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纵观中外，文学作品皆被认为有引导人、塑造人、鼓舞人的作用，因为文学本来就源自生活。美国布朗大学比较文学的教授Arnold Weinstein专门著书《Morning, Noon, And Night: Finding the Meaning of Life's Stages Through Books》，告诉我们如何在人生的不同阶段从文学作品中学习经验，吸取教训。
珠串
Host: You’ve framed this big look at literature, and you had many in a long career, but you framed this one in terms of our sort of progress through life. I suppose, what are you doing in that case? Just catching the insights that a great writer finds on a particular point, stringing them together like beads of insight for us?
Arnold: There is a lot of that, and certainly the books, that are fine books, have these insights. On the other hand, you can’t always look at it in a particular passage or a page. Often it’s the actual curve of the book. I mean, after all, stories pack lives; they pack the curve of time in 200, 300 pages, whereas it takes us 60, 80 years to live that long, so that there’s a sense in which art reveals the curve of our life, the shape of our life, our passage through time, 1)trajectory, in ways that our own eyes, our 2)retina, can’t take in at all. So it’s the books as a whole as well as some marvelous passages, it seems to me, that are really illuminating.
主持人：你给这部巨著设定的构思是文学，你在漫长的职业生涯里出过不少书，但这一本你设定的是我们人类的生命进程。我在想，你在那个构思的框架下做了什么？就是捕捉某个优秀作家在人生某个阶段对生活的深刻见解，然后把它们像珠子串起来吗？
阿诺德：很多情况是那样的。确实，文学作品，我是指好的文学作品确实有不少对人生的体会。而另一方面，你也不会总在只看某一段文字或者书的某一页就找到它。多数情况下，你要看整本书呈现的曲线。我的意思是说，故事毕竟包含了人生历程，它们在二三百页的书里展示了人一生历程的曲线。而在现实生活中，人要花上六十、八十年的时间去经历这些。所以，你就会有一种艺术揭示生活的感觉，它呈现生活的曲线、生活的形态、我们的经历、生活的轨迹，这些都是我们自己的双眼无法收纳的。因此，在我看来，文学作品从整体来说，与一些精彩片段一样，都非常有启发性。
镜子
Host: So the gift that literature brings in terms of understanding ourselves at each age is…is what, a kind of torch or flashlight to look through the 3)murk that can surround us without these clarifying insights.
Arnold: That’s right. I think of it also as a 4)repertoire that, when we read books, we inevitably are encountering, in some sense 5)ingesting, stories of other lives. We lived “other;” we live again in some sense with the stories that we read, and therefore, these are “might be’s” or “might-have-been’s”, these even older stories, going back to 6)Sophocles or Shakespeare, that these are stories that certainly take place in their own moment, but they also echo or resonate or illuminate our own conditions. I mean a lot of this is pretty 7)generic. People do start out as babies and then young people, and then, in the middle of their lives, and then they get old, and then they get older, and then they approach dying. I mean, we personalize that with our own stories and existences, but, of course, it’s a pretty generic story in itself.
Host: You’ve taught for years to your students in…in university about the literature of youth and of coming of age. When we’re talking about passages from literature that might light up a young life, what do you find compelling?
Arnold: Well, of course, the first thing that’s compelling is that any story of young lives inevitably gets the attention of young students. And it’s, secondly, the case that it really performs something of the same role that these stories of growing older, which is to say, it functions as a mirror. These young people, after all, that I teach at university—18, 22 years old—they’re 8)poised for a life beyond the university—they’re being credentialed—and many of these stories, in a sense, give them a foreshadowing, a possible set of outcomes, of horizons, that they’re going to have to negotiate themselves, and they don’t have the answers yet. So I choose a range, a range of texts to illustrate these passages for young people, and they’re often about how young people really do not understand their worlds. After all, we’re not born understanding our culture, our society, or even the values that have come into us without our knowing it. Many of the most wonderful books—I’m thinking of 9)Huckleberry Finn or some of 10)William Blake’s poems—show us how it is we have absorbed values and assumptions—never knowing it, never seeing it, but they’re in us; we didn’t choose them—and then life, all of a sudden, causes us to question them. Are they ours? Do we really believe in them? We’re just now beginning to see them.
