俄国文学讲稿

我总是觉得当代中国文学大体上是无聊的，除了80年代前后有一些有趣的先锋派，不过也是比西方晚了半个多世纪的一次尝试，后来好像就没什么人写出有趣的东西，甚至没什么人看了，经常说起来著名的白话文作品，结果一看都是民国时期的。很少听人说起又有什么值得称赞的中国文学作品诞生。我不太清楚为什么现在会是这样，虽然也知道存在写了却发不出来的问题，但是不知道这到底会有什么影响，直到我看了纳博科夫（就是写洛丽塔那个人）写的《俄国文学讲稿》（Lectures on Russian Literature）。这似乎是他在给康奈尔大学的学生讲授俄国文学的时候所起草的教案，中间第一章叫做俄国作家、审查机制和读者（Russian writers, censors, and readers），虽然写的是俄国和后来的苏联，但是有些地方实在过于切实，以至于不难做些联想。这里只引用一些英文版的内容（附上自己写的翻译），因为听说中文版可能会有删节。

…the foreigner’s mind tends to regard [Russian literature] as something complete, something finished once and for all. This is mainly due to the bleakness of the typically regional literature produced during the last four decades under the Soviet rule. (referring to 1958)
（外国人喜欢将俄国文学作为一个完成了的事物来看待。这主要是因为进入苏联时期的这四十年（当时他是1958年写的）所创作出的文学的苍白所引致的。)

实际上，纳博科夫指出19世纪的俄国文学是整个俄国文学史上唯一值得一提的时期，之前没什么俄国文学，之后的不值一提（除了20世纪开头的那几年）。而这些文学加起来也没超过23000页，跟英国、法国的文学完全没法比。这里我想到其实中国文学倒算是有很长的历史，加起来页数应该也很多，虽然流传下来的大多是诗歌，小说可能也没有那么多，不过这明显也并不影响后来的结果。

For an artist one consolation is that in a free country he is not actually forced to produce guidebooks. Now, from this limited point of view, nineteenth-century Russia was oddly enough a free country: books and writers might be banned and banished, censors might be rogues and fools, be-whiskered Tsars might stamp and storm; but that wonderful discovery of Soviet times, the method of making the entire literary corporation write what the state deems fit — this method was unknown in old Russia, although no doubt many a reactionary statesman hoped to find such a tool.
（对于艺术家而言在一个自由的国度里有一个值得慰藉的地方，即他是不用被强迫去创作指南书的。从这个有限的角度来说，19世纪的俄罗斯倒居然是个自由国度：书有可能被封杀，作家可能被流放，审查人员可能是流氓和傻子，流着络腮胡子的沙皇可能跺脚和狂怒；但到了苏联时期有了伟大的发现，即可以让整个文学团体写国家认为合适的内容——这个发现在旧俄国还不为人所知，当然肯定有反动的政治家是希望能找到这种工具的。）

这种对比其实在以前也是有的。清朝当然也是有文字狱的，不过到了晚清，反而有很多人出版各种书各种文章，他们有时候是在境外出版的，有时候是在租界里，可能现在都能算是“境外势力”。不过总的来说，在过去是没有政府去那么大规模的组织作家写什么的。这里纳博科夫又对比了一下有些人的说法，即在所谓的自由国度里，其实作家也是有经济压力的，要写出至少能糊口的东西，但他认为这个跟政治压力不太一样，不是度的问题，而是性质不同。首先经济压力不一定存在（可能是富二代，或者糊口的要求没有那么高）而且因为存在不同的出版商，有的可能喜欢你的作品，即便其他的不喜欢，所以不像只有一个政府决定出不出版的时候压力是那么的全面。

Nobody would exile me to the wilds of Alaska for having my happy atheist published after all by some shady experimental firm; and on the other hand, authors in America are never ordered by the government to produce magnificent novels about the joys of free enterprise and of morning prayers. In Russia before the Soviet rule there did exist restrictions, but no orders were given to artists. They were — those nineteenth-century writers, composers, and painters — quite certain that they lived in a country of oppression and slavery, but they had something that one can appreciate only now, namely, the immense advantage over their grandsons in modern Russia of not being compelled to say that there was no oppression and no slavery.
（不会有人因为我找了家不靠谱的实验性质的出版社出版了个关于快乐的无神论者的书就把我流放到阿拉斯加的荒郊野外；另一方面，美国的作者也从来不会被政府要求写出关于自由企业或者清晨祷告的宏大小说。在苏联之前的俄国，当然还是有创作方面的限制的，但是从来没有过给艺术家的要求。他们——那些19世纪的作家、作曲家及画家——都很确定自己住在充满压迫充满奴役的国家里，但是他们对于后来现代俄国的子孙们有着某种巨大的优势，就是他们不会被强迫说现在就没有压迫没有奴役了。）

