Unit 8 - The Merely Very Good
The Merely Very Good
Jeremy Bernstein
Early in 1981 I received an invitation to give a lecture at a writers' conference that was being held someplace on the Delaware River in Pennsylvania, just across from New Jersey. I don't remember the exact location, but a study of the map convinces me that it was probably New Hope. My first inclination was to say no. There were several reasons. I was living in New York City and teaching full time. My weekends were precious and the idea of getting up before dawn on a Saturday, renting a car, and driving across the entire state of New Jersey to deliver a lecture was repellent. As I recall, the honorarium offered would have barely covered the expense. Furthermore, a subject had been suggested for my lecture that, in truth, no longer interested me. Since I both wrote and did physics, I had often been asked to discuss the connection, if any, between these two activities. When this first came up, I felt obligated to say something, but after twenty years, about the only thing that I felt like saying was that both physics and writing, especially if one wanted to do them well, were extremely difficult.
The conference seemed to be centered on poetry, and one of the things that came to mind was an anecdote that Robert Oppenheimer used to tell about himself. Since Oppenheimer will play a significant role in what follows, I will elaborate. After Oppenheimer graduated from Harvard in 1925, he was awarded a fellowship to study in Europe. Following a very unhappy time in England, where he seems to have had a sort of nervous breakdown, he went to Germany to get his Ph.D.
He studied with the distinguished German theoretical physicist Max Born in Gottingen and took his degree there in 1927 at the age of twenty-three. Born's recollections of Oppenheimer, which were published posthumously in 1975, were not sympathetic. Oppenheimer, he wrote, "was a man of great talent and I was conscious of his superiority in a way which was embarrassing and led to trouble. In my ordinary seminar on quantum mechanics, he used to interrupt the speaker, whoever it was, not excluding myself, and to step to the blackboard, taking the chalk and declaring: 'this can be done much better in the following manner.'" In fact, it got so bad that Oppenheimer's fellow students in the seminar petitioned Born to put a stop to it.
Quantum mechanics had been invented the year before by Erwin Schrodinger, Werner Heisenberg and Paul A. M. Dirac. The next year, Dirac came as a visitor to Gottingen and, as it happened, roomed in the large house of a physician named Cario where Oppenheimer also had a room. Dirac was twenty-five. The two young men became friends—insofar as one could have a friendship with Dirac. As young as he was, Dirac was already a great physicist, and I am sure he knew it. He probably just took it for granted. However, he was, and remained, an enigma. He rarely spoke, but when he did, it was always with extraordinary precision and often with devastating effect. This must have had a profound effect on Oppenheimer. While Oppenheimer was interrupting Born's seminars, announcing that he could do calculations better in the quantum theory, Dirac, only two years older, had invented the subject.
In any case, in the course of things the two of them often went for walks. In the version of the story that I heard Oppenheimer tell, they were walking one evening on the walls that surrounded Gottingen and got to discussing Oppenheimer's poetry. I would imagine that the “discussion" was more like an Oppenheimer monologue, which was abruptly interrupted by Dirac, who asked, "How can you do both poetry and physics? In physics we try to give people an understanding of something that nobody knew before, whereas in poetry…' Oppenheimer allowed one to fill in the rest of the sentence. As interesting as it might have been to hear the responses, this did not seem to be the sort of anecdote that would go over especially well at a conference devoted to poetry.
Pitted against these excellent reasons for my not going to the conference were two others that finally carried the day. In the first place, I was in the beginning stages of a love affair with a young woman who wanted very much to write. She wanted to write so much that she had resigned a lucrative job with an advertising agency and was giving herself a year in which, living on her savings, she was going to do nothing but write. It was a gutsy thing to do, but like many people who try it, she was finding it pretty rough going. In fact, she was rather discouraged. So, to cheer her up, I suggested attending this conference, where she might have a chance to talk with other people who were in the same boat. This aside, I had read in the tentative program of the conference that one of the other tutors was to be Stephen Spender. This, for reasons I will now explain, was decisive.
I should begin by saying right off that I am not a great admirer of Spender's poetry. He is, for me, one of those people whose writing about their writing is more interesting than their writing itself. But I had read with great interest Spender's autobiography— World Within World—especially for what it revealed about the poet who did mean the most to me—namely, W. H. Auden. Auden's Dirac-like lucidity, the sheer wonder of the language, and the sense of fun about serious things—"At least my modem pieces shall be cheery / Like English bishops on the Quantum Theory"—were to me irresistible. I became fascinated by Spender's obsession with Auden. Auden must have been to Spender what Dirac was for Oppenheimer, a constant reminder of the difference between being "great" and being "merely" very good. I was also struck by the fact that, like Oppenheimer, Spender seemed "unfocused." Partly Jewish, partly homosexual, partly a British establishment figure, one wondered when he got time to write poetry. By being profoundly eccentric, both Auden and Dirac, probably not by accident, insulated themselves. They focused like laser beams. What I did not know in 1981—I learned it only after Spender's journals were published in 1986—was that Spender had paid a brief visit to the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton in November of 1956, the year before I got there and two years before Dirac came on one of his perennial visits.
