Thoughts on The Idiot of Dostoevsky (1919)

By Hermann Hesse

Translated from the German by Stephen Hudson

中文翻译：姜乙

德文版：Gedanken zu Dostojewskis «Idiot»

Dostoevsky's Idiot, Prince Lyov Myshkin, has often been compared with Christ. Of course such a comparison can be made. One can compare with the Saviour every man who lays bare magical truth, who no longer separates thought from life, and, who on that account lives a life of solitude among hostile neighbours. From that point of view there seems to be no great likeness between Myshkin and Jesus. Only one trait in Myshkin's character, but that an important one, appears to me as Christlike. I allude to his timid, morbid purity. The secret fear of sex and of procreation is a trait which must be reckoned with in the message of Christ for it plays a distinct part in his world mission. Even the superficial portrait of Jesus by Renan does not entirely overlook this feature.

陀思妥耶夫斯基笔下的“白痴”列夫·梅什金公爵常被比作耶稣。这当然可以。人们可以拿任何一个被神秘真理触碰过，不再将思想从生活中剥离，并因此孤立于他的周遭，乃至成为一切的敌人的人，与耶稣相提并论。为此，在我看来，梅什金与耶稣之间并无极为显明的相似之处。他唯一肖似耶稣的重要特征，是他“胆怯的贞洁”。对性和生育的隐匿恐惧是“史实中”的耶稣和福音书中的耶稣不可或缺的特征。这一特征显然隶属他尘世的使命，甚至在勒南（法国作家，宗教学者）笔下肤浅的耶稣形象中也并未被疏漏。

But it is curious--little as I sympathize with the constant comparison between Myshkin and Christ--that I also see the two intermingled in some strange fashion. This occurred to me only latterly and in connexion with a point of comparative insignificance. It came into my mind one day, while I was thinking of the Idiot, that my first thought of him was always an apparently secondary one. in the first flash of my imagination, I always see him in one particular minor side-scene, in itself not specially significant. And so it is with Christ. When any association suggests to me a presentation of Jesus or when the word of Christ meets my ear or my eye, then I never see Him on the Cross or in the desert, or as a miracle-worker or as a raiser of the dead. I see Him in that moment when He drinks the cup of solitude to the dregs in the Garden of Gethsemane, when His soul is torn by the agony of death through which He must pass to His higher birth, and how He then in a last moving and childlike longing for comfort, turns to His disciples. He turns to them for a little human warmth, for a fleeting illusion of affection in the midst of His bitter loneliness. He turns to them--and the disciples are asleep. There lie excellent Peter and beautiful John; they are all asleep together, these worthy men, about whom Christ in His goodness has experienced disappointments over and over again. He has shared His thoughts with them as though they understood His words, as though it were in actual fact possible to communicate His thoughts to such as these, to arouse in them something like a vibration of kinship, something akin to understanding, to relationship, to unity with Himself. And now in the moment of unbearable torment, He turns to these few comrades He has. He is so utterly human, so utterly alone, so utterly the Man of Suffering, that He would now approach them as never before, to find some poor solace, some poor support in any stupid word they might utter, even in a friendly gesture. But no, they are not even there--they are sleeping, snoring.This cruel moment, in what way I know not, seared itself into my mind in early youth, and. when I think of Jesus, unfailingly it springs into my memory.

