诗辩

A Defence of Poetry

诗辩

Percy Bysshe Shelley

珀西.比希.雪莱

作者简介

珀西.比希.雪莱（Percy Bysshe Shelley，1792—1822），英国文学史上最具浪漫情怀的抒情诗人之一，与约翰.济慈（John Keats）和乔治.戈登.拜伦（George Gordon Byron）齐名。

雪莱的作品热情而富哲理思辨，诗风自由不羁，惯用梦幻象征手法和远古神话题材，常任天上地下、时间空间、神怪精灵变幻驰骋。其代表作包括评论人间事物的长诗《仙后麦布》（Queen Mab）、支持意大利民族解放斗争的政治诗《自由颂》（Ode to Liberty）、表现革命热情和胜利信念的《西风颂》（Ode to the West Wind）等。1822年，雪莱在出海时遭遇风暴不幸遇难，年仅30岁。斯人已逝，但他那饱含美好希冀的预言“如果冬天已经来临，春天还会远吗？”长留世人心间。

本文节选自1840年出版的雪莱文集《诗辩》（A Defence of Poetry），该书可视为他一生创作与文艺思想的总结。本篇文采飞扬，细数诗歌超凡脱俗之美。

Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds. We are aware of evanescent visitations of thought and feeling sometimes associated with place or person, sometimes regarding our own mind alone, and always arising unforeseen and departing unbidden, but elevating and delightful beyond all expression: so that even in the desire and the regret they leave, there cannot but be pleasure, participating as it does in the nature of its object. It is as it were the interpenetration of a diviner nature through our own; but its footsteps are like those of a wind over the sea, which the coming calm erases, and whose traces remain only, as on the wrinkled sand which paves it. These and corresponding conditions of being are experienced principally by those of the most delicate sensibility and the most enlarged imagination; and the state of mind produced by them is at war with every base desire.

The enthusiasm of virtue, love, patriotism, and friendship, is essentially linked with such emotions; and whilst they last, self appears as what it is, an atom to a universe. Poets are not only subject to these experiences as spirits of the most refined organisation, but they can colour all that they combine with the evanescent hues of this ethereal world; a word, a trait in the representation of a scene or a passion, will touch the enchanted chord, and reanimate, in those who have ever experienced these emotions, the sleeping, the cold, the buried image of the past. Poetry thus makes immortal all that is best and most beautiful in the world; it arrests the vanishing apparitions which haunt the interlunations of life, and veiling them, or in language or in form, sends them forth among mankind, bearing sweet news of kindred joy to those with whom their sisters abide—abide, because there is no portal of expression from the caverns of the spirit which they inhabit into the universe of things. Poetry redeems from decay the visitations of the divinity in man.

诗记录了最快乐、最美好的心灵中最美好、最快乐的时刻。我们知道，思想和感情短暂的造访有时与地点或人物相关，有时只与我们自己的心灵相关。它们总是不期而至，又不辞而别，却能带来无法言传的崇高与欢乐。即使它们留下了期许和遗憾，这其中也满是快乐。这种快乐是期许和遗憾本质中的一部分。诗就像通过人的本性展示神性；但它留下的足迹，就像清风掠过海面的痕迹，被寂静轻轻抚平，只在沙滩上留下浅浅的细纹。这类心境，只有情感最细腻、想象力最丰富的人才能体会；在这种状态下，人们心中无法容忍任何卑劣的欲望。

美德、爱情、爱国、友谊等炽热的感情与上述情感有本质上的联系。只要这些感情存在，人就会呈现出原初的样子，即宇宙中的一个原子。诗人不仅受这些最纯粹情感的支配，还能用天国转瞬即逝的色彩渲染一切。写景抒情的一字一句都会拨动沉醉的心弦，并在体验过如上情感之人的心中，唤醒沉睡的、冰冷的、被埋葬的往昔图景。诗让世间一切最美好的事物得到永生。诗能捕捉人生阴霾中飘忽不定的幻影，用语言或结构将其修饰，然后将其送往人间，为人们带去欢乐的消息。那些人与幻影的姐妹一同“居留”。这里说“居留”，是因为精神寄居的洞穴没有通往外界的表达之门。诗让人的神性免于堕落。

Poetry turns all things to loveliness; it exalts the beauty of that which is most beautiful, and it adds beauty to that which is most deformed; it marries exultation and horror, grief and pleasure, eternity and change; it subdues to union under its light yoke, all irreconcilable things. It transmutes all that it touches, and every form moving within the radiance of its presence is changed by wondrous sympathy to an incarnation of the spirit which it breathes: its secret alchemy turns to potable gold the poisonous waters which flow from death through life; it strips the veil of familiarity from the world, and lays bare the naked and sleeping beauty, which is the spirit of its forms.

