旅行的藝術(shù):Ⅵ 壯闊-4

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黎明時分的西奈南部，給人的感覺是怎樣的？4億年前形成的幽谷、2300米高的花崗石山，以及陡峭谷壁上千年的侵蝕造就了它。人在這些壯闊景觀面前，就像遲來的塵埃。與這般壯麗景致的交會，令人欣喜、陶醉，也讓人在面對宇宙的力量、更迭和浩瀚時，深感人類的脆弱與渺小。

The southern Sinai at dawn. What then is this feeling? It is generated by a valley created 400 million years ago, by a granite mountain 2,300 metres high and by the erosion of millennia marked on the walls of a succession of steep canyons. Beside all three man seems merely dust postponed: the sublime as an encounter, pleasurable, intoxicating even, with human weakness in the face of the strength, age and size of the universe.

我的背包里有一把手電筒、一頂太陽帽和一部伯克 [7] 的著作。伯克24歲時，放棄在倫敦的法律研究之后，就寫了《關(guān)于壯闊和美麗理念之源的哲學(xué)探究》。他直截了當?shù)乇硎荆壕爸轮畨验熀痛嗳醯母杏X有關(guān)。很多景致是美麗的，例如：春天的草原、柔美的山谷、橡樹和河畔小花（尤其是雛菊），不過這些景致并不壯闊。“壯闊和美麗常被人混淆，”他抱怨道，“兩者所指相差很遠，有時性質(zhì)可說是南轅北轍。”對于那些從丘園瞭望泰晤士河，然后驚嘆泰晤士河是何等壯闊的人，這位年輕的哲學(xué)家顯露出了一絲的不耐煩。一種景致只有讓人感受到力量，一種大過人類、甚至是威脅到人類的力量，才能稱之為壯闊。壯闊之地具體表現(xiàn)了人類意志所不能左右的力量。他用耕牛和野牛作比較來說明這個道理：“耕牛力氣很大，但是它是溫馴的，任勞任怨，不構(gòu)成任何威脅，因此耕牛并不會給人以雄偉的感覺。野牛的力氣也很大，但是這種力氣屬于另外一種，往往是非常具有破壞性……因此野牛給人的感覺是雄偉無比的，壯闊的感覺也是如此。”

In my backpack, I am carrying a torch, a sunhat and Edmund Burke. At the age of twenty-four, after giving up his legal studies in London, Burke composed A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. He was categorical: sublimity had to do with a feeling of weakness. Many landscapes were beautiful. Meadows in spring, soft valleys, oak trees, banks of flowers (daisies especially). But they were not sublime. 'The ideas of the sublime and beautiful are frequently confounded,' he complained, 'both are indiscriminately applied to things greatly differing and sometimes of natures directly opposite'-a trace of irritation in the young philosopher with those who might have gasped at the Thames from Kew and called that sublime. A landscape could arouse the sublime only when it suggested power, power greater than that of humans and threatening to them. Sublime places embodied a defiance to our will. Burke illustrated the argument with an analogy about oxen and bulls: 'An ox is a creature of vast strength; but he is an innocent creature, extremely serviceable, and not at all dangerous; for which reason the idea of an ox is by no means grand. A bull is strong too; but his strength is of another kind; often very destructive … the idea of a bull is therefore great, and it has frequently a place in sublime descriptions, and elevating comparisons.'

世界上有“耕牛般”的景致，沒有殺傷力，“一點也不危險”，并順從人類的意志。伯克年少時就曾經(jīng)到過這么一個地方，也就是基爾代爾郡巴麗多村里的一所貴格會寄宿學(xué)校。這個地方位于都柏林西南30英里處，有大片的農(nóng)田、果園、樹籬、河流和花園。世界上也有一些“野牛般”的景致。伯克列舉了這些景致的特征：龐大、空曠、晦暗，而且這些景致因具有一致而延綿不絕的特質(zhì)，看起來無窮無盡。西奈沙漠就是其中之一。

There were ox-like landscapes: innocent and 'not at all dangerous', pliable to the human will. Burke had spent his youth in one, at a Quaker boarding school in the village of Ballitore in County Kildare, thirty miles south-west of Dublin, a landscape of farms, orchards, hedges, rivers and gardens. Then there were bulllike landscapes. Burke enumerated their features: vast, empty, often dark and apparently infinite, because of the uniformity and succession of their elements. The Sinai was among them.