literary criticism: a cognitive approach(6 )

Herbert Simon

Inducing the Context 引出語境

If we wish to grapple with the intensions of a writer, then we must somehow determine the context that was evoked and present at the time of writing. First, we may focus on the text itself and infer local context by what preceded it and, to a lesser extent, by what followed it. Of course, we cannot assume that context remains constant, even over short segments of text, but we may expect it usually to change in a gradual manner, so that elements of context in one sentence or passage are likely to remain part of the context in closely adjoining parts of the text. Thus, in our quotation from Camus, we are probably safe in assuming that the locale, a bar in a Dutch city, and the bartender will remain part of the context throughout some substantial segment of text. The conditions under which, and the ways in which a writer shifts from one

context to another constitute an important element in that writer's style.

如果我們想盡力去解決某位作者的內含之疑問，那麼我們多少要決定出其寫作當時的以及所引發出的語境。首先，我們可能把焦點放在文本自身並由其前文，或稍借助其後文，來推論出該局部文本之語境。當然，即使只在一短段落之內，我們也不能假設語境會一成不變，不過我們或可預期它通常會逐漸變化，所以在該文本中一句或一段的語境元素，可能會與其臨近者的，保持不變。如此，在我們引Camus的文章中、我們可能可安心假設，在當地，荷蘭某城市的一間酒吧，該侍者在後繼大段文本內還會是語境的上一部分。一位作者在什麼情況下，以及用什麼方式，來轉變其語境，這是構成他或她的文章風格的重要因素。




A second way in which we may try to infer context is by determining what kinds of ideas and information are in the head of the writer at the time of writing. Here, we may draw on biographical material but also on information about the culture

in which the writing took place and the particular social stratum and role in that culture the writer inhabited. We may discover what the writer read or might have read.

第二種可能可以嘗試推論語境的方式是，想出作者在寫作時，腦中有那些種類的想法和資訊。欲達此目的，我們或可從作者的傳記資料，又可從他寫作時所處的文化中，以及他居住在該文化中的特定社會層級和角色等來看。我們或可發現作者在讀什麼或讀過什麼。




To understand Proust, we may wish to supplement his fictional autobiography with other biographical information. We may wish to understand French society at the turn of the century, the Dreyfus trials and their impact on that society, and the special position of upper-class Jewish families. We may seek information about the French aristocracy and the haute bourgoisie and the relations between the Bourbon and Empire aristocrats.

要了解Proust，我們除了他在小說中的自傳成份之外，還想用其他的傳記情報來補充。我們或想知道在19-20世紀之交的法國社會文化，對於猶太軍官Dreyfus審告案件人和它們對社會的種種衝擊，以及上階層猶太家族所處的特別地位。我們可能想找下述情報：關於法國貴族和追求高品位的有產階，以及Bourbon王朝和帝國貴族之間的關係。




All these bits of information, and many others, are relevant components of the context that was present in some form in Proust's memory, that was evoked from time to time while he was writing and that helped to form his words. It is probably easier to survey the totality of the knowledge to which he had access than to assess what part of his memory store provided the actual context for any passage in his novel.

這些情報和其他許多東西，都是相關的語境夠元件，它們以某種形式承現或存在Proust的記憶中，讓他在寫作時不時引發出來，協助他造句遣字。也許調查他所接達的知識之整體性，遠比評估他存的記憶中的那一部份提供其小說中任何段落的實際語境更為容易得多。




By this game of inferring contexts are innumerable books and theses made: Joyce's Dublin, Shakespeare's literary sources, poems of chivalry at the time of Cervantes, the social structure of Russian feudal estates in the nineteenth century. And the same processes we use to establish writers' contexts can be used to infer readers' contexts and, thereby, to assess how the same text may receive different readings in various eras and in particular lands. In this way we can come to understand the various meanings that can be attached (by Chinese students, by Chinese peasants, by foreigners of various nationalities) to the Statue of Liberty in Tiananmen Square or to the family intrigues recounted in The Dream of the Red Chamber.

