2013年6月7日 星期五

《重生》Reborn: Early Diaries, 1947-64 by Susan Sontag / Styles of Radical Will /Second volume of her diaries

   一晃眼 Susan Sontag竟然快過世十年了呢. 在半夜讀她的筆記和日記-- 台灣和中國的翻譯各有千秋. 以後再談......

重生:桑塔格日記第一部 Reborn: Journals & Notebooks 1947-1963

本書收錄的是蘇珊桑塔格14歲到31歲寫的日記和札記。
  這日記宛如寫在二十世紀的希臘悲劇。
  即使劇中人物的命運早已決定,主角已謝幕,
  但身為觀眾的我們仍無法停止激動。
  這是擁有「當代最偉大知識分子」美譽的桑塔格,
  誠實的不安和反省。
   桑塔格逝世之後,兒子大衛瑞夫整理母親日記和手札集結的作品第一部, 收錄的是從十四歲至三十一歲(1947-1964)的日記,從青春時期開始,桑塔格便開始對抗自己,也和世界作戰。從早年日記中可看出,她對藝術領域的嫻 熟,對自己判斷力的極端自信,以及對知識的強烈渴望。然而她對失敗的感受,在愛情與性慾道路上的崎嶇跌撞卻也同樣熾烈難擋。
  本書記載的是她對閱讀的飢渴、寫作的追求、對愛情和性欲的探索。
  她的痛苦、閱讀書單、愛與恨、思索與反芻……
  本書堪稱當代最偉大知識份子的養成實錄
作者簡介
蘇珊.桑塔Susan Sontag
  1933年1月16日出生於美國紐約市。難以被歸類的傑出寫作者,不僅是一名小說家、哲學家、文學批評家、符號學家,也是電影導演、劇作家與製片。影響遍及各領域,與西蒙.波娃、漢娜.鄂蘭並列為二十世紀最重要的三位女性知識分子,而有「美國最聰明的女人」的封號。
   她每發表一本著作都成為了一件文化盛事。代表作品包括:1966年出版的《反詮釋》即成為大學校院經典,令她名噪一時。1977年的《論攝影》獲得國家 書評人評論組首獎,至今仍為攝影理論聖經。1978年的《疾病的隱喻》肇於她與乳癌搏鬥的經驗,被女性國家書會列為七十五本「改變世界的女性著述」之一。 2000年面世的小說《在美國》為她贏得美國國家書卷獎。
  桑塔格一生獲獎無數,1996年獲得哈佛大學榮譽博士學位,並當選為美國文學 藝術院院士,2001年獲得耶路撒冷獎,表彰其終身的文學成就,2003年再獲頒德國圖書交易會和平獎。雖然她已於2004年12月28日離世,但她提出 的問題仍敲打著讀者的心靈,世界也從未停止對她的思考與懷念。
  桑塔格基金會:www.susansontag.com/。
譯者簡介
郭寶蓮
  台大社會學碩士,輔大翻譯研究所。專職譯者。近期譯作包括《心願清單》、《不用讀完一本書》、《魔鬼的名字》等。譯文賜教:hot8miso@hotmail.com。

 序言
大衛.瑞夫(David Rieff)

我經常想,活著的談到逝者,最蠢的一句話就是「他/她一定會想這麼 做。」這種話充其量不過是揣測,而更多時候是為了表現自己的傲慢,即使用意良善。總之,沒人可以真正知道逝者的想法。不論如何看待蘇珊.桑塔格的日記選集 三冊中的第一冊《重生》的出版,唯一確定的是,這不是一本她會出版的書,事實上打從一開始寫這些日記,她就沒打算出版。付梓出版與內容挑選,全由我一人決 定。雖然現在沒有審查制度,不過冒險出版這本書可能引發的文學風險及道德傷害自不待言。在此提醒讀者。

我未曾想過做此決定,但我母親死前 沒留遺言交代怎麼處置她的書稿、散落各地或未竟的作品。這似乎不像她的作風,畢竟她非常謹慎對待自己的作品。就算對自己作品的譯出語言僅皮毛涉獵,她也會 費盡辛勞堅持親力親為,對世界各地的出版社和雜誌社也有自己深思熟慮且堅決果斷的意見。她患有致命性的「骨髓發育不良症候群」 (Myelodysplastic syndrome),但最終奪走她性命的是血癌。直到二○○四年十二月二十八日臨終前幾個禮拜,她都還相信自己撐得過去。所以那段期間她不像臣服於死神魔 掌的人開始交代後事,反而談起自己出院後要返回工作,以及想著手撰寫的東西,絲毫沒提萬一哪天無法親自看顧自己的書稿時,希望別人怎麼照顧她的作品。

對 我而言,她有百分之百的權利死得其願。在她與死神搏鬥的過程中,她對後代子孫沒任何連累或虧欠,更遑論我,不過她生前的一些決定顯然造成始料未及的結果, 其中最重要的一項結果造成我必須全權負責她身後遺留作品的出版事宜。以她辭世兩年後所付梓的論文集《在同一時空下》(At the Same Time)來說,出版此書的相關決策相對上來說容易得多。若她健在,此書重新出版前肯定會進行大幅修改,但很確定的是,她在世期間這些內容要不已付梓,就 是以演講的方式公開發表過,由此可推論她出版《在同一時空下》的意願顯而易見。