主持人：那么说，就了解我们自身在人生每一个阶段而言，文学奉献给我们的是类似火炬，或者说手电筒一样的礼物。如果没有书中这些解释人生困惑的体会，我们就会被黑暗包围。
阿诺德：是的。我也把它看成是一个宝库，也就是我们在阅读文学作品的时候，我们不可避免地会遭遇他人的生活，从某种意义上说是汲取他人的人生故事。通过文学作品，我们经历别人的生活，我们在某种程度上重新经历我们读到的人生经历。因此，那些文学作品中呈现各种“可能”、“或许”，重温那些甚至回到索福克勒斯或莎士比亚时代更古老的故事，这些故事当然发生在他们生活的时代，但他们的故事在我们的生活中得到回响、共鸣，让我们得到启发。我是说很多这样的故事都是有普遍性的。大家都从婴儿阶段起步，然后到青年阶段，再步入中年，变老，再变老些，接着就是接近死亡。我是说，我们会把这些故事融入我们自己的生活当中，当然，书中的这些故事本身是相当普通的。
主持人：你在大学里教书多年，向学生们教授青年和成长的文学作品。当我们谈到文学作品中那些能对年青人的生活有所启发的片段，你觉得什么是最引人入胜的？
阿诺德：呃，当然，首先是任何一个关于年青人的故事都必然会引起青年学生的关注。其次，在文学作品有一些角色的成长故事确实起作用，也就是说，它就像是一面镜子。说到底，我在大学里教的这些年轻人——十八岁、二十二岁——他们正开始为大学毕业后的生活作准备——他们正为获取学位而学习——许多文学作品里的故事在某种意义上给他们展示了一个前景，一连串人生可能出现的结果，他们的未来，而这些都是他们要通过自己的努力实现的，目前他们还没有答案。所以，我会为年轻人选择各种各样展示如何经历这些人生阶段的作品，这些作品很多都是关于年轻人多么不了解自己所处的世界的。因为说到底，我们并不是生出来就明白我们的文化、我们的社会，甚至于在我们没有注意到就已经形成的价值观。许多最优秀的文学作品——如《哈克贝利·费恩历险记》和威廉·布莱克的一些诗歌——向我们展示我们在生活中是如何形成自己的价值观和文化传统——我们从来都没有意识到这些东西的存在，对其视而不见，但它们确实是我们的一部分，但我们并没有选择它们——然后，生活突然在某个时刻促使我们去提出质疑：这是我们的一部分吗？我们真的深信这一切？这时，我们才开始认识它们。
宝库
Host: And, as we move through time, it also helps us keep in touch maybe with different parts of our own life; a kind of storehouse. You remind us of 11)Proust beautifully saying that “we live on 12)stilts, stilts that get longer each day of our life, stilts from which we must eventually fall,” and you…you remind us that our own lives, as time passes, can grow distant from us. Maybe we find pieces of them again in literature.
Arnold: It’s true. I mean, literature does…certainly one of the virtues for someone old like me to read these children’s books, or books about Huckleberry Finn, etc., is to gain another glimpse of a time that’s long ago. Occasionally I say that reading books is a form of time travel. There’s nothing science fiction-like in it, but we return in some sense to our own paths, our own childhood, we have an opportunity to relive. I think that books extend all of our lives, and what a bargain they are too. I mean it’s one of civilization’s sweetest gifts, it seems to me.
Host: No kidding!
主持人：而且，在我们经历自己的人生时，它帮助我们理解生命中的不同阶段，就像是个宝库。你让我们想起普鲁斯特非常优美的话：“我们就生活在高跷上，高跷每天都在往上长，而我们最终会从高跷上掉下来”。你提醒我们，随着时间的推移，我们的生活会与我们产生了距离。我们也许可以从文学作品中重新找到生活的碎片。
阿诺德：没错。我是说，文学作品可以做到……无疑，像我这种年纪的人读这些儿童读物，或者像《哈克贝利·费恩历险记》等等这一类书的好处之一就是可以追溯往日时光。我有时会说读书就像是时光旅行，但不是像科幻小说那种时光旅行，而是我们在某种意义上回顾我们的生活道路，我们的童年，让我们有机会重新体验人生。我认为读文学作品可以延长我们的生命，这太划算了。在我看来，这可是文明世界最美好的馈赠之一。
主持人：确实如此。
翻译：丁一
珠串
Host: You’ve framed this big look at literature, and you had many in a long career, but you framed this one in terms of our sort of progress through life. I suppose, what are you doing in that case? Just catching the insights that a great writer finds on a particular point, stringing them together like beads of insight for us?
