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段义孚《coming home to china》P52-P64
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《回家记》中北师大演讲稿(人文主义地理学之我见)的英语原文Humanistic Geography
At the architectural conference, I had addressed a mixed audience of Chinese and Westerners, and so it seemed not altogether inappropriate to use English. But here I was speaking to an audience made up entirely of Chinese, so what was my excuse? I felt I had to explain. After the usual expression of thanks to my hosts, I said: “As you notice, I am speaking in English. I owe you an apology and a brief explanation. I left China with my family sixty-four years ago to live among English-speaking peoples—Australians, Brits, and, since 1951, Americans. Sad to say, in that time my Chinese has grown rusty. Though I can still carry on a social conversation in my native tongue, I am not able to do so on topics of intellectual interest. And this is doubly regrettable because my area of competence is humanistic geography. As I hope to show in the following lecture, if humanistic geography is distinguished in one characteristic, it is in its extraction of meaning from the resources of language. A humanist geographer who is not skilled in and sensitive to the subtleties of language is therefore a living contradiction.” The Felt Quality of EnvironmentI broached three themes in my lecture: the felt quality of environment, the psychology of power, and the relationship between material setting and the good life. By “felt quality,” I refer to the obvious fact that places are not just what we see but also what we hear, smell, and touch, even taste. This felt quality is rich beyond description by virtue of the power of our Wve senses working alone, doubly, or, more often than not, all together. A more mysterious aspect of our senses is a phenomenon called synesthesia, a blending of the senses such that, for example, when one hears a sound one also sees a color. Generally, low-pitched sounds such as deep voices, drums, and thunder produce dark and round images, whereas highpitched sounds such as soprano voices, violins, and squeaks produce bright and sharp images. Language points to its synesthetic grounding when we say in English, “What a loud tie you have” or “It’s bitterly cold.” What would be an example in Chinese? Could the expression jin sang zi (golden throat) be one? Thanks to synesthesia, objects acquire a vividness and resonance they would not otherwise have. It is an advantage to young children because it helps them locate and Wxate on the world’s objects. When strongly developed, however, it promotes hallucination. As children grow older and acquire a certain Xuency in language, synesthesia weakens, its function to enrich the world being taken over by the metaphorical powers of language. What is a metaphor? If synesthesia is the blending of senses, metaphor is the blending of image-ideas or concepts. Metaphor enables us to make concrete what is diffuse, familiar what is unfamiliar. Nature, for example, can seem diffuse, complex, and threatening. It becomes less so when we predicate it on parts of our body that we know intimately. So we refer to headlands, foothills, the mouth of a river, the spine of a ridge, an arm of the sea, and so on. Even the objects we have made ourselves can seem coolly indifferent. To overcome that detachment, we bind objects to our anatomy: the eye of a needle, the spine of a book, the hands of a clock, the legs of a table, and the back of a chair. These are, of course, English idioms, and I don’t know that they all have Chinese equivalents. Some do exist, and some are not only equivalent but identical. And so we say in Chinese ho kou (river mouth) and shan chio (mountain foot). A worthwhile project in humanistic geography is to see how languages differ in the ways they use metaphors to make unfamiliar objects more familiar. Not just metaphors but the full resources of language are available to us as poets— and we are all poets to some degree—to Wrm up the emotional bonds between ourselves and the world. The world is made up of tangible objects, but also of more abstract entities such as space and spaciousness. How does language cope with spaciousness, making it more real and vivid to us? One way is to use the specialized vocabulary of numbers. For example, a popular medieval work (South English Legendary) conveys the vastness of space by saying, “If a man could travel upwards at the rate of more than 40 miles a day, he still would not have reached highest heaven in 8,000 years.” But more common is to use a geographical vocabulary that can stimulate our geographical imagination. I am struck by the similarity between two poems, one composed by an anonymous Chinese poet in the Han dynasty and the other by the English poet Wordsworth in the nineteenth century. The Chinese poem, rendered into English by Robert Payne, has these lines: “Who knows when we shall meet again? The Hu horse leans into the north wind; the Yueh bird nests in southern branches.” In Wordsworth’s poem “The Solitary Reaper,” just how solitary is the Reaper? How vast is the space that envelops her? For answer, Wordsworth, like the Chinese poet, calls up two contrasting images: to one side are the “weary bands of travellers in some shady haunt, among Arabian sands,” and, to the other, “the Cuckoo-bird, breaking the silence of the seas among the farthest Hebrides.” I