哲学对爱默生（第20届韩素音翻译大赛之英译汉）
2008-03-18 18:20阅读：
Philosophy vs. Emerson (Excerpt)
哲学对爱默生(节选)
“He is,” said Matthew Arnold of Emerson, “the friend and
aider of those who would live in the spirit.”These well-known
words are perhaps the best expression of the somewhat vague yet
powerful and inspiring effect of Emerson’s courageous but
disjointed philosophy.
马修·阿诺德评价爱默生说：“他是那些愿意活在精神世界里的人们的朋友和助手。”这句著名的评语也许能最好说明爱默生那大胆无畏然而支离零散的哲学何以不够明朗清晰但依然强烈有力，让人振奋。
Descended from a long line of New England ministers,
Emerson, finding himself fettered by even the most liberal ministry
of his day, gently yet audaciously stepped down from the pulpit
and, with little or no modification in his interests or utterances,
became the greatest lay preacher of his time. From the days
of his undergraduate essay upon “The Present State of Ethical
Philosophy” he
continued to be preoccupied with matters of conduct: whatever the
object of his attention—an ancient poet, a fact in science, or an
event in the morning newspaper—he contrives to extract from it a
lesson which in his ringing, glistening style he drives home as an
exhortation to a higher and more independent life.
爱默生生于新英格兰牧师世家，但他发现即使当时最开明自由的神职也让他无从施展，于是，他优雅而果断地走下布道讲坛。他始终坚持自己的兴趣和言论，终于成为时代最伟大的教外宣道士。从他本科时那篇“伦理哲学之现状”一文开始，他就一直专注地探寻行为问题：他无论关注什么对象---一位古代诗人，一件科学事实或者晨报的一个事件---都要设法从中抽取教益，然后用响亮悦耳、光彩闪烁的风格准确地传达世人，劝告他们追求更高尚更独立的生活。
Historically,Emerson marks one of the largest reactions
against the Calvinism of his ancestors.That stern creed had taught
the depravity of man,the impossibility of a natural,unaided growth
toward perfection,and the necessity of constant and anxious effort
to win the unmerited reward of being numbered among the
elect.Emerson starts with the assumption that the individual,if he
can only come into possession of his natural excellence,is the most
godlike of creatures.Instead of believing with the Calvinist that
as a man grows better he becomes more unlike his natural self (and
therefore can become better only by an act of divine mercy),Emerson
believes that as a man grows in excellence he becomes more like his
natural self. It is common to hear the expression,when one is
deeply stirred,as by sublime music or a moving discourse:“That
fairly lifted me out of myself.” Emerson would have said that such
influences lift us into ourselves.
爱默生的历史意义在于他代表着对他祖先们的加尔文主义的一次最大反叛。加尔文苛严的信条告诉人们：人是堕落的；不可能在自然状态依靠自身达到完美；要跻身上帝的选民之列，要赢得这原本不配的奖赏，必须不断地在焦虑之中付出努力。爱默生的基始假设却是：个人如果能获得自身的自然卓越，他就是最有神性之人。他不同意加尔文派的观点，即，人的境界越高将越远离他的自然本性（因此，只有仰仗神恩他才可能提升）。他认为，人变得越卓越优秀，他就越接近自己的天性。当人们被深深打动，比如，当他们听到神圣的音乐或动人的话语，经常会听到这样的表述：“它让我彻底超越了自己。”不过爱默生可能会说，这种影响是把我们抬升到了自己。
For one of Emerson’s most fundamental and frequently
recurring ideas is that of a“great nature in which we rest as the
earth lies in the soft arms of the atmosphere,”an“Over-Soul, within
which every man’s particular being is contained and made one with
all other,” which “evermore tends to pass into our thought and hand
and become wisdom and virtue and power and beauty.” This is the
incentive—the sublime incentive of approaching the perfection which
is ours by nature and by divine intention—that Emerson holds out
when he asks us to submit us to ourselves and to all instructive
influences.
因为，他的一个最根本的也是他文中反复出现的观点是：“自然崇高伟大，我们憩息其间，就如地球静躺在大气的温柔怀抱”；有一个“‘超灵’存在，每个人的具体存在包容其中，和所有其他存在融为一体”。它“始终会进入我们思维，传递我们手中，变成智慧，美德，力和美。”这就是爱默生在要求我们顺从自己，听从一切启迪时给予的鼓励，一种崇高的敦促我们趋近完美的鼓励。这种完美因为天性因为神意本来属于我们。
Nature, which he says“is loved by what is best in us,” is all
about us, inviting our perception of its remotest and most cosmic
principles by surrounding us with its simpler manifestations.“A man
does not tie his shoe without recognizing laws which bind the
farthest regions of nature.” Thus man“carries the world in his
head.” Whether he be a great scientist,proving by his discovery of
a sweeping physical law that he has some such constructive sense as
that which guides the universe, or whether he be a poet beholding
trees as“imperfect men,”who“seem to bemoan their imprisonment,
rooted in the ground,”he is being brought into his own by
perceiving“the virtue and pungency of the influence on the mind of
material objects, whether inorganic or organized.”