Spender's journal entry on his visit is fascinating both for what it says and for what it does not say. He begins by noting that "Oppenheimer lives in a beautiful house, the interior of which is painted almost entirely white."
This was the director's mansion. Spender did not notice that, because of Oppenheimer's western connections, there was also the odd horse on the grounds. He continues: “He has beautiful paintings. As soon as we came in, he said: 'Now is the time to look at the van Gogh.' We went into his sitting room and saw a very fine van Gogh of a sun above a field almost entirely enclosed in shadows." At the end of my first interview with Oppenheimer, immediately after I had driven cross-country from Los Alamos in a convertible with a large hole in the roof and had been summoned to the interview while still covered in grime, he said to me that he and his wife had some pictures I might like to look at sometime. I wondered what he was talking about. Some months later I was invited to a party at the Oppenheimers, and realized that he was talking about a van Gogh. Some years later, I learned that this was part of a small collection he had inherited from his father to which he had never added.
In his journal entry, Spender describes Oppenheimer's physical appearance: "Robert Oppenheimer is one of the most extraordinary-looking men I have ever seen. He has a head like that of a very small intelligent boy, with a long back to it, reminding one of those skulls which were specially elongated by the Egyptians. His skull gives an almost eggshell impression of fragility, and is supported by a very thin neck. His expression is radiant and at the same time ascetic.," Much of this description seems right to me except that it leaves out the fact that Oppenheimer did have the sunwrinkled look of someone who had spent a great deal of time outdoors, which he had.
Spender also does not seem to have remarked on Oppenheimer's eyes, which had a kind of wary luminescence. Siamese cats make a similar impression. But more important, Oppenheimer appears in Spender's journal as a disembodied figure with no contextual relevance to Spender's own life.
There is no comment about the fact that, three years earlier, Oppenheimer had been "tried" for disloyalty to this country and that his clearance had been taken away. One of the charges brought against him was that his wife, Katherine Puening Oppenheimer, was the former wife of Joseph Dallet, who had been a member of the Communist Party and who had been killed in 1937 fighting for the Spanish Republican Army. In 1937, Spender was also a member of the Communist Party in Britain and had also spent time in Spain. Did Oppenheimer know this? He usually knew most things about the people who interested him. Did "Kitty" Oppenheimer know it? Did this have anything to do with the fact that, during Spender's visit, she was upstairs "ill"? Spender offers no comment. What was he thinking? There were so many things the two of them might have said to each other, but didn't. They talked about the invasion of the Suez Canal.
In the fall of my second year at the institute, Dirac came for a visit. We all knew that he was coming, but no one had actually encountered him, despite rumored sightings. By this time, Dirac, who was in his mid-fifties, had a somewhat curious role in physics. Unlike Einstein, he had kept up with many of the developments and indeed from time to time commented on them.
But, like Einstein, he had no school or following and had produced very few students. He had essentially no collaborators. Once, when asked about this, he remarked that "the really good ideas in physics are had by only one person. That seems to apply to poetry as well. He taught his classes in the quantum theory at Cambridge University, where he held Newton's Lucasian chair, by, literally, reading in his precise, clipped way from his great text on the subject. When this was remarked on, he replied that he had given the subject a good deal of thought and that there was no better way to present it.
At the institute we had a weekly physics seminar over which Oppenheimer presided, often interrupting the speaker. Early in the fall we were in the midst of one of these—there were about forty people in attendance in a rather small room—when the door opened. In walked Dirac. I had never seen him before, but I had often seen pictures of him. The real thing was much better. He wore much of a blue suit—trousers, shirt, tie, and, as I recall, a sweater——but what made an indelible impression were the thigh-length muddy rubber boots. It turned out that he was spending a good deal of time in the woods near the institute with an ax, chopping a path in the general direction of Trenton. Some years later, when I had begun writing for The New Yorker and attempted a profile of Dirac, he suggested that we might conduct some of the sessions while clearing this path. He was apparently still working on it.
Now it is some twenty-five years later. The sun has not yet come up, and I am driving across the state of New Jersey with my companion. We have left New York at about 5 A.M. so that I will arrive in time for a midmorning lecture.
I have cobbled something together about physics and writing. Neither of us has had a proper breakfast. As we go through the Lincoln Tunnel I recall an anecdote my Nobelist colleague T. D. Lee once told me about Dirac. He was driving him from New York to Princeton through this same tunnel. Sometime after they had passed it, Dirac interrupted his silence to remark that, on the average, about as much money would be collected in tolls if they doubled the toll and had tollbooths only at one end. A few years later the Port Authority seems to have made the same analysis and halved the number of tollbooths. We pass the turnoff that would have taken us to Princeton. It is tempting to pay a visit. But Oppenheimer is by then dead and Dirac living in Florida with his wife, the sister of fellow physicist Eugene Wigner. Dirac used to introduce her to people as Wigner's sister, as in "I would like you to meet Wigner's sister." Dirac died in Florida in 1984.