利用這種方式推出諸語境的遊戲，可以應用到無數的作家和作品：喬依斯的都柏林、莎士比亞的各種文學來源、塞萬提斯時代的騎士詩篇、19世紀俄羅斯封建時代的諸階級的社會結構。再者，我們用來建立作者語境的同一過程，也可以用來推論讀者的語境，據此，我們可以評估相同的一文本，在不同的讀者和某些特定的地方，可能會產生種種不同的釋意。採用這種方式我們可以了解，就天安門前的自由女神像或《紅樓夢》中曲折的家庭恩愛情怨故事，由中國學生、中國農民、各不同國籍的讀者，大家認為的意義可能形形色色。




Syntax 句法




In language, certain kinds of relations among meanings, and corresponding relations among the words and sentences that denote them, occur very frequently. It then becomes convenient to have definite conventions for representing these relations. These conventions constitute the syntax of the language.

在語言中，諸意義之間的某些種類的關係，以及在表示它們的字詞和句子之間的對應諸關係，出現的頻率很高。因為要再現這些關係，如果能有確定的慣用協定，會很方便行事。這些慣用協定就稱為該語言的句法。




Thus, in every language we often have occasion to speak or write about relations between pairs of things (ARB), where A and B are names of the things, and R denotes a relation. So we have particles like prepositions (or postpositions, as in

Japanese) that have little semantic meaning associated with them but that signal a relation of some sort between two terms. Every language has such conventions for the most common situations that it needs to represent, and while the conventions

themselves are different for different languages, there is great overlap in the sorts of things that possess syntactical conventions in different languages (i.e., agents, patients, temporal relations, instruments, number, determiners).

如此，使用每一語言時，我們經常有場合會談到或寫到一對事物之間的關係(ARB)，其中A和B是事物的名稱，而R表示一關係。所以我們有小詞(particle)像介詞，(或像日文中的後置詞(postpositions) 案： particle或翻譯成「小品詞」，指具有語法功能的不變形詞項，特別指那些不容易歸入詞類標準分類的詞。例如英文的不定式標記to，常稱為小詞，因為它狀似介詞，實則不然，無共通處。後置詞是在名詞短短語(或單個名詞或代名詞)後頭共同構成一個結構組構成份的一個封閉的詞類，英文極少，如two years ago中之ago，日文和印地語多見。本譯注參考David Crystal著的《現代語言學詞典》北京：商務印書館) ，這些與它們少有語義上的意義關連，不過卻通知我們，兩詞項之間有某種關係。每一語言在最常見的需要再現的情況都有這種慣用協定，而這些協定雖然隨不同語言而異，不過在諸不同語言具有句法協定的部分，重疊處相當多(即agents—施事者/格，執行動作的有生命的”行為者”, patients—受事(受動詞的動作影響的實體), temporal relations—語速上的關係, instruments—工具格，執行動詞動作的工具的名詞等, number—數，如單/複/雙/三…, determiners—限定詞) 。另參考 王寅編《簡明語義學辭典》山東人民出版社)





Thus syntax becomes one of the tools we use to discover meanings, but meaning itself is a matter of semantics, and syntax is (for writer, reader, or critic) no more than an efficient signaling device that sometimes makes the expression of meaning

more expeditious.

如此，語法成為我們用來發現意義的工具之一，不過意義本身屬於語義學的範圍，而句法(就讀者、作者和批評者而言)只不過是一有效的發信號裝置，它有時候讓意義的表現更為方便。




Images as Meanings 心象作為意義




Many of the meanings, especially of objects, events, and scenes, that are evoked by reading or in other ways take the form of mental images. We seem to "see" what is denoted by the text or evoked by it from memory, although the sight may seldom be as specific or vivid as scenes that actually pass before our eyes.

有許多的意義的形式是心象，特別是那些經由閱讀或其他方式所引發的東西、事件、和景象。我們似乎「看得見」文本所表示的或由它從記憶所引發的，雖然該景況的心象並不能像實際歷歷眼前般具體而生動。




The first of Wallace Stevens' "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" goes like this:

Wallace Stevens《觀照紫鷯哥的十三種方式》("Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird") 的第一首如下




二十座雪山之中

動者獨為

紫鷯哥之眼睛。




Among twenty snowy mountains

The only moving thing

Was the eye of the blackbird.




It is hard (at least for me) to read these lines without seeing the high-perched blackbird and its sharp darting eye framed by the range of mountains. It is no more surprising that we experience as mental images our encodings of words we have

read or of memories we have recovered than that we experience as mental images our encodings of the quanta of light that fall on our retinas in the presence of an actual scene. In both cases the mental image is neither words nor light but a symbolic coding of the initial stimulus that presents itself for interpretation in the mind's eye.

