第5章

It is, if I can fully attain to it, the ultimate realisation of the artistic life. For the artistic life is simple self-development. Humility in the artist is his frank acceptance of all experiences, just as Love in the artist is simply that sense of Beauty that reveals to the world its body and its soul. In Marius the Epicurean[93.1] Pater seeks to reconcile the artistic life with the life of religion in the deep, sweet and austere sense of the word. But Marius is little more than a spectator an ideal spectator indeed, and one to whom it is given “to contemplate the spectacle of life with appropriate emotions,” which Wordsworth defines as the poets true aim[93.2] yet a spectator merely, and perhaps a little too much occupied with the comeliness of the vessels of the Sanctuary to notice that it is the Sanctuary of Sorrow that he is gazing at.

倘若我能完全达致这一境界，那就是艺术生命的终极感悟。因为艺术生命是简单的自我发展。艺术家的谦卑在于他对所有经验的坦诚接受，正如艺术家的爱无非是那份对美的感受，那份向世界揭示其灵与肉的美感。佩特在他的小说《伊壁鸠鲁信徒马利乌斯》中，想求得艺术生命与宗教生命在深层、美好、严肃意义上的一致。但马利乌斯同一个旁观者相差无几，的确是一个再好不过的旁观者了，天生“以合适的情感观照生活之奇景”，华兹华斯把这点定义为诗人的真正目的。然而他这个旁观者只不过、或者太过于注重神殿的器皿是否好看得体，因而未能注意到他所注目的乃是悲怆之神殿。

I see a far more intimate and immediate connection between the true Life of Christ and the true life of the artist, and I take a keen pleasure in the reflection that long before Sorrow had made my days her own and bound me to her wheel I had written in The Soul of Man that he who would lead a Christ-like life must be entirely and absolutely himself, and had taken as my types not merely the shepherd on the hillside and the prisoner in his cell but also the painter to whom the world is a pageant and the poet for whom the world is a song. I remember saying once to Andre Gide, as we sat together in some Paris caf, that while Metaphysics had but little real interest for me, and Morality absolutely none, there was nothing that either Plato or Christ had said that could not be transferred immediately into the sphere of Art, and there and its complete fulfilment. It was a generalisation as profound as it was novel.

我看到了，真正的基督生命和真正的艺术家生命之间，有一个亲密直接得多的联系；令我大为高兴的是，回想起在悲怆占据我的日日夜夜、使我身心俱裂之前，我早就在《人的灵魂》中写道，一个人必须完全是、绝对是他自己，才会过基督那样的生活，而我引为典型的，不但有山坡上的牧羊人、牢里的囚徒，还有画家，对于他们世界是一幅美景，还有诗人，对于他们世界是一首歌。记得有一次跟安德烈纪德在巴黎的一家咖啡馆里，我对他说过，对形而上学我少有兴趣，对道德伦理则一点也没有，然而不管是柏拉图还是耶稣基督，他们所说的无不能直接移植到艺术领域，并在此获得圆满的实现。这一条概括既新颖又深刻。

Nor is it merely that we can discern in Christ that close union of personality with perfection which forms the real distinction between classical and romantic Art and makes Christ the true precursor of the romantic movement in life, but the very basis of his nature was the same as that of the nature of the artist, an intense and flamelike imagination. He realised in the entire sphere of human relations that imaginative sympathy which in the sphere of Art is the sole secret of creation. He understood the leprosy of the leper, the darkness of the blind, the fierce misery of those who live for pleasure, the strange poverty of the rich. You can see now一can you not—that when you wrote to me in my trouble, “When you are not on your pedestal you are not interesting. The next time you are ill I will go away at once,” you were as remote from the true temper of the artist as you were from what Matthew Arnold calls “the secret of Jesus.” [95.1] Either would have taught you that whatever happens to another happens to oneself, and if you want an inscription to read at dawn and at night-time and for pleasure or for pain, write up on the wall of your house in letters for the sun to gild and the moon to silver “Whatever happens to another happens to oneself,” and should anyone ask you what such an inscription can possibly mean you can answer that it means “Lord Christs heart and Shakespeares brain.”

在基督身上还看得到个性与完美那种紧密的结合，这结合形成了古典和浪漫艺术的真正区别，也使得基督成为生活中浪漫运动的真正先驱；还看得到基督天性的根本基础与艺术家的完全一样，是一种热烈奔放、火一样的想象力。他在人类关系的整个领域中实现了那种由想象引发的同情，而这在艺术领域中又是创作的唯一奥秘。他理解麻风病人的痛苦，失明之人的黑暗，为享乐而活者的巨大悲哀，富人不可思议的贫乏。现在你明白了吧——难道还不明白吗？——在我病痛之中你写信给我说，“你像尊偶像，没了底座就没意思了。下次你要是病了我马上走开”，这样做距离真正艺术家的气质，同距离马修阿诺德所称的“耶稣的真谛”一样遥远。无论艺术家的气质还是耶稣的真谛，都会教你怎样对别人的遭遇感同身受。你如果需要一句座右铭好晨昏温习，好读着痛快或痛苦，那就把这一句写在你家墙壁上，让它日沐阳光夜被月华吧：“对别人的遭遇感同身受。 ”要是有人问起这样一句座右铭意味着什么，你就回答说，它意味着“主耶稣的心肠和莎士比亚的头脑”。95

Christs place indeed is with the poets. His whole conception of Humanity sprang right out of the imagination and can only be realised by it. What God was to the Pantheist, man was to him. He was the first to conceive the divided races as a unity. Before his time there had been gods and men. He alone saw that on the hills of life there were but God and Man, and, feeling through the mysticism of sympathy that in himself each had been made incarnate, he calls himself the Son of the One or the son of the other, according to his mood. More than anyone else in history he wakes in us that temper of wonder to which Romance always appeals. There is still something to me almost incredible in the idea of a young Galilean peasant imagining that he could bear on his own shoulders the burden of the entire world all that had been already done and suffered, and all that was yet to be done and suffered the sins of Nero, of Caesar Borgia, of Alexander VI., and of him who was Emperor of Rome and Priest of the Sun[96.1] the sufferings of those whose name is Legion and whose dwelling is among the tombs,[96.2] oppressed nationalities, factory children, thieves, people in prison, outcasts, those who are dumb under oppression and whose silence is heard only of God and not merely imagining this but actually achieving it, so that at the present moment all who come in contact with his personality, even though they may neither bow to his altar nor kneel before his priest, yet somehow find that the ugliness of their sins is taken away and the beauty of their sorrow revealed to them.

