2020年6月4日 星期四

part 5 Ambiguity 歧義Herbert Simon literary criticism: a cognitive approach(7 )

part 5

Herbert Simon

Ambiguity 歧義




We should not suppose that it is always or usually the author's intent to be wholly consistent. Imperceptible inconsistency is supposed to be one of the finest marks of the political orator's art. (The inconsistency is easy, but with national media, the imperceptibility becomes harder to sustain.) Punning is another reminder that inconsistency may reflect intent rather than accident. 我們不應該假設:作者會想一直或通常保持完全一致。大家認為政治演說藝術的最高境界之標記之一,就是在神不知鬼不覺之間轉換立場。(要不一致是容易的,然而現在媒體是全球性的,所以要聽眾不察此等,倒是難事。)採用雙關語的作法提醒我們,這種昨非今是並非巧合,而是有意。





The term "ambiguous" sounds less pejorative than "inconsistent," so let's substitute it. In the kind of writing we call "literature," possibly in contrast with "scientific" writing, the creation of ambiguity rather than its elimination may be a major target of the writer's efforts. This is nowhere more evident than in Joycean and post-Joycean writing, but we should not think of it as peculiarly modern. Without trying to be exhaustive, let me propose several different kinds of ambiguity

that are important to art. 「歧義」聽起來比「不一致」更不刺耳,所以我們就用前者來取代後者。在我們稱為「文學」的寫作,很可能與「科學」正好相反,作者努力的一項主要目標是創造歧義而非消除歧義。這在喬伊斯式或後喬伊斯式作品最為明顯不過,不過我們不該認為只有現代派的才會特別致力於此。我們討論某些種類的歧義,這並非歧義的全貌。





In novels, we object to "flat" or "two-dimensional" characters. Such characters are too simple and, what is worse, predictable. In a great novel (i.e., The Remembrance of Things Past), we catch partial glimpses of the characters, as we do of real people. Over time, character changes, both of itself and because successive glimpses reveal new facets. And even on the last page, do we really know the people we have met in the book? Can we extrapolate the Baron Charlus of The Past Recaptured from his early appearance at Balbec? And which is the real Charlus?

在小說論中,我們反對所謂「扁平」或「二維」人物。這種人太過單純,更糟的是,行事完全可預測。在一本偉大的小說(即,《追憶逝水年華》) ,我們對於其人物可以有部分的驚鴻一瞥,就像對於真實的人一般。隨著時間的進展,這些人物有所變化,這一方面是他本身,另一方面是因為每回的見真章一瞥,都讓我們有不同的認知層面。即使到了該書最後一頁,我們能說對書中人物有所認識嗎?我們能在Charlus伯爵在Balbec一出場就預測他在最末卷往事重抓的樣子嗎?那一個Charlus是真的?




Do we know our friends, our spouses? Do we know the town and the society we grew up in? Can they provide us with no surprises? We wish literature to reflect this fundamental and admirable characteristic of life--its ambiguity. Hence, the

author is often absorbed in creating multiple meanings, craftily interwoven.

我們對於自己的朋友,配偶又知道多少?我們對自己生長於斯的城陣和社會又知多少?這些對我們能無令人驚豔的新知?我們但願文學能反映人生這一基本而可佩的特性__人生的歧義性。因此,作者們經常會全神致力於多重文義的開創,並極技巧地將它們交織在文本之中。




Ambiguity is as prominent in painting and music as it is in the literary arts. The banal example in music is the diminished seventh chord, which, with its four enharmonic equivalents can signal a dozen keys, allowing the composer to transpose

without other warning from one to another. But the multiple interpretation of pattern in music goes far beyond this simple device and is especially endemic in such composers as Beethoven and Stravinsky.

在繪畫和音樂中,歧義也佔顯要的地位,猶如在文學百藝之中。音樂中一了無新意的例子是,消失了的第七弦,它的等義四 諧音可以發出一打的健音,允許作曲者在其中移位而無警示。不過,對於音樂中形樣的多重解釋遠多於這簡單的機制、特別是在在諸如貝多芬和史特文斯基的作品中。




In painting, ambiguity takes the most varied forms, from the calculated trickery of Escher and of the Cubists to what one might describe as the vagueness of much Abstract Expressionism. A portion of a canvas that retains no ambiguity, that

allows only a single interpretation, usually appears dull and lifeless.

