閱讀本癡狂

Reading as Schw?rmerei

閱讀本癡狂

Joseph Hillis Miller

約瑟夫.希利斯.米勒

作者簡(jiǎn)介

約瑟夫.希利斯.米勒（Joseph Hillis Miller，1928—），美國(guó)著名文學(xué)批評(píng)家，解構(gòu)主義批評(píng)的代表人物，也是歐美文學(xué)及比較文學(xué)研究的杰出學(xué)者。他是哈佛大學(xué)博士，曾任教于霍普金斯大學(xué)、耶魯大學(xué)，現(xiàn)為加州大學(xué)歐文分校英語(yǔ)與比較文學(xué)系教授。米勒的著作包括《理論今昔》（Theory Now and Then）、《閱讀的倫理》（The Ethics of Reading）、《他者》（Others）等。米勒曾在中國(guó)發(fā)表演講，講稿匯編為《土著與數(shù)碼沖浪者——米勒中國(guó)演講集》（The Indigene and the Cybersurfer）。

本文節(jié)選自2002年出版的《文學(xué)死了嗎？》（On Literature）。作者在文中強(qiáng)調(diào)，閱讀須像天真孩童一樣全身心投入；閱讀過(guò)程中順其自然，書(shū)里精華自能融會(huì)貫通。

If it is really the case, as I have argued, that each literary work opens up a singular world, attainable in no other way than by reading that work, then reading should be a matter of giving one’s whole mind, heart, feelings, and imagination, without reservation, to recreating that world within oneself, on the basis of the words. This would be a species of that fanaticism, or rapture, or even revelry that Immanuel Kant calls Schw?rmerei. The work comes alive as a kind of internal theater that seems in a strange way independent of the words on the page. That was what happened to me when I first read The Swiss Family Robinson. The ability to do that is probably more or less universal, once you have learned to read, once you have learned, that is, to turn those mute and objectively meaningless shapes into letters, words, and sentences that correspond to spoken language.

I suspect that my interior theater or revelry is not by any means the same as another person’s. Even so, each reader’s imaginary world, generated by a given work, seems to that reader to have unquestionable authority. One empirical test of this is the reaction many people have when they see a film made from a novel they have read: “No, No! It’s not at all like that! They’ve got it all wrong.”

如果確實(shí)如我所說(shuō)，每部文學(xué)作品都會(huì)開(kāi)啟一個(gè)獨(dú)特的世界，而且只有通過(guò)閱讀該作品才能走進(jìn)這個(gè)世界，那么，人們閱讀時(shí)就該全心全意地感受和想象，毫無(wú)保留地以文字為基礎(chǔ)在腦中創(chuàng)造新世界。閱讀將成為一種狂熱、狂喜，甚至成為被康德[1]稱(chēng)為“癡狂”的狂歡。作品會(huì)以一種奇怪的方式獨(dú)立于文字，如腦內(nèi)劇場(chǎng)一般鮮活呈現(xiàn)。我初讀《瑞士人的魯賓遜故事》[2]時(shí)就是如此。一旦你學(xué)會(huì)閱讀，學(xué)會(huì)將無(wú)聲且無(wú)意義的字形變成有聲的字母、詞語(yǔ)、句子，便會(huì)發(fā)現(xiàn)這種能力可能或多或少是普遍存在的。

我懷疑自己腦內(nèi)的劇場(chǎng)或狂歡和其他人的迥然不同。即便如此，閱讀某部特定作品時(shí)，每位讀者似乎都對(duì)自己想象的世界深信不疑。最典型的例子是，觀看根據(jù)自己讀過(guò)的小說(shuō)改編的電影時(shí)，很多人會(huì)說(shuō)：“不，不！根本不是那回事！他們?nèi)沐e(cuò)了?！?

The illustrations, particularly of children’s books, play an important role in shaping that imaginary theater. The original Sir John Tenniel illustrations for the Alice books told me how to imagine Alice, the White Rabbit, Tweedledum and Tweedledee, and the rest. Still, my imaginary world behind the looking-glass exceeded even the Tenniel pictures. Henry James, in A Small Boy and Others, paid homage to the power of George Cruikshank’s illustrations for Oliver Twist to determine the way that imaginary world seemed to him:

It perhaps even seemed to me more Cruikshank’s than Dickens’s; it was a thing of such vividly terrible images, and all marked with that peculiarity of Cruikshank that the offered flowers or goodnesses, the scenes and figures intended to comfort and cheer, present themselves under his hand as but more subtly sinister, or more suggestively queer, than the frank badnesses and horrors.

