詩辯

A Defence of Poetry

詩辯

Percy Bysshe Shelley

珀西.比希.雪萊

作者簡介

珀西.比希.雪萊（Percy Bysshe Shelley，1792—1822），英國文學史上最具浪漫情懷的抒情詩人之一，與約翰.濟慈（John Keats）和喬治.戈登.拜倫（George Gordon Byron）齊名。

雪萊的作品熱情而富哲理思辨，詩風自由不羈，慣用夢幻象征手法和遠古神話題材，常任天上地下、時間空間、神怪精靈變幻馳騁。其代表作包括評論人間事物的長詩《仙后麥布》（Queen Mab）、支持意大利民族解放斗爭的政治詩《自由頌》（Ode to Liberty）、表現(xiàn)革命熱情和勝利信念的《西風頌》（Ode to the West Wind）等。1822年，雪萊在出海時遭遇風暴不幸遇難，年僅30歲。斯人已逝，但他那飽含美好希冀的預言“如果冬天已經(jīng)來臨，春天還會遠嗎？”長留世人心間。

本文節(jié)選自1840年出版的雪萊文集《詩辯》（A Defence of Poetry），該書可視為他一生創(chuàng)作與文藝思想的總結。本篇文采飛揚，細數(shù)詩歌超凡脫俗之美。

Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds. We are aware of evanescent visitations of thought and feeling sometimes associated with place or person, sometimes regarding our own mind alone, and always arising unforeseen and departing unbidden, but elevating and delightful beyond all expression: so that even in the desire and the regret they leave, there cannot but be pleasure, participating as it does in the nature of its object. It is as it were the interpenetration of a diviner nature through our own; but its footsteps are like those of a wind over the sea, which the coming calm erases, and whose traces remain only, as on the wrinkled sand which paves it. These and corresponding conditions of being are experienced principally by those of the most delicate sensibility and the most enlarged imagination; and the state of mind produced by them is at war with every base desire.

The enthusiasm of virtue, love, patriotism, and friendship, is essentially linked with such emotions; and whilst they last, self appears as what it is, an atom to a universe. Poets are not only subject to these experiences as spirits of the most refined organisation, but they can colour all that they combine with the evanescent hues of this ethereal world; a word, a trait in the representation of a scene or a passion, will touch the enchanted chord, and reanimate, in those who have ever experienced these emotions, the sleeping, the cold, the buried image of the past. Poetry thus makes immortal all that is best and most beautiful in the world; it arrests the vanishing apparitions which haunt the interlunations of life, and veiling them, or in language or in form, sends them forth among mankind, bearing sweet news of kindred joy to those with whom their sisters abide—abide, because there is no portal of expression from the caverns of the spirit which they inhabit into the universe of things. Poetry redeems from decay the visitations of the divinity in man.

詩記錄了最快樂、最美好的心靈中最美好、最快樂的時刻。我們知道，思想和感情短暫的造訪有時與地點或人物相關，有時只與我們自己的心靈相關。它們總是不期而至，又不辭而別，卻能帶來無法言傳的崇高與歡樂。即使它們留下了期許和遺憾，這其中也滿是快樂。這種快樂是期許和遺憾本質中的一部分。詩就像通過人的本性展示神性；但它留下的足跡，就像清風掠過海面的痕跡，被寂靜輕輕撫平，只在沙灘上留下淺淺的細紋。這類心境，只有情感最細膩、想象力最豐富的人才能體會；在這種狀態(tài)下，人們心中無法容忍任何卑劣的欲望。

美德、愛情、愛國、友誼等熾熱的感情與上述情感有本質上的聯(lián)系。只要這些感情存在，人就會呈現(xiàn)出原初的樣子，即宇宙中的一個原子。詩人不僅受這些最純粹情感的支配，還能用天國轉瞬即逝的色彩渲染一切。寫景抒情的一字一句都會撥動沉醉的心弦，并在體驗過如上情感之人的心中，喚醒沉睡的、冰冷的、被埋葬的往昔圖景。詩讓世間一切最美好的事物得到永生。詩能捕捉人生陰霾中飄忽不定的幻影，用語言或結構將其修飾，然后將其送往人間，為人們帶去歡樂的消息。那些人與幻影的姐妹一同“居留”。這里說“居留”，是因為精神寄居的洞穴沒有通往外界的表達之門。詩讓人的神性免于墮落。

Poetry turns all things to loveliness; it exalts the beauty of that which is most beautiful, and it adds beauty to that which is most deformed; it marries exultation and horror, grief and pleasure, eternity and change; it subdues to union under its light yoke, all irreconcilable things. It transmutes all that it touches, and every form moving within the radiance of its presence is changed by wondrous sympathy to an incarnation of the spirit which it breathes: its secret alchemy turns to potable gold the poisonous waters which flow from death through life; it strips the veil of familiarity from the world, and lays bare the naked and sleeping beauty, which is the spirit of its forms.