基督的确是诗人的同道。他整个的人性观念，都是出自想象也只有通过想象才能领悟。人之于基督，一如上帝之于泛神论者。把分成各种各类的人视为整体，他是第一人。在他到来之前，有诸多的神和各样的人。唯有他，看到在生活的座座山峦上只有一个上帝和一样人，而且借助同情的玄妙，使两者都通过他道成肉身，并依心情而定，称自己为神之子、或人之子。历史上没有谁能像他那样唤醒我们心中那种永远为罗曼司所激动的奇妙气质。我仍然觉得其中有些事几乎难以置信：一个年轻的加利利农夫想象他能双肩担起整个世界的重负——一切犯过的罪、受过的苦，一切要犯还未犯的罪、要受还未受的苦；尼罗的罪过、教皇亚历山大六世的罪过、其私生子泽扎博尔吉亚的罪过、那个身兼罗马皇帝和太阳神祭司的人的罪过；那些名字叫“群”，住在坟茔里的人所受的苦；那些受压迫的民族、工厂的童工、盗贼、囚犯、流浪汉；那些无言地受着压迫，他们的沉默只有上帝听到的人——这些何止是想象，而是真的做到了。所以，现在任何人与他的人格交通，即使没向他的圣坛鞠躬、没向他的牧师下跪，也会神奇地感到他们的罪孽褪去了丑陋，他们的悲怆显出了美。96

I have said of him that he ranks with the poets. That is true. Shelley and Sophocles are of his company. But his entire life also is the most wonderful of poems. For “pity and terror” [97.1] there is nothing in the entire cycle of Greek Tragedy to touch it. The absolute purity of the protagonist raises the entire scheme to a height of romantic art from which the sufferings of “Thebes and Pelops line” [97.2] are by their very horror excluded, and shows how wrong Aristotle was when he said in his treatise on the Drama that it would be impossible to bear the spectacle of one blameless in pain.[97.3] Nor in Aeschylus or Dante, those stern masters of tenderness, in Shakespeare, the most purely human of all the great artists, in the whole of Celtic myth and legend where the loveliness of the world is shown through a mist of tears, and the life of a man is no more than the life of a flower, is there anything that for sheer simplicity of pathos wedded and made one with sublimity of tragic effect can be said to equal or approach even the last act of Christs Passion. The little supper with his companions, one of whom had already sold him for a price the anguish in the quiet moonlit olive-garden the false friend coming close to him so as to betray him with a kiss the friend who still believed in him and on whom as on a rock he had hoped to build a House of Refuge for Man denying him as the bird cried to the dawn his own utter loneliness, his submission, his acceptance of everything and along with it all such scenes as the high priest of Orthodoxy rending his raiment in wrath, and the Magistrate of Civil Justice calling for water in the vain hope of cleansing himself of that stain of innocent blood that makes him the scarlet figure of History the coronation-ceremony of Sorrow, one of the most wonderful things in the whole of recorded time the crucifixion of the Innocent One before the eyes of his mother and of the disciple whom he loved the soldiers gambling and throwing dice for his clothes the terrible death by which he gave the world its most eternal symbol[97a] and his final burial in the tomb of the rich man, his body swathed in Egyptian linen with costly spices and perfumes as though he had been a Kings son—when one contemplates all this from the point of view of Art alone one cannot but be grateful that the supreme office of the Church should be the playing of the tragedy without the shedding of blood, the mystical presentation by means of dialogue and costume and gesture even of the Passion of her Lord, and it is always a source of pleasure and awe to me to remember that the ultimate survival of the Greek Chorus, lost elsewhere to art, is to be found in the servitor answering the priest at Mass.

我说了他与诗人同道。这是真的。雪莱和索福克勒斯即是他的伙伴。但他的整个生命也是诗中最美妙的一首。就“怜悯与恐惧”而言，倾所有古希腊悲剧也不可望其项背。主人公绝对纯洁的形象，使整个情节上升到一个浪漫艺术的高度。这一高度，底比斯或珀罗普斯家族所遭受的苦难，恰恰因为其情节的恐怖而无法达到。主人公的纯洁也说明亚里士多德的话大错特错，他在阐述戏剧的论著中说，看到一个毫无过失的人痛苦是不可忍受的。同样的，在埃斯库罗斯或但丁这两个严格对待温情的大师笔下，在莎士比亚这一最具人情味的艺术大师笔下，在凯而特人全部那些以泪眼看世界之美好、将人生视为一朵花的神话传奇中，也找不到什么，能在悲情的朴实与悲剧效果的崇高融为一体这一点上，同耶稣受难中哪怕最后的一幕相提并论。那顿小小的晚餐他与同伴们共进，其中有一人已经将他索价卖掉了；月光中，橄榄园里静悄悄的是一片痛苦，那假朋友走上前，要用一个吻将他的身份暴露；那个还信着他的朋友，他像倚靠磐石一样本想倚重这朋友来建起一所供世人避难的房子，在黎明鸡叫前不认他；他本人孑然一身的孤独、那样的温良谦恭、那样的逆来顺受；与此同时，还有那一幕幕情境：如大祭司怒撕衣服，巡抚要水、无济于事地想洗去手上那使他成为历史罪人的义人之血；那悲怆的加冕典礼，有史以来最奇妙的一个情景；将这无辜之人在他母亲和他所爱的信徒面前钉上十字架；兵丁赌博，为分他的衣服拈阄；通过这惨烈的死，他给世界留下最永恒的象征[97a]；而他最终葬在富人的坟里，身体裹着埃及的细麻布加贵重的香料，宛如王子一般——这一切，单从艺术的角度来观照，也使人不得不心怀感激，感激教会的至高职能成了即使是上演这出悲剧，不必流血，也不借助对话、服装及手势等带神秘感的表现，来演出她的救主最后的受难历程；而我呢，一想到那在别的艺术中失传的古希腊合唱，最终在做弥撒时以赞礼人对神父的应答中保存了下来，喜乐和敬畏之情总是油然而生。

