一天早晨,格里高尔·萨姆沙从不安的睡梦中醒来,发现自己变成了一只甲虫。
这个开头,犹如百年孤独那个众所周知的如经典一般的经典开头。
多年以后,当卡夫卡身患结核病,躺在病床上奄奄一息的时候,一定能够回想起自己落笔决定创作,写下第一个字时,那如影随形的痛苦。
写作,尤其是虚构写作,就像是在路面扣饼,无中生有。
不管作品如何,垃圾或是优秀,除了后记,人们都很难读出创作者的艰辛。
卡夫卡在自己的日记中袒露了这些心声,不仅是他个人的创作苦旅,更触及了所有创作者可能面临的核心问题——那些隐藏在心底、阻碍才华充分绽放的心理障碍。
创造性工作充满矛盾,它是深入自我与超脱自我的途径,写作则是卡夫卡代谢经验、理清思绪、摆脱内心束缚的方式。
所有创造性工作本质上都是自我解放与应对内心负面情绪的手段,日记能让我们瞥见创作者内心世界的美丽与真实。
众多写日记的创作者中,卡夫卡对阻碍创作的心理障碍有着深刻而尖锐的洞察。
卡夫卡多次在日记中哀叹自己的创作停滞,如“Wrote nothing”(什么都没写)、“Have written nothing for three days”(三天什么都没写),甚至在美好的春日因未写作而宣称“Bad”(糟糕)。
到了初夏,他陷入绝望,意识到长久未写作的自己即将陷入极度不满,且神经状态已开始受影响。
他时而深陷孤独,被日常琐事分心,身体疲劳,还饱受结核病折磨,生命即将走到尽头。
大量未回复信件如同他那个时代的“FOMO”(错失恐惧症),让他倍感压力。
“This month, which, because of the absence of the boss, could have been put to exceptionally good use, I have wasted and slept away without much excuse… Even this afternoon I stretched out on the bed for three hours with dreamy.” (这个月,因为老板不在,本可以好好利用,我却毫无理由地浪费掉、睡过去了……甚至今天下午我还在床上躺了三个小时,做着梦。)
他早上睡觉、读报,害怕完成给《布拉格日报》的评论,明知拖延不好,却仍狡辩这是创作过程的一部分。
“Stretching in the presence of the maid and saying, ‘I’ve been writing until now.’ The appearance of the undisturbed bed, as though it had just been brought in… I am in the shameful lowlands of writing. Only in this way can writing be done, only with such coherence, with such a complete opening out of the body and the soul.” (在女仆面前伸懒腰,说‘我一直在写作到现在’。未被弄乱的床看起来就像刚搬进来一样……我正处于写作的可耻低谷。只有这样才能写作,只有这样全身心地投入。)
卡夫卡本就是一个心思敏感细腻的人,在一战期间,战争带来的恐惧如影随形。
“The thoughts provoked in me by the war… devour me from every direction. I can’t endure worry, and perhaps have been created expressly in order to die of it.” (战争引发的思绪……从四面八方吞噬着我。我无法忍受忧虑,也许我生来就是为了死于忧虑。)
写作的问题远不止这些,对于同行的比较,也严重地损害了卡夫卡的创作信心,使他陷入不安全感和嫉妒的绝望中。
在创作第一篇发表的短篇小说时,阅读歌德的作品让他完全受阻。
“So passes my rainy, quiet Sunday, I sit in my bedroom and am at peace, but instead of making up my mind to do some writing, into which I could have poured my whole being the day before yesterday, I have been staring at my fingers for quite a while. This week I think I have been completely influenced by Goethe, have really exhausted the strength of this influence and have therefore become useless.” (就这样,我的下雨的安静的星期天过去了,我坐在卧室里很平静,但我没有下定决心写作,前天我本可以全身心投入写作的,而我却盯着手指看了好一会儿。这周我觉得自己完全被歌德影响了,真的耗尽了这种影响的力量,因此变得毫无用处。)
如同写传统武侠的作者,看到了金庸的《天龙八部》,泰山横亘于前,扭头看了看自己的小土坡。
“The zeal, permeating every part of me, with which I read about Goethe (Goethe’s conversations, student days, hours with Goethe, a visit of Goethe’s to Frankfort) and which keeps me from all writing.” (我阅读关于歌德的作品(歌德的谈话、学生时代、与歌德相处的时光、歌德访问法兰克福)时的热情弥漫在我全身,这让我无法写作。)
“I cannot believe that I shall really write something good tomorrow” (我不相信明天我真的能写出好东西),
他认为自己在写作上几乎是个失败者。他觉得自己无能、无知。