在繪畫中,歧義的形式最形形色色,從Escher(二十世紀著名的圖案設計家)和立體派的精算把戲,到我們可以稱為含混的抽象表現主義。畫布上一部分要是沒歧義,而只能有單一的解釋者,它通常就沉悶和了無生氣。




Notice that the function of ambiguity is not to drain the work of art of meaning but to enrich its meaning by suggesting that one interpretation does not exhaust it. Nor does this kind of ambiguity "leave the meaning to the reader." On the contrary, it is the task of the author to write in such a way that a multiplicity of meanings can be teased out by the reader. They are not to be created from whole cloth but are hidden in the work of art in order that they may be discovered. Of course the author cannot prevent the reader from finding additional meanings (or missing those intended to be found), but

few authors regard themselves as simply creating Rorschach inkblots to evoke wholly personal patterns from readers' memories.

注意 歧義的功能不是要讓藝術品的意義泛泛,而是提示單一解釋無法窮盡它,其意義更為豐富。而且這種歧義也不是要讓「讀者自決其所以然」。正相反,作者的任務是要將作品書寫成讀者可以從中激起好奇心來演譯出多重意義。它們不是要全盤托出,而是要意寓於作品中,待解人。當然作者無法防讀者「讀出更豐富的所以然」(或是未領會其旨意),不過幾乎沒有作者會以創作Rorschach墨跡聯想測驗自居,只想完全讓讀者的記憶自由發揮而已。





At the other extreme, we tend to denigrate art, visual or literary, that evokes pre-existing memory structures in too simplistic a way. Thus Norman Rockwell depends for his effects upon memory structures ("Mom and apple pie") stored

reliably in the heads of his viewers and triggered into awareness by very literal and explicit clues.

另一極端方面,我們對於只以單純方式引發讀者或觀藝者先前記憶結構的文藝作品,評價甚低。職是之故,畫家Norman Rockwell的作品效果,依靠的觀畫者對於相當明顯的提示喚起他們安然存於腦中的記憶結構,如畫題為《母親準備的 派》者。





The art of "high culture" distinguishes itself from that of popular culture in calling for more subtle and elaborate sequences of evocation and association or (more snobbishly) for evocation of relatively esoteric structures that are stored only in properly educated memories--memories that have had extensive exposure to the appropriate Canon. New Yorker cartoons provide an adequate if frivolous example. Only those who are in touch with particular aspects of the New York scene will be likely to understand them.

「高尚文化」與通俗文化的區別,在於它所引發的感受和聯想,較為微妙和精緻(或稱較勢利媚世),這些相對而言較為異奇的記憶,多只存在受過適當教育者的腦海中,即,多少讀過正統古典全書系列的人。《紐約客》的漫畫最足以作證說明,雖說此例甚淺。它們只能為熟悉紐約的特殊景物和人事,才可能心領神會。




Art is called representational when it denotes something outside itself, nonrepresentational otherwise. Until rather recent times, virtually all art, as distinguished from design, was assumed to be representational: Art was supposed to imitate Nature. The major exception was music; in absolute music, which encompassed the bulk of classical music other than song and opera, the only "meaning" was supposed to be the set of tonal relations placed there by the composer and detected by the listener. The meaning of music was the musical pattern, rhythmic, tonal, and harmonic. It would, of course, evoke emotion, but it had no other reference to anything non-musical.

當藝術品表達超出它本身的,稱為再現性藝術,反之,稱為非再現性藝術。直到晚近,幾乎所有的藝術都與設計有別,多屬再現性藝術。人們認為藝術應該模仿大自然。主要的例外為音樂,在純音樂中,它包括那些除了歌曲和歌劇之外的大部分古典音樂,它們的「意義」只是作曲者寫出的一組音調關係,而為聽者察出的而已。音樂的意義,為音訊形樣、韻律、調性和和音。當然,它會引發情感,不過它除了音樂之外,其他別無指涉。




Only in our own century have we had "absolute" literature or "absolute" painting that undertake to emphasize internal relations as their meanings and eschew reference to things outside. Examples, even approximate examples, are hardest to come by in literature. We might think of The Waste Land as nonrepresentational, or Finnegans Wake, but in no such strict sense as a Bach Fugue or a Mozart Sonata.[3] "Enigmatic," in that the denotations are obscure and often kaleidoscopic,

might be a better term than "nonrepresentational" for such examples. Poetry, with its attention to phonetic relations, has generally a larger explicit nonrepresentational component than prose.

