閱讀本癡狂

Reading as Schw?rmerei

閱讀本癡狂

Joseph Hillis Miller

約瑟夫.希利斯.米勒

作者簡介

約瑟夫.希利斯.米勒（Joseph Hillis Miller，1928—），美國著名文學批評家，解構(gòu)主義批評的代表人物，也是歐美文學及比較文學研究的杰出學者。他是哈佛大學博士，曾任教于霍普金斯大學、耶魯大學，現(xiàn)為加州大學歐文分校英語與比較文學系教授。米勒的著作包括《理論今昔》（Theory Now and Then）、《閱讀的倫理》（The Ethics of Reading）、《他者》（Others）等。米勒曾在中國發(fā)表演講，講稿匯編為《土著與數(shù)碼沖浪者——米勒中國演講集》（The Indigene and the Cybersurfer）。

本文節(jié)選自2002年出版的《文學死了嗎？》（On Literature）。作者在文中強調(diào)，閱讀須像天真孩童一樣全身心投入；閱讀過程中順其自然，書里精華自能融會貫通。

If it is really the case, as I have argued, that each literary work opens up a singular world, attainable in no other way than by reading that work, then reading should be a matter of giving one’s whole mind, heart, feelings, and imagination, without reservation, to recreating that world within oneself, on the basis of the words. This would be a species of that fanaticism, or rapture, or even revelry that Immanuel Kant calls Schw?rmerei. The work comes alive as a kind of internal theater that seems in a strange way independent of the words on the page. That was what happened to me when I first read The Swiss Family Robinson. The ability to do that is probably more or less universal, once you have learned to read, once you have learned, that is, to turn those mute and objectively meaningless shapes into letters, words, and sentences that correspond to spoken language.

I suspect that my interior theater or revelry is not by any means the same as another person’s. Even so, each reader’s imaginary world, generated by a given work, seems to that reader to have unquestionable authority. One empirical test of this is the reaction many people have when they see a film made from a novel they have read: “No, No! It’s not at all like that! They’ve got it all wrong.”

如果確實如我所說，每部文學作品都會開啟一個獨特的世界，而且只有通過閱讀該作品才能走進這個世界，那么，人們閱讀時就該全心全意地感受和想象，毫無保留地以文字為基礎在腦中創(chuàng)造新世界。閱讀將成為一種狂熱、狂喜，甚至成為被康德[1]稱為“癡狂”的狂歡。作品會以一種奇怪的方式獨立于文字，如腦內(nèi)劇場一般鮮活呈現(xiàn)。我初讀《瑞士人的魯賓遜故事》[2]時就是如此。一旦你學會閱讀，學會將無聲且無意義的字形變成有聲的字母、詞語、句子，便會發(fā)現(xiàn)這種能力可能或多或少是普遍存在的。

我懷疑自己腦內(nèi)的劇場或狂歡和其他人的迥然不同。即便如此，閱讀某部特定作品時，每位讀者似乎都對自己想象的世界深信不疑。最典型的例子是，觀看根據(jù)自己讀過的小說改編的電影時，很多人會說：“不，不！根本不是那回事！他們?nèi)沐e了?！?

The illustrations, particularly of children’s books, play an important role in shaping that imaginary theater. The original Sir John Tenniel illustrations for the Alice books told me how to imagine Alice, the White Rabbit, Tweedledum and Tweedledee, and the rest. Still, my imaginary world behind the looking-glass exceeded even the Tenniel pictures. Henry James, in A Small Boy and Others, paid homage to the power of George Cruikshank’s illustrations for Oliver Twist to determine the way that imaginary world seemed to him:

It perhaps even seemed to me more Cruikshank’s than Dickens’s; it was a thing of such vividly terrible images, and all marked with that peculiarity of Cruikshank that the offered flowers or goodnesses, the scenes and figures intended to comfort and cheer, present themselves under his hand as but more subtly sinister, or more suggestively queer, than the frank badnesses and horrors.

