【备注】这里录下的是本人2006年参加中国译协《中国翻译》编辑部举办的第18届“韩素音青年翻译奖”的参赛译文（原文也附上）。付出了很多汗水，可惜没能获奖。结果并不重要，最重要的是，收获了自信，提升了自己的翻译能力。

LITERATURE OF KNOWLEDGE AND LITERATURE OF POWER

 What is it that we mean by literature? Popularly, and amongst the thoughtless, it is held to include everything that is printed in a book. Little logic is required to disturb that definition. The most thoughtless person is easily made aware that in the idea of literature one essential element is, —some relation to a general and common interest of man, so that what applies only to a local or professional or merely personal interest, even though presenting itself in the shape of a book, will not belong to literature. So far the definition is easily narrowed; and it is as easily expanded. For not only is much that takes a station in books not literature, but, inversely, much that really is literature never reaches a station in books. The weekly sermons of Christendom, that vast pulpit literature which acts so extensively upon the popular mind— to warn, to uphold, to renew, to comfort, to alarm— does not attain the sanctuary of libraries in the ten-thousandth part of its extent. The Drama again－ as, for instance, the finest of Shakespeare's plays in England, and all leading Athenian plays in the noontide of the Attic stage－operated as a literature on the public mind, and were (according to the strictest letter of that term) published through the audiences that witnessed their representation some time before they were published as things to be read; and they were published in this scenical mode of publication with much more effect than they could have had as books during ages of costly copying or of costly printing.

 

Books, therefore, do not suggest an idea coextensive and interchangeable with the idea of Literature, since much literature, scenic, forensic, or didactic (as from lectures and public orators), may never come into books, and much that does come into books may connect itself with no literary interest. But a far more important correction, applicable to the common vague idea of literature, is to be sought, not so much in a better definition of literature, as in a sharper distinction of the two functions which it fulfils. In that great social organ which, collectively, we call literature, there may be distinguished two separate offices that may blend and often do so, but capable, severally, of a severe insulation, and naturally fitted for reciprocal repulsion. There is, first, the literature of knowledge, and secondly, the literature of power. The function of the first is－ to teach; the function of the second is－ to move: the first is a rudder; the second an oar or a sail. The first speaks to the mere discursive understanding; the second speaks ultimately, it may happen, to the higher understanding or reason, but always through affections of pleasure and sympathy. Remotely it may travel towards an object seated in what Lord Bacon calls dry light;  but proximately，it does and must operate— else it ceases to be a literature of power－on and through that humid light which clothes itself in the mists and glittering iris  of human passions, desires, and genial emotions. Men have so little reflected on the higher functions of literature as to find it a paradox if one should describe it as a mean or subordinate purpose of books to give information. But this is a paradox only in the sense which makes it honorable to be paradoxical. Whenever we talk in ordinary language of seeking information or gaining knowledge, we understand the words as connected with something of absolute novelty. But it is the grandeur of all truth which can occupy a very high place in human interests that it is never absolutely novel to the meanest of minds: it exists eternally by way of germ or latent principle in the lowest as in the highest, needing to be developed, but never to be planted. To be capable of transplantation is the immediate criterion of a truth that ranges on a lower scale. Besides which, there is a rarer thing than truth－namely, power, or deep sympathy with truth. What is the effect, for instance, upon society, of children? By the pity, by the tenderness, and by the peculiar modes of admiration, which connect themselves with the helplessness, with the innocence, and with the simplicity of children, not only are the primal affections strengthened and continually renewed, but the qualities which are dearest in the sight of heaven－the frailty, for instance, which appeals to forbearance, the innocence which symbolizes the heavenly, and the simplicity which is most alien from the worldly－are kept up in perpetual remembrance, and their ideals are continually refreshed. A purpose of the same nature is answered by the higher literature, viz., the literature of power. What do you learn from Paradise Lost? Nothing at all. What do you learn from a cookery book? Something new, something that you did not know before, in every paragraph. But would you therefore put the wretched cookery book on a higher level of estimation than the divine poem? What you owe to Milton is not any knowledge, of which a million separate items are still but a million of advancing steps on the same earthly level; what you owe is power－ that is, exercise and expansion to your own latent capacity of sympathy with the infinite, where every pulse and each separate influx is a step upwards, a step ascending as upon a Jacob's ladders from earth to mysterious altitudes above the earth. All the steps of knowledge, from first to last, carry you further on the same plane, but could never raise you one foot above your ancient level of earth： whereas the very first step in power is a flight－ is an ascending movement into another element where earth is forgotten.