We arrived at the conference center a few minutes before my lecture was scheduled to begin. There was no one, or almost no one, in the lecture room. However, in midroom, there was Spender. I recognized him at once from his pictures. Christopher Isherwood once described Spender's eyes as having the "violent color of blue-bells." Spender was wearing a dark blue suit and one of those striped British shirts—Turnbull and Asser?—the mere wearing of which makes one feel instantly better. He had on a club tie of some sort. He said nothing during my lecture and left as soon as it was over, along with the minuscule audience that I had traveled five hours by car to address.
My companion and I then had a mediocre lunch in one of the local coffee shops. There seemed to be no official lunch. I was now thoroughly out of sorts and was ready to return to New York, but she wanted very much to stay for at least part of Spender's poetry workshop, and so we did.
I had never been to a poetry workshop and couldn't imagine what one would consist of. I had been to plenty of physics workshops and knew only too well what they consisted of: six physicists in a room with a blackboard shouting at one another. The room where Spender was to conduct his workshop was full, containing perhaps thirty people. One probably should not read too much into appearances, but these people—mostly women—looked to me as if they were clinging to poetry as if it were some sort of life raft. If I had had access to Spender's journals (they came out a few years later), I would have realized that he was very used to all of this. In fact, he had been earning his living since his retirement from University College in London a decade earlier by doing lectures and classes for groups like this. I would also have realized that by 1981 he was pretty tired of it, and pretty tired of being an avatar for his now dead friends—Auden, C. Day Lewis, and the rest. He had outlived them all, but was still under their shadow, especially that of Auden, whom he had first met at Oxford at about the same age and same time that Oppenheimer had met Dirac.
Spender walked in with a stack of poems written by the workshop members. He gave no opening statement, but began reading student poems. I was surprised by how awful they were. Most seemed to be lists: "sky, sex, sea, earth, red, green, blue," and so forth.
Spender gave no clue about what he thought of them. Every once in a while he would interrupt his reading and seek out the author and ask such a question as, "Why did you choose red there rather than green? What does red mean to you?" He seemed to be on autopilot.
It is a pity that there are no entries in Spender's journals for this precise period. But it is clear that he was leading a rich social life at the time: dinner with Jacqueline Onassis one day, the Rothschilds' at Mouton a week later— the works. My feeling was that whatever he was thinking of had little to do with this workshop. Somehow, I was getting increasingly annoyed. It was none of my business, I guess, but I had put in a long day, and I felt that Spender owed us more. I didn't know what—but more.
My companion must have sensed that I was about to do something because she began writing furiously in a large notebook that she had brought along. Finally, after one particularly egregious "list," I raised my hand. Spender looked surprised, but he called on me. “Why was that a poem?” I asked. In reading his journals years later, I saw that this was a question that he had been asked by students several times and had never come up with an answer that really satisfied him. In 1935, Auden wrote an introduction for an anthology of poetry for schoolchildren in which he defined poetry as "memorable speech." That sounds good until one asks, Memorable to whom? Doesn't it matter? If not, why a workshop?
I can't remember what Spender answered, but I then told him that, when I was a student, I had heard T. S. Eliot lecture.
After the lecture one of the students in the audience asked Eliot what he thought the most beautiful line in the English language was—an insane question, really, like asking for the largest number. Much to my amazement Eliot answered without the slightest hesitation, "But look, the morn in russet mantle clad / Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastward hill." I asked Spender what he thought the most beautiful line in the English language was. He got up from his chair and in a firm hand wrote a line of Auden's on the blackboard. He looked at it with an expression that I have never forgotten—sadness, wonder, regret, perhaps envy. He recited it slowly and then sat back down. There was total silence in the room. I thanked him, and my companion and I left the class.
I had not thought of all of this for many years, but recently, for some reason, it all came back to me, nearly. I remembered everything except the line that Spender wrote on the blackboard. All that I could remember for certain was that it had to do with the moon—somehow the moon. My companion of fifteen years ago is my companion no longer: so I could not ask her. I am a compulsive collector of data from my past, mostly in the form of items that were once useful for tax preparation. Perhaps I had saved the program of the conference with the line written down on it. I looked in the envelopes for 1981 and could find no trace of this trip.
Then I had an idea—lunatic, lunar, perhaps. I would look through Auden's collected poems and seek out every line having to do with the moon; to see if it jogged my memory. One thing that struck me, once I started this task, was that there are surprisingly few references to the moon in these poems. In a collection of eight hundred and ninety-seven pages, I doubt if there are twenty. From Moon Landing, there is "Unsmudged, thank God, my Moon still queens the Heavens as she ebbs and fulls…" or from The Age of Anxiety, Mild, unmilitant, as the moon rose / And reeds rustled…" or from "Nocturne," "Appearing unannounced, the moon / Avoids a mountain's jagged prongs / And seeps into the open sky / Like one who knows where she belongs" —all wonderful lines, but not what I remembered. The closest was "White hangs the waning moon / A scruple in the sky…" also from The Age of Anxiety. This still didn't seem right.
