2024年4月30日发(作者：redmik20pro是什么手机)

the merely very good课文翻译及原文

The Merely Very Good

第八单元 仅仅不错

Jeremy Bernstein

杰里米·伯恩斯坦

Early in 1981 I received an invitation to give a lecture at a writers' conference

that was being held someplace on the Delaware River in Pennsylvania, just across

from New Jersey. I don't remember the exact location, but a study of the map

convinces me that it was probably New Hope. My first inclination was to say no.

There were several reasons. I was living in New York City and teaching full time. My

weekends were precious and the idea of getting up before dawn on a Saturday,

renting a car, and driving across the entire state of New Jersey to deliver a lecture

was repellent. As I recall, the honorarium offered would have barely covered the

expense. Furthermore, a subject had been suggested for my lecture that, in truth,

no longer interested me. Since I both wrote and did physics, I had often been

asked to discuss the connection, if any, between these two activities. When this

first came up, I felt obligated to say something, but after twenty years, about the

only thing that I felt like saying was that both physics and writing, especially if one

wanted to do them well, were extremely difficult.

早在1981年，我收到过一份请柬是邀请我在一个作家年会上做讲座，这次会议会在

在宾夕法尼亚州特拉华河沿岸过新泽西不远的某个地方召开。确切的地点我已记不太清了，

但仔细查看地图后我觉得应该是在新望市。我一开始的意向是拒绝它。拒绝的理由有很多。

首先我在纽约居住，并担负着一份全职的教学工作，周末对我来说是很宝贵的。一想到要

在周六天不亮的时候就要起床，然后还得租车，并且驾车穿越整个新泽西州去会议上做个

讲座，实在是烦得很。我回想起这场讲座所付的酬金几乎还不足以支付我这段行程所需的

这些花费。此外，它建议我讲的主题实际上我已经没有什么兴趣了。我在写作的同时又从

事物理学研究，因此人们经常让我去讨论这两者之间的联系。在这个议题第一次提出的时

候，我觉得还有必要谈一谈。但二十年过去了，我现在唯一想说的就是搞物理学和搞写作

都是极其困难的事，尤其是在你想将这两者做得尽善尽美的时候。

The conference seemed to be centered on poetry, and one of the things that

came to mind was an anecdote that Robert Oppenheimer used to tell about

himself. Since Oppenheimer will play a significant role in what follows, I will

elaborate. After Oppenheimer graduated from Harvard in 1925, he was awarded a

fellowship to study in Europe. Following a very unhappy time in England, where he

seems to have had a sort of nervous breakdown, he went to Germany to get his

Ph.D.

这个大会的中心议题似乎在诗歌上，由此我想起罗伯特·奥本海默过去讲述的关于他自

己的一件事。因为奥本海默下面的故事中会扮演一个重要的角色，我会比较详细地去讲述

他。奥本海默在1925年从哈佛毕业以后，被授予研究员的资格到欧洲继续学习。在英国

时他似乎有些神经衰弱的症状，在那里度过了一段不怎么愉快的经历之后，他转去德国攻

读博士学位。

He studied with the distinguished German theoretical physicist Max Born in

Gottingen and took his degree there in 1927 at the age of twenty-three. Born's

recollections of Oppenheimer, which were published posthumously in 1975, were

not sympathetic. Oppenheimer, he wrote, "was a man of great talent and I was

conscious of his superiority in a way which was embarrassing and led to trouble. In

my ordinary seminar on quantum mechanics, he used to interrupt the speaker,

whoever it was, not excluding myself, and to step to the blackboard, taking the

chalk and declaring: 'this can be done much better in the following manner.'" In

fact, it got so bad that Oppenheimer's fellow students in the seminar petitioned

Born to put a stop to it.

在哥廷根，他跟随著名的德国理论物理学家马克思·伯恩一同搞研究，并于1927年他

23岁时在那里获得了博士学位。但1975年伯恩去世后出版的对奥本海默的回忆录中对其

毫无赞同之词。“奥本海默，”他写道，“是伟大的天才，我是在一种令人尴尬并频惹麻烦的

方式上意识到他是一个多么优秀的人。在上我的量子力学的常规研讨课时，他经常打断发

言者，不管他是谁，也包括我在内，然后跨上讲台，拿起粉笔，宣称：‘用下面的方式可以

把这做得更好。’”虽然实际上，这样做的效果很糟糕，以至于他的同学恳求伯恩制止这样

事情的再度发生。

Quantum mechanics had been invented the year before by Erwin Schrodinger,

Werner Heisenberg and Paul A. M. Dirac. The next year, Dirac came as a visitor to

