THAT WHICH IS HELD

THAT WHICH IS HELD
持有之物

插图说明：
乔尔乔内的画作《暴风雨》局部

I AM THINKING in front of Giorgione's Tempest and I want to begin with a quotation from Osip Mandelstam: "For Dante time is the content of history felt as a single synchronic act. And inversely the purpose of history is to keep time together so that all are brothers and companions in the same quest and conquest of time."
我在乔尔乔内（Giorgione）的《暴风雨》（Tempest）前陷入了沉思。我想引述奥斯普•曼德尔施塔姆（Osip Mandelstam）的一段话，作为本文的开头：“对于但丁来说，时间就是历史的内容，但这历史是作为一个单一的共时行动被感知的。因此，反过来说，历史的目的就是把时间收集到一处，从而所有的人都在时间的同一的探求和征服中成为兄弟和伙伴。”
Of all that we have inherited from the nineteenth century, only certain axioms about time have passed largely unquestioned. The left and right, evolutionists, physicists, and most revolutionaries, all accept—at least on a historical scale—the nineteenth-century view of a unilinear and uniform "flow" of time.
在我们从十九世纪继承下来的遗产中，关于时间，只有少数几个特定的公理是大致尚未遭到质疑的。不管是左派还是右派，或是进化论者、物理主义者，以及大部分革命者，都赞同十九世纪关于时间是一个单线和匀速的“流”的观念——至少在历史的尺度上。
Yet the notion of a uniform time within which all events can be temporally related depends upon the synthesizing capacity of a mind. Galaxies and particles in themselves propose nothing. We face at the start a phenomenological problem. We are obliged to begin with a conscious experience.
所有事件都在这个匀速的时间中相互关联。不过，匀速时间的观念依赖于心智的综合能力。星系和尘埃本身没有什么想法。而我们则打一开始就面临着一个现象学的问题。我们不得不始于一个意识经验。
Everybody has noticed that, despite clocks and the regular turning of the earth, time is experienced as passing at different rates. This "impression" is generally dismissed as subjective, because time, according to the nineteenth-century view, is objective, incontestable and indifferent; to its indifference there are no limits.
可是人人皆知，尽管时钟和地球自转是规则的，我们对时间的体验却有不同的速率。人们通常把这种“印象”斥为主观的，因为，按照十九世纪的看法，时间是客观存在、无可争辩、不偏不倚的；其中立是不受限制的。
Yet perhaps our experience should not be dismissed so quickly. Supposing we accept the clocks: time does not slow down or accelerate. But time appears to pass at different rates because our experience of its passing involves not a single but two dynamic processes which are opposed to each other: as accumulation and dissipation.
不过，也许我们不该这么快把我们的体验打发掉。假定我们认可时钟标准：时间既不减速也不加速。但是，时间仍然显得以不同的速率流逝，这是因为我们对时间流逝的体验包含两个动态的进程而不是一个。这是两个相反的进程：一个是积聚，一个是耗散。
The deeper the experience of a moment, the greater the accumulation of experience. This is why the moment is lived as longer. The dissipation of the time-flow is checked. The lived durée is not a question of length but of depth or density. Proust is the master who gave this truth a literary form.
对某个时刻的体验越深，体验的积聚也就越密。这就是为什么这一时刻会逗留得更久。此时，时间－流（time-flow）的耗散得到了抑制。生存的durée 不是一个长度的问题，而是一个深度和密度的问题。普鲁斯特（Proust）是这一问题上的大师，他为上述真理提供了文学的形式。
Yet it is not only a cultural truth. A natural equivalent of the periodic increase of the density of lived time may be found in those days of alternating sun and rain, in the spring or early summer, when plants grow, almost visibly, several millimetres or centimetres a day. These hours of spectacular growth and accumulation are incommensurate with the winter hours when the seed lies inert in the earth.
然而这还不只是一个文化的真理。在自然界中亦可见到生存时间（lived time）之密度的周期增长。在那些阴晴不定的日子，在春天或初夏，植物生长的速度几乎达到肉眼可见的程度，每天能长几毫米甚至几厘米。这些引人入胜的生长和积聚的时刻，与种子长眠地底的寒冷的冬季是迥然不同的。
The content of time, which is to say that which time carries, seems to entail another dimension. Whether one calls this dimension the fourth, the fifth, or even (in relation to time) the third is unimportant, and only depends upon the space-time model that one is using. What matters and is important is that this dimension is intractable to the regular, uniform flow of time. There may be a sense in which time does not sweep all before it; to assert that it did was a specifically nineteenth-century article of faith.