have noted similarities and differences in the ways English and Chinese evoke the felt quality of environment. It may be that true synesthetic expressions (“it’s bitterly cold”) are more common in English than in Chinese, suggesting that the Chinese people have moved closer to depending on the purely linguistic devices of metaphor and simile. On the whole, educated Chinese are more apt to use poetic words and phrases in their speech and writing than are their European counterparts, one reason being that the Europeans, though not the Chinese, have at one stage of their development—the seventeenth century—denounced the use of adjectives and fancy metaphors. Members of the newly founded Royal Society did so in a Wt of scientiWc passion. “Just the facts” turned into “just the numbers.” Science, they believed, must eschew verbal embellishment. Within a society of any size, however, differences in attitude can be expected among individuals. Some take pride in unvarnished speech, others are less astringent, and still others may glory in the evocative powers of a rich vocabulary. The Psychology of PowerMy second theme is the psychology of power. Geographers are much concerned with the human transformation of the earth. Repeatedly, they seek to understand how forest and scrubland, steppe and swamp, have been turned into arable Welds, towns, and cities. Neglected is the exercising of power for pleasure—the pleasure that is to be had in making gardens and pets. Geographers, like most people, tend to see gardens and pets as belonging to an area of innocence, in sharp contrast to large works of engineering and economic development, which are tarnished by suspicions of greed and pride. Nevertheless, from a psychological viewpoint, playing with nature, restrained only by the limit of one’s fantasy, may manifest an even greater urge to power. Consider water. Water becomes a pet when we make it dance for us. But we can only make it dance through the exercising of irresistible power—the power of hydraulic engineering and of large labor teams organized along military lines. The fountains that are the pride of the great gardens of Europe were mostly built by autocratic rulers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Many construction workers died in the effort, their bodies carried out in the middle of the night so as not to demoralize workers. Tourists who Xock to these showpieces today, their senses drugged by beauty and charm, forget the raw power that lies behind them. Water is alive only in a Wgurative sense. So let’s move to things that are truly alive: plants, animals, and human beings. An egregious example of abusing nature for pleasure is the miniature garden—the pen ching, or, to use the more common Japanese word, bonsai. It is considered a Wne art. But what kind of Wne art is it that regularly uses instruments of torture—knives and scalpels, wires and wire cutters, trowels and tweezers, jacks and weights—to distort the plants and prevent their natural growth? Animals are domesticated for economic use, but also made obedient through training or docile through breeding so they can be playthings and pets. Training can turn a huge and powerful animal, such as the elephant, into a docile beast of burden. Training can also turn it into a plaything—an object of ridicule—as when an elephant is made to wear a petticoat and stand on its hind legs. An even more radical way of altering nature is through selective breeding. Applied over successive generations, it can transform an animal into something dysfunctional and grotesque, and yet appeal to the taste of jaundiced connoisseurs. Think of the goldWsh and the miniature dog—pets that have found favor in China. A certain breed of goldWsh is created to have large eyes shaped like Wsh bowls that impede movement and are easily damaged. As for the miniature dog, the Pekinese, weighing less than Wve pounds, is just a bundle of hair that can be used to warm the owner’s lap. From a psychological viewpoint, power reaches a peak, a peak charged with sadisticerotic pleasure, when human beings themselves are turned into playthings. In Europe, Renaissance princes kept dwarfs, whom they dressed up, slobbered over, passed around at the dinner table, or presented as gifts to inXuential friends. Household slaves and servants, if they were comely, enjoyed the status of pets in slave-owning and other strongly hierarchical societies. In England, black boys were put in fancy uniforms so that they, along with purebred dogs, could sit for portraits with their masters and mistresses. Toward the end of the eighteenth century, so many duchesses and countesses kept black boys as pets that the fashion turned to Chinese or Indian boys. They were harder to come by and so commanded greater prestige. And then there are the women. In despotic Eastern societies, they were the decorative objects and sexual toys of powerful men, small, pretty, and helpless—a helplessness made evident in China when women submitted to having their feet bound and deformed. Even in relatively enlightened Western societies, women were legally children—child-wives in doll houses, as Ibsen put it—until a century or so ago. Do I speak only of the past? Have times changed? The answer is yes, but the desire to dominate or patronize is too deeply embedded in human psychology to disappear altogether. Today, this desire is directed mostly at racial minorities