LESSON 16

MY EXPERIENCE IN ELOCUTION

我的演说经历

John Neal, 1793-1876, a brilliant but eccentric American writer, was born in Portland, Maine. He went into business, when quite young, in company with John Pierpont, the well-known poet. They soon failed, and Mr. Neal then turned his attention to the study of law. He practiced his profession somewhat, but devoted most of his time to literature. For a time he resided in England, where he wrote for “Blackwood’s Magazine” and other periodicals. His writings were produced with great rapidity, and with a purposed disregard of what is known as “classical English.”

In the academy I attended, elocution was taught in a way I shall never forget—never! We had a yearly exhibition, and the favorites of the preceptor were allowed to speak a piece; and a pretty time they had of it. Somehow I was never a favorite with any of my teachers after the first two or three days; and, as I went barefooted, I dare say it was thought unseemly, or perhaps cruel, to expose me upon the platform. And then, as I had no particular aptitude for public speaking, and no relish for what was called oratory, it was never my luck to be called up.

Among my schoolmates, however, was one—a very amiable, shy boy—to whom was assigned, at the first exhibition I attended, that passage in Pope’s Homer beginning with,

“Aurora, now, fair daughter of the dawn!”

This the poor boy gave with so much emphasis and discretion, that, to me, it sounded like “O roarer!” and I was wicked enough, out of sheer envy, I dare say, to call him “O roarer!”—a nickname which clung to him for a long while, though no human being ever deserved it less; for in speech and action both, he was quiet, reserved, and sensitive.

My next experience in elocution was still more disheartening, so that I never had a chance of showing what I was capable of in that way till I set up for myself. Master Moody, my next instructor, was thought to have uncommon qualifications for teaching oratory. He was a large, handsome, heavy man, over six feet high; and having understood that the first, second, and third prerequisite in oratory was action, the boys he put in training were encouraged to most vehement and obstreperous manifestations. Let me give an example, and one that weighed heavily on my conscience for many years after the poor man passed away.

Among his pupils were two boys, brothers, who were thought highly gifted in elocution. The master, who was evidently of that opinion, had a habit of parading them on all occasions before visitors and strangers; though one bad lost his upper front teeth and lisped badly, and the other had the voice of a penny trumpet. Week after week these boys went through the quarrel of Brutus and Cassius, for the benefit of myself and others, to see if their example would not provoke us to a generous competition for all the honors.

How it operated on the other boys in after life I can not say; but the effect on me was decidedly unwholesome—discouraging, indeed,—until I was old enough to judge for myself, and to carry into operation a system of my own.

On coming to the passage,—

“Be ready, gods, with all your thunderbolts;

Dash him to pieces!”—

the elder of the boys gave it after the following fashion: “Be ready, godths, with all your thunderbolths,—dath him in pietheth!”—bringing his right fist down into his left palm with all his strength, and his lifted foot upon the platform, which was built like a sounding-board, so that the master himself, who had suggested the action and obliged the poor boy to rehearse it over and over again, appeared to be utterly carried away by the magnificent demonstration; while to me—so deficient was I in rhetorical taste—it sounded like a crash of broken crockery, intermingled with chicken peeps.

I never got over it; and to this day can not endure stamping, nor even tapping of the foot, nor clapping the hands together, nor thumping the table for illustration; having an idea that such noises are not oratory, and that untranslatable sounds are not language.

My next essay was of a somewhat different kind. I took the field in person, being in my nineteenth year, well proportioned, and already beginning to have a sincere relish for poetry, if not for declamation. I had always been a great reader; and in the course of my foraging depredations I had met with “The Mariner’s Dream” and “The Lake of the Dismal Swamp,” both of which I had committed to memory before I knew it.

And one day, happening to be alone with my sister, and newly rigged out in a student’s gown, such as the lads at Brunswick sported when they came to show off among their old companions, I proposed to astonish her by rehearsing these two poems in appropriate costume. Being very proud of her brother, and very obliging, she consented at once,—upon condition that our dear mother, who had never seen anything of the sort, should be invited to make one of the audience.

