There is more proud savagery in the person whom no pleasure can satisfy than in one who feels frustrated by everything and barks at the fun others have. The energy needed for supersession is to be found in the first, whereas the anger of the second perpetuates the impotence of a world where nothing changes. Instead of contenting ourselves with compensatory sprees, which is the suicide’s homage to what is killing him, we will destroy the world and offer nothing in its place. No barrier can stand up to the centred violence of irrepressible gratuity. Instead of taking advantages of laws framed to exploit us, we gradually substitute a practical innocence in which all legality is null and void. The time is near when no one will be presumed to know what the laws are at all.
i) The Book of Pleasure (Le Livre des plaisirs). Trans. John Fullerton. London: Pending Press, 1983. p.65
ii) “Die Welt ist alles, was der Fall ist.” (The world is all that is the case). Ludwig Wittgenstein. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.1961 Pears-McGuinness translation. Cited from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Wittgenstein
iii) “So long as an illusion is not recognized as an error, it has a value precisely equivalent to reality. But once the illusion has been recognized as such, it is no longer an illusion. It is, therefore, the very concept of illusion, and that concept alone, which is an illusion.”
“We are faced, ultimately, with two irreconcilable hypotheses: that of the extermination of all the world’s illusion by technology and the virtual, or that of an ironic destiny of all science and all knowledge in which the world – and the illusion of the world – would survive. The hypothesis of a ‘transcendental’ irony of technology being by definition unverifiable, we have to hold to these two irreconcilable and simultaneously ‘true’ perspectives. There is nothing which allows us to decide between them. As Wittgenstein says: ‘The world is everything which is the case’.”
Jean Baudrillard. The Perfect Crime (Le crime parfait). Trans. Chris Turner. London & New York: Verso, 2008. p53, 76.
“…I’ve always been fascinated by the imbalance between the physical author of a book, the individual who puts his name onto the cover, and the authentic author who I am not certain is the same person. Take War and Peace, for example. On the cover it says, ‘Leo Tolstoy.’ You open the book on the first page, and somebody starts speaking to you. Is this Tolstoy real? No, it is the one that can be perceived as the narrative voice of Tolstoy. One that is very different from the man called Tolstoy. The stories, it seems to me, are written by a certain place in our interior which is unknown and inaccessible to us. This is the reason why the biography of the writer and his work are never in accordance. A biographical study will never tell you where exactly the work came from.”
God is in a word. God is in a word. God is in HER. She said, “Her, HER, HER, I am Her, I am Hermione… I am the word AUM.”
“I am the word AUM” frightened her. She tired to forget the word AUM, said “UM, EM, HEM” clearing her throat, wondered if she had offended something, clearing her throat trying to forget the word… I am the word… the word was with God… I am the word… HER.
《聖經》的「作者群」很明顯不只是為了當地、當代人的個別社會情境的溝通。《聖經》的寫作成為了對歷史，對遙遠的未來的一種歷史性介入和重劃：只要一天有人相信、信仰，嘗試理解，以至質疑「In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God….」這一句話，裡面的「上帝」就會一路在人們的信心中存在，或在辯證中成為可能。
I am the word AUM：她連一個「字」都不是、她只是一個啍聲，無以形容，無法區分。
她聽見自己說，「I am the word AUM」，她嘗試忘記但她不能忘記，她害怕，說出真相會冒犯了甚麼（something）。在男人的語言裡，「她」是第三身單數，但她名叫HER，「她的」，那麼一定有屬於她的甚麼、以至她的全部，只是那並不屬於「世界」的部分、不算作「世界」的內部，「世界」沒有涵蓋。一切以外，還有。
_____________________
1. H.D. HERmione. New York: New Directions. 1982. p32
2. 於是我想到Ina Grigorova的一句話：「having the word may have the magical power against the unravelling of the world.」