然而日記全然不是這麼回事。日記裡的字字句句都是她為自己 而寫,從少女時期到臨終前幾年持續不斷,雖然最後幾年她對電腦和電子郵件的著迷減輕了她寫日記的興趣。她從未准許日記裡的隻字片語曝光,也不像有些人會把 內容念給朋友聽。不過她的摯友多半知道有這些日記存在,也了解她這個習慣:把全寫滿的札記放進臥房的大衣櫥內,並排在之前寫滿的札記旁邊,連同其他私人物 品,譬如家人照片和童年紀念物一併珍藏。

二○○四年春天她臨終病重前,衣櫥裡的札記累計達上百。她辭世後一年,我和她最後一任助理安.強 普(Anne Jump)及密友保羅.迪洛納爾多(Paolo Dilonardo)整理遺物時又找到另外一些。其實我對札記裡的內容印象模糊,唯一和母親談及這些是在她第一次病重時,那時她還未燃起自己能戰勝血癌病 魔的信心,不相信自己能如同前兩次一樣熬過癌症摧殘。那次交談裡她悄聲說過這麼一句話:「你知道我的日記放在哪裡。」但完全沒提及希望我怎麼處置。

雖 然我不能百分之百肯定,不過我傾向這麼相信:若能全照我所願,我很可能會等許久許久之後才出版這些日記,也或許永遠不會出版。有幾次我甚至想把它們燒毀, 不過想歸想,沒真的動手做,畢竟這一本本日記都不屬於我。她身體還硬朗時曾將手稿文件賣給加州大學位於洛杉磯的圖書館,雙方的協議是一旦她亡故,這些日記 就必須連同她的手稿和書籍送到該館保存。母親簽訂的合約裡沒有限制該館對資料的取得範圍,由此我很快明白這份合約已替我做出決定:就算我沒把日記整理出來 公諸於世,別人也會這麼做。而由身為兒子的我來著手進行日記出版事宜,應該會比較妥當。

 雖然如此,我仍惴惶不安。若說這些日記具有自我揭露的意義或許過度低估,因為我挑選出來的內容有許多甚至揭露我母親極端的個人看法。她是個很堅持己見,勇 於批評的人。這些日記充分暴露她這種個性,而這種暴露不可避免地會引發讀者對她的議論。另外的兩難在於,我母親絕不是一個喜歡揭露私事的人,至少晚年的她 確實如此。她尤其會盡力避開對她同性戀傾向與強烈企圖心的任何討論,雖然她從未正面否認她具有這樣的傾向。所以我決定出版日記絕對會侵犯到她的隱私。但除 了將她的日記公開出版,沒有其他方式可以公平地描述我母親這個人。

不過話說回來,這些日記記載了她年少時期對於自己性欲的探索、十六歲時 加州大學柏克萊分校念大一時的初期性實驗,以及年輕時兩段轟轟烈烈的感情。第一段是和海芮葉特.索默.茲沃鈴(Harriet Sohmers Zwerling)。我母親上加州大學那年與她初識,一九五七年兩人在巴黎同居。第二段是和劇作家瑪莉雅.艾琳.佛妮絲(Maria Irene Fornes),兩人相識於她定居巴黎那一年(佛妮絲和海芮葉特曾是戀人)。我母親返回美國後和我父親離婚,搬到紐約曼哈頓區,之後就和艾琳於一九五九年 至一九六三年間交往同居。

決定要出版她的日記後,我理所當然會將一些內容拿掉。這些不予公開的部分包括可能會讓我母親受到某種異樣眼光的 內容,或是過於露骨的性愛情事,要不就是會冒犯到某些人的文字,雖然我已經把這些人的真名刪除。我挑選內容的原則是根據我的直覺,只留下能坦率呈現出蘇 珊.桑塔格年輕面貌,如實反映出那個具強烈自我意識,堅決活出自我的年輕女孩。而這就是她日記裡最教人讚歎佩服的地方。我借用她一本早期日記的封面上所出 現的詞,把這本書取名為《重生》的理由正是如此。而這兩個字也象徵著我母親從幼年起所追尋的道路。

在她那年代,沒有哪位美國作家能像我母 親與歐洲有如此深的聯繫。我們很難想像她會像名作家約翰.厄普戴克(John Updike)初入文壇時說自己有整個家鄉「(賓州的)虛靈頓鎮(Shillington)」可以寫,而說自己有「整個土桑市」或「整個雪曼橡市 (Sherman Oaks)的故事可以訴說」(譯注1)。我們更不可能想像她會像她那時代的許多猶太裔美國作家,從童年或出生背景的社會與種族脈絡中尋找靈感。事實上,她 的故事正好與這些人截然相反,而且在我看來,《重生》這個書名就非常貼切地帶出她的人生歷程。從許多方面來看,她就像小說人物魯邦普雷(Lucien de Rubempré)(譯注2),滿懷雄心壯志的年輕人遠從窮鄉僻壤的省分來到大都會,期望在城市闖出一片天。

當然,從我母親的性 格、氣質和抱負等各方面來看,她截然不同於魯邦普雷。她不追求別人的掌聲,相反地,她只相信自己心中的指引之星。從少女時期,她就展現才華洋溢的天賦,嶄 露頭角。她擴展深化知識的熾烈渴望就是為了要實踐她的自我。而這樣的主題在她的日記中占了極大分量,所以我在挑選日記集結成書時也讓這主題具有相同的比 重。她希望自己配得上她所崇仰的作家、畫家和音樂家。俄羅斯名作家伊薩克.巴別爾(Isaac Babel)的座右銘「你要無所不知」或許正是蘇珊.桑塔格對自己的期許。

