《種子與播種者》與《聖誕快樂勞倫斯先生》的部分文段對應以及一些個人思考

本文章獻給自己，還有跟我一樣喜歡這（兩）部作品的朋友們。（本文涉及劇透）

前言：

在看到大島渚導演的電影《Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence》之後，並且了解到其改編於Laurens Van Der Post所著的書《The Seed and he Sower》，我便萌生出了一個想法：以前總是看著書面文字腦補畫面；這部電影讓我自己莫名想了解書內的文字到底是怎樣的，又是怎樣和劇情畫面一一對應的？

每個人心裡有自己的哈姆雷特，大島渚自然是把自己的獨到體會放入了這部電影里。即使這是一部非常優秀的電影，它也是不全面的。抱著想要更加全面到了解裡面的故事的想法，我購買了《The Seed and the Sower》，找到了對應章節，並即將給大家還原書中的內容，希望各位對這個故事（主要是針對Yonoi和Celliers）有更多或者不一樣的體會。

由於這部電影映射了許多方面的矛盾，從Hara與Lawrence，Yonoi與Celliers，到日本傳統文化與西方文化的衝突，本篇文章只解讀一個方面－－Yonoi和Celliers. 他們的關係如果用書中的比喻，那無異於就是播種者與被播種者的關係：Celliers在Yonoi心裡撒下了一顆種子。

對於Y&C的故事線，我帶著一系列疑問，在書中找到了答案。這些疑問包括：

• 是什麼內在因素（Celliers到底思考了些什麼）導致C最後做出那個「自殺式」行為，從而解救了全員俘虜還有（或許）結束了Yonoi的掙扎？
• C對Y（或者Y對C）的感情真如電影描述的那麼明朗嗎？有多明朗？又有多隱晦？
• 作者是怎樣描述最具震撼力的幾個片段的？e.g.親吻雙頰，月下剪髮
• Yonoi是怎樣告訴Lawrence那一撮黃髮對於他的重要意義的？Yonoi的結局到底是怎樣的？他對Celliers的感情還有後續發展嗎？

對於我選擇還原的故事內容，有幾點需要注意：

• 這部書的內容是從兩個人的視角來描述的，Lawrence只是其中一位。或許是為了簡化故事敘述的複雜性，電影里的視角是針對Lawrence個人的，我認為並無不妥；不過，接下來書中的還原的情景，第一人稱並不一定是Lawrence，但不會影響理解，因為這兩個角色都是作為描述這個故事的客體。
• 我只選取了一部分我認為會聯想到電影情節本身的敘述，並且這些片段對整個故事發展有重大作用。所以我的引用敘述也不是百分百全面的。
• 陰影部分的文字是我自己對這個片段取的題目。

正文：

Jack Celliers philosophical thoughts

He (Celliers) was convinced that we were all accessories to the fact of war, and that once war had become a fact we could not avoid our own role in it. I remembered a phrase he had often repeated in our discussions in hospital. (Celliers said) None of us were pure enough to claim a special solution for ourselves out of our own human and time context. We could none of us afford, without fatal excess of spirit, to by-pass any of the stages through which life itself was forced to go. The spirits battle for life was so important that one had to accept the challenge on whichever level it was presented, no matter how exalted or how humble or horrible. One had even to respect the need of the spirit for death in certain living issues and just take what decency and proportion one could lay claim to into the killing. ...Later in hospital Celliers had explained to me that he had come to realize that life had no meaning unless one was obedient to ones awareness of it. He attributed the sense of meaninglessness which had afflicted his world before the war to just that fact: it had been disobedient to its own greater awareness. I asked him what awareness had meant to him as he sat there in the sunset hour on the Peak of Arrow? Hed replied it was easier to say what it was not, rather than what it was! It was certainly not merely cerebral effort or achievement. It was not what we called knowledge, for, as he saw it, our knowledge tended to pin us down, to imprison us in what should be no more than a frontier position. What he meant by awareness was perhaps a sense of the as yet unimagined wholeness of life; a recognition that one could live freely only on the frontiers of ones being where the known was still contained in the infinite unknown, and where there could be a continual crossing and re-crossing of tentative borders, like lone hunters returning from perilous sojourns in great forests. It was, to put it pictorially, he said, a way of living not only by moonlight or sunlight, but also by starlight....Celliers had concluded rather abruptly by saying that, as he saw it, he felt the first necessity in life was to make the universal specific, the general particular, the collective individual, and what was unconscious in us conscious. ...(In the prison, the night before Celliers was about to be executed) When at last the rain fell and joined with the other storm sounds they brought him great comfort reminding him that, on the last tide, the abiding answer was not with man but with life; the true power and the glory were beyond all the comings and goings of man, no matter how imperious and impressive.

