到燈塔去 / To the Lighthouse 讀書筆記

06-24

到燈塔去 / To the Lighthouse

Virginia Woolf

Reading Notes

THE WINDOW

「He was incapable of untruth; never tampered with a fact; never altered a disagreeable word to suit the pleasure or convenience of any mortal being ... one that needs, above all, courage, truth, and the power to endure.」(Mr. Ramsay)//人直面客觀世界的一面，與Ramsay夫人代表的人的社會性的一面不同。
「woe betide the girl—pray Heaven it was none of her daughters!—who did not feel the worth of it(something trustful, childlike, reverential), and all that it implied, to the marrow of her bones!「 (Mrs. Ramsay)// ？
"Strife, divisions, difference of opinion, prejudices twisted into the very fibre of being." (Mrs. Ramsay) //反過來，人與人之間的「和諧」正是Ramsay夫人的人生理念。此處「和諧」並非真正的和諧，是Ramsay夫人目光所限的表面功夫。

she often felt herself—struggling against terrific odds to maintain her courage; to say: 「But this is what I see; this is what I see 」 (Lily Briscoe) // 在紛亂的世界中保持自己需要勇氣。此處what I see指的是世界的真實？還是lily的個人觀點？
It was absurd, it was impossible (to demonstrate ones real feelings) (Lily Briscoe)
both of them looked at the dunes far away, and instead of merriment felt come over them some sadness—because the thing was completed partly, and partly because distant views seem to outlast by a million years (Lily thought) //永恆的自然面前，人類的生命顯得可悲而無意義。Ramsay先生也在思考自己工作的意義，實際是人類生命的意義。
after which Ramsay had married, and their paths lying different ways, there had been, certainly for no one』s fault, some tendency, when they met, to repeat. (William Bankes)//兩個人overlap的部分消失了，友誼也就只能活在對過去的回憶里。
Naturally, if one』s days were passed in this seeing of angular essences, this reducing of lovely evenings, with all their flamingo clouds and blue and silver to a white deal four–legged table (and it was a mark of the finest minds to do so), naturally one could not be judged like an ordinary person. (the comments of Mr. Ramsay from Bankes)//透過每個人的內心折射出他們看待世界的視角，這些視角是如此的不同。每個人都幾乎不能相互理解彼此，他們同處一個世界，真是荒誕無比。

But was it nothing but looks, people said? What was there behind it—her beauty and splendour? ... For easily though she might have said at some moment of intimacy when stories of great passion, of love foiled, of ambition thwarted came her way how she too had known or felt or been through it herself, she never spoke. She was silent always.//每個人的外表和內心也是不盡相同的，這是人們無法理解彼此的原因之一。她不說話，因為她不認為人人都要表達自己的看法，世界上的爭執已經夠多了。
She knew then—she knew without having learnt. Her simplicity fathomed what clever people falsified. Her singleness of mind made her drop plumb like a stone, alight exact as a bird, gave her, naturally, this swoop and fall of the spirit upon truth which delighted, eased, sustained—falsely perhaps. (Mrs. Ramsay)// 並非ramsay夫人比其他人聰明得多；只是她關注的重點和男人們不一樣，她更想讓每個人都能愉快，因而在人際關係中她的策略總是有效的，即使她的看法並不總是對的。
"But she』s no more aware of her beauty than a child."//美而不自知；這種單純是最能體現出「少女感」的品質。