Arnold: There is a lot of that, and certainly the books, that are fine books, have these insights. On the other hand, you can’t always look at it in a particular passage or a page. Often it’s the actual curve of the book. I mean, after all, stories pack lives; they pack the curve of time in 200, 300 pages, whereas it takes us 60, 80 years to live that long, so that there’s a sense in which art reveals the curve of our life, the shape of our life, our passage through time, 1)trajectory, in ways that our own eyes, our 2)retina, can’t take in at all. So it’s the books as a whole as well as some marvelous passages, it seems to me, that are really illuminating.
主持人：你给这部巨著设定的构思是文学，你在漫长的职业生涯里出过不少书，但这一本你设定的是我们人类的生命进程。我在想，你在那个构思的框架下做了什么？就是捕捉某个优秀作家在人生某个阶段对生活的深刻见解，然后把它们像珠子串起来吗？
阿诺德：很多情况是那样的。确实，文学作品，我是指好的文学作品确实有不少对人生的体会。而另一方面，你也不会总在只看某一段文字或者书的某一页就找到它。多数情况下，你要看整本书呈现的曲线。我的意思是说，故事毕竟包含了人生历程，它们在二三百页的书里展示了人一生历程的曲线。而在现实生活中，人要花上六十、八十年的时间去经历这些。所以，你就会有一种艺术揭示生活的感觉，它呈现生活的曲线、生活的形态、我们的经历、生活的轨迹，这些都是我们自己的双眼无法收纳的。因此，在我看来，文学作品从整体来说，与一些精彩片段一样，都非常有启发性。
镜子
Host: So the gift that literature brings in terms of understanding ourselves at each age is…is what, a kind of torch or flashlight to look through the 3)murk that can surround us without these clarifying insights.
Arnold: That’s right. I think of it also as a 4)repertoire that, when we read books, we inevitably are encountering, in some sense 5)ingesting, stories of other lives. We lived “other;” we live again in some sense with the stories that we read, and therefore, these are “might be’s” or “might-have-been’s”, these even older stories, going back to 6)Sophocles or Shakespeare, that these are stories that certainly take place in their own moment, but they also echo or resonate or illuminate our own conditions. I mean a lot of this is pretty 7)generic. People do start out as babies and then young people, and then, in the middle of their lives, and then they get old, and then they get older, and then they approach dying. I mean, we personalize that with our own stories and existences, but, of course, it’s a pretty generic story in itself.
Host: You’ve taught for years to your students in…in university about the literature of youth and of coming of age. When we’re talking about passages from literature that might light up a young life, what do you find compelling?
Arnold: Well, of course, the first thing that’s compelling is that any story of young lives inevitably gets the attention of young students. And it’s, secondly, the case that it really performs something of the same role that these stories of growing older, which is to say, it functions as a mirror. These young people, after all, that I teach at university—18, 22 years old—they’re 8)poised for a life beyond the university—they’re being credentialed—and many of these stories, in a sense, give them a foreshadowing, a possible set of outcomes, of horizons, that they’re going to have to negotiate themselves, and they don’t have the answers yet. So I choose a range, a range of texts to illustrate these passages for young people, and they’re often about how young people really do not understand their worlds. After all, we’re not born understanding our culture, our society, or even the values that have come into us without our knowing it. Many of the most wonderful books—I’m thinking of 9)Huckleberry Finn or some of 10)William Blake’s poems—show us how it is we have absorbed values and assumptions—never knowing it, never seeing it, but they’re in us; we didn’t choose them—and then life, all of a sudden, causes us to question them. Are they ours? Do we really believe in them? We’re just now beginning to see them.