… [Factors existed in the first half of 19th century] hampered the author to a considerable degree but also afforded him the keen pleasure of pin-pricking and deriding the government in a thousand subtle, delightfully subversive ways with which governmental stupidity was quite unable to cope… whatever defects the old administration in Russia had, it must be conceded that it possessed one outstanding virtue — a lack of brains.
（19世纪前期存在的各种限制（根据上下文，主要是来自于沙皇政府以及某些实用主义政客）确实在某种程度上阻碍了作者的创作，但是也给了他们用一千种巧妙的、愉快而颠覆性的方式针砭和嘲讽这些当权者，而政府因为过于愚蠢根本无法对付……不管俄国旧政权有什么缺点，至少要承认他们有着一个特别的优点，就是没脑子。）

Actually Lenin was in art a philistine, a bourgeois, and from the very start the Soviet government was laying the grounds for a primitive, regional, political, police-controlled, utterly conservative and conventional literature. The Soviet government, with admirable frankness very different from the sheepish, half-hearted, muddled attempts of the old administration, proclaimed that literature was a tool of the state; and for the last forty years this happy agreement between the poet and the policeman has been carried on most intelligently. Its result is the so-called Soviet literature, a literature conventionally bourgeois in its style and hopelessly monotonous in its meek interpretation of this or that governmental idea.
（列宁的艺术品位确实不佳，所以苏联政府从一开始就奠定了那种原始的、地域性的、政治的、警察控制的、非常保守且非常传统的文学基础。苏联政府跟过去那种窘迫的、不认真的、糊涂的旧政权不同，他们带着值得敬佩的诚实，宣布文学就是国家的工具；所以过去这四十年诗人与警察之间的这份快乐的合同已经得到了非常透彻地执行。产生的结果就是所谓的苏联文学，一种在风格上传统而平庸的文学，而在温顺地解释这个或那个政府的理念时不可救药的单调。）

It is interesting to ponder the fact that there is no real difference between what the Western Fascists wanted of literature and what the Bolsheviks want. Let me quote: “The personality of the artist should develop freely and without restraint. One thing, however, we demand: acknowledgement of our creed.” Thus spoke one of the big Nazis, Dr. Rosenberg, Minister of Culture in Hitler’s Germany. Another quotation: “Every artist has the right to create freely; but we, Communists, must guide him according to plan.” Thus spoke Lenin.
（有时看看法西斯对于文学的态度，再看看布尔什维克的，就会发现其实两者没什么区别。法西斯说：“艺术家的人格应该自由且不受限制地发展。不过我们要求一件事：承认我们的信条。”这是希特勒的文化部部长罗森伯格博士说的。布尔什维克：“每个艺术家都应该自由地创作，但是我们共产主义者，必须按照计划引导他们。”这是列宁说的。）

Communist officials called with a simper “an endless variety of themes” because every turn of the economic and political path implied a turn in literature: one day the lesson would be “factories”; the next, “farms”; then, “sabotage”; then, “the Red Army,” and so on (what variety!); with the Soviet novelist puffing and panting and dashing about from model hospital to model mine or dam, always in mortal fear that if he were not nimble enough he might praise a Soviet decree or a Soviet hero that would both be abolished on the publication day of his book.
（共产党官员们带着傻笑所宣称的“没有尽头的多样化主题”，是指的在经济和政治上的每一次转变，都意味着文学上的转变：有一天主题是“工厂”；第二天是“农场”；再然后“暗中破坏”；然后“红军”，诸如此类（多么多样化！）；苏联小说家喘着粗气从模范医院冲刺到模范矿井或大坝，总是深深恐惧着如果他不够迅速，他可能会赞扬某个在出版之日已经被废除的苏联政令或者苏联英雄。）