she often felt she was nothing but a sponge sopped full of human emotions. (Mrs. Ramsay)
on the one hand the steady goers of superhuman strength who, plodding and persevering, repeat the whole alphabet in order, twenty–six letters in all, from start to finish; on the other the gifted, the inspired who, miraculously, lump all the letters together in one flash—the way of genius.//科學/哲學家與藝術家的區別。在Chpt.8中Mr. Ramsay想到：若世界是為平凡的大眾而存在的，那麼藝術就應該只是一種非必需的裝飾品；藝術是真正的天才創造的。
who shall blame the leader of the doomed expedition, if, having adventured to the uttermost, and used his strength wholly to the last ounce and fallen asleep not much caring if he wakes or not... (Mr. Ramsay)// 即使人窮盡一生也達不到真理的終點，最後倒在了登山的路上，但誰又能因此責怪他呢？怕什麼真理無窮，進一寸有一寸的歡喜。（胡適語）
Who will not secretly rejoice when the hero puts his armour off, and halts by the window and gazes at his wife and son, who, very distant at first, gradually come closer and closer, till lips and book and head are clearly before him... // Ramsay先生也滿懷著對家人的愛，但他們要排在真理的後面，至少不是人生的最高追求。

But he must have more than that. He must have sympathy. He must be assured that he too lived in the heart of life; was needed; not only here, but all over the world. (Mr. Ramsay)
she did not like, even for a second, to feel finer than her husband; and further, could not bear not being entirely sure, when she spoke to him, of the truth of what she said.
at the very moment when it was painful to be reminded of the inadequacy of human relationships, that the most perfect was flawed. (Mrs. Ramsay) //她並不真正地接受她丈夫的一切，正如她的丈夫不能接受她的不理性一般。但他們的婚姻是為人稱羨的。這說明即便是最親密的人，也並不能完全相互理解。

」...of human relations, how flawed they are, how despicable, how self–seeking, at their best.「 //echoes the sentence in Chpt.1&7 (Mrs. Ramsay thought）
If Shakespeare had never existed, he asked, would the world have differed much from what it is today? Does the progress of civilization depend upon great men? Is the lot of the average human being better now than in the time of the Pharaohs? Is the lot of the average human being, however, he asked himself, the criterion by which we judge the measure of civilization? Possibly not. (Mr. Ramsay thought) //文明的程度取決於它的高度還是平均水平？Ramsay先生當然是狹隘的，他甚至認為電梯操作員永遠不能取消。這是一種自上而下俯視的冷酷。

「she had a clear sense of it there, something real, something private, which she shared neither with her children nor with her husband. A sort of transaction went on between them, in which she was on one side, and life was on another, and she was always trying to get the better of it, as it was of her; and sometimes they parleyed (when she sat alone);there were, she remembered, great reconciliation scenes; but for the most part, oddly enough, she must admit that she felt this thing that she called life terrible, hostile, and quick to pounce on you if you gave it a chance. There were eternal problems: suffering; death; the poor.「 (Mrs. Ramsay) //即使對Ramsay夫人這樣一個獻身於家庭的人來說，生活也永遠是孤獨的戰場。正因為人們是各不相同、不能相互理解的。生活也是不可避免地充滿痛苦的。
「Then people might say she was tyrannical, domineering, masterful, if they chose;「

「well, not even to think. To be silent; to be alone. All the being and the doing, expansive, glittering, vocal, evaporated; and one shrunk, with a sense of solemnity, to being oneself, a wedge–shaped core of darkness, something invisible to others.「
Losing personality, one lost the fret, the hurry, the stir; and there rose to her lips always some exclamation of triumph over life when things came together in this peace, this rest, this eternity; (Mrs. Ramsay) // 「personality」這個詞暗示，「人」不僅是一個實體，也是一種屬性。人可以沒有這種屬性而依舊存在。這裡的personality不全是積極的部分，它代指一種與世俗的牽扯，人被賦予的意義，或者說essence。在這樣的無「人性」的狀態下人不需要依靠他人而存在。人的存在先於人的本質，此即「此在」（dasein）。在人一生中，人是被「拋入」這個世界，他的存在不是主動的，而是被動的。時間性賦予了人生命的essence。就是生命中的「煩」（sorge），即生老病死苦。沒有時間，人隔絕了人性（或本質），自然體會不到任何痛苦。在ramsay夫人此刻意識的片段中，時間彷彿是靜止的，在這樣的暫時片段，她能超越生命的痛苦和繁瑣，體驗到超越生命（生物性、意識）固有限制的勝利。
how if one was alone, one leant to inanimate things; trees, streams, flowers; felt they expressed one; felt they became one; felt they knew one, in a sense were one; felt an irrational tenderness thus as for oneself. //獨處時也可看作是人和人的社會性的隔絕。
Always, Mrs Ramsay felt, one helped oneself out of solitude reluctantly by laying hold of some little odd or end, some sound, some sight.

