旅行的藝術(shù):藝術(shù) Ⅶ 令人眼界大開的藝術(shù)-1

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一個夏天，我應邀和朋友一起在普羅旺斯的一座農(nóng)舍里度過了幾天時間。我知道“普羅旺斯”這個詞能讓許多人產(chǎn)生無限遐想，然而它對于我而言并不意味著什么。我傾向于通過這樣一種感覺，即那個地方與我并不相投，來打消自己對這個詞的聯(lián)想。沒錯，在一些聰明人眼里，普羅旺斯美若仙境——“啊，普羅旺斯！”他們會懷著崇敬之情作如此感嘆，一如他們正在觀看歌劇或是欣賞代爾夫特 [1] 陶藝品。

One summer, I was invited to spend a few days with friends in a farmhouse in Provence. I knew that the word 'Provence' was for many people rich in associations, though it meant little to me. I tended to switch off at its mention out of a sense, founded on little, that the place would not be congenial to me. What I did know was that Provence was generally held by sensible people to be very beautiful- 'Ah, Provence!' they would sigh, with a reverence otherwise reserved for opera or Delft earthenware.

飛抵馬賽機場后，我租了一輛小小的雷諾汽車，前往主人的住所。他們的房子建在阿爾卑斯山腳下，處于兩個小鎮(zhèn)阿爾勒和桑特拉米之間。出了馬賽機場，我竟走錯了路，車子一直開到了濱海福斯的煉油廠。它那糾結(jié)在一塊兒的管道和冷卻塔訴說著這種液體生產(chǎn)的復雜性，我習慣于將這種液體注入我的汽車卻從不思考它的來處。

I flew to Marseilles and, after renting a small Renault at the airport, headed for the home of my hosts, which lay at the foot of the Alpilles hills, between the towns of Arles and Saint-Rémy. At the exit out of Marseilles, I grew confused and ended up at the giant oil refinery at Fos-sur-Mer, whose tangle of pipes and cooling towers spoke of the complexity involved in the manufacture of a liquid that I was used to putting into my car with scant thought for its origins.

我終于找到了自己的路，返回到N568公路，穿過拉克羅生長著小麥的大片原野，我進入法國內(nèi)陸。由于時間還早，在圣馬丹-德克羅的村莊外面，離我的目的地幾公里的地方，我在路邊停下，關(guān)掉了發(fā)動機，停在一片橄欖林的一端。除了隱藏在樹中蟬的鳴叫之外，周圍都很安靜。在橄欖林的后面是一大片麥田，以一排柏樹作為分界線。那些柏樹的頂部依稀可見阿爾卑斯山脈不規(guī)則的山脊。天空湛藍一片。

I found my way back to the N568, which led me inland across the wheat-growing plain of La Crau. Outside the village of St-Martin-de-Crau, a few miles from my destination, being too early, I pulled off the road and turned off the engine. I had come to a stop on the edge of an olive grove. It was quiet save for the sounds of cicadas hidden in the trees. Behind the grove were wheat fields bordered by a row of cypresses, over whose tops rose the irregular ridge of the Alpilles. The sky was a cloudless blue.

我瀏覽著這片景象。我并不在尋找某些特定的東西：獵物，度假小屋或是回憶。我的動機很單純，快樂就是我的出發(fā)點，我在尋找美的蹤跡。我希望普羅旺斯的橄欖樹、柏樹和天空能夠“帶給我喜悅，讓我生機勃勃”。這是一個偉大而松散的計劃。此刻眼睛自由自在，卻反倒有些迷惘。眼睛在完成了當日的搜索任務(wù)——如尋找租車處，離開馬賽的公路出口——之后，開始無拘無束地在景物中穿梭。如果把眼睛經(jīng)過的路線用一支巨大的鉛筆描繪出來，那么天空就將立即被躁動而隨意的線條涂滿了。

I scanned the view. I was not looking for anything in particular: not for predators, holiday homes or memories. My motive was simple and hedonistic: I was looking for beauty. 'Delight and enliven me' was my implicit challenge to the olive trees, cypresses and skies of Provence. It was a vast, loose agenda and my eyes were bewildered at their freedom. Without the motives that had marked the rest of the day-to seek out the car-rental desk, the exit out of Marseilles and so on-they careered from object to object, so that if their path had been traced by the mark of a giant pencil, the sky would soon have been darkened by random impatient patterns.

盡管風景并不難看，但在一段時間的仔細觀察之后，我卻找不到傳言中充滿魅力的景致。橄欖樹看上去很矮小，與其說是樹，倒不如說是灌木；而麥田則讓我想起了平坦卻枯燥的英格蘭東南部地區(qū)，我曾在那里的一所學校里讀書，而且過得并不快樂。我有些疲憊，無力再去注意這里的谷倉、山上的石灰?guī)r或是生長在一群柏樹下的罌粟。

Though the landscape was not ugly, I could not-after a few moments of scrutiny-detect the charm so often ascribed to it. The olive trees looked stunted, more like bushes than trees, and the wheat fields evoked the flat, dull expanses of south-eastern England, where I had attended a school and been unhappy. I lacked the energy to register the barns, the limestone of the hills or the poppies growing at the feet of a group of cypresses.