他说，自然“为我们灵魂所爱”，是关于我们的一切。它用简单的现象环绕包围我们，敦请我们去感受它最细微和最宏阔的法则。“一个人在系鞋带的时候也会发现那些把自然以内相距最遥远的区域连接在一起的规律。”因此，人的“脑中装着世界”。无论是一名伟大的科学家发现一个普遍的物理定律，证明自己理解了一些如支配宇宙的规律的那样的建构性法则，还是一位诗人在大树身上看到“缺陷的人”，他们“深陷进在泥土之中，似乎哀恸自己的囚禁”，只要心灵能感受到物理实物（不管有无组织，结构）的力量和深刻，他都正被带回到他自己。
Ranging over time and space with astonishing rapidity and
binding names and things together that no ordinary vision could
connect,Emerson calls the Past also to witness the need of
self-reliance and a steadfast obedience to intuition.The need of
such independence,he thought,was particularly great for the
student, who so easily becomes overawed by the great names of the
Past and reads“to believe and take for granted.”This should not be,
nor can it be if we remember what we are.When we sincerely find,
therefore, that we cannot agree with the Past,then,says Emerson,we
must break with it,no matter how great the prestige of its
messengers.But often the Past does not disappoint us;often it
assists us in our quest to become our highest selves. For in the
Past there have been many men of genius;and,inasmuch as the man of
genius has come nearer to being continually conscious of his
relation to the Over-Soul, it follows that the genius is actually
more ourselves than we are. So we often have to fall back upon more
gifted souls to interpret for us what we mean but cannot say.Any
supreme triumph of expression,therefore, should arouse in us not
humility,still less discouragement,but renewed consciousness
that“one nature wrote and the same reads.” So it is in travel or in
any other form of contact with the Past: we cannot derive any
profit or see any new thing except we remember that“the world is
nothing,the man is all.”
爱默生喜欢在广漠的时空之中急速穿越，善于把不同的名字和事物串接一起，一般的想象根本做不到。他还召唤“过去”为他作证：人需要自立，应始终顺从直觉。他认为，这种独立的需要对学生尤其重要。他们很容易被“过去”显赫的名字吓倒，把读书变成“随便相信和自然接受”。如果我们记得自己的现在，就不该这样，也不可能这样。因此，当我们确实发现我们无法认同“过去”，那么，爱默生说，我们就必须和它决裂，不管它的信使们威望曾有多么崇高。但通常“过去”不会让我们失望；它常会帮助我们求索如何成就卓越。因为“过去”出现过很多天才；而且，只要天才更频繁地意识到他和“超灵”的关系，那么，他实际上比我们更像我们自己。所以，我们经常要依赖更有天赋的灵魂替我们解说我们无法言明的心中所想。因此，任何超凡的表述在我们心灵都不该唤起谦卑，更不该唤起气馁，而应激发起苏醒的意识：“一个自然写就，同一灵魂解读”。所以，在游历之中，或与“过去”的其他交流之中，我们发现“世界无他，唯人而已”。只有记住这点我们才能获益或感受新奇。
Similar are the uses of Society.More clearly than in Nature
or in the Past, we see in certain other people such likeness to
ourselves,and receive from the perception of that likeness such
inspiration,that a real friend“may well be reckoned the masterpiece
of nature.” Yet elsewhere Emerson has more than once urged us not
to be“too much acquainted”:all our participation in the life of our
fellows,though rich with courtesy and sympathy,must be free from
bending and copying. We must use the fellowship of Society to
freshen, and never to obscure,“the recollection of the grandeur of
our destiny.”
“友伴”的益处也大致如此。我们在某些他人身上比在“自然”或“过去”更能清晰看到自己的影子，并从这种彼此类似的感觉获得灵感：真正的朋友“更应看作自然的杰作”。但在其他地方，爱默生却不止一次告诫我们不要“过从甚密”：我们在同伴生活的一切参与虽然充满亲切和意气相投，但必须戒绝服从和模仿。我们必须让“友伴”的情谊焕发而非暗淡“我们高贵命运的记忆”。
Such,in some attempt at an organization,are a few of
Emerson’s favorite ideas, which occur over and over again, no
matter what may be the subject of the essay. Though Emerson was to
some degree identified, in his own time, with various movements
which have had little or no permanent effect,yet as we read him now
we find extraordinarily little that suggests the limitations of his
time and locality. Often there are whole paragraphs which if we had
read them in Greek would have seemed Greek.The good sense which
kept him clear of Brook Farm because he thought Fourier“had skipped
no fact but one, namely life,”kept him clear from many similar
departures into matters which the twenty-first century will
probably not remember. This is as it should be in the essay,which
by custom draws the subject for its“dispersed meditations” from the
permanent things of this world,such as
Friendship,Truth,Superstition,and Honor.One of Emerson’s sources of
strength,therefore,is his universality.
