LESSON 76

_{INDIAN JUGGLERS}

印第安耍把戏者

William Hazlitt, 1778-1830, was born in Maidstone, England. His father was a Unitarian clergyman, and he was sent to a college of that denomination to be educated for the ministry; but having a greater taste for art than theology, he resolved, on leaving school, to devote himself to painting. He succeeded so well in his efforts as to meet the warmest commendation of his friends, but did not succeed in satisfying his own fastidious taste. On this account he threw away his pencil and took up his pen. His works, though numerous, are, with the exception of a life of Napoleon, chiefly criticisms on literature and art.

Hazlitt is thought to have treated his contemporaries with an unjust severity; but his genial appreciation of the English classics, and the thorough and loving manner in which he discusses their merits, make his essays the delight of every lover of those perpetual wellsprings of intellectual pleasure. His “Table Talk,” “Characters of Shakespeare’s Plays,” “Lectures on the English Poets,” and “Lectures on the Literature of the Elizabethan Age,” are the works that exhibit his style and general merits in their most favorable light.

Coming forward and seating himself on the ground, in his white dress and tightened turban, the chief of the Indian jugglers begins with tossing up two brass balls, which is what any of us could do, and concludes by keeping up four at the same time, which is what none of us could do to save our lives, not if we were to take our whole lives to do it in.

Is it then a trifling power we see at work, or is it not something next to miraculous? It is the utmost stretch of human ingenuity, which nothing but the bending the faculties of body and mind to it from the tenderest infancy with incessant, ever-anxious application up to manhood, can accomplish or make even a slight approach to. Man, thou art a wonderful animal, and thy ways past finding out! Thou canst do strange things, but thou turnest them to small account!

To conceive of this extraordinary dexterity, distracts the imagination and makes admiration breathless. Yet it costs nothing to the performer, any more than if it were a mere mechanical deception with which he had nothing to do, but to watch and laugh at the astonishment of the spectators. A single error of a hair’s breadth, of the smallest conceivable portion of time, would be fatal; the precision of the movements must be like a mathematical truth; their rapidity is like lightning.

To catch four balls in succession, in less than a second of time, and deliver them back so as to return with seeming consciousness to the hand again; to make them revolve around him at certain intervals, like the planets in their spheres; to make them chase each other like sparkles of fire, or shoot up like flowers or meteors; to throw them behind his back, and twine them round his neck like ribbons, or like serpents; to do what appears an impossibility, and to do it with all the ease, the grace, the carelessness imaginable; to laugh at, to play with the glittering mockeries, to follow them with his eye as if he could fascinate them with its lambent fire, or as if he had only to see that they kept time with the music on the stage—there is something in all this which he who does not admire may be quite sure he never really admired anything in the whole course of his life. It is skill surmounting difficulty, and beauty triumphing over skill. It seems as if the difficulty, once mastered, naturally resolved itself into ease and grace, and as if, to be overcome at all, it must be overcome without an effort. The smallest awkwardness or want of pliancy or self-possession would stop the whole process. It is the work of witchcraft, and yet sport for children.

Some of the other feats are quite as curious and wonderful—such as the balancing the artificial tree, and shooting a bird from each branch through a quill—though none of them have the elegance or facility of the keeping up of the brass balls. You are in pain for the result, and glad when the experiment is over; they are not accompanied with the same unmixed, unchecked delight as the former; and I would not give much to be merely astonished without being pleased at the same time. As to the swallowing of the sword, the police ought to interfere to prevent it.

When I saw the Indian juggler do the same things before, his feet were bare, and he had large rings on his toes, which he kept turning round all the time of the performance, as if they moved of themselves.

The hearing a speech in Parliament drawled or stammered out by the honorable member or the noble lord, the ringing the changes on their commonplaces, which anyone could repeat after them as well as they, stirs me not a jot,—shakes not my good opinion of myself. I ask what there is that I can do as well as this. Nothing. What have I been doing all my life? Have I been idle, or have I nothing to show for all my labor and pains? Or have I passed my time in pouring words like water into empty sieves, rolling a stone up a hill and then down again, trying to prove an argument in the teeth of facts, and looking for causes in the dark, and not finding them? Is there no one thing in which I can challenge competition, that I can bring as an instance of exact perfection, in which others can not find a flaw?

The utmost I can pretend to is to write a description of what this fellow can do. I can write a book: so can many others who have not even learned to spell. What abortions are these essays! What errors, what ill-pieced transitions, what crooked reasons, what lame conclusions! How little is made out, and that little how ill! Yet they are the best I can do.

I endeavor to recollect all I have ever heard or thought upon a subject, and to express it as neatly as I can. Instead of writing on four subjects at a time, it is as much as I can manage, to keep the thread of one discourse clear and unentangled. I have also time on my hands to correct my opinions and polish my periods; but the one I can not, and the other I will not, do. I am fond of arguing; yet, with a good deal of pains and practice, it is often much as I can do to beat my man, though he may be a very indifferent hand. A common fencer would disarm his adversary in the twinkling of an eye, unless he were a professor like himself. A stroke of wit will sometimes produce this effect, but there is no such power or superiority in sense or reasoning. There is no complete mastery of execution to be shown there; and you hardly know the professor from the impudent pretender or the mere clown.

【中文阅读】

走上前坐在地上，他身着白色衣服，包头巾系得紧紧的，这位印度耍把戏者先是开始向上掷两个铜球。他这一手随便谁都会，最后，他同时向上掷四个，这一手恐怕我们当中没有谁能做到，如果不是用毕生时间来练习的话。

这是我们在工作中看到的微不足道的能力，难道它算不上奇迹吗？它是人类巧智最大限度的延伸。只不过从最幼弱的婴儿期到成年阶段，身体和心智能力总是焦急地服从于巧智。人类是一种奇妙的动物，

为了构想出这种非同寻常的灵巧，要分散对想象的注意力，使赞叹扣人心弦。然而，对表演者来说，灵巧算不了什么。如果它只是呆板的骗术的话，一点价值也没有，只是在观看者的惊讶中博得一笑而已。一个极其细微的失误，哪怕是时间上最不经意的错位，都是致命的。动作的精确必须像数学公理一样，如闪电般快捷。

在一秒钟之内连续接住四个球，然后将它们再抛向空中，通过表面上意识的连续性造成连续不断的假象。这种假象就是为了使球以一定的间歇围着他转，就像行星在轨道上转一样；使它们像火花一样彼此追逐，或者像花和流星一样绽放；将球抛到身后，像缎带或蛇一样绕着脖子；做似乎不可能的事情，一切都显得那样从容、优雅，淡定得令人难以想象。嬉笑着，玩着表面令人炫目实则无甚价值的把戏，让人们眼睛围着他转，目不暇接，仿佛他能用闪烁的火光令他们着迷似的，抑或仿佛只有他自己能发现他们在舞台上随着音乐的节拍亦醉亦痴——所有这些都有一个要素，不会对这一切表示赞赏的他也许相