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你垂询什么是爱嗎?当我们在自身思想的幽谷中发现一片虚空,从而在天地万物中呼唤、寻求与身内之物的通感对应之时,受到我们所感、所惧、所企望的事物的那种情不自禁的、强有力的吸引,这就是爱。
倘使我们推理,我们总希望能够被人理解;
倘使我们遐想,我们总希望自己头脑中逍遥自在的孩童会在别人的头脑里获得新生;
倘若我们感受,那么,我们祈求他人的神经能和我们一起共振,他人的目光和我们交融,他人的眼睛和我们的一样炯炯有神;
我们祈愿漠然麻木的冰唇不要对另一颗火热的心讥笑嘲讽。这就是爱。
我们降临世间,我们的内心深处存在着某种东西,自有自我存在的那一颗起,就渴求着与它相似的东西。这种与生俱来的倾向随着天性的发展而发展。
在思维能力的本性中,我们隐隐约约地看到的仿佛是完整自我的一个缩影,它丧失了我们所蔑视、嫌厌的成分,而成为尽善尽美的人形的理想典范。它不仅是一帧外在肖像,更是构成我们天性的最精细微小的粒子组合。它是一面只映射出纯洁和明亮形态的镜子;它是在其灵魂固有的乐园外勾画出一个为痛苦、悲哀和邪恶所无法逾越的圆圈的灵魂。这以精魂同样渴求与之相像或对应的知觉相关联。
当我们在大千世界中寻觅到了灵魂的对应物,在天地万物中发现了可以无误地评估我们自身的知音(它能准确地、敏感地捕捉我们所珍惜并怀着喜悦悄悄展露的一切),那么,我们与对应物就好比两架精美的竖琴上的琴弦,在一个快乐的声音伴奏下发出音响,这音响与我们自身神经组织的震颤相共振。这——就是爱所要到达的无形的、不可企及的目标。正是它,驱使人的力量去捕捉其淡淡的影子;没有它,为爱所驾权的心灵就永远不会歇息......
因此,在孤独中,或处在一群毫不理解我们的人群中(这时,我们仿佛遭到遗弃),我们会热爱花草、小草、河流以及天空。就在蓝天下,在春天树叶的颤动中,我们找到神秘的心灵的回应:
无语的风中有一种雄辩;流淌的溪水和河边瑟瑟的苇叶声中,有一首歌谣。它们与我们灵魂之间神秘的感应,唤醒了我们心中的精灵去跳一场酣畅淋漓的狂喜之舞,并使神秘的温柔的泪盈满我们的眼睛,如爱国志士胜利的热情,又如心爱的人为你独自歌唱之音。
因此,斯泰恩说,假如他身在沙漠,他会爱上柏树枝的。爱的需求或力量一旦死去,人就成为一个活着的墓穴,苟延残喘的只是一副躯壳。
ON LOVE.
By Percy Bysshe Shelley
WHAT is Love? Ask him who lives, what is life; ask him who adores, what is God?
I know not the internal constitution of other men, nor even thine, whom I now address. I see that in some external attributes they resemble me, but when, misled by that appearance, I have thought to appeal to something in common, and unburthen my inmost soul to them, I have found my language misunderstood, like one in a distant and savage land. The more opportunities they have afforded me for experience, the wider has appeared the interval between us, and to a greater distance have the points of sympathy been withdrawn. With a spirit ill fitted to sustain such proof, trembling and feeble through its tenderness, I have everywhere sought sympathy, and have found only repulse and disappointment.
Thou demandest what is Love. It is that powerful attraction towards all we conceive, or fear, or hope beyond ourselves, when we find within our own thoughts the chasm of an insufficient void, and seek to awaken in all things that are, a community with what we experience within ourselves. If we reason, we would be understood; if we imagine, we would that the airy children of our brain were born anew within another's; if we feel, we would that another's nerves should vibrate to our own, that the beams of their eyes should kindle at once and mix and melt into our own; that lips of motionless ice should not reply to lips quivering and burning with the heart's best blood. This is Love. This is the bond and the sanction which connects not only man with man, but with every thing which exists. We are born into the world, and there is something within us which, from the instant that we live, more and more thirsts after its likeness. It is probably in correspondence with this law that the infant drains milk from the bosom of its mother; this propensity developes itself with the developement of our nature. We dimly see within our intellectual nature a miniature as it were of our entire self, yet deprived of all that we condemn or despise, the ideal prototype of every thing excellent and lovely that we are capable of conceiving as belonging to the nature of man. Not only the portrait of our external being, but an assemblage of the minutest particles of which our nature is composed;* a mirror whose surface reflects only the forms of purity and brightness; a soul within our own soul that describes a circle around its proper Paradise, which pain and sorrow and evil dare not overleap. To this we eagerly refer all sensations, thirsting that they should resemble or correspond with it. The discovery of its antitype; the meeting with an understanding capable of clearly estimating our own; an imagination which should enter into and seize upon the subtle and delicate peculiarities which we have delighted to cherish and unfold in secret; with a frame whose nerves, like the chords of two exquisite lyres, strung to the accompaniment of one delightful voice, vibrate with the vibrations of our own; and of a combination of all these in such proportion as the type within demands; this is the invisible and unattainable point to which Love tends; and to attain which, it urges forth the powers of man to arrest the faintest shadow of that, without the possession of which there is no rest nor respite to the heart over which it rules. Hence in solitude, or in that deserted state when we are surrounded by human beings, and yet they sympathize not with us, we love the flowers, the grass, the waters, and the sky. In the motion of the very leaves of spring, in the blue air, there is then found a secret correspondence with our heart. There is eloquence in the tongueless wind, and a melody in the flowing brooks and the rustling of the reeds beside them, which by their inconceivable relation to something within the soul, awaken the spirits to a dance of breathless rapture, and bring tears of mysterious tenderness to the eyes, like the enthusiasm of patriotic success, or the voice of one beloved singing to you alone. Sterne says that if he were in a desert he would love some cypress. So soon as this want or power is dead, man becomes the living sepulchre of himself, and what yet survives is the mere husk of what once he was.
Forman's Editorial Preface: Mrs. Shelley (Essays &c., 1840, Vol. I, page x) seems to regard this brief effusion on Love as in a manner cognate with Shelley's Platonic labours. It seems improbable however that it belongs to so late a period of his activity. The style appears to me rather that of 1815, or even earlier, than that of 1818; and Mr. Rossetti is probably not far wrong in assigning it to 1815. Instead, therefore, of placing it after the Banquet, it appears to me better to place it after the fragment on Life. It was issued as long ago as 1829, in The Keepsake, edited by Frederic Mansel Reynolds, which contained three poetic fragments by Shelley (Summer and Winter, The Tower of Famine, and The Aziola). For these four compositions, the Editor expresses in his Preface his indebtedness "to the kindness of the author of Frankenstein"; and Mrs. Shelley was also a contributor on her own account to this annual. Mrs. Shelley excepts from the censure of inaccuracy an "Essay on Love," published by Medwin. The follwoing effusion, I have not found in The Athenæum or in The Shelley Papers; and the little Reflection on Love that is to be found in both can hardly be alluded to, because Mrs. Shelley's text of it varies from Medwin's. It is possible that, in the multiplicity of details to be dealt with, the distinction between a cutting from The Keepsake and a series of cuttings from The Athenæum or The Shelley Papers escaped notice.—H.B.F.
NOTES
even thine: In The Keepsake we read even of thine for even thine.
sympathy: This word is omitted in The Keepsake.
and: So in The Keepsake; in the Essays &c., or.
*: These words are ineffectual and metaphorical. Most words are so—No help! [Shelley's Note]
our own soul: In The Keepsake we read our own soul; in the Essays &c., our soul. As a prose expression the earlier reading seems more probable than the latter, which, however, corresponds more closely with the expression in Epipsychidion (line 455), a soul within the soul.
or: In The Keepsake we read and instead of or.
rules: The whole line of thought here and in the following sentence corresponds with the line of thought in Alastor, one would say, rather than with Shelley's studies and writings of 1818.
wind: Cf. Epipsychidion:
I questioned every tongueless wind that flew
Over my tower of mourning, if it knew
Whither 'twas fled, this soul out of my soul;
there is much in Epipsychidion that is reminiscent of Alastor and of the phase of Shelley's existence which produced that earlier poem.
Perhaps Love http://c.mms.blog.xuite.net/c/0/3/b/15579319/blog_442728/dv/7915500/7915500.mp3
古圣先贤的话语就是不同--想想那时候可没有什么google啊。。。所以每每翻起书来,看到欢喜处,能不拍案叫绝,弹冠相庆?
jerryus--同意妳的话。。。
爱情就是那个让妳觉得生命中突然一切都那么美好的媒介, 那个让人心醉,让所有感官都调到最灵敏的状态的东西--爱情,可不是钻石!(看新写的Blood Diamond)
信达雅是老兄所要求的,何不卷起袖子来共襄盛举?
毅兄,“有才”好像现在是贬意吧。。。
蘿莉亞,这首的确是好歌。。。
北鶴兄果然獨具慧眼,佩服啊!!!
聽着"Perhaps Love",讀着" On Love by Shelley"撫平了多少歲月的傷痕。。。吾道不孤,我相信生活總是美好的!!
Here is the song from the Three Tenors, Perhaps Love
Perhaps love is like a resting place
A shelter from the storm
It exists to give you comfort
It is there to keep you warm
And in those times of trouble
When you are most alone
The memory of love will bring you home
Perhaps love is like a window
Perhaps an open door
It invites you to come closer
It wants to show you more
And even if you lose yourself
And don’t know what to do
The memory of love will see you through
Oh, love to some is like a cloud
To some as strong as steel
For some a way of living
For some a way to feel
And some say is holding on
And some say letting go
And some say love is everything
And some say they don’t know
Perhaps love is like the ocean
Full of conflict, full of change
Like a fire when it’s cold outside
Or thunder when it rains
If I should live forever
And all my dreams come true
My memories of love will be of you
Let me think of John Denver's song......could I share his song with all of you? ^_^ ( Perhaps Love )
-- 写得很美。是你翻译的吗?这是上乘的译作。