时间的内容，——即时间所承载的那些东西，——似乎还蕴涵着另一个维度。至于这个维度究竟应该叫做第四维、第五维，抑或只是第三维（就其与时间的关系），却无甚紧要。这取决于我们所用的时空模型。重要的是，这个维度对于规则的、匀速的时间流来说是难以理解的。也许存在一种感官，在其中，时间并不扫视一切眼前之物；断言其可以如此，乃是一个十九世纪的信条。
Earlier this intractable dimension was allowed for. It is present in all cyclic views of time. According to such views, time passes, time goes on, and it does so by turning on itself like a wheel. Yet for a wheel to turn, there needs to be a surface like the ground which resists, which offers friction. It is against this resistance that the wheel turns. Cyclic views of time are based on a model whereby two forces are in play: a force (time) moving in one direction and a force resisting that movement.
在更早的时期，这个难解的维度是允许存在的。所有循环时间观（cyclic views of time）都含有这一维度。按照这种观念，时间之迎来送往，皆起于其自身的滚动，犹如一只车轮。而车轮若要滚动，则必须要有一个平面，像土地一样提供支撑和摩擦。唯有借着抵御这种阻抗，车轮才能前进。循环时间观乃是基于这样一种模型，其间有两种力量在起作用：一种力量（时间）朝着某个方向运动，另一种力量则阻挡这种运动。
Today the intractable dimension lives a ghostly life within the cyclic measurements—seconds, minutes, days, years— which we still use to measure time. The term light-year is eloquent of this persistent ghost. To measure astronomic distances one takes as a unit that distance which light travels in a year. The magnitude of such distances, the degree of separation they imply, seems boundless. Yet hidden within the conceptual system for measuring such boundlessness is the indispensable, local, cyclic unit of the year, a unit which is recognized by its returning.
今天，这个难解的维度就像一个幽灵，藏身于时间的循环度量方式之中——秒、分、日、年——我们仍然用这种方式测度时间。光年这个术语就是这个挥之不去的幽灵的明证。为了度量天文距离，人们把光在一年中走过的距离当作一个距离单位。其相距之遥远，其空间之广袤，无边无际，杳乎莫测。可是，测度这无穷宇宙的概念体系，却隐含着一个不可或缺的、褊狭而循环的年度单位。我们对这个单位的分辨，靠的就是它的循环往复。
The body ages. The body is preparing to die. No theory of time offers a reprieve here. Yet we condemn ourselves as no other culture has done.
肉身逐渐衰老。肉身时刻预备着死亡。此时，任何时间理论都无法推迟死亡的降临。我们谴责自己，而其他文化并不这么做。
The spectre of death has always haunted man. Death and Time were always in alliance. Time took away more or less slowly, and Death more or less suddenly.
对人类来说，死亡的阴影永远挥之不去。死亡和时间是永恒的联盟。时间就像抽丝，死亡则几如泰山压顶一般。
Yet Death was also thought of as the companion of life, as the pre-condition for that which came into Being from Non-being: one was not possible without the other. As a result, Death was qualified by that which it could not destroy, or by that which would return.
不过，也有人认为死亡乃是生命的伴侣，是无（Non-being）中生有（Being）之先决条件：离开了这一个，另一个就不能存在（去此则失彼，二者须臾不可分离）。因此，死亡之资格认定，乃在其所不能摧毁者，抑或复来之者。
That life is brief was continually lamented. Time was Death's agent, and one of life's constituents. But the timeless—that which Death could not destroy—was another. All cyclic views of time held these two constituents together: the wheel turning and the ground on which it turned.
生命短暂，每每使人扼腕叹息。时间是死亡的代理人，自身亦是死亡的成分之一。永恒则是另一个成分，那是死亡所不能摧毁的。所有循环时间观都把这两个要素捏在一起：滚动的车轮，和承载着车轮之滚动的大地。
Modern thought has removed time from this unity and transformed it into a single, all-powerful and active force. Modern thought has transferred the spectral character of Death to the notion of time itself. Time has become Death triumphant over all.