in our own country, whether this be the United States or China, and at “our little brown brothers” in the rest of the world. More generally, it is directed at all subordinates. Dog owners like to order their dog to “fetch” and see the animal trotting off in obedience. But it is a pleasure available to all who have human subordinates at their disposal. The boss says “fetch”—though, of course, he uses a more polite language— and his subordinate goes to get coffee or a multimillion-dollar contract. Geographers have focused too exclusively on economic exploitation. As humanists, we should also attend to the ways we toy with nature and weaker people for no other purpose than to indulge in our dark fantasies of total power and control. Environment and Quality of LifeMy third theme is the relationship between the quality of environment and the quality of life. As swamps are drained and malaria is conquered, the quality of human life undoubtedly improves. Likewise in a built environment, as peeling walls are repainted, drains unclogged, and rooms and household amenities added. But at what point does adding more rooms and amenities cease to improve, and might indeed detract from, the quality of life—a life that is not only materially but intellectually and spiritually rewarding? China faces this question as its economy booms and standard of living rises so that people can move from shoddy dwellings to well-built ones, and (for some) even from well-built houses to luxurious mansions. Material goods can enslave rather than liberate. This is well understood. But what about works of art? Don’t they enrich? What about philosophy and religion? Don’t they add to the quality of life? Take, Wrst, the enlarging and enriching power of art; more speciWcally, of architecture. Consider an elemental aesthetic experience known to all human beings, that of interior space. The quality of that experience—of what it means to be inside and enclosed—varies enormously, depending on people’s access to great works of architecture. Ancient Egyptians knew the sublimity of exterior space (think of the pyramids under moonlight), but interior space for them was darkness and clutter. Ancient Greeks had the Parthenon on the Acropolis to lift their spirits, but its interior was hardly more spacious than the interior of an Egyptian mortuary temple. Europeans had to wait for the construction of Hadrian’s Pantheon in Rome (AD 118–28) to acquire, for the Wrst time, the sense of an interior space that was formally elegant yet sublime, a vast hemisphere illuminated by the rotating sun. And, of course, this was only the beginning of the story. Architecture and, with it, the human appreciation of interior space continued to evolve. This story of architectural-aesthetic progress leads me to ask, What about moral rules and systems? These too are products of culture, acts of the imagination. All societies have moral rules, but only a few have elaborated them into systems, into what might be called moral ediWces. Are the people who live under large and complex ediWces better off, more able to realize their full potential than people who live in structures of simpler design—moral lean-tos and huts? The answer is not at all clear. One reason is that large moral ediWces are inevitably tied to sophisticated material culture. History is replete with examples of how the products of such culture, which include shrines, temples, churches, and mosques, can corrupt. Rather than inspire people to improve morally, they tempt them to vie for power and prestige. On the other hand, people whose moral ediWces are as artless as their lean-tos and huts have been found to be gentle and caring, to value each other’s company rather than material goods. Understandably, educated urbanites in both East and West have been tempted to romanticize them, and see only virtue in their lives. But this picture does not bear close examination. Hunter-gatherers and other folks who live close to nature are human, after all. Certain behavioral traits, acceptable to them, are no longer acceptable to peoples elsewhere. An egregious example is the tendency of hunter-gatherers to be cruel to the deformed and handicapped in their own group and to be indifferent to the plight of all those outside their group. As for people who have been raised in elaborate moral ediWces—in universal religions and philosophies such as Buddhism, Christianity, and Stoicism—they have glaring faults, which are well known, but they also have distinctive virtues, an outstanding example of which is their willingness to help the stranger. Evidence of this virtue in the landscape is the inns and hospices for needy travelers, the indigent, and the sick. The evidence goes beyond architecture, of course. As action, this virtue is most dramatically demonstrated in the way aid is generously extended to victims of natural disaster, even when they live at the other end of the earth. The KernelI concluded my lecture with the observation that the three themes I had touched on were very different. So the question arises, What do they have in common? More generally, what do humanist themes have in common? My brief answer is that they all show a deep-seated desire to understand the complexity and subtlety of human experience, which in practice translates into paying rather more attention to quality than quantity, adjective than noun, psychology than economics.