至少就我而言，讀這幾行詩時，很難不看見以山脈為背景，高枝上棲身的紫鷯哥和它的的無忌亮眼。我們將所讀到的或從光線把記憶中的恢復了的，此等體驗都解碼成心象，而這並不令人驚訝，因為它們都無異於在實景中的光，落在眼的視網膜上。因為在這兩情況下，心象並非是字眼或光線，而是承現在心靈之眼，等待解釋的原刺激的記號編碼。




The most common explanation of mental images in cognitive science today, and the one I shall accept here, is that such images, whether generated from sensations or memories, make use of some of the same neuronal equipment that is used for displaying or representing the images of perceptually recorded scenes--hence the near identity of the ways in which we experience them subjectively. (Kosslyn, 1980). Both actual scenes and remembered scenes are viewed in the mind's eye.

今日認知科學最常用來說明心象的說法，它也是本論文所接受的(Kosslyn, 1980)，它說，這些心象，不管是從感官或從記憶所產生的，它們所用到的神經元，是與知覺所紀錄下之景的再現或顯示者相同的—因此，它的方式與我們主觀的體驗者是同一的。實際之景與回想起來之景，這兩種都用心靈之眼來觀看。

On this hypothesis, a mental picture formed by retrieving some information from memory or by visualizing the meaning of a spoken or written paragraph is stored in the same brain tissue and acted on by the same mental processes as the picture recorded by the eyes. That one can translate memories or words into a mental picture is no more (and no less) mysterious than that one can similarly translate the impact of photons on the retina.

根據這一假設，從記憶檢索出某些資訊，或將從口頭或書寫段落視覺化找出意義，這形成的心像，都是存在腦中同一組織，其心理過程，與由眼錄像的，屬相同者。將記憶或字眼轉譯成一心像的，與將光子落在視網膜上的力量轉譯，這兩者道理相同。





The meanings we have discussed so far are meanings without emotion: they are the stuff of cold cognition rather than hot cognition. But words are quite as potent in evoking feelings as they are in evoking thoughts. It is time (perhaps it is past time) to introduce emotion into the conversation. We do not have to propose a formal definition of emotion; it is enough that we have all amply experienced it. In particular, we have experienced it while reading or listening to words.

我們至此所談的意義，是不帶情感的：它們是冷認知而非熱認知的題材。不過，字眼或可以激當人心，這與它能讓人思考，能力上相同。所以現在開始談談情感，正是時候(或者是「時不我與」) 。我們不必提出一套正式的情感的界說；只要我們曾經充分體驗過即可。特別是我們如曾經讀過或聽過某些字眼，而心生感動即可。




The evoking mechanism, which we have already examined, provides the means for arousing emotions as well as retrieving ideas. Among the memories that we retrieve, some are deeply dyed with happiness or sadness, with pity or envy, with love or hate, with fear or longing. Remembering recovers for us not only facts and events and ideas but also the feelings that have become associated with them. Both Plato and Aristotle regard the evocation of emotion as a central part of esthetic experience.

引發的機制，這我們已檢驗過了，它提供喚醒情感與檢索觀念的手段。我們所檢索出的記憶，有些是深染歡、悲，或憫或怨，或愛或恨，或懼怕或盼望。回憶不只會恢復實、事件和想法，也會引發它們相關聯的情感。柏拉圖和亞里斯多德都認為情感的引發，為審美經驗的中心。




In the language of neuropsychology, emotion is felt when evoking a memory stimulates the autonomic nervous system in the same way that an experience might stimulate it. Just as visual scenes can be re-displayed in the mind's eye, so

emotions can be re-experienced in the "mind's heart," which we are told has its locus in that autonomic system.

就神經心理學的語言來談，當引發某一記憶來刺激自發神經系統，從而有所感觸，這與某一經濟可能刺激它的方式是同一的。正如同心靈之眼可以再展現某些視覺景象，「心坎」(據說它是自發系統所在處)也可以再次體會情感波動。

There is no good reason to restrict the idea of "meaning" to the cold component of cognition. It makes perfectly good sense, by virtue of the way in which emotion is aroused, to speak of the emotional meaning of a text. And what has already been said here about meanings, the ways in which they are organized in memory and the ways in which they are evoked, applies equally well to emotional meanings.