现代思想已从这个统一体中去除了时间，并把它转化为一个单一、全能的动力。现代思想已把死亡的不散阴魂转化为时间概念本身。时间变成了无处不在的志得意满的死亡。
The concept of entropy is the figure of Death translated into scientific principle. Yet, whereas Death used to be thought of as being the condition of life, entropy, it is maintained, will eventually exhaust and extinguish not only lives but life itself. And entropy, as Eddington termed it, "is time's arrow." Here is the finality of modern despair, against which no plea is possible. Our totalitarianism begins with our teleology.
死亡的形象，译为科学原理就是熵的概念。不过，虽然人们以前常常认为死亡是生命的条件，对于熵，人们却主张它不仅将耗尽和扑灭芸芸众生，甚至还会摧毁生命本身。按照Eddington的说法，熵是“时间之箭”。这就是现代断绝希望之后的最终定局。在这种绝望面前，任何哀怜祈求都无济于事。我们的极权主义乃是始于我们的目的论。
The modern transformation of time from a condition into a force began with Hegel. For Hegel, however, the force of history was positive; there has rarely been a more optimistic philosopher. Later Marx set out to prove that this force—the force of history—was subject to man's actions and choices. The always-present drama in Marx's thinking, the original opposition of his dialectics, stems from the fact that he both accepted the modern transformation of time into the supreme force and wished to return this supremacy into the hands of man. This is why his thought was—in every sense of the word—gigantic. The size of man—his potential, his coming power—would replace the timeless.
时间从条件到力量的现代转型始于黑格尔。但是对于黑格尔来说，历史的力量是积极的；很少有像他这么乐观的哲学家。此后，马克思着手证明这种力量——历史的力量——是受制于人类的行动和选择的。在马克思的思想中，那些历久弥新的场景，他的辩证法的原初对立面，源于他既接受时间之为最高力量的现代转型，同时也希望把这无上的权威放在人类的大手上。因此，他的思想乃是巨人的思想——不管在何种意义上说。人类的尺寸，——其潜能、其未来的力量——将取代永恒的存在。
Today, as the culture of capitalism abandons its claim to be a culture and becomes nothing more than an instant practice, the force of time, still retaining its absolute supremacy, is felt to be inhuman and annihilating. The planet of the earth and the universe are running down. Disorder increases with every time-unit that passes. The envisaged final state of maximum entropy, where there will be no activity at all, is termed heat death.
今天，资本主义的文化已经放弃了其文化的地位，变成了一种单纯的即时实践。而时间的力量却仍然保有其绝对的至高无上的地位，因此人们在这力量面前就感到冷漠和毁灭的气息。地球和宇宙正在衰落。每一时间单位的流逝都带来无序的增长。我们所能想象的终极状态就是熵值的最大化，那时将根本不存在任何活动。这种状态就叫做“热死”。
To question the finality of the principle of entropy is not to dispute the second law of thermodynamics. Within a given system this and the other laws of thermodynamics can apply to what unfolds within time. They are laws of time's processes. It is their finality which needs to be disputed.
对熵原理所导致的结局提出质疑，并不意味着争辩第二热力学定律的真实性。在一个封闭系统内，热力学的两个定律可以有效应用于那些尚未于时间中展开的事物。它们是关于时间进程的定律。我们要质疑的是它们的最终命运。
The process of increasing entropy ends with heat death. It began with a state of total order (perfection?), which in astrophysical terms is thought of as an explosion. The theory necessitates a beginning and an end; both these face on to what is beyond time. The theory of entropy ultimately treats time as a parenthesis, and yet has nothing to say, and has eliminated everything that might be said, about what precedes or follows the parenthesis. Therein lies its innocence.
熵值的渐增必定以热死告终。最初是一个全序状态（完美？）， 按照天体物理学的术语，就是一个大爆炸。这个理论要求有一个开端和一个终结；但是不管是开端还是终结都面临着一个问题：时间之外是什么。熵理论最后把时间处理为一对括弧，至于这个括弧之前或之后是什么，它仍然什么也没说，而且已经把一切可说的都掐死在摇篮里了。在这问题上它是完全无知的。
Many previous cosmological explanations of the world proposed, as does the theory of entropy, an ideal original state and afterwards, for man, a continually deteriorating situation. The Golden Age, the Garden of Eden, the Time of the Gods— all were far away from the misery of the present.
