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IN 1628, a young woman in the town of Dole, in what is now eastern France, believed she was visited by a ghost. The young woman was ill in bed. At first she saw an ordinary woman who had tidied up and taken care of her. She began to think that her nurse might be a spirit after the kind woman appeared at her side without opening the locked door. The spirit, she believed, was the ghost of her aunt, who came to help her out as a form of penance to lessen the aunt’s time in purgatory.
1628年，在今天法國(guó)東部的多勒，一名年輕女性相信她遇見(jiàn)了鬼魂。她當(dāng)時(shí)臥病在床，起初以為看到的是一個(gè)清潔并照顧她的普通女人。她之所以開(kāi)始覺(jué)得這名看護(hù)或許是鬼魂，是因?yàn)檫@位善良的女人無(wú)需打開(kāi)上鎖的門就來(lái)到了她的身邊。她相信，這是姑母的鬼魂，為了減少在煉獄煎熬的時(shí)間而前來(lái)幫助她，作為一種贖罪。
We think of ghosts as wispy and translucent — a vaporous woman, perhaps, who floats down the stairs, her dress trailing in the languid air behind her. But in early modern Europe, ghosts were often perceived as solid persons. The viewer discovered that they weren’t when they did something that ordinary humans could not, like bypassing a locked door to enter a room.
我們?nèi)缃裼X(jué)得，鬼魂輕盈飄渺——也許是個(gè)朦朧的女鬼，從臺(tái)階上飄然而下，衣裙悠悠地在身后搖曳。然而，在近代的歐洲，鬼魂常常被認(rèn)為帶有具象的人形。只有當(dāng)他們做了普通人沒(méi)法實(shí)現(xiàn)的事情時(shí)，比如穿門而入，才會(huì)被旁觀者發(fā)現(xiàn)不是真人。
By the 19th century, people had begun to think of ghosts predominantly as spectral forms — ephemeral, elusive, evanescent. When the ghost of Marley appeared to Scrooge in Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol” (1843), and Scrooge looked his transparent body “through and through,” he illustrated a shift in the ways ghosts became real to people, how ghosts were seen and remembered.
到了19世紀(jì)，人們開(kāi)始大體認(rèn)為鬼魂是抽象的——偶爾出現(xiàn)、虛無(wú)縹緲、來(lái)去匆匆。在狄更斯1843年出版的《圣誕頌歌》(A Christmas Carol)中，馬利(Marley)的鬼魂來(lái)到斯克魯奇(Scrooge)面前，而斯克魯奇能夠“看穿”那個(gè)透明的軀體。這說(shuō)明鬼魂顯靈的方式——如何被看到與記憶——發(fā)生了轉(zhuǎn)變。
In “Spectres of the Self,” the cultural historian Shane McCorristine points to two reasons for this transmutation. The first was skepticism about the supernatural, generated by the new developments in science. The concept of hallucination emerged to explain experiences like seeing an apparition. As the seeing of ghosts became a psychological phenomenon, it also became a pathological one. In 1848, the British skeptic Charles Ollier spoke for many when he wrote that “anyone who thinks he has seen a ghost, may take the vision as a symptom that his bodily health is deranged.” As a result, Dr. McCorristine writes, the ghost was gradually relocated “from the external, objective and theological structured world to the internal, subjective and psychological haunted world of personal experience.”
在《自我的幽靈》(Spectres of the Self)一書中，文化史學(xué)者沙恩·麥克里斯廷(Shane McCorristine)指出這種演變有兩個(gè)原因。首先是由科學(xué)的新進(jìn)步帶來(lái)的對(duì)超自然現(xiàn)象的質(zhì)疑。“幻覺(jué)”的概念越來(lái)越多地被用來(lái)解釋看到幽靈之類的經(jīng)歷。伴隨著見(jiàn)到鬼魂成為一種心理現(xiàn)象，它也開(kāi)始成為一種病理現(xiàn)象。1848年，持懷疑態(tài)度的英國(guó)作家查爾斯·奧利爾(Charles Ollier)道出了許多人的心聲。他寫道，“任何覺(jué)得自己見(jiàn)過(guò)鬼魂的人，都可以將這種幻象當(dāng)成他的身體健康失常的表征。”因此，麥克里斯廷寫道，鬼魂“從外在、客觀且由神學(xué)構(gòu)造的世界”逐漸遷移到“個(gè)人體驗(yàn)的內(nèi)在、主觀且與心理密切相關(guān)的世界”。
The other reason was the development of new technologies, including photography in the early decades of the 19th century. Those who wanted to hang on to their belief in the supernatural despite the apparent threat posed by science found in the idea of the hallucination a kind of scientific evidence that the dead came back to life. By the 1860s “spirit photography” presented astonishing images of people alongside dead relatives, using double exposure and other manipulations to portray a gauzy form alongside living flesh. It was the transparency that marked the dead as dead — and of course, it was technology that allowed some photographers to fake the ghost.