Embracing on the cheeks (對應電影Yonoi最後一次召集全體俘虜)

So a full hour went by in this fashion. We dared not speak since we knew from experience how easily any sound or movement of body could provoke our jailers on these occasions. But Celliers who was standing next to me did ask in a whisper: Whats the form now? Do they often do this sort of thing? Who started it?I managed to tell him that it had never happened quite like this before with so great show of force, and briefly explained the ostensible cause adding:Im sorry its happened on your first day out. But its no good pretending that anything might not happen at any moment. They might even be getting ready to massacre us all.(Celliers said he knew how to stop it.)You know? I asked, my voice like that of a stranger in my own ears.I do. But be careful, he whispered back, long pauses between each phrase. I dont like the way that bloke in charge of the machine-gun over there is watching us. His eye has not left my face these past few minutes. ...Celliers mumbled to me that Yonoi was only behaving the way he was because, like us, he was doing just what was expected of him. Celliers added that confronting Yonoi with the unexpected alone could save Yonoi, his men, and us.(Yonoi was about to execute Hicksley-Ellis)Yonoi had Hicksley-Ellis tied with hand behind his back and made to kneel bare-headed on the ground near him. Yonoi then stepped back, drew his sword, raised it flashing in the sun and with his lips to the naked steel said a prayer to it as I had seen other officers do before other executions. (Celliers said) Im going to stop it now. Itll be all right. But whatever happens do nothing about me. Remember, nothing. Goodbye. I did not have time or mind to take in the significance of that goodbye, nor recognise it then as a clear indication of his knowledge of what the end was going to be for him for as he spoke he stepped out of the ranks his new hat at a rakish angle on his head and the sun flashing on it multilated badge. He walked, as Lawrence had already remarked, most beautifully. Without hurry he advanced on Yonoi as if he were going across a paddock at home to do no more than take a high-spirited stallion in hand. When Yonoi opened his eyes again after his short prayer to the spirit, the Maru of his sword, Celliers was barely fifteen yards away. Amazement like the shock of a headlong collision went through him. Going white in the process he stared in a blank unbelieving way at Celliers. For the first time he was compelled, because of the unfathomed identification between Celliers and himself, to see someone outside himself. Amazement then gave way to consternation and he cried out a command in English that was also a plea: You-officer-go-back, go back, go back! But Celliers went on to place himself between Hicksley-Ellis and Yonoi and said something quietly and unhurriedly to Yonoi. Yonoi appeared to not have heard him. He shrieked again: You- go back, back, back! Like someone trying to scare a ghost. Celliers shook his head quietly and went on staring at him steadily as a disarmed hunter might stare a growling lion straight in the face. Perhaps more in terror than in anger, Yonoi raised his sword and knocked Celliers down with the flat of it. The crack on his head rang out like a pistol-shot to be followed by another exhortation to Celliers to go back. Dazed, Celliers struggled to his feet, swayed and half-turned as if to obey--then swung around suddenly. He took a couple of paces back towards Yonoi, put his hands on Yonois arms and embraced him on both cheeks rather like a French general embracing a soldier after a decoration for valour. ...Celliers had stepped back a pace from Yonoi and stood once more silently facing him. Of course, none of us will ever know what went on in Yonois mind but for the only time I had ever known he, who always had been so quick and in command of all situations, obviously did not know what to do. He looked as if lightning had struck him. His face had lost its colour and was like death with dismay. He trembled on his feet and might have even fallen to the ground if his warrant officer had not acted for him. ...Did I not realize that Celliers had insulted Yonoi before his men? Did I not remember how kissing between men and women, even in the most natural forms, was regarded by the Japanese as the most obscene of gestures? ...It was soon over. Yonoi, though still like a person profoundly concussed, stopped the beating and ordered the guard to carry Celliers off to the guard house. Celliers by then was unconscious and only recognizable by his long yellow hair. Then, like someone utterly exhausted, Yonoi turned his back on us and, his eyes on the ground, walked slowly away and out of the prison gates.

Farewell under the mooonlight （月下剪髮）

The moon was full at the time and the parade ground brilliant with its light. At three in the morning our watch was startled to see Yonois elegant figure appear at the enclosure and send away the guard to the gate. For a moment he thought he was seeing ghosts because like many he believed Yonoi had committed hara-kiri some days before. Yet it wasYonoi, for his walk and build were unmistakable. After standing in front of Celliers and looking at him for long in silence, Yonoi put his hand in his pocket and produced something which flashed like silver in the moonlight. Strange as it might seem our watch was convinced that it was a pair of scissors, for Yonoi appeared to bend down over Celliers, take his long hair in his hand and snip some of it off...Our watch distinctly heard the metal blades click in the moon silence. For a while longer Yonoi remained there in deep thought before bowing low to Celliers in the same way that the watch had seen him bow to the rising sun on the day of his Emperorsbirthday. That done he walked slowly to the gate where he resummoned the guard.And that was the last we saw of Yonoi.