先前许多关于世界的宇宙论解释，就像熵理论一样，提出过理想的初始状态，以及随之而来的人类境遇的不断恶化。黄金时代、伊甸园、诸神时代——都远离现在的悲惨世界。
That life may be seen as a fall is intrinsic to the human faculty of imagination. To imagine is to conceive of that height from which the Fall takes place.
视生命为堕落的过程，这是人类想象力的本能。所谓想象，就是构思一个堕落所由以发生的顶点。
In most earlier cosmogonies, however, time was cyclic and this meant that the "ideal" original state would one day return or was retrievable. Not usually in a lifetime—this was only the occasional revolutionary hope—but in the lifetime of existence. Recognition of the Fall coexisted with hope. Accumulation and dissipation increased concurrently. With entropy and the nineteenth-century view of time, we face only the irretrievable and only dissipation.
不过，在更早的宇宙演化论中，时间却是循环式的。这意味着，“理想的”初始状态有朝一日将得以恢复或者重现。只是，这种希望在人的短暂一生中是可望而不可即的——你所能想望的，顶多只是偶尔的革命——只有在万事万物的生灭中，才可能见到这样的机会。与堕落的意识并存的乃是希望。积聚和耗散是同时增长的。按照熵理论和十九世纪的时间观，我们眼前只有耗散，只有无可挽回的时间消逝。
The facing of this may be considered an act of intellectual courage. Yet it is also an act of inhibition.
直面惨淡的人生，或许可以称得上是理智的勇气。然而这也是一种压抑的行为。
The sexual thrust to reproduce and to fill the future is a thrust against the current of time flowing towards the past. The genetic information which assures reproduction works against dissipation. The sexual animal—like a grain of corn— is a conduit of the past into the future. The scale of that span over millennia and the distance covered by that temporal short circuit which is fertilization are such that sexuality opposes the impersonal passing of time and is antithetical to it.
性爱的冲刺旨在繁衍生息和充实未来，这冲刺乃是反抗面向过往的时间之流的冲刺。保证生殖进行的遗传信息之运作，是逆向于时间之耗散的。性爱动物——就像一粒谷子——是贯通过去和未来之间的管道。世代更替，动辄跨越千年，而受孕过程则仅仅覆盖短暂的瞬间，因此，性爱抗拒着时间的无情流逝，两者相互对立。
Every life is both created by and held in the encounter of these two opposing forces. The paired relationship of Eros and Thanatos is an expression of this holding. To speak of such a "holding" is another way of defining Being. What is so baffling and mysterious about the state of Being is that it represents both stillness and movement. The stillness of an equilibrium created by the movement of two opposing forces.
芸芸众生，皆在这两种相反力量的遭遇中诞生和延续。生的本能和死的本能是一对双生子，它们都是这一延续的表现。当我们谈论这“延续”，我们同时就是提出存在（Being）的定义。存在的状态之所以如此变幻莫测、难以理解，就是因为它同时表现了静止和运动。均衡状态之静止，乃是诞生于两种相反力量的运动。
The nineteenth-century inhibition was not towards the function of sexuality in nature; it was towards the intimacy of the relation between sexuality and love. The two had to be kept as far apart as possible. Partly because in capitalist practice—and capitalism was now annexing the entire world—all love had to be reduced to the narrowly private; and partly because the century's view of time left no place (except in poetry) for the energy of love. It was Blake who saw this so clearly and so early.
十九世纪的压抑，并不是针对性机能的本质；而是针对性与爱之间的密切关系。人们尽其所能把它们远远分开。在某种程度上，这是因为在资本主义的实践中——而资本主义如今正在吞并整个世界——一切爱情都被挤到了纯然私密的角落；此外，还因为这一世纪的时间观没有为爱情的能量留下空间（除了在诗歌里）。最早清楚看到这一点的是Blake。
Love, in the history of human development, was born, and still is, from sexuality. Without the initial force of the sexual impulse across, towards another body, the transmigration of the self which constitutes love would never have been possible. The distinction between love, in any of its sexual forms, and simple sexuality, can be seen in their different relations to time.