段义孚《回家记》中的北师大报告
(翻译者志丞注释①此演讲稿的中文译稿最初发表于《地理科学进展》2006年第2期,题为《人文主义地理学之我见》,由北京师范大学志丞、左一鸥译,周尚意校。此处译文做了进一步修订,并根据原书文字变化有所改动。——译者)
《回家记》P55-P66
人文主义地理学
在建筑师大会上,我所面对的既有中国人也有西方人,所以用英文演讲似乎并非完全不妥。但是现在我面前的听众全都是中国人,这让我拿什么来当借口呢?我觉得我必须做出解释。在礼节性地谢过了主办方之后,我说:“你们注意到了,我是用英文在演讲。我觉得自己理应向大家表示歉意并做出解释。在64年前,我随着家人一起离开了中国,居住到说英语的国家——澳大利亚、英国,从1951年起又到了美国。很遗憾地说,从那时起,我的中文就开始荒废了。尽管我还能用母语进行一些社交性的对话,但是就学术工作来说肯定是难以胜任。又因为我的研究领域是人文主义地理学,这就更增加了一层遗憾。就像我在下面要讲的一样,如果说人文主义地理学还有一项独到之处,那就是它能够从语言资源里提炼出意义。如果一个人文主义地理学家没有足够的技巧,或者没有足够的敏感性去感悟语言的精妙,那么他就是不称职的。”
环境的感受价值
我的演讲包括三个主题:环境的感受价值、强权的心理学以及物质条件与幸福生活的关系。我所谓的“感受价值”指的是一个明显的事实,即地方不仅能让我们看到,也能让我们听到、嗅到和触碰到,甚至是品尝到。当我们的某一种或某两种感官发挥作用,更多的时候是五种感官同时发挥作用,那么感受价值就会大得难以言表。我们的感觉还会出现另一种奇妙现象,称为通感,也就是感受的混合,例如听到声音的同时又看到一种颜色。一般来说,浑厚的嗓音、鼓声、雷声这种低沉的声音可以制造出灰暗和圆形的景象,女高音、小提琴、尖叫声这类尖锐的声音可以制造出明亮和带有棱角的景象。语言就可以表达其具有通感的性质。比如英文中的“你怎么选了这么一条颜色张扬的领带”或者“刺骨的寒冷”①。中文里有没有这样的例子呢?或许“金嗓子”算是一个例子? 注释①“颜色张扬的领带”和“刺骨的寒冷”:原文是loud tie和bitterly cold。——译者 通过通感,主体可以获得一种生动的感知并能产生共鸣,这是其他的方式无法做到的。它对于少年儿童来说很有好处,它帮助他们去找到世间的各种事物,并把注意力集中在它们上。然而,当过度使用时,它也会产生幻觉。随着孩子们的长大成人,语言表述渐趋流畅,通感的作用就会削弱,取而代之的是隐喻,它同样能够使世界更加丰富完满。
什么是隐喻?如果说通感是几种感觉的混合,隐喻就是若干形象的想法或者观念的复合体。隐喻使我们将一些散乱的事物具体化,使我们对不熟悉的事物变得熟悉起来。例如,自然界看上去是危险而纷繁复杂的,但是当我们将其隐喻成我们所熟悉的身体各部分时,情况就好多了。所以我们用“海角”、“山脚”、“河口”、“山脊”、“谷肩”这样的词(So we refer to headlands(岬角),Foothills(山麓山脚), the mouth of a river(河口), the spine of a ridge(山脊), an arm of the sea(海湾), and so on. 整理者附原文)。1就连我们自己制造的东西有时候都和我们很疏远。