這種思維迥異於當今想法。世界各地有所成就的偉大人物心裡或許 都有深刻自信,不過自信形式是由文化所決定,會因時代差異而呈現極大不同的面貌。我想,我母親具有的是十九世紀的自信意識,而她對日記的熱衷或許也帶著那 些偉大「實踐家」的強烈自我意識的風格。說到這類人物我直覺想到的是蘇格蘭的諷刺歷史家卡萊爾(Thomas Carlyle)。而這類思維在二十一世紀初期就徹底消失,被野心取而代之。真正想追求諷刺意義的讀者在當今很難找出真正的實踐家。關於這點,我母親深刻 了解。我總覺得她針對小說家伊利亞斯.卡內提(譯注3)和德國思想家華特.班雅明(Walter Benjamin)所寫的評論文章接近一種自傳體式的探索。在這些文章中,她深有同感地引用卡內提的沈思語:「我想像有人告訴莎士比亞:『輕鬆點!』。」

 再次提醒讀者,在這本日記裡,藝術被視為生死大事,所以藝術裡的諷刺是缺陷而非美德,唯有嚴肅才是至高的善行。我母親很早就表現出這種嚴肅特質,所以她身 邊不乏想叫她輕鬆點的人。她以前常回憶道,她那仁慈保守,在戰場上立下汗馬功勞的繼父曾拜託她別看那麼多書,免得找不到人嫁。此外她在牛津大學的導師史都 華.漢普雪(Stuart Hampshire)也說過類似的話,只不過他的說法更振振有辭且較具文化素養。她告訴過我,漢普雪在和她輔談的過程中曾經挫折地嚷嚷:「喔,妳這個美國 人!妳實在太嚴肅了……簡直就像德國人。」他此言可不是讚賞,但我母親仍將之當成美言。

這些可能會讓讀者以為我母親是「天生的歐洲人」。 套用哲學家以賽亞.柏林(Isaiah Berlin)所說:有些歐洲人是「天生的」美國人,而有些美國人是「天生的」歐洲人。不過我覺得這種說法不盡然適用於我母親。沒錯,對她來說,美國文學 的確處於歐洲偉大文學(尤其是德國文學)的邊緣位置,然而,或許在她內心深處,她認為她可以重塑自己(事實上每個人都能重塑自己),所以個人的出身等背景 可以透過意志來加以扔棄或超越,若該人具有堅強意志。這種想法若不是美國小說家費茲傑羅(F. Scott Fitzgerald)所說的「美國人的生命中沒有第二幕」的具體展現,那又是什麼呢?如我所言,我母親臨終前仍相信自己能從那張病榻上起身,所以還計畫 著在醫療幫她爭取的時間內,要如何演出之後人生的第一幕。

就這方面來說,我母親果然一路走來始終如一。展讀她的日記,最教我訝異的是從青 春到年邁,她始終打著相同的仗,既對抗世界也與自己交戰。她對藝術領域的嫻熟,對自己判斷力的極端自信,以及對知識的強烈渴望從很早就開始。年幼的她會列 出想讀的書目清單,讀完後一本一本劃掉。從她想聆聽每首樂曲,親睹每件藝術創作,精通所有文學鉅著,就可看出她對知識的貪婪。然而她對失敗的感受,在愛情 與性慾道路上的崎嶇跌撞卻也同樣熾烈難擋。她的心靈平靜,卻對自己身體極度不安。

對母親的這番了解,讓我有說不出的哀傷。她很年輕時曾到 過希臘,在伯羅奔尼薩半島南部的露天劇場觀賞著名希臘悲劇《米蒂亞》(Medea)。那次經驗讓她深深震撼,因為就在米蒂亞準備弒子時,觀眾席裡傳出驚 呼:「不,別下手,米蒂亞!」她跟我說過多次:「那些觀眾沒意識到自己觀賞的是藝術作品,對他們來說,那是真真實實的故事。」

她的這些日 記也是真真實實的故事。閱讀這些故事的我,焦急憂慮的心情正如一九五○年代中期那些看戲的希臘觀眾。我很想大喊:「別這樣做」、「別這麼苛待自己」、「別 把妳自己想得那麼好」、「小心那女人,她不是真的愛妳」。當然,我的焦急來得太遲。戲已演出,主角已謝幕,而其他演員,就算不是全部也多數跟著下臺了。

徒留的只有我的痛苦和野心。而日記,就在痛苦和野心之間擺盪。我母親會希望日記曝光嗎?我不止決定將它們集結成書,也決心要自己親自編輯,這樣的決定背後有實際的道理,雖然裡面有些東西會讓我很痛苦,雖然我會讀到很多我寧願不知道也不想讓別人看見的東西。

我清楚知道,我母親身為讀者和作家,非常喜歡閱讀日記和書信,愈私密愈佳。所以,或許身為作家的蘇珊.桑塔格會准許我這麼做吧。無論如何,我懷此希望。

 一九四八年/八月/十九日
曾是沉重的壓力驟然改變位置,以出其不意的戰術,搖蕩到我逃離的雙腳下,成了一股吸力,拖住我,使我疲憊不堪。我好想屈 服!要說服自己,爸媽的婚姻走得下去,其實很容易,如果我只和他們及他們的朋友認識一年,或許就能屈服?我的「智慧」難道真得靠別人滔滔不絕的不滿不平, 才能回春有活力,否則就會枯萎?真希望我能堅持自己的誓言!我可以感覺自己動搖了,有時甚至打算同意留在家鄉上大學。

我現在能想到的就只 有媽媽。想到她是多麼美麗,肌膚多麼光滑,還有她有多愛我。還想到她前兩天晚上全身抖動啜泣的模樣。她不希望待在另個房間的爸爸聽見她哭泣,所以每次婆娑 淚眼,將哽咽壓抑成劇烈打嗝。人真是懦弱,沒膽面對枯燥乏味的婚姻關係,只會被動讓自己受傳統束縛。他們的生活過得好糟糕、好鬱悶、好悲慘……

我怎能再傷害她?她如此飽受折磨,又從未反抗。

我要怎樣讓自己狠得下心?