但奇怪——虽然我对常拿梅什金和耶稣相比鲜有激赏——却还会在无意间将两者的形象联系在一起。这一点，我很晚才从一些隐微之处有所觉察。有一天，我想到白痴，突然发现我对他最初的思考总是涉及他貌似次要的部分。想到他，我脑海中浮现的总是他出现在一个特殊的、毫无意义的次要场景中，正如我想到救主。当某时的联想唤起我心头的耶稣意象，当耶稣这个名字，响过我的耳畔或映入我的眼帘，我的第一个闪念，从不是十字架上的耶稣，旷野中的耶稣，行神迹的耶稣，或从死中复活的耶稣，而是在客西马尼园中痛饮最后孤单的一杯，灵魂在必定的舍命与崇高的新生间痛苦撕裂的耶稣。这一刻，耶稣像个孩子般渴求着最后的安慰，环顾他的门徒，在绝望的孤苦中寻找一丝温暖和属人的亲近，寻找一丝稍纵即逝的甜蜜假象——但门徒们熟睡了！他们躺着，熟睡。他们，正直的彼得，俊美的约翰，所有这些好人，这些耶稣习惯了一再以善意和热忱的自我欺瞒与其分享思想、他部分思想的人，这些他以为他们切实懂了他的话，以为他的思想已切实传授给他们，唤醒了他们的某种共鸣，在他们中找到了诸如理解、亲系和休戚与共的人——这一刻，在这不堪忍受的痛苦时刻，耶稣成了一个彻底的凡人，一个彻底的受难者，他坦诚地转向他们，比任何时候都渴望靠近他们，渴望在每句蠢话、每个半吊子的友好举动中获得些许慰藉和鼓舞，他转向这些同伴，他所唯一拥有的——他们不在。他们睡觉，打鼾。这残酷的一幕盘踞在我心中。我不知这一幕如何早在幼年就盘踞在我心中。而正如我所述，一想到耶稣，对这一幕的印象，就立刻浮现脑海。

The parallel with Myshkin is this. When I think of The Idiot, I an apparently unimportant moment bursts upon me in the same way. In that case also the moment is one of incredible isolation, of tragic solitude. The scene I have in mind is that evening in Paslovsk in the Lebedyevs' house, when the prince, convalescent, some days after his epileptic attack, receives the visit of the whole Epanchin family. Into this society, serene and elegant, in spite of tensions and hidden fires beneath, there suddenly bursts a band of young revolutionaries and nihilists. The wretched youth Ippolit with the pretended "Son of Pavlishtchev," with the "Boxer" and the other Individual make their appearance. Then comes that disagreeable, repellent scene, a scene which one reads with equal excitement and disgust. These shallow-minded and misled youths stand upon the stage, naked in their helpless malignity. Every single one of their words inflicts a double pain upon Myshkin, the pain of their effect upon himself and the pain caused by the revelation of their own souls through every word they utter. This strange and unforgettable scene, though not in itself particularly weighty is the one to which I referred. On the one side a company of elegant people, people of the world, rich, powerful, and conservative. On the other the raging young anarchists, inexorable in their hostility, caring only to gratify their spite against everything that exists, with consideration for no one and, in spite of their rhetorical pretence of intellectuality, wild, foolish, trashy. Between these two parties, the prince, alone, exposed to the fire of both, regarded with equal distrust by both. And how does the situation end? Myshkin, in spite of small mistakes, due to his agitation, reveals his sweet, tender, childlike nature. He smilingly accepts affront and insult, answers the most shameless with a Christlike selflessness, is ready to accept all the fault, to take upon himself all the blame and exactly in such a way as to incur the full weight of odium, displeasure, and contempt from both sides-not from one side or the other, but from both. All turn away from him, for he has trodden on the toes of all. One moment more and the extremest social antagonisms, differences in ages and opinions are wiped out. All are completely united in a common resentment against the single clean one amongst them.

