Fiction and the Dream

文/约翰·班维尔 译/陈丽

A man wakes in the morning, feeling light-headed, even somewhat dazed.Standing in the curtained gloom in his pyjamas, blinking, he feels that somehow he is not his real, vital, fully conscious self. It is as if that other, alert version of him is still in bed, and that what has got up is a sort of shadow-self, tremulous,two-dimensional. What is the matter?Is he “coming down with something”?He does seem a little feverish. But no,he decides, what is afflicting him is no physical malady. There is, rather,something the matter with his mind. His brain feels heavy, and as if it were a size too large for his skull. Then, suddenly, in a rush, he remembers the dream.

[2] It was one of those dreams that seem to take the entire night to be dreamt. All of him was involved in it, his unconscious, his subconscious,his memory, his imagination; even his physical self seemed thrown into the effort. The details of the dream flood back, uncanny, absurd, terrifying, and all freighted with a mysterious weight—such a weight, it seems, as is carried by only the most profound experiences of life, of waking life, that is. And indeed,all of his life, all of the essentials of his life, were somehow there, in the dream,folded tight, like the petals of a rosebud.Some great truth has been revealed to him, in a code he knows he will not be able to crack. But cracking the code is not important, is not necessary; in fact,as in a work of art, the code itself is the meaning.

男人清晨醒来，感觉头晕，甚至有些神志不清。他穿着睡衣，站在窗帘遮蔽的阴暗里，茫然四顾，感觉自己并不真实，没有活力，尚未完全醒来。就仿佛那个警醒的自己仍然还在床上，起来的只是一个发怯的、二维的影子。出了什么事？病了吗？他的确有些发热，但是不，他认为影响自己的不是身体上的疾病。问题出在他的大脑。他感觉头很重，就仿佛它大了一号，颅骨装不下似的。接着，在一瞬间，他突然想起那个梦。

[2]是那种整晚缠身的梦。他的全部身心都投身其中：无意识、潜意识、记忆、想象力；甚至他的肉身似乎也参与其中。梦的细节如洪水般袭来，诡异、荒谬、令人恐惧，具有一种神秘的沉重感——这种沉重感似乎只有最为深刻的生活，也即清醒的生活，才能具有。啊是的，他所有的生活，他生活的所有核心本质，都以某种方式出现在梦中，紧紧包裹在一起，就像玫瑰蓓蕾的花瓣一样。某个惊人的真相得以展示给他，使用的密码他知道自己无法破解。但是破解密码并不重要，也非必须；事实上，作为艺术品，密码本身就是意义所在。

[3] He puts on his dressing gown and his slippers and goes downstairs. Everything around him looks strange. Has his wife’s eyes developed overnight that slight imbalance, the right one a fraction lower than the left, or is it something he has never noticed before? The cat in its corner watches him out of an eerie stillness. Sounds enter from the street, familiar and at the same time mysterious. The dream is infecting his waking world.

[4] He begins to tell his wife about the dream, feeling a little bashful, for he knows how silly the dreamed events will sound. His wife listens, nodding distractedly. He tries to give his words something of the weight that there was in the dream. He is coming to the crux of the thing, the moment when his dreaming self woke in the midst of the dark wood, among the murmuring voices. Suddenly his wife opens her mouth wide—is she going to beg him to stop,is she going to cry out that she finds what he is telling her too terrifying?—is she going to scream? No: she yawns,mightily, with little inward gasps, the hinges of her jaws cracking, and finishes with a long, shivery sigh, and asks if he would like to finish what is left of the scrambled egg.

[3]他披上睡袍，穿上拖鞋，走下楼梯。四周的一切看起来有些陌生。妻子的眼睛是昨天夜里才变得那样吗——有些轻微的不平衡，右眼比左眼稍微低了一点点，抑或它们一直是那样而他以前从未注意到？角落里的猫盯着他，带着一种怪异的肃穆。街道的声音传了过来，熟悉的同时又有些神秘。那个梦正在影响他的清醒的生活。

[4]他开始给妻子讲述那个梦，有点忸怩，因为他知道那些梦中的情境听起来会有多傻。妻子听他讲着，时不时漫不经心地点点头。他尽量斟酌用词，以体现出梦中的那种沉重感。他就要讲到关键时刻了——就是他梦中的自我在黑暗的林中醒来，听到一片低语的那个时刻。突然，他的妻子张大了嘴巴——她是要请求他闭嘴吗，还是要大喊她觉得他讲述的一切太吓人了？——她是要尖叫吗？不：她打了个呵欠，大大的那种，还轻微倒抽了口气，上下颚的关节咔哒作响。她以一声长长的、颤抖的叹息结束了呵欠，接着问他能不能把剩下的炒蛋吃完。

[5] The dreamer droops, dejected.He has offered something precious and it has been spurned. How can she not feel the signi ficance of the things he has been describing to her? How can she not see the bare trees and the darkened air, the memory of which is darkening the very air around them now—how can she not hear the murmurous voices,as he heard them? He trudges back upstairs to get himself ready for another,ordinary, day. The momentous revelations of the night begin to recede. It was just a dream, after all.

[6] But what if, instead of accepting the simple fact that our most chaotic,our most exciting, our most signi ficant dreams are nothing but boring to others,even our signi ficant others—what if he said to his wife, All right, I’ll show you!I’ll sit down and write out the dream in such an intense and compelling formulation that when you read it you, too,will have the dream; you, too, will find yourself wandering in the wild wood at nightfall; you, too, will hear the dream voices telling you your own most secret secrets.