Gottingen and, as it happened, roomed in the large house of a physician named

Cario where Oppenheimer also had a room. Dirac was twenty-five. The two young

men became friends—insofar as one could have a friendship with Dirac. As young

as he was, Dirac was already a great physicist, and I am sure he knew it. He

probably just took it for granted. However, he was, and remained, an enigma. He

rarely spoke, but when he did, it was always with extraordinary precision and often

with devastating effect. This must have had a profound effect on Oppenheimer.

While Oppenheimer was interrupting Born's seminars, announcing that he could

do calculations better in the quantum theory, Dirac, only two years older, had

invented the subject.

量子力学在此前一年由埃尔温·薛定谔、沃纳·海森堡和保罗·A.M·狄拉克创造。第二年，

狄拉克到哥廷根做客，碰巧的是他下榻在一位名叫加里奥的物理学家的大房子里，奥本海

默正好也住在那里。狄拉克当时25岁。两个年轻人成了朋友——当然迄今为止他是唯一

能和狄拉克建立友谊的人。狄拉克如此年轻，可已经是个伟大的物理学家了，我确信他知

道这一点。也许他觉得无所谓。然而，他从前，直至现在仍然是个谜。他很少说话，但一

旦他开始说话，他的话往往特别精确，而且通常具有压倒一切的威力。这一定对奥本海默

产生了深刻的影响。当奥本海默还在打断伯恩的讲座，声称他能运用量子理论把计箅做得

更好的时候，只比他大两岁的狄拉克已经将这个课题设置好了。

In any case, in the course of things the two of them often went for walks. In the

version of the story that I heard Oppenheimer tell, they were walking one evening

on the walls that surrounded Gottingen and got to discussing Oppenheimer's

poetry. I would imagine that the “discussion" was more like an Oppenheimer

monologue, which was abruptly interrupted by Dirac, who asked, "How can you do

both poetry and physics? In physics we try to give people an understanding of

something that nobody knew before, whereas in poetry../' Oppenheimer allowed

one to fill in the rest of the sentence. As interesting as it might have been to hear

the responses, this did not seem to be the sort of anecdote that would go over

especially well at a conference devoted to poetry.

无论如何，那时他们两个人经常一块去散步。在我听说足奥本海默所讲述的那个故事

的版本中，某一天傍晚他们正在哥廷根周围的城墙上散步，讨论着奥本海默的诗歌。我可

以想象，这种“讨论”几乎更像奥本海默的个人独白。狄拉克有时会突然打断他，问道：

“你怎么能够又写诗又搞物理学？在物理学的领域里我们尽力让人们明白从前没人知道的

事情，可是诗歌……”。奥本海默意在用后半句未填的内容留去给人们更大的想象空间。尽

管听听人们对此的反应可能会十分有趣，但这似乎并不是一个适合在以诗歌为主题的年会

上讲的话题。

Pitted against these excellent reasons for my not going to the conference were

two others that finally carried the day. In the first place, I was in the beginning

stages of a love affair with a young woman who wanted very much to write. She

wanted to write so much that she had resigned a lucrative job with an advertising

agency and was giving herself a year in which, living on her savings, she was going

to do nothing but write. It was a gutsy thing to do, but like many people who try it,

she was finding it pretty rough going. In fact, she was rather discouraged. So, to

cheer her up, I suggested attending this conference, where she might have a

chance to talk with other people who were in the same boat. This aside, I had read

in the tentative program of the conference that one of the other tutors was to be

Stephen Spender. This, for reasons I will now explain, was decisive.

尽管我找了这些不去参加会议的冠冕堂皇的理由，但最终还是另外两个原因占了上风。

首先，便是因为我刚刚同一位极其热衷于写作的年轻女士坠入爱河。她对写作是如此热切

以至于为此她甚至为了写作辞掉了一家广告公司的报酬丰取的工作，给了自己一年时间，

在此期间她仅仅靠积蓄生活，除了写作之外什么也不做。这么做当然勇气可嘉，可也像许

多如此尝试的人一样，她逐渐开始觉得这事异常艰难，而且毫无进展。事实上，她已经开

始泄气了。因此，为了让她高兴起来，重新，我建议参加这个会议，在会上她也许有机会

同与她处于相同困境的人谈谈。这个原因暂且按下不提，在我读到会议的暂定议程，得知

其中有一位导师是斯蒂芬·斯彭德。这才是决定了我最终的行程的原因，原因我会马上解释。

This was the director's mansion. Spender did not notice that, because of

Oppenheimer's western connections, there was also the odd horse on the grounds.