插圖，特別是童書(shū)插圖，對(duì)于構(gòu)筑想象的劇場(chǎng)至關(guān)重要。約翰?坦尼爾爵士[3]為愛(ài)麗絲系列[4]畫(huà)的原版插圖，教我如何想象愛(ài)麗絲、白兔、胖墩雙胞胎兄弟[5]等人。不過(guò)，我想象里的鏡中世界，遠(yuǎn)遠(yuǎn)超出了泰尼爾的插圖。亨利?詹姆斯[6]在《小男孩和其他人》這本書(shū)里，向喬治?克魯克香克[7]為《霧都孤兒》畫(huà)的插圖致敬，因?yàn)樗鼈儧Q定了他想象中的世界：

在我看來(lái)，這本書(shū)與其說(shuō)是狄更斯的，不如說(shuō)是克魯克香克的。書(shū)中充滿了栩栩如生的可怕形象，都帶著克魯克香克的特殊印記。無(wú)論是獻(xiàn)上的鮮花還是施舍的善意，甚至本應(yīng)給人安慰和鼓舞的場(chǎng)景和人物，在他筆下都透露出微妙的不詳或隱約的詭異，遠(yuǎn)遠(yuǎn)超越普通的邪惡和恐怖。

What reader, who has happened to see them, to give two other examples, has not had his or her imagination shaped by the wonderful photographs by Coburn that are used as frontispieces for the New York Edition of James’s works or by the frontispiece photographs for the Wessex or Anniversary Editions of Thomas Hardy’s work?

I am advocating, as the first side of the aporia of reading, an innocent, childlike abandonment to the act of reading, without suspicion, reservation, or interrogation. Such a reading makes a willing suspension of disbelief, in Coleridge’s famous phrase. It is a suspension, however, that does not even know anymore that disbelief might be possible. The suspension then becomes no longer the result of a conscious effort of will. It becomes spontaneous, without forethought. My analogy with reciprocal assertions of “I love you” by two persons is more than casual. As Michel Deguy says, La poésie comme l’amour risque tout sur des signes. (Poetry, like love, risks everything on signs.) The relation between reader and story read is like a love affair. In both cases, it is a matter of giving yourself without reservation to the other. A book in my hands or on the shelf utters a powerful command: “Read me!” To do so is as risky, precarious, or even dangerous as to respond to another person’s “I love you” with an “I love you too.” You never know where saying that might lead you, just as you never know where reading a given book might lead you. In my own case, reading certain books has been decisive for my life. Each such book has been a turning point, the marker of a new epoch.

再舉兩個(gè)例子：如果讀者偶然看過(guò)詹姆斯作品紐約版的卷首插圖，即科伯恩[8]拍攝的絕妙照片，或是看過(guò)托馬斯?哈代的《威塞克斯小說(shuō)》[9]或其作品周年紀(jì)念版的卷首插圖，他們的想象怎能不被這些圖片左右？

我主張的閱讀困境的第一個(gè)方面[10]，就是像天真孩童一樣閱讀，不懷疑，不保留，不探究。正如柯勒律治[11]的名言所說(shuō)，這種閱讀是“自愿擱置懷疑”。然而，它甚至?xí)屓送浤軐?duì)書(shū)提出懷疑。久而久之，這種擱置不再需要有意識(shí)的努力，而是不假思索便能自發(fā)產(chǎn)生，這和兩個(gè)人互相說(shuō)出“我愛(ài)你”相似。我并不是隨隨便便打這個(gè)比方。正如米歇爾?德吉[12]所說(shuō)：“詩(shī)歌像愛(ài)情一樣，把一切押在暗示上。 ”讀者與所讀故事的關(guān)系，就像戀愛(ài)關(guān)系。這兩種關(guān)系都要將自己毫無(wú)保留地獻(xiàn)給對(duì)方。手中和架上的書(shū)發(fā)出強(qiáng)有力的命令：“讀我！”但這么做就像用“我也愛(ài)你”回應(yīng)別人說(shuō)的“我愛(ài)你”一樣冒險(xiǎn)，充滿了不確定性，甚至可能有危險(xiǎn)。你永遠(yuǎn)不知道這么說(shuō)會(huì)有什么后果，正如不知道閱讀某本書(shū)會(huì)將你引向何方。對(duì)我來(lái)說(shuō)，讀某些書(shū)對(duì)我的一生有決定性的影響。那些書(shū)，每本都是一個(gè)轉(zhuǎn)折點(diǎn)，每本都是新時(shí)代的里程碑。

Reading, like being in love, is by no means a passive act. It takes much mental, emotional, and even physical energy. Reading requires a positive effort. One must give all one’s faculties to re-creating the work’s imaginary world as fully and as vividly as possible within oneself. For those who are no longer children, or childlike, a different kind of effort is necessary too. This is the attempt, an attempt that may well not succeed, to suspend ingrained habits of “critical” or suspicious reading.

...

A certain speed in reading is necessary to accomplish this actualization, just as is the case with music. If you linger too long over the words, they lose their power as windows on the hitherto unknown. If you play a Mozart piano sonata or one of Bach’s Goldberg Variations too slowly it does not sound like music. A proper tempo is required. The same thing is true for reading considered as the generation of a virtual reality. One must read rapidly, allegro, in a dance of the eyes across the page.

