Lesson Eight The Case for Greater Clarity in Writing.doc

Lesson Eight The Case for Greater Clarity in Writing写作中写得更清楚的理由The literary fashion of these days is not to know what you mean and, if challenged, to shrug a careless shoulder and say that you write what you write and the reader must make his oen interpretation. The authors observations are presumed to be pregnant; the reader is to be midwife and bring the child to birth. It is no business of genius to make itself plain.如今的文学时尚就是不知道你说什么，假如你受到挑战，你就耸一耸无所谓的肩膀，说你写你的，读者需要去作自己的阐释，作者所说的话被假定孕育着意义，读者需要去做助产师把孩子生出来。天才作品的任务不是要把话说得明白。This was the line taken up by T.S. Eliot in an interview given after the first production of The Cocktail Party at the Edinburgh Festival of Arts in 1949. The play later acted with immense success in London and New York was, I think, a simplified and improved version of the original. But that does not affect Eliots replay to the charge of being obscure and his tenet that the artist is under no obligation to be explicit. He projects his thoughts, feeling, and fancies: on the task of interpretation the public must bring its own wits to bear这就是1949年爱丁堡艺术节首次演出了“鸡尾酒会”后T.S. Eliot在接受采访时采取的路线。 该剧后来在伦敦和纽约上演获得了巨大的成功，我认为，该剧本是在原版上进行了简写和改进的版本。但这并不影响Eliot对他晦涩难懂的指控的回答，也不影响他的关于艺术家没有责任把话说得明白易懂的信条。艺术家就是去投射自己的思想，感情，和想像，读者大众必须用自己的智慧去诠释。I suggest in return that this attitude betrays either laziness or affectation. It is the abdication of authorship. It is the business of the literary artist to know his mind and to speak it. Mr. Eliot, after all, was dramatizing certain problems of conduct and of human relations and he presented a Psychotherapeutic Sage as moral preceptor. He was not just fetching up thoughts that lie too deep for tears: he was informing us about destiny and salvation, important matters on which we have a right to clear instruction. In that cause we surely are entitled to know what his opinions on these great matters are. The fact that the play was written in what might be called conversational verse does not affect the proposition that an author is evading his responsibilities if he is not intelligible.作为对Eliot的回答，我的想法是他的这种态度，要么表明懒惰，要么表明装腔作势。这种态度就是放弃了作者的任务。文学艺术家的任务就是知道自己想什么并把它说出来。不管怎么说，Eliot是在用戏剧表现某些行为问题和人际关系的问题，他在“鸡尾酒会”剧本中给我们呈现是一个精神疗法的圣人的形象，是作为一个道理导师呈现给观众的。他做的事不是把观众心中埋藏得太深的思想挖掘出来赚取廉价的眼泪，他是在给我们提供关于人类命运和人类灵魂拯救的信息，对于这些重要的问题，我们有权得到他的明确的指示。在这样的情况下，我们当然有权知道他关于这一重要论题的意见。“鸡尾酒会”是用可以称为会话体诗歌写出来的，这一事实并不影响“如果作者没有把他的作品写得明白易懂，那他就是在逃避作者的责任”这一论点。Swift shrewdly said that the true definition of style is “proper words in proper places To this I would add “proper thoughts in proper order.” There is nothing impossible about that. The greatest prose writers of our time are in my estimation Bernard Shaw and Somerset Maugham. Did rather of them ever write a sentence that was vague?Swift非常精明的说过，文体的真正定义是“合适的词，用在合适的地方”，对于这一点，我还想指出一句“合适的思想，以合适的顺序写出来”要做到这一点没什么不可能。我们这个时代最伟大的散文作家，在我看来是萧伯纳和毛姆,他们有没有一个人写过一句模糊的话吗？If you are anti-Shavian you can accuse Shaw of writing every sort of nonsense, but you need never pause for a moment to wonder what sort of nonsense he intends. And as a model of lucid scrutiny of a lifes experience and a lifes conclusions Maughams The Summing-Up is unsurpassed. Again you need not agree with his judgments and valuations, but you know precisely what those judgments are.假如你反对萧伯纳你可以指控他写的是各种各样的废话，但是你从不需要停顿片刻去问自己他想说什么样的废话。毛姆写的大总结这本书是对一个人一生经验和一生总结作清晰的、仔细观察的典范，毛姆写的大总结这本书是没有人能超越的。同样如此，你可以不同意他的判断和评价，但你能确切的知道他的评价是什么。