All things exist as they are perceived: at least in relation to the percipient. “The mind is its own place, and of itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.” But poetry defeats the curse which binds us to be subjected to the accident of surrounding impressions. And whether it spreads its own figured curtain, or withdraws life’s dark veil from before the scene of things, it equally creates for us a being within our being. It makes us the inhabitants of a world to which the familiar world is a chaos. It reproduces the common universe of which we are portions and percipients, and it purges from our inward sight the film of familiarity which obscures from us the wonder of our being. It compels us to feel that which we perceive, and to imagine that which we know. It creates anew the universe, after it has been annihilated in our minds by the recurrence of impressions blunted by reiteration. It justifies that bold and true words of Tasso—Non merita nome di creatore, se non Iddio ed il Poeta.

诗美化万物；它为最美的事物锦上添花，使最丑的事物变得美丽；它让狂喜与恐惧、悲伤与欢乐、永恒与无常缔结姻缘；在它轻柔的联结中，矛盾的事物变得彼此相容。诗改变了它触及的一切；在其光芒的笼罩下，奇妙的共鸣使万物变形，化身为灵性。它拥有神秘的魔力，能将冥河的毒液化为琼浆。它揭开了世界平淡无奇的面纱，展示了毫无遮拦的沉睡之美。这正是世间各种表象下蕴含的精神所在。

世间万物，存在即被感知；它至少与感知者相关。“心灵是自身的主宰，可化地狱为天堂，化天堂为地狱。”但诗打破了魔咒，让我们不再受制于偶然的外界印象。无论是展开自己多彩的帷幔，还是揭开万物前的黑暗面纱，诗都在人类心中创造了另一重存在。诗带我们进入了另一个世界。与此相比，我们熟悉的世界一片混沌。诗再造了我们身处、感知的寻常世界，拭去了我们心灵之眼上的薄翳，正是这层薄翳让我们无视人生的奇妙。诗迫使我们去体会感知到的东西，去想象已知晓的东西。重复的印象让我们麻木，摧毁了我们心目中的世界。此时，诗创造了新的世界。这证实了塔索[1]大胆的真言：“除了上帝与诗人，无人配称创造者。 ”

A poet, as he is the author to others of the highest wisdom, pleasure, virtue and glory, so he ought personally to be the happiest, the best, the wisest, and the most illustrious of men. As to his glory, let time be challenged to declare whether the fame of any other institutor of human life be comparable to that of a poet. That he is the wisest, the happiest, and the best, inasmuch as he is a poet, is equally incontrovertible: the greatest poets have been men of the most spotless virtue, of the most consummate prudence, and, if we would look into the interior of their lives, the most fortunate of men: and the exceptions, as they regard those who possessed the poetic faculty in a high yet inferior degree, will be found on consideration to confine rather than destroy the rule...

Poetry, as has been said, differs in this respect from logic, that it is not subject to the control of the active powers of the mind, and that its birth and recurrence have no necessary connexion with the consciousness or will...But in the intervals of inspiration, and they may be frequent without being durable, a poet becomes a man, and is abandoned to the sudden reflux of the influences under which others habitually live. But as he is more delicately organised than other men, and sensible to pain and pleasure, both his own and that of others, in a degree unknown to them, he will avoid the one and pursue the other with an ardour proportioned to this difference. And he renders himself obnoxious to calumny, when he neglects to observe the circumstances under which these objects of universal pursuit and flight have disguised themselves in one another’s garments.

诗人是无上的智慧、欢乐、美德和光荣的创造者，所以诗人本身应该是最快乐、最美好、最睿智、最杰出的人。至于诗人的荣誉，世上有没有其他创造者能与诗人相媲美，就让时间来评判吧。因为一个人是诗人，他就是最睿智、最快乐、最美好的人，这一点同样无可辩驳。最伟大的诗人，品德最无可挑剔，行事最审慎小心。如果我们深入审视他的生平，还会发现他是最幸运的人。那些出身低微但拥有天赋的诗人例外，这些例外无损于以上规律，只是它的局限……

如上所述，诗和逻辑不同。诗不服从头脑的主动掌控，它的诞生和再现与知觉和意志没有必然联系……然而，灵感往往不能持久。灵感消逝之后，诗人便成了普通人，被遗弃在生活的激流中，受到世人寻常生活的影响。但诗人比常人的情感更加细腻，对自己和别人的悲喜更加敏感——常人无法理解这种敏感。诗人与常人不同，所以他总是带着超凡的热忱，躲避痛苦并追寻欢乐。这使得诗人容易受人诽谤。毕竟，常人追求或逃避目标时往往半遮半掩，诗人则毫不掩饰。

诗揭开了世界平淡无奇的面纱，展示了毫无遮拦的沉睡之美。

Percy Bysshe Shelley 珀西•比希•雪莱

[1] 托尔夸托.塔索（Torquato Tasso，1544—1595），文艺复兴运动晚期的意大利诗人，代表作为叙事长诗《耶路撒冷的解放》。