He continues: “He has beautiful paintings. As soon as we came in, he said: 'Now is

the time to look at the van Gogh.' We went into his sitting room and saw a very

fine van Gogh of a sun above a field almost entirely enclosed in shadows." At the

end of my first interview with Oppenheimer, immediately after I had driven

cross-country from Los Alamos in a convertible with a large hole in the roof and

had been summoned to the interview while still covered in grime, he said to me

that he and his wife had some pictures I might like to look at sometime. I

wondered what he was talking about. Some months later I was invited to a party at

the Oppenheimers, and realized that he was talking about a van Gogh. Some years

later, I learned that this was part of a small collection he had inherited from his

father to which he had never added.

这就是研究院主管的公寓。斯彭德没有注意到，由于奥本海默的西方情结，他的庭院

里还有一匹古怪的马。斯彭德接着写道：“奥本海默有很多漂亮的油画。我们刚一进来，他

就说，‘现在是欣赏梵·高的时候了。’我们走进他的起居室，看到一幅优秀的梵·高作品，在

画上太阳髙髙地悬挂在几乎完全被阴影所笼罩的田地上空。”在我驾着篷顶露个大洞的折篷

汽车，翻山越岭从洛斯阿拉莫斯风尘仆仆赶来赴约的这次与奥本海默的首次见而结束的时

候，他对我说他和他妻子有些画，也许我什么时候愿意看看。当时我不太明白他说的是什

么样的画，几个月以后我受邀来到一个在奥本海默家里举办的晚会，才意识到他说的是一

幅梵·高的画。几年以后，我了解到这是他从他父亲那儿继承的小规模收藏品中的一部分，

他自己从来没有再增添过。

In his journal entry, Spender describes Oppenheimer's physical appearance:

"Robert Oppenheimer is one of the most extraordinary-looking men I have ever

seen. He has a head like that of a very small intelligent boy, with a long back to it,

reminding one of those skulls which were specially elongated by the Egyptians. His

skull gives an almost eggshell impression of fragility, and is supported by a very

thin neck. His expression is radiant and at the same time ascetic.," Much of this

description seems right to me except that it leaves out the fact that Oppenheimer

did have the sunwrinkled look of someone who had spent a great deal of time

outdoors, which he had.

斯彭德在日记中对奥本海默的相貌做了描述：“罗伯特·奥本海默是我见过的样貌最奇

特的人之一。他的头就像一个聪明的小孩的头，后脑勺很长，让人想到被埃及人特意拉长

的那些脑壳。他的脑壳给人的感觉像脆弱易碎的鸡蛋壳，撑在一根细细的脖子上面。他的

表情看起来总是神采奕奕，但同时又像苦行僧一般。”在我看来这是一个大部分都是准确的

描写，只是他遗漏了这样一个事实：奥本海默有一张像一个大量时间在户外度过的人那样

满布晒纹的相貌，当然事实也是如此。

Spender also does not seem to have remarked on Oppenheimer's eyes, which

had a kind of wary luminescence. Siamese cats make a similar impression. But

more important, Oppenheimer appears in Spender's journal as a disembodied

figure with no contextual relevance to Spender's own life.

斯彭德似乎也没有对奥本海默的那双总是闪着一种谨慎的寒光的眼睛进行评论。暹罗

猫的眼睛也可以给人一种类似的感觉。但是更更重要的是，出现在斯彭徳的日志中的奥本

海默更像是一个游离于斯彭德本人的生活环境之外的脱离实体的人物。

There is no comment about the fact that, three years earlier, Oppenheimer had

been "tried" for disloyalty to this country and that his clearance had been taken

away. One of the charges brought against him was that his wife, Katherine Puening

Oppenheimer, was the former wife of Joseph Dallet, who had been a member of

the Communist Party and who had been killed in 1937 fighting for the Spanish

Republican Army. In 1937, Spender was also a member of the Communist Party in

Britain and had also spent time in Spain. Did Oppenheimer know this? He usually

knew most things about the people who interested him. Did "Kitty" Oppenheimer

know it? Did this have anything to do with the fact that, during Spender's visit, she

was upstairs "ill"? Spender offers no comment. What was he thinking? There were

so many things the two of them might have said to each other, but didn't. They

talked about the invasion of the Suez Canal.