一九四八年/九月/一日
「在他杯子中」,這是什麼意思?

擲扔石塊而成就的山脈。

再次沉醉於紀德(譯注1),好清晰精準的思維啊!這個人本身就無可匹敵,相較之下他的所有作品反倒無足輕重。至於【托馬斯.曼】(譯注2)的《魔山》(The Magic Mountain)則是每人一生必讀的書。

我 就知道!《魔山》是我讀過最棒的小說。再次捧讀,重燃甜美滋味,熟悉感覺絲毫不減,我在其中感受到的寧靜與沉思喜悅無與倫比。不過若要追求純粹的情緒衝 擊,得到具體感官的愉悅,體驗到喘息與光陰瞬間虛度的感覺(一種倉促匆忙的快、快、快),或想得到生活知識,不,不對,是想得到盎然活著的知識,那麼我就 會讀【羅曼.羅蘭】的《約翰.克利斯多夫》(Jean-Christophe)。

***

……「我若死,但願墓碑如此記載:
『此人罪孽深重,然作品廣受拜讀』。」
--希拉瑞.貝洛克(譯注3)

**

整 個下午沉浸於紀德中,還聆聽了【指揮家富里茲.】布許(Busch)(格林德波恩歌劇音樂節合唱團Glyndebourne festival)所灌錄的【莫札特】歌劇《唐.喬凡尼》(Don Giovanni)。我讓其中幾段詠嘆調反覆播放,譬如「那個忘恩負義的出賣了我」(Mi tradi quell’ alma ingrata)及「走開,殘酷的人,走開」(Guggi, crudele, fuggi)。若能經常聽這些曲子,我一定能變得更堅毅平靜。

浪費了整個晚上跟納特廝混【納特.桑塔格(Nathan Sontag)是蘇珊.桑塔格的繼父】。他教我開車,然後我陪他,還假裝很享受那部彩色的血腥暴力片。

寫完上句,我讀了一次,很想將這句刪除,不過我應該讓它留著。只對生命滿意的部分加以記錄,對我來說並無助益(反正滿意的部分本來就少!),乾脆把無所事事而浪費掉的今天也記錄下來吧,免得我太寬容自己,又虛度明天。


一九四八年/九月/二日
和 蜜爾崔德展開一場淚眼相對的討論【蜜爾崔德.桑塔格(Mildred Sontag)是蘇珊.桑塔格的母親。娘家本姓賈克布森(Jacobson)】(該死!)她說:「妳應該高興我嫁給納特,要不然妳永遠不可能有機會去芝加 哥,這點非常確定!我不會告訴妳,這段婚姻讓我有多不快樂,不過我覺得我必須好好彌補妳。」

或許我該感到慶幸!


一九四八年/九月/十日
【蘇珊.桑塔格影印了紀德日記文集中的第二卷,並在影本的封面內側寫出以下文字且載明日期】

拿到書當天的凌晨兩點半,我讀完整本書—

我應該讀慢點,應該無數次反覆重讀。紀德和我能達到完美的智識交流,我彷彿經歷陣痛般深刻體會由他催生的每個思想!我想的不是「好澄澈的思緒啊!」而是「停!我沒法思考那麼快!或者,我沒法成長那麼快!」

因為,我不止閱讀這本書,我還在自己腦中創作這本書,這種獨特強烈的閱讀經驗洗滌了過去那可怕數月所聚積在我心中的迷惑與乏力感—
 一九四八年/十二月/十九日
有很多書、劇作和故事我想讀,這裡只是其中一些:

《偽幣製造者》(The Counterfeiters)--紀德
《背德者》(The Immoralist)-- “
《拉弗卡地歐的冒險》(Lafcadio’s Adventures)(譯注4)-- “
《田園牧人》(Corydon)--紀德
《柏油》(Tar)--舍伍德.安德森(Sherwood Anderson)
《所在的島嶼》(The Island Within)-- 路德維格.劉易斯遜(Ludwig Lewisohn)《聖殿》(Sanctuary)--威廉.福克納(William Faulkner)
《依莎.沃斯特》(Esther Waters)--喬治.莫爾(George Moore)
《作家日記》(Diary of a Writer)--杜斯妥也夫斯基(Dostoyevsky)
《背道而馳》(Against the Grain)--于斯曼(Huysmans)
《弟子》(The Disciple)--保羅.布爾熱(Paul Bourget)
《沙寧》(Sanin)--米開爾.阿爾志跋綏夫(Mikhail Artsybashev)
《強尼上戰場》(Johnny Got His Gun)--戴爾頓.杜倫波(Dalton Trumbo)《》《佛賽情史》(The Forsyte Saga)--高爾斯華綏(Galsworthy)
《利己主義者》(The Egoist)--喬治.梅瑞迪斯(Geoge Meredith)
《十字路口的黛安娜》(Diana of the Crossways)-- “
《理查.費佛拉的考驗》(The Ordeal of Richard Feverel)-- “

