評論
打印
I had been thinking of it, too. It seemed to me that here Strickland had finally put the whole expression of himself. Working silently, knowing that it was his last chance, I fancied that here he must have said all that he knew of life and all that he divined. And I fancied that perhaps here he had at last found peace. The demon which possessed him was exorcised at last, and with the completion of the work, for which all his life had been a painful preparation, rest descended on his remote and tortured soul. He was willing to die, for he had fulfilled his purpose.
我腦子里想的也正是這件事。看來思特里克蘭德終于把他的內心世界完全表現出來了。他默默無言地工作著，心里非常清楚，這是他一生中最后一個機會了。我想思特里克蘭德一定把他理解的生活、把他的慧眼所看到的世界用圖象表示了出來。我還想，他在創作這些巨畫時也許終于尋找到心靈的平靜；纏繞著他的魔鬼最后被拔除了。他痛苦的一生似乎就是為這些壁畫做準備，在圖畫完成的時候，他那遠離塵囂的受折磨的靈魂也就得到了安息。對于死他勿寧說抱著一種歡迎的態度，因為他一生追求的目的已經達到了。
"What was the subject?" I asked.
“他的畫主題是什么？”我問。
"I scarcely know. It was strange and fantastic. It was a vision of the beginnings of the world, the Garden of Eden, with Adam and Eve—que sais-je?—it was a hymn to the beauty of the human form, male and female, and the praise of Nature, sublime, indifferent, lovely, and cruel. It gave you an awful sense of the infinity of space and of the endlessness of time. Because he painted the trees I see about me every day, the cocoa-nuts, the banyans, the flamboyants, the alligator-pears, I have seen them ever since differently, as though there were in them a spirit and a mystery which I am ever on the point of seizing and which forever escapes me. The colours were the colours familiar to me, and yet they were different. They had a significance which was all their own. And those nude men and women. They were of the earth, and yet apart from it. They seemed to possess something of the clay of which they were created, and at the same time something divine. You saw man in the nakedness of his primeval instincts, and you were afraid, for you saw yourself."
“我說不太清楚。他的畫奇異而荒誕，好象是宇宙初創時的圖景——伊甸園，亞當和夏娃……我怎么知道呢？是對人體美——男性和女性的形體—— 的一首贊美詩，是對大自然的頌歌；大自然，既崇高又冷漠，既美麗又殘忍……它使你感到空間的無限和時間的永恒，叫你產生一種畏懼的感覺。他畫了許多樹，椰子樹、榕樹、火焰花、鱷梨……所有那些我天天看到的；但是這些樹經他一畫，我再看的時候就完全不同了，我仿佛看到它們都有了靈魂，都各自有一個秘密，仿佛它們的靈魂和秘密眼看就要被我抓到手里，但又總是被它們逃脫掉。那些顏色都是我熟悉的顏色，可是又有所不同；它們都具有自己的獨特的重要性。而那些赤身裸體的男男女女，他們既都是塵寰的、是他們揉捏而成的塵土，又都是神靈。人的最原始的天性赤裸裸地呈現在你眼前，你看到的時候不由得感到恐懼，因為你看到的是你自己。”
