2024年夏末秋初，第十届“剑桥徐志摩诗歌艺术节”在剑桥大学国王学院院长官邸开幕。受邀前来的各国诗人、艺术家和学者如期在美丽的康河畔相聚，赏读名家诗作，共赴此次十年之约。

本届剑桥徐志摩诗歌艺术节于9月5日至10月15日举行,以"爱与想象力"为主题。活动内容丰富多彩,包括开幕式、茶会、艺术特展、音乐会、诗歌朗诵与工作坊、影视作品工作坊、图书发布和艺术联展等。

艺术节还特别设立了颁奖环节,表彰为中英交流做出杰出贡献的人士,并以交流晚宴圆满收官。这一系列精心策划的活动不仅展示了丰富的文化内涵,更持续推动着中英两国在文化与艺术领域的深入交流与合作。

爱与想象力

艾伦·麦克法兰

第十届剑桥徐志摩诗歌艺术节序言

十余年来，我与同事们携手努力，致力于在中国与西方（尤其是英格兰和剑桥）之间架起一座理解之桥。在这座桥梁的众多支柱中，20世纪伟大的中国诗人徐志摩及其作品无疑是最为重要的一根。徐志摩曾于1921年至1922年期间就读于剑桥大学国王学院，为纪念他的生平和创作，我们陆续举办了一系列会议、讲座和诗歌艺术节。在这些活动中，我们从不同角度向徐志摩的作品致敬。细思今年的主题“爱与想象力”，这两个词不仅捕捉到了我们这个促进相互理解的宏大项目的精髓，更体现了徐志摩作品的核心所在。

在英语中，“爱”这个词有多层含义，其中之一无疑是走出自我的能力——超越狭隘、自私、内省的视角，让心灵和精神去关怀他人。母爱是理解这种爱的一个绝佳例子：母亲常常不惜牺牲自己，忍受种种艰辛，只因孩子的茁壮成长就是她最大的快乐。美满的婚姻也是如此，最大的喜悦不是来自自身，而是源于让伴侣更幸福、更充实。因此，爱是一种情感的投射，既投向特定个体，也常常延伸至整个社会。它抑制了个人主义和自私的一面，通过同理心和同情心与他人产生共鸣，从而提升“他者”。

在当今世界，爱这种品质显得尤为重要。我们目睹了太多与爱相悖的事物——仇恨、侵略和军事冲突。然而，如果国家、社会或文明能够对那些容易被误解和视为敌人的群体展现些许爱、同理心和同情，那么爱就能治愈我们世界的诸多问题。

谈到诗歌，英国诗歌几乎可以说是关于爱的百科全书。从斯宾塞、莎士比亚、约翰·多恩到现代诗人，我敢说我们最伟大诗作中有四分之三都以这样或那样的形式讲述着爱情，包括婚姻之爱和其他浪漫之情。这与中国传统颇为不同，后者对异性之间的爱情着墨较少。不过，中国诗歌中深深根植着另一种形式的爱——对自然的挚爱。

1921年，徐志摩来到剑桥大学国王学院，开始接触浪漫主义诗人的作品。这些诗作对他产生了深远影响，既有像华兹华斯那样歌颂自然之美的诗人，也有如济慈和雪莱般颂扬其他爱之形式的诗人。正是这些影响塑造了他的诗人气质。

Love and Imagination

For more than ten years now, I've been trying to create, with my colleague Wang Zilan, a bridge of understanding between China and the West (and in particular England  and Cambridge). In building this bridge, one of the main planks has revolved around the work of the great Chinese 20th century poet, Xu Zhimo, who was at King's  College from 1921 to 1922. So we've celebrated his life and work in a series of conferences  and music festivals. In these festivals, we've paid tribute to  various aspects of Zhimo’s work. Thinking about this year's theme, ‘love and  imagination’, these two words capture an essence of both our general project of mutual  understanding and Xu Zhimo's work. 