日记中也没有评论这样一个事实：三年前奥本海默曾因被疑为对国家不忠而受到“审

讯”，其接触国家机密文件的权利被剥夺。不利于他的一项指控是他的妻子凯瑟琳·普宁·奥

本海默也是约瑟夫·戴勒特的前妻。约瑟夫·戴勒特曾是一名共产党员，在1937年与西班牙

共和军的战斗中牺牲。同一年，斯彭德也是英国共产党员，当时也在西班牙。奥本海默知

道这件事吗？他总是知道他所感兴趣的人的大多数事情。“基蒂”·奥本海默知道这件亊吗？

这与斯彭德来访期间她正在楼上养“病”避而不见的事实是否有关？斯彭德在日记里没有

任何评述。他那时在想什么？他们两人明明有许多可以互相倾诉的事情，却什么都没谈，

谈的只是关于苏伊士运河的入侵。

In the fall of my second year at the institute, Dirac came for a visit. We all knew

that he was coming, but no one had actually encountered him, despite rumored

sightings. By this time, Dirac, who was in his mid-fifties, had a somewhat curious

role in physics. Unlike Einstein, he had kept up with many of the developments and

indeed from time to time commented on them.

我在研究院的第二年的秋天，狄拉克来到这里访学。我们都知道他要来，却从来没有

人真的遇到过他，尽管谣言中有人看到他在远处的身影。当时已经50多岁的狄拉克，在

物理学界仍然占据游有点奇怪的一席之地。与爱因斯坦不同的是，他能够紧跟研究领域的

发展形势，还能不时地品头论足一番。

But, like Einstein, he had no school or following and had produced very few

students. He had essentially no collaborators. Once, when asked about this, he

remarked that "the really good ideas in physics are had by only one person. That

seems to apply to poetry as well. He taught his classes in the quantum theory at

Cambridge University, where he held Newton's Lucasian chair, by, literally, reading

in his precise, clipped way from his great text on the subject. When this was

remarked on, he replied that he had given the subject a good deal of thought and

that there was no better way to present it.

但是跟爱因斯坦一样，他既没有建立学派，也没有追随者，甚至没有培养出几个学生。

基本上也没有合作者。有一次被问及此事时，他说：“物理学上真正有价值的见地，只属于

个人。”这个说法其实对诗歌也挺合适。他曾经在剑桥大学教授量子理论课程，在那里他坐

着牛顿曾经执掌过的卢卡斯教授的席位，在教授课程时他以一种梢确的、掐头去尾的方式

念着与课题有关的他本人的著作中的东西。当有人对此质疑时，他回答说他对该课题钻研

至深，但没有更好的方式演示出来。

At the institute we had a weekly physics seminar over which Oppenheimer

presided, often interrupting the speaker. Early in the fall we were in the midst of

one of these—there were about forty people in attendance in a rather small room

—when the door opened. In walked Dirac. I had never seen him before, but I had

often seen pictures of him. The real thing was much better. He wore much of a blue

suit—trousers, shirt, tie, and, as I recall, a sweater——but what made an indelible

impression were the thigh-length muddy rubber boots. It turned out that he was

spending a good deal of time in the woods near the institute with an ax, chopping

a path in the general direction of Trenton. Some years later, when I had begun

writing for The New Yorker and attempted a profile of Dirac, he suggested that we

might conduct some of the sessions while clearing this path. He was apparently

still working on it.

在研究院有一个每周一次由奥本海默主持的物理学研讨会，他还是不停地打断发言者。

初秋的一天，其中一个研讨会正在进行，当时那个小房间容纳了大约有40余位与会者。

这时门开了，狄拉克走了进来。我以前从来没有见过他，不过经常看到他的照片。他本人

比照片好多了。他大致穿的是蓝色的套装——西裤、衬衫、领带，还有，我记得他还穿着

一件毛衫。但是真正给人留下刻骨难忘的印象的是他的那双过膝的、粘满污泥的橡胶靴。

后来证明他是在离研究院不远的树林里用了很长的时间手持板斧朝特顿大致的方向开辟一

条小路。几年以后，当我开始给《纽约人》杂志撰稿时，试图得到一个狄拉克的个人简介，

他建议我们可以一边淸理那条小路一边找一些时间来谈这件事。很明显他仍然在从事着这

项工作。

Now it is some twenty-five years later. The sun has not yet come up, and I am

driving across the state of New Jersey with my companion. We have left New York

at about 5 A.M. so that I will arrive in time for a midmorning lecture.