为了避免这个问题,我们把这些人造物也都和我们的身体结构相联系,例如“针鼻”、“书脊”、“桌子腿”和“椅子背”。( the eye of a needle, the spine of a book,the hands of a clock, the legs of a table, and the back of a chair整理者附原文;谷肩是地貌学名词。由于侵蚀基准面下降或构造运动抬升,在古谷地中下切形成谷中谷,原来老谷地之底则成为新谷地的谷肩) 当然,这些是英文习语,中文里也有与之相对应的表达法;有些不仅仅相似,甚至是完全相同。比如中文也说“河口”和“山脚”。人文地理学很值得研究的一个方面就是不同的语言是如何通过隐喻帮人们将本不熟悉的事物变得熟悉的。
不仅仅是隐喻,语言的各个方面都为我们提供了丰富的资源,使我们能如诗人一般,用情感将我们自身和大自然连接在一起。从这个意义上说,我们都是诗人。尽管这个世界基本上是由实实在在的事物组成的,但也不乏一些抽象的实体,比如空间和空间的无限性。如何用语言来描述空间的无限性,使其更加生动形象呢?一种方法是使用专业的数学词汇。比如,流传很广的一部中世纪著作(《英格兰南部的传奇文学》)是这样形容宇宙之广袤无垠无垠“即使一个人能以每日40英里的速度向上行进,那么8000年后他依然无法到达天空的最高处。”但更常用的方法是使用空间性的词汇,这种空间性词汇的使用促进了我们的空间想象力。有两首诗,一首由汉朝无名氏所作(已由罗伯特·派恩译成英文),另一首由英国诗人华兹华斯作于19世纪,我惊异于这两首诗的异曲同工。中文诗中的几句是这样的:“道路阻且长,会面安可知?胡马依北风,越鸟巢南枝。”在华兹华斯的《孤独的割麦女》中,割麦女究竟是何等孤独?笼罩着她的空间又是何等的无限呢?为了回答这个问题,像中国诗人一样,华兹华斯也举出两个反差较大的画面:一边是“身处沙漠绿茵间的疲惫旅客”,另一边是“在遥远的赫布利底群岛,杜鹃的轻啼打破大海的寂寥”。
我已经讲述过中文和英文在体验环境的感受价值上的相似性和差异性。或许通感的表达方式(比如“刺骨的寒冷”)在英文中更为常见,因为中国人更倾向于使用明喻暗喻这样的纯粹的语言工具。从整体上讲,相比于欧洲人,中国文人更习惯于在说话和行文中使用诗一般的词语和句子。其中一个原因在于,相比于中文,欧洲语言在其特定的发展阶段上,即17世纪,曾经公开抵制使用繁复的形容词和比喻手法。那时新成立的英国皇家学会的成员们这样做是为了顺应人民追求科学的热情。“用事实说话”变成了“用数字说话”。他们相信,科学必须要摒弃修饰性的花言巧语。不过,在任何一个由人组成的社会里,无论它是大是小,每个人的想法都会有区别。有的人推崇不加修饰的语言,而有的人就没有这么严苛,也还有另外一部分人愿意沐浴在丰富的辞藻所激发出的丰沛情感中。
强权的心理学