 

知识文学与力量文学

何谓文学？流行于世的看法是：文学乃一切印刷于书中的东西。勿庸置疑，这是一种欠思考的定义。对该定义，稍有点逻辑知识的人，都会产生怀疑；哪怕对问题不加思考的人也很容易明白：文学最根本的因素在于文学离不开普通大众的兴趣爱好。对于那些只适合于局部范围内、或专业化范围内的，以及只与个人兴趣爱好相关的东西，即使通过书面印刷的形式出现，也不属于文学范畴。

目前“文学”这个定义被人们要么随意缩小了，要么任意扩大了。很多印刷在书中的东西并不一定属于文学。反过来，那些真正属于文学的东西，也并未都印刷出来。比如基督徒每周都进行的布道（那属于广大神职人员采用的最普遍的文学形式），在大众心中产生深远影响：或警示、或支持、或鼓励、或安慰、或警醒等。该形式的文学并没有获得图书馆的庇护，哪怕是百分之一的保护。

另一个例子――戏剧――包括在英格兰上演的莎士比亚最好的戏剧以及引导雅典潮流的戏剧，作为一种对公众产生广泛影响的文学形式，在它们还未被作为正式的文学形式印刷出来之前，已经在观众头脑中留下深刻印象了。这在当时复印或印刷书籍还相当奢侈的时代来说，已是一种最为有效的出版了。

    由此说来，书籍与文学并不是可以互换的概念，因为它们并不等同。对于大多数文学形式来说，如舞台戏剧、法庭公开辩论、演讲者的说教等，或许永远也不会出现在书籍当中；同样，大多数出现在书中的东西也并不一定与文学有关。

    对文学的模糊概念一个重要修正就是：不是去寻找一种更好的定义，而是要寻找文学所承担的两种功能之间的区别。

    在我们共同称之为文学的社会机体中，可以区分为两大类：它们能彼此融合也经常融合在一块，但又彼此排斥对方。第一类称之为知识文学，第二类称之为力量文学。前者的功能在于对人们晓之以理，后者的功效则是对人们动之以情。把文学比喻为载人驶向人生彼岸的航船，那么前者就是舵，后者则为桨或帆。前者试图以简单的悟性来启发人类，后者则以更高一筹的悟性或理性来达到教育人的目的，但通常是通过愉悦和同感来让人接受。

   从长远的眼光来看，文学使人能通过培根爵士所谓的“初始之光”而驶向既定的目标；从近处着眼，文学是通过、也只能通过那种“混沌之光”――像闪现在迷雾中的光芒或彩虹一样－－即人类的激情、欲望和真挚情感，给世人混沌初开的教益（否则就不配称为力量文学了）。

    人类很少从文学功能的更高层面上来反思文学的本质，所以如果说文学是书籍用来传达信息的手段或次要目的，就出现了一种悖论。但正是这种悖论，使得文学的定义在一定程度上值得探讨。

通常我们说探求知识，都与新奇未知的事物相联系。只有辉煌的终极真理，才能凌驾于人类各种利益之上。但是，对于那些最普通的人来说，也不一定能看出有任何新奇之处，因为它可能存在于最低层次的萌芽状态，也可能体现在最高层次的潜在规则之中。不管是属于哪一种，真理都需要不断演变，但永远都不能直接培育。真理最直接的标准就是能够在局部范围内灌输给人类。

除此之外，比真理更希罕的东西就是力量，或者说是对真理的热爱。我们可以设想，儿童能对社会产生何种影响？无非就是凭借同情、敏感以及对世界那种独特的崇拜，再加上他们自身的无助、天真与单纯。有了这一切，不光最初对世界那种感情得到了加深，而且那种在上帝眼中看来属于最可爱的品质（如需要得到上帝容忍的那种柔弱、代表上帝的那种清纯、与世俗格格不入的纯真等），也将永远保存在记忆深处，他们的理想也不断在成长中得到充实。

对同样本质的相关问题，可以从文学的更高层次上，即力量文学得到回答。我们捧读《失乐园》会有何收获？答曰：一无所获。找一本烹饪方面的书加以学习，又会有何所得？答曰：每章每节，均有新知；未闻之事，跃然纸上。如此说来，在评价时，我们是否一定要将不足挂齿的烹饪之书置于弥尔顿的神圣诗篇之上呢？我们从弥翁那里获得的，决非一般知识：此类知识，即使掌握百万种之多，也无非是在尘世之平地上小步前行百万步而已。我们所获得的，是力量－－即自身与天地交感的潜能得到激扬与拓展。天地之间，每一次力量的搏动与翻涌，都是生命的升腾，犹如攀援雅各的通天之梯，抵达远离尘嚣的神奇天界。知识层面上所有小步，从头到尾，难以让我们超越世俗樊篱，而游离于既定不变的水平。相反，力量之步伐，虽一步劳力，犹如鲲鹏展翅，搏扶摇而翱翔，升入至真至美之境界，可将尘嚣抛到九霄云外去。

 

【注】如果大家需要阅读这次大赛的参考译文，可以翻阅《中国翻译》2006年第4期。

 

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