而到现在大约25年过去了。太阳还没有升起，我正驾车和我的女友穿越新泽西州。

我们大约在早晨五点钟就离开纽约出发了，只有这样我才能及时到会做一个安排在上午的

讲座。

I have cobbled something together about physics and writing. Neither of us

has had a proper breakfast. As we go through the Lincoln Tunnel I recall an

anecdote my Nobelist colleague T. D. Lee once told me about Dirac. He was driving

him from New York to Princeton through this same tunnel. Sometime after they

had passed it, Dirac interrupted his silence to remark that, on the average, about as

much money would be collected in tolls if they doubled the toll and had tollbooths

only at one end. A few years later the Port Authority seems to have made the same

analysis and halved the number of tollbooths. We pass the turnoff that would have

taken us to Princeton. It is tempting to pay a visit. But Oppenheimer is by then

dead and Dirac living in Florida with his wife, the sister of fellow physicist Eugene

Wigner. Dirac used to introduce her to people as Wigner's sister, as in "I would like

you to meet Wigner's sister." Dirac died in Florida in 1984.

我胡乱拼凑了一些关于物理学与写作之间的关系的东西。我们俩都没好好地吃一顿早

饭。当我们穿越林肯隧道时，我想起我的同伴诺贝尔奖获得者李政道曾经讲的一件关于狄

拉克的轶事。他当时正开车穿过这座隧道送狄拉克从纽约去普林斯顿。已经通过隧道的某

个时候，狄拉克打破沉默说道：平均起来，如果把通行费提高一倍而只把收费站建在隧道

的一端，收上来的钱其实是一样多的。而在几年以后，口岸管理部门似乎做了同样的分析，

然后把收费站的数量减半。我们经过了通向普林斯顿方向的岔道。突然很想去拜访一下。

可是那时奥本海默已经去世，狄拉克和妻子住在佛罗里达。他的妻子是他的物理学家同伴

尤金·维格纳的妹妹。狄拉克过去常常把妻子以维格纳的妹妹的身份介绍给人们，比如：“我

想让你们认识一下维格纳的妹妹。”狄拉克后来也于1984年在佛罗里达去世。

We arrived at the conference center a few minutes before my lecture was

scheduled to begin. There was no one, or almost no one, in the lecture room.

However, in midroom, there was Spender. I recognized him at once from his

pictures. Christopher Isherwood once described Spender's eyes as having the

"violent color of blue-bells." Spender was wearing a dark blue suit and one of

those striped British shirts—Turnbull and Asser?—the mere wearing of which

makes one feel instantly better. He had on a club tie of some sort. He said nothing

during my lecture and left as soon as it was over, along with the minuscule

audience that I had traveled five hours by car to address.

我们到达会议中心的时候距离我做讲座的预定时间只剩下几分钟了。讲堂里没有任何

人，或者可以说几乎没有人。但是在屋子的中央斯彭德正坐在那里。因为我见过他的照片，

所以立刻就认出他来。克里斯托弗·伊舍伍德曾描绘斯彭德的眼睛里如同有“蓝铃花般狂热

的色彩”。斯彭德身着一套深蓝色的西装和一件英式的条纹衬衫——或者是特恩布尔-阿瑟

品牌？——仅仅穿上就立即让人赏心悦目的那种。他还系着一条某个俱乐部的领带。在我

的整个讲座中他一句话也没说，一结束他就立即起身离去，随之离开的还有那些我驾车奔

波了五个小时给他们做讲座的一小撮听众。

My companion and I then had a mediocre lunch in one of the local coffee

shops. There seemed to be no official lunch. I was now thoroughly out of sorts and

was ready to return to New York, but she wanted very much to stay for at least part

of Spender's poetry workshop, and so we did.