只到這二十世紀,我們才興起「純」文學或「純」繪畫,它們旨在強調內在關係作為其意義,而迴避外在的指涉。這種例子在文學中很難找到,即使但求略沾點邊的。我們或許會想《荒原》或《芬尼根守靈》等為非再現性作品,不過它們無法合乎一首巴赫的賦格曲或莫札特的奏鳴曲的嚴格「純作品」意義[3]。上述的例子,與其稱為「非再現」,無寧用「謎題」更能形容其旨意不明而且通常如萬花筒般變化。詩歌極重視音調關係,所以通常比散文更多屬非再現類。




It is a matter of terminological preference whether we want to use the word "meaning" broadly enough to encompass the nonrepresentational components of pattern. Apart from the question of terminology, there are no particular problems in

seeking out such patterns in a work of art, whether it be music, painting, or literature. It is really the representational component in painting and literature, rather than the nonrepresentational component, that is problematic.

我們要不要將「意義」這字眼,用得廣泛到包括形樣中的非再現性組成,這只是用語偏好問題而已。除了用語上的問題之外,藥在種種藝術品中,不管是音樂、繪畫、或文學,找尋這非再現的形樣,並沒有特別的困難。在繪畫和文學中,真正問題重重的,並不在非再現性組成,而在其再現性組成。




What does a Renaissance Venus and Adonis represent? Most of us consider Venus and Adonis to be mythological figures who never trod the Earth. How can a painter represent them? What one sees on the canvas is a figure that is recognizable as a beautiful woman and another recognizable as a handsome man. From their stances in relation to each other, one can perhaps infer some motives, hopes, expectations, and intents. (Or one can judge consistency of those stances with motives, hopes, expectations and intents in the myth they are supposed to portray.) But what do the figures represent? At most, the models who posed for them; at least, a generic woman and a generic man.

文藝復興時代的維納斯女神和Adonis,究竟代表什麼?我們大部分認為他倆為神話中人物,從未親履大地過。這樣,畫家如何再現他們?我們看到畫面上的他們,只是一對美人和俊男。從他倆彼此立著的位置關係,人們或許可以推論出某些動機、希望、預期和意圖。(或者可從他倆彼此立著的位置關係,是否與神話中該有的某些動機、希望、預期和意圖相一致。)再怎麼說,這樣的人像究竟代表什麼意思。充其量,這些扮像模特兒,至少是一種類型的女性和類型的男性。




What is represented, then, in this kind of "representational" painting is not some actual scene or event but a hypothetical scene assembled from components that could actually be seen. A representational painting is like a molecule synthesized by chemical ingenuity (i.e., nylon or aspirin). Nothing like it exists in nature, but the atoms of which it is composed are real enough, as are the chemical forces that bind them together.

所以在這種「表現型」繪畫中所再現的,並不是實際的景物或事件,而是將實際能看到的一些組成加以組裝成一假設的景象。一幅表現型繪畫正像一種由化學元素合成的大分子(即,尼龍或阿斯匹靈) 。自然中原無此物,不過其組成的原子倒是真東西,猶如其間的化學結合力般。




Of course, by this standard it could be argued that a Kandinsky painting represents a scene that could be seen through a microscope. The difference is merely one of grain size. If the grains are small (as in Kandinsky or Pollock), comparable to what we see under the microscope, we call it nonrepresentational. If the grains are large (as in "Venus and Adonis"), whole human figures in a possible landscape, we call it representational. Similarly, in Joyce and Eliot, the represented elements are small; in Dickens or Flaubert, they are much larger--but still arranged in contrived patterns that correspond to only fictional events.