The seed and the sower (Yonoi被關進監獄時，以及4年後被釋放時)

Yonoi, hearing Lawrences fluent Japanese and attracted by his manner with the accused men, had spontaneously come up to him and pleaded to speak to him alone. Having heard about Yonois reputation, Lawrence was surprised to find him so subdued and oddly preoccupied. Still more had he been puzzled by Yonois business with him and had remained so until I had told him about Celliers. The moment they were alone Yonoi had confided in Lawrence that, when the war ended, he had been in charge of a womens prison. That apparently had been the humiliating consequence of what had passed between Celliers and him. When he was arrested and searched in one of our prisons after the war something Yonoi valued more than anything in the world was found on him and taken away. Could Lawrence get it back for him? Lawrence had asked what it was. ...In this case, Yonoi begged, you understand us Japanese and will know how important it is to me. As my last wish would you recover this thing for me and send it my home to be offered to the spirit of the ancestors in the shrine of my fathers? That thing was just a strand of yellow hair. The British soldier who had found it on him, fed on stories of Yonois brutality to women prisoners, had thought Yonoi had cut it from the head of one of his victims, and had snatched it from him and hit him with his fist. Yonoi did not complain of that. All that mattered was the fact that the soldier was wrong. It was a mans not a womens hair? It was a lock of hair from the head of the most remarkable man he had ever met, an enemy and now a dead enemy, but none the less a man so remarkable that he would never forget him. He had cut that strand of hair from the dead head purely so that the spirit of the man should be honoured and given a proper home in the hereafter. It was his intention when the war was over to give a place in the inmost hall of his own ancestors to that strand of hair. ....(Returning home, Yonoi wrote a poem to Jack and also to himself. )In the spring, Obeying the August spirits I went to fight the enemy. In the fall, Returning I beg the spirits, To receive also the enemy.

後記：

這部電影給我帶來的震撼力是相當大的，不僅是因為兩位主演都是當時閃耀世界的音樂家，而且也特別是因為Celliers這個角色個性給我的較大的衝擊。看完書和電影，我有幾點自己的體會。

1. 個人認為Celliers 並不那麼在乎Yonoi對他的感情。

書中的某一點佐證就可以證明。看Lawrence後來是怎樣評價C最後那個瘋狂的舉動的：

Kissing between men and women, even in the most natural forms, was regarded by the Japanese as the most obscene of gestures.

用一種近乎「強姦」的方式「救贖」Yonoi，如果說C對Y心裡尚存愛慕，還不如說C只是在履行他自己賦予自己的使命：

The first necessity in life was to make the universal specific, the general particular, the collective individual, and what was unconscious in us conscious.

也就是說，電影里描述的C&Y之間的關係，很大一部分是大島渚導演按照自己的理解安裝進去的（比如Y送毯子給C，C獻花給Y等等）。Y過度關注C是事實，在書里也有充分體現；但是C對於Y的感情，或許更多程度上是給自己贖罪，或者救贖Y。

他們之間的感情這條「明線」，其實並不能算是書內描述的重點，我認為重點應該是在於描述，C是如何播種了一顆希望的種子（一種面對人性保持individuality而不是一味的collectivity的信念）進Y的內心裡的。

2. 這部電影不是悲劇。

剛看完這部電影的時候，隨著神曲Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence 的娓娓道來，我心裡有種說不出來的酸楚，認為這是一個悲情的結局。事實上，大島渚導演將故事悲情化了，可能是因為悲情，所以悲壯。

我認為不是悲劇，並不是因為Yonoi在書中實際上最後活了下來。看完書，我才意識到，悲喜劇跟主角的存活毫無關聯。評價一部電影是否是悲劇，要看的是主角的目的性是否達到。

誠然，Celliers的死法很痛苦悲催，但是他對Yonoi卻完成了自己的終極教義。對於Celliers來說，他完成了兩個人的向死而生：一個是對他自己的內心，用他自己的話來說就是 obedient to the awareness of life; 另一個人則是Yonoi，面對真實的內心，他選擇了放棄或許缺失人性的Collectiveness，他已經作為一個人，一個Individual而存在於世了。

我認為，把Yonoi的重生表現的淋漓盡致的，莫過於他最後的那一首詩：表面上看似是對敵人的接納，實則是對自己的重新接納。

想想看，Celliers有多幸福啊。其實人活著，不就是為了一個機會實現自己內心的終極教義嗎？Yonoi也很幸福啊，被救贖後找到更輕鬆的生存方式，從此不再活在過去，不再活在集體和個人的矛盾之中。

最後，再持續安利一波這本原著還有電影。原著呈現了其他很多有趣的東西。

謝謝大家閱讀。