So that is marriage, Lily thought, a man and a woman looking at a girl throwing a ball.//這裡的婚姻指的是婚姻的典範。
And suddenly the meaning which, for no reason at all, as perhaps they are stepping out of the Tube or ringing a doorbell, descends on people, making them symbolical, making them representative, came upon them, and made them in the dusk standing, looking, the symbols of marriage, husband and wife. //典範來自於符號化。
still, for one moment, there was a sense of things having been blown apart, of space, of irresponsibility as the ball soared high, and they followed it and lost it and saw the one star and the draped branches. In the failing light they all looked sharp–edged and ethereal and divided by great distances. Then, darting backwards over the vast space (for it seemed as if solidity had vanished altogether) (Lily) // Lily也進入了這種時空近乎靜止的存在狀態。見Chpt.11。

...through her own past, some deep, some buried, some quite speechless feeling that one had for one』s mother at Rose』s age. Like all feelings felt for oneself, Mrs Ramsay thought, it made one sad. It was so inadequate, what one could give in return; and what Rose felt was quite out of proportion to anything she actually was. And Rose would grow up; and Rose would suffer, she supposed, with these deep feelings...// ？

Lily Briscoe watched her drifting into that strange no–man』s land where to follow people is impossible and yet their going inflicts such a chill on those who watch them that they always try at least to follow them with their eyes as one follows a fading ship until the sails have sunk beneath the horizon.//長句。一些關於思索時靜止狀態的性質。
she pitied men always as if they lacked something—women never, as if they had something. (lily thought of Mrs. Ramsay)// ？是指處理情緒的能力嗎
It was in this sort of state that one asked oneself, What does one live for? Why, one asked oneself, does one take all these pains for the human race to go on? Is it so very desirable? Are we attractive as a species? (Mr. Bankes)//以非人類的視角來看，人類確無延續的必要性，事實上沒有什麼東西有。#一粒沙看世界
She had done the usual trick—been nice. She would never know him. He would never know her. Human relations were all like that, she thought, and the worst (if it had not been for Mr Bankes) were between men and women. (lily)
and if you asked nine people out of ten they would say they wanted nothing but this—love; while the women, judging from her own experience, would all the time be feeling, This is not what we want; there is nothing more tedious, puerile, and inhumane than this; yet it is also beautiful and necessary. Well then, well then? (lily) //此處Lily所指的愛情是在Woolf所處時期的愛情。正因為在那時的觀念中，愛情應該佔據女性全部的生活，才使得愛情在Lily的眼中如此難以忍受。Woolf也是如此認為的。not sure Lily和Bankes兩個人都如此反感婚姻、愛情和家庭，Ramsay夫人卻覺得他們是最合適的一對，諷刺。
so that again tonight she had the feeling she had had once today, already, of peace, of rest. Of such moments, she thought, the thing is made that endures. (Mrs. Ramsay)// see Chpt. 11
It was necessary now to carry everything a step further... it had become, she knew, giving one last look at it over her shoulder, already the past.//人在思考時似乎完全沉浸在自己的意識中，這時外界對他來說幾乎是靜止的，世界看起來像是由人的意識所推動的。並不是客觀世界真的靜止了，而是人對世界的聚焦和注視停止了，對於這個觀察者來說世界也就彷彿停滯了。