Yet the whole life of Christ—so entirely may Sorrow and Beauty be made one in their meaning and manifestation—is really an idyll, though it ends with the veil of the temple being rent, and the darkness coming over the face of the earth, and the stone rolled to the door of the sepulcher[98a]. One always thinks of him as a young bridegroom with his companions, as indeed he somewhere describes himself, or as a shepherd straying through a valley with his sheep in search of green meadow or cool stream, or as a singer trying to build out of music the walls of the city of God, or as a lover for whose love the whole world was too small. His miracles seem to me as exquisite as the coming of Spring, and quite as natural. I see no difficulty at all in believing that such was the charm of his personality that his mere presence could bring peace to souls in anguish, and that those who touched his garments or his hands forgot their pain or that as he passed by on the highway of life people who had seen nothing of lifes mysteries saw them clearly, and others who had been deaf to every voice but that of Pleasure heard for the first time the voice of Love and found it as “musical as is Apollos lute” [98.1] or that evil passions fled at his approach, and men whose dull unimaginative lives had been but a mode of death rose as it were from the grave when he called them or that when he taught on the hillside the multitude forgot their hunger and thirst and the cares of this world, and that to his friends who listened to him as he sat at meat the coarse food seemed delicate, and the water had the taste of good wine, and the whole house became full of the odour and sweetness of nard[98b]. 然而基督的整个生命——这生命可以如此完满地在意义和表现上将悲与美合而为一——真的是一首田园牧歌，尽管在结尾时殿里的幔子裂为两半，遍地都黑暗了，石头滚到墓穴前[98a]。人们总是把他看作是一位同友伴们相聚的年轻新郎，确实就像他自己在什么地方说的；或者是一个倘佯在山谷里的牧人，同他的羊群一道找寻绿草和甘泉；或者是一名歌者，要用歌声为上帝的城筑起城墙；或者是一个大爱之人，他的爱整个世界也装不下。对于我，他的神迹煦煦如冬去春来般顺心应时。我看一点也不难相信，这就是他人格的魅力：他一出现，就足以让在痛苦中煎熬的灵魂获得安宁；摸一下他的手或衣服，便能把痛楚忘却；他在生活之路上行过，那些对生活的玄妙视而不见的人便心明眼亮，而那些两耳充斥着享乐的靡靡之音的人，便第一次听到爱的声音，觉得那声音如“阿波罗的琴声般悦耳”；他走来，罪恶的情欲便遁逃无影，而那些生活暗淡想象力阙如的人们，便像死而复生一样，从坟墓中随他的召唤站立起来；他在山边讲道，众人听着便忘了饥渴和尘世的纷扰；他坐在餐桌边，聆听他教诲的朋友们便觉得粗茶淡饭也成了美味佳肴，白水喝着犹如美酒，整个屋子弥漫着甘松油的甜香[98b]。

Renan in his Vie de Jsus—that gracious Fifth Gospel, the Gospel according to St Thomas one might call it—says somewhere that Christs great achievement was that he made himself as much loved after his death as he had been during his lifetime.[99.1] And certainly, if his place is among the poets, he is the leader of all the lovers[99a]. He saw that love was that lost secret of the world for which the wise men had been looking, and that it was only through love that one could approach either the heart of the leper or the feet of God.

勒南写了《耶稣的一生》——那部优美的第五福音书，照圣托马斯所言可说是只此一部的福音书——他在书中某处说了，耶稣伟大的成就，在于使自己死后如同生前一样受人爱戴。当然，倘若他是诗人的同道，那更是天下有爱心之人的魁首[99a]。他看到，爱就是世界失去的那个真意，贤哲在寻找的那个真意；他看到，只有通过爱，一个人才能到达麻风病人心间，或上帝跟前。

100

And, above all, Christ is the most supreme of Individualists. Humility, like the artistic acceptance of all experiences, is merely a mode of manifestation. It is mans soul that Christ is always looking for[100a]. He calls it “Gods Kingdom”— —and finds it in everyone[100b]. He compares it to little things, to a tiny seed, to a handful of leaven, to a pearl. That is because one only realises ones soul by getting rid of all alien passions, all acquired culture, and all external possessions be they good or evil[100c].

而最重要的是，基督是个最高超的自为主义者。谦卑，就像艺术接受一切经验一样，不过是一个表现的方式而已。基督一直在找寻的是人的灵魂[100a]。他把这称作“上帝的国度”，在每个人心中都有的[100b]。他把这比作小东西，一小粒种子、一小团酵母、一颗珍珠。这是因为，只有在摆脱了所有与之不合的情欲、所有习得的文化、所有的身外之物，不管是好是坏，然后人才能领悟自己的灵魂[100c]。

100

101

I bore up against everything with some stubbornness of will and much rebellion of nature till I had absolutely nothing left in the world but Cyril. I had lost my name, my position, my happiness, my freedom, my wealth. I was a prisoner and a pauper[101a]. But I had still one beautiful thing left, my own eldest son. Suddenly he was taken away from me by the law. It was a blow so appalling that I did not know what to do, so I flung myself on my knees, and bowed my head, and wept and said “The body of a child is as the body of the Lord I am not worthy of either.” That moment seemed to save me. I saw then that the only thing for me was to accept everything. Since then—curious as it will no doubt sound to you—I have been happier. 碰到大小事情，我因为意志上有些顽梗、加上天性中的不少叛逆，向来是咬咬牙挺住，直到在世界上除了西里尔，我一无所有。名声、地位、幸福、自由、财富，全失去了，人成了阶下囚、穷光蛋[101a]。但我还是有一样美好的东西，我自己的大儿子。突然间他又被法庭判走了。这个打击令我毛骨悚然，不知该怎样才好，于是跪在地上，低下头，哭着说：“孩子的身躯有如主的身躯，可我两样都不配得到。” 这一刻似乎救了我。我当下明白，唯一能做的只有接受一切。从那以后——你听了无疑会觉得奇怪——我心情便高兴了一些。

