悲劇的誕生The Birth Of Tragedy 第119期:理想的人物

Our whole modern world is entangled in the net of Alexandrian culture.

我們整個現代世界陷於亞歷山德里亞文化的網羅中；

It proposes as its ideal the theoretical man equipped with the greatest forces of knowledge,

它所目爲理想的人物，是具備最高知識能力，

and laboring in the service of science, whose archetype and progenitor is Socrates.

努力爲科學效勞的理論家，蘇格拉底就是這種人物的原型和始祖。

All our educational methods originally have this ideal in view:

我們所有教育方法最初就以這種理想爲目的；

every other form of existence must struggle on laboriously beside it, as something tolerated, but not intended.

其餘一切生存方式都在它旁邊艱苦掙扎，彷彿是一種姑且允許的而非其所欲的生存。

In an almost alarming manner the culture man was for a long time found only in the form of the scholar:

很長時間，有教養的人只以學者的姿態出現，實屬驚人；

even our poetical arts have been forced to evolve from scholarly imitations,

甚至我們的詩藝也不得不從淵博的仿作演繹出來，

and in the main effect,

即就韻律的主要作用而言，

that of rhyme, we still recognize the origin of our poetic form from artificial experiments with a nonindigenous, really scholarly language.

我們也見到我們的詩體不是出自鄉土之音，而是源於博學雅言的藝術試作。

How unintelligible must Faust, the modern cultured man, who is in himself intelligible, have appeared to a true Greek--Faust,

浮士德，現代文明人的典型，是可以理解的現象，可是在真正的希臘人看來，定必是多麼不可思議：

storming unsatisfied through all the faculties, devoted to magic and the devil from a desire for knowledge;

浮士德貪得無厭地攻究一切學術，爲了求知的衝動而獻身於巫術與魔鬼。

Faust, whom we have but to place beside Socrates for the purpose of comparison,

我們只要把浮士德放在蘇格拉底旁邊來比較，

in order to see that modern man is beginning to divine the limits of this Socratic love of knowledge

就不難明白：現代人開始預料到這種蘇格拉底求知慾的極限，

and yearns for a coast in the wide waste of the ocean of knowledge.

所以對着滄茫的知識之海悠然嚮往彼岸。

When Goethe on one occasion said to Eckermann with reference to Napoleon:

歌德有一次講到拿破崙，便對厄克爾曼說：

"Yes, my good friend, there is also a productiveness of deeds,"

“是的，好朋友，在事業方面也有一種創作力。”

he reminded us in a charmingly naïve manner that the nontheorist is something incredible and astounding to modern man;

他天真得可愛地提醒我們：對於現代人，非理論家總是可疑可畏的人物。

so that we again have need of the wisdom of Goethe to discover that such a surprising form of existence is not only comprehensible, but even pardonable.

所以，我們還需要有歌德的聰明，才能發現這樣一種驚人的生存方式不但是可以理解的，甚至是可以原諒的。