In the course of forty years of absolute domination the Soviet government has never once lost control of the arts. Every now and then the screw is eased for a moment, to see what will happen, and some mild concession toward individual self-expression is accorded; and foreign optimists acclaim the new book as a political protest, no matter how mediocre it is… But, alas, even if the Soviet writer does reach a level of literary art worthy of, say, an Upton Lewis — not to name any names — even so the dreary fact remains that the Soviet government, the most philistine organization on earth, cannot permit the individual quest, the creative courage, the new, the original, the difficult, the strange, to exist. And let us not be fooled by the natural extinction of elderly dictators. Not a jot changed in the philosophy of the state when Lenin was replaced by Stalin, and not a jot has changed now, with the rise of Krushchev, or Hrushchyov, or whatever his name is.
（在苏联政府过去的四十年里从来就没有失去对艺术的控制。有时螺丝钉会稍微拧松一点，看看会发生什么，然后给予一点轻柔的个人表现的退让；某些境外的乐观分子就会赞扬某本新书是政治上的抗议，不管那本书写的多么一般……但是哎呀，就算苏联作家在文艺上达到了厄普顿刘易斯（这名字瞎编的）——不是说要具体提到谁——的水平，沉闷的事实是，地球上艺术口味最平庸的苏联政府还是不会允许这一个人的探索、创作的勇气、新颖的、原创的、困难的、奇怪的东西的存在。我们也不应该被年老的独裁者的自然灭绝给愚弄。斯大林取代列宁的时候整个国家（对文学）的想法一点也没有改变，所以现在不管是赫鲁晓夫还是赫鲁晓伏还是随便什么名字的人上台，这种想法也一点都不会改变。）

这段话让人想起苏联时期有几个还算是著名的作品，比如日瓦格医生、古拉格群岛，当然这两本书都出版于本文写成之后，可能不在纳博科夫此文的杀伤范围内……不过从上下文来看，纳博科夫似乎对这种揭露现实式的作品嗤之以鼻。他认为好的作品应该形成自己的宇宙，而不是直接反映现实，可能是认为文学价值才是判断好的作品的最高标准（否则仅仅是所谓的报告文学）。具体见下。

Since a definite limit is set to an author’s imagination and to free will, every proletarian novel must end happily, with the Soviets triumphing, and thus the author is faced with the dreadful task of having to weave an interesting plot when the outcome is in advance officially known to the reader.
（自从作家的想象力和自由意志设立了固定的边界，所有的无产阶级的小说都必须有一个圆满的结局，其中苏联胜利了，所以作家的工作就变得很无聊，无非是把一个有趣的情节和一个读者都提前知道的结局编织在一起。）

…since it is the Soviet state that is the real protagonist of every Soviet novel, we can have a few minor characters — fairly good Bolsheviks though they be — die a violent death provided the idea of the Perfect State triumphs in the end; in fact, some cunning authors have been known to arrange things in such a way that on the very last page the death of the Communist hero is the triumph of the happy Communist idea: I die so that the Soviet Union may live.
（既然苏联这个国家才是每部苏联小说真正的主角，我们也可以有一些配角——即便是还不错的布尔什维克——以惨烈的方式死亡，只要最后还是完美的国家胜利就行了；其实有些作者巧妙地将故事的结局安排成了共产主义英雄虽然死了，但是一个令人欣慰的共产主义信念却胜利了：我死了所以苏联可以继续存在。）

Especially amusing in these circumstances is the romantic theme in Soviet novels. I have here two examples culled at random. First a passage from The Big Heart, a novel by Antonov, published serially in 1957:
Olga was silent.
“Ah,” cried Vladimir, “Why can’t you love me as I love you.”
“I love my country,” she said.
“So do I,” he exclaimed.
“And there is something I love even more strongly,” Olga continued, disengaging herself from the young man’s embrace.
“And that is?” he queried.
Olga let her limpid blue eyes rest on him, and answered quickly: “It is the Party.”
（特别有趣的是苏联文学中的情感描写。我这里有两个随便挑出来的例子（只放了一个）。首先是大心脏，由安东诺夫于1957年成系列地出版：
欧加沉默了。
“啊，”弗拉德米尔叫道，“你为什么不能像我爱你一样爱我。”
“我爱我的祖国，”她说。
“我也爱，”他叫道。
“但是我有一样更爱的东西，”欧加继续说，将自己从年轻人的怀抱中推开。
“那是？”他问道。
欧加用湛蓝的眼睛看着他，快速地说：“我更爱党。”）