He liked to think that every one had taken themselves off and that he and she were alone. The whole of life did not consist in going to bed with a woman, he thought（Mr. Ramsay）//他不想承認自己在關係中是被動的一方。
He wanted something—wanted the thing she always found it so difficult to give him; wanted her to tell him that she loved him. And that, no, she could not do. He found talking so much easier than she did. He could say things—she never could. So naturally it was always he that said the things, and then for some reason he would mind this suddenly, and would reproach her. A heartless woman he called her; she never told him that she loved him. But it was not so—it was not so.
「Yes, you were right. It』s going to be wet tomorrow. You won』t be able to go.」 And she looked at him smiling. For she had triumphed again. She had not said it: yet he knew.// 沒有說的是she loves him，她又一次在感情的世界中佔據了上風。

TIME PASSES

//前半本書只用來描寫一個晚上，充滿巨變的十年卻在一段段描述中飛速流逝。

「Well, we must wait for the future to show,」 said Mr Bankes, coming in from the terrace. // 這句話與本節標題呼應。

[Mr Ramsay, stumbling along a passage one dark morning, stretched his arms out, but Mrs Ramsay having died rather suddenly the night before, his arms, though stretched out, remained empty.] // sad

So loveliness reigned and stillness, and together made the shape of loveliness itself, a form from which life had parted; ... Loveliness and stillness clasped hands in the bedroom, ... 」Will you fade? Will you perish?」—scarcely disturbed the peace, the indifference, the air of pure integrity, as if the question they asked scarcely needed that they should answer: we remain. //loveliness: the quality of being very beautiful or attractive.

Did Nature supplement what man advanced? Did she complete what he began? With equal complacence she saw his misery, his meanness, and his torture. That dream, of sharing, completing, of finding in solitude on the beach an answer, was then but a reflection in a mirror, and the mirror itself was but the surface glassiness which forms in quiescence when the nobler powers sleep beneath? Impatient, despairing yet loth to go (for beauty offers her lures, has her consolations), to pace the beach was impossible; contemplation was unendurable; the mirror was broken.//還沒有弄明白。

THE LIGHTHOUSE

Let him be fifty feet away, let him not even speak to you, let him not even see you, he permeated, he prevailed, he imposed himself. He changed everything. （Lily『s thought of Mr. Ramsay）// 第一部分第10節中也提到Ramsay夫人的domineering。一個理性、一個感性，都非常有侵略性。
That man, she thought, her anger rising in her, never gave; that man took. She, on the other hand, would be forced to give. Mrs Ramsay had given. Giving, giving, giving, she had died—and had left all this. // 兩人一個索取，一個給予，都要對他人施加強有力的影響，他們兩個因而都被形容為domineering，他們每個人也都不是理想的狀態。
Surely, she could imitate from recollection the glow, the rhapsody, the self–surrender, she had seen on so many women』s faces (on Mrs Ramsay』s, for instance) when on some occasion like this they blazed up—she could remember the look on Mrs Ramsay』s face—into a rapture of sympathy, of delight in the reward they had, which, though the reason of it escaped her, evidently conferred on them the most supreme bliss of which human nature was capable.

All that in idea seemed simple became in practice immediately complex;(lily)
What is the meaning of life? That was all—a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years. The great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come.Instead there struck unexpectedly in the dark; here was one. This, that, and the other; //雜務瑣事並非麻煩一堆，別以為我們一旦逃開，就可以開始修習，步上道途——其實這些瑣事就是我們的道。(Gary Snyder) 集體的意義是建構的；個體的意義應當是自我賦予的。並沒有一個存在於身外的、永恆正確的、超凡脫俗的「人生意義」。把過去發生的事情看作文本，意義是審視者賦予的。

