旅行的藝術(shù):藝術(shù) Ⅶ 令人眼界大開的藝術(shù)-6

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那個澳大利亞人的抱怨在團隊中是少見的。我們中的大多數(shù)人聽完索非婭的解說后，都懷著一種重新建立起來的敬意——對于凡·高和他畫過的那片風(fēng)景的敬意。但是我突然想起帕斯卡爾一句尖刻的名言，早在凡·高到法國南部的幾百年前，他就說出這樣的話了：

The complaints of the Australian man were unusual in the group. Most of us left Sophie's lecture with a new-found reverence both for Van Gogh and for the landscapes he had painted. But my enthusiasm was troubled by the memory of an exceptionally acerbic maxim that Pascal had penned two centuries before Van Gogh's southern journey:

繪畫是多么地虛榮，它使我們不去贊美事物本身，而興奮地贊美繪畫所體現(xiàn)出來的與事物的相似性。

How vain painting is, exciting admiration by its resemblance to things of which we do not admire the originals.

——《沉思錄》

Pensées , 40

令人尷尬的是，在我還沒發(fā)現(xiàn)凡·高對普羅旺斯的描繪前，我并不那么欣賞普羅旺斯這個地方。但是，在意欲嘲諷藝術(shù)愛好者的同時，帕斯卡爾的箴言卻有可能忽略了重要的兩點。如果我們設(shè)想所有畫家所做的就是精確地再現(xiàn)他們眼前的圖景，而我們贊嘆這樣一幅繪畫作品，一幅描繪了一個我們知道卻并不喜歡的地方，這聽起來荒謬而虛偽。如果這些畫家是精確地再現(xiàn)他們眼前的圖景，那么在一幅畫中我們將要贊嘆的對象便只是畫家的技巧和他本人的聲名了。這樣說來，或許帕斯卡爾說的繪畫無用論的確沒錯。但是，如同尼采所言，畫家并不單純地再現(xiàn)，他們有所選擇，有所強調(diào)，同時他們還致力于表現(xiàn)他們眼中的真實，因而值得讓人真心喝彩。

It seemed awkwardly true that I had not admired Provence much before I had come across its depiction in Van Gogh's work. But, in its desire to mock art lovers, Pascal's maxim was in danger of skirting two important points. To admire a painting that depicts a place we know but don't like sounds absurd and pretentious if we imagine that painters do nothing but reproduce exactly what lies before them. If that were true, then all we could admire in a painting would be the technical skills involved in the reproduction of an object and the glamorous name of the painter, in which case, we would have little difficulty in agreeing with Pascal's description of painting as a vain pursuit. But, as Nietzsche knew, painters do not merely reproduce. They select and highlight, and they are accorded genuine admiration in so far as their version of reality seems to bring out valuable features of it.

而且，即便我們所贊美的關(guān)于一個地方的圖畫不在眼前，我們也不必像帕斯卡爾暗示的那樣，恢復(fù)我們對這個地方的漠然。欣賞的能力可以從藝術(shù)轉(zhuǎn)向（現(xiàn)實）世界。我們會發(fā)現(xiàn)許多事物，最初畫布上的圖景讓我們感到愉悅，而后我們在畫作所描繪的那個地方喜歡上它們。就像看了凡·高畫的柏樹之后，我們更知道如何欣賞柏樹。

Furthermore, we do not have to resume our indifference to a place once the painting of it that we have admired is out of sight, as Pascal hints we might. Our capacity to appreciate can be transferred from art to the world. We can find things that delight us on a canvas first but then later welcome them in the place where the canvas was painted. We can continue to see cypresses beyond Van Gogh's paintings.