然后我和我的女友在当地的一家咖啡馆吃了顿不入流的午餐，会议方也好像没有准备

正式的午餐。此时我情绪不佳，觉得厌烦透顶，很想马上启程回纽约去，但是我的女友非

常想多待一阵，至少要等到看看部分斯彭德的诗歌讲习班，因此我们留了下来。

I had never been to a poetry workshop and couldn't imagine what one would

consist of. I had been to plenty of physics workshops and knew only too well what

they consisted of: six physicists in a room with a blackboard shouting at one

another. The room where Spender was to conduct his workshop was full,

containing perhaps thirty people. One probably should not read too much into

appearances, but these people—mostly women—looked to me as if they were

clinging to poetry as if it were some sort of life raft. If I had had access to Spender's

journals (they came out a few years later), I would have realized that he was very

used to all of this. In fact, he had been earning his living since his retirement from

University College in London a decade earlier by doing lectures and classes for

groups like this. I would also have realized that by 1981 he was pretty tired of it,

and pretty tired of being an avatar for his now dead friends—Auden, C. Day Lewis,

and the rest. He had outlived them all, but was still under their shadow, especially

that of Auden, whom he had first met at Oxford at about the same age and same

time that Oppenheimer had met Dirac.

在此之前我从未参加过这种诗歌讲习班，所以无法想象其中会有些什么内容。我倒是

去过很多物理学讲习班，因此太知道它们都做什么：六个物理学家在一个带有黑板的房间

里互相叫嚷。斯彭德要举行诗歌讲习班的房间里挤得满满的，容纳了大约有三十个人。一

个人也许不应该过于以貌取人，可是这些人大多数是女士——在我看来好像过于迷恋诗歌，

视它为救命稻草一般。如果那时我能有幸接触到斯彭德的日记的话(这些日记几年以后才出

版），我就会知道他对所有的这一切已经习以为常了。事实上，自从十年前他从伦敦的大学

学院退休以后就以给这样的人群做讲座和开讲习班维持生计。我还得知，1981年的时候他

对此已经十分厌倦了，他也厌倦了做他如今已经过世了的朋友——奥登、C戴·刘易斯以及

其他人的替身。他比他们每个人都长寿，可是却活在他们的阴影里，尤其是奥登，那个他

在牛津初次结识的人，刚好和奥本海默遇到狄拉克是同一年龄，也是同一时期。

Spender walked in with a stack of poems written by the workshop members.

He gave no opening statement, but began reading student poems. I was surprised

by how awful they were. Most seemed to be lists: "sky, sex, sea, earth, red, green,

blue," and so forth.

斯彭德带着一叠讲习班成员写的诗走了进来。他没做任何开场就开始读起学员们的诗

来。我惊讶于那些诗竟然会写得如此糟糕，大多数都像一串清单，什么“天空、性爱、海

洋、大地、红色、绿色、蓝色”等等。

Spender gave no clue about what he thought of them. Every once in a while he

would interrupt his reading and seek out the author and ask such a question as,

"Why did you choose red there rather than green? What does red mean to you?"

He seemed to be on autopilot.

斯彭德没有露出任何想表达对这些诗的看法的蛛丝马迹，只是偶尔间断朗读，找到作

者问问类似这样的问题：“为什么你选用红色而不是绿色？红色对你意味着什么？”他对这

种过程十分熟悉，如同在用自动驾驶仪一般。

It is a pity that there are no entries in Spender's journals for this precise period.

But it is clear that he was leading a rich social life at the time: dinner with

Jacqueline Onassis one day, the Rothschilds' at Mouton a week later— the works.

My feeling was that whatever he was thinking of had little to do with this workshop.

Somehow, I was getting increasingly annoyed. It was none of my business, I guess,

but I had put in a long day, and I felt that Spender owed us more. I didn't know

what—but more.

很遗憾斯彭德的日记中没有记载这段时期的只言片语，但是很明显他当时过着一种丰

富多彩的社交生活：某日与杰奎琳·奥纳西斯一同进餐，一星期以后在缪顿的罗氏银行——

手段高明。我感觉无论他怎么想都与这个讲习班无关。不知为什么，我越来越觉得恼怒。

虽然我猜这不关我的事。但我耗费了一整天的时间，我觉得斯彭德欠了我们很多。我说不

清欠的到底是什么——反正很多。

My companion must have sensed that I was about to do something because

she began writing furiously in a large notebook that she had brought along. Finally,

after one particularly egregious "list," I raised my hand. Spender looked surprised,

but he called on me. “Why was that a poem?” I asked. In reading his journals

years later, I saw that this was a question that he had been asked by students

several times and had never come up with an answer that really satisfied him. In

1935, Auden wrote an introduction for an anthology of poetry for schoolchildren

in which he defined poetry as "memorable speech." That sounds good until one

asks, Memorable to whom? Doesn't it matter? If not, why a workshop?