Then I got an idea. I would reread Spender's journals to see if he mentions a line in Auden's poetry that refers to the moon. In the entry for the sixth of February 1975, I found this: "It would not be very difficult to imitate the late Auden. [He had died in 1973.] For in his late poetry there is a rather crotchety persona into whose carpet slippers some ambitious young man with a technique as accomplished could slip.
But it would be very difficult to imitate the early Auden, 'this lunar beauty / has no history, / Is complete and early…'" This, I am sure of it now, is the line that Spender wrote on the blackboard that afternoon in 1981.
Poor Stephen Spender, poor Robert Oppenheimer, each limited, if not relegated, to the category of the merely very good, and each inevitably saddened by his knowledge of what was truly superior. "Being a minor poet is like being a minor royalty," Spender wrote in his journals, "and no one, as a former lady-in-waiting to Princess Margaret once explained to me, is happy as that." As for Oppenheimer, I recall Isidor Rabi once telling me that "if he had studied the Talmud and Hebrew, rather than Sanskrit, he [Oppenheimer] would have been a much greater physicist. I never ran into anyone who was brighter than he was. But to be more original and profound I think you have to be more focused."
As Spender says, W. H. Auden's poetry cannot be imitated, any more than Paul Dirac's physics can be. That is what great poetry and great physics have in common: Both are swept along by the tide of unanticipated genius as it rushes past the merely very good.
参考译文——仅仅不错
仅仅不错
杰里米·伯恩斯坦
早在1981年，我收到过一份邀请我在一次作家年会上做讲座的请柬，这次会议在宾夕法尼亚州特拉华河沿岸过新泽西不远的某地召开。我记不起确切的地点了，但仔细查看地图后我确信应该是在新望市。我最初的意向是拒绝。有多种理出。首先我住在纽约，并担负着全职的教学工作，周末是很宝贵的。一想到周六天不亮就要起床，还要租车，然后驾车穿越整个新泽西州去做个讲座，实在是很厌烦。我回想起所给的酬金几乎还不足以支付行程所需的这些花费。此外，建议我讲的主题实际上我已经不再感兴趣了。我既写作又从事物理学研究，因此人们经常让我谈论两者之间的联系。这个议题最初提出的时候，我觉得还有必要讲一讲。可是二十年过去了，我现在唯一想要说的就是搞物理学和搞写作都极其困难，尤其是在一个人想做得尽善尽美的时候。
大会的中心议题似乎在诗歌上，于是我想起罗伯特·奥本海默过去讲述的关于他自己的一件事。由于奥本海默将在下面的故事中扮演重要的角色，我会详细讲述他。奥本海默1925年从哈佛毕业后，被授予研究员的资格到欧洲学习。在英国他似乎有些神经衰弱的症状，在那里度过了一段不愉快的时光之后，他去德国攻读博士学位。