另一個(gè)原因是新技術(shù)的發(fā)展，包括19世紀(jì)頭一二十年攝影技術(shù)的進(jìn)步。不顧科學(xué)帶來(lái)的顯著威脅而希望繼續(xù)相信超自然現(xiàn)象的那些人認(rèn)為，幻覺(jué)的概念反而是死者顯靈的一種科學(xué)證據(jù)。19世紀(jì)60年代，“幽靈攝影”貢獻(xiàn)了活人與死去的親屬共存的驚人畫面，但卻是利用雙重曝光等把戲炮制出的飄渺的輪廓與活生生的人相伴的景象。其透明的樣子表明死者已逝——毫無(wú)疑問(wèn)，是技術(shù)讓某些攝影師得以偽造鬼魂。
By the late 19th century, séances had become wildly popular. Historians have argued that spiritualism and psychical research became a kind of surrogate religion that demonstrated the truth of an otherworldly reality as faith in ordinary Christianity declined. Then, through the 20th century, their appeal receded.
到了19世紀(jì)末，降神會(huì)已變得非常流行。歷史學(xué)者提出，通靈術(shù)和對(duì)此的研究成為了一種替代宗教，在傳統(tǒng)基督教信仰式微之際展示了超自然現(xiàn)實(shí)的真切性。后來(lái)在20世紀(jì)，這種吸引力逐漸消退。
Pop culture is richly peopled with vampires, zombies, the living dead: the Harry Potter books, the “Twilight” series, the television show “Grimm.” The Syfy network has produced 16 paranormal reality shows since 2004. A 2013 Harris Poll found that 42 percent of Americans believed in ghosts — but only 24 percent of respondents 68 and older.
今天的流行文化中充斥著吸血鬼和僵尸這樣的活死人：《哈利·波特》(Harry Potter)叢書、《暮光之城》(Twilight)系列，以及電視劇《童話鎮(zhèn)》(Grimm)。2004年以來(lái)，Syfy電視臺(tái)制作了16個(gè)超自然真人秀。2013年的哈里斯民調(diào)(Harris Poll)顯示，42%的美國(guó)人相信鬼魂存在——但這個(gè)數(shù)字在68歲及更年長(zhǎng)的調(diào)查對(duì)象中僅為24%。
Scholars sometimes talk about this supernaturalization as a kind of “re-enchantment” of the world — as a growing awareness that the modern world is not stripped of the magical, as the German sociologist Max Weber and so many others once thought, but is in some ways more fascinated than ever with the idea that there is more than material reality around us. In part, I think, this is because skepticism has made the supernatural safe, even fun. It turns out that while many Americans may think that there are ghosts, they often don’t believe that ghosts can harm them.
學(xué)者們有時(shí)會(huì)將這種超自然現(xiàn)象的流行概括為世界的某種“重新魔幻化”——正如德國(guó)社會(huì)學(xué)家馬克斯·韋伯(Max Weber)等眾多學(xué)者曾經(jīng)認(rèn)為的，人們?cè)絹?lái)越多地意識(shí)到當(dāng)代世界并非沒(méi)有了魔幻色彩，而是在一定程度上比以往更為癡迷于我們周遭的物質(zhì)現(xiàn)實(shí)之外還有更多東西的概念。我想，部分原因在于，質(zhì)疑反而讓超自然現(xiàn)象變得安全，甚至有趣了。事實(shí)表明，盡管許多美國(guó)人或許認(rèn)為存在鬼魂，但他們往往并不相信會(huì)被它們傷害。
There is, however, a deeper reason. Just as spiritualism became a means to hold on to the supernatural claims of religion in the face of science in the 19th century, the supernaturalism of our own time may enable something similar. The God that has emerged in the post-1960s “renewalist” Christianity practiced by nearly a quarter of all Americans is vividly supernatural — a Jesus who walks by your side just as Jesus walked with his disciples. This assertion that the supernatural is natural helps to make the case for God in a secular age, because it promises people that they will know by experience that God is real.
不過(guò)，還有一個(gè)更深層次的原因。正如通靈術(shù)成為了19世紀(jì)人們面對(duì)科學(xué)時(shí)的一種對(duì)宗教超自然力的堅(jiān)持，我們這個(gè)時(shí)代的超自然主義也可能激起類似的東西。上世紀(jì)60年代以后近四分之一的美國(guó)人受神恩“復(fù)興”運(yùn)動(dòng)影響，其中上帝呈現(xiàn)的是種生動(dòng)的超自然形象——耶穌就在你身邊，正如耶穌在他的使徒身邊。在一個(gè)世俗化的時(shí)代，這種“超自然即自然”的論斷有助于為上帝正名，因?yàn)樗蛉藗儽ＷC，他們可以親身感受到上帝的真實(shí)存在。
Perhaps technology plays a role as well. Our world is animated in ways that can seem almost uncanny — lights that snap on as you approach, cars that fire into life without keys, websites that know what you like to read and suggest more books like those. The Internet is not material in the ordinary way. It feels somehow different. Maybe this, too, stokes our imagination.
或許科技也起到了一些作用。我們的世界在以看似超凡的方式運(yùn)轉(zhuǎn)——人靠近時(shí)燈會(huì)自動(dòng)點(diǎn)亮，無(wú)需鑰匙車就能點(diǎn)火，網(wǎng)站知道你想讀些什么，還能推薦更多類似的書籍?；ヂ?lián)網(wǎng)不是一種尋常的有形物質(zhì)。它給人的感覺(jué)是不太一樣的。這一點(diǎn)，大概也激發(fā)了我們的想象力。
This suggests there may be even more supernaturalism in years to come.
這意味著，未來(lái)的超自然色彩也許會(huì)更為濃烈。
Happy Halloween.
萬(wàn)圣節(jié)前夜快樂(lè)！