當然,就此標準而言,可以辯說一幅康定斯基的繪畫,可以說表示從顯微鏡所看到的景象。其差別只在顯示的色素顆粒的大小而已。如果顆粒小,與我們從顯微鏡所看到的類似(如同康定斯基的或Pollock的),我們稱其為非再現的。如果顆過大(如同維納斯女神和Adonis),其人像所處的背景是人間可能的一景,我們稱其為再現的。類似的,Joyce 和Eliot的表現元素是小型的;而狄更斯(Dickens) 或 Flaubert的則較大些--不過它們仍以對應虛構事件的的構圖方式安排而成。

The notion of "representational," then, makes some appeal to the notion of "possible." Something is representational to the extent that it denotes real things in mutual relations that could possibly be real, even if we know that in fact they are not.Madame Bovary does not violate any of our beliefs about what 19th Century small-town bourgeois French society was or could be like or about how people in such a society did behave or could have behaved.

如此,「再現的」想法,多少與「可能的」想法有關係。某人事物是再現型的,多少表示其在彼此關係中,為可能真實的東西,即使事實上不然。包法利夫人並不與我們相信的,十九世紀法國小城中的有產社會中,人們的待人接物的真相或可能的做法。




In the same way, a physicist could describe a star like our Sun, but only half as massive, with planets about it, but at different distances from it than our planets are from our Sun. The movements of this solar system could be represented, although the objects it denotes presumably do not exist. Such a description would be representational in the same sense that a novel is representational.

一位物理學家可以同樣方式來描述某星球像我們的太陽,只是它的質量只有一半,它周圍也有些行星,不過其間的距離與太陽系不同。此一星系的運動是可以加以表徵的,雖然它所表示的這些星座是不存在的。這樣的一描述可以說是表現型的,猶如某本小說是表現型的意義般。




What is possible depends on which laws of nature are relaxed and which are enforced. Science fiction is a peculiar genre in this respect, since it opens the doors of possibility (at least physical possibility) more widely than most other forms of

fiction do. If a novel depicted people who were so monstrous as to be unbelievable (impossible?), would we regard it as representational? As science fiction? Or just as a bad novel, like the novels whose characters are cardboard? In representational literature, we seem to insist more strictly upon the laws of human nature (however imperfectly we understand them) than upon the laws and boundary conditions of physical and biological nature.

什麼是可能的,依那些自然法則要放寬,那些要強化而定。在這方面,科幻小說是一特別的文類,因為它比其它大多類的小說更將種種可能性(至少是物理上的可能性)之門大開。如果某本小說所描述的人邪惡到匪夷所思,那我們會當它是代表型的嗎?或當它為科幻小說?或只是一本惡小說,正如許多人物多為不牢靠者的小說般?在表現型文學中,我們看來更嚴格強調遵照人性法則(不管我們對它們的了解多不完全),這遠比遵守物理或生物法則和其邊界條例強得多。




The writer of a piece of representational prose describes a possible world, and we grasp the meanings to the extent that we are able to evoke from the words and our memory a world like the one described. Since we carry around in memory

schemas or scripts for a great variety of possible elements that can be combined into scenes and narratives, writers draw on knowledge of the nature of these schemas to predict what meanings, what possible worlds, readers will extract from their words.

一篇表現型散文的作者在描述的為一可能的世界,而我們掌握的意義,與這些字詞能引發記憶中與此一世界類似者。由於我們在記憶中有極多樣這種可能的心理圖式或劇本元素,可以加以組合成景與敘述,所以作者是利用他對於我們這些圖式的知識,來預估那些造詞遣字會在讀者心中引發出什麼意義和什麼可能的世界來。




My discussion of ambiguity suggests that there may be no such gulf between the meanings of the author and the meanings of the text as is presumed in some contemporary theories of criticism. The meanings of the author can be characterized by what he or she had in mind: what was evoked from the author's mind, what was actualized while writing the text. But in many, perhaps most, cases authors will in fact intend to evoke similar meanings from their readers, especially when reader

and author belong to the same culture. To the extent that they succeed, the meanings of the text will be the same as the meanings intended by the author. We might even assert that the craftier the author (the greater the mastery of the craft) the

closer will be the correspondence between the author's meanings and the meanings that critics or readers can find in the text.