On the whole, I rather think that I succeeded in astonishing both. I well remember their looks of amazement—for they had never seen anything better or worse in all their lives, and were no judges of acting—as I swept to and fro in that magnificent robe, with outstretched arms and uplifted eyes, when I came to passages like the following, where an apostrophe was called for:

“And near him the she wolf stirred the brake,

And the copper snake breathed in his ear,

Till he, starting, cried, from his dream awake,

‘Oh, when shall I see the dusky lake,

And the white canoe of my dear!’”

Or like this:

“On beds of green sea flowers thy limbs shall be laid;

Around thy white bones the red coral shall grow,

Of thy fair yellow locks, threads of amber be made,

And every part suit to thy mansion below;”—

throwing up my arms, and throwing them out in every possible direction as the spirit moved me, or the sentiment prompted; for I always encouraged my limbs and features to think for themselves, and to act for themselves, and never predetermined, never forethought, a gesture nor an intonation in my life; and should as soon think of counterfeiting another’s look or step or voice, or of modulating my own by a pitch pipe (as the ancient orators did, with whom oratory was acting elocution, a branch of the dramatic art), as of adopting or imitating the gestures and tones of the most celebrated rhetorician I ever saw.

The result was rather encouraging. My mother and sister were both satisfied. At any rate, they said nothing to the contrary. Being only in my nineteenth year, what might I not be able to accomplish after a little more experience!

How little did I think, while rehearsing before my mother and sister, that anything serious would ever come of it, or that I was laying the foundations of character for life, or that I was beginning what I should not be able to finish within the next forty or fifty years following. Yet so it was. I had broken the ice without knowing it. These things were but the foreshadowing of what happened long afterward.

【中文阅读】

在我读书的学院，演说术的传授方式我一辈子也忘不了——永生难忘！我们每年都要公开示范，老师让自己喜爱的学生读一段文字，经过一段时间他们就能掌握演讲的要领。不知怎么地，从上两三天课后我就不再为任何老师所喜欢；当我赤足走上讲台时，我敢说没有谁认为这很得体，让我出现在讲台上本身就有点残酷。因此，我在当众演讲方面没有什么天资，对于所谓的演说术也不抱什么乐趣。对我而言，被叫起来演讲从来就不是什么幸运的事情。

然而在我的同学中，有一位非常和蔼、害羞的男生，在我第一次参加公开示范时，指定他来示范演讲，那篇选段是蒲伯的《荷马》，该文开头是这样的：

“现在，曙光女神奥罗拉，黎明女神那位漂亮的女儿！”

这可怜的孩子太过强调和谨慎，以至于在我听起来，就像是“啊，奥罗雷！”出于纯粹的嫉妒，我感到颇不耐烦，直接想叫他“啊，奥罗雷！”——这个绰号伴他很长时间，尽管没有别人配得上这个绰号。就说话和举止两者来说，他过于内敛、含蓄和敏感了。

我接下来的演说经历依旧非常令人气馁，以至于我从来没有机会表现出我能按照那种方式驾驭演讲，直到我亲自践行。我的下一任老师穆迪被认为在教授演说术上具有非凡的能力。他块头很大，相貌英俊，身高超过六英尺，深谙演说术三昧，他鼓励接受训练的孩子要尽最大程度的热情去展现，打破种种束缚。我不妨举一个例子，在这个可怜的人过世多年后，他的大块头还驻留在我的意识中，挥之不去。

在他的学生中有两个孩子，一对兄弟，在演说方面被认为天赋极高。这位老师显然也抱有这个看法，他有一个习惯，在所有场合，只要有访客和陌生人在场，都会拿他们炫耀。然而这兄弟二人，一个上门牙掉了，严重口齿不清；另一个嗓音就像小号。过了好几个星期，他们俩当着我和其他人的面，像布鲁图和凯西厄那样争吵，看看他们的争吵是否会激起我们为了所有人的荣誉而进行慷慨的竞争。