Love is a word which has many meanings in English, but certainly one of them is the ability to get outside yourself, your own narrow, selfish,  introspective views, and to let your heart and spirit consider another. One way of thinking  of love is the love between a mother and a child, where the mother very often sacrifices  herself. She goes through hardship because her great joy is in the flourishing of her child. It is the same in good marriages, where one of the greatest  pleasures is not for oneself, but when one makes the other person happier and more fulfilled. So love is a projection of the emotions, both to a particular individual and often to the  whole society. It is a halting of the individualistic, selfish side of a person to raise up ‘the other’ through letting your emotion identify with someone through empathy and sympathy. 

Love is a quality which is really essential now in our world, where there is  so much of the opposite of this – hate and aggression and military excursions – whereas if nations  or societies or civilizations showed some love and empathy and sympathy with people  who they too quickly misunderstand and turn into enemies, then love could heal many of  the problems of our world. 

In terms of the poet, English poetry is almost solely about love. I should think three-quarters of our greatest poetry, from Spenser, Shakespeare and John Donne up to modern poetry, is about love in one form or another, married  love and other romantic love. This of course is different from the Chinese tradition, which has much  less emphasis on love of another human being of the opposite sex. Yet another form of love  is deeply present in Chinese poetry, and that is the love of nature. 

When Xu came to King's College, Cambridge in 1921 he started reading the Romantic poets and was deeply moved and influenced by them, both by those who showed deep love for nature like  Wordsworth, and also those who extolled other kinds of love, particularly Keats and Shelley.  This made him into a poet. 

His own poetry is not much about that kind of romantic love, although he had a very romantic kind of personal history, as is well known. He had an arranged marriage and then had the first public divorce in China. He and had a passionate  love affair  with a young girl who then married one of his best friends. He then married a beautiful and talented lady  who became an opium addict. So he had a tragic love life in many ways,  but his poetry is more about nature than love of the romantic kind.  

The other aspect is imagination. Love is the projection of one's emotions. It's the product of the heart in western thought. Imagination involves another part of human beings, which  is their mind and their ‘spirit’, as we call it in the West. Again, it has the central  feature of taking you out of yourself. In this case, not necessarily into another human  being, but out of yourself into other worlds. What you create as an imaginative artist,  whether you're a painter or a poet or a novelist or an individual who is trying to understand other things, is that you rise above yourself, out of the present and the particular place you are. You forget the imprisonment  of your own mind and spirit, and you imagine yourself into another world, another person,  another experience. 

This is one of the most powerful and wonderful things about human beings, that they have this capacity to imagine alternatives. So all great literature  and all great art, and even all great science, is a matter of imagination. Great scientists are often thought to work on the basis of experimental methods. As Einstein said, ‘Imagination is more important than knowledge’ and many others say that the most important characteristic of a scientist is  imagination. Guessing, thinking what is possible and then seeing whether it is true. 

This imaginative faculty is also absolutely essential in international affairs, because it means  that someone who is brought up and only experiences one country or one world, can through imagination  and through reading, travel and through talking to friends, begin to imagine what it would be like to live in another country, and to escape from narrow nationalism, fears and anxieties.  So imagination in international relations is very important, as it is in poetry.  The Romantic poets, particularly Coleridge and Wordsworth, wrote books and treatises about how imagination was the most important of the ingredients in poetry. 

Xu Zhimo most famous poem, ‘Second Farewell to Cambridge’ was one of imagination and memory. He'd loved Cambridge, spent time there, then he'd been away, come back a couple of times. The poem was actually  not written in Cambridge, but on the ship going back to China. In that  poem, Xu imagines himself back with all the heartaches and pleasures of Cambridge. In his ‘mind's eye’, which is a way of talking about imagination, he saw  himself punting  up the Cam river with starlit water and the willows and the reeds. So he was a great  imaginative poet. 

So these twin themes, the emotional and the intellectual and spiritual, are ones which we celebrated in the 10th Xu Zhimo Poetry and Arts Festival. It was a wonderful event with tea ceremonies, music, talks and feasting. It celebrated one of the great strengths of humankind, whether in East or West, namely emotional and  intellectual imagination, through the particular life of Xu Zhimo.