我的女友一定察觉到了我要做些什么，因为她开始在她随身带来的一个大笔记本上狂

写一通。最终，在听完了一个尤其恶劣的“清单”之后，我举起了手。斯彭德看起来有点

惊讶，但还是叫起了我。“那为什么也算是一首诗？”我问道。几年后读了他的日记我才发

现，这是一个他已经被学生问过很多遍却从来没有想出一个令他自己满意的答案的问题。

1935年，在一篇奥登为一本给小学生写的诗集做的序中，他对诗歌给出了“难忘的演讲”

这样的定义。这个定义听起来还不赖，直到有人问道：对谁难忘？这很重要吗？如果不重

要，为什么要弄讲习班？

I can't remember what Spender answered, but I then told him that, when I was

a student, I had heard T. S. Eliot lecture.

现在我已经记不得当时斯彭德是怎么回答我的，但是之后我告诉他，在我还是学生的

时候，我听过T.S.艾略特的讲座。

After the lecture one of the students in the audience asked Eliot what he

thought the most beautiful line in the English language was—an insane question,

really, like asking for the largest number. Much to my amazement Eliot answered

without the slightest hesitation, "But look, the morn in russet mantle clad / Walks

o'er the dew of yon high eastward hill." I asked Spender what he thought the most

beautiful line in the English language was. He got up from his chair and in a firm

hand wrote a line of Auden's on the blackboard. He looked at it with an expression

that I have never forgotten—sadness, wonder, regret, perhaps envy. He recited it

slowly and then sat back down. There was total silence in the room. I thanked him,

and my companion and I left the class.

讲座后听众中有一个学生问艾略特他认为最美的英文诗句是什么，一个愚蠢的问题，

真的，就像问最大的数字是什么一样。而令我万分吃惊的是，艾略特毫不犹豫地回答了这

个问题，“瞧，清晨披着金黄色的氅蓬，踏着髙山上的露珠从东方走来。”于是我问斯彭德，

他认为最美的英文诗句是什么。他从椅子上站起，坚定地在黑板上写下了一行奥登的诗句。

他以一种我永难忘怀的复杂表情看着诗句——悲伤、惊叹、悔恨，或许还有妒忌。他慢慢

地背诵了一遍，然后坐了回去。房间里悄无声息。我感谢了他，然后与我的女友离开了课

堂。

I had not thought of all of this for many years, but recently, for some reason, it

all came back to me, nearly. I remembered everything except the line that Spender

wrote on the blackboard. All that I could remember for certain was that it had to

do with the moon—somehow the moon. My companion of fifteen years ago is my

companion no longer: so I could not ask her. I am a compulsive collector of data

from my past, mostly in the form of items that were once useful for tax preparation.

Perhaps I had saved the program of the conference with the line written down on it.

I looked in the envelopes for 1981 and could find no trace of this trip.

我已经很多年没有想过这些事了，可是最近由于某种原因，我几乎将这些事想起来了。

我记得所有的事情，除了斯彭德写在黑板上的那行诗句。我的的确确能够记起来的就是那

句诗与月亮有关一反正是某种关于月亮的东西。如今我十五年前的那位女友如今已经不再

是我的女友了，所以我也没法去问她。我是个收集成癖的人，热衷于收集过去的数据资料，

多数资料以条款的形式列出，曾经对返税起了作用。或许我保存了那次会议的章程，上面

会写着那句诗。我仔细翻看了装着1981年材料的信封，但并没有找到一丁点儿关于那次

旅行的资料。

Then I had an idea—lunatic, lunar, perhaps. I would look through Auden's

collected poems and seek out every line having to do with the moon; to see if it

jogged my memory. One thing that struck me, once I started this task, was that

there are surprisingly few references to the moon in these poems. In a collection of

eight hundred and ninety-seven pages, I doubt if there are twenty. From Moon

Landing, there is "Unsmudged, thank God, my Moon still queens the Heavens as

she ebbs and fulls…" or from The Age of Anxiety, Mild, unmilitant, as the moon

rose / And reeds rustled…" or from "Nocturne," "Appearing unannounced, the

moon / Avoids a mountain's jagged prongs / And seeps into the open sky / Like

one who knows where she belongs" —all wonderful lines, but not what I

remembered. The closest was "White hangs the waning moon / A scruple in the

sky…" also from The Age of Anxiety. This still didn't seem right.