All things exist as they are perceived: at least in relation to the percipient. “The mind is its own place, and of itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.” But poetry defeats the curse which binds us to be subjected to the accident of surrounding impressions. And whether it spreads its own figured curtain, or withdraws life’s dark veil from before the scene of things, it equally creates for us a being within our being. It makes us the inhabitants of a world to which the familiar world is a chaos. It reproduces the common universe of which we are portions and percipients, and it purges from our inward sight the film of familiarity which obscures from us the wonder of our being. It compels us to feel that which we perceive, and to imagine that which we know. It creates anew the universe, after it has been annihilated in our minds by the recurrence of impressions blunted by reiteration. It justifies that bold and true words of Tasso—Non merita nome di creatore, se non Iddio ed il Poeta.

詩美化萬物；它為最美的事物錦上添花，使最丑的事物變得美麗；它讓狂喜與恐懼、悲傷與歡樂、永恒與無常締結姻緣；在它輕柔的聯(lián)結中，矛盾的事物變得彼此相容。詩改變了它觸及的一切；在其光芒的籠罩下，奇妙的共鳴使萬物變形，化身為靈性。它擁有神秘的魔力，能將冥河的毒液化為瓊漿。它揭開了世界平淡無奇的面紗，展示了毫無遮攔的沉睡之美。這正是世間各種表象下蘊含的精神所在。

世間萬物，存在即被感知；它至少與感知者相關?！靶撵`是自身的主宰，可化地獄為天堂，化天堂為地獄?！钡姶蚱屏四е洌屛覀儾辉偈苤朴谂既坏耐饨缬∠?。無論是展開自己多彩的帷幔，還是揭開萬物前的黑暗面紗，詩都在人類心中創(chuàng)造了另一重存在。詩帶我們進入了另一個世界。與此相比，我們熟悉的世界一片混沌。詩再造了我們身處、感知的尋常世界，拭去了我們心靈之眼上的薄翳，正是這層薄翳讓我們無視人生的奇妙。詩迫使我們去體會感知到的東西，去想象已知曉的東西。重復的印象讓我們麻木，摧毀了我們心目中的世界。此時，詩創(chuàng)造了新的世界。這證實了塔索[1]大膽的真言：“除了上帝與詩人，無人配稱創(chuàng)造者。 ”

A poet, as he is the author to others of the highest wisdom, pleasure, virtue and glory, so he ought personally to be the happiest, the best, the wisest, and the most illustrious of men. As to his glory, let time be challenged to declare whether the fame of any other institutor of human life be comparable to that of a poet. That he is the wisest, the happiest, and the best, inasmuch as he is a poet, is equally incontrovertible: the greatest poets have been men of the most spotless virtue, of the most consummate prudence, and, if we would look into the interior of their lives, the most fortunate of men: and the exceptions, as they regard those who possessed the poetic faculty in a high yet inferior degree, will be found on consideration to confine rather than destroy the rule...

Poetry, as has been said, differs in this respect from logic, that it is not subject to the control of the active powers of the mind, and that its birth and recurrence have no necessary connexion with the consciousness or will...But in the intervals of inspiration, and they may be frequent without being durable, a poet becomes a man, and is abandoned to the sudden reflux of the influences under which others habitually live. But as he is more delicately organised than other men, and sensible to pain and pleasure, both his own and that of others, in a degree unknown to them, he will avoid the one and pursue the other with an ardour proportioned to this difference. And he renders himself obnoxious to calumny, when he neglects to observe the circumstances under which these objects of universal pursuit and flight have disguised themselves in one another’s garments.

詩人是無上的智慧、歡樂、美德和光榮的創(chuàng)造者，所以詩人本身應該是最快樂、最美好、最睿智、最杰出的人。至于詩人的榮譽，世上有沒有其他創(chuàng)造者能與詩人相媲美，就讓時間來評判吧。因為一個人是詩人，他就是最睿智、最快樂、最美好的人，這一點同樣無可辯駁。最偉大的詩人，品德最無可挑剔，行事最審慎小心。如果我們深入審視他的生平，還會發(fā)現(xiàn)他是最幸運的人。那些出身低微但擁有天賦的詩人例外，這些例外無損于以上規(guī)律，只是它的局限……

如上所述，詩和邏輯不同。詩不服從頭腦的主動掌控，它的誕生和再現(xiàn)與知覺和意志沒有必然聯(lián)系……然而，靈感往往不能持久。靈感消逝之后，詩人便成了普通人，被遺棄在生活的激流中，受到世人尋常生活的影響。但詩人比常人的情感更加細膩，對自己和別人的悲喜更加敏感——常人無法理解這種敏感。詩人與常人不同，所以他總是帶著超凡的熱忱，躲避痛苦并追尋歡樂。這使得詩人容易受人誹謗。畢竟，常人追求或逃避目標時往往半遮半掩，詩人則毫不掩飾。

詩揭開了世界平淡無奇的面紗，展示了毫無遮攔的沉睡之美。

Percy Bysshe Shelley 珀西?比希?雪萊

[1] 托爾夸托.塔索（Torquato Tasso，1544—1595），文藝復興運動晚期的意大利詩人，代表作為敘事長詩《耶路撒冷的解放》。