旅行的藝術(shù):動機 Ⅲ 異國情調(diào)-3

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在阿姆斯特丹，我住在佐旦區(qū)的一個小旅館。在一家快餐店吃過午飯后（夾著鯡魚和蔥頭的全麥面包），我在城西各處散散步。在亞歷山大，異域的色彩體現(xiàn)在駱駝、悠閑垂釣的阿拉伯人和粗嗄的叫喊聲等方面。阿姆斯特丹同樣有異域情調(diào)，只是表現(xiàn)在不同的方面：很多用淡粉色長形磚和奇怪的白色灰漿搭建成的房屋（同英國和北美以磚材為材料的建筑相比較，這里的建筑要規(guī)則得多；而從外觀看，它們也不同于法國或德國的建筑）；很多排狹長的公寓樓，建于20世紀早期，底樓有寬大的窗戶；每家或每幢門口都停著自行車（讓人聯(lián)想到大學城）；街道上的設(shè)施較陳舊，大眾化；看不到華麗宏偉的建筑；街道筆直，點綴著一些小的公園，可以看出規(guī)劃者試圖建造社會主義花園城市的用心。有一條街，每幢公寓看來都一模一樣，我在一戶人家的紅色大門口駐足，突然產(chǎn)生了一種強烈的愿望——希望自己能在那里度過余生。頭頂上的2樓，是一間有3個大窗戶的房間，窗戶都沒有窗簾。房間的內(nèi)墻都刷成白色，墻上掛著一幅畫，畫面上只是許多小的藍色和紅色的點?？恐贿厜?，擺著一張橡木書桌，房間里還有一個很大的書架，一張扶手椅。在這樣的環(huán)境里的生活便是我夢寐以求的生活。我想有一輛自行車。我想每天晚上將自己的鑰匙塞進這紅色大門的鎖孔里。我想在黃昏時分站在沒有窗簾的窗前，看著對面一樣沒有窗簾的房間，在這鋪有白色床單的白色調(diào)的房間里，在我躺到床上看書之前，我會吃點夜宵（一碗湯、培根和全麥面包）。

In Amsterdam, I took a room in a small hotel in the Jordaan district and, after lunch in a café (roggebrood met haring en uitjes) , went for a walk in the western parts of the city. In Flaubert's Alexandria, the exotic had collected around camels, Arabs peacefully fishing and guttural cries. Modern-day Amsterdam provided different, but analogous examples: buildings with elongated pale pink bricks put together with curiously white mortar (far more regular than English or North American brickwork and exposed to view unlike the bricks on French or German buildings); long rows of narrow apartment buildings from the early twentieth century with large ground-floor windows; bicycles parked outside every house or block (recalling university towns); a democratic scruffiness to street furniture; an absence of ostentatious buildings; straight streets interspersed with small parks, suggesting the hand of planners with ideas of a socialist garden city. In one street lined with uniform apartment buildings, I stopped by a red front door and felt an intense longing to spend the rest of my life there. Above me on the second floor, I could see an apartment with three large windows and no curtains. The walls were painted white and decorated with a single large painting covered with small blue and red dots. There was an oak desk against a wall, a large bookshelf and an armchair. I wanted the life that this space implied. I wanted a bicycle. I wanted to put my key through the red front door every evening. I wanted to stand by the curtainless window at dusk looking out at an identical apartment opposite and snack my way through an erwentsoep met roggebrood en spek before retiring to read in bed in a white room with white sheets.

為什么會在異國被公寓前門這樣微不足道的東西誘惑？為什么僅僅因為那里的有軌電車，因為那里的人們幾乎不在家里裝窗簾，我就深深地陷入對它的愛戀？不管這些由異國的細小（和無聲）的事物所引發(fā)的強烈反應看上去是多么荒謬，這情形至少同我們的私人生活有相通之處。在個人生活中，我們也會因為一個人給面包抹黃油的方式而喜歡上他，也可能因為他對鞋子的品位而憎惡他。如果我們因注重這些細節(jié)的東西而自責，那么我們必將忽視生活中的細節(jié)本身所具有的豐富含義。

Why be seduced by something as small as a front door in another country? Why fall in love with a place because it has trams and its people seldom have curtains in their homes? However absurd the intense reactions provoked by such small (and mute) foreign elements may seem, the pattern is at least familiar from personal life. There too we may find ourselves anchoring emotions of love to the way a person butters bread or turning against them because of their taste in shoes. To condemn ourselves for these minute concerns is to ignore how rich in meaning details may be.

我對公寓房子情有獨鐘，因為這樣的建筑讓我感受到節(jié)制之美。它舒適，但不招搖。從這種樓房可以看出，這是個在財富上偏好中庸的社會。在建筑設(shè)計方面，也透出一種淳樸來。在倫敦，建筑物的前門通常傾向于模仿古典廟宇的外觀，但在阿姆斯特丹，人們坦然面對生活，他們避免在建筑中采用石柱和石膏，選擇的是整齊且不加任何裝飾的磚石。這里的建筑最好地體現(xiàn)了現(xiàn)代意識，予人以整飭，干凈，明亮的感覺。

My love for the apartment building was based on what I perceived to be its modesty. The building was comfortable, but not grand. It suggested a society attracted to a financial mean. There was an honesty in the design. Whereas front doorways in London were prone to ape the look of classical temples, in Amsterdam they accepted their status, they avoided pillars and plaster, they settled on neat undecorated brick. The building was modern in the best sense, it spoke of order, cleanliness and light.

異國情調(diào)一詞包含有一些更細微、更讓人捉摸不定的意義，異域的魅力源發(fā)于新奇與變化，譬如在異域你看到的是駱駝，而在家鄉(xiāng)，你看到的是馬匹；在異域你看到的是不加粉飾的公寓房，而在家鄉(xiāng)，你看到的是帶有裝飾性石柱的公寓房。但除此之外，這一切還可能為我們帶來更深層次的快樂，因為我們看重這些域外特質(zhì)，不僅僅是因為它們新奇，而且還因為它們更符合我們的個性，更能滿足我們的心愿，相反，我們的故土并不能做到這一切。

In the more fugitive, trivial association of the word exotic, the charm of a foreign place arises from the simple idea of novelty and change: from finding camels where at home there had been horses; from finding unadorned apartment buildings where at home they had had pillars. But there may be a more profound pleasure: we may value foreign elements not only because they are new, but because they seem to accord more faithfully with our identity and commitments than anything our homeland could provide.

我之所以對阿姆斯特丹表現(xiàn)出如此的熱情，是和我對本國的不滿相關(guān)的。在我自己的國家里，缺乏這種現(xiàn)代性，也沒有這里素樸單純的美感，有的只是對都市生活的抗拒和封閉保守的心態(tài)。

My enthusiasms in Amsterdam were connected to my dissatisfactions with my own country, with its lack of modernity and aesthetic simplicity, with its resistance to urban life and its net-curtained mentality.

我們在異域發(fā)現(xiàn)的異國情調(diào)可能就是我們在本國苦求而不得的東西。

What we find exotic abroad may be what we hunger for in vain at home.