還有,但丁(Dante)、亞里歐斯多(Ariosto)、塔索(Tasso)、提卜魯斯(Tibullus)、海涅(Heine)、普希金(Pushkin)、韓波(Rimbaud)、魏爾倫(Verlaine)、阿波利奈爾(Apollinaire)的詩。

辛格(Synge)、奧尼爾(O’Neill)、卡特隆(Calderon)、蕭伯納(Shaw)、海爾曼(Hellman)……的劇作。
【這份清單還有另外五頁,列出的書名或劇名超過一百部】

****

……詩,應該要:明確、強烈、具體、意賅、有韻律、正規、複雜

……藝術,該永遠努力獨立於智識之外……

……語言,不止是工具,本身應該是目的……

……霍普金斯(Gerard Hopkins)透過他袤廣又能聚焦的澄澈心智,利用文字雕琢出一個既殘破又歡欣的意象世界。

以他冷酷的清醒神智為劍揮舞,以他徹底心靈化的生命和藝術為盾,遮擋自己免於肉身的沉淪,在有限的餘地內他仍創造作品。說起他靈魂的苦痛……


一九四八年/十二月/二十五日
此刻,我全然陶醉於未曾聽過的天籟之音中,韋瓦第(Vialdi)B小調鋼琴協奏曲。這是音樂廠牌Cetra-Soria與鋼琴家馬利歐.薩勒諾(Mario Salerno)合作的版本。

當 下,音樂成為最令人讚歎,最栩栩如生的藝術形式,它是最抽象、最完美、最純粹,也是感官性最強烈的。我用我的身體聆聽音樂,我的身體渴望回應音樂裡的熱情 與感傷。整個旋律世界乍現閃爍光芒,然,首次律動的下一秒,音符旋即抖落,肉身具體的「我」經驗到難以承受的苦痛,而後,隱約的焦躁。每次深陷第二次律動 的渴慕中,我的肉、我的骨就一點點死去—

我快要瘋了。有時,我認為(我好刻意寫出這幾個字),我會瞬間(喔,這念頭急速地飛向我)明確知道我正在深淵斷崖邊踉蹌欲墜,那種清晰感覺就像知道今天是聖誕節—

我 問,是什麼讓我失序?我如何診斷自己?我當下感覺到的,就是我痛苦地渴望肉體愛情與心智伴侶。我這麼年輕,或許我性慾上不安的那面會發展到難以收拾。坦白 說,我不在乎。【在這句話旁邊,蘇珊.桑塔格另外寫了一句話:「你也不應該在乎」,並註明一九四九年五月三十一日】。我的欲求,排山倒海而來,而人生,在 我的魂縈夢繫中,如此苦短—

我應該盡可能帶著輕鬆趣味的心情來回顧這件事。我以前是個驚嚇過度、戒慎恐懼的嚴謹虔信者,以為自己有天應當成為天主教徒,而現在的我,則強烈認為自己有同性戀的傾向(我真不願意寫出這點)—

我 不該想到太陽系,想到那數不清的銀河跨越無垠的光年太空。我不該仰望天空太久;我不該想到死亡或永恆;我不該做那些事情,這樣一來就不會經歷到自己的心智 彷彿化為具體有形的可怕時刻。事實上不止心智如此,而是我整個靈魂,所有賦予我生命、構成我之「自我」的那些原始敏銳的慾望,全都化身成明確具體的形狀和 大小,規模之大,實非我稱之為身軀的架構所能涵納。這些東西多年來拉扯推擠,緊繃(我當下就感覺到)到我掄起拳頭,原本能忍住不動的我起身,每寸肌肉受折 磨。這些東西想樹立自己的無際分量,逼得我想尖喊,我的五臟六腑壓迫,我的腿、腳和趾繃緊到抽痛不止。

我這個可憐的軀殼就快爆破,我現在 感覺得到。對無垠進行沉思,讓我的心智緊繃,透過抽象化的簡單感官愉悅,稀釋我的恐懼。有些魔鬼知道我沒有宣洩出口,趁機折磨我,讓我痛苦難當,憤怒難 消。我恐懼和顫抖的心(受絞擰、被折磨,受盡絞擰的我),被那一陣陣發作的不羈慾望鍛鍊得很堅強—


一九四八年/十二月/三十一日

我又讀了這些札記裡的日記。沉悶又乏味!我難道永遠不能逃離無止盡的自艾自憐嗎?我的整個存在似乎處於緊繃狀態—而期盼的……


Dec 31, 2008 – These notebooks of raw, unpublished writing by Susan Sontag ...Reborn,” the first volume of notebooks by his mother, Susan Sontag, who died in 2004.

The lust to write

Susan Sontag's early journals give a fascinating insight into the growth of an original mind, says Sarah Churchwell