同样，想到梅什金亦是如此。想到他，这位白痴时，首先浮现我脑海的也是些似乎并不重要，却同样难以置信、同样孤绝、同样悲惨凄凉的瞬间。我所指的场景，发生在那个晚上，列别杰夫位于帕夫洛夫斯克镇的宅邸中。癫痫病发作数日后处于康复中的公爵迎接叶潘钦一家的登门造访。一派明媚优雅的气氛，尽管暗含危机和沉闷。这时，一群年轻的革命者和虚无主义者突然闯进来：能言善辩的年轻人伊波利特、自许的“帕夫利谢夫之子”，“拳术家”和其他不请自来的人。这一幕令人不快。阅读时每每叫人作呕，引人愤慨和厌恶。这群带着无可救药的恶意，狭隘而步入歧途的年轻人炫耀着，形同赤裸地暴露在舞台的聚光灯下。这一刻，他们的每句话、每个用词都构成双重伤害：对善良的梅什金的影响，以及由于其话语的残酷性对讲话者自身的出卖和背弃——尽管在小说中，我所谈及的这一幕并不重要，并未被着重强调，却奇异而令人难忘。一方是优雅的社交名流、拥有财富和权势的保守派；一方是不留情面、不屈不挠，除了暴动、憎恶传统之外一无所知的愤怒青年，他们肆无忌惮、野蛮无理，自诩理性主义者，却带着难以名状的愚昧——位于两派之间的公爵孤立无依，被双方谴责，成为众矢之的。而这种情形是如何告终的？纵使在激动中有三两纰漏，梅什金还是以完全合乎其善良、温柔和天真本性的态度，微笑着接受了不堪忍受之事，无私地回答了不知羞耻的提问，检讨自己并承担了一切罪过——他因此彻底失败，招致蔑视——不是此方或彼方的蔑视，不是年轻人反对年长者，或反之，而是招致双方的蔑视！所有人都疏远他。他踩了所有人的脚。顷刻间，这些人之间因阶层、年龄和主张的差异造成的极端矛盾被彻底化解。他们阵线一致，甚至完全一致地在盛怒中疏远他——他们中唯一纯粹的人。

Upon what turns the impracticability of a being such as the Idiot in this world? Why does no one understand this man whom almost all somehow or other love, whose tenderness is so sympathetic to all as to lead to a sort of transfiguration? What separates this magical creature from ordinary men? Why are they right when they turn aside from him? Why must they necessarily do so? Why must he be like Christ who was deserted not only by the world, but even by His own disciples?

造成这位白痴不可能步入他人世界的缘由是什么？尽管几乎所有人都以某种方式爱着他，他的温良为众人拥戴，他甚至时常被众人视为楷模，可为什么无人理解他？是什么将这位有魔力的人物与他人和大众区分开来？为何他们反对他是正当的？他们为何不容置疑，非反对他不可？他为何必须步耶稣的后尘，最终不仅被尘世，亦被他所有的门徒遗弃？

It is because the Idiot thinks other thoughts than the rest of the world. It is not because his thinking is less logical or more childlike than theirs. His thinking is that which I call "magical." This compassionate Idiot denies the whole of Life, all thinking and feeling, all that the world and reality mean to others. For him Reality is something entirely different than for them. Their Reality is for him a shadow: For that reason, because he sees and offers a new Reality, he becomes the enemy.

这是因为白痴有着有别于他人的思想。不是他的思想比他人少有逻辑，或多了几分天真的遐思。不是。他的思想，我称之为“魔术般的”。这位温良的白痴，否定了他人的整个生活、整个思想及感受，否定了他人的整个世界与现实。他的现实与众不同。而他人的现实对他来说是彻底的虚幻。正因为他看见并追求一种全新的现实，他才成为众人的敌人。

The difference is not that they esteem highly such values as power and wealth, family and state, and that he does not. It is not that he stands for the Spirit while they stand for the Material or what-every way one likes to put it. That is not the reason. For the Idiot, too, material concerns matter, he invariably recognizes the significance of such things even though he does not consider them of prime importance. His gospel is not an ascetic-Indian ideal, a dying to the world of apparent reality to make the joy of the immortal soul which alone shall know Truth.

梅什金与他人的区别并不在于他人尊重权力和金钱、家庭和国家之类的价值，而他不尊重。并非他代表精神，他人代表物质，或随便怎么措辞！并非如此。对白痴来说，物质同样存在。尽管他并不十分看重，却绝对识得物质的意义。他的要求、他的理想不是印度苦行僧式的，不是去凋敝表象世界的现实，以陷入自我满足的精神世界，并认为唯有这样才是真实的。

No, Myshkin would readily come to an understanding with other people regarding the mutual claims of Nature and spirit and on the necessity of their working together.It is simply that while the simultaneity and equivalue of both worlds is for them an intellectual concept, for him these considerations constitute Life and Reality.This is not clear. Let us try to elucidate the matter.