爱情产生于性欲。不管在人类演化的历史上，还是在当今时代，都是如此。若非性冲动产生出穿越、接近另一个身体的原初动力，构成爱情的自我轮回就不可能实现。爱情（不管以何种性的形式）和单纯性欲之间的区别，可以从它们与时间的不同关系中看出。
Sexuality is a source of continual renewal—renewal of the species and renewal of itself. The sexual is forever unfinished, is never complete. It finishes only to rebegin, as if for the first time.
性是不断更新的源泉——物种的更新和个体本身的更新。性是永无休止，永无止境的。若有结束，那也只是为了新的开始，就像第一次一样。
By contrast, the Utopia of love is completion to the point of stillness. The ideal act of love is to contain all. The love poetry of every continent and century testifies to this. "Here I understand," wrote Camus, "what they call glory: the right to love without limits." But this ideal act is not a passive one, for the totality which love has to continually reclaim is precisely the totality which time so convincingly appears to fragment and hide. Love is a reconstitution—in the heart as much as in the mind—of that "holding," of that Being, which occurs in the momentary equilibrium created by the opposing forces of sexuality and time.
相形之下，爱情的乌托邦完成于静止状态。理想的爱情是包容一切的。所有大陆和一切时代的情诗都证明了这一点。加缪写道，“在此我理解了他们称为荣耀的东西：不受限制的爱的权利。”但是这种理想的行为不是消极的，因为爱情持续不断要求索回的总体性，正好就是时间以不可抗拒的力量撕碎和隐藏的那种总体性。爱是重建，——于内心，也于理智中——是“延续”的重建，也是存在的重建，在性和时间这两个相反力量所创造的瞬时的均衡中，我们可以发现这种重建。
Sublimated forms of love—political, social, religious, cultural—reclaim a totality on a historical as well as a personal scale. But in every form of love a past and a future are grasped as if present. The momentary "holding," seized by the imagination through the energy of love, realizes a whole, which is outside time.
爱的升华——其政治的、社会的、宗教的、文化的形式——既在历史的层面，也在个人的层面召回一种总体性。但是无论在何种形式中，过去和未来都被理解为当下。通过爱的能量，想象力捕获了瞬时的“延续”，而这瞬时的“延续”，却令时间之外的全体现实化了，
Such realizations are intrinsic to the human experience and occur, more or less intensely, all the while. To ask whether love has or has not an objective existence is to ask a somewhat mechanical question, for it ignores that what we feel can be a response to what approaches us from our surroundings; surroundings in both time and space. Heidegger suggests the nature of this approach: "It might be that that which distinguishes man as man, is determined precisely by what we must think about here: man, who is concerned with, approached by presence, who, through being thus approached, is himself present in his own way for all present and absent things."
这现实化乃是人类经验所固有的，有时强烈，有时微弱，但从不消失。若要问爱情是否有一个客观的存在，这就等于提出了一个多少有点机械的问题，因为这种提问方式没有意识到，引起我们感觉的，也可能是从我们四周接近我们的事物；那些在时间和空间上环绕着我们的事物。海德格尔暗示了这种接近的本质：“”
This "approaching" has always been recognized by artists and in the modern era has been termed inspiration.
这种“接近”向来为艺术家们所承认。在现代，我们称之为灵感。
Much has to be thought through. Particularly the question of how each art finds its own specific means for giving form to a whole, realized by love. Poetry would seem to be the simplest art to approach in this sense because it so often speaks of love, sexual or otherwise. Yet for this very reason poetry could confuse the inquiry.
还有许多问题有待思考。特别是，每一门艺术是如何找到自己的特殊方式，以便为爱之现实化的全体赋形。看起来，诗歌大概是在此意义上接近我们的最简单的艺术形式，因为它是那么经常地述说着爱、性或其反面。然而，正是由于这个缘故，诗歌也许会扰乱我们的追问。
For it is not a question of saying that every painter (Goya?) has loved what he has painted, that every story-teller (Stendhal?) has loved all his characters, that all music is lyrical. Rather it is a question of seeing that the artist's will to preserve and complete, to create an equilibrium, to hold—and in that "holding" to hope for an ultimate assurance—that this derives from a lived or imagined experience of love.