閱讀像戀愛(ài)一樣，絕非被動(dòng)的行為，而須投入心理、情感甚至是身體的活力。閱讀需要積極的努力。讀者必須傾盡全力，在腦中重建像書(shū)里一樣完整、生動(dòng)的想象世界。對(duì)于不再是孩子、不再有童真的人來(lái)說(shuō)，還需要另外一種努力，即努力摒棄批判式閱讀、質(zhì)疑式閱讀的習(xí)慣，盡管這未必能成功。

……

為了實(shí)現(xiàn)上述目標(biāo)，閱讀必須以特定的速度進(jìn)行，就像音樂(lè)一樣。如果你太過(guò)字斟句酌，詞語(yǔ)便會(huì)喪失力量，無(wú)法帶你通往未知。如果你演奏莫扎特的鋼琴奏鳴曲或巴赫的《哥德堡變奏曲》時(shí)速度太慢，它們聽(tīng)起來(lái)就不像音樂(lè)了。奏樂(lè)需要適當(dāng)?shù)乃俣龋喿x也是一樣。為了創(chuàng)造出虛擬的世界，讀者必須快速閱讀，以“快板”的節(jié)奏讓視線在書(shū)頁(yè)上舞動(dòng)。

[1] 伊曼努爾.康德（Immanuel Kant，1724—1804），德國(guó)著名哲學(xué)家，其代表作《純粹理性批判》《實(shí)踐理性批判》《判斷力批判》合稱(chēng)“三大理性批判”。

[2] 《瑞士人的魯賓遜故事》（The Swiss Family Robinson），瑞士牧師約翰.戴維.維斯（Johann David Wyss）基于《魯賓遜漂流記》寫(xiě)的冒險(xiǎn)小說(shuō)，目的是教育孩子自力更生。

[3]約翰.坦尼爾（John Tenniel，1820—1914），英國(guó)插圖畫(huà)家和諷刺畫(huà)家。

[4]愛(ài)麗絲系列是牛津大學(xué)數(shù)學(xué)家劉易斯.卡羅爾（Lewis Carroll）的著名童話作品，包括《愛(ài)麗絲夢(mèng)游仙境》和其姐妹篇《愛(ài)麗絲鏡中奇遇記》。

[5]愛(ài)麗絲、白兔、胖墩雙胞胎兄弟都是《愛(ài)麗絲夢(mèng)游仙境》中的著名形象。后來(lái)，雙胞兄弟的名字Tweedledum和Tweedledee逐漸演變?yōu)椤半y以分辨的兩個(gè)人或兩個(gè)事物”的意思，也用來(lái)形容“半斤八兩”。

[6]亨利.詹姆斯（Henry James，1843—1916），出生于美國(guó)，小說(shuō)家，其代表作品包括長(zhǎng)篇小說(shuō)《貴婦的畫(huà)像》等。自傳《一個(gè)小男孩及其他人》（A Small Boy and Others）講述了他童年的經(jīng)歷。

[7]喬治.克魯克香克（George Cruikshank，1792—1878），英國(guó)插圖畫(huà)家，他為狄更斯（Charles Dickens）作品創(chuàng)作的插畫(huà)廣受歡迎。

[8] 阿爾文.蘭登.科伯恩（Alvin Langdon Coburn，1882—1966），美國(guó)畫(huà)意主義（pictorialism）攝影家，代表作有《馬肯島》等。

[9] 托馬斯.哈代（Thomas Hardy，1840—1928），英國(guó)詩(shī)人和小說(shuō)家，前中期創(chuàng)作以小說(shuō)為主，晚年以詩(shī)歌成就最為突出。《威塞克斯小說(shuō)》是哈代的系列小說(shuō)總題名，包括14部小說(shuō)。威塞克斯是哈代家鄉(xiāng)的古地名，作者用同一背景把多部小說(shuō)聯(lián)成一體，展示了19世紀(jì)后半期英國(guó)農(nóng)村的恬靜景象，其中的代表作為《德伯家的苔絲》。

[10]本文為節(jié)選，作者在前文提出了兩種閱讀方式，一種是天真無(wú)邪的閱讀，一種是去神秘化的閱讀。兩者彼此相悖。作者將此稱(chēng)為“閱讀的困境”。

[11]塞繆爾.泰勒.柯勒律治（Samuel Taylor Coleridge，1772—1834），英國(guó)桂冠詩(shī)人和評(píng)論家，“湖畔派”代表人物，代表作有長(zhǎng)詩(shī)《古舟子詠》《忽必烈汗》等。本句出自柯勒律治《文學(xué)傳記》第14章。

[12]米歇爾.德吉（Michel Deguy，1930—），法國(guó)詩(shī)人，作品多為艱深晦澀的哲理詩(shī)，在當(dāng)今法國(guó)詩(shī)壇有舉足輕重的地位。