不，关于自然与精神的权利，以及二者相互作用的必要性，梅什金完全可以与他人达成共识。只是对他人而言，两个世界的共存与平等是一种智识，而对梅什金来说，则是他的生命与现实！如此说来仍不够清晰，我们试着以另一种方式阐明。

Myshkin is different from others because, as an Idiot and an epileptic who is at the same time an exceptionally clever man, he has much closer and less obscure relationships with the Unconscious. He has had rare instants of intuitive perception, occasional seconds of transcendent exaltation. For a lightning moment he has felt the all-being, the all-feeling, the all-suffering, the all-understanding. He has known all that is in the world. There lies the kernel of his magical being. He has not studied and is not endowed with, mystical wisdom, he has not even aspired to it. He has simply experienced the thing itself. He has not merely had occasional significant thoughts and ideas. He has literally, once and more than once, stood on the magic borderland where everything is affirmed, where not only the remotest thought is true, but also the contrary of such thought.

梅什金与他人的区别在于他作为“白痴”和癫痫病人，同时又作为一个极为聪慧的人，与无意识的关系比他人更直接、更密切。他的巅峰体验，是他数次经历的拥有至高灵敏度和判断力的时刻。在这些时刻，这些闪电般的瞬间，他所具备的魔力让他成为世间万物，同情世间万物，并与世间万物共同受苦。他理解一切，赞赏一切。在这种巅峰体验中有着他本性的核心。他没有阅读和赞赏过，也没有研究和惊叹过魔法和神秘学智慧，他只是切实经验了这一切（尽管只是几个少有的瞬间）。他没有奇崛而杰出的思想和念头，而是一次或数次站在了神秘的边界。在那里，一切皆被肯定。在那里，不仅最生僻的思想是真实的，就连与这些思想相悖的思想也同样真实。

That is the fearful part of it, that is the part of him rightly feared. by others. He does not stand quite alone, not all the world is against him. There are a few people, very doubtful, risky, dangerous people who stand in close relationship to him. Rogozhin, Nastasya. He is understood by criminals and by hystericals; he, the innocent, the gentle child.

这就是这个人的可怕之处，令人畏惧之处。他并非绝对孤立，并非整个世界与他为敌。几个人，几个极不可靠、极富危害和极端危险的人会偶尔深情地理解他：罗果仁，娜斯塔霞。罪犯和歇斯底里的女人理解他。他，一个无辜的、温和的孩子！

But this child is not so soft as he seems. His innocence is not so harmless and men are rightly in awe of him.

但这个孩子并不像他表现得那般温和。他的无辜也并非无害。人们害怕他，这不无道理。

The Idiot is, as I said, from time to time near that borderland where every thought and its opposite are equally true. That is, he has an intuitive perception that no thought, no law, no mould, no form exist which are true and right except as regarded from one pole-and every pole has its opposite. The situation of a pole, the taking up, that is to say, of a position from which to view and order the world, is the first stage in the foundation of every cultural form, of every society and morality. Whosoever considers Spirit and Nature, Spirit and Freedom, Good and Evil as interchangeable, if only for a moment, is the deadliest foe of every order of civilization. For there begins the contrary of Order; there begins Chaos.