將「意義」這觀念僅挶限在認知的冷組成內，並沒什道理。依靠情感被喚醒的方式，來談某文件的情感的意義，倒是最合情合理。我們談過的主題，如意義和它們在記憶中組織的方式，以及它們被引發的方式等等，都同樣適用在情感的意義上。




Absolute music reminds us that emotion is best aroused not by talking about happiness or sadness but by presenting stimuli that produce feelings of happiness or sadness. It is still quite unclear what it is about "sad" music that is sad (or sadness-producing) or about "happy" music that is happy. The nearest approach, perhaps, to a theory of how music produces emotion is the tension-building, tension-release cycle proposed by Hindemith and others.

純音樂(案：指與音樂本身以外的任何事物無明確關聯的音樂)提醒我們，喚醒情感的最佳方法，並不是談幸福或悲情，而是要將產生幸福或悲情的刺激展現出來。我們對於究竟什麼是所謂「悲」音樂中的悲情(或產生悲情) ，或「喜」音樂，即快樂的音樂，仍然不甚清楚。也許最接近的學說乃是由Hindemith等人所提出的理論：音樂藉由壓力的起落或伸縮循環來產生情感。




In literature, as in music, emotion is usually evoked not by using words like "sad" or "happy" but by creating situations to which we respond with sadness or happiness. Some of the basic ways of accomplishing this are obvious enough. Create a character, describe the character's behavior in such a way as to secure readers' empathy with him or her, and expose the character to events of the kind that produce emotions in those experiencing them and those observing them. If this is done skillfully, one may expect readers to respond as they would to the corresponding situations in real life.

在文學如同在音樂，情感的引發，通常不是由使用諸如「悲」或「喜」等字眼，而是創造對應於悲或喜的情景。達成此境界的基本方式太顯然不過了。創一人物，描寫該人物的行為的方式能讓讀者動容，感同身受，安排那種能讓劇中人和讀者感動的情節和事件。如果處理的技巧夠純熟，就可以預期讀者的反應是認為它們栩栩如生，猶如真實人生中的故事。

The intertwining of emotion with the other dimensions of meaning is already illustrated by the examples I introduced earlier. In the brief passages I quoted from Stendhal, Camus, and Wallace Stevens, we read descriptions of scenes, but descriptions that, even in the first sentences, evoke a mood: the exhilaration of conquest across the Alps, the foreboding gloom of a cheap bar, the loneliness of a vast landscape.

我們上文中讀了Stendhal、Camu、和 Wallace Stevens等所描述之景，即使在第一句，都能引發我們的心情：跨越阿爾帕斯山脈征服的欣喜若狂，低等酒吧中充滿不詳預感的憂鬱，千山景象中的孤獨感。




In the discussion that follows, then, we will be concerned with a full-bodied cognition that encompasses emotion as fully as thought.

我們接下來所關心的、要討論的，是全面認知，它是感情和思想兼備的。




The Author's Meanings 作者的意義




With this very general explication of the meanings of "meaning" before us, we are ready to look at the relation between an author's meanings and the words he or she writes down. Before an author writes "thunderstorm," something must have occurred to evoke that word from memory. In my case, I paused to look out of my office window, saw a black sky, and thought "thunderstorm." Now in fact, I don't believe a thunderstorm is coming--it's the wrong season--but I was reminded of one. In this case, a rather superficial, even accidental, meaning. "It doesn't mean much," we might say.

我們有了以上對於「意義」的種種意義的一般性說明，現在可以來檢視作者寫下的字眼和作者的意含之間的關係。某位作者在寫下「雷雨」(thunderstorm)之前，一定有些事讓它從記憶中引發它。就我而言，我暫停並望一下辦公室窗外，天色頗暗，從而想起「雷雨」。事實上，我並不認為現在會來場雷雨，因為季節不對，不過它就是讓我想到這字眼。此例中字眼的意義，相當表面化，甚至於只是偶然而已。我們可能會說：「這沒多大意義。」





Or, if Freudianly inclined, we might ask, "Why does seeing a black sky remind him of a thunderstorm?" The latter question might be difficult or impossible to answer, but it is certainly legitimate to ask it. It is no less than the question of the great tangle of associated meanings that fill my cranium and how they came to be there and to arrange themselves in just the particular organization they now maintain. It is the question of my biography, my life--my "identity," to use that

tired word.