主持人：那么说，就了解我们自身在人生每一个阶段而言，文学奉献给我们的是类似火炬，或者说手电筒一样的礼物。如果没有书中这些解释人生困惑的体会，我们就会被黑暗包围。
阿诺德：是的。我也把它看成是一个宝库，也就是我们在阅读文学作品的时候，我们不可避免地会遭遇他人的生活，从某种意义上说是汲取他人的人生故事。通过文学作品，我们经历别人的生活，我们在某种程度上重新经历我们读到的人生经历。因此，那些文学作品中呈现各种“可能”、“或许”，重温那些甚至回到索福克勒斯或莎士比亚时代更古老的故事，这些故事当然发生在他们生活的时代，但他们的故事在我们的生活中得到回响、共鸣，让我们得到启发。我是说很多这样的故事都是有普遍性的。大家都从婴儿阶段起步，然后到青年阶段，再步入中年，变老，再变老些，接着就是接近死亡。我是说，我们会把这些故事融入我们自己的生活当中，当然，书中的这些故事本身是相当普通的。
主持人：你在大学里教书多年，向学生们教授青年和成长的文学作品。当我们谈到文学作品中那些能对年青人的生活有所启发的片段，你觉得什么是最引人入胜的？
阿诺德：呃，当然，首先是任何一个关于年青人的故事都必然会引起青年学生的关注。其次，在文学作品有一些角色的成长故事确实起作用，也就是说，它就像是一面镜子。说到底，我在大学里教的这些年轻人——十八岁、二十二岁——他们正开始为大学毕业后的生活作准备——他们正为获取学位而学习——许多文学作品里的故事在某种意义上给他们展示了一个前景，一连串人生可能出现的结果，他们的未来，而这些都是他们要通过自己的努力实现的，目前他们还没有答案。所以，我会为年轻人选择各种各样展示如何经历这些人生阶段的作品，这些作品很多都是关于年轻人多么不了解自己所处的世界的。因为说到底，我们并不是生出来就明白我们的文化、我们的社会，甚至于在我们没有注意到就已经形成的价值观。许多最优秀的文学作品——如《哈克贝利·费恩历险记》和威廉·布莱克的一些诗歌——向我们展示我们在生活中是如何形成自己的价值观和文化传统——我们从来都没有意识到这些东西的存在，对其视而不见，但它们确实是我们的一部分，但我们并没有选择它们——然后，生活突然在某个时刻促使我们去提出质疑：这是我们的一部分吗？我们真的深信这一切？这时，我们才开始认识它们。
宝库
Host: And, as we move through time, it also helps us keep in touch maybe with different parts of our own life; a kind of storehouse. You remind us of 11)Proust beautifully saying that “we live on 12)stilts, stilts that get longer each day of our life, stilts from which we must eventually fall,” and you…you remind us that our own lives, as time passes, can grow distant from us. Maybe we find pieces of them again in literature.
Arnold: It’s true. I mean, literature does…certainly one of the virtues for someone old like me to read these children’s books, or books about Huckleberry Finn, etc., is to gain another glimpse of a time that’s long ago. Occasionally I say that reading books is a form of time travel. There’s nothing science fiction-like in it, but we return in some sense to our own paths, our own childhood, we have an opportunity to relive. I think that books extend all of our lives, and what a bargain they are too. I mean it’s one of civilization’s sweetest gifts, it seems to me.
Host: No kidding!
主持人：而且，在我们经历自己的人生时，它帮助我们理解生命中的不同阶段，就像是个宝库。你让我们想起普鲁斯特非常优美的话：“我们就生活在高跷上，高跷每天都在往上长，而我们最终会从高跷上掉下来”。你提醒我们，随着时间的推移，我们的生活会与我们产生了距离。我们也许可以从文学作品中重新找到生活的碎片。
阿诺德：没错。我是说，文学作品可以做到……无疑，像我这种年纪的人读这些儿童读物，或者像《哈克贝利·费恩历险记》等等这一类书的好处之一就是可以追溯往日时光。我有时会说读书就像是时光旅行，但不是像科幻小说那种时光旅行，而是我们在某种意义上回顾我们的生活道路，我们的童年，让我们有机会重新体验人生。我认为读文学作品可以延长我们的生命，这太划算了。在我看来，这可是文明世界最美好的馈赠之一。
主持人：确实如此。
翻译：丁一