Fatal Attraction—Writers’ and Artists’ Obsession with the Sea

2018-01-04By

英语世界 2017年10期

ByPhilip Hoare

“The sea has many voices / Many gods and many voices,” TS Eliot wrote. “We cannot think of a time that is oceanless.” “In civilisations without boats,” Michel Foucault observed,“dreams dry up.” It is, plainly, a fluid state, a place of transition and transmutation1transmutation转化；蜕变。; the place from which we all came.

[2] In the womb we swim in salty water. We fi rst sense the world through the fl uid of our mother’s belly; we hear through the sea inside her. We speak of bodies of water, Herman Melville wrote of “the times of dreamy quietude, when beholding2behold看；把……视为。the tranquil beauty and brilliancy of the ocean’s skin”.

[3] Some believe Shakespeare was a sailor in his former life, hence the 200 mentions of the word “ocean” in his works. And in his last great play,TheTempest, the rising, transforming sea seems to mirror our own tempestuous3tempestuous有暴风雨的；暴乱的。world.

[4] My new book was partly inspired by the discovery of a 1968 Penguin edition ofThe Tempest,with an evocative4evocative引起记忆的；唤起感情的。woodcut cover by David Gentleman depicting a galleon lurching5lurch倾斜；蹒跚。on high seas. Rereading the play, I realised that it was conjured out of the past into the future, as if it were happening before it was written.“Deliberately enigmatic6enigmatic神秘的；谜一般的。”, in the words of critic Anne Righter.

[5] Shakespeare’s rich and strange transition has haunted writers and artists, from Melville to Derek Jarman,from JMW Turner to Virginia Woolf.And it haunts me, too.

[6] I swim in the sea every day,summer, spring, autumn and winter. I suppose I’m catching up on lost time,having been so fearful of the water as a boy that I didn’t even like to take a bath. I never learned to swim until I was in my late 20s, living on the dole in the East End. On seeing me floundering7flounder挣扎；错乱地做事或说话。about in a Victorian pool,an elderly lady wearing a rubber hat took pity on me and taught me how to make an alliance with the water. Now I cycle out every morning, often long before daybreak, to an urban shore on Southampton Water, close to where I grew up and where I still live.

[7] This is not a pretty place. It is overlooked by a vast refinery with its ever-burning flame, and passed by leviathanic8leviathanic海中怪兽般的；庞然大物般的。liners and container ships.Behind me stands a ruined abbey, a gothic site hymned by Horace Walpole,John Constable and Turner, and visited by Jane Austen. But my companions are oystercatchers9oystercatcher〈美〉蛎鹬。, grebes10grebe水鸟（一种鸟）；鸊鷉。and seals that might turn into selkie11selkie〈苏格兰〉（神话传说中的）海豹人，海豹精。—scraping a living in this industrial estuary.

[8] Two hundred years ago, John Keats came here, seeking refuge from London. Unfortunately, when he arrived, there was no sea. Rarely,Southampton boasts a double tide—and when it is out, the sea disappears.“The Southampton water when I saw it just now was no better than a low water. Water which did no more than answer my expectations,” Keats told his brothers. His nerves were raw12raw（说话）触及（某人）痛处。, so he took outThe Tempest. “There’s my comfort,” he said. That afternoon he left on the rising tide, with Shakespeare’s play in his pocket, sailing to the Isle of Wight, another island of strange noises,to compose his sonnet “On the Sea”,fi lled with “eternal whisperings around /desolate shores”.

[9] Shelley had never learned to swim.Yet he could not resist the water—a place where the Oceanids13Oceanids海洋的女神。cast human fates, and where sharks gnawed at14gnaw at啃咬；侵蚀。the bones of jettisoned15jettisoned被抛弃的。African slaves.The poet’s friend recalled Shelley jumping into a river and sinking to the bottom, as if seeking his amniotic16amniotic羊膜的。origins, an unplugged foetus17foetus胎儿。. Having been dragged out, Shelley declared: “I always fi nd the bottom of the well, and they say Truth lies there.” He added:“It’s a great temptation; in another minute I might have been in another planet.” He had fallen to Earth and kept on falling, a dark angel, like Icarus.And like Byron (who loved swimming but often vomited while in the process),he sought the water as an antidote18antidote〈药〉解毒剂；解药；矫正方法。to an industrial century. As Shelley’s body was burned on the beach, like a smouldering19smoulder阴燃，焖燃。comet, Byron stripped off and plunged into the sea to defy20defy藐视；公然反抗。the element that had taken his friend from him.