3. 希伯來原文「מְרַחֶ֖פֶת」一詞，英譯多為「hovering」、「moving 」，並沒有中譯「運行」所隱含的規律或方向性。
4. 這樣我們會比較容易明白，何以《浮士德》的主人公在復活節的早上，概嘆行醫者無能、殺人比戰禍更多，才又一個人回到書房裡，一輪斟酌苦思，把《約翰福音》首句翻譯做「Im Anfang war die Tat 」，「 die Tat」，即行動 （Deed / Act），也就是意志的體現；現代神學家／哲學家Gordon Clark （1902-1985） 更直接把它譯作「邏輯」：「In the beginning was the Logic, and the Logic was with God and the Logic was God. 」；天主教教宗本篤十六世亦曾強調，基督信仰（Christianity ）始終應被理解為邏各斯的宗教（Religion of Logos）（01/04/2005, Lecture at Convent of Saint Scholastica in Subiaco, Italy.）見： http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/politics/pg0143.html。
Derrida 甚至認為，猶太人作為一沒有國土之民（People），乃基於對一部經傳的篤信。
然後，牛津大學出版社「世界經典」系列的英譯本The Flowers of Evil (iv) 就是我花錢買的第一本英文書吧，扉頁上的墨跡指證，那是1993年10月19日，一本翻過又打開另一本，也就是這樣開始接觸英語世界建構的「世界文學」。十年以後，受著指導老師的影響，我的碩士論文中有一章是以波特萊爾幾首詩作為例子，討論到第二帝國（1852-1870）的巴黎重建大計，令巴黎的街道與社鄰空間由席捲歐洲的革命現場變成方便軍車與資本快速調動的馬路城市之同時，在拿破崙「子姪」與政商利益集團的高壓管治下，城市住民所經驗的各種社會意義上與精神上（psyche）的流離、斷裂，人身自由與政治權利的受壓，如何以一種厭煩、沉悶（ennui）的癥候方式呈現於波特萊爾的創作，換言之，厭煩、沉悶並不是個人偶然的心理狀態，而是歷史性的。
還有人要談波特萊爾嗎？
我知道的「波特萊爾」似乎更像個原地流放的的零餘者、前朝遺孤。回憶讓詩人無論身處那裡都被一種隔世感、錯置感所折磨，正因為回憶無所憑證，光亮的新城與廢墟無異。第二帝國大肆托建的時代之都，呼召歷史、標誌傳承（追宗認祖從拿破崙一直追溯至古羅馬戰神Minerva）,可是此光榮「歷史」所取消、取締的一切，不能做訪、不允憑弔。煤氣燈點亮的繁華巴黎，不過是管治者搭建的舞台布景，當「歷史」可以重複，現實不過一齣荒謬鬧劇。(v) 每一棟新蓋的建築，每一種新鮮事物都刺著詩人的心事，都變成失落（loss）與一切所失去的（all that is lost）的託寓（allégorie）(vi)，外間一切變得特別擾人，厭煩、納悶的取態乃是一種保存自我的防衛機制，這無疑與學院中人天天在說波特萊爾是「城市漫遊者」、是「Dandy」的說法大相逕違：
More Memories than if I’d lived a thousand years!
A giant chest of drawers, stuffed to the full
With balance sheets, love letters, lawsuits, verse
Romances, locks of hair rolled in receipts,
Hides fewer secrets than my sullen skull.
It is a pyramid, a giant vault
Holding more corpses than a common grave.
—I am a graveyard hated by the moon
Where like remorse the long worms crawl, and turn
Attention to the dearest of my dead.
[…]
Nothing is longer than the limping days
When under heavy snowflakes of the years,
Ennui, the fruit of dulling lassitude
Takes on the size of immortality.
—Henceforth, o living flesh, you are no more!
You are of granite, wrapped in a vague dread,
Slumbering in some Sahara’s hazy sands,
An ancient sphinx lost to a careless world,
Forgotten on the map, whose haughty mood
Sings only in the glow of the setting sun. (vii)
_________________________
i) 文題取自波特萊爾（Charles Baudelaire），〈天鵝〉，《惡之華》（Les Fleurs du Mal）。莫渝譯，台北：志文，1985。頁280.
ii) 同上。頁278-279。
James McGowan的英譯：
A swan, who had escaped from his captivity, / And scuffing his splayed feet along the paving stones, / He trailed his white array of feathers in the dirt. / Close by a dried out ditch the bird opened in his beak, / Flapping excitedly, bathing his wings in dust, / And said, with heart possessed by lakes he once had loved: / ‘Water, when will you rain? Thunder, when will you roar?’ / I see this hapless creature, sad and fatal myth, / Stretching the hungry head on his convulsive neck, / Sometimes towards the sky, like the man in Ovid’s book — / Towards the ironic sky, the sky of the cruel blue, / As if he were a soul contesting with his God!
見：Charles Baudelaire. The Flowers of Evil. Trans. James McGowan. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press, 1993．
Our destiny (as contrasted with the hell of Swedenborg and the hell of Tibetan mythology) is not frightful by being unreal; it is frightful because it is irreversible and iron-clad. Time is the substance I am made of. Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger which destroys me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire which consumes me, but I am the fire. The world, unfortunately, is real; I, unfortunately, am Borges. (i)
_________________________
(*) Jorge Luis Borges. “A Refutation of Time.” Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings. Ed Donald A. Yates & James E. Irby. London & New York: Penguin, 1970. p269.
