雙語(yǔ)·聰明的消遣：毛姆談?dòng)?guó)文學(xué) 查爾斯·狄更斯與《大衛(wèi)·科波菲爾》 5

所屬教程:譯林版·聰明的消遣：毛姆談?dòng)?guó)文學(xué)

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2022年05月17日

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Charles Dickens and David Copperfield 5

In a famous essay, Matthew Arnold insists that poetry to be truly excellent must have a high seriousness, and because he finds it lacking in Chaucer, refuses him, though praising him handsomely, a place among the greatest poets. Arnold was too austere not to look upon humour without a faint misgiving, and I don’t suppose he could ever have been brought to admit that there might be as high a seriousness in Rabelais’ laughter as in Milton's desire to justify the works of God to man. But I see his point, and it does not apply only to poetry. It may be that it is because this high seriousness is lacking in Dickens's novels that, for all their great merits, they leave us faintly dissatisfied. When we read them now with the great French and Russian novels in mind, and not only theirs, but George Eliot's, we are taken aback by their naiveté. In comparison with them, Dickens's are scarcely adult. But, of course, we must remember that we do not read the novels he wrote. We have changed, and they have changed with us. It is impossible for us to recapture the emotions with which his contemporaries read them, as they came hot from the press. In this connection, I will quote a passage from Una Pope-Hennessy's book: “Mrs. Henry Siddons, a neighbour and friend of Lord Jeffrey, peeped into his library and saw Jeffrey with his head on the table. He raised it with his eyes suffused with tears. She begged to be excused, saying, ‘I had no idea that you had any bad news or cause of grief or I would not have come. Is anyone dead?’‘Yes, indeed, ’ replied Lord Jeffrey.‘I’m a great goose to have given away so, but I could not help it. You’ll be sorry to hear that little Nelly, Boz's little Nelly is dead.’”Jeffrey was a Scottish judge, a founder of The Edinburgh Review and a severe, caustic critic.

For my part, Ifind myself still immensely amused by Dickens's humour, but his pathos leaves me cold. I am inclined to say that he had strong emotions, but no heart. I hasten to qualify that. He had a generous heart, a passionate sympathy with the poor and oppressed, and as we know, he took a persistent and effective interest in social reform. But it was an actor's heart, by which I mean that he could feel intensely an emotion that he wished to depict in the same way as an actor playing a tragic part can feel the emotion he represents.“What's Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba?”Here I am reminded of something an actress, at one time in Sarah Bernhardt's Company, told me many years ago. The great artist was playing Phèdre and, in the midst of one of her most moving speeches, when to all appearance she was distraught with anguish, she became aware that some persons standing in one of the wings were loudly talking; she moved towards them and, turning away from the audience as though in her misery to hide her face, hissed out what was the French equivalent to: Stop that bloody row, you lousy bastards; and then, turning back with a magnificent gesture of woe, went on with her tirade to its impressive end. The audience had noticed nothing. It is hard to believe that she could have given expression so noble and tragic to the words she had to utter unless she had truly felt them; but her emotion was a professional emotion, skin-deep, an affair of nerves rather than of heart which had no effect on her self-possession. I have no doubt that Dickens was sincere, but it was an actor's sincerity; and that, perhaps, is why now, no matter how he piled up the agony, we feel that his pathos was not quite genuine and so are no longer moved by it.

But we have no right to ask of an author more than he can give, and if Dickens lacked that high seriousness which Matthew Arnold demanded of the greatest poets, he had much else. He was a very great novelist. He had enormous gifts. He thought David Copperfield the best of all his books. An author is not always a good judge of his own work, but in this case Dickens's judgment seems to me correct. David Copperfield, as I suppose everyone knows, is in great part autobiographical; but Dickens was writing a novel, not an autobiography, and though he drew much of his material from his own life, he made only such use of it as suited his purpose. For the rest, he fell back on his vivid imagination. He was never much of a reader, literary conversation bored him, and such acquaintance with literature as he made later in life seems to have had little effect in lessening the very strong impressions he had received from the works he first read as a boy at Chatham. Of these it was, I think, the novels of Smollett that in the long run chiefly influenced him. The figures Smollett presents to the reader are not so much larger than life as more highly coloured. They are“humours”rather than characters.

