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

By

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

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轉(zhuǎn)化；蛻變。; 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……視為。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有暴風雨的；暴亂的。world.

[4] My new book was partly inspired by the discovery of a 1968 Penguin edition ofThe Tempest,with an evocative4evocative引起記憶的；喚起感情的。woodcut cover by David Gentleman depicting a galleon lurching5lurch傾斜；蹣跚。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；謎一般的。”, 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掙扎；錯亂地做事或說話。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海中怪獸般的；龐然大物般的。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〉蠣鷸。, grebes10grebe水鳥（一種鳥）；鸊鷉。and seals that might turn into selkie11selkie〈蘇格蘭〉（神話傳說中的）海豹人，海豹精?！猻craping 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（說話）觸及（某人）痛處。, 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；侵蝕。the bones of jettisoned15jettisoned被拋棄的。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胎兒。. 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〈藥〉解毒劑；解藥；矯正方法。to an industrial century. As Shelley’s body was burned on the beach, like a smouldering19smoulder陰燃，燜燃。comet, Byron stripped off and plunged into the sea to defy20defy藐視；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，含義模糊的。image, a residual22residual剩余的；殘留的。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皮艇運動。out to sea to draw cormorants25cormorant鸕鶿。and whales; she spent one summer feeding flounder26flounder比目魚。to a female orca27orca= orcinus orca逆戟鯨。. She is feral28feral野生的；兇猛的；陰郁的。and ferocious29ferocious殘忍的；驚人的。,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絨鴨。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.

“海有許多種聲音/許多神靈及諸多聲音，”T. S.艾略特寫道，“我們無法想象沒有海洋的時代會是什么樣子?！薄耙环N文明，如若沒有船，”米歇爾·福柯評論說，“夢想便會枯竭?！憋@然，這是一片流動的領域，一個充滿轉(zhuǎn)型和蛻變的地方;而我們都源于此。

[2]母親的子宮中，我們在咸水里游泳。我們通過母親肚子里的液體初次感受世界；通過她體內(nèi)的這片海洋聆聽世界。我們會提及水域，即赫爾曼·梅爾維爾筆下“夢幻般平靜的時代，可以注視著海平面的寧靜美麗和燦爛輝煌”。

[3]有人認為，莎士比亞上輩子就是一名水手，因此他的作品中有200次提及“海洋”一詞。其最后一部戲劇佳作《暴風雨》中，那洶涌變幻的大海似乎是對我們所處的暴風雨般世界的真實寫照。

[4]我新書的靈感在一定程度上源自1968年企鵝版《暴風雨》，該版的封面是戴維·金特爾曼的木刻作品，描繪了一艘在遠海傾斜航行的加利恩帆船，令人思緒馳騁。重讀該劇，我才意識到，它從過去暢想未來，好像所有的事情都發(fā)生在創(chuàng)作之前。以評論家安妮·賴特的話來說就是“故作神秘”。

[5]莎士比亞劇中的轉(zhuǎn)變豐富且奇特，使許多作家和藝術(shù)家魂牽夢繞，從梅爾維爾到德里克·賈曼，從J. M. W. 透納到弗吉尼婭·伍爾夫，無一例外。同樣，我也深陷其中。

[6]無論春夏秋冬，每天我都會到海里游泳。小時候，由于極度怕水我甚至不喜歡淋浴，而現(xiàn)在，我認為自己是在彌補失去的美好時光。我直到二十八九歲才學會游泳，那時我住在倫敦東區(qū)，靠領取救濟金生活?？吹轿以诰S多利亞式泳池里胡亂撲騰，一位頭戴泳帽的老婦人很是同情，并教我如何與水為伍?，F(xiàn)在，每天清晨，常常早在破曉之前，我都會騎車出去，騎到南安普頓溺灣的市區(qū)岸邊游泳，那里靠近我長大成人且至今居住之地。

[7]這里不再美好。一座巨大的精煉廠拔地而起，俯瞰大海。工廠一天到晚冒著煙，龐大的班輪和集裝箱船從旁經(jīng)過。我身后是一座荒廢的哥特式修道院，不僅為霍勒斯·沃波爾、約翰·康斯太布爾和透納所贊美，簡·奧斯丁也曾慕名拜訪。但與我相伴的只有蠣鷸、水鳥和可能變成海豹人的海豹——它們在這片工業(yè)區(qū)的河口處勉強度日。