101

102

It was of course my soul in its ultimate essence that I had reached[102a]. In many ways I had been its enemy, but I found it waiting for me as a friend. When one comes in contact with the soul it makes one simple as a child, as Christ said one should be. It is tragic how few people ever “possess their souls” before they die[102b].[102.1] “Nothing is more rare in any man,” says Emerson, “than an act of his own.” [102.2] It is quite true[102c]. Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone elses opinions, their life a mimicry, their passions a quotation[102d]. Chris was not merely the supreme Individualist, but he was the first in History. People have tried to make him out an ordinary Philanthropist, like the dreadful philanthropists of the nineteenth century, or ranked him as an Altruist with the unscientific and sentimental. But he was really neither one nor the other. Pity he has, of course, for the poor, for those who are shut up in prisons, for the lowly, for the wretched, but he has far more pity for the rich, for the hard Hedonists, for those who waste their freedom in becoming slaves to things, for those who wear soft raiment and live in Kings houses. Riches and Pleasure seemed to him to be really greater tragedies than Poverty and Sorrow. And as for Altruism, who knew better than he that it is vocation not volition that determines us[102e], and that one cannot gather grapes off thorns or figs from thistles

我所触及的，当然是自己灵魂最深处的本质[102a]。我曾多方与它为敌，没想到它却像朋友一样等着我。当人同灵魂相交时，就变得像小孩一样单纯，正如基督所要的那样。可悲的是，能在死前“拥有自己灵魂”的人，又有几个[102b]？“任何人当中，”埃默森说过，“最难得的莫过于出自本人的行为。” 这话还真不假[102c]。大多数人都是别人的人。他们的思想是别人的想法，他们的生活是对别人的模仿，他们的激情是袭人牙慧的情感[102d]。基督不仅是个最高超的自为主义者，他也是历史上的第一个。人们想把他说成是个一般的慈善家，就像十九世纪那些个窝囊的慈善家；要不就说他是个利他主义者，等同于那些不讲科学又自作多情的人们。但说实在的，他既不是这个也不是那个。恻隐之心他当然有，他可怜穷人、关在牢里的犯人、下等人、受苦受难的人，但更多得多的是可怜富人、死心塌地的享乐主义者、那些浪费自己的自由而沦为物的奴隶的人、那些身穿绫罗绸缎住着王宫侯宅的人。对于他，财富和享乐比起贫穷和悲哀来，似乎真正是更大的悲剧。至于说利他主义，有谁比他知道得更清楚，左右我们的，是神召而非心愿[102e]，在荆棘中采不来葡萄，在蓟丛中摘不到无花果？

102

103

To live for others as a definite self-conscious aim was not his creed. It was not the basis of his creed[103a]. When he says “Forgive your enemies,” [103.1] it is not for the sake of the enemy but for ones own sake that he says so, and because Love is more beautiful than Hate. In his entreaty to the young man whom when he looked on he loved, “Sell all that thou hast and give it to the poor,” [103.2] it is not of the state of the poor that he is thinking but of the soul of the young man, the lovely soul that wealth was marring. In his view of life he is one with the artist who knows that by the inevitable law of self-perfection the poet must sing, and the sculptor think in bronze, and the painter make the world a mirror for his moods, as surely and as certainly as the hawthorn must blossom in Spring, and the corn burn to gold at harvest-time, and the Moon in her ordered wanderings change from shield to sickle, and from sickle to shield[103b]. 为别人而活，作为一个确定的自我意识的目的，这不是他的教义。这不是他教义的基础[103a]。他说“饶恕你的敌人”，但这不是因为你敌人的缘故，而是为了你本人他才这么说的，还因为爱比恨美。他恳求那个他看了喜欢的年轻人，“去变卖你所有的，分给穷人。” 这时他心中想的并非穷人的处境，而是那年轻人的灵魂，那个正被财富糟蹋的可爱的灵魂。他的人生观与艺术家无异；这样的艺术家明白，遵循自我完善的必然法则，诗人非唱不可，雕塑家非用青铜思考不可，画家非以世界为他心绪的镜子不可。这道理千真万确，就像春天里山楂树必得开花，秋天里麦子必得金黄一样，就像月亮有条不紊地漫游天庭一样，何时如盘，何时如钩[103b]。

103

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But while Christ did not say to men, “Live for others,” he pointed out that there was no difference at all between the lives of others and ones own life. By this means he gave to man an extended, a Titan personality. Since his coming the history of each separate individual is, or can be made, the history of the world. Of course Culture has intensified the personality of man. Art has made us myriad-minded[104a]. Those who have the artistic temperament go into exile with Dante[104.1] and learn how salt is the bread of others and how steep their stairs[104b] they catch for a moment the serenity and calm of Goethe, and yet know but too well why Baudelaire cried to God

O Seigneur, donnez-moi la force et le courage

De contempler mon corps et mon coeur sans dgot.[104.2]

Out of Shakespeares sonnets they draw, to their own hurt it may be, the secret of his love and make it their own they look with new eyes on modern life because they have listened to one of Chopins nocturnes, or handle Greek things, or read the story of the passion of some dead man for some dead woman whose hair was like threads of fine gold and whose mouth was as a pomegranate.[104.3] But the sympathy of the artistic temperament is necessarily with what has found expression. In words or in colour, in music or in marble, behind the painted masks of an Aeschylean play[104.4] or through some Sicilian shepherds pierced and jointed reeds the man and his message must have been revealed.