插圖，特別是童書插圖，對于構(gòu)筑想象的劇場至關重要。約翰?坦尼爾爵士[3]為愛麗絲系列[4]畫的原版插圖，教我如何想象愛麗絲、白兔、胖墩雙胞胎兄弟[5]等人。不過，我想象里的鏡中世界，遠遠超出了泰尼爾的插圖。亨利?詹姆斯[6]在《小男孩和其他人》這本書里，向喬治?克魯克香克[7]為《霧都孤兒》畫的插圖致敬，因為它們決定了他想象中的世界：

在我看來，這本書與其說是狄更斯的，不如說是克魯克香克的。書中充滿了栩栩如生的可怕形象，都帶著克魯克香克的特殊印記。無論是獻上的鮮花還是施舍的善意，甚至本應給人安慰和鼓舞的場景和人物，在他筆下都透露出微妙的不詳或隱約的詭異，遠遠超越普通的邪惡和恐怖。

What reader, who has happened to see them, to give two other examples, has not had his or her imagination shaped by the wonderful photographs by Coburn that are used as frontispieces for the New York Edition of James’s works or by the frontispiece photographs for the Wessex or Anniversary Editions of Thomas Hardy’s work?

I am advocating, as the first side of the aporia of reading, an innocent, childlike abandonment to the act of reading, without suspicion, reservation, or interrogation. Such a reading makes a willing suspension of disbelief, in Coleridge’s famous phrase. It is a suspension, however, that does not even know anymore that disbelief might be possible. The suspension then becomes no longer the result of a conscious effort of will. It becomes spontaneous, without forethought. My analogy with reciprocal assertions of “I love you” by two persons is more than casual. As Michel Deguy says, La poésie comme l’amour risque tout sur des signes. (Poetry, like love, risks everything on signs.) The relation between reader and story read is like a love affair. In both cases, it is a matter of giving yourself without reservation to the other. A book in my hands or on the shelf utters a powerful command: “Read me!” To do so is as risky, precarious, or even dangerous as to respond to another person’s “I love you” with an “I love you too.” You never know where saying that might lead you, just as you never know where reading a given book might lead you. In my own case, reading certain books has been decisive for my life. Each such book has been a turning point, the marker of a new epoch.

再舉兩個例子：如果讀者偶然看過詹姆斯作品紐約版的卷首插圖，即科伯恩[8]拍攝的絕妙照片，或是看過托馬斯?哈代的《威塞克斯小說》[9]或其作品周年紀念版的卷首插圖，他們的想象怎能不被這些圖片左右？

我主張的閱讀困境的第一個方面[10]，就是像天真孩童一樣閱讀，不懷疑，不保留，不探究。正如柯勒律治[11]的名言所說，這種閱讀是“自愿擱置懷疑”。然而，它甚至會讓人忘記能對書提出懷疑。久而久之，這種擱置不再需要有意識的努力，而是不假思索便能自發(fā)產(chǎn)生，這和兩個人互相說出“我愛你”相似。我并不是隨隨便便打這個比方。正如米歇爾?德吉[12]所說：“詩歌像愛情一樣，把一切押在暗示上。 ”讀者與所讀故事的關系，就像戀愛關系。這兩種關系都要將自己毫無保留地獻給對方。手中和架上的書發(fā)出強有力的命令：“讀我！”但這么做就像用“我也愛你”回應別人說的“我愛你”一樣冒險，充滿了不確定性，甚至可能有危險。你永遠不知道這么說會有什么后果，正如不知道閱讀某本書會將你引向何方。對我來說，讀某些書對我的一生有決定性的影響。那些書，每本都是一個轉(zhuǎn)折點，每本都是新時代的里程碑。

Reading, like being in love, is by no means a passive act. It takes much mental, emotional, and even physical energy. Reading requires a positive effort. One must give all one’s faculties to re-creating the work’s imaginary world as fully and as vividly as possible within oneself. For those who are no longer children, or childlike, a different kind of effort is necessary too. This is the attempt, an attempt that may well not succeed, to suspend ingrained habits of “critical” or suspicious reading.

...

