旅行的藝術:Ⅷ 對美的擁有-4

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在1856年到1860年之間，當旅游代理商托馬斯·庫克第一次開始帶領英國旅行團前往瑞士的阿爾卑斯山時，羅斯金最希望教大家做的事就是繪畫：“繪畫的藝術，對于人類而言，要比寫作的藝術更加重要，每個孩子不僅要學寫字，更要學畫畫。無奈，繪畫藝術常被忽視和濫用，以至于懂得繪畫基本原則的人少而又少，即使是博學的教師也未必知道。”

Between 1856 and 1860, Ruskin's primary intellectual concern was to teach people how to draw: 'The art of drawing, which is of more real importance to the human race than that of writing and should be taught to every child just as writing is, has been so neglected and abused, that there is not one man in a thousand, even of its professed teachers, who knows its first principles.'

為了矯正時弊，羅斯金出版了兩本書，一本是1857年的《繪畫的元素》，另一本是1859年的《透視畫法的元素》，同時他還在倫敦的工人學院里作了一系列的演講。在那里，他教授學生——大多是倫敦的手工藝者——有關明暗法、色彩、尺寸、角度和構圖等方面的技巧。他的演講大受歡迎，他寫的書更是獲得了巨大的商業(yè)上的成功，因此，他更深信繪畫不該只是屬于小眾的藝術：“如果想學繪畫的話，每個人身上都有不錯的能力，就像學習法語，拉丁語或數(shù)學一樣，可以達到某種程度并且學以致用。”

To begin rectifying the damage, Ruskin published two books, The Elements of Drawing in 1857 and The Elements of Perspective in 1859, and gave a series of lectures at the Working Men's College in London, where he instructed students-mostly Cockney craftsmen-in shading, colour, dimension, perspective and framing. The lectures were heavily subscribed and the books were critical and commercial successes, confirming Ruskin in his view that drawing should not be for the few: 'There is a satisfactory and available power in every one to learn drawing if he wishes, just as nearly all persons have the power of learning French, Latin or arithmetic, in a decent and useful degree.'

什么是繪畫的要點？羅斯金強調(diào)為了追求美而畫與一心畫出好的作品或成為藝術家并沒有沖突：“人生來就是藝術家，就像河馬生來是河馬一樣；你不能把你自己變成別人，就像你不能把你自己變成長頸鹿。”如果他倫敦東區(qū)的學生們在完成所有課程后，無法畫出任何可以掛在畫廊里展出的作品，他也并不介意。“我的目標并不是把一名工匠調(diào)教為一名藝術家，而是使他成為一名更加快樂的工匠，”他在1857年對皇家委員會作了此種表述。他訴苦說，他自己遠非一個有天賦的藝術家。對于他孩童時代的繪畫，他嘲諷說：“在我一生中，我從未看到任何男孩的作品顯得如此沒有原創(chuàng)力，或是如此缺乏通過記憶來描繪的能力。我無法照原樣畫出任何東西，我畫不出一只貓、一只老鼠、一艘船或是一把刷子。”

What was the point of drawing? Ruskin saw no paradox in stressing that it had nothing to do with drawing well, or with becoming an artist: 'A man is born an artist as a hippopotamus is born a hippopotamus; and you can no more make yourself one than you can make yourself a giraffe.' He did not mind if his East End students left his classes unable to draw anything that could ever hang in a gallery. 'My efforts are directed not to making a carpenter an artist, but to making him happier as a carpenter,' he told a Royal Commission into drawing in 1857. He complained that he himself was a far from talented artist. Of his childhood drawings, he mocked: 'I never saw any boy's work in my life showing so little original faculty, or grasp by memory. I could literally draw nothing, not a cat, not a mouse, not a boat, not a brush.'

如果沒有天賦的人都在繪畫的話，那么，繪畫的價值何在呢？羅斯金認為，繪畫可以教我們?nèi)ビ^察：不是走馬觀花地看，而是關注。在用我們的手再創(chuàng)造眼前的景物的過程中，我們似乎自然而然地從一個以松散的方式觀察美的位置轉向了另一個位置，在這個位置上，我們可以獲得對美的組成部分的深刻理解，繼而獲得關于美的更深刻的記憶。一個曾經(jīng)在工人學院學習過的小商人轉述了羅斯金在課程結束時對他和他的同學們所說的話：“現(xiàn)在，請記住，紳士們，我并沒有試圖教你們畫，只是教你們?nèi)ビ^察。兩個男人正在穿越克拉爾市場，他們中的一個從市場的另一端走出去，出去時跟進來時并沒什么差別；另一個注意到了賣黃油的婦女籃子旁邊垂下的一些皺葉歐芹，并且?guī)е赖挠跋耠x開。這種美的影像在他的日常生活中留存多日，不斷重現(xiàn)。我希望你們這樣去觀察事物。”

