旅行的藝術(shù):Ⅷ 對(duì)美的擁有-7

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羅斯金不僅鼓勵(lì)我們?cè)诼眯械臅r(shí)候作畫，同時(shí)他覺得我們應(yīng)該寫，他覺得，寫作就是用文字畫畫，這樣做可以鞏固我們對(duì)于美的印象。在他的一生中，他的繪畫非常受人尊敬，但是他的語言描畫具有更重要的意義，它吸引了公眾的想象力，并且在維多利亞時(shí)代晚期給他帶來了顯赫的名聲。

Ruskin did not only encourage us to draw on our travels, he also felt we should write, or as he called it 'word paint', so as to cement our impressions of beauty. However respected he was in his lifetime for his drawings, it was his word-paintings that captured the public imagination and were responsible for his fame in the late Victorian period.

令人陶醉的景致通常讓我們意識(shí)到語言的貧乏。在湖區(qū)給一個(gè)朋友的明信片上，我?guī)е撤N絕望，匆忙寫道，這里景色很美，天氣潮濕、多風(fēng)。羅斯金會(huì)將這樣的語句更多地歸因于懶惰，而不是缺乏能力。他認(rèn)為，我們有能力進(jìn)行大量豐富的語言描繪。導(dǎo)致失敗的結(jié)果僅僅是因?yàn)槲覀儧]有問自己足夠多的問題，沒有精確地分析我們的所見和所感。我們不應(yīng)當(dāng)僅僅停留在“這片湖很美”的感覺上，我們應(yīng)該更加積極地問自己，“這片開闊的水面究竟有什么地方如此吸引人？它會(huì)讓人聯(lián)想到什么？除了用‘大’這個(gè)詞之外有什么更好的詞可以形容？”以語言描畫完成的作品不一定才華橫溢，但至少它是一種探尋真實(shí)經(jīng)驗(yàn)的結(jié)晶。

Attractive places typically render us aware of our inadequacies with language. In the Lake District, while writing a postcard to a friend, I explained-in some despair and haste-that the scenery was pretty and the weather wet and windy. Ruskin would have ascribed such prose more to laziness than incapacity. We were all, he argued, able to turn out adequate word-paintings. A failure was only the result of not asking ourselves enough questions, of not being more precise in analysing what we had seen and felt. Rather than rest with the idea that a lake was pretty, we were to ask ourselves more vigorously, 'What in particular is attractive about this stretch of water? What are its associations? What is a better word for it than big?' The finished product might not then be marked by genius, but at least it would have been motivated by a search for an authentic representation of an experience.

貫穿整個(gè)成年時(shí)代，羅斯金都對(duì)禮貌的、受過教育的英國人拒絕更有深度地談?wù)撎鞖舛械骄趩?，他們加諸天氣的形容詞總是“潮濕、風(fēng)大”，這尤其讓羅斯金感覺不適：“人們對(duì)天氣知之太少，這真是一件怪事。我們從來不關(guān)注它，我們從來不把它當(dāng)作思考的主題，我們只把它看作是一系列無意義和單調(diào)的事情，太普通，太無聊，以至于不值得花費(fèi)一點(diǎn)時(shí)間留心或是以欣賞的眼光瞄上一眼。如果在百無聊賴之下，我們最后轉(zhuǎn)向天空，可以說些什么呢？有人說潮濕，有人說風(fēng)大，還有一種可能說挺暖和。在整個(gè)喋喋不休的人群中，誰能告訴我，在今天中午，環(huán)繞著地平線的一大片綿延的白色高山，究竟是何種形狀，那峭壁又有何種姿態(tài)？誰看見從南面照射過來的狹長光束照耀著山頂直至白雪融化、崩流而下形成像藍(lán)色的雨滴？誰看見當(dāng)昨晚陽光不再照耀，被西風(fēng)吹得猶如凋零的樹葉般的朵朵烏云在空中的舞蹈？”

Ruskin was throughout his adult life frustrated by the refusal of polite, educated English people to talk in sufficient depth about the weather: 'It is a strange thing how little people know about the sky. We never attend to it, we never make it a subject of thought, we look upon it only as a succession of meaningless and monotonous accidents, too common and too vain to be worthy of a moment of watchfulness or a glance of admiration. If in our moments of utter idleness and insipidity, we turn to the sky as a last resource, which of its phenomena do we speak of? One says it has been wet, and another, it has been windy, and another, it has been warm. Who, among the whole chattering crowd, can tell me of the forms and the precipices of the chain of tall white mountains that girded the horizon at noon today? Who saw the narrow sunbeam that came out of the south, and smote upon their summits until they melted and mouldered away in a dust of blue rain? Who saw the dance of the dead clouds when the sunlight left them last night, and the west wind blew them before it like withered leaves?'

當(dāng)然，答案就蘊(yùn)涵在另一個(gè)有關(guān)藝術(shù)的功能和吃、喝的功能之間的類推中，羅斯金曾得意地說，他將天空裝進(jìn)了瓶子里，就像他的酒商父親將雪利酒裝進(jìn)瓶子里一樣小心翼翼。這里有兩篇日記，記載了在1857年秋天，在倫敦，羅斯金將天空裝進(jìn)瓶子里的兩天：

The answer was, of course, Ruskin himself, who liked to boast, in another analogy between the function of art and that of eating and drinking, that he bottled skies as carefully as his sherry-importing father bottled sherries. Here are two diary entries of sky-bottling days in London in the autumn of 1857:

11月1日一個(gè)紅暈中的早晨，翻騰的云呈現(xiàn)出柔軟的紅色，云邊的紅更加鮮艷，接著漸漸變成紫色?；疑脑贫溆晌髂巷h來，從其下方向它們靠近，地平線上，飛云和卷云之間則是灰色的積云。多美的一天……遠(yuǎn)處所有的紫色和藍(lán)色、樹叢中迷蒙的陽光、綠色的田野……小心觀察那精美的景致，藍(lán)色的天空中散漫了金色的葉子，栗子樹纖細(xì)而矮小，星星將黑暗襯出。

November 1st : A vermilion morning, all waves of soft scarlet, sharp at the edge, and gradated to purple. Grey scud moving slowly beneath it from the south-west, heaps of grey cumuli-between the scud and cirrus-at horizon. It issued in an exquisite day … All purple and blue in distance, and misty sunshine near on the trees, and green fields … Note the exquisite effect of the golden leaves scattered on the blue sky, and the horse-chestnut, thin and small, dark against them in stars.

阿米蒂奇仿透納畫作鐫刻的《云》，出自羅斯金《現(xiàn)代畫家》第五卷，1860年

11月3日黎明，紫色、泛紅、優(yōu)美。6點(diǎn)的時(shí)候，出現(xiàn)一道灰灰、濃濃的云。接著，被照亮的紫色云朵穿過這堆灰色，露出了上方暗黃色的天空。所有的灰云，和更暗的飛云從西南方斜斜地飄過天空，飄移得很快，然而卻并不會(huì)讓人感到緊張，最后它們漸漸散去。灰色的天空中出現(xiàn)一道黃銅色的光線，光線不久便消逝，灰色的早晨凸現(xiàn)在眼前。

November 3rd : Dawn purple, flushed, delicate. Bank of grey cloud, heavy at six. Then the lighted purple cloud showing through it, open sky of dull yellow above-all grey, and darker scud going across it obliquely, from the south-west-moving fast, yet never stirring from its place, at last melting away. It expands into a sky of brassy flaked light on grey-passes away into grey morning.