So to see people well suited the idiosyncrasy of Dickens's temper. Mr. Micawber was drawn from his father. John Dickens was grandiloquent in speech and shifty in money matters, but he was no fool and far from incompetent; he was industrious, kindly and affectionate. We know what Dickens made of him. If Falstaff is the greatest comic character in literature, Mr. Micawber is the greatest but one. Dickens has been blamed, to my mind unjustly, for making him end up as a respectable magistrate in Australia, and some critics have thought that he should have remained reckless and improvident to the end. Australia was a sparsely settled country. Mr. Micawber was a man of fine presence, of some education and of flamboyant address; I do not see why, in that environment and with those advantages, he should not have attained official position. But it was not only in his creation of comic characters that Dickens was masterly. Steerforth's smooth servant is admirably drawn; he has a mysterious, sinister quality which sends cold shivers down one's back. Uriah Heep smacks of what used to be called transpontine melodrama; but for all that he is a powerful, horrifying figure, and he is most skilfully presented. Indeed, David Copperfield is filled with characters of the most astonishing variety, vividness and originality. There never were such people as the Micawbers, Peggotty and Barkis, Traddles, Betsy Trotwood and Mr. Dick, Uriah Heep and his mother: they are the fantastic inventions of Dickens's exultant imagination; but they have so much vigour, they are so consistent, they are presented with so much verisimilitude and with so much conviction, that while you read, you cannot but believe in them. They may not be real; they are very much alive.

Dickens's general method of creating character was to exaggerate the traits, peculiarities, foibles of his models and to put into the mouth of each one some phrase, or string of phrases, which stamped his quintessence on the reader's mind. He never showed the development of characters and, on the whole, what his creatures were at the beginning they remain at the end. (There are in Dickens's work one or two exceptions, but the change of nature he has indicated is highly unconvincing; it is occasioned to bring about a happy ending.) The danger of drawing character in this way is that the limits of plausibility may be exceeded, and the result is caricature. Caricature is all very well when the author presents you with a character at whom you can laugh, as you can at Mr. Micawber, but it will not serve when he expects you to sympathize. Dickens was never particularly successful with his female characters unless, like Mrs. Micawber, with her“I will never desert Mr. Micawber, ”and Betsy Trotwood, they were caricatured. Dora, drawn after Dickens's first love, Maria Beadnell, is too silly and too childish; Agnes, drawn after Mary and Georgy Hogarth, is too good and too sensible: they are both fearfully tiresome. Little Em’ly seems to me a failure. Dickens evidently meant us to feel pity for her: she only got what she asked for. Her ambition was to be a“l(fā)ady, ”and in the hope, presumably, that she would be able to get Steerforth to marry her, she ran away with him. She seems to have made him a most unsatisfactory mistress, sullen, tearful and sorry for herself; and it is no wonder that he grew tired of her. The most baffling female character in David Copperfield is Rosa Dartle. I suspect that Dickens meant to make greater use of her in his story than he did, and if he did not do so, it was because he feared to offend his public. I can only suppose that Steerforth had been her lover and she hated him because he had abandoned her, but notwithstanding, loved him still with a jealous, hungry, vindictive love. Dickens here invented a character that Balzac would have made much of. Of the leading actors in David Copperfield, Steerforth is the only one that is drawn“straight, ”using the word as actors do when they speak of a“straight part.”Dickens has given the reader an admirable impression of Steerforth's charm, grace and elegance, his friendliness, his kindliness, his amiable gift of being able to get on with all kinds of people, his gaiety, his courage, his selfishness, his unscrupulousness, his recklessness, his callousness. He has drawn here a portrait of the sort of man that most of us have known, who gives delight wherever he goes and leaves disaster behind him. Dickens brought him to a bad end. Fielding, I think, would have been more lenient; for, as Mrs. Honour, speaking of Tom Jones, put it: “And when wenches are so coming, young men are not so much to be blamed neither; for to be sure they do no more than what is natural.”To-day, the novelist is under the necessity of making the events he relates not only likely, but so far as possible inevitable. Dickens was under no such constraint. That Steerforth, coming from Portugal by sea after an absence from England of some years, should be wrecked and drowned in sight of Yarmouth just when David Copperfield had gone there on a brief visit to his old friends, is a coincidence that really puts too great a strain on the reader's credulity. If Steerforth had to die in order to satisfy the Victorian demand that vice should be punished, Dickens might surely have thought of a more plausible way of bringing this about.