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国王学院大教堂展厅内的艺术展

爱与想象力：当东方遇见西方

展出作品包括：意大利裔艺术家、徐悲鸿在英国的再传弟子彼得·卡瓦鸠蒂的《繁茂的秋天》；剑桥大学生物学教授埃德蒙德·昆琦的《春眠不觉晓》；剑桥大学油画修复专家安妮·马兴的《黄山》系列；剑桥大学三一堂学院图书馆馆长多米尼克·鲁曼尼的《池塘》；简·培根教授的《鸾尾花的种子》。他们是在英国的教育与科研领域作出重要贡献的专家，都同时爱上了中国艺术。此外，中国艺术家陈晔的瓷画《生命力与亡命徒》、戈牧野的油画《国王夏日》、罗莹的版画《春》为展览注入了更丰富的层次与意蕴。

著名艺术家、英国皇家水彩协会前主席大卫·帕斯凯特与他在英国的青少年学生们共同带来了一系列充满青春活力的作品。作品以西方油画和中国工笔画等不同风格的艺术手法，展现了中国传统戏曲与山水园林的空间意境之美。帕斯凯特的油画《牡丹亭》组曲与其学生曹茜琪的《武夷山》、Qianhao Han的作品《心上的绣片》、Michael Guo的作品《昆曲舞台上的道具》、Yolanda Yan的作品《镜中的闺门旦》、牛朝歌的作品《印象之马》、郭思睿的作品《京剧的头面》相映成趣，共同交织成为一首中国文化的艺术协奏曲。

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颁奖与晚宴

本次剑桥徐志摩艺术节还向多位杰出人士颁发了奖项，表彰其在中英文化交流中的杰出表现，其中，剑桥大学国王学院首席园艺师史蒂文·寇戈海尔（剑桥大学徐志摩花园总设计师），法国儿童插画家布丽姬特·马尔佐，剑桥大学计算机科学教授、艺术家简·培根院士获徐志摩艺术奖，大英博物馆的中国古代绘画修复大师邱锦仙获徐志摩终身成就奖，剑桥国王学院副院长、宗教与心理学家史蒂文·切利院士获徐志摩国际文化交流奖，英国诗人詹姆士·寇戈海尔、中国《诗刊》社主编李少君获徐志摩诗歌奖。

麦克法兰院士为获奖者们颁奖

开幕晚宴在国王学院“盐与沼泽”房间内进行，为后续的精彩活动拉开序幕。本届诗歌艺术节为期四周，一直持续至10月15日，期间开展一系列丰富多彩的文化艺术活动，还包括新书发布、时装艺术展、名家访谈等。

本次诗歌艺术节由英国濒临消失的世界基金会、剑桥大学国王学院瑞弗斯文化遗产保护计划主办，并受到剑桥康河出版社、剑桥亚洲文化协会、剑桥华人社区中心、卓尔书店、睦野工作室等协办机构与合作伙伴的大力支持。

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剑桥徐志摩诗歌艺术节缘起

上世纪20年代，中国诗人徐志摩在剑桥大学留学期间创作的《再别康桥》，使这座英国小城在中国广为人知。2014年，剑桥大学国王学院举办“徐志摩影像展”，开启了一系列纪念活动。

在国王学院终身院士、徐志摩花园与诗碑保管人艾伦·麦克法兰教授的主持下，最初的小型诗歌朗诵会因广受欢迎，于2015年发展成为“剑桥徐志摩诗歌艺术节”。

每年夏季，来自世界各地的诗人、艺术家与学者齐聚康河畔，参与学术论坛、艺术展、音乐会与诗歌朗诵会。这些活动不仅丰富了参与者的文化体验，也成为了剑桥大学历史的一部分。

经过多年发展，艺术节已成为英国最具影响力的中英文化交流活动之一，为各国文化工作者提供了国际化的交流平台。历届艺术节围绕“康河·康桥”、“森林与音乐”、“花园与飞鸟”等主题展开，吸引了全球艺术家参与，并得到中外主流媒体的广泛报道，被誉为见证“中英文化交流新时代”的年度盛典。

往期诗歌艺术节展览现场