If drawing had value even when it was practised by people with no talent, it was for Ruskin because drawing could teach us to see: to notice rather than to look. In the process of re-creating with our own hand what lies before our eyes, we seem naturally to move from a position of observing beauty in a loose way to one where we acquire a deep understanding of its constituent parts and hence more secure memories of it. A tradesman who had studied at the Working Men's College reported what Ruskin had told him and his fellow students at the end of their course: 'Now, remember, gentlemen, that I have not been trying to teach you to draw, only to see . Two men are walking through Clare Market, one of them comes out at the other end not a bit wiser than when he went in; the other notices a bit of parsley hanging over the edge of a butter-woman's basket, and carries away with him images of beauty which in the course of his daily work he incorporates with it for many a day. I want you to see things like these.'

羅斯金因為人們?nèi)绱松俚刈⒁獾郊毠?jié)而感到痛苦。他為現(xiàn)代旅游者的盲目和匆忙感到痛惜，尤其是那些得意于自己在一周時間內(nèi)乘火車游遍歐洲（由托馬斯·庫克第一個在1862年開辦的旅游行程）的人：“我們在旅行時，如果我們放棄每小時走100英里，從從容容地行進，我們或許會變得健康些、快樂些或明智些。世界之大，遠超過我們的眼界可以容納的范圍，不管人們走得多慢；走得快，他們也不會看到更多。真正珍貴的東西是所思和所見，不是速度。子彈飛得太快并不是好事；一個人，如果他的確是個人，走慢點也并無害處；因為他的輝煌根本不在于行走，而在于親身體驗。”

Ruskin was distressed by how seldom people noticed details. He deplored the blindness and haste of modern tourists, especially those who prided themselves on covering Europe in a week by train (a service first offered by Thomas Cook in 1862): 'No changing of place at a hundred miles an hour will make us one whit stronger, happier, or wiser. There was always more in the world than men could see, walked they ever so slowly; they will see it no better for going fast. The really precious things are thought and sight, not pace. It does a bullet no good to go fast; and a man, if he be truly a man, no harm to go slow; for his glory is not at all in going, but in being.'

有一種標準可以衡量我們是多么習慣于對細節(jié)的疏忽：如果我們停下來注視一地的風景，停留時間約為完成一幅素描的時間，那我們將被認為是反常，甚至是危險的。10分鐘敏銳的專注是描畫一棵樹所必需的；然而最好看的樹也很少能讓過路人駐足1分鐘。

It is a measure of how accustomed we are to inattention that we would be thought unusual and perhaps dangerous if we stopped and stared at a place for as long as a sketcher would require to draw it. Ten minutes of acute concentration at least are needed to draw a tree; the prettiest tree rarely stops passersby for longer than a minute.

羅斯金認為，假若我們只想旋風式地造訪一個遙遠的地方，就難以從這個旅途得到快樂，正如如果我們行色匆匆，就無法注意到垂在籃邊的歐芹這樣的細節(jié)。有一段時間他對旅游業(yè)感到非常沮喪，1864年，羅斯金在曼徹斯特向一批富有的工廠老板大聲疾呼：“你們認為火車旅行其樂無窮。你們已經(jīng)在沙夫豪森瀑布上架了一座鐵路橋；你們在盧塞恩的泰爾教堂旁的高崖開挖隧道；你們已經(jīng)破壞了日內(nèi)瓦湖克拉朗堤岸，你們在英國鄉(xiāng)間山谷升起大火，使得那里的寧靜不復存在，你們在足跡所至的每個地方造起一堆讓人生厭的白色旅館。你們眼中的阿爾卑斯山不過是在有熊出沒的花園里，一根擦過肥皂的柱子，你們爬上去，然后一邊溜下來，一邊快樂地尖叫。”

Ruskin connected the wish to travel fast and far to an inability to derive appropriate pleasure from any one place and, by extension, from details like single pieces of parsley hanging over the edges of baskets. In a moment of particular frustration with the tourist industry, he harangued an audience of wealthy industrialists in Manchester in 1864: 'Your one conception of pleasure is to drive in railroad carriages. You have put a railroad bridge over the fall of Schaffenhausen. You have tunnelled the cliffs of Lucerne by Tell's chapel; you have destroyed the Clarens shore of the Lake of Geneva; there is not a quiet valley in England that you have not filled with bellowing fire nor any foreign city in which the spread of your presence is not marked by a consuming white leprosy of new hotels. The Alps themselves you look upon as soaped poles in a bear-garden, which you set yourselves to climb, and slide down again, with “shrieks of delight”.'

羅斯金：《一根孔雀胸部羽毛的研究》，1873年

羅斯金的言辭有些過激，但兩難處境卻是真實的。技術也許讓人們更加容易接觸到美，但是它并沒有使擁有或欣賞美的過程變得簡單。

The tone was hysterical, but the dilemma was genuine. Technology may make it easier to reach beauty, but it has not simplified the process of possessing or appreciating it.