Mrs Ramsay has faded and gone, she thought. We can over–ride her wishes, improve away her limited, old–fashioned ideas ... It has all gone against your wishes. They』re happy like that; I』m happy like this. Life has changed completely. (lily thought)
how 「you」 and 「I」 and 「she」 pass and vanish; nothing stays; all changes; but not words, not paint... One might say, even of this scrawl, not of that actual picture, perhaps, but of what it attempted, that it 「remained for ever,」// 作品要求流傳，這構成了作品的一個內在品格。一方面來說，（藝術）作品是自成語境的，故而可以超越時代的束縛；另一方面來說，作品總是帶有模糊性的，這種模糊又創造了闡釋的可能性。

he felt, looking at the Lighthouse and the distant shore) whether he was in a business, in a bank, a barrister, a man at the head of some enterprise, that he would fight, that he would track down and stamp out—tyranny, despotism, he called it—making people do what they did not want to do, cutting off their right to speak.(James thought)

she murmured, dreamily half asleep, how we perished, each alone. (Cam)

Love had a thousand shapes. There might be lovers whose gift it was to choose out the elements of things and place them together and so, giving them a wholeness not theirs in life, make of some scene, or meeting of people (all now gone and separate), one of those globed compacted things over which thought lingers, and love plays.(lily)
she could not achieve that razor edge of balance between two opposite forces; Mr Ramsay and the picture; which was necessary. //這兩者都不是Lily本身。
she thought, for she could not shake herself free from the sense that everything this morning was happening for the first time, perhaps for the last time, as a traveller, even though he is half asleep, knows, looking out of the train window, that he must look now, for he will never see that town, or that mule–cart, or that woman at work in the fields, again.//人不能兩次踏入同一條河流。

But his father never praised him, James thought grimly... //堅定嚴肅，典型的Ramsay先生品格。
There! Cam thought, addressing herself silently to James. You』ve got it at last. For she knew that this was what James had been wanting, and she knew that now he had got it he was so pleased that he would not look at her or at his father or at any one. //也許是Ramsay先生不似從前了，也可能James已經成為了像Ramsay先生一樣的人。

They had been thinking the same things and he had answered her without her asking him anything. He stood there as if he were spreading his hands over all the weakness and suffering of mankind; she thought he was surveying, tolerantly and compassionately, their final destiny.
With a sudden intensity, as if she saw it clear for a second, she drew a line there, in the centre. It was done; it was finished. Yes, she thought, laying down her brush in extreme fatigue, I have had my vision.(Lily) // 全書最後一句。此處vision我理解為對命運和未來的洞察。畫作的完成代表了一種和解，與Ramsay先生所代表的力量的和解。（不過此時Ramsay先生也確實不和Lily在同一個地方，他們在空間上相隔。此前Lily在Ramsay先生靠近時感到很大的壓力。）畫作的完成也代表了Lily的精神世界的完滿，這樣她才有另一種力量與Ramsay先生抗衡，達到一種平衡的境地。

-THE END-

本書的敘述在不同人物的視角間自如轉換，有別於POV的一點是並不是一章節只以一個人物為中心。Ramsay先生代表了傳統的男性形象，具有「真」的品格；夫人代表了傳統的女性形象，代表「美」。借Ramsay先生之口，探討人與自然的關係，人在自然中的渺小，以及如何克服這種渺小；借Ramsay夫人之口，探討人與人的關係，人在世的永恆孤獨和不能相互理解。（杜甫詩：天意高難問，人情老易悲。）借這對夫婦和他們的家庭探討兩性關係。Lily最後的平衡是作者對傳統的否定和超越。Carmichael先生和Lily一個是詩人，一個是畫家，全書以兩人並立的場景結尾，說明藝術是到達人生完滿境地的輔助。（朱光潛《談美》最後一節即「人生的藝術化」。）在我看來，藝術之所以超越科學和哲學而被woolf青睞，就在於藝術在反映現實的基礎上傳達的是個人經驗，它與知識無關，也就與壓迫無關。（知識即權力）藝術在這一層面上是自由的象徵。