查爾斯·狄更斯與《大衛(wèi)·科波菲爾》 5

馬修·阿諾德曾在他的一篇著名文章中堅(jiān)持說(shuō)，詩(shī)歌要想真正優(yōu)秀需得具備高度的嚴(yán)肅性。他認(rèn)為喬叟缺乏這種嚴(yán)肅性，因此盡管他對(duì)喬叟贊美有加，卻拒絕在最偉大的詩(shī)人行列中給他留下一席之地。阿諾德太嚴(yán)肅，看待幽默時(shí)未免帶了絲疑慮。我不認(rèn)為有誰(shuí)能說(shuō)服他承認(rèn)，拉伯雷的大笑中可能也包含著類(lèi)似彌爾頓想要向世人昭示天道一樣的嚴(yán)肅。但是我明白他的意思，而且我認(rèn)為這個(gè)意思不光適用于詩(shī)歌?？赡苷?yàn)榈腋沟男≌f(shuō)缺乏這種高度的嚴(yán)肅性，因此即使其優(yōu)點(diǎn)眾多，仍會(huì)使我們有一絲不滿(mǎn)。我們今天再讀他的小說(shuō)，會(huì)驚訝于他的幼稚，因?yàn)槲覀兊哪X子里已經(jīng)有了偉大的法俄小說(shuō)的印象，而且不光是法俄小說(shuō)，喬治·艾略特的小說(shuō)也給我們留下了印象。和這些小說(shuō)比，狄更斯的小說(shuō)簡(jiǎn)直還未成年。但是我們必須記住，我們現(xiàn)在讀的并不是他當(dāng)年寫(xiě)的小說(shuō)。因?yàn)槲覀円呀?jīng)變了，那些小說(shuō)也和我們一樣變了。我們不可能再次捕捉到這些小說(shuō)新鮮出爐時(shí)狄更斯的同代人讀它們的感受。關(guān)于這點(diǎn)，我將引用烏娜·蒲柏—亨尼斯書(shū)中的一段話(huà)加以證明。“亨利·希登斯太太是杰弗里勛爵的一個(gè)鄰居和朋友。有一次她向杰弗里的書(shū)房窺探，發(fā)現(xiàn)杰弗里正趴在桌上，他抬起頭的時(shí)候滿(mǎn)眼是淚。她請(qǐng)他原諒，說(shuō)：‘我不知道你收到了壞消息，或者你有令你悲痛的理由，否則我就不來(lái)了。是誰(shuí)死了嗎？’‘是的，確實(shí)有人死了，’杰弗里勛爵回答道，‘我知道我這么動(dòng)情很傻，但我真的是情不自禁。你知道了也一定會(huì)難過(guò)：小耐爾，博茲的小耐爾死了?！苯芨ダ锸莻€(gè)蘇格蘭法官，《愛(ài)丁堡評(píng)論》的創(chuàng)辦者，一個(gè)嚴(yán)厲刻薄的評(píng)論家。