我的第二个主题是强权的心理学。地理学者更多地关注人类是如何改造地表的。人们不断地探索着如何将森林、草原、沼泽改造成农田、乡村和城市。但是,人们都忽略了一点,即我们为了从建造园林、饲养宠物中寻求快乐,正在对自然施加着强权。地理学者和大多数人一样,认为园林和宠物的纯真自然,能与代表着贪婪和自负的大型工程项目和经济发展形成鲜明的对比。然而,从心理学的角度讲,极尽人们所想的方式来拿自然取乐,显示出的恰恰是对强权更为强烈的渴望。 以水为例。当我们让它为我们翩翩起舞的时候,它便是我们的玩物。然而,我们只能用它无法抗拒的力量来操纵它,比如水利工程和成群结队的劳动力所产生的力量。在欧洲,为著名园林引以为荣的那些喷泉,都是在17到18世纪独裁力量的主持下修建的。修建过程中,许多工人累死了;为了不扰乱人心,他们的尸体要到半夜才被运走。如今,当旅游者成群结队地去观摩这些杰作时,他们为眼前的美景所蒙蔽,却遗忘了隐藏在美景背后的强权统治。 水只有在具有象征意义的时候才有生命。所以我们来看看真正有生命的东西:植物,动物,还有人类。盆景就是人类为满足自己娱乐需求而滥施暴力的典型例证。盆景一直被看做是一种工艺美术。这到底是怎样一种美术啊,它居然会使用刑具作为自己的工具——枝剪和削皮刀、铁丝和克丝钳、铲子和镊子、棕绳和配重——去阻止植物的正常生长,扭曲它们的自然形态! 人们拳养动物用于经济用途,也通过训练和驯化让它们变成玩物和宠物。训练可以使体型巨大、身体强壮的动物,比如说大象,变成驯良的可以负重的劳力。训练还可以将其变成玩偶,比如马戏团或动物园中被迫穿着短裙用后腿站着的大象。选择性繁殖是一种更荒唐的扭曲自然的方式。经过几代的选择性繁殖,动物们变得奇形怪状、机能失调,却符合了鉴赏家乖僻的口味。金鱼和京叭儿狗就是在中国很常见的宠物。人们驯养出一种特殊的金鱼,它长出像圆形鱼缸形状的外突眼泡,然而这种眼睛有碍鱼的游动,而且容易撞破。还有就是京叭儿,被改造得只剩下一撮狗毛儿,重量不足五斤,为主人的膝头御寒。 从心理学的角度来讲,当强权的快感源于性虐待的时候——也就是当人类自身也变成了玩物的时候,这种快感便达到顶峰。在欧洲,文艺复兴时期的王子们养着一些侏儒。他们给这些胖墩墩的侏儒穿上华美的服饰,令其在主子们的餐桌边跑前跑后;有时也把他们当作礼物赠送给地位显赫的朋友。在奴隶制和其他等级制度森严的社会中,家里的奴仆如果长得标致,就能享有宠物的地位。在英国,画肖像画时,黑人男孩可以穿上滑稽的制服,与纯种狗一起坐在主人身边。到18世纪末,有太多的男爵夫人、伯爵夫人都将黑人男孩养作宠物,以至于这种风尚转向了中国和印度的男孩。因为中国和印度的男孩不容易得到,因此标榜了更高的地位。继而,便是女人。在专制的东方社会,女人是权贵的装饰物件和性玩具:她们“娇小、美貌而无助”。中国女人缠足便是女人“无助”的最好例证。即便是在相对文明的西方社会,直到大约一个世纪以前,女人也不过是合法的孩子,在玩偶之家里面当她丈夫的孩子,就如易卜生曾经写过的那样。 我说的都是以前的事吗?时代已经变了吗?答案是肯定的,但是统治、领导的欲望在人们心中是如此根深蒂固,不是一朝一夕便可根除的。今天,这种欲望在我们的国家,无论是在美国还是中国,体现为如何对待少数民族,体现为如何对待其他国家“我们的有色小兄弟”。更普遍地,它体现在如何对待一切相对低级的事物上。狗的主人喜欢命令小狗,然后看着小狗颠颠儿地小跑着把他们抛出的东西“拿过来”。任何有支配权力的人都能够体会到这种乐趣。老板说“拿过来”—一当然,他会说得客气些一—于是,他的下属便去端茶倒水或是取来几百万美元的订单。作为人文主义者,我们应该注意到:我们在玩弄自然、玩弄弱者——没有什么特别的原因,只为了纵容我们内心权力欲与控制欲的邪念。
环境和生活质量
