约翰·阿什伯利：鸟的骚动 | 巴洛克风格的胜利
鸟的骚动
约翰·阿什伯利
我们正在渡过的确切说是十七世纪。 后半部分很不错，远远现代于 前半部分。当下，我们拥有的是王政复辟时期的喜剧。 对它们的时代来说，网络用户，呃不，韦伯斯特，和莎士比亚和皮埃尔·高乃依 相当不错，但不够现代， 尽管比亨利八世、拉苏斯和彼得鲁斯·克里斯蒂的 16世纪有所改进，后者，矛盾的是， 似乎比他们的直接继任者，廷代尔、莫罗尼和卢卡·马伦齐奥更现代。 有时，这往往是一个看似不现代的问题， 看似一样好，而且表面和存在偶尔一样好。是否还能变得更好 这个问题最好留给哲学家 和他们的其他同类，他们以某种方式知悉 其他人不能知悉的事物，即便事物 往往与我们所知道的几乎相同。 我们知道，比如，亲爱的之卡里西米对木匠之夏彭蒂耶造成的影响是， 被其衡量的议案在末尾 有一个将事情带回稍高一点的 起点的循环。这个循环是意大利语的， 被引入法国法院，先是被鄙弃， 然后被接受，但不承认 它所来的地方，正如法国人的习惯行为。 也许有些人会辨认出这一点 在它的新面貌中——这可以推迟到 另一个世纪，届时历史学家 会声称这一切都是正常发生的，作为历史的一个结果。 （当我们以为巴洛克风格已经被妥善管收安全放置时 它总是出现在一条塌下来的路上滚落到我们面前。 经典忽略了它，或者不太介意。 它自己脑子里，事实证明， 还装着其他更不足道哉的事情。)但我们仍然，正确地与之共同成长， 不耐烦地期待着现代主义，到时候 不管怎样，一切都会进展得更好。 在那之前最好放纵我们的口味 以任何让它们感到合适的感受： 当现代主义的深思熟虑的魅影被安装 在周围，这只鞋，那条带子，会变得有用 就像建筑工程残留的边角料。 如果你能忍受现代，那它就很好。 这就像被遗忘在雨中，渐渐地 你明白了事情一直是这样：现代， 潮湿，被抛弃，尽管如此一种特殊的直觉 让你意识到你就是这样的，你无意 成为别的人，对他们来说现代主义的创造者 在今天的强光下枯萎褪色 但经得起它的检验。 （沙织 译）
COMMOTION OF THE BIRDS
We’re moving right along through the seventeenth century. The latter part is fine, much more modern than the earlier part. Now we have Restoration Comedy. Webster and Shakespeare and Corneille were fine for their time but not modern enough, though an improvement over the sixteenth century of Henry VIII, Lassus and Petrus Christus, who, paradoxically, seem more modern than their immediate successors, Tyndale, Moroni, and Luca Marenzio among them. Often it’s a question of seeming rather than being modern. Seeming is almost as good as being, sometimes, and occasionally just as good. Whether it can ever be better is a question best left to philosophers and others of their ilk, who know things in a way others cannot, even though the things are often almost the same as the things we know. We know, for instance, how Carissimi influenced Charpentier, measured propositions with a loop at the end of them that brings things back to the beginning, only a little higher up. The loop is Italian, imported to the court of France and first despised, then accepted without any acknowledgment of where it came from, as the French are wont to do. It may be that some recognize it in its new guise—that can be put off till another century, when historians will claim it all happened normally, as a result of history. (The baroque has a way of tumbling out at us when we thought it had been safely stowed away. The classical ignores it, or doesn’t mind too much. It has other things on its mind, of lesser import, it turns out.) Still, we are right to grow with it, looking forward impatiently to modernism, when everything will work out for the better, somehow. Until then it’s better to indulge our tastes in whatever feels right for them: this shoe, that strap, will come to seem useful one day when modernism’s thoughtful presence is installed all around, like the remnants of a construction project. It’s good to be modern if you can stand it. It’s like being left out in the rain, and coming to understand that you were always this way: modern, wet, abandoned, though with that special intuition that makes you realize you weren’t meant to be somebody else, for whom the makers of modernism will stand inspection even as they wither and fade in today’s glare.