[5]做梦者垂头丧气。他和盘托出的是某样宝贵的东西，而这个东西被唾弃了。她怎么能感受不到他正在描述的事情的重要性？她怎么能看不到那些光秃秃的树和暗黑的空气，对于它们的回忆正在将他们周围的空气浸染成黑色——她怎么能听不到那些喃喃细语，怎么不像他一样能听到？他步履沉重地走上楼梯，准备迎接又一个平平常常的一天。夜里那个重要的启示开始淡去。毕竟，只是个梦。

[6]我们最杂乱无章、最激动人心、最意义重大的梦，在别人——哪怕是爱人——看来也不过是无聊乏味之事，但是假如我们不接受这个简单的事实呢？假如他告诉妻子，好吧，我展示给你瞧！我会坐下来，把那个梦写出来，让它紧张激烈、扣人心弦，令你在读过之后也会做那个梦；你也会发现自己在黑夜中漫步于那片荒林；你也会听到那些梦中的声音告诉你最为隐秘的秘密。

[7] I can think of no better analogy than this for the process of writing a novel. The novelist’s aim is to make the reader have the dream—not just to read about it, but actually to experience it: to have the dream; to write the novel.

[8] Now, these are dangerous assertions. In this post-religious age, people are looking about in some desperation for a new priesthood. And there is something about the artist in general and the writer in particular which seems priest-like: the unceasing commitment to an etherial faith, the mixture of arrogance and humility, the daily devotions,the confessional readiness to attend the foibles and fears of the laity. The writer goes into a room, the inviolable domestic holy of holies—the study—and remains there alone for hour after hour in eerie silence. With what deities does he commune, in there, what rituals does he enact? Surely he knows something that others, the uninitiates, do not; surely he is privy to a wisdom far beyond theirs.

[9] These are delusions, of course.The artist, the writer, knows no more about the great matters of life and the spirit than anyone else—indeed, he probably knows less. This is the paradox. As Henry James has it, we work in the dark, we do what we can, we give what we have, the rest is the madness of art. And Kafka, with a sad laugh,adds: The artist is the man who has nothing to say.

[7]这是我能想出的关于小说写作过程的最为贴切的类比了。小说家的目标就是要让读者做同样的梦——不仅仅是读它，还要真正亲身去体验它：去做梦；去写小说。

[8]如今，这样的论断是危险的了。在这个后宗教时代，人们四顾茫然，急切地寻求新的神父领路人。而艺术家，尤其是作家，便具有某种类似于神父的品质：对于精神信仰的不灭追求、高傲与谦卑的杂糅混合、日日的自省、聆听忏悔时准备好随时应对普通信徒的弱点和忧惧。作家进入他的房间——书房——家庭空间中神圣不可侵犯的圣地，在那里孤独地一待几个小时，保持着诡异的静默。在那里，他与哪些神祇交流，又实施了哪些仪式？他肯定知道一些不为人知——不为外行所知的——秘密；他肯定悄悄掌握了远超那些外行的智慧。

[9]当然，这些都是假象。艺术家（作家）并不比别人更加了解生活和精神上的大事——事实上，他很可能知道得更少。这就是矛盾所在了。正如亨利·詹姆斯指出的，我们在黑暗中工作，我们尽我们所能，给予我们所能提供的，余下的就是艺术的疯狂了。而卡夫卡则带着忧伤笑着添了句：艺术家就是无话可说的人。

[10] The writer is not a priest, not a shaman, not a holy dreamer. Yet his work is dragged up out of that darksome well where the essential self cowers, in fear of the light.

[11] I have no grand psychological theory of creativity. I do not pretend to know how the mind, consciously or otherwise, processes the base metal of quotidian life into the gold of art. Even if I could find out, I would not want to. Certain things should not be investigated.

[12] The dream world is a strange place. Everything there is at once real and unreal. The most trivial or ridiculous things can seem to carry a tremendous significance, a significance which—and here I agree with Freud—the waking mind would never dare to suggest or acknowledge. In dreams the mind speaks its truths through the medium of a fabulous nonsense. So, I think,does the novel.

[13] The writing of fiction is far more than the telling of stories. It is an ancient, an elemental, urge which springs,like the dream, from a desperate imperative to encode and preserve things that are buried in us deep beyond words.This is its significance, its danger and its glory. ■

[10]作家不是神父，不是僧人，不是神圣的做梦者。然而，他的作品却是从那口深井中拖曳而出：本质的自我就退缩在那口黑暗的深井中，惧怕光明。

[11]我没有宏大的心理学理论来解释创造力。我也不会假装懂得大脑如何有意识或无意识地加工日常生活的基础材料，从中提取艺术的黄金。哪怕我能，我也不想这么做。有些东西不应该被这么研究。

[12]梦境是奇特的世界。那里的一切既真实又虚幻。最琐碎或者最荒谬的事情都看起来具有重大的意义，那种意义——此处我同意弗洛伊德——是清醒的头脑永远也不敢暗示或者承认的。在梦境中，头脑通过不可思议的胡言乱语来讲述真相。我认为小说亦是如此。

[13]写小说远胜于讲故事。它是一种古老的、基本的冲动，像梦一样，源自那种急切地想要编码保存那些东西的冲动——那些东西深埋于我们内心深处，言语无法触及。这就是它的意义、它的危险，也是它的荣耀。 □