Now let us have some examples of the muddled writing for which in my opinion there is no excuse. Mr Henry Greens novels are now very much in the intellectual fashion, presumably because he so loftily disdains syntax, grammar, and punctuation . Here is a typical sentence from page 1 of his much-praised story, modestly called “Nothing”.现在让我们来看一些例子，那些在我看来是没有理由写出来的杂乱无章的例子. 亨利的小说现在在知识分子的圈子里非常流行，也许是他非常傲慢的藐视句法、语法和标点符号，下面是一段来自他写的一篇收到广泛好评的短篇小说第一页的一个典型句子，这篇短篇小说被谦虚的称着“一无所有” It was wet then, did she remember he was saying, so unlike this he said, and turned his face to its dazzle of window, it had been dark with sad tears on the panes and streets of canals as he sat by her fire for Jane liked dusk, would not turn on the lights until she couldnt see to move, while outside a single street lamp was yellow, reflected over a thousand raindrops on the glass, the fire was rose, and Pen elope came in.Could anything be untidier? A schoolboy would be in trouble for such infantile, turbid, ill-punctuated stuff, with its flood of commas and contempt of all the rules of composition; those rules were not made to be a nuisance to writes but for the advantage of readers. As a reader I object to having this mess thrown at my head.有没有任何东西能够比这个更加混乱？一个中小学的学生读到这样幼稚的，混浊的，标点标得糟的东西一定会陷入困境，因为整篇写作用了一连窜逗号，而且藐视所有写作规则。那些规则的制定不是为了让作家头痛的，而是为了给读者带来好处的。作为一名读者，我反对将这些混乱的东西砸到我头上来。Then we have Mr. T.S.Eliot writing “Notes Towards a Definition of Culture.” Note the timidity of the title. He is not offering to define culture; he is going to devote 124pages to fidgeting round the edges of a definition. He includes sentences like this:接着我们来看看Eliot写的“文化定义的笔记”我们注意一下这个题目的胆怯。它不是要给文化下定义，而是用124页的篇幅在定义的边缘心不在焉的玩弄，在他的文章中包含了这样的句子：They way of looking at culture and religion which I have been trying to adumbrate is so difficult that I am not sure I grasp it myself except in flashes or that I comprehend all its implications.我在努力试图描述看待文化和宗教的方式是如此的困难，以至于我不能肯定我就能抓住这样的方式，除了偶尔我的脑海里省过一些念头，而且我也不能肯定我能理解它的全部含义。 Now if an author can only “try to adumbrate” an opinion and then admits his own inability to understand his own point of view, I suggest that he should keep quiet until he had cleared up his own confusion. Can one imagine a master of thought and English faltering and fumbling in this way! But to cut ones way through mental fog is now to be called obvious, or trivial; to founder in it, confessing ones impotence, is taken to be profound.当然假如一个作家只能“努力去简单的描述”一个观点，而且承认他无法理解自己的观念，那么我建议他应该保持肃静，直到他理清了他的混乱。我们能够想象一位思想大师，英语大师竟然如此结结巴巴吱吱呜呜吗？但是现在一个人能够穿透思想的迷雾就会被人说作是显然或琐碎，在思想的迷雾中沉沦下去，承认自己的无能，这被看着是深刻。Nobody can pretend that much of the poetry written in the last quarter of a century had not been obscure. That is one reason why in Great Britain the bulk of it has become unsalable. London publishers protest that, with the exception of Eliot and one or two others, it is ruin to print poetry, and the Arts Council, appealed to for help by the distraught bards, is busily considering what to do about the wilting Muse. Shall it endow with public funds publication of the poetry which the public is now so unwilling to read?谁也不能假装说在20世纪的最后的25年间所写的大部分的诗歌不是晦涩难懂的（事实是难懂的）。那就是为什么在英国大部分的诗歌无法销售出去，伦敦的出版商抗议说，除了Eliot和其他一两个诗人以外，去印刷诗歌就会带来破产，那些抓狂的诗人们在寻求帮忙的英国艺术委员会，正在忙着考虑该给越来越不景气（枯萎）的艺术创作灵感采取什么行动？英国艺术委员会是不是要用公众的钱去支助这些公众不愿意读的诗歌的出版呢？The defense of the obscure poets who defy grammar, syntax, and meaning as they eject their strained imagery is a mixed one. Some pleaders merely deny the charge; those who do not understand the tangled products of the Spasmodist Singers are accused of being lazy or stupid or both. The blame is laid on the boneheaded reader who will not puzzle the stuff out and work away at the verbal jigsaw provided. Another plea is that the contemporary world is so confused in its complex of economic, political, ethical, and psychological problems that nobody who is true to his time can be expected to be lucid in the exposition of the age and its dilemmas.