換另外角度來談，如果我們傾向採取佛洛依德派作風，我們會追問：「為什麼看到天色暗了就想起雷雨來？」要回答這提問可能很難說清楚，甚至辦不到，不過問這肯定是合理的。它不下於問我腦海中錯綜複雜的相關連的意義何以致之，如何安排成現在這副模樣。遠不只這呢，這問題與我的故事，我的今生今世相關—不妨用一老掉牙的字眼(tired word--案：我們想起dog-tired extremely tired)，它與我的「認同」相關。




Discovering Authors' Meanings 發現作者的意義




A richer meaning might be more complex, yet easier to understand, than an isolated "thunderstorm." In the previous sentence, I used the word "meaning." What did I intend by it? To discover my intension, you don't need to speculate quite as wildly as you did for "thunderstorm." I have been writing about meaning for many pages and have even offered a rather explicit definition of the term. A good guess would be that its meaning in this paragraph corresponds to my definition. We could probably even rephrase this guessing process as a rather reliable heuristic for determining authors'

meanings in contexts where they had just defined a term explicitly. We would normally object to an author's defining a term and then using it in a sense that did not fit the definition.

有比單獨詞「雷雨」的意義更為豐富的，它可能更為複雜，不過更容易了解。上句我用了「意義」一詞，我用它究竟意指什麼？要發現我的意圖，你用不著像猜「雷雨」那般海闊天空。我們這篇論文談它的篇幅，業已好多頁了，甚至於給它過一清楚的界說。所以上段中它的意指，如果用我對意義的界說來回答，那雖不中亦不遠噫。我們甚至或許可能將此猜測過程重新講一次，讓它成為一個相當可靠的啟發程式，可用來決定作者已明白界定夠該詞的語境之下的意義。如果某作者界定某詞時用的是一套，隨後講起該詞卻又用另外一套，我們通常會反對這種作法。




Authors' meanings, then, are to be assigned by discovering what was actually evoked in their minds to form their words.By attributing consistency of meaning to them over intervals of time, we can use context to help us narrow the ambiguity of meanings. But we must not carry the consistency criterion too far. Authors, like all mortals, are fully capable of inconsistency. Since only a small fragment of the potential meaning of a term may be evoked on any occasion of use, different fragments--possibly almost totally different ones--may be evoked on different occasions, with or without an

author's awareness or intent. Moreover, the meanings evoked in authors' minds by reading things they have written (even have just written) need not be the same as the meanings that evoked the writing.

如此，作者的意義的指定，是要由我們發現他內心實際上是如何被引發來用詞遣字來了解的。在某段時間內給予這些字眼一致的意義，我們可以藉語境之助來降低歧義。不過這種一致性準則還是不能過份信任。作者們也像凡人，能夠與時變遷、推移而不一致。由於某一用語在任何運用的時候，都只有小部分的潛在意義會被引發，所以一些不同的段落__可能幾乎全部完全不同的__在不同場合會有不同的引發，不管作者自覺或有意與否。尤其甚者，作者在寫過再讀其作品(即使剛完成的作品)，當時所引發的，不見得與書寫時的引發相同。




On the other side of this coin, as long as we retain the context in which we wrote or spoke some words, it may be difficult for us to recognize the different meanings (derived from other contexts) that others may extract from our words. That is

why we must often allow our texts to grow cold before we undertake to revise or edit them. The cold text may evoke a quite different context, hence different meaning, from the same text at the moment of composition. Then we see how we

may be misunderstood.

另一面，只要我們一直停留在我們書寫或口說的語境中，我們可能很難認出別人可能望文生不同的意義(他們導出意義的語境可能不同) 。這是為什麼我們在進行修訂或編輯之前，通常要先把文本擺一陣子，讓它如陳酒般沉積一番。該冷文本可能引發原先寫作時很不同的語境。如此我們會看清可能被誤解。








SEHR, volume 4, issue 1: Bridging the Gap

Updated 8 April 1995




Editor's note: Professor Simon's article appears here in 5 parts. This is the fifth part.






literary criticism: a cognitive approach