以上就是爱默生偏爱的一些观点。无论他的文章涉及什么主题，这些观点都一再出现。这些整理只是一点尝试。某种程度上说，爱默生在自己的时代是和各种运动联系在一起的。这些运动很少或没有产生持久的影响。但是现在阅读他的文章，我们很难找到蛛丝马迹，暗示他的思想受了时代和环境的局限。他的文中经常出现整段整段文字，这些文字如果我们用希腊文阅读，就会感觉像是希腊文写成。他的睿智让他避免了讨论布鲁克农场，因为他认为傅立叶“无所不涉，唯独生活例外”。它也让他避开了类似歧途，避免了很多二十一世纪可能已经忘却的话题。这和他的为文准则一致。他的文集习惯从世间的永恒（如，“友谊”，“真理”，“迷信”和“荣誉”）选取话题，展开“随意沉思”。因此，爱默生的一个力量来自于他的广博和全面。
Another source of Emerson’s strength is his extraordinary
compactness of style and his range and unexpectedness of
illustration. His gift for epigram is, indeed, such as to make us
long for an occasional stretch of leisurely commonplace. But
Emerson always keeps us up—not less by his memorable terseness than
by his startling habit of illustration. He loves to dart from the
present to the remotest past, to join names not usually associated,
to link pagan with Christian, or human with divine, in single rapid
sentences, such as that about “Scipio, and the Cid, and Sir Philip
Sidney, and Washington, and every pure and valiant heart, who
worshiped Beauty by word or by deed.”
另一个则来自他简约凝练的风格和纵横驰骋，出人意料的阐述。他擅作警句格言。确实，他的天分让我们渴望偶尔伸展一下悠闲的平庸。然而，他始终都在激励我们向上---不仅通过令人惊愕的阐释习惯，而且也通过令人难忘的凝练。他喜欢在节奏明快的单句之中从现在飞奔到过去，让通常无关的名字交织缠绕，将异教与基督教，或人与神并列，比如这样一句：“西庇阿，熙德，飞利浦，华盛顿，以及每个颗纯洁勇敢的心灵，他们用文字或行动表达了对美的崇敬。”
1：西庇阿，普布留斯·科内利乌斯：(185?-129)
罗马将军和政治家，曾在第三次布匿战争中最终摧毁迦太基(146年）。
2：熙德：(1043?-1099)
西班牙战士和民族英雄，军事功绩包括占领瓦伦西亚(1094年）。
许多文学著作中描述过。
3：锡德尼，菲利普：(1554-1586)
英格兰诗人、军人和政治家。他最重要的著作是十四行组诗《爱星者和星星》
及田园诗集 《阿卡迪亚》。这些诗均在其死后出版。
If,in spite of all these admirable qualities,Emerson’s ideas
seem too vague and unsystematic to satisfy those who feel that they
could perhaps become Emersonians if there were only some definite
articles to sign,it must be remembered that Emerson wishes to
develop independence rather than apostleship,and that when men
revolt from a system because they believe it to be too definite and
oppressive,they are likely to go to the other extreme.That Emerson
did go so far toward this extreme identifies him with a period
notable for its enthusiastic expansion of thought.That he did not
systematize or restrict means that he was obedient to the idea that
what really matters is not that by exact terminology, clever
tactics and all the niceties of reasoning a system of philosophy
shall be made tight and impregnable for others to adopt,but rather
that each of us may be persuaded to hitch his own particular wagon
to whatever star for him shines brightest.
虽然爱默生有这么多令人敬仰的特点，他的观点仍显得过于含糊，缺乏体系，无法令一些人感到满意。这些人以为，只要有一定数量的文章署名，他们也能成为爱默生。但我们必须记住，爱默生希望成就独立而非成为使徒；而且，当人们认为一个体系过于明确过于压抑而起身反叛之时，他们可能会走向另一极端。爱默生确实向这个极端走了很远，这就把他和一个思想受热情张扬而闻名的时代联系在了一起。他确实没有尝试系统化也没有自设藩篱。这是因为他服从了这样一种观念：真正重要的不是通过精确的术语，巧妙的策略以及周密详尽的推理让一个哲学体系严密紧凑，无懈可击，方便他人借用，而是要让它可以说服我们每一个人，说服我们把自己独特的马车套在那颗对我们发出耀眼光芒的星星之上。
