旅行的藝術(shù):Ⅷ 對(duì)美的擁有-5

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羅斯金認(rèn)為人人都可拾起畫(huà)筆，在這種觀念鼓舞下，我開(kāi)始在旅程中嘗試著繪畫(huà)。關(guān)于要畫(huà)什么，我想，盡可以由著擁有美的渴望來(lái)引導(dǎo)，在那些以前想用相機(jī)拍下的地方動(dòng)筆即可。在羅斯金看來(lái)，“你的藝術(shù)是對(duì)某些你所喜歡的東西的贊美。它或許僅僅是對(duì)一片貝殼或是一塊石頭的贊美。”

Encouraged by Ruskin's democratic vision of drawing, I tried my hand during my travels. As for what to draw, it seemed sensible to be guided by the desire to possess beauty which had previously led me to take up my camera. In Ruskin's words, 'Your art is to be the praise of something that you love. It may only be the praise of a shell or a stone.'

我決定畫(huà)“凡人”旅館里臥室的玻璃窗，一是因?yàn)樗谘矍埃且驗(yàn)樵谝粋€(gè)明朗的秋日清晨它顯得很迷人。結(jié)果如我所料，畫(huà)出的東西很糟，但我仍然感覺(jué)學(xué)到了一些東西。畫(huà)一件物體，不論畫(huà)得有多糟，我們都會(huì)很快從模模糊糊的感覺(jué)進(jìn)到明確的知覺(jué)，分析這樣?xùn)|西的組成部分和特點(diǎn)。因此，“一扇窗”是一堆架子在合適處支撐著玻璃片，是由木條和凹槽組合成的體系，（旅館的窗口是喬治亞式 [3] 的），12塊玻璃看起來(lái)像正方形但其實(shí)是長(zhǎng)方形，窗格涂的是白色的涂漆，但看起來(lái)并不像真的白色，而是呈現(xiàn)出灰色、棕灰色、黃色、粉紫色和柔和的綠色，這得取決于光的強(qiáng)度和光線照射在木條上的情況（窗戶(hù)的西北角有受潮的痕跡，那里的油漆因此略顯粉紅）。玻璃也不是完全明凈；在玻璃的內(nèi)部略有瑕疵，有些細(xì)小的氣泡，像是結(jié)凍了的汽水，玻璃的表面有干了的雨滴的痕跡和玻璃清潔工的抹布不經(jīng)意留下的拭痕。

I decided to draw the bedroom window at the Mortal Man Inn because it was to hand and seemed attractive on a bright autumn morning. The result was a predictable yet instructive disaster. Drawing an object, however badly, swiftly takes us from a woolly sense of what it looks like to a precise awareness of its component parts and particularities. So 'a window' reveals itself to be made of a succession of ledges holding the glass in place, of a system of ridges and indentations (the hotel's was in the Georgian style), of twelve panes that might seem square but are in fact mildly but importantly rectangular, of white paint that doesn't really look white but ash-grey, brown-grey, yellow, pinky mauve and mild green depending on the light and on the relationship between this light and the condition of the wood (in the north-western edge of the window, a trace of damp gave the paint a pinky tint). Nor is glass wholly clear; it has within it minute imperfections, tiny bubbles of air like a frozen fizzy drink, and on its surface mine had been marked with the traces of dried raindrops and the impatient swipes of a window cleaner's cloth.

繪畫(huà)無(wú)情地揭示出了我們先前對(duì)于事物真實(shí)面目的無(wú)知。這里以樹(shù)木為例。在《繪畫(huà)的元素》的一段論述里，羅斯金借助他的插圖說(shuō)明，通常我們?cè)趧?dòng)手畫(huà)之前想象的樹(shù)枝，跟我們更接近地觀察后用紙筆去描繪是有區(qū)別的：“樹(shù)干并不是隨意地從這里或那里生長(zhǎng)出無(wú)規(guī)律的樹(shù)枝來(lái)占據(jù)各自的位置，而是所有的樹(shù)枝分享了一個(gè)類(lèi)似于噴泉的巨大力量。那也就是說(shuō)，一棵樹(shù)大體上的形狀不是像1a，而像1b；所有的粗樹(shù)枝都將它們細(xì)小的分支向外延伸，形成一個(gè)弧度。同時(shí)每一根獨(dú)立的樹(shù)枝的形狀不是2a而是2b，也就是說(shuō)，類(lèi)似于一株花椰菜的結(jié)構(gòu)。”

Drawing brutally shows up our previous blindness to the true appearance of things. Consider the case of trees. In a passage in The Elements of Drawing , Ruskin discussed, with reference to his own illustrations, the difference between the way we usually imagine the branches of trees before we draw them and the way they reveal themselves once we have looked more closely with the help of a pad and pencil:'The stem does not merely send off a wild branch here and there to take its own way, but all the branches share in one great fountain-like impulse. That is to say, the general type of a tree is not as 1a but as 1b , in which the boughs all carry their minor divisions right out to the bounding curve. And the type of each separate bough is not 2a but 2b ; approximating, that is to say, to the structure of a plant of broccoli.'

羅斯金：《枝條》，引自《繪畫(huà)的元素》，1857年

在我的一生中，我已經(jīng)見(jiàn)過(guò)許多橡樹(shù)，但只有在花費(fèi)了1個(gè)小時(shí)去畫(huà)蘭代爾峽谷中的一棵之后（盡管連小孩見(jiàn)了我畫(huà)的東西都會(huì)覺(jué)得難為情），我才開(kāi)始了解并記住了橡樹(shù)的特征。

I had seen many oak trees in my life, but only after an hour spent drawing one in the Langdale valley (the result would have shamed an infant) did I begin to appreciate, and remember, their identity.