在哥廷根，他跟随著名的德国理论物理学家马克思·伯恩一同搞研究，并于1927年他23岁时在那里获得了博士学位。1975年伯恩去世后出版的对奥本海默的回忆录中对其毫无赞同之词。“奥本海默，”他写道，“是伟大的天才，我在一种令人尴尬并频惹麻烦的方式上意识到他多么优秀。在上我的量子力学的常规研讨课时，他经常打断发言者，不管他是谁，也包括我在内，然后跨上讲台，拿起粉笔，宣称：‘用下面的方式可以把这做得更好。’”实际上，这样做很糟糕，以至于他的同学恳求伯恩制止这样事情的再度发生。
量子力学在此前一年由埃尔温·薛定谔、沃纳·海森堡和保罗·A.M·狄拉克创造。第二年，狄拉克到哥廷根做客，碰巧的是他下榻在一位名叫加里奥的物理学家的大房子里，奥本海默正好也住在那里。狄拉克当时25岁。两个年轻人成了朋友——迄今为止他是唯一能和狄拉克建立友谊的人。狄拉克如此年轻，可已经是个伟大的物理学家了，我确信他知道这一点。也许他觉得无所谓。然而，他从前，直至现在仍然是个谜。他很少说话，但一旦开口，他的话往往极为精确，而且常常具有压倒一切的威力。这一定对奥本海默产生了深远的影响。当奥本海默还在打断伯恩的讲座，声称他可以运用量子理论把计箅做得更好的时候，只比他年长两岁的狄拉克已经设置了这个课题。
无论如何，那时两个人经常一块散步。在我听说足奥本海默所讲述的那个故事的版本中，一天傍晚他们正在哥廷根周围的城墙上散步，讨论着奥本海默的诗歌。我可以想象，这种“讨论”更像奥本海默的个人独白。狄拉克会突然打断他，问道：“你怎么能够又写诗又搞物理学？在物理学的领域里我们尽力让人们明白从前没人知道的事情，可是诗歌……”。奥本海默意在用后半句未填的内容留给人们广泛的想象空间。尽管听听人们对此的反应可能会很有趣，可这似乎并不是适合在以诗歌为主题的年会上讲的话题。
尽管有这些不去参加会议的冠冕堂皇的理由，另外两个原因最终还是占了上风。首先，我刚刚同一位极其热衷于写作的年轻女士同沐爱河。她对写作是如此热切以至于为此她甚至辞掉了一家广告公司的报酬丰取的工作，给了自己一年时间，在此期间她紧靠积蓄生活，除了写作什么也不做。这么做的确勇气可嘉，可是像许多如此尝试的人一样，她逐渐觉得异常艰难，毫无进展。事实上，她已经有些泄气了。因此，为让她高兴，振作起来，我建议参加这个会，在会上她也许有机会同与她处于相同困境的人谈谈。这个暂且不提，我读到会议的暂定议程，得知其他的导师之一是斯蒂芬·斯彭德。这才决定了我最终的行程，原因我会马上解释。
我得首先说明我并不是斯彭德诗歌的狂热崇拜者。对我来说，他是那种关于自己作品的评论比作品本身更有趣的那类人之一。不过我曾饶有兴趣地读过斯彭德的自传《世界中的世界》，尤其是书中谈到的一位对我很重要的诗人，即W. H.奥登。奥登的狄拉克式的冷静清晰，对语言的十足妙用，对严肃的事情的幽默感——例如“至少我现代风格的作品会给人带来欢乐，就如英国的主教在论述量子力学。”这样的诗句——对我来说具有不可抗拒的魅力。我为斯彭德对奥登的痴迷所吸引。奥登对于斯彭德所产生的意义一定跟狄拉克对于奥本海默一样，不断地提醒着“伟大”与“仅仅不错”之间的差别。另外，与奥本海默一样，斯彭德看起来似乎有些“不够集中”，这也让我印象深刻。一部分信仰犹太教，一部分有点同性恋倾向，一部分又是英国当权派中的人物，人们很奇怪他用什么时间来写诗。不像奥登和狄拉克，也许他们极其怪异的举止很自然就把他们自己与世隔绝。他们像激光光束一样集中。1981年我还有所不知的是斯彭徳曾于1956年11月简短地拜访过普林斯顿的高级研究院，是在我到那里的前一年，比狄拉克常年访问中的一次还早两年。直到1986年斯彭德的日记发表以后我才知道这些。
斯彭德在日记中对他那次访问的描述十分吸引人，包括所提到的和没有提到的事情。在日记的开头他写逍：“奥本海默住在一所漂亮的房子里，内部几乎彻底粉刷成白色。”
这就是研究院主管的公寓。斯彭德没苻注意到，由于奥本海默的西方情结，他的庭院里还有一匹古怪的马。斯彭德接着写道：“奥本海默有漂亮的油画。我们刚一进来，他就说，‘现在是欣赏梵·高的时候了。’我们走进他的起居室，看到一幅优秀的梵·高作品，在画上太阳高高地悬挂在几乎完全被阴影所笼罩的田地上空。”在我驾着篷顶露个大洞的折篷汽车，翻山越岭从洛斯阿拉莫斯风尘仆仆赶来赴约的这次与奥本海默的首次见面结束的时候，他对我说他和他妻子有些画，也许我什么时候愿意看看。我那时不太明白他说的是什么样的画，几个月以后我受邀来到一个在奥本海默家里举办的晚会，才意识到他说的是一幅梵·高的画。几年以后，我了解到这是他从他父亲那儿继承的小规模收藏的一部分，他自己从来没有再增添过。
