英譯現(xiàn)代散文●毀畫 ◎ 吳冠中

毀畫

Scrapping My Paintings

◎　吳冠中

◎　Wu Guanzhong

二十年前我住在前海北沿時，附近鄰居生了一個瞎子嬰兒，我看著這雙目失明的孩子一天天成長，為他感到悲哀，他將度過怎樣的一生!我想，如果這孩子是我自己，我決不愿來到人間，但父母總是珍惜自己的小生命，千方百計養(yǎng)育殘疾的后代。作者對自己的作品，當會體會到父母對孩子的心情。學生時代撕毀過大量習作，那是尋常情況，未必總觸動心弦。創(chuàng)作中也經(jīng)常撕毀作品，用調色刀戳向畫布，氣憤，痛苦，發(fā)泄。有時毀掉了不滿意的畫反而感到舒暢些，因那無可救藥的“成品”不斷在嚙咬作者的心魂。當我在深山老林或邊遠地處十分艱難的條件下畫出了次、廢品，真是頹喪之極，但仍用油布小心翼翼保護著丑陋的畫面背回宿處，是病兒啊，即使是瞎子嬰兒也不肯遺棄。

Twenty years ago, when I was living on the northern side of the Qianhai Lake, Beijing, one of my neighbors gave birth to a blind baby. That made me sad. What would become of it for life? Personally, I would have refused to come into this world disabled. Nevertheless, all parents love their own babies and will do whatever they can to rear them even though they are born disabled. A work of art is to the creator what a baby is to its parents. When I was a schoolboy, I used to tear up a lot of the exercises I did. That was a common practice, and I never regretted it. Now I am doing the same with my paintings. I will often use a palette knife to cut into a canvas so as to let off my pent-up anger or anguish. Sometimes, it will bring me ease of mind to scrap my own substandard works. Sometimes, I will feel extremely dejected when a painting I have done under hard conditions in remote mountains and dense forests turns out to be inferior. But I will nevertheless carry it home on my shoulder after wrapping it up carefully in a tarpaulin. It's my sick baby, my blind baby. I shouldn't abandon it.

數(shù)十年風風雨雨中作了大批畫，有心愛的、有帶缺陷的、有很不滿意但浸透苦勞的……任何一個探索者都走過彎路和歧途，都會留下許多失敗之作，蹩腳貨，暴露真實吧，何必遮丑，然而，換了人間，金錢控制了人，進而摧毀了良知和人性。作品于今有了市價，我以往送朋友、同學、學生、甚至報刊等等的畫不少進入了市場，出現(xiàn)于拍賣行。五十年代我作了一組井岡山風景畫，當時應井岡山管理處的要求復制了一套贈送作為藏品陳列，后來我翻看手頭原作，感到不滿意，便連續(xù)燒毀，那都屬于探索油畫民族化的幼稚階段，但贈管理處的那套復制品近來卻一件接一件在拍賣行出現(xiàn)。書畫贈友人，這本是我國傳統(tǒng)人際關系的美德，往往不看金錢重友情。

I produced a great many paintings during the scores of difficult years. Some of them were my favorites, some were defective, some, though unsatisfactory, were fruits of my painstaking labor... All art explorers are liable to take roundabout courses or lead themselves astray, thus ending up in fiascoes. Defective works should be exposed rather than covered up. But things on earth have changed and men are so much under the sway of money that they have become conscienceless and unfeeling. Paintings, nowadays, have market prices. Many of my paintings given as presents to friends, schoolmates, students and newspapers and periodicals have found their way to the market or auction house. In the 1950s, after I finished a set of Jinggang Mountain landscape paintings, I donated a replica of it to the Jinggang Mountain Administrative Office at its request for permanent museum display. Later, when I looked over the original set of the paintings, which represented the immature stage of my attempts at nationalizing oil painting, I felt dissatisfied and had it all destroyed by fire. Unexpectedly, however, the replicated paintings recently showed up one after another in an auction house. Making a gift of painting or calligraphy to friends has been a traditional virtue of ours related to interpersonal relationship, which values affection above material gains.

藝術作品最終成為商品，這是客觀規(guī)律，無可非議。但在一時盛名之下，往往不夠藝術價值的劣畫也都招搖過市，欺蒙喜愛的收藏者，被市場上來回倒賣，互相欺騙。我早下決心要毀掉所有不滿意的作品，不愿謬種流傳。開始屠殺生靈了，屠殺自己的孩子。將有遺憾的次品一批批，一次次張掛起來審查，一次次淘汰，一次次刀下留人，一次次重新定案。一次次，一批批毀，畫在紙上的，無論墨彩、水彩、水粉，可撕得粉碎。作在布上的油畫只能用剪刀剪，剪成片片。作在三合板上的最不好辦，需用油畫顏料涂蓋。兒媳和小孫孫陪我整理，他們幫我展開六尺以上的巨幅一同撕裂時也滿懷惋惜之情，但惋惜不得啊!我往往教兒媳替我撕，自己確乎也有不忍下手的隱痛。畫室里廢紙成堆了，于是兒媳和阿姨抱下樓去用火燒，我在畫室窗口俯視院里熊熊之火中飛起的作品的紙灰，也看到許多圍觀的孩子和鄰居們在交談，不知他們說些什么。畫室里尚有一批覆蓋了五顏六色的三合板，只能暫時堆到陽臺上去，還不知能派什么用場，記得困難時期我的次品油畫是用來蓋雞窩的。

It is natural and beyond reproach for works of art to end up becoming commodities. The problem is that inferior paintings of low artistic value, often, under cover of high reputation, openly beguile avid art collectors and people rush for speculative buying and reselling of them, cheating each other. I made up my mind long ago to scrap all of my unsatisfactory paintings so as to prevent the circulation of low-grade products. So I began to butcher my own babies. I would hang up on the wall my problematic paintings batch by batch and time and time again for rigorous screening. Substandard paintings were eliminated and demolished. Poor paintings on paper, be they ink-and-wash, watercolor or gouache, were torn to pieces. Poor oil paintings on canvas had to be cut to shreds with a pair of scissors. Poor paintings on three-ply boards were a hard nut to crack, and had to be blotted out with oils. My daughters-in-law and grandchildren would lend me a helping hand. But they sighed regretfully while joining me in unrolling and tearing up gigantic painting scrolls of over six feet in length. I too could not help feeling soft-hearted and silently endured anguish in my heart. As my studio was piled high with the scrapped paintings, my daughters-in-law, together with our housemaid, would take the scrapheap downstairs to make a bonfire of it in the yard. I looked out of my studio window and saw paper ashes flying up from the raging flames. And I also saw children and neighbors crowd around watching and chatting. I didn't know what they were chatting about. Left in the studio were some threeply boards covered with multicolored oil paints. I had all of them temporarily stored in the balcony without knowing what I could ever do with them in the future. I remember that back in the famine year I even used my unsatisfactory oil paintings for building chicken coops.

生命末日之前，還將大量創(chuàng)作，大量毀滅，愿創(chuàng)作多于毀滅!

I'll, before the end of my life journey, continue to do a lot of creating as well as destroying, but, hopefully, more creating than destroying!

散文《毀畫》是著名畫家兼散文家吳冠中(1919—2010)的佳作，選自1955年5月出版的《吳冠中散文選》(由國際文化出版公司發(fā)行)。