When Susan Sontag died in 2004, she left behind a closet full of nearly 100 notebooks. As her son and editor, David Rieff, has explained in his harrowing memoir Swimming in a Sea of Death, Sontag fought to the exceptionally bitter end, refusing to admit the prospect of death, eventually dying "as she had lived: unreconciled to mortality". In his restrained preface to Reborn, Rieff reveals that one of the few times Sontag even implied that she might die was in a "conversation" about the journals. It wasn't much of a conversation: she whispered to him, "You know where the diaries are", and that was it; she offered no further guidance about her wishes, leaving Rieff to draw his own conclusions. Given that she had already sold all her papers to UCLA, he decided, not unreasonably, that they would be published anyway, and he would prefer to edit them himself.
  1. Reborn: Early Diaries, 1947-64
  2. by Susan Sontag
The first of three projected volumes, Reborn offers a portrait of the critic as a young woman, from a frighteningly precocious 14-year-old to a 30-year-old divorcée and mother. It ends as she is about to publish her first novel, and a year before "Notes on Camp" would launch her career as America's most famous public intellectual. Reborn makes plain that Sontag sprang fully formed from her own forehead; the notebook outlines her efforts to will herself into critical existence. Although Sontag always prized her fiction most highly - especially her 1992 novel The Volcano Lover - it was her astute cultural criticism that made her name. And it is that developing critical intelligence, rather than any especially novelistic impulse, that dominates the pages of Reborn.
Sontag's drive towards self-improvement is indefatigable: Reborn eschews narration in favour of admonitory, appraising notes and observations, prescriptions, judgments and an embryonic impulse towards moralising. The journal consists in great part of schedules, plans and lists, especially of the books, music and films she intends to consume, or has just finished consuming. She frequently upbraids herself, as, for example, 10 days before her 24th birthday, for wasting her ideas in conversation: "The leakage of talk. My mind is dribbling out through my mouth." Those who are familiar with Sontag's often censorious approach to her society may be relieved to discover that she started out no more lenient with herself than with the rest of us. Her most characteristic intellectual traits are evident early on: ferocious acuity, formidable ambition, a tendency towards pretension, and a deeply earnest approach to life that would lead her to declare herself "a zealot of seriousness". As a young woman, predictably, this just meant that she took everything far too seriously - especially herself. As Reborn begins when Sontag is an adolescent, her solipsism seems perfectly understandable. However, your average 16-year-old probably wouldn't track down and "interrogate" Thomas Mann, record in detail his thoughts on The Magic Mountain and then sniff: "The author's comments betray his book with their banality."
The book begins with Sontag a bored and frustrated 14-year-old, contemptuous of her suburban family's philistinism and determined to broaden her aesthetic and sexual horizons. Her exceptional cleverness made Sontag self-important, sometimes pompous, as a young woman; but her intellectual complacency is tempered by a sexual insecurity exacerbated by the era's intense homophobia. By 15 she was acknowledging her desire for women, while resisting it: "I feel that I have lesbian tendencies (how reluctantly I write this)." At barely 16, she matriculated at the University of California, Berkeley, and almost immediately she was, she ecstatically declares in the journal, "reborn" after making drunken love with a woman the diary calls H. The next entry, touchingly, reads: "6/4/49 Shostakovich Piano Concerto / Scriabin Preludes / Franck D Minor Symphony / Prokofiev Symphony #5 // [Bach's] Mass in B Minor / Sex with music! So intellectual!!"
Sontag will not long permit herself such unguarded juvenility as those double exclamation marks, however. Soon she is exploring San Francisco's gay underground, earnestly keeping a primer on gay slang and its proper usage.
After just one semester at Berkeley, Sontag transferred to the University of Chicago. At the end of November 1949, she notes that she will do research work for a sociology instructor named Philip Rieff. The next entry, 10 days later, says only: "Last night, or was it early this (Sat) morning? - I am engaged to Philip Rieff." She was 16. The next entry muses briefly on morality, and then comes the long passage about "interrogating" Mann. Rieff has been consigned to the margins. For the reader, it is a startling, disorienting swerve from the rapturous girl "resurrected" through lesbian sex, to what seems, reading between the lines (which is all the reader can do, faced with huge gaps in narration), like an all-too-common mid-century effort at going straight. A decade later Sontag will recall that she "did desire Philip tremendously during the first year", but that desire does not appear on the page. Instead, she writes a year after the marriage that she wed Rieff on 3 January 1950, 13 days before she turned 17, with "full consciousness + fear of will toward self-destructiveness". As omens go, its not auspicious.
The journals then skip two years, during which Sontag had her son David and battled a depression that is never named, but strongly implied by the long silence itself. After a few years of increasingly bitter musings on the entrapments of marriage, and some charming maternal anecdotes about her small son, Sontag abruptly left her husband and child, at 24, to study at Oxford. From there she went on holiday to Paris, and instead of returning to England she embarked on a painful, doomed affair with none other than her first lover, H, whom she re-encountered there. Eventually returning to New York, Sontag successfully sued Rieff for custody of David and began an affair with the next letter, "I", a woman with whom both she and H had previously been involved. That relationship seems little happier than the one with H, although it was considerably longer lasting.
If her two lovers do not come off well in Sontag's sometimes blistering analysis ("I say that H's honesty is not honesty; it's nastiness. Honesty means being honest all the time, not just when you can afford it"), the young Sontag seems frankly exhausting. Needy, nearly masochistic in what she depicts as her own submissiveness (it is worth asking whether her lovers might have found her more combative), she chose self-destructive relationships and then tended towards self-dramatisation and martyrdom: "A crucifixion, these last two weeks . . . Must deserve it. Love is ridiculous." The quick slash dates Rieff reproduces ("2/8/58") make it difficult for the reader to remember how young she is, especially given how mature her voice always sounds. The post-adolescent histrionics leave little room for humour, especially at her own expense, but occasionally Sontag offers an astringent little taste of self-knowledge, as when she suddenly admits how voluntary, even wilful, are these hopeless affairs: "I remember expressing amazement (+ feeling superior) when H said once in Paris that she didn't know whether or not she had ever been in love with someone. I couldn't understand what she was talking about . . . for me being in love is deciding: I'm in love + sticking with it, I'm always well-informed."
Sontag seems to have spent the time when she wasn't agonising over love watching films and voraciously consuming New York's cultural offerings. She continued to probe arguments, dissect her emotions, jot down the occasional graphic sexual anecdote and develop theories of aesthetics and moral philosophy. But she was actually working on a novel, to which the notebooks give short shrift; to support herself she taught, in a desultory way, at Sarah Lawrence College, regularly missing lectures and arriving late. Her son, who lived with her, seems not to have occasioned much thought. The journal ends with a characteristic, undated note from 1963: "The intellectual ecstasy I have had access to since early childhood. But ecstasy is ecstasy. Intellectual 'wanting' like sexual wanting." Despite her consistent association of intellectual and sexual energy ("the orgasm focuses. I lust to write"), and however strong her urge to experience life, from pleasure to pain, what comes through most powerfully is not the desire to feel, but the need to understand.
Like many an aspiring writer, Sontag wrote her notebooks with a self-conscious awareness that, ultimately, her words were meant to be read. At 24, she offered thoughts "On Keeping a Journal": "Superficial to understand the journal as just a receptacle for one's private, secret thoughts - like a confidante who is deaf, dumb and illiterate. In the journal I do not just express myself more openly than I could do to any person; I create myself." But Sontag also used her journals as a whetstone, sharpening her blades, as is clear from a rather unpleasant episode, in which she deliberately reads H's journal and discovers a "curt, unfair, uncharitable assessment" of herself. Sontag rationalises her snooping by defining the journal as a "social" text: "One of the main (social) functions of a journal or diary is precisely to be read furtively by other people, the people (like parents + lovers) about whom one has been cruelly honest only in the journal." She then wonders when H will read this entry. "No mask is wholly a mask", she says, covertly acknowledging that journal-keeping by writers is often an exercise in the art of the open secret, and in covert revenge.
Reborn grows considerably more compelling as it progresses: even a precocious adolescent's thoughts and emotions are adolescent. Near the end of this first volume, one can feel Sontag's mind beginning to ripen and bloom, and the full force of the intellectual originality that would be her hallmark emerging. As fascinating as this fragmented glimpse into Sontag's mind is, it remains a kind of tease. Volumes two and three may well be where the real pleasure comes: not from gossip, but from genius.
• Sarah Churchwell is a senior lecturer in American literature and culture at the University of East Anglia.