那么，照相機有什么錯呢？沒有，羅斯金最初這樣想。“在這恐怖的19世紀，機械給人們帶來了各種害處，但照相機提供了一種解毒劑。”他在評論1839年路易·雅克·芒代·達蓋爾 [2] 的發(fā)明時這樣寫道。1845年，他在威尼斯拼命拍照，結果非常滿意。他在寫給父親的信中說：“利用銀版攝影在陽光下拍攝到的東西非常棒，它使整個皇宮躍然紙上，每一塊碎片和上面的斑點都在，當然，也不會有比例上的差錯。”

What, then, is so wrong with the camera? Nothing, thought Ruskin initially. 'Among all the mechanical poison that this terrible nineteenth century has poured upon men, it has given us at any rate one antidote,' he wrote of Louis-Jacques-Mandé's invention of 1839. In Venice in 1845, he used a daguerreotype repeatedly and delighted in the results. To his father he wrote: 'Daguerreotypes taken by this vivid sunlight are glorious things. It is very nearly the same thing as carrying off a palace itself-every chip of stone and stain is there-and of course, there can be no mistakes about proportion.'

然而，羅斯金逐漸察覺到攝影給它的大多數(shù)使用者帶來了嚴峻的問題，他的熱情慢慢消失。使用者們不是把攝影作為積極而有意識的觀察的一種補充，相反，他們將它作為一種替代物，以為只要有一張照片，自己就把握了世界的一部分。

Yet Ruskin's enthusiasm diminished as he observed the devilish problem that photography created for the majority of its practitioners. Rather than using photography as a supplement to active, conscious seeing, they used it as an alternative, paying less attention to the world than they had done previously from a faith that photography automatically assured them possession of it.

羅斯金每次旅行總會畫些素描。在解釋他對繪畫的熱愛時，羅斯金曾經(jīng)提及說這種愛源于一種渴望。“不為名聲，不為服務于別人，也不為自己，而是來自一種像吃或喝一樣的本能。”而繪畫、吃飯、喝水這三件事之所以可以相提并論，是因為它們?nèi)可婕白约簭倪@個世界吸收好的元素，把好的東西輸進來。據(jù)羅斯金說，在孩童時代，他就非常喜歡草的樣子，甚至常常想去吃它，但是他漸漸發(fā)覺嘗試把草畫下來會更好：“我過去經(jīng)常躺在草地上，并通過繪畫來捕捉它們的成長過程——直到草地的每一平方英尺的原野或碧綠的河畔成為我的一筆財產(chǎn)。”

In explaining his love of drawing (it was rare for him to travel anywhere without sketching something), Ruskin once remarked that it arose from a desire, 'not for reputation, nor for the good of others, nor for my own advantage, but from a sort of instinct like that of eating or drinking' . What unites the three activities is that they all involve assimilations by the self of desirable elements from the world, a transfer of goodness from without to within. As a child, Ruskin had so loved the look of grass that he had frequently wanted to eat it, he said, but he had gradually discovered that it would be better to try to draw it: 'I used to lie down on it and draw the blades as they grew-until every square foot of meadow, or mossy bank, became a possession ［my italics］ to me.'

照相本身并不能保證這樣的收獲。對于一片景色真正的擁有，實質(zhì)是通過有意識的努力注意到各種元素并且了解它們的結構。只要將眼睛睜開，我們就能見到許多美景，但是這份美在記憶中存留多久卻要依賴于我們領悟它的用心的程度。照相機模糊了觀看和注視之間、觀看與擁有之間的區(qū)別；它或許可以讓我們擇取真正的美，但是它卻可能不經(jīng)意地使意欲獲得美的努力顯得多余。照相機暗示我們，只需拍攝一張照片，我們就做完了所有的功課，然而就清晰地了解一個地方（如一片樹林）而言，就必然包含詢問我們自己一系列的問題，比如，“樹干是如何與樹根相連的？”“霧是從哪里來的？”“為什么一棵樹的色澤似乎比另一棵更深？”——在素描的過程之中，類似的問題不斷出現(xiàn)并得到回答。

But photography alone cannot ensure such eating. True possession of a scene is a matter of making a conscious effort to notice elements and understand their construction. We can see beauty well enough just by opening our eyes, but how long this beauty survives in memory depends on how intentionally we have apprehended it. The camera blurs the distinction between looking and noticing, between seeing and possessing; it may give us the option of true knowledge but it may unwittingly make the effort of acquiring it seem superfluous. It suggests we have done all the work simply by taking a photograph, whereas properly to eat a place, a woodland for example, implies asking ourselves a series of questions like, How do the stems connect to the roots?','Where is the mist coming from?','Why does one tree seem darker than another?'-questions implicitly raised and answered in the process of sketching.