但虽然基督并没有对世人说，“为别人而活”，他却指出了他人的生命和自己的生命，其间一点差别也没有。这样一来，他给了人一个外延了的、巨大的人格。自从他来后，每一个各各分离的个人的历史，就是、或者说就能够成为世界的历史。当然文化强化了人的人格。艺术使得我们心有千千重[104a]。有艺术气质的和但丁一道去流放，去了解他人的艰辛，去明白他们的困苦[104b]：他们有一阵领略到歌德的宁静与从容，然而心里对波德莱尔为什么会向上帝呼告又太清楚了：

啊，主啊，给我力量和勇气吧

让我看着自己的身体和内心而不厌恶。

他们也许是自作自受吧，从莎士比亚的商籁诗中得出他爱的真意，并把它变为己有；他们以新的目光看待现代生活，就因为自己听过了肖邦的一首夜曲；他们或者摆弄古希腊的东西，或者阅读某个死去的男人对某个死去的女人爱得神魂颠倒的故事，那女人发如金丝嘴似石榴。但艺术气质必定是与已然表达的产生共鸣。通过言语或色彩、音乐或大理石，在埃斯库罗斯戏剧的彩画面具背后，在某个西西里岛牧人的芦笛声中，人以及人的信息必定已经被揭示过了。

104

105

To the artist, expression is the only mode under which he can conceive life at all. To him what is dumb is dead. But to Christ it was not so. With a width and wonder of imagination, that fills one almost with awe, he took the entire world of the inarticulate, the voiceless world of pain, as his kingdom, and made of himself its eternal mouthpiece[105a]. Those of whom I have spoken, who are dumb under oppression and “whose silence is heard only of God,” he chose as his brothers. He sought to become eyes to the blind, ears to the deaf, and a cry on the lips of those whose tongue had been tied. His desire was to be to the myriads who had found no utterance a very trumpet through which they might call to Heaven. And feeling, with the artistic nature of one to whom Sorrow and Suffering were modes through which he could realise his conception of the Beautiful, that an idea is of no value till it becomes incarnate and is made an image, he makes of himself the image of the Man of Sorrows, and as such has fascinated and dominated Art as no Greek god ever succeeded in doing.

对艺术家来说，表达是他得以体察生活的唯一方式。对于他，没有声音的就等于没有生命。但是对于基督，情况就不是这样。靠着那令人肃然起敬的想象力，其宽宏其神妙，他把整个说不出话的世界、无声的痛苦世界，当作他的国度，使自己成为它永恒的喉舌[105a]。我提到过的那些人，那些无言地受着压迫，“沉默只有上帝听到的人”，他认他们为兄弟。他尽力要成为盲者的眼睛、聋者的耳朵、口舌被困者的一声呼喊。他期望的就是为有口无言的芸芸众生当一把号角，他们好向上天呼唤。靠着他那份艺术的天性——一个人具备了这天性，悲怆和受苦就成了实现自己对美的观念的方式——他感觉到一个理念，要是没道成肉身化作形象，便没有价值，于是就让自己化成了悲怆之人的形象。正因为此，艺术为之倾倒，尊他为上，而纵观希腊诸神，哪个也没能如此独领风骚过。105

106

For the Greek gods, in spite of the white and red of their fair fleet limbs, were not really what they appeared to be. The curved brow of Apollo was like the suns disk crescent over a hill at dawn, and his feet were as the wings of the morning, but he himself had been cruel to Marsyas[106.1] and had made Niobe childless [106.2] in the steel shields of the eyes of Pallas there had been no pity for Arachne[106.3] [106a] the pomp and peacocks of Hera were all that was really noble about her[106.4] and the Father of the Gods himself had been too fond of the daughters of men. The two deep suggestive figures of Greek mythology were, for religion, Demeter, an earth-goddess, not one of the Olympians, [106.5] and, for art, Dionysus, the son of a mortal woman to whom the moment of his birth had proved the moment of her death also.[106.6]

因为希腊的神祗，尽管他们有着好看伶俐的四肢，红白光鲜，却不见得真有外表那么堂皇。阿波罗曲线型的前额，就像拂晓时分在山顶刚探出来的半轮红日，他的双脚像黎明的双翼，但他却对长笛对手玛耳绪阿斯心狠手辣，剥了他的皮，还杀死了尼俄柏所有的子女；那个别名叫帕拉斯的雅典娜，她钢盾般的双眼里却不见对阿剌克涅的怜悯[106a]；赫拉除了她的派头和孔雀外，没多少高贵可言；而众神之父本人，却对人间女子太过钟情了。希腊神话中深具暗示意义的有两个人物：对宗教来说是大地女神德美特，她不是奥林波斯山诸神的一员；对艺术来说是狄俄倪索斯，一名民间凡妇的儿子，他出世之时成了自己母亲去世之日。

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107

But Life itself from its lowliest and most humble sphere produced one far more marvellous than the mother of Proserpina or the son of Semele[107.1]. Out of the carpenters shop aat Nazareth had come a personality infinitely greater than any made by myth or legend, and one, strangely enough, destined to reveal to the world the mystical meaning of wine and the real beauty of the lilies of the field as none, either on Cithaeron or at Enna, had ever done it.[107.2]

可是生活本身却从最卑下的底层产生了一个人物，远比普洛塞庇娜的母亲还是塞墨勒的儿子更令人可敬可叹。拿撒勒的木匠铺里出了个人，他比任何神话或传奇中的人物伟大不知有多少倍。够奇怪的是，他命定要向世界揭示葡萄酒的奥秘、百合花的真美，而喀泰戎山或恩那草地上的那些人，谁也办不到。

107

108

The song of Isaiah, “He is despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief and we hid as it were our faces from him,” [108.1] had seemed to him to be a prefiguring of himself, and in him the prophecy was fulfilled. We must not be afraid of such a phrase. Every single work of art is the fulfilment of a prophecy. For every work of art is the conversion of an idea into an image[108a]. Every single human being should be the fulfilment of a prophecy. For every human being should be the realisation of some ideal, either in the mind of God or in the mind of man. Christ found the type, and fixed it[108b], and the dream of a Virgilian poet, either at Jerusalem or at Babylon, became in the long progress of the centuries incarnate[108c] in him for whom the world was waiting.[108.2] “His visage was marred more than any mans, and his form more than the sons of men,” [108.3] are among the signs noted by Isaiah as distinguishing the new ideal, and as soon as Art understood what was meant it opened like a flower at the presence of one in whom truth in Art was set forth as it had never been before. For is not truth in Art, as I have said, “that in which the outward is expressive of the inward in which the soul is made flesh, and the body instinct with spirit in which Form reveals”