2012.6.5
Susan Sontag
Second volume of her diaries

In her personal journals, a picture of a complicated, brilliant person emerges (14)



激進意志的樣式
Styles of Radical Will


作者 / 蘇珊.桑塔格 Sontag, Susan
譯者 / 何寧/ 周麗華/ 王磊
出版社 / 上海譯文
出版日期 / 2007/08/01
商品語言 / 中文/簡體本書是蘇珊?桑塔格生平第二本重要的文論集,是對于《反對闡釋》所研究的主題的一種延伸,內容涉及電影、文學、政治等各個領域,其中頗為引人注目的是她關 於色情文學作品的分析。該書秉承了桑塔格一貫的風格,視角犀利敏銳、見解別具一格。書本內容涉及電影、文學、政治等各個領域,其中頗為引人注目的是她關於 色情文學作品的分析。

【作者簡介】
蘇珊.桑塔格(1933~2004年),她生于美國紐約,畢業于芝加哥大學。1993年當選為美國文學藝術學院院士。她是當前美國聲名卓著的“新 知識分子”,和賽門?波伏娃、漢娜?艾倫特被並稱為西方當代最重要的女知識分子,被譽為“美國公眾的良心”。2000年獲美國國家圖書獎、2001年獲耶 路撒冷國際文學獎,並獲得2003年度德國圖書大獎──德國書業和平獎。論文集︰《反對闡 釋》(AGAINSTINTERPRETATIONANDOTHERESSAYS,1968)《論攝影》(ONPHOTOGRAPHY,1977)《疾病 的隱喻》(AIDSANDITSMETAPHORS,1988)《重點所在》(WHERETHESTRESSFALLS,2001)《激進意志的形 式》(STYLESOFRADICALWISH)《在土星的光環下》(UNDERTHESIGNOFSATURN)《他者之 痛》(REGARDINGTHEPAINOFOTHERS)小說︰《火山情人》(THEVOLCANOLOVER,1992)《人在美 國》(INAMERICA,2000)等
目录
静默之美学
色情之想像
“自省”:反思齐奥兰

戏剧与电影
伯格曼的《假面》
戈达尔

美国现状(1966)
河内之行

'Styles of Radical Will'