就我而言，我雖然還是覺(jué)得狄更斯的幽默非常有趣，但他的悲愴讓我覺(jué)得冷，讓我提不起興趣。我會(huì)說(shuō)他感情強(qiáng)烈，但他沒(méi)有心。我得趕快糾正。他對(duì)窮人和受壓迫者有一顆慷慨的心和極大的同情，我們還知道，他一直持續(xù)有效地關(guān)注著社會(huì)改革。但他的心是一顆演員的心，我說(shuō)這話(huà)的意思是，他可以強(qiáng)烈地感受到某種情感，他也希望表達(dá)這種情感，就像一個(gè)悲劇演員能夠感受到他想要表達(dá)的那種情感一樣。“赫庫(kù)芭(5)對(duì)他算得了什么，他又對(duì)赫庫(kù)芭算得了什么？”這讓我想起多年前莎拉·伯恩哈特(6)劇團(tuán)的一個(gè)女演員對(duì)我說(shuō)的話(huà)。有一次這位大藝術(shù)家（莎拉·伯恩哈特）飾演費(fèi)德?tīng)?7)，正說(shuō)到她最感人的一段臺(tái)詞時(shí)，在所有人看來(lái)她悲痛得都要發(fā)瘋了，結(jié)果她發(fā)現(xiàn)舞臺(tái)一側(cè)有幾個(gè)工作人員正在大聲交談，于是她向那幾個(gè)人的方向走去。她轉(zhuǎn)身背向觀眾，做出在悲痛中把臉藏起來(lái)的樣子，其實(shí)她是在向那幾個(gè)人嘶吼，法語(yǔ)的意思是：別你媽吵了，你們這幫討厭的渾蛋。然后，她向觀眾轉(zhuǎn)過(guò)身來(lái)，做出一副極度悲傷的姿態(tài)，繼續(xù)她那激烈的長(zhǎng)篇演說(shuō)，直至它令人敬畏地結(jié)束。觀眾什么也沒(méi)察覺(jué)到。很難相信她如果不是真的感受到臺(tái)詞的意思，她能如此高貴、悲壯地說(shuō)出這些臺(tái)詞，但是她的感情是一種專(zhuān)業(yè)的感情，就像皮膚一般淺，只關(guān)神經(jīng)，不關(guān)心靈，對(duì)她的自控毫無(wú)作用。我不懷疑狄更斯是真誠(chéng)的，但那是一種演員的真誠(chéng)，這可能也就是為什么不管他怎么堆砌痛苦，我們都覺(jué)得他的抒情并不發(fā)自?xún)?nèi)心，都不再被他打動(dòng)。

但我們無(wú)權(quán)要求一個(gè)作家給予他不具備的東西。如果狄更斯缺乏馬修·阿諾德所要求的最偉大的詩(shī)人應(yīng)該具備的高度嚴(yán)肅性，他也還有別的很多東西。他是個(gè)很偉大的小說(shuō)家，他的天賦極高，他認(rèn)為《大衛(wèi)·科波菲爾》是他所有作品中最好的一部。雖然作家并不總是能對(duì)自己的作品做出公正的判斷，但狄更斯對(duì)此書(shū)的判斷在我看來(lái)卻是正確的。我想每個(gè)人都知道，《大衛(wèi)·科波菲爾》在很大程度上帶有自傳性質(zhì)，但是狄更斯寫(xiě)的是小說(shuō)，不是自傳，因此他的取材雖然很多來(lái)源于他自己的生活，但他只是把這些素材用于小說(shuō)創(chuàng)作。對(duì)于其余部分，他則依賴(lài)自己生動(dòng)的想象力。他從來(lái)都不是個(gè)閱讀者，文學(xué)對(duì)話(huà)使他厭煩，他后來(lái)接觸到的文學(xué)似乎對(duì)他無(wú)甚作用，沒(méi)能消除掉他幼時(shí)在查塔姆讀到的那些書(shū)留給他的深刻印象。從長(zhǎng)遠(yuǎn)看來(lái)，我認(rèn)為那些書(shū)中對(duì)他影響最大的是斯摩萊特的小說(shuō)。斯摩萊特向讀者展示的那些人物與其說(shuō)高大夸張，不如說(shuō)色彩艷明；與其說(shuō)是“人物”，不如說(shuō)是“氣質(zhì)”。