后来我有了个主意——愚蠢透顶的（lunatic)、月亮的（lunar)，也许这两个字差不多。

我要从头到尾查遍奥登所有的诗集，找出每一句与月亮有关的诗句来，看看我是不是能够

突然想起来。这项工作一旦开始，令我惊奇的是，我才发现这些诗里与月亮有关的诗句寥

寥无几！在一本长达897页的诗集中，我怀疑可能连二十句都没有。在《月球登陆》里有

“谢天谢地，我的月亮没有受到污染，月缺又月圆，她仍后居天庭……”或者在《焦虑的时

代》里，“月亮升起，温柔，安详，草在摇曳……”，还有在《夜曲》里的“月亮出现，悄然

无声，避让山峦的獠牙磋齿；悄悄然，溜进开阔的天空，豁然知所处”——都是奇妙的诗

句，可都不是我记得的那一句。最接近的是“渐逝的月儿苍白地高悬，犹豫踌躇在天边……”，

也是《焦虑的时代》里的。可是这似乎也不对。

Then I got an idea. I would reread Spender's journals to see if he mentions a

line in Auden's poetry that refers to the moon. In the entry for the sixth of February

1975, I found this: "It would not be very difficult to imitate the late Auden. [He had

died in 1973.] For in his late poetry there is a rather crotchety persona into whose

carpet slippers some ambitious young man with a technique as accomplished

could slip.

后来我又有了一个主意。我要重读一遍斯彭德的日记，看看其中他是否提到过一句奥

登的有关月亮的诗。在1975年2月6日的那篇日记中我找到了这样的话：“模仿晚年的奥

登并不是件闲难的事。(他于1973年去世。）因为在他晚年的诗歌里有一种暴躁的人格面

貌，一些有抱负的有聪明技巧的年轻人完全可以效仿。

But it would be very difficult to imitate the early Auden, 'this lunar beauty / has

no history, / Is complete and early…'" This, I am sure of it now, is the line that

Spender wrote on the blackboard that afternoon in 1981.

但是模仿早期的奥登就很难了。‘此月之美，无始无终，初始即已成……’”这一句，我

敢肯定，这一句正是1981年那个下午斯彭德写在黑板上的那行诗。

Poor Stephen Spender, poor Robert Oppenheimer, each limited, if not

relegated, to the category of the merely very good, and each inevitably saddened

by his knowledge of what was truly superior. "Being a minor poet is like being a

minor royalty," Spender wrote in his journals, "and no one, as a former

lady-in-waiting to Princess Margaret once explained to me, is happy as that." As

for Oppenheimer, I recall Isidor Rabi once telling me that "if he had studied the

Talmud and Hebrew, rather than Sanskrit, he [Oppenheimer] would have been a

much greater physicist. I never ran into anyone who was brighter than he was. But

to be more original and profound I think you have to be more focused."

可怜的斯蒂芬·斯彭德，可怜的罗伯特·奥本海默，他们都被局限在或归类到仅仅不错之

列，而他们又清楚地知道什么叫作出类拔萃，这就使他们不可避免地感到悲哀。“做个不太

著名的诗人就如同做个不太重要的王族中人，”斯彭德在日记中写道，“任何人，正如玛格

利特公主的侍卫女官有一次给我解释的那样，做成那种角色都不会髙兴的。”至于奥本海默，

我记得埃斯德·拉比曾经跟我说：“如果他研究的是犹太教法典和希伯来语，而不是梵语的

话，他(奥本海默)或许会成为更伟大的物理学家。我从未遇见过比他更聪明的人。但要想

更具独创性、更有深度，人还是要更专注于某个领域才行。”

As Spender says, W. H. Auden's poetry cannot be imitated, any more than Paul

Dirac's physics can be. That is what great poetry and great physics have in

common: Both are swept along by the tide of unanticipated genius as it rushes

past the merely very good.

正如斯彭德所说，W.H.奥登的诗无法模仿，保罗·狄拉克的物理学更无法模仿。那才是

伟大的诗歌与伟大的物理学的共同之处：都是随着无法预见的天才们掀起的浪潮狂扫而来，

而同时把仅仅不错的人冲刷殆尽。