以赛亚的诗“他被藐视，被人厌弃，多受痛苦，常经忧患。他被藐视，好像被人掩面不看的一样”，对于他这就像自己一生的预示，而这预言也在他身上实现了。这句话我们绝不应该害怕。每一件艺术品都是一个预言的实现，因为每一件艺术品都是理念向形象的转化[108a]。人类的每一分子都应该成为一个预言的实现，因为每一个人，无论是在上帝还是在人的心中，都应该是某个理想的实现。基督找到了预示，并成就了它[108b]；一个弗吉尔诗人的梦，不管是在耶路撒冷还是在巴比伦，历经几个世纪漫长的演进，在世人等待着的耶稣身上道成肉身[108c]。“他的面貌比别人憔悴，他的形容比世人枯槁”，这是以赛亚注意到的一些迹象，用来辨别这新的理想。只要艺术一明白其中意义，便在那个前所未有地彰显了艺术之真谛的人跟前，绽开如花。难道不像我所说的吗，艺术的真谛即是“外形表达着内涵；使灵魂获得肉身，使肉体充满精神；以形式揭示内容”？

108

109

To me one of the things in history the most to be regretted is that the Christs own renaissance which had produced the Cathedral of Chartres, the Arthurian cycle of legends, the life of St Francis of Assisi, the art of Giotto, and Dantes Divine Comedy, was not allowed to develop on its own lines but was interrupted and spoiled by the dreary classical Renaissance that gave us Petrarch, and Raphaels frescoes, and Palladian architecture, and formal French tragedy, and St Pauls Cathedral, and Popes poetry, and everything that is made from without and by dead rules, and does not spring from within through some spirit informing it[109a]. But wherever there is a romantic movement in Art, there somehow, and under some form, is Christ, or the soul of Christ. He is in Romeo and Juliet, in the Winters Tale, in Provencal poetry, in “The Ancient Mariner,” in “La Belle Dame sans Merci,” and in Chattertons “Ballad of Charity.” [109b]

对于我，历史上最令人遗憾的一件事是，基督本身的复兴，既然产生了沙特尔城的大教堂、阿瑟王记的传奇、阿西西城的圣弗兰西斯的生平、乔托的艺术、但丁的《神曲》，却不让按其自身的主线发展，反而被无聊的古典复兴打断了、破坏了。这古典复兴给我们留下了彼特拉克的商籁诗体、拉斐尔的壁画、帕拉第奥的建筑风格、重形式的法国悲剧、圣保罗大教堂、蒲伯的诗，以及各种来自外部、靠死的规则形成的东西，而不是通过某种精神的点化从内部跃然而出[109a]。但是不管何时何地，只要艺术上出现浪漫主义运动，不知为什么就有基督，或者基督的灵魂，以某种形式出现。在《罗密欧与朱丽叶》中，在《冬天的童话》中，在普罗旺斯人的诗中、在柯尔律治的《古舟子咏》中，在济慈的《无情妖女》中，在查特顿的《仁爱之歌》中[109b]。

109

110

We owe to him the most diverse things and people. Hugos Les Miserables, Baudelaires Fleurs du Mal, the note of pity in Russian novels, the stained glass and tapestries and quattrocento work of Burne-Jones and Morris,[110.1] Verlaine and Verlaines poems, belong to him no less than the Tower of Giotto, Lancelot and Guinevere, Tannhauser, the troubled romantic marbles of Michael Angelo, pointed architecture, and the love of children and flowers—for both of whom, indeed, in classical art there was but little place, hardly enough for them to grow or play in, but who from the twelfth century down to our own day have been continually making their appearance in art, under various modes and at various times, coming fitfully and wilfully as children and flowers are apt to do[110a], Spring always seeming to one as if the flowers had been hiding, and only came out into the sun because they were afraid that grown-up people would grow tired of looking for them and give up the search, and the life of a child being no more than an April day on which there is both rain and sun for the narcissus.

拜他之赐，世上才有如此丰繁的人和物。雨果的《悲惨世界》，波德莱尔的《恶之花》，俄罗斯小说中的哀怜情调，伯恩琼斯和莫理斯的着色玻璃窗、挂毡及其十五世纪风格的作品，魏尔伦和他的诗歌，这一切，都是属于他的，一如乔托的塔、亚瑟王的妻子和她的情人兰斯洛特、汤豪泽、米开朗琪罗那不安的浪漫主义雕像、尖顶建筑风格，以及对儿童和花的钟爱——因为对儿童和花，古典艺术的确没留出什么地方，足以让他们成长玩耍，但是自十二世纪至今，他们则不断地以不同方式于不同时候在艺术中出现，说来就来说走就走，完全是一派孩童与鲜花的样子[110a]：春天给人的印象，永远是花好像躲在了什么地方，又怕大人找他们不着，烦了，不找了，赶紧冒出来跑到太阳底下；而一个小孩子的生活，简直就像个四月天，又是阳光又是雨地洒在水仙花上。

110

111

And it is the imaginative quality of Christs own nature that makes him this palpitating centre of romance. The strange figures of poetic drama and ballad are made by the imagination of others, but out of his own imagination entirely did Jesus of Nazareth create himself[111a]. The cry of Isaiah had really no more to do with his coming than the song of the nightingale has to do with the rising of the moon—no more, though perhaps no less. He was the denial as well as the affirmation of prophecy. For every expectation that he fulfilled, there was another that he destroyed. In all beauty, says Bacon, there is “some strangeness of proportion,” [111b] [111.1] and of those who are born of the spirit, of those, that is to say, who like himself are dynamic forces, Christ says that they are like the wind that “bloweth where it listeth and no man can tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth.” [111.2] That is why he is so fascinating to artists. He has all the colour-elements of life mystery, strangeness, pathos, suggestion, ecstasy, love. He appeals to the temper of wonder, and creates that mood by which alone he can be understood.