我處理歧義的討論,顯示可能沒有某些當代批評理論中所宣稱的,在作者的含義和文本的意義之間有一鴻溝存在。作者的含義可以用其心理所想的來表徵:在作者心裡引發出什麼,他寫該文本的時候什麼被激活?不過,可能在大多數場合,尤其是針對同一文化的讀者而言,作者寫從讀者所引發的,正是他原先的用意所在。所以在作者成功程度中,該文本的意義正是作者有意賦予的。我們甚至可以肯定,作者的技巧越高明,那麼作者的含意越會與批評者或讀者從該文本所發現密切對應。




Now the fat is on the fire: I have mentioned critics. I find it impossible to interpret "the meaning of the text" in any other sense than "the meaning of the text to X," where X is some person or computer capable of having intentions. If the meaning of the text is not the meaning to "lay" readers, it must be the meaning either to a critic or (to borrow the word "representative" from the economists) the meaning to a representative member of the language community.

現在我的麻煩來了,因為我提到批評者。我發現要將「該文本的意義」,解釋成與「該文本對於X君的意義」 (其中的X可以任何能夠有意圖的某人或某部電腦)以外的看法,是不可能的事。如果該文本的意義不是它對「非專家」讀者的意義,它必須是對於批評者的意義或(從經濟家借「代表的」這字眼)該語言社會中某一代表成員的意義。




Criticism as Creator of Meanings 批評作為意義的創造者




One responsibility of critics is to identify the meanings that can be evoked from texts--both the meanings intended by the authors and the meanings that, intended or not, are consistent with the ambiguities. And for the Great Texts--the Bible, Shakespeare, Homer, and the others--the ambiguities are inexhaustible, a permanent lode of treasure for scholars.

批評者的一項責任就是確認能從文本引發的種種意義—作者的用意所在,或是種種與歧義一致的,不管是作者有意或無意間所作出的。對於一些偉大的文本,諸如《聖經》、莎士比亞、荷馬作及其他諸賢的作品,它們的歧義是無法窮盡的,所以成為學者們研究的無窮寶藏。




I tint this last statement with only the palest wash of irony. The meanings that the Great Texts have for us cannot be separated from the generations of scholarship that have gone into interpreting them, and it becomes almost irrelevant whether those meanings were "really" in the texts when they were written. It is as irrelevant as whether the rule of the Miranda case is really in the Bill of Rights of the Constitution. For a person who shares the appropriate cultural heritage (has the right schemas in memory), the Texts can evoke the future as readily as the past: Homer can evoke Joyce just as Joyce can evoke Homer.

我對於上段最後的說法並沒有絲毫反諷意思。這些偉大文本對於我們的意義,是無法與歷代學者對它們的闡述隔開的,而且這些意義究竟是作者當初寫作時「真正的」寄意所在,這幾乎是無所謂了或不相干了。它正如Miranda案的判決,真的是在美國憲法中的《權利法案》中,同樣不相干。對於那些有共同的適當的文化傳承的人 (有正確的記憶圖式者) 而言,此等文本對於前人和後代,都能發明出意義:荷馬(作品)可以引發Joyce(作品),正如Joyce(作品)可以與荷馬(作品)相互發明。




Scholarship attaches new meaning to the question of "who was the author of Shakespeare's plays?" Shakespeare must now share that authorship with all those who have commented on him, borrowed from him, plagiarized him, been compared with him, distanced themselves from him. When we read Shakespeare, any or all of the comments of these co-authors may be evoked as part of his meaning--or perhaps I should say "as part of the meaning of his text."




I must pause here to comment briefly on an issue that bulks large in contemporary talk about liberal education. It is not hard to translate into the terms we have been using here the battle that is going on between the defenders of the Canon, the core of Great Books central to the traditional curriculum, and the opponents of ethnocentrism.

學者們的努力,賦予「究竟誰是莎士比亞作品的作者?」一番新意。莎士比亞現在必然與那些所有曾對他評論發揮的、引用的、抄襲的、比較的、迴避他的影響力的,共同成為作者風格的一成員。我們在讀莎士比亞時,上述這些共同作者的任何一位或全部的評論發揮都可以是其意義的一部份--也許我該說成是「他的文本的意義之一部份」。




The defenders of the Canon argue, correctly, that only an informed mind can read deeply and extract rich meanings--even those implanted in the text by the author, to say nothing of those added by the text's subsequent role in the culture. The

opponents of ethnocentrism argue correctly that new meanings may be evoked from a text by a reader who has stored in memory knowledge of other cultures and are unlikely to be evoked by a reader who hasn't.