In the nineteenth century genius not only survived, but flourished, because public opinion was stronger than any Tsar and because, on the other hand, the good reader refused to be controlled by the utilitarian ideas of progressive critics. In the present era when public opinion in Russia is completely crushed by the government, the good reader may perhaps still exist there, somewhere in Tomsk or Atomsk, but his voice is not heard, his diet is supervised, his mind divorced from the minds of his brothers abroad.
（19世纪的时候天才们不仅存活了下来，并且活得很好，这是因为公众意见比沙皇更强大，也是因为好的读者拒绝被进步批评家的功利主义意见所控制。在现在的俄国，公众意见完全被政府所压制，好的读者可能还有，在托木斯克或者阿托木斯克，不过他的声音没人能听到，他能摄入的东西被规管，他的思想和他海外的兄弟们的思想已经分离了。）

这里让我想起中国和俄国不太一样的一个地方。俄国整个并入了苏联，即便有些人跑了出来，但数量也不成气候。在中国则存在港澳台这样的地方，还是多少保留了一些“海外的兄弟”。他们中间虽然没有出来传世之作（也许有人会有不同看法），但还是出来了很多境内没有创作出来的有趣作品（或者没有发掘出来的），比如金庸、比如张爱玲、港台本地也还有一些类似朱天心朱天文董启章也斯陈冠中等写出有趣作品（很多大概在境内都无法出版，或者因为境内读者的口味没有出版）的作家。当然以后会变成怎样，现在也无法预测。

His brothers — that is the point: for just as the universal family of gifted writers transcends national barriers, so is the gifted reader a universal figure, not subject to spatial or temporal laws. It is he — the good, the excellent reader — who has saved the artist again and again from being destroyed by emperors, policemen, postmasters, and prigs.
（他的兄弟们，也就是说：就像好的天才型作家能够超越国界而存在，好的读者也是如此，不受时间或空间的限制。好的优秀的读者，能够一而再再而三地拯救艺术家，不被沙皇、警察、邮政局长和自命清高的家伙毁灭。）

很遗憾的是，虽然好的读者可以超越国界，但是不太可能超出他们所能阅读的语言。而让一个人用非母语写作实在太难，虽然现在确实有哈金和石黑一雄这种能用非母语写作的人（后者可能应该算英语母语），而除非作品已经出名到一个境界，会被翻译成不同语言出版，否则也很难接触到以其他语言阅读的读者。即便可以接触到，也存在题材不受欢迎的可能，比如张爱玲晚年在美国继续用英文创作与之前作品类似的小说，但是在美国没有形成什么影响。很遗憾的是，即便国界不构成障碍，语言和题材也是会形成障碍的，这也是即便进入全球化时代没有办法孕育出什么好的中国小说的可能。

Let me define this admirable reader. He does not belong to any specific nation or class. No director of conscience and no book club can manage his soul. His approach to a work of fiction is not governed by those juvenile emotions that make the mediocre reader identify himself with this or that character and “skip descriptions.”… The admirable reader does not seek information about Russia in a Russian novel, for he knows that the Russia of Tolstoy or Chekhov is not the average Russia of history but a specific world imagined and created by individual genius.
（让我来定义这可敬的读者。他可能不属于任何特定的国家或阶级。没有良心的监督或者图书俱乐部可以管理他的灵魂。他对虚构作品的态度不像那些一般的读者一样，会被青春期的情感所驱动，不会为书中某个角色产生共情并且“跳过描述的部分”……可敬的读者不会从俄国小说中获取有关俄国的信息，因为他知道托尔斯泰或者契科夫的俄国不是历史上一般的俄国，而是这些天才所单独创设的想象的国度。）

The Russian reader in old cultured Russia was certainly proud of Pushkin and of Gogol, but he was just as proud of Shakespeare or Dante, of Baudelaire or of Edgar Allan Poe, of Flaubert or of Houmer, and this was the Russian reader’s strength.
（在过去有文化的俄国，俄国读者们会为普希金或者果戈里感到骄傲，就像他们也会为莎士比亚或者但丁、波德莱尔或者爱伦坡、福楼拜或者荷马感到骄傲一样，这是俄国读者的强势所在。）

也就是说，俄国文学能在19世纪发扬光大，离不开俄国的读者。如果书出版不了，读者看不到，所谓的天才作家也永远没有出头之日。他们的作品就算写了可能只能在柜子里锁起来被时间氧化掉，可能因为知道没人能看到从一开始就没写。好的读者的培养是需要环境和时间的，一旦失去了这些读者，也就出不来好的作家和好的作品了。这也多少解释了我对现在的中国文学的疑惑。当然现在还是有很多好书可以看的，但大部分都是国外的，他们大概已经在国外的好的读者那里得到了发掘，所以才有机会流入国内，反之就很难行得通了。