旅行的藝術(shù):對旅行的期待-1

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時序之入冬，一如人之將老，徐緩漸近，每日變化細(xì)微，殊難確察，日日累疊，終成嚴(yán)冬，因此，要具體地說出冬天來臨之日，并非易事。先是晚間溫度微降，接著連日陰雨，伴隨來自大西洋捉摸不定的陣風(fēng)、潮濕的空氣、紛落的樹葉，白晝亦見短促。其間也許會有短暫的風(fēng)雨間歇，天氣晴好，萬里無云，人們不穿大衣便可一早出門。但這些都只是一種假象，是病入膏肓者臨終前的“回光返照”，于事無補。到了12月，冬日已森然盤踞，整座城市每天為鐵灰色的天空所籠罩，給人以不祥之兆，極類曼特尼亞 [1] 或韋羅內(nèi)塞 [2] 的繪畫作品中晦暗的天空，是基督耶穌遇難圖的絕佳背景，也是在家賴床的好天氣。鄰近的公園在雨夜的路燈下，滿眼泥濘和積水，甚是荒涼。有一晚，大雨滂沱，我從公園走過，忽地記起剛剛逝去的夏日，在酷暑中，我曾如何躺在草地上，伸展四肢，任光腳從鞋中溜出，輕撫嫩草；我還記起那種和大地的直接接觸如何讓我覺得自由舒展：夏日里沒有慣常的室內(nèi)、戶外之別，置身大自然時，我有如在臥室里一般自在。

It was hard to say when exactly winter arrived. The decline was gradual, like that of a person into old age, inconspicuous from day to day until the season became an established relentless reality. First came a dip in evening temperatures, then days of continuous rain, confused gusts of Atlantic wind, dampness, the fall of leaves and the changing of the clocks-though there were still occasional moments of reprieve, mornings when one could leave the house without a coat and the sky was cloudless and bright. But they were like false signs of recovery in a patient upon whom death has passed its sentence. By December, the new season was entrenched and the city was covered almost every day by an ominous steely-grey sky, like one in a painting by Mantegna or Veronese, the perfect backdrop to the crucifixion of Christ or to a day beneath the bedclothes. The neighbourhood park became a desolate spread of mud and water, lit up at night by rain-streaked lamps. Passing it one evening during a downpour, I recalled how, in the intense heat of the previous summer, I had stretched out on the ground and let my bare feet slip from my shoes to caress the grass and how this direct contact with the earth had brought with it a sense of freedom and expansiveness, summer breaking down the usual boundaries between indoors and out, and allowing me to feel as much at home in the world as in my own bedroom.

威廉·霍奇斯：《重游塔希提島》，1776年

但現(xiàn)在，眼前的公園再次變得陌生，連綿的陰雨中，草地已無從涉足。此時，任何的哀愁，任何得不到快樂和理解的擔(dān)憂，似乎都能在那些暗紅磚石外墻、浸得透濕的建筑，以及城市街燈映照下略泛橙色的低沉的夜空中找到佐證。

But now the park was foreign once more, the grass a forbidding arena in the incessant rain. Any sadness I might have felt, any suspicion that happiness or understanding was unattainable, seemed to find ready encouragement in the sodden dark-red brick buildings and low skies tinged orange by the city's street-lights.

這樣的天氣，以及這個時節(jié)發(fā)生的一系列的事件（似乎應(yīng)驗了詹佛 [3] 的名言，一個人每天早晨都得吞食一只癩蛤蟆，這樣才能保證他在日間不會遇上更惡心的事），使我很自然地想起了一件事：一天下午，幾近黃昏，我意外地收到了一大本色彩亮麗、名為《冬日艷陽》的畫冊。畫冊的封面是一大片的沙灘，還可以看見沙灘邊緣湛藍(lán)的海。沙灘另一邊，是一排棕櫚樹，多數(shù)斜立著，再往后，是畫面中作為背景的群山；我能想象那山中有瀑布，想象得出山中飄香果樹下的蔭涼，體會從酷熱中解脫的愜意。畫冊里的攝影圖片讓我不禁想起描繪塔希提島的油畫——那是威廉·霍吉斯和庫克船長一起旅行時創(chuàng)作的作品，畫面中，夜色輕柔，熱帶礁湖邊，土著少女在繁茂的簇葉中無憂無慮地（赤腳）歡跳。1776年嚴(yán)冬，霍奇斯首次在倫敦皇家學(xué)院展出這些油畫，引起了人們對美景的好奇和向往，而且，從那以后，這類圖景一直都是熱帶風(fēng)情畫的范本；自然，這本《冬日艷陽》也不例外。

Such climatic circumstances, together with a sequence of events that occurred at around this time (and seemed to confirm Chamfort's dictum that a man must swallow a toad every morning to be sure of not meeting with anything more revolting in the day ahead), conspired to render me intensely susceptible to the unsolicited arrival one late afternoon of a large, brightly illustrated brochure entitled 'Winter Sun'. Its cover displayed a row of palm trees, many of them growing at an angle, on a sandy beach fringed by a turquoise sea, set against a backdrop of hills, where I imagined there to be waterfalls and relief from the heat in the shade of sweet-smelling fruit trees. The photographs reminded me of the paintings of Tahiti that William Hodges had brought back from his journey with Captain Cook, showing a tropical lagoon in soft evening light where smiling local girls cavorted carefree (and barefoot) through luxuriant foliage, images that had provoked wonder and longing when Hodges first exhibited them at the Royal Academy in London in the sharp winter of 1776and that continued to provide a model for subsequent depictions of tropical idylls, including the pages of 'Winter Sun'.

那些設(shè)計和制作這份畫冊的人也許還不知道畫冊的讀者是多么容易為那些攝影圖片所俘虜，因為這些亮彩的圖片，如棕櫚樹、藍(lán)天和銀色沙灘等，有一種力量，使讀者理解力受挫，并完全喪失其自由意志。在生活中別的場合，他們原本謹(jǐn)慎，敢于質(zhì)疑，但在閱讀這些圖片時，他們卻不假思索，變得異常的天真和樂觀。這本畫冊所引發(fā)出的令人感動，同時讓人傷感的向往便是一個例子，它說明了人生中許許多多的事件（甚至是整個人生）是如何為一些最簡單、最經(jīng)不起推敲的快樂圖景所影響；而一次開銷巨大，超出經(jīng)濟承受能力的旅程的起因又如何可能僅僅只是因為瞥見了一張攝影圖片：圖片里，一棵棕櫚樹在熱帶微風(fēng)中輕搖曼舞。

Those responsible for the brochure had darkly intuited how easily their readers might be turned into prey by photographs whose power insulted the intelligence and contravened any notions of free will: over-exposed photographs of palm trees, clear skies and white beaches. Readers who would have been capable of scepticism and prudence in other areas of their lives reverted in contact with these elements to a primordial innocence and optimism. The longing provoked by the brochure was an example, at once touching and bathetic, of how projects (and even whole lives) might be influenced by the simplest and most unexamined images of happiness; of how a lengthy and ruinously expensive journey might be set into motion by nothing more than the sight of a photograph of a palm tree gently inclining in a tropical breeze.

我決定到巴巴多斯島旅行。

I resolved to travel to the island of Barbados.