贊成讀經典的人辯說得對,只有具深入情報的讀者才能深入,讀出豐富的意義—甚至於是作者的微言大意,姑且不論該文本在文化中所扮演的角色史實。那些反對以種族為中心論的也辯得好,某文本在具有其他文化知識的記憶者身上,是可以引發出新意義,而那些記憶中空空如也的人,則無法發明出新意。




Juxtaposing these two correct arguments we are led inexorably and unhappily to the conclusion that life is full of dilemmas and hard choices. Since we have not time to read all the texts, we must devise some scheme of sampling. And different schemes will assign different weights to the old and the new Canons.

將上述兩正確論述重疊並成,可得出必定而令人不快的結論:人生處處有兩難境遇而必須作困難的抉擇。因為我們無法盡讀所有的文章,所以我們必須採取某種抽樣方式來讀這些經典,可是,不同的抽選方式將對古經典和新經典的著重的比重有所不同。




We should like to select texts that will enhance our abilities to understand, and even empathize with, cultures other than our own and, at the same time, texts that will enable us to hold common discourse among ourselves. Adherence to a Canon is surely conducive to ethnocentrism; sampling widely and variously is inimical to common discourse of any depth, for each text must be examined in the absence of much of its context (its meaning).

我們應該喜歡選擇這樣的文本:會提升我們理解的能力的,以及那些甚至於會強調的,那些文化與我們不相同的而同時可以讓我們之間能有共同的談話對象和範圍的文本。對於某套經典堅守不逾肯定與某種民族中心論相通;從廣泛範圍和多樣中抽樣選讀的話,肯定對於建立任何深入的共同的談話對象有所不利,因此此時每一文本必須從缺乏其大部分的(其意義的)語境中來解讀。




The structure of this dispute is identical with the structure of the common dispute between breadth and depth; and it should probably be settled in the same way. An inverted "T" is an attractive shape for an education. The broad base assures

breadth; the tall projection assures depth (and in our case, an area of common discourse). Constructing both the base and the riser of the T calls for sampling, but the exact content of the sample does not much matter.

這一爭論的結構,與一般所謂的「博 vs 深」之爭論者相同,所以它的解決或許要沿用同一方式。如果某種教育方式能如「倒 T字型(案:其學問根基「博大、深入、產出專精」詳下段)」。基本廣大確保一定的含蓋範圍;高的投影確保深度(在我們的上文它表示共同的談話對象之範圍) 。「倒T字型」的底和高(如”1”)建構是需要抽樣的,不過它與該選樣的確切內容沒什麼關係。




For the broad base of the T, we can go to anthropology and some kinds of sociology, to history, and to world literature (in translation, alas). To give our T depth, we can use the tried and true "making of the modern world" formula, the history of Western civilization and/or some shelf of "great books." The history, of course, should be mainly social history rather than the old-fashioned kind.

就該倒T字型的廣大基礎,我們可以求助(研習)人類學與某些種類的社會學,與求助世界文學(可惜呀,我們不得不讀些翻譯本)。而求其深度,我們可利用屢試不爽的「現代世界是如何形成的」方式,西方文明史和/或「偉大經典文庫」。當然,歷史應該是以社會史為主體,而不是老套的歷史。




The University of Chicago in the 1930s (educational philosophy so often turns out to be nostalgia for the undergraduate curriculum that the philosopher experienced) used its Humanities and Social Science survey courses to provide just such a broadening and deepening experience. One who had this training was able to bring to bear upon texts from the Western tradition (i.e., most of the texts he or she was likely to encounter) a rich context to illuminate their meaning. This context, in fact, incorporated a wide range of views of class and gender. At the same time, the base of the inverted T exposed the assumptions implicit in this Western tradition to sharp examination from the vantage points of other cultures.

芝加哥大學在1930年代(在大學本科生教育哲學方面經常碰到哲學家經驗過的那種「好古」)利用其「人文暨社會科學通識課程」來提供這種「能日漸博大精深」的體驗。受過這種培訓的人能夠從西方傳統(他們最常碰到的文化環境)找出,,,,,,、。,,,,,、、。,,,,,、:,,、。《》;?!

:;;;;‧、、。、、。、:,,、。「」

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