104
104
But while Christ did not say to men, “Live for others,” he pointed out that there was no difference at all between the lives of others and one’s own life. By this means he gave to man an extended, a Titan personality. Since his coming the history of each separate individual is, or can be made, the history of the world. Of course Culture has intensified the personality of man. Art has made us myriad-minded[104a]. Those who have the artistic temperament go into exile with Dante[104.1] and learn how salt is the bread of others and how steep their stairs[104b]: they catch for a moment the serenity and calm of Goethe, and yet know but too well why Baudelaire cried to God:
O Seigneur, donnez-moi la force et le courage
De contempler mon corps et mon coeur sans dégo?t.[104.2]
Out of Shakespeare’s sonnets they draw, to their own hurt it may be, the secret of his love and make it their own: they look with new eyes on modern life because they have listened to one of Chopin’s nocturnes, or handle Greek things, or read the story of the passion of some dead man for some dead woman whose hair was like threads of fine gold and whose mouth was as a pomegranate.[104.3] But the sympathy of the artistic temperament is necessarily with what has found expression. In words or in colour, in music or in marble, behind the painted masks of an Aeschylean play[104.4] or through some Sicilian shepherd’s pierced and jointed reeds the man and his message must have been revealed.
但虽然基督并没有对世人说,“为别人而活”,他却指出了他人的生命和自己的生命,其间一点差别也没有。 这样一来,他给了人一个外延了的、巨大的人格。自从他来后,每一个各各分离的个人的历史,就是、或者说就能够成为世界的历史。当然文化强化了人的人格。艺术使得我们心有千千重[104a]。有艺术气质的和但丁一道去流放,去了解他人的艰辛,去明白他们的困苦[104b]:他们有一阵领略到歌德的宁静与从容,然而心里对波德莱尔为什么会向上帝呼告又太清楚了:
啊,主啊,给我力量和勇气吧
让我看着自己的身体和内心而不厌恶。
他们也许是自作自受吧,从莎士比亚的商籁诗中得出他爱的真意,并把它变为己有;他们以新的目光看待现代生活,就因为自己听过了肖邦的一首夜曲;他们或者摆弄古希腊的东西,或者阅读某个死去的男人对某个死去的女人爱得神魂颠倒的故事,那女人发如金丝嘴似石榴。但艺术气质必定是与已然表达的产生共鸣。通过言语或色彩、音乐或大理石,在埃斯库罗斯戏剧的彩画面具背后,在某个西西里岛牧人的芦笛声中,人以及人的信息必定已经被揭示过了。
104