我的第三个主题是环境质量与生活质量之间的关系。沼泽地被弄干了,疟疾被战胜了,人们的生活质量无疑会提高。同样,在一个建筑环境中,掉了皮的墙被重新漆好,淤塞的排水管被疏通了,房间和家具也都备齐了。可是,房间和家具增添修饰到多好才算是改进了我们的生活呢?会不会实际上在降低我们的生活质量呢?因为我们的生活不只包括物质生活,还有精神上的生活。中国正面临这个问题——国民经济在发展,人民甚至还有些人从好房子里搬到了豪华房子里。
我们知道,物质财富只能带来束缚而不是解放。艺术品呢?难道它们不能使精神富足吗?哲学和宗教这类非物质又如何呢?难道它们没有提高生活的质量吗?首先,我们来说艺术力量的不断扩大和艺术品的不断丰富一—具体一点,就拿建筑来举例吧。让我们思考一个全人类都有的基本美学体验:建筑内部的空间感。这种身处物体内部、被物体包围的体验所具有的价值随着人们对建筑精品的接触而发生显著的变化。古代的埃及人知道外部空间的崇高(让我们想象月光下的金字塔),但是他们的建筑内部空间是黑暗和混乱的。古希腊人在雅典卫城顶上建有帕台农神庙,但是它内部的空间几乎和当时埃及的停尸间一样小。欧洲人一直等到罗马皇帝哈德里安设计建造万神殿的时候(公元118-128年),见到那个被运行的太阳照亮的巨大穹顶,才第一次体验到既优雅又庄严的空间感。当然,这仅仅是故事的开始。建筑和人们对其内部空间的欣赏在继续发展。
建筑美学发展的故事使我思考一个问题:道德标准和秩序是怎样的呢?它们是文化的产物和想象力的实现。每个社会都有道德标准,但是只有一些社会能详尽设计它们并将之系统化——这也许可以叫做道德大厦。在巨大而复杂的道德大厦下生活的人状况更好吗?他们比生活在更简单的结构(比如叫做道德棚屋)下的人更能认识到自己的全部潜力吗?很难讲。一个原因是巨大的道德大厦不可避免地与复杂的物质文化联系在一起。包括神殿、庙宇、教堂和清真寺在内的文化产品是如何腐化的,这种例子在历史里比比皆是。那些东西并非鼓励人们提升道德修养,而是怂恿人们争权夺势。在另一方面,那些道德大厦如同道德棚屋一样朴实无华的人,却给人们带来随和、体贴的感觉,他们重视相互之间的友谊而不是物质财富。于是可以理解,东西方受过教育的都市人一直试图把他们传奇化,在他们的生命中看到的都是美德。
但是这幅图景禁不起仔细推敲。狩猎者和其他靠自然生活的民族毕竟也是人类。他们所遵从的特定的道德规范,在其他地方已经不再适用了。渔猎者们对族群内部残疾者表现出的残忍和对族群之外生活困难之人的麻木不仁,就很让我们触目惊心。对于在精心设计的道德大厦下长大的人而言,全球性的宗教和哲学——比如佛教、基督教和希腊哲学中的斯多葛学派,虽然都有广为人知的欠缺,但是它们有与众不同的美德,一个明显的例子就是它们提倡帮助陌生人。这一美德表现在景观上,就是为旅行者、穷人和病人提供的客栈和收容所。当然,这些东西超出了建筑学本身的范畴。就行动而言,这一美德最突出的表现是对自然灾害受害者的帮助,哪怕他们生活在世界的另一个角落。①
注释①此演讲稿的中文译稿最初发表于《地理科学进展》2006年第2期,题为《人文主义地理学之我见》,由北京师范大学志丞、左一鸥译,周尚意校。此处译文做了进一步修订,并根据原书文字变化有所改动。——译者
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