那些晦涩难懂的诗人们，当他们从头脑里喷射他们费解的印象的时候公然藐视语法、句法，意义的这些人，他们的辩护并不是一致的。有的申诉人干脆否认指控，那些不能理解反复无常的诗人们作品的人，被指控要么是懒惰要么是愚蠢，要么是即懒惰又愚蠢。那些指责归咎于读者，是愚蠢的读者不愿意去想出作品的意义来，不愿意去研究向他们提供的语言游戏。另外一个借口是，当代世界是一个经济问题政治问题伦理问题心理问题混乱的综合体，以至于任何一个人想忠诚于自己的时代就不能被期待在阐释这个时代和这个时代窘境时，表达得清晰明白易懂。The first excuse is a mere denial of guilt, which gets nowhere in a court of a law. The second is an affirmation and defense of artistic impotence. Once more it is the abdication of the author. The more intricate the mass of our difficulties the greater is the need of minds able to cut into them like knives, get rid of jargon and give us meaning.第一个理由纯粹否认有罪，在法庭上这是毫无帮助的。第二个理由是承认艺术的无能并为艺术的无能辩护，同样如此，这也是放弃作家的责任。我们的问题越复杂，我们越需要像刀子一样切入问题核心的头脑，清除行话，给我们意义。 One habit of those unable to express themselves is to take cover under a long word which happens to be in vogue. Existentialism is an obvious case in point. Whenever somebody tells me that So-and-So is an Existentialist, with the implication that I am therefore to bow my head in awe and admiration, I immediately challenge him for a definition of Existentialism. I have never had the beginnings of a satisfactory reply.那些无法表达自己的人有一个习惯，就是掩蔽的用碰巧很流行的一个长字。存在主义就是很明显恰当的例子。每当有人告诉我某某是个存在主义者，其含义是我因此要满心敬畏和羡慕低下头，我立即挑战他，拿出一个存在主义的定义。我从来没有得到令人满意的答复，哪怕一个答案的开头。Producers and actors of Existentialist plays are completely flummoxed if asked to cut the cackle and say exactly what they mean. So, in my experience, are literary critics. They wander off into some vague profundities about Essence and when asked to say exactly what that means they do not know.存在主义的制作人和演员当他们被要求停止扯淡说出具体的意义时，他们也是完全困惑的。因此，从我的经验来讲，文学批评家也慌成一片。他们扯出一些模糊深刻的本质，当被要求说出本质是什么时，他们也不知道。To be vague may often be a short cut to a certain kind of popularity. It provides a debating point, and man is an argumentative animal. To write a poem, a play, or a book which will become a dinner-table topic may be a profitable occupation. It is jam for the intellectual snobs who relish telling you what the author was really getting at. Because you do not know, and do not pretend to know, you are supposed to be a crude simpleton. The history of the Sob-Value of the Obscure deserves a book in itself. When Browning remarked that only the author knew the meaning of his “Sordello” and that he had forgotten it, he gave enormous joy to the Browning Societies of his day, who then got to work on unravelment and so displayed their own surpassing acumen and ingenuity.说话模糊通常是通往受欢迎的捷径，它提供了辩论点，而人类是喜欢争论的动物。写一首成为晚餐桌上的一个话题诗，或一个剧本，一本书可能是有利可图的职业。这对于知识分子中的势利眼来说是个讨人喜欢的好东西，他们就爱津津乐道告诉你作者真正想说什么。因为你不懂也不想装懂，你就被称为粗俗的傻瓜。那些晦涩难懂的作品的炫耀势利价值历史上有太多例，本身就值得写一本书了。当伯朗宁说起，只有作家自己明白他的“Sordello”的意义，而现在他已经忘记了，他给他那个时代伯朗宁研究会成员带来了巨大的快乐，他们就开始去阐释这首诗的含义，因此就展示了他们自己过人的敏锐和足智多谋。Admittedly the poet is not quite in the same position as the writer of prose. He is working more on percept than on concept, more on feeling than on dialectic. But there is no reason why he should not be able to given exact image in words of his perceptions and his emotions. The best poets have managed to do so. Bowe know just what Keats felt about the nightingale or the Grecian urn? We do. He did not have to make war on syntax or turn his odes into a grammarians funeral.必需承认诗人和散文作家的处境不完全相同，诗人更多是的抒写感知而不是概念，更多的是抒发感情而不是辩证法。但是一样没有理由不做到用语言表达准确的映像，关于他所感知的和他的情感的映像。最好的诗人都设法做到了这一点。我们