雷諾汽車的車廂里持續(xù)上升的溫度讓我覺得乏味而且極不舒適，我開始出發(fā)駛向目的地。見了朋友，我向他們問候，口是心非地稱道此地真是人間天堂。

Bored and uncomfortable in the Renault's increasingly hot plastic interior, I set off for my destination and greeted my hosts with the remark that this was simply paradise.

在接觸一地風景時，我們的感覺會迅速涌出，就如發(fā)現(xiàn)雪是冰的而糖是甜的一樣，因此很難想象風景對我們的吸引力可以改變或者增強。似乎對一個地方的感覺已經(jīng)被這些地方內(nèi)在的氣質(zhì)或是我們心中根深蒂固的思維模式所決定。因此，當我們力圖改變對于這些美麗風景的感覺時，會覺得很無助，就好像力圖改變自己對已經(jīng)覺得味美的冰淇淋的感覺一樣。

Because we find places to be beautiful as immediately and as apparently spontaneously as we find snow to be cold or sugar sweet, it is hard to imagine that there is anything we might do to alter or expand our attractions. It seems that matters have been decided for us by qualities inherent in the places themselves or by hard-wiring in our psyches and that we would therefore be as helpless to modify our sense of the places we find beautiful as we would our preference for the ice-creams we find appetizing.

但是審美品位不會像上面作的類比那么刻板。我們忽略了一些地方，是因為從來沒有什么事物促使我們發(fā)現(xiàn)其欣賞價值，或者是因為一種不幸卻隨意的聯(lián)想使我們有負面的判斷。我們和橄欖樹的關(guān)系，在我們被引導向它那樹葉上的銀色光芒或是其枝干的形態(tài)的過程中得到了提升。當我們看到一株株結(jié)實飽滿的麥穗在風中傾下頭顱時，我們不禁會對這種脆弱而又必不可少的作物產(chǎn)生了悲憫之情，一些新的聯(lián)想就此產(chǎn)生。一旦我們被告知，即使從最原始的角度來看，普羅旺斯天空的主宰仍是藍色，我們就能在天空中找到一些值得欣賞的東西。

Yet aesthetic tastes may be less rigid than the analogy suggests. We overlook certain places because nothing has ever prompted us to conceive of them as worthy of appreciation, or because some unfortunate but stray association has turned us against them. Our relationship to olive trees can be improved by being directed towards the silver in their leaves or the structure of their branches. New associations can be created around wheat once we are directed to the pathos of this fragile and yet essential crop as its stalks bend their grain-filled heads in the wind. We may find something to appreciate in the skies of Provence once we are told, even if only in the crudest way, that it is the shade of blue that counts.

或許視覺藝術(shù)最能提升我們欣賞風景的能力。我們可以把許多藝術(shù)作品想象為有著無限微妙含義的工具，它們將教會我們?nèi)绾涡蕾p：“注視著普羅旺斯的天空，更新你對麥子的認識，不要小看了橄欖樹?！痹诔汕先f個事物中，以一片麥地為例子，一幅成功的作品將描繪出這麥田的特色，并且使美感和興趣從觀眾心中升起。視覺藝術(shù)將使平常湮沒在眾多素材中的要素凸現(xiàn)出來，同時使其穩(wěn)定下來，一旦我們熟悉了這些要素，視覺藝術(shù)就會在不知不覺中推動我們在周遭的世界中發(fā)現(xiàn)這些要素；如果我們已經(jīng)發(fā)現(xiàn)它們了，它將使我們更有信心，讓這些要素在生命中發(fā)酵。我們就像這樣一個人，有一個詞語在他耳邊已經(jīng)被提及多次，但是只有他體會到這個詞語的含義時，他才開始傾聽到它。

And perhaps the most effective way in which our sense of what to look for in a scene can be enriched is through visual art. We could conceive of many works of art as immensely subtle instruments for telling us what amounts in effect to: 'Look at the sky of Provence, redraw your notion of wheat, do justice to olive trees.' From amidst the million things in, for example, a wheat field, a successful work will draw out the features capable of exciting a sense of beauty and interest in the spectator. It will foreground elements ordinarily lost in the mass of data, it will stabilize them and, once we are acquainted with them, prompt us imperceptibly to find them in the world about us-or, if we have already found them, lend us confidence to give them weight in our lives. We will be like a person around whom a word has been mentioned on many occasions, but who only begins to hear it once he has learnt its meaning.

我們探尋美的旅程也是這樣；我們想要從哪里開始藝術(shù)之旅，藝術(shù)作品就從哪里開始潛移默化地影響我們。

And in so far as we travel in search of beauty, works of art may in small ways start to influence where we would like to travel to.