我不好说这对其他孩子以后的生活起了怎样的作用，不过，对我的作用却非常糟糕——实际上是沮丧——直到我年龄大到足以对自己做出判断，将这一活动融入到我自己的体系里。

接下来是这段：

“做好准备，诸神，用你们所有的雷电，

将他碎尸万段！”

年长的哥哥按照下面的风格朗诵：“做好准备，诸神，用你们所有的雷电，将他碎尸万片！”他朗诵的时候身体所有的力量都集中到右拳上了，挥舞右拳猛地砸进左掌，他抬起的脚重重落在讲台上，就像一个隔音板，以至于老师本人，本来他暗示要用动作来配合，要这可怜的孩子一遍一遍地排练，结果他完全被这华丽的表现给迷住了。在我看来——按照我的修辞品味来判断，这种表现方式存在严重缺陷——听上去就像陶器打碎了的声音，间杂着小鸡的吱吱叫声。

我从未真正掌握所谓的要领；时至今日，也不堪忍受踏足，哪怕是轻拍，也不会双手相抵，为了发挥感染力而拍桌子。我一直抱有这种看法，即这种噪音与演说术相去甚远，那种不可翻译的声音不是语言。

我下一篇散文则有点不同。我当时年仅十九岁，好在野外玩耍，倒也与年龄颇为相称，已经开始对诗歌怀有真诚的喜好，如果不是对慷慨激昂的演说真心喜欢的话。我始终是一位贪婪的读者，在寻找破坏的对象期间，我与《水手的梦》和《凄凉的沼泽湖》不期而遇，这两首诗在我拜读之前就已经在我的记忆里留下了烙印。

有一天，碰巧就我和姐姐两个人在家，我穿了一件簇新的学生礼服，就像布伦兹维克特意向别人炫耀的男孩子，他们在向自己的伙伴显摆时就是这个样子。我本来打算穿适合的衣服朗诵这两首诗，让她大吃一惊。她会为她的弟弟感到非常骄傲，非常满足，她马上表示同意——我亲爱的妈妈从来没有见过这个，也会邀请她来做观众的。

总的来说，我宁愿相信自己让她们两人都大吃了一惊。我记得她们惊愕的样子——因为在她们的生活中从未见过这个，对于我到底表现得如何无从判断——我拖着那件华丽的袍子在地上扫来扫去，夸张地伸着胳膊，眼睛上挑，当时我朗诵的好像是下面这段，有的地方要求省略：

“在他旁边，这条母狼扳着闸，

紫色蝮蛇在他耳畔咝咝作响，

直到他从梦里惊醒开始大喊，

‘啊，当我看到那条黑魆魆的湖，

我朝思暮想的白舟！’”

或像这首：

“你爬到绿绿的海中花圃上，

在你白白的骨头周围，长出的是红珊瑚

你那一缕金黄的头发，就像琥珀的丝线一样，

与下面的宅邸那样相符；”

我的胳膊向前伸展，随着情绪或情感提示而伸向各个方向；因为我始终调动四肢和面部表情来所思和所动，在我的演说生涯里我从不会预先决定，从不会事先考虑一个姿势或一个语调。一提到演说，就会想到伪造其他人的表情，步伐或声音，抑或通过为笛子定调的方法来调整我自己的音调（就像古代演说家那样，在他们看来演说术就是表演朗诵，属于戏剧的一个分支），采用或模仿我曾见过的最著名的演说家的姿势和声音。

结果相当令人鼓舞。我妈妈和姐姐都很满意。不管怎样，她们没有说让我气馁的话。鉴于当时只有十九岁，我不可能做得更好了。

在我妈妈和姐姐面前朗诵时，我的顾虑很少，任何一点点麻烦都会克服，或者说我以生活中的人物性格为基础，抑或我开始做的事情在接下来四十年或五十年之内都无法完成。然而，事实就是如此。我不用先了解就打破了这层坚冰。这些事情只不过预言了长久以后将要发生的一切而已。