斯彭德在日记中对奥本海默的相貌做了描述：“罗伯特·奥本海默是我见过的样貌最奇特的人之一。他的头就像一个聪明的小孩的头，后脑勺很长，让人想到被埃及人特意拉长的那些脑壳。他的脑壳给人的感觉像脆弱易碎的鸡蛋壳，撑在一根细细的脖子上面。他的表情看起来总是神采奕奕，但同时又像苦行僧一般。”在我看来这个描写大部分都是准确的，只是他遗漏了这样一个事实：奥本海默有一幅像一个大量时间在户外度过的人那样满布晒纹的相貌，而事实也是如此。
斯彭德似乎也没有对奥本海默的那双总是闪着一种谨慎的寒光的眼睛进行评论。暹罗猫的眼睛也可以给人一种类似的感觉。但是更更重要的是，出现在斯彭徳的日志中的奥本海默是一个游离于斯彭德本人的生活环境之外的脱离实体的人物。
日记中也没有评论这样一个事实：三年前奥本海默曾因被疑为对国家不忠而受到“审讯”，其接触国家机密文件的权利被剥夺。不利于他的一项指控是他的妻子凯瑟琳·普宁·奥本海默也是约瑟夫·戴勒特的前妻。约瑟夫·戴勒特曾是一名共产党员，在1937年与西班牙共和军的战斗中牺牲。同一年，斯彭德也是英国共产党员，当时也在西班牙。奥本海默知道这件事吗？他总是知道他所感兴趣的人的大多数事情。“基蒂”·奥本海默知道这件亊吗？这与斯彭德来访期间她正在楼上养“病”避而不见的事实是否有关？斯彭德在日记里没有任何评述。他那时在想什么？他们两人有许多可以互相倾诉的事情，却什么都没谈，谈的只是苏伊士运河的入侵。
我在研究院的第二年的秋天，狄拉克来到这里访学。我们都知道他要来，却没有人真的遇到过他，尽管谣言有人看到他在远处的身影。当时已经50多岁的狄拉克，在物理学界仍然占据有点奇怪的一席之地。与爱因斯坦不同的是，他能够紧跟研究领域的发展形势，还能不时地品头论足一番。
但是跟爱因斯坦一样，他没有建立学派，没有追随者，也没有培养出几个学生。基本上也没有合作者。有一次被问及此事时，他说：“物理学上真正有价值的见地，只属于个人。”这个说法好像对诗歌也挺合适。他曾经在剑桥大学教授量子理论课程，在那里他坐着牛顿曾经执掌过的卢卡斯教授的席位，在教授课程时他以一种精确的、掐头去尾的方式念着与课题有关的他本人的著作中的东西。当有人对此质疑时，他回答说他对该课题钻研至深，但没有更好的方式演示出来。
在研究院有一个每周一次由奥本海默主持的物理学研讨会，他还是不停地打断发言者。初秋的一天，其中一个研讨会正在进行，当时那个小房间容纳了大约有40余位与会者。这时门开了，狄拉克走了进来。我以前从来没有见过他，不过经常看到他的照片。他本人比照片好多了。他大致穿的是蓝色的套装——西裤、衬衫、领带，还有，我记得他还穿着一件毛衫。但是真正给人留下刻骨难忘的印象的是他的那双过膝的、粘满污泥的橡胶靴。后来证明他是在离研究院不远的树林里用了很长的时间手持板斧朝特顿大致的方向开辟一条小路。几年以后，当我开始给《纽约人》杂志撰稿时，试阁要一个狄拉兑的个人简介，他建议我们可以一边淸理那条小路一边找一些时间来谈这件事。很明显他仍然在从事着这项工作。
现在大约25年过去了。太阳还没有升起，我正驾车和我的女友穿越新泽西州。我们大约在早晨五点钟离开纽约，这样我才能及时到会做一个安排在上午的讲座。
我胡乱拼凑了一些关于物理学与写作之间的关系的东西。我们俩都没好好地吃一顿早饭。当我们穿越林肯隧道时，我想起我的同伴诺贝尔奖获得者李政道讲的一件关于狄拉克的轶事。他当时正开车穿过这座隧道送狄拉克从纽约去普林斯顿。已经通过隧道的某个时候，狄拉克打破沉默说道：平均起来，如果把通行费提高一倍而只把收费站建在隧道的一端，收上来的钱其实是一样多的。几年以后，口岸管理部门似乎做了同样的分析，然后把收费站的数量减半。我们经过了通向普林斯顿方向的岔道。很想去拜访一下。可是那时奥本海默已经去世，狄拉克和妻子住在佛罗里达。他的妻子是他的物理学家同伴尤金·维格纳的妹妹。狄拉克过去常常把妻子以维格纳的妹妹的身份介绍给人们，比如：“我想让你们认识一下维格纳的妹妹。”狄拉克于1984年在佛罗里达去世。
我们到达会议中心的时候距离我做讲座的预定时间仅有几分钟了。讲堂里没有任何人，或者说几乎没有人。但是在屋子的中央斯彭德正坐在那里。我见过他的照片，所以立刻就认出他来。克里斯托弗·伊舍伍德曾描绘斯彭德的眼睛里如同有“蓝铃花般狂热的色彩”。斯彭德身着一套深蓝色的西装和一件英式的条纹衬衫——特恩布尔-阿瑟品牌？——仅仅穿上就立即让人赏心悦目的那种。他系着一条某个俱乐部的领带。在我的整个讲座中他一言不发，一结束就立即起身离去，随之离开的还有那些我驾车奔波了五个小时给他们做讲座的一小撮听众。
然后我和我的女友在当地的一家咖啡馆吃了顿不入流的午餐，会议方好像没有准备正式的午餐。此时我情绪不佳，厌烦透顶，想马上启程回纽约去，但是我的女友非常想多待一阵，至少等到看看部分斯彭德的诗歌讲习班，所以我们留了下来。