[10] For Virginia Woolf, who had spent her childhood summers in St Ives, the sea took on an even more fated symbolism. She constantly evoked a cryptic21cryptic神秘的，含义模糊的。image, a residual22residual剩余的；残留的。memory of the dolphins she had seen off the Cornish coast. That enigmatic shape accompanied her fromTo the Lighthouse, throughOrlando, and toThe Waves.

[11] Melville’s book was then virtually unknown in the United States; it owed its rediscovery to British writers such as Woolf, DH Lawrence and EM Forster, who found their queerness reflected in its pages.The unattainable white whale became Woolf’s unattainable white lighthouse;Melville’s playing with time and space and gender resurfaces inOrlando;and his benthic23benthic水底的；深海底的。darkness is implicit inThe Waves. Indeed, whales and dolphins make a surprising number of appearances in Woolf’s writing.

[12] Pat is now in her 80s, but it was only recently that she gave up kayaking24kayaking皮艇运动。out to sea to draw cormorants25cormorant鸬鹚。and whales; she spent one summer feeding flounder26flounder比目鱼。to a female orca27orca= orcinus orca逆戟鲸。. She is feral28feral野生的；凶猛的；阴郁的。and ferocious29ferocious残忍的；惊人的。,always walking unshod and sunbathing naked in the dunes, disdaining all bylaws. Her wooden house hangs over the sea like an ark; high spring tides fl ow beneath it.

[13] The sea is both loss and hope,like the lighthouses that flash across Cape Cod Bay. Out of the January snow, Pat calls me in from the beach. I shiver from the water in which I have just swum. We watch the seals slip off her sea fl oat and eider30eider绒鸭。ducks take their place. And in the silence of the night, broken by the waves lapping on the shore, Pat and I look out through the windows to the blackness beyond.Somewhere out there, the whales are diving into the dark, never-ending sea.

“海有许多种声音/许多神灵及诸多声音，”T. S.艾略特写道，“我们无法想象没有海洋的时代会是什么样子。”“一种文明，如若没有船，”米歇尔·福柯评论说，“梦想便会枯竭。”显然，这是一片流动的领域，一个充满转型和蜕变的地方;而我们都源于此。

[2]母亲的子宫中，我们在咸水里游泳。我们通过母亲肚子里的液体初次感受世界；通过她体内的这片海洋聆听世界。我们会提及水域，即赫尔曼·梅尔维尔笔下“梦幻般平静的时代，可以注视着海平面的宁静美丽和灿烂辉煌”。

[3]有人认为，莎士比亚上辈子就是一名水手，因此他的作品中有200次提及“海洋”一词。其最后一部戏剧佳作《暴风雨》中，那汹涌变幻的大海似乎是对我们所处的暴风雨般世界的真实写照。

[4]我新书的灵感在一定程度上源自1968年企鹅版《暴风雨》，该版的封面是戴维·金特尔曼的木刻作品，描绘了一艘在远海倾斜航行的加利恩帆船，令人思绪驰骋。重读该剧，我才意识到，它从过去畅想未来，好像所有的事情都发生在创作之前。以评论家安妮·赖特的话来说就是“故作神秘”。

[5]莎士比亚剧中的转变丰富且奇特，使许多作家和艺术家魂牵梦绕，从梅尔维尔到德里克·贾曼，从J. M. W. 透纳到弗吉尼娅·伍尔夫，无一例外。同样，我也深陷其中。

[6]无论春夏秋冬，每天我都会到海里游泳。小时候，由于极度怕水我甚至不喜欢淋浴，而现在，我认为自己是在弥补失去的美好时光。我直到二十八九岁才学会游泳，那时我住在伦敦东区，靠领取救济金生活。看到我在维多利亚式泳池里胡乱扑腾，一位头戴泳帽的老妇人很是同情，并教我如何与水为伍。现在，每天清晨，常常早在破晓之前，我都会骑车出去，骑到南安普顿溺湾的市区岸边游泳，那里靠近我长大成人且至今居住之地。