“I will write again, but how many doubts have I meanwhile had about my writing? At bottom I am an incapable, ignorant person who, if he had not been compelled — without any effort on his own part and scarcely aware of the compulsion — to go to school, would be fit only to crouch in a kennel, to leap out when food is offered him, and to leap back when he has swallowed it.” (我会再次写作,但在此期间我对自己的写作有多少怀疑呢?归根结底,我是一个无能、无知的人,如果不是被迫——他自己没有任何努力,几乎没有意识到这种强迫——去上学,他只适合蹲在狗窝里,有食物时就跳出来,吃完就跳回去。)
“It is as if I were made of stone, as if I were my own tombstone, there is no loophole for doubt or for faith, for love or repugnance, for courage or anxiety, in particular or in general, only a vague hope lives on, but no better than the inscriptions on tombstones. Almost every word I write jars against the next, I hear the consonants rub leadenly against each other… My doubts stand in a circle around every word, I see them before I see the word, but what then! I do not see the word at all, I invent it. Of course, that wouldn’t be the greatest misfortune, only I ought to be able to invent words capable of blowing the odour of corpses in a direction other than straight into mine and the reader’s face.” (我仿佛是石头做的,仿佛我就是自己的墓碑,没有怀疑或信仰、爱或厌恶、勇气或焦虑的漏洞,无论是具体的还是一般的,只有一丝模糊的希望尚存,但并不比墓碑上的铭文好多少。我写的几乎每个字都与下一个字格格不入,我听到辅音沉重地相互摩擦……我的怀疑围绕着每个字,我在看到字之前就看到了怀疑,但那又怎样!我根本看不到字,我在编造它。当然,这不是最大的不幸,只是我应该能够编造出一些词,把尸体的气味吹向除了直接吹向我和读者脸以外的方向。)
他还会因对自己作品的不满而痛苦,如准备看望家人时,因未写出满意作品而羞愧。
“I shall, since I have written nothing that I could enjoy, not appear stranger, more despicable, more useless to them than I do to myself.” (因为我没有写出自己能欣赏的东西,所以在他们面前不会比在自己面前更陌生、更可鄙、更无用。)
“Every day at least one line should be trained on me, as they now train telescopes on comets… Then I should appear before that sentence once, lured by that sentence.” (每天至少应该有一行字对准我,就像现在用望远镜对准彗星一样……然后我应该被那句话吸引,出现在那句话面前一次。)
“I feel helpless and an outsider. The firmness, however, which the most insignificant writing brings about in me is beyond doubt and wonderful.” (我感到无助,像个局外人。然而,最微不足道的写作给我带来的坚定是毫无疑问且美妙的。)
“I have now… a great yearning to write all my anxiety entirely out of me, write it into the depths of the paper just as it comes out of the depths of me, or write it down in such a way that I could draw what I had written into me completely. This is no artistic yearning.” (我现在……非常渴望把我所有的焦虑完全写出来,就像它从我的内心深处出来一样,把它写进纸的深处,或者以一种我可以把我写的东西完全吸收到自己体内的方式写下来。这不是艺术上的渴望。)
“Without weight, without bones, without body, walked through the streets for two hours considering what I overcame this afternoon while writing.” (没有重量,没有骨头,没有身体,在街上走了两个小时,思考着今天下午写作时我克服了什么。)
每个人都有自己的困惑迷茫,痛苦悲伤,无非是他们选择用自己的方式消解了而已。
旁人也许不知,但自己肯定清楚,面具下是怎么样的一张脸。
让我们得以透过这些文字,看清楚他——一个被捧上了神位的作家——那仍然人性的一面。
“生活是一个化妆舞会,而我带着真实面孔就参加了,太惭愧了。”
文章基于《The Diaries of Franz Kafka》(卡夫卡日记)以及网络上搜集到的其他卡夫卡资料进行创作。
评论区
共 条评论热门最新