我从未参加过这种诗歌讲习班，无法想象其中会有些什么内容。我倒是去过很多物理学讲习班，因此太知道它们都做什么：六个物理学家在一个带有黑板的房间里互相叫嚷。斯彭德要举行诗歌讲习班的房间里挤得满满的，容纳了大约有三十个人。一个人也许不应该过于以貌取人，可是这些人大多数是女士——在我看来好像过于迷恋诗歌，视它为救命稻草一般。如果那时我能有幸接触到斯彭德的日记的话（这些日记几年以后才出版），我就会知道他对所有的这一切已经习以为常了。事实上，自从十年前他从伦敦的大学学院退休以后就以给这样的人群做讲座和开讲习班维持生计。我还得知，1981年的时候他对此已经十分厌倦了，他也厌倦了做他如今已经过世了的朋友——奥登、C戴·刘易斯以及其他人的替身。他比他们每个人都长寿，可是仍然活在他们的阴影里，尤其是奥登，那个他在牛津初次结识的人，刚好和奥本海默遇到狄拉克是同一年龄，也是同一时期。
斯彭德带着一叠讲习班成员写的诗走了进来。他没做任何开场就开始读起学员们的诗来。我惊讶于那些诗竟然写得如此糟糕，大多数都像一串清单，什么“天空、性爱、海洋、大地、红色、绿色、蓝色”等等。
斯彭德没有露出任何想表达对这些诗的看法的蛛丝马迹，只是偶尔间断朗读，找到作者问问类似这样的问题：“为什么你选用红色而不是绿色？红色对你意味着什么？”他对这种过程驾轻就熟，如同在用自动驾驶仪一般。
很遗憾斯彭德的日记中没有记载这段时期的只言片语，但是很明显他当时过着一种丰富多彩的社交生活：某日与杰奎琳·奥纳西斯一同进餐，一星期以后在缪顿的罗氏银行——手段高明。我感觉无论他怎么想都与这个讲习班无关。不知为什么，我越来越觉得恼怒。我猜这不关我的事。不过我耗费了一整天的时间，我觉得斯彭德欠了我们很多。我说不清欠的什么——反正很多。
我的女友一定感觉到了我要做些什么，因为她开始在她随身带来的一个大笔记本上狂写一通。最终，在听完了一个尤其恶劣的“淸单”之后，我举起了手。斯彭德看起来有点惊讶，但还是叫了我。“那为什么也算是一首诗？”我问道。几年后读了他的日记我才发现，这是一个他已经被学生问过很多遍却从来没有想出一个令他自己满意的答案的问题。1935年，在一篇奥登为一本给小学生写的诗集做的序中，他对诗歌给出了“难忘的演讲”这样的定义。这个定义听起来还不赖，直到有人问道：对谁难忘？这很重要吗？如果不重要，为什么要弄讲习班？
我已经记不得当时斯彭德是怎么回答我的，但是之后我告诉他，在我还是学生的时候，我听过T.S.艾略特的讲座。
讲座后听众中有一个学生问艾略特他认为最美的英文诗句是什么，一个愚蠢的问题，真的，就像问最大的数字是什么一样。令我万分吃惊的是，艾略特毫不犹豫地回答了这个问题，“瞧，清晨披着金黄色的氅蓬，踏着高山上的露珠从东方走来。”于是我问斯彭德，他认为最美的英文诗句是什么。他从椅子上站起，坚定地在黑板上写下了一行奥登的诗句。他以一种我永难忘怀的复杂表情看着诗句——悲伤、惊叹、悔恨，也许还有妒忌。他慢慢地背诵了一遍，然后坐了回去。房间里悄无声息。我谢了他，与我的女友离开了课堂。
我已经很多年没有想过这些事了，可是最近由于某种原因，我几乎又都想起来了。我记得所有的事情，除了斯彭德写在黑板上的那行诗句。我的的确确能够记起来的就是那句诗与月亮有关一反正是某种关于月亮的东西。我十五年前的那位女友如今已经不再是女友了，所以我也没法去问她。我是个收集成癖的人，热衷于收集过去的数据资料，多数资料以条款的形式列出，曾经对返税起了作用。或许我保存了那次会议的章程，上面会写着那句诗。我仔细翻看了装着1981年材料的信封，没有找到一丁点儿关于那次旅行的资料。
后来我有了个主意——愚蠢透顶的（lunatic)、月亮的（lunar)，也许这两个字差不多。我要从头到尾查遍奥登所有的诗集，找出每一句与月亮有关的诗句来，看看我是不是能够突然想起来。这项工作一旦开始，令我惊奇的是，我才发现这些诗里与月亮有关的诗句寥寥无几！在一本长达897页的诗集中，我怀疑可能连二十句都没有。在《月球登陆》里有“谢天谢地，我的月亮没有受到污染，月缺又月圆，她仍后居天庭……”或者在《焦虑的时代》里，“月亮升起，温柔，安详，草在摇曳……”，还有在《夜曲》里的“月亮出现，悄然无声，避让山峦的獠牙磋齿；悄悄然，溜进开阔的天空，豁然知所处”——都是奇妙的诗句，可都不是我记得的那一句。最接近的是“渐逝的月儿苍白地高悬，犹豫踌躇在天边……”，也是《焦虑的时代》里的。可是这似乎也不对。
后来我又有了一个主意。我要重读一遍斯彭德的日记，看看其中他是否提到过一句奥登的有关月亮的诗。在1975年2月6日的那篇日记中我找到了这样的话：“模仿晚年的奥登并不是件闲难的事。(他于1973年去世。）因为在他晚年的诗歌里有一种暴躁的人格面貌，一些有抱负的有聪明技巧的年轻人完全可以效仿。
但是模仿早期的奥登就很难了。‘此月之美，无始无终，初始即已成……’”这一句，我敢肯定，正是1981年那个下午斯彭德写在黑板上的那行诗。