我说过，白痴间或接近了能觉察每种思想及其对立面皆为真实的边界。也就是说，他感受到，从某个极点看，没有任何思想、任何准则、任何特征和形式的存在不是真实的和正确的——而每个极点都有其对极。设定一个极点，采取某种立场，去观察和归置世界，是一切教育、文化、社会和道德的首要根基。凡意识到精神与自然、善与恶是可以互置的人，哪怕只是瞬间有所意识，那么这个人，就是一切秩序可怕的敌人。因为意识的瞬间，即反秩序的开端，混沌的开端。

A line of thought which turns back to the Unconscious, to Chaos, disturbs every human system of order. It was once said to the Idiot that it was lamentable he no longer told only the truth. So it was. Truth is everything. It is possible to say "Yes" to everything. But, to order the world, to achieve material results, to render possible Law, Society, Organization, Culture, and Morality, No must follow Yes. The world must be polarized, it must be divided against itself into Good and Evil. Establish every No, every prohibited thing, every wickedness upon a foundation sufficiently solid to make it accepted law and as soon as such law is enforced, as soon as it becomes the basis of a new mode of viewing things, a new order, it equally becomes absolute and sacred.

回归无意识和混沌的思维摧毁一切人类秩序。一次言谈中，有人声称“白痴”除了描述真相，绝口不语，这多么贫乏！确实。一切皆真。对一切皆可予以肯定。要建立世界的秩序，达成目标，要实现法律、社会、机制、文明和道德，还必须在肯定的同时予以否定，必须将世界在对立中划分为善与恶，哪怕一切否定、一切禁忌的最初确立都十分专断——但只要它成为法律、生发效力，成为观念和秩序的基础，它就是神圣的。

Highest Reality in the sense of human culture is the division of the World into Light and Dark, Good and Evil, Allowed and Forbidden. Highest Reality for Myshkin is the magical experience of the reversibility of all institutional. forms, of the existence of a negative equivalent to all moral values. The Idiot finally considered, introduces the Mother-claim of the Unconscious, he is the blaster of Civilization. He does not break the Tables of the Law, he simply turns them round and shows that the contrary to them is written on the other side.

人类文明意义上的至高真实性，在于世界被划分为光明与黑暗、善与恶、许可和禁忌。但对梅什金而言，至高的真实性在于他神秘地经验到，一切规则的可逆性和对跖两极的平等存在。归根结底，“白痴”导入了无意识的母权，废弃了文化。他没有打破律法的昭告，而是翻转它并指明，律法的背面写着完全相反的东西。

It is the secret of this terrifying book that this enemy of Order, this fearful destroyer does not appear as a malefactor but as a charming, shy creature full of childlike grace, full of warm-hearted, unselfish goodness. Dostoevsky drew upon the depths of his imagination when he made this man a diseased epileptic. All Dostoevsky's harbingers of a new and fearful and sinister future, all his forerunners of Chaos are enigmatic, burdened with pain and disease, Rogozhin, Nastasya, the four Karamazovs: all are represented as strange, exceptional beings, but in such a way that their eeriness and soul-sickness inspire that sort of awed veneration that the Asiatics feel for the insane.

这位秩序的敌人，可怕的毁坏者，不是以罪犯的形象登场，而是以可爱、羞怯，周身洋溢着天真优雅、纯良无私的形象登场。这就是这本可怕之书的秘密。出于深邃的直觉，陀思妥耶夫斯基将这个人描写为病人，癫痫病患者。在陀思妥耶夫斯基笔下，一切新事物、可怕事物和不确定未来的载体，一切预知混沌的禁令的载体，都是病人、可疑的人、重负的人：罗果仁，娜斯塔霞，后来的卡拉马佐夫四兄弟。他们都被描写为脱离常轨的人，古怪而异乎寻常的人。但所有这些人，这些脱轨的人和精神病人，都能激起我们像亚洲人相信他们有义务去尊重疯子那般神圣的敬意。

The remarkable and peculiar thing is not that an epileptic of genius between fifty and sixty years old had such fantasies and made an epic of them. The significant, the ominous consideration is that during three decades the youth of Europe has more and more been accepting these books as full of prophetic gravity. Another strange thing is that we look these criminals, hystericals, and idiots of Dostoevsky in the face in quite a different way from that in which we regard the criminals or fools in other novels, even in novels we have affection for. It is strange and uncanny to realize that in some curious way we love these bad people, to realize that there must be in us something akin to them, something that is like them.