A certain speed in reading is necessary to accomplish this actualization, just as is the case with music. If you linger too long over the words, they lose their power as windows on the hitherto unknown. If you play a Mozart piano sonata or one of Bach’s Goldberg Variations too slowly it does not sound like music. A proper tempo is required. The same thing is true for reading considered as the generation of a virtual reality. One must read rapidly, allegro, in a dance of the eyes across the page.

閱讀像戀愛一樣，絕非被動的行為，而須投入心理、情感甚至是身體的活力。閱讀需要積極的努力。讀者必須傾盡全力，在腦中重建像書里一樣完整、生動的想象世界。對于不再是孩子、不再有童真的人來說，還需要另外一種努力，即努力摒棄批判式閱讀、質(zhì)疑式閱讀的習慣，盡管這未必能成功。

……

為了實現(xiàn)上述目標，閱讀必須以特定的速度進行，就像音樂一樣。如果你太過字斟句酌，詞語便會喪失力量，無法帶你通往未知。如果你演奏莫扎特的鋼琴奏鳴曲或巴赫的《哥德堡變奏曲》時速度太慢，它們聽起來就不像音樂了。奏樂需要適當?shù)乃俣?，閱讀也是一樣。為了創(chuàng)造出虛擬的世界，讀者必須快速閱讀，以“快板”的節(jié)奏讓視線在書頁上舞動。

[1] 伊曼努爾.康德（Immanuel Kant，1724—1804），德國著名哲學家，其代表作《純粹理性批判》《實踐理性批判》《判斷力批判》合稱“三大理性批判”。

[2] 《瑞士人的魯賓遜故事》（The Swiss Family Robinson），瑞士牧師約翰.戴維.維斯（Johann David Wyss）基于《魯賓遜漂流記》寫的冒險小說，目的是教育孩子自力更生。

[3]約翰.坦尼爾（John Tenniel，1820—1914），英國插圖畫家和諷刺畫家。

[4]愛麗絲系列是牛津大學數(shù)學家劉易斯.卡羅爾（Lewis Carroll）的著名童話作品，包括《愛麗絲夢游仙境》和其姐妹篇《愛麗絲鏡中奇遇記》。

[5]愛麗絲、白兔、胖墩雙胞胎兄弟都是《愛麗絲夢游仙境》中的著名形象。后來，雙胞兄弟的名字Tweedledum和Tweedledee逐漸演變?yōu)椤半y以分辨的兩個人或兩個事物”的意思，也用來形容“半斤八兩”。

[6]亨利.詹姆斯（Henry James，1843—1916），出生于美國，小說家，其代表作品包括長篇小說《貴婦的畫像》等。自傳《一個小男孩及其他人》（A Small Boy and Others）講述了他童年的經(jīng)歷。

[7]喬治.克魯克香克（George Cruikshank，1792—1878），英國插圖畫家，他為狄更斯（Charles Dickens）作品創(chuàng)作的插畫廣受歡迎。

[8] 阿爾文.蘭登.科伯恩（Alvin Langdon Coburn，1882—1966），美國畫意主義（pictorialism）攝影家，代表作有《馬肯島》等。

[9] 托馬斯.哈代（Thomas Hardy，1840—1928），英國詩人和小說家，前中期創(chuàng)作以小說為主，晚年以詩歌成就最為突出?！锻怂剐≌f》是哈代的系列小說總題名，包括14部小說。威塞克斯是哈代家鄉(xiāng)的古地名，作者用同一背景把多部小說聯(lián)成一體，展示了19世紀后半期英國農(nóng)村的恬靜景象，其中的代表作為《德伯家的苔絲》。

[10]本文為節(jié)選，作者在前文提出了兩種閱讀方式，一種是天真無邪的閱讀，一種是去神秘化的閱讀。兩者彼此相悖。作者將此稱為“閱讀的困境”。

[11]塞繆爾.泰勒.柯勒律治（Samuel Taylor Coleridge，1772—1834），英國桂冠詩人和評論家，“湖畔派”代表人物，代表作有長詩《古舟子詠》《忽必烈汗》等。本句出自柯勒律治《文學傳記》第14章。

[12]米歇爾.德吉（Michel Deguy，1930—），法國詩人，作品多為艱深晦澀的哲理詩，在當今法國詩壇有舉足輕重的地位。