卡夫卡的现代与奇怪、谦恭不谦逊

文摘   2024-08-11 00:02   美国  

继续《重新评价卡夫卡》的翻译,这是最后一部分,是为十六,十五即《天才与伟人》

What makes Kafka appear so modern and at the same time so strange among his contemporaries in the prewar world is precisely that he refused to submit to any happenings (for instance, he did not want marriage to “happen” to him as it merely happens to most); he was not fond of the world as it was given to him, not even fond of nature (whose stability exists only so long as we “leave it at peace”). He wanted to build up a world in accordance human needs and human dignities, a world where man's actions are determined by himself and which is ruled by his laws and not by mysterious forces emanating from above or from below. Moreover his most poignant wish was to be part of such a world—he did not care to be a genius or the incarnation of any kind of greatness.

卡夫卡之所以在战前世界的同时代人中显得如此现代,同时又如此奇怪,正是因为他拒绝屈服于任何偶然事件(例如,他不想要“偶然”的婚姻,因为大多数人都如此);他不喜欢别人给他的世界,甚至不喜欢大自然(只有我们“让它平静下来”,大自然的稳定才存在)。他想建立一个符合人类需求和人类尊严的世界,一个人类的行为由他自己决定、由他的法律而不是由自上而下的神秘力量统治的世界。此外,他最强烈的愿望是成为这样一个世界的一部分——他不想成为天才或任何伟大的化身。

This of course does not mean, as it is sometimes asserted, that Kafka was modest. It is he who once, in genuine astonishment, noted in his diaries, “Every sentence I write has perfection”—which is a simple statement of truth, but was certainly not made by a modest man. He was not modest; but humble.

译注1944年在Partisan Review发表本文时,but humble”写作“he was humble”。

这当然并不意味着卡夫卡是谦逊的,就像某些人断言的那样。他确实在日记里以一种确定的夸张方式写道:“我写下的每一句话都是完美的”——这就是一个简单明了的声明,是事实,但一定不谦逊。他并不谦逊,但却谦恭。

In order to become part of such a world, a world freed from all bloody apparitions and murderous magic (as he tentatively attempted to describe it at the end, the happy end, of his third novel, Amerika), he first had to anticipate the destruction of a misconstructed world. Through this anticipated destruction he carried the image, the supreme figure, of man as a model of good will, of man the fabricator mundi, the world-builder who can get rid of misconstructions and reconstruct his world. And since these heroes are only models of good will and left in the anonymity, the abstractness of the general, shown only in the very function good will may have in this world of ours, his novels seem to have a singular appeal as though he wanted to say: This man of good will may be anybody and everybody, perhaps even you and me.

译者注:1944年在Partisan Review发表本文时,本段开头一句中没有“, a world freed from all bloody apparitions and murderous magic”。

他在第三部小说《美国》的结尾尝试描绘一个欢乐的终局、一个摆脱了所有血腥幽灵和杀戮魔法的世界。为了成为这样一个世界的一部分,他首先必须期待毁灭一个被错误构建的世界。通过这种预期的破坏,他塑造了一个形象,一个作为善意典范的超级人物,一个能够摆脱错误构建、重建世界的创造者。并且由于这些主人公只是善意典范,而且处在匿名状态,也就是普遍的抽象状态,只有通过我们这个时代中或许善意还具有的功能而显示出来,因此,他的小说看上去只有一个单一的诉求,仿佛他想要说:这个善意的人可能是所有任何一个人,甚至也许就是你和我。

(全文完)

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