[7]这里不再美好。一座巨大的精炼厂拔地而起，俯瞰大海。工厂一天到晚冒着烟，庞大的班轮和集装箱船从旁经过。我身后是一座荒废的哥特式修道院，不仅为霍勒斯·沃波尔、约翰·康斯太布尔和透纳所赞美，简·奥斯丁也曾慕名拜访。但与我相伴的只有蛎鹬、水鸟和可能变成海豹人的海豹——它们在这片工业区的河口处勉强度日。

[8] 200年前，约翰·济慈曾从伦敦来到这里寻求慰藉。不幸的是，他到这儿时，这里没有海。南安普敦市自诩拥有罕见的双潮——而且双潮退去时，海洋也消失了。“我方才所见的南安普敦水域不过是一片枯水，根本不能满足我更多的期望。”济慈对弟弟们说。他的神经受到了刺激，于是他拿出《暴风雨》，表示：“我能从这里找到安慰。”当天下午，他在涨潮之际乘船离开，口袋里还装着莎翁之作。船儿驶向了另一个充满奇异声音的岛屿——怀特岛，他在那里创作出十四行诗《在海上》，诗中满溢“永恒的飒飒声弥漫/荒芜的海岸”的情怀。

[9]雪莱从未学过游泳。但他却无法抵抗水的诱惑——在水里，海洋女神主宰人类的命运，鲨鱼啃食非洲奴隶残留的尸骨。他的朋友回忆道，雪莱跃入河流，渐渐沉入河底，就像不受束缚的婴儿寻找自己的胎盘。被人从水里拖出来后，雪莱声称：“我总能找到井底，他们说真理就在那里。”他还补充说：“这是个巨大的诱惑，很快我可能就身处另一个星球了。”他就像伊卡洛斯般的黑暗天使，坠落人间，不断下沉。而且，像拜伦一样（拜伦喜欢游泳，但游泳时常会呕吐），他将水奉为解救工业时代的良方。当雪莱的尸体像一颗燃烧的彗星在海滩上焚烧，拜伦脱去衣衫，一头扎进海里，向带走他朋友的大海发出挑战。

[10]弗吉尼娅·伍尔夫幼年时光的夏日都是在康沃尔郡圣艾夫斯度过的，对她而言，海洋更象征着命运。她在作品中时常提及某个神秘的形象，那是她对康沃尔海岸所看到海豚的残存记忆。那个神秘形象一直陪伴着她，在其作品《到灯塔去》《奥兰多》《海浪》中多次出现。

[11]赫尔曼·梅尔维尔的作品起初在美国其实并不为人所知；其作品被重新发掘要归功于英国作家伍尔夫、D. H.劳伦斯和E. M.福斯特，他们体会到了其作品字里行间所反映的奇妙之处。梅尔维尔书中不可企及的白鲸变成了伍尔夫笔下不可企及的白色灯塔；梅尔维尔对时空和性别的处理在《奥兰多》中重现；而他对深海黑暗的感悟在《海浪》中也有隐喻式的表达。事实上，鲸鱼和海豚在伍尔夫的作品中频频出现，数量惊人。

[12]帕特今年80多了，但直到最近才放弃到海上进行皮艇运动，转而去画鸬鹚及鲸鱼。有一整个夏天，她都给一只母逆戟鲸喂食比目鱼。帕特强势不羁，习惯赤脚行走且经常在沙滩上裸身享受日光浴，且不屑于所谓的世俗典则。她的木房子像悬在海上的方舟；高扬的浪潮从房下冲过。

[13] 大海既代表着失去也孕育着希望，就像照亮科德角湾的灯塔一般。1月的海边下雪了，帕特招呼我进屋。刚刚还在冬泳的我颤抖着走上岸。我们注视着海豹从她的海上浮板滑进水里，几只绒鸭爬上了浮板。寂静的夜被拍岸的海浪刺破，我和帕特透过窗户，望向那一望无际的夜幕。就在那里的某个地方，鲸鱼正纵身游向那片黑暗神秘、永无止境的大海。