可怜的斯蒂芬·斯彭德，可怜的罗伯特·奥本海默，都被局限在或归类到仅仅不错之列，而他们又清楚地知道什么叫作出类拔萃，这就使他们不可避免地感到悲哀。“做个不太著名的诗人如同做个不太重要的王族中人，”斯彭德在日记中写道，“任何人，正如玛格利特公主的侍卫女官有一次给我解释的那样，做成那种角色都不会髙兴的。”至于奥本海默，我记得埃斯德·拉比曾经跟我说：“如果他研究的是犹太教法典和希伯来语，而不是梵语的话，他（奥本海默）或许会成为更伟大的物理学家。我从未遇见过比他更聪明的人。但要想更具独创性、更有深度，人还是要更专注于某个领域才行。”
正如斯彭德所说，W.H.奥登的诗无法模仿，保罗·狄拉克的物理学更无法模仿。那才是伟大的诗歌与伟大的物理学的共同之处：都是随着无法预见的天才们掀起的浪潮狂扫而来，而同时把仅仅不错的人冲刷殆尽。
Key Words:
anecdote ['ænikdəut]
n. 轶事，奇闻
inclination [.inkli'neiʃən]
n. 倾向，意愿，倾斜度
enigma [i'nigmə]
n. 费解的事情，谜，谜一般的人
superiority [sju.piəri'ɔriti]
n. 优越性，优势
monologue ['mɔnəlɔg]
n. 独白，长篇大论，独角戏
obsession [əb'seʃən]
n. 困扰，沉迷，着魔，妄想
eccentric [ik'sentrik]
adj. 古怪的，反常的，不同圆心的
admirer [əd'maiərə]
n. 赞赏者；钦佩者；爱慕者
perennial [pə'reniəl]
adj. 四季不断的，继续多年的，永久的 n. 多年生植
fragility [frə'dʒiliti]
n. 脆弱，虚弱，易碎
ascetic [ə'setik]
adj. 禁欲的 n. 苦行者
autobiography [.ɔ:təbai'ɔgrəfi]
n. 自传
canal [kə'næl]
n. 运河，沟渠，气管，食管
wary ['wɛəri]
adj. 小心的，机警的
companion [kəm'pænjən]
n. 同伴，同事，成对物品之一，(船的)甲板间扶梯
indelible [in'delibl]
adj. 不能擦除的，不能磨灭的，难忘的
minuscule ['minəskju:l]
n. 小写字 adj. 小写字的，很小的
raft [rɑ:ft]
n. 筏，救生艇，大量 v. 乘筏，制成筏
mediocre ['mi:diəukə]
adj. 平庸的，平凡的
memorable ['memərəbl]
adj. 值得纪念的，难忘的
anthology [æn'θɔlədʒi]
n. 诗选，文选
trace [treis]
n. 痕迹，踪迹，微量
imitate ['imiteit]
vt. 仿制，仿造，模仿，仿效
scruple ['skru:pl]
n. 顾忌，迟疑 n. 微量 vi. 顾虑
jagged ['dʒægid]
adj. 锯齿状的，参差不齐的
mild [maild]
adj. 温和的，柔和的
superior [su:'piəriə]
n. 上级，高手，上标
参考资料：
- 现代大学英语精读(第2版)第五册:U8 The Merely Very Good(1)_大学教材听力 - 可可英语
- 现代大学英语精读(第2版)第五册:U8 The Merely Very Good(2)_大学教材听力 - 可可英语
- 现代大学英语精读(第2版)第五册:U8 The Merely Very Good(3)_大学教材听力 - 可可英语
- 现代大学英语精读(第2版)第五册:U8 The Merely Very Good(4)_大学教材听力 - 可可英语
- 现代大学英语精读(第2版)第五册:U8 The Merely Very Good(5)_大学教材听力 - 可可英语
- 现代大学英语精读(第2版)第五册:U8 The Merely Very Good(6)_大学教材听力 - 可可英语
- 现代大学英语精读(第2版)第五册:U8 The Merely Very Good(7)_大学教材听力 - 可可英语
- 现代大学英语精读(第2版)第五册:U8 The Merely Very Good(8)_大学教材听力 - 可可英语
- 现代大学英语精读(第2版)第五册:U8 The Merely Very Good(9)_大学教材听力 - 可可英语
- 现代大学英语精读(第2版)第五册:U8 The Merely Very Good(10)_大学教材听力 - 可可英语
- 现代大学英语精读(第2版)第五册:U8 The Merely Very Good(11)_大学教材听力 - 可可英语
- 现代大学英语精读(第2版)第五册:U8 The Merely Very Good(12)_大学教材听力 - 可可英语
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