Reviewed by LAWRENCE M. BENSKY

Published: July 13, 1969

STYLES OF RADICAL WILL

By Susan Sontag






The subjects of the essays in this important book --- Susan Sontag's second collection of essays, containing pieces written since 1966 -- are major subjects of relevant intellectual concern in 1969: the avant-garde "esthetics of science," the pornographic classics of "The Story of O" and "The Image," French philosopher E.M. Cioran, Ingmar Bergman, Jean-Luc Godard.
Is this to say she is fashionable? Readers can certainly find excuses for thinking so. The techniques she employs have something for everyone in the mind game: vast fields of reference, an easy use of traditional philosophical and literary analysis, ruthless self-criticism, a shifting focus of investigation. But since she uses such techniques better than almost any other writer today, Susan Sontag cannot be called fashionable, any more than a statue can be called statuesque. She's simply there, thoroughly herself.
Where she is can best be seen in her own words. On esthetics: "As the activity of the mystic must end in a via negativa, a theology of God's absence, a craving for the cloud of unknowing beyond knowledge and for the silence beyond speech, so art must tend toward anti-art, the elimination of the 'subject' ('the object,' the 'image'), the substitution of chance for intention, and the pursuit of silence.... Art is unmasked as gratuitous, and the every concreteness of the artist's tools ... appears as a trap. Practiced in a world furnished with secondhand perceptions, and specifically confounded by the treachery of words, the artist's activity is cursed.... Art becomes the enemy of the artist, for it denies him the realization -- the transcendence -- he desires. Therefore, art comes to be considered something to be overthrown." (And the "esthetics of silence" come to be written.)
Or, on politics: "What the Mongol hordes threaten is far less frightening than the damage that Western, 'Faustian' man, with his idealism, his magnificent art, his sense of intellectual adventure, his world-devouring energies for conquest, has already done, and further threatens to do.... [In Vietnam] an unholy dialectic is at work, in which the big wasteful society dumps its garbage, its partly unemployable proletarian conscripts, its poisons and its bombs upon a small, virtually defenseless, frugal society whose citizens, those fortunate enough to survive, then go about picking up the debris, out of which they fashion materials for daily use and self-defense."
Who she is can be glimpsed in the following passage from her essay "'Thinking Against Oneself': Reflections on Cioran," for it provides something of an auto-portrait of Susan Sontag:
"More and more, the shrewdest thinkers and artists are precocious archeologists of ... ruins-in-the-making, indignant or stoical diagnosticians of defeat, enigmatic choreographers of the complex spiritual movements useful for individual survival in an era or permanent apocalypse."
The key words are clear: "indignant," "stoical," "enigmatic," "complex," "useful." But one major adjective must be added: "moral" -- because the eight essays in "Styles of Radical Will" are mainly exercises in moral definition, as far as moral definition can be accomplished today on the two supremely and terrifyingly insecure areas of modern art and modern political brutality.
Like all moralists, Miss Sontag hopes to inspire readers with the desire to act upon her principles. But there are insurmountable difficulties in acting upon them, and this is the final, most maddening element in the world she so brilliantly describes.
For example: How is art -- even radical art -- "useful for individual survival in an era of permanent apocalypse?" As Miss Sontag has convincingly argued, good and bad have become useless concepts; the most valid forms -- in art, in philosophy -- are those which accommodate the greatest ambiguity; they are profoundly disturbing but are psychologically appropriate to our condition. Thus Bergman's "Persona" and the films of Godard are exemplary esthetic models. But art is not life; life drives one crazy and corrupts the language with which one could recognize one's condition, while art reinvents language and makes sure one recognizes just how badly off one is. Can such a vicious circle aid us in a moral definition? How "useful to individual survival" can it -- or similar intellectual structures -- be?
This issue -- like so many -- reaches the point of crisis when Miss Sontag confronts the question of Vietnam in her essay "Trip to Hanoi," based on her visit there in the spring of 1968. It is her triumph that by being true to what she sees and feels -- her first concern -- she is able to transfer her artistic and philosophical values to politics without distorting them or losing herself, and find value and meaning where others have lapsed into political cliches or been struck dumb with horror. The placement of "Trip to Hanoi" as the concluding piece in the book is symbolic of the way in which Vietnam has wrenched many students, writers, teachers and intellectuals away from their guarded concerns into a field of experience where they must suddenly cope as never before.
When "Trip to Hanoi" appeared last year in Esquire and later as a paperback, inmates of the liberal and radical wards in the cultural asylum roared in pain. How dare Susan Sontag use the Vietnamese as foils for her own personal psychological development? How dare she claim to be a radical and still spend time agonizing over agonizing at the typewriter? Aren't we getting gassed, clubbed, taxed, drafted, jailed while she is trying to decide what to say?
Reading "Trip to Hanoi" now as a part of a collection, one sees how Miss Sontag's sensibility allowed her to risk these painful accusations. "What I'd been creating and enduring for the last few years was a Vietnam inside my head, under my skin, in the pit of my stomach," she writes, adding that she is "a stubbornly unspecialized writer who has so far been largely unable to incorporate into either novels or essays my evolving radical political convictions and sense of moral dilemma at being a citizen of the American empire."
Hanoi changed that -- and "Trip to Hanoi" enables us to see how her attitude toward Vietnam does follow logically from the moral philosophy which she applies so successfully to esthetic questions. In art, she glories in the discovery of "tact" and "poise" amidst the roaring babble. On her trip, she delighted in the painful recognition of the virtues of the Vietnamese who were "fastidious" and "whole" in the unspeakable holocaust.
To understand the nature of this achievement -- the clear-eyed translation of a vocabulary of art and philosophy into politics -- one must note again that Miss Sontag has been deeply influenced by the contemporary radical French intellectual tradition that concentrates on searching for the underlying structures -- often of an awesome complexity -- beneath the tangled and chaotic surface of individual acts. By creating a personal vocabulary that can permit her to define esthetic expression or political behavior as "tactful," "poised," "fastidious" and "whole," she is demonstrating an intellectual achievement both foreign to contemporary American usage and difficult to appropriate in times of artistic and political change.
Even if one does not accept the annoying and sometimes difficult validity of intellectual accomplishment in a period of ferment and horror, one ignores the best of human creativity and personal honesty at one's peril. It should be remembered that Miss Sontag has now written four of the most valuable intellectual documents of the past 10 years: "Against Interpretation," "Notes on Camp," "The Aesthetics of Silence," and "Trip to Hanoi." In the world in which she's chosen to live, she continues to be the best there is.
Mr. Bensky, a critic and former managing editor of Ramparts, lives in San Francisco.

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