并不是说每个画家（戈雅？）都热爱他所画的东西，或者每个故事讲述者（司汤达？）都热爱他的所有角色，或者一切音乐都是抒情的。这不是问题所在。相反，这是一个观看的问题，艺术家旨在维护和完善这观看，创造一个平衡，并坚信——在此“坚信”中，。。。——这一切都源于爱的切身的或想象的经验。
This may seem close to Freud's theory of sublimation. Except for the important difference that Freud, given his nineteenth-century view of time, could not distinguish between sexuality and love in terms of what is intractable to time. I am arguing that sexuality is the antithesis of art, but that love is the human model for both.
这个说法似乎接近弗洛伊德的升华理论。不过，这里有一个重大区别：弗洛伊德深受十九世纪时间观的影响，不懂得区分性爱和爱情，就时间所难以处理的维度的意义上而言。我一直认为，性爱是艺术的反面，但两者却同时包容于人性的同一个模式之中，那就是爱。
Does this mean that historical analysis is therefore irrelevant? No. The means used by each art at different periods for giving form to "what is held" are often historically determined. To analyse these determinants helps us to understand better the conditions under which people were living or were trying to live, and this is to understand better the form of their hopes.
这是否意味着，历史的分析是无关紧要的？不然。一切时代的艺术都为“持有的东西”赋予一定的形式，它们藉以为此的方式却常常取决于历史条件。对这些决定因素的分析，有助于我们更好地理解人类生活的环境，或者。。。的环境，而这就意味着我们更好地理解他们的希望的形式。
What is ahistorical is the need to hope. And the act of hoping is inseparable from the energy of love, from that which "holds," from that which is art's constant example.
那与历史无关的，乃是对希望的渴求。而希望的行动离不开爱的力量，离不开那“持有”的东西，离不开那艺术的恒久不变的范例。
There is a question which finally has to be answered, one way or the other. Is art consolation or revelation? Modern aesthetics have mostly avoided this question by reducing art to the personal and private; most superficially by reducing it to a question of taste; more subtly, by isolating the artistic experience by refusing to place what poetry says beside the findings of science—for example, what poetry says, often explicitly, about that which is intractable to time. "More permanent than anything on earth is sadness," wrote Akhmatova, "and more long-lived is the regal word."
不管以何种方式，最终有一个问题是必须回答的。艺术究竟是一种慰藉，抑或一种启示？现代美学理论大多回避了这个问题，而把艺术简化为属于个人的和私密的；最浅薄的做法是把它简化为一个品味问题；较精致的理论，则拒绝把诗歌的言说置于科学发现之外，从而使艺术经验分离出来——例如，诗歌常常明确地论及那些时间所无法处理的事物。“世上最持久不变的东西就是悲伤，”Akhmatova写道，“而最长寿的则是华丽的言语。”
Art is either a social practice to maintain illusions (a conclusion not so different from that of many Althusserians), or it is a glimpse of what lies beyond other practices, beyond them because it is not subject to the tyranny of the modern view of time.
艺术要么是一门维持幻想的社会技艺（这个结论和大多数“阿尔杜塞派”所持的观点没有太大区别），要么是超越其他社会实践之上的事物的隐约一瞥，之所以超越，是因为它不服从现代时间观的暴政。
I began with a quotation from Mandelstam. The sentence which follows reads: "Dante is anti-modernist. His topicality is inexhaustible, incalculable, perennial."
我在本文开头引用了Mandelstam的话。他接着写道：“但丁是反现代主义的。他的时事性话题取之不尽、不计其数、持久不断。”
There is no question of looking away from the modern world and its practices. There is no question of a Pre-Raphaelite flight back to the Middle Ages. It is rather that Dante advances towards us. And in the specific purgatory of the modern world, created and maintained by corporate capitalism, every injustice is grounded in that modern unilinear view of time, for which the only relation conceivable is that between cause and effect. In contrast to this, in defiance of this, the "single synchronic act" is that of loving.
我们不可能从现代世界及其实践移开我们的目光。我们也无法乘坐拉斐尔前派的航班返回到中世纪。相反，但丁自己迎面向我们走来。在现代世界的特殊的炼狱里，——公司资本主义（corporate capitalism）打造和维持了这个世界——一切非正义都是以现代的单线时间观为基础的，在这一观念下，唯一可想象的关系就是因果关系。与之相反，与之相抗，“单一共时行为”乃是关于爱的。