正是基督本人天性中那富有想象力的气质，使他成为这生气勃勃的罗曼司中心。诗剧和歌谣中奇特的人物是别人的想象造出来的，但拿撒勒的耶稣创造自己，凭的全是自己的想象[111a]。以赛亚的呼唤同他的降世，其间的关系就像夜莺的歌声同月亮的升起，两者相差不多——不多，虽然也许也不少。他既是对预言的确认，也是对预言的否认。因为他每成就一个期望，便摧毁了另一个。所有的美，培根说了，都存在着“某种比例上的奇特之处” [111b]；至于那些生就这种精神，也就是说，那些同他一样具有勃勃生机的人，基督说，他们就像风“随着意思吹，你听见风的响声，却不晓得它从哪里来，往哪里去”。这就是为什么他那么让艺术家着迷。他具备了生活所有的色调：神秘、奇特、悲情、暗示、狂喜、挚爱。他打动人的惊叹之心，并营造出这样一种情调，只有借助这情调才能理解他。

111

112

And it is to me a joy to remember that if he is “of imagination all compact,” [112.1] the world itself is of the same substance. I said in Dorian Gray[112.2] that the great sins of the world take place in the brain, but it is in the brain that everything takes place[112a]. We know now that we do not see with the eye or hear with the ear. They are merely channels for the transmission, adequate or inadequate, of sense-impressions. It is in the brain that the poppy is red, that the apple is odorous, that the skylark sings[112b]. 我很高兴地想到，假如他是“集想象之大成者”，那世界本身也是如此。我在《道林格雷》中说过，天下的大罪大恶产生于头脑，但世上的一切都是在头脑中产生的[112a]。现在知道，我们并不是用眼睛看，用耳朵听。眼睛耳朵不过是传递感官印象的通道而已，传递得充分不充分另当别论。是在头脑里罂粟花红了，苹果香了，云雀唱了[112b]。

112

113

Of late I have been studying the four prose-poems about Christ with some diligence. At Christmas I managed to get hold of a Greek Testament, and every morning, after I have cleaned my cell and polished my tins, I read a little of the Gospels, a dozen verses taken by chance anywhere. It is a delightful way of opening the day. To you, in your turbulent ,ill-disciplined life, it would be a capital thing if you would do the same. It would do you no end of good, and the Greek is quite simple. Endless repetition, in and out of season, has spoiled for us the navet, the freshness, the simple romantic charm of the Gospels. We hear them read far too often, and far too badly, and all repetition is anti-spiritual. When one returns to the Greek it is like going into a garden of lilies out of some narrow and dark house[113a].

近来我下了点功夫钻研了关于基督的那四部散文诗。圣诞节时想法弄到了一本希腊语的《新约》，每天早晨洗好牢房刷好盆罐，就读一点福音书，随手翻他十几节读读。这样来开始一天很愉快的。对于你，在那纷纷攘攘、没有节制的生活中，要能这么做那简直是天大的一件事。那对你可是有说不完的好处，而希腊语也挺简单的。一年到头没完没了的重复，已经败坏了我们对福音书那份率真、清新，那份朴实无华的浪漫神韵的感受。我们听别人读太多太多遍了，读得也太糟太糟了，而所有的重复都是反精神的。当你回到希腊文本时，感觉就像从一所狭窄黑暗的房子里走进一个百合花花园似的[113a]。

113

114

And to me the pleasure is doubled by the reflection that it is extremely probable that we have the actual terms, the ipsissima verba,[114.1] used by Christ. It was always supposed that Christ talked in Aramaic. Even Renan thought so. But now we know that the Galilean peasants, like the Irish peasants of our own day, were bilingual, and that Greek was the ordinary language of intercourse all over Palestine, as indeed all over the Eastern world. I never liked the idea that we only knew of Christs own words through a translation of a translation. It is a delight to me to think that as far as his conversation was concerned, Charmides[114.2] might have listened to him, and Socrates reasoned with him, and Plato understood him that he really said [114.3] that when he thought of the lilies of the field, and how they neither toil nor spin, his absolute expression was ,[114.4] and that his last word when he cried out “My life has been completed, has reached its fulfillment, has been perfected,” was exactly as St John tells us it was [114.5] no more.

对于我，这愉悦又是双份的，因为心想极有可能我们读到基督所用的原话，他的ipsissima verba。从来都以为基督说的是阿拉姆语，就连勒南也这样想。可现在我们知道，加利利的农民，就像我们现在的爱尔兰农民一样，是操双语的，而那希腊语又是整个巴勒斯坦的一般交际语言，的确就像在整个东部地区那样。我向来就不喜欢那个观念，认为只能通过翻译的翻译来知道基督自己的话语。令我高兴的是，就他的谈话而言，查密迪斯也许听过他的话，苏格拉底同他理论过，柏拉图明白了他的话；他也当真用希腊语说过“我是好牧人”；当他想到野地里的百合花，它们不劳苦也不纺线，千真万确地用希腊语说了“你想野地里的百合花，怎么长起来，他也不劳苦，也不纺线”；而当他最后一句话喊出“我的生命完成了，成就了，圆满了”，这时用的确实就是约翰告诉我们的： —— “成了”，没多话。

114

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And while in reading the Gospels—particularly that of St John himself, or whatever early Gnostic took his name and mantle—I see this continual assertion of the imagination as the basis of all spiritual and material life[115a], I see also that to Christ imagination was simply a form of Love, and that to him Love was Lord in the fullest meaning of the phrase[115b]. Some six weeks ago I was allowed by the Doctor to have white bread to eat instead of the coarse black or brown bread of ordinary prison fare. It is a great delicacy. To you it will sound strange that dry bread could possibly be a delicacy to anyone. I assure you that to me it is so much so that at the close of each meal I carefully eat whatever crumbs may be left on my tin plate, or have fallen on the rough towel that one uses as a cloth so as not to soil ones table[115c] and do so not from hunger—I get now quite sufficient food—but simply in order that nothing should be wasted of what is given to me. So one should look on love.