所以，看人很適合狄更斯的性情特質(zhì)。麥考伯源自他父親。約翰·狄更斯在說(shuō)話(huà)上夸夸其談，在金錢(qián)上極不可靠，但是他不傻，也并非無(wú)能。相反，他勤奮、溫和、親切。我們知道狄更斯把他寫(xiě)成了什么樣。如果福斯塔夫(8)是文學(xué)中第一偉大的喜劇角色，麥考伯就是第二偉大的。有人埋怨狄更斯不該給麥考伯安排一個(gè)澳大利亞地方法官的體面結(jié)局，我認(rèn)為這種批評(píng)不公正。還有評(píng)論家認(rèn)為麥考伯自始至終都應(yīng)該是一副行事魯莽、揮霍無(wú)度的樣子?？墒前拇罄麃啴?dāng)時(shí)是個(gè)人煙稀少之地，麥考伯又是個(gè)講究派頭、受過(guò)教育、說(shuō)起話(huà)來(lái)喜歡炫耀夸大的主兒。我看不出為什么他這么個(gè)不乏優(yōu)點(diǎn)的人在這種情況下就不能弄個(gè)一官半職。但是狄更斯的厲害之處不只在創(chuàng)造喜劇人物上，斯蒂爾福斯那個(gè)圓滑的仆人他也寫(xiě)得很好。此人有一種神秘、邪惡的氣質(zhì)，能讓人脊背發(fā)涼。尤賴(lài)·希普有一種過(guò)去叫作“泰晤士河南岸的鬧劇感”(9)，但是即便如此，他也一樣是個(gè)強(qiáng)大、可怕的人物，狄更斯寫(xiě)他的技巧很高超。的確，《大衛(wèi)·科波菲爾》充滿(mǎn)了最多樣、最生動(dòng)、最新穎的人物。文學(xué)史上還沒(méi)有過(guò)像麥考伯、辟果提和巴克斯、特萊德、貝特西姨婆和狄克先生、尤賴(lài)·希普和他媽那樣的人物。他們是狄更斯旺盛想象力的出色創(chuàng)造。他們是那么有活力，那么前后一致，狄更斯對(duì)他們的描寫(xiě)又是那么逼真可信，以至于你會(huì)邊讀邊情不自禁地信以為真。他們可能并不真實(shí)，但是他們鮮活生動(dòng)。

