雙語·當呼吸化為空氣 不久就要畢業(yè)了

不久就要畢業(yè)了，我卻有種坐立不安的感覺，似乎有很多問題還沒解決，我還有很多東西要學習。我申請了斯坦福的英語文學碩士，被錄取了。我已經把語言視作一種幾乎超自然的力量，存在于人與人之間，讓我們那一厘米厚頭蓋骨下隱藏的大腦溝通共享。只有在人與人之間，一個單詞才有意義。而生命是否有意義，某種程度上要看我們建立的關系的深度。就是人類的關聯(lián)性加強了生命的意義。不過，不知怎么地，這個過程存在于大腦和身體里，也受生理原因的驅使，可能被打破，可能會失敗。我一直在思考，我們所經歷的人生的“語言”，比如激情、饑餓與愛，一定通過某種方式，與神經元、消化道和心臟的跳動產生聯(lián)系，不管這聯(lián)系多么錯綜復雜。
As graduation loomed, I had a nagging sense that there was still far too much unresolved for me, that I wasn’t done studying. I applied for a master’s in English literature at Stanford and was accepted into the program. I had come to see language as an almost supernatural force, existing between people, bringing our brains, shielded in centimeter-thick skulls, into communion. A word meant something only between people, and life’s meaning, its virtue, had something to do with the depth of the relationships we form. It was the relational aspect of humans—i. e., “human relationality”—that undergirded meaning. Yet somehow, this process existed in brains and bodies, subject to their own physiologic imperatives, prone to breaking and failing. There must be a way, I thought, that the language of life as experienced—of passion, of hunger, of love—bore some relationship, however convoluted, to the language of neurons, digestive tracts, and heartbeats.

在斯坦福，我很幸運地師從理查德·羅蒂，他大概是同時代在世哲學家中最偉大的一位。在他的指導下，我開始看清構建語匯系統(tǒng)的所有原則，并掌握一系列工具，能用特定的方法、從特定的角度去理解人類的生命。偉大的文學作品能提供屬于它本身的工具，吸引和催促讀者去運用它們的語匯系統(tǒng)。我的論文研究的是沃爾特·惠特曼的作品。一個世紀前，這位詩人也和我一樣，被同樣的問題纏繞困擾，上下求索，努力去理解和描述他所說的“生理與精神共存之人”。
At Stanford, I had the good fortune to study with Richard Rorty, perhaps the greatest living philosopher of his day, and under his tutelage I began to see all disciplines as creating a vocabulary, a set of tools for understanding human life in a particular way. Great literary works provided their own sets of tools, compelling the reader to use that vocabulary. For my thesis, I studied the work of Walt Whitman, a poet who, a century before, was possessed by the same questions that haunted me, who wanted to find a way to understand and describe what he termed “the Physiological-Spiritual Man.”

論文收尾，我只得出一個結論：和我們一樣，惠特曼也沒能建立一個連貫完整的“生理與精神共存”的語匯系統(tǒng)。不過，至少他失敗的各種方式都很有啟發(fā)性。我也越來越確定，自己已經不想繼續(xù)文學研究了，因為我猛然意識到，文學研究主要關注的很多東西，都太政治化，而且反科學。我的一位論文導師說，我想在文學界為自己找到一個圈子是很難的，因為，大多數(shù)英語文學博士對科學的反應，“就像猿猴看到火，特別恐懼”。我有點找不到人生的方向了。我的論文《惠特曼和人格的醫(yī)療化》收獲了好評，但太“異端”了，精神病學與神經學歷史的內容和文學批評所占比例一樣多。這篇文章在英語系顯得格格不入，我也是。
As I finished my thesis, I could only conclude that Whitman had had no better luck than the rest of us at building a coherent“physiological-spiritual” vocabulary, but at least the ways in which he’d failed were illuminating. I was also increasingly certain that I had little desire to continue in literary studies, whose main preoccupations had begun to strike me as overly political and averse to science. One of my thesis advisers remarked that finding a community for myself in the literary world would be difficult, because most English PhDs reacted to science, as he put it, “l(fā)ike apes to fire, with sheer terror.” I wasn’t sure where my life was headed. My thesis— “Whitman and the Medicalization of Personality”—was well-received, but it was unorthodox, including as much history of psychiatry and neuroscience as literary criticism. It didn’t quite fit in an English department. I didn’t quite fit in an English department.