在读《福音书》时——尤其是圣约翰本人的福音，或者说早期诺斯替教认为是他的名份真传的那些东西——我看到了书中不断在强调，想象是一切精神和物质生活的基础[115a]，也看到了对基督来说，想象简直就是爱的一个形式，而爱又是主的全部意义所在[115b]。大概六周前医生允许我吃白面包，而不是通常监狱伙食那粗糙的黑或半黑面包。真是可口美味。你听着会奇怪，怎么可能干巴巴的面包也有人当成美味佳肴。我郑重地告诉你，对我是这样的美味可口，每顿饭吃完了，要是盘里还留一点面包屑，或者权当桌布的粗毛巾上掉了一点，我都会认认真真地吃干净[115c]：而且不是因为肚子饿——我现在饭食足够——只是因为给的东西我一点也不愿浪费。人当以此心向着爱。

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Christ, like all fascinating personalities, had the power not merely of saying beautiful things himself, but of making other people say beautiful things to him and I love the story St Mark tells us about the Greek woman—the —who, when as a trial of her faith he said to her that he could not give her the bread of the children of Israel, answered him that the little dogs—, “little dogs” it should be rendered—who are under the table eat of the crumbs that the children let fall.[116.1] Most people live for love and admiration. But it is by love and admiration that we should live[116a].[116.2] If any love is shown us we should recognise that we are quite unworthy of it. Nobody is worthy to be loved. The fact that God loves man shows that in the divine order of ideal things it is written that eternal love is to be given to what is eternally unworthy. Or if that phrase seems to you a bitter one to hear, let us say that everyone is worthy of love, except he who thinks that he is. Love is a sacrament that should be taken kneeling[116b], and Domine, non sum dignus[116.3] should be on the lips and in the hearts of those who receive it. I wish you would sometimes think of that. You need it so much.

基督就像所有个性迷人的人物那样，不但自己有能力讲出美好的道理，也能叫别人对他讲出美好的道理。我喜欢圣马可讲的那个希腊妇人的故事。为了考验她的信念，基督对她说不能把以色列孩子们的面包给她，她听了回答说小狗——照希腊文应该译为“小狗”的——在桌子底下，吃孩子们丢下的碎渣儿呢。大部分人活着是为了爱和赞美。但我们应该是凭借爱和赞美活着[116a]。假如有任何爱向我们显露了，我们应该认识到这爱自己是很不配的。没有谁配得到爱。上帝爱世人，这一事实显示，在神定下的事物的理想法则中，写明了要把永恒的爱给予那些永远不配的人。倘若那话你不高兴听，那就这么说吧，每个人都配得到爱，除了那些自认为配得到爱的人。爱是神圣的，必须双膝跪接[116b]，承受的人嘴里和心里都要默念“主啊，我不配。”我希望你有时会想想这一点。这对你太需要了。

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If I ever write again, in the sense of producing artistic work, there are just two subjects on which and through which I desire to express myself[117a] one is “Christ, as the precursor of the Romantic movement in life” the other is “the Artistic life considered in its relation to Conduct.” The first is, of course, intensely fascinating, for I see in Christ not merely the essentials of the supreme romantic type, but all the accidents, the wilfulnesses even, of the romantic temperament also. He was the first person who ever said to people that they should live “flower-like” lives[117.1]. He fixed the phrase. He took children as the type of what people should try to become. He held them up as examples to their elders, which I myself have always thought the chief use of children, if what is perfect should have a use. Dante describes the soul of man as coming from the hand of God “weeping and laughing like a little child,” and Christ also saw that the soul of each one should be “a guisa di fanciulla, che piangendo e ridendo pargoleggia.” [117.2] He felt that life was changeful, fluid, active, and that to allow it to be stereotyped into any form was death[117b]. He said that people should not be too serious over material, common interests that to be unpractical was a great thing that one should not bother too much over affairs. “The birds didnt, why should man” He is charming when he says, “Take no thought for the morrow. Is not the soul more than meat Is not the body more than raiment” [117.3] A Greek might have said the latter phrase. It is full of Greek feeling. But only Christ could have said both, and so summed up life perfectly for us[117c]. 如果我真的重新提笔，指的是艺术创作，那只有两个主题我希望提出自己的看法并通过它们来表达自己[117a]：一个是“基督乃生活中浪漫主义运动的先驱”；另一个是“艺术生命与为人处世的关系”。第一个，当然了，很是引人入胜，因为我在基督身上不单看到了浪漫主义最高楷模不可或缺的精要，还看到了浪漫气质所有随机的、甚至是率性的成分。他是天下第一人，要大家过“花一样的”生活。他落实了这句话。他把儿童作为人们学习的楷模，把儿童树立为长辈的榜样。我本人一向都认为这是儿童的首要作用，如果完美的事物也应该有点用的话。但丁把人的灵魂描写为“像个小孩一样又哭又笑的”从上帝手中出来，而基督也认为每个人的灵魂应该“像个小小女孩，躺在地上又哭又笑”。他感到生活是变化的、流动的、积极的，让它僵化成为任何形式都意味着死亡[117b]。他说人不该太过执着于物质的、世俗的利益，能变得不实际是了不起的事，不要太汲汲于大小事务。“鸟都不用操心，何况人呢？” 他说得真好，“不要为明天忧虑。灵魂不胜于饮食么？身体不胜于衣裳么？” 希腊人也许会说这后一句，那句充满了希腊感。但只有基督才会两句都说，替我们把生活总结得如此一丝不差[117c]。

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His morality is all sympathy, just what morality should be. If the only thing he had ever said had been “Her sins are forgiven her because she loved much,” [118.1] it would have been worth while dying to have said it. His justice is all poetical justice, exactly what justice should be[118a]. The beggar goes to heaven because he had been unhappy.[118.2] I cant conceive a better reason for his being sent there. The people who work for an hour in the vineyard[118.3] in the cool of the evening receive just as much reward as those who had toiled there all day long in the hot sun. Why shouldnt they Probably no one deserved anything. Or perhaps they were a different kind of people. Christ had no patience with the dull lifeless mechanical systems that treat people as if they were things, and so treat everybody alike as if anybody, or anything for that matter, was like aught else in the world[118b]. For him there were no laws there were exceptions merely.

他的道德完全是同情，道德就应该这样。即使他说过的话中只有一句“她许多的罪都赦免了，因为她的爱多”，此言既出，一死无憾。他的公义完全是扬善惩恶，公义就应该这样[118a]。乞丐进天堂因为他苦。我再也想不出更好的理由，来解释乞丐为什么送进了天堂。凉爽的傍晚时分在葡萄园里干一个钟头的人，同大太阳底下干了一整天的人，所得报酬一样。为什么不能这样呢？大概谁也不配得到什么。也许他们是不同的人吧。基督才不耐烦去同那些机械呆板、了无生气的体系周旋呢，这种体系把人当作物，拿谁都一样不当人看好像不管是什么人，也不管是什么东西，在世界上都是一回事[118b]。在他看来没有法则，只有例外。