值得注意的、奇特的、重要的、后果严重的并非1850年至1860年间俄国某处的一位天才兼癫痫病人有过如此奇想，创造了这些人物形象。重要的是，三十年来，这些著作已逐渐被欧洲青年视为重要的先知书。奇异的是，陀思妥耶夫斯基笔下的这些罪犯、癔病患者和白痴，在我们眼中的面貌，与其他畅销小说中的罪犯和愚人形象截然不同。我们如此恐惧地领悟他们，如此奇特地爱着他们，乃至我们从自身中发现了与这些人物的关联和相似之处。

This does not come about by chance and still less has it anything to do with the obvious and literary in Dostoevsky's work. Puzzling as are certain of his characteristics--consider only the way he bears one forward towards a solidly constructed psychology of the Unconscious--we are not surprised at his work being the finished expression of a highly developed insight nor at its artistic interpretation of a daily world with which we are thoroughly familiar. What actually impresses us is its prophetic import, its foreshadowing of a disintegration and of a Chaos into which we have during these last years seen Europe obviously descending. It is not as though this world of Dostoevsky's were a picture of the future in an ideal sense. No one will accept it as that. No, we do not feel that Myshkin and the rest afford us a prefiguration in the sense of "This is what you must become." It is something different, but fully as significant: "We must pass through this. This is our Destiny."

这并非出于偶然，也并非由于陀思妥耶夫斯基作品中的外在因素和文学因素。他作品中的许多特征都极为令人震惊——让人想到如今业已完善的无意识心理学的预先出现——我们并非惊叹其作品中高度智性的表达和娴熟的技巧，或其作品艺术地再现了我们基本熟知的世界，而是我们视其为先知，视其为我们在近年来的欧洲目睹的腐朽与混乱的预言。这些诗意人物的世界不是理想意义上的未来图景——不会有人这样认为。不，我们在梅什金或其他人物身上没有感受到“你应当如此！”的典范性，而是感受到“我们必须遭逢此番际遇。这是我们的命运！”的必然性。

The future is uncertain, but the road which he shows can have but one meaning. It means a new spiritual dispensation. This takes us beyond Myshkin, it points towards magical thinking, to the acceptance of Chaos, to a return to anarchy, back into the unconscious. into formlessness, into the beast, back far beyond the beast, back to the beginnings of everything. Not to stay there, not to become beast or primeval matter, but to start in a fresh direction, to discover new springs of development and action deep down m the roots of our being in order to reach to a higher and nobler creation and valuation and division of the world. No programme can teach us to find this road, no revolution will cast down the walls that we may enter into it. Each one must approach it alone, each one for himself. Each one of us must in one hour of his life stand on the threshold of the borderland where Myshkin stood, where truths cease and new ones begin. Each one of us must once, for one moment in his life, experience something of what Myshkin experienced in his flashlight seconds, of what Dostoevsky himself experienced in that moment when he stood facing his condemnation and with prophetic vision took his way onward.

未来是不确定的，但这里指出的道路是明确的。它意味着心灵的重置。它引领我们超越梅什金，拥有“魔术般的”思维，接纳混乱，返回无序，返回无意识和无状，回归动物，甚至比动物还原始，回到一切的发端。但这么做并不为让我们在那里停滞，成为动物或成为原始的淤泥，而是为让我们建立新的方向，让我们在存在的根源邂逅遗忘的本能和发展的可能性，为能以新的方式去从事对世界的创造、重估和分割。没有任何纲领能引领我们发现这条路。没有任何革命能为我们打开通往这条路的大门。每个人都要独自上路。每个人都要去找寻自己的路。每个人的一生中都必须有一个时刻，站在梅什金曾经站在的边界。在那里，旧真理终结，新真理伊始。我们中的每个人都必将在人生的某个瞬间，经历梅什金那富有洞见的瞬间，那正是陀思妥耶夫斯基在濒临死刑又死里逃生的体验中，获得先知视野的瞬间。