狄更斯刻畫(huà)人物的方法通常是夸大其特點(diǎn)、怪癖和弱點(diǎn)，還讓他們每個(gè)人說(shuō)一句話(huà)或一串話(huà)，好把其典型特點(diǎn)深深印在讀者的腦子里。他從來(lái)不展示人物的發(fā)展。整體看來(lái)，他的人物開(kāi)始什么樣，最后還什么樣。（只有一兩個(gè)例外，但那時(shí)狄更斯所表現(xiàn)的人物性格的變化非常不能令人信服，因?yàn)槟亲兓脑蚴菫榱巳藶榈貙?shí)現(xiàn)大團(tuán)圓的結(jié)局。）如此刻畫(huà)人物的危險(xiǎn)在于合理性的邊界似乎被越過(guò)，結(jié)果就變成了漫畫(huà)。漫畫(huà)其實(shí)也不錯(cuò)，如果作者給讀者看的是一個(gè)可以嘲笑的人物，就像你可以嘲笑麥考伯?？墒侨绻髡呦胱屪x者同情，漫畫(huà)就不管用了。狄更斯刻畫(huà)女性人物從來(lái)都不是很成功，除非他可以使其漫畫(huà)化，比如那個(gè)說(shuō)“我永遠(yuǎn)都不會(huì)拋棄麥考伯先生”的麥考伯太太，再比如貝特西姨婆。朵拉是按狄更斯的初戀瑪麗亞·比德內(nèi)爾刻畫(huà)的，太傻太幼稚。艾格尼絲是按瑪麗和喬琪刻畫(huà)的，又太好太理智。此外，朵拉和艾格尼絲都極其無(wú)趣。小艾米莉在我看來(lái)是個(gè)失敗的形象，狄更斯明顯想讓我們同情她，可她的結(jié)局純屬自找的。她的雄心是想當(dāng)個(gè)“貴婦”，她跟斯蒂爾福斯私奔是因?yàn)樗詾樗茏屗⑺Y(jié)果她只當(dāng)了個(gè)令他非常不滿(mǎn)的情婦：陰郁、愛(ài)哭、自憐，時(shí)間長(zhǎng)了他當(dāng)然會(huì)厭倦她?！洞笮l(wèi)·科波菲爾》里最令人不解的女性是羅莎·達(dá)特爾。我猜一開(kāi)始狄更斯是想讓她發(fā)揮更大作用的，而后來(lái)他之所以沒(méi)這么做，是因?yàn)榕聲?huì)冒犯公眾。我只能猜斯蒂爾福斯曾是她的戀人，但是后來(lái)拋棄了她，因此她恨他，可又還愛(ài)著他，那是一種嫉妒、饑渴、復(fù)仇式的愛(ài)。狄更斯創(chuàng)造的這個(gè)人物到巴爾扎克手里是可以大寫(xiě)特寫(xiě)一番的。在《大衛(wèi)·科波菲爾》的所有主角里，斯蒂爾福斯是唯一一個(gè)“直”寫(xiě)的，取演員們所說(shuō)一個(gè)角色是“直角”的意思。狄更斯給讀者提供了一個(gè)絕妙的印象，他寫(xiě)了斯蒂爾福斯的魅力、大方、優(yōu)雅、友好、親切，他能跟各種人合得來(lái)的可愛(ài)天賦，他的快活、勇氣、自私、沒(méi)良心、魯莽、無(wú)情。他描繪的這副形象是我們大多數(shù)人都認(rèn)識(shí)的一類(lèi)男人，這類(lèi)人所到之處都能給人愉悅，可是離開(kāi)時(shí)也都留下了災(zāi)難。狄更斯最后給了他一個(gè)壞結(jié)局，我覺(jué)得菲爾丁會(huì)更仁慈，因?yàn)檎鐘W諾太太(10)說(shuō)湯姆·瓊斯的那樣：“如果女孩們都這么急切，年輕男子也就沒(méi)什么好指責(zé)的了，因?yàn)樗麄兯龅臒o(wú)非是天性使然。”今天，小說(shuō)家不僅要使他的故事情節(jié)可信，還得盡可能地逼真。然而狄更斯卻不受這樣的限制。離開(kāi)英國(guó)多年后，斯蒂爾福斯從葡萄牙坐船回國(guó)，居然就在能看得到亞茅斯港時(shí)，船沉沒(méi)被淹死了，而且還正趕上大衛(wèi)·科波菲爾來(lái)此短暫拜訪老友。這樣的巧合很難令讀者信服。如果是為了滿(mǎn)足維多利亞時(shí)代惡有惡報(bào)的要求，斯蒂爾福斯必須死，狄更斯也一定能想出一個(gè)更合理的方式。

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雙語(yǔ)·聰明的消遣：毛姆談?dòng)?guó)文學(xué) 查爾斯·狄更斯與《大衛(wèi)·科波菲爾》 4

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雙語(yǔ)·聰明的消遣：毛姆談?dòng)?guó)文學(xué) 查爾斯·狄更斯與《大衛(wèi)·科波菲爾》 6

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