[8] 200年前，約翰·濟慈曾從倫敦來到這里尋求慰藉。不幸的是，他到這兒時，這里沒有海。南安普敦市自詡擁有罕見的雙潮——而且雙潮退去時，海洋也消失了。“我方才所見的南安普敦水域不過是一片枯水，根本不能滿足我更多的期望?！睗葘Φ艿軅冋f。他的神經(jīng)受到了刺激，于是他拿出《暴風雨》，表示：“我能從這里找到安慰?！碑斕煜挛?，他在漲潮之際乘船離開，口袋里還裝著莎翁之作。船兒駛向了另一個充滿奇異聲音的島嶼——懷特島，他在那里創(chuàng)作出十四行詩《在海上》，詩中滿溢“永恒的颯颯聲彌漫/荒蕪的海岸”的情懷。

[9]雪萊從未學過游泳。但他卻無法抵抗水的誘惑——在水里，海洋女神主宰人類的命運，鯊魚啃食非洲奴隸殘留的尸骨。他的朋友回憶道，雪萊躍入河流，漸漸沉入河底，就像不受束縛的嬰兒尋找自己的胎盤。被人從水里拖出來后，雪萊聲稱：“我總能找到井底，他們說真理就在那里?！彼€補充說：“這是個巨大的誘惑，很快我可能就身處另一個星球了?！彼拖褚量逅拱愕暮诎堤焓梗瑝嬄淙碎g，不斷下沉。而且，像拜倫一樣（拜倫喜歡游泳，但游泳時常會嘔吐），他將水奉為解救工業(yè)時代的良方。當雪萊的尸體像一顆燃燒的彗星在海灘上焚燒，拜倫脫去衣衫，一頭扎進海里，向帶走他朋友的大海發(fā)出挑戰(zhàn)。

[10]弗吉尼婭·伍爾夫幼年時光的夏日都是在康沃爾郡圣艾夫斯度過的，對她而言，海洋更象征著命運。她在作品中時常提及某個神秘的形象，那是她對康沃爾海岸所看到海豚的殘存記憶。那個神秘形象一直陪伴著她，在其作品《到燈塔去》《奧蘭多》《海浪》中多次出現(xiàn)。

[11]赫爾曼·梅爾維爾的作品起初在美國其實并不為人所知；其作品被重新發(fā)掘要歸功于英國作家伍爾夫、D. H.勞倫斯和E. M.福斯特，他們體會到了其作品字里行間所反映的奇妙之處。梅爾維爾書中不可企及的白鯨變成了伍爾夫筆下不可企及的白色燈塔；梅爾維爾對時空和性別的處理在《奧蘭多》中重現(xiàn)；而他對深海黑暗的感悟在《海浪》中也有隱喻式的表達。事實上，鯨魚和海豚在伍爾夫的作品中頻頻出現(xiàn)，數(shù)量驚人。

[12]帕特今年80多了，但直到最近才放棄到海上進行皮艇運動，轉(zhuǎn)而去畫鸕鶿及鯨魚。有一整個夏天，她都給一只母逆戟鯨喂食比目魚。帕特強勢不羈，習慣赤腳行走且經(jīng)常在沙灘上裸身享受日光浴，且不屑于所謂的世俗典則。她的木房子像懸在海上的方舟；高揚的浪潮從房下沖過。

[13] 大海既代表著失去也孕育著希望，就像照亮科德角灣的燈塔一般。1月的海邊下雪了，帕特招呼我進屋。剛剛還在冬泳的我顫抖著走上岸。我們注視著海豹從她的海上浮板滑進水里，幾只絨鴨爬上了浮板。寂靜的夜被拍岸的海浪刺破，我和帕特透過窗戶，望向那一望無際的夜幕。就在那里的某個地方，鯨魚正縱身游向那片黑暗神秘、永無止境的大海。

大海對作家和藝術(shù)家的致命誘惑

文/菲利普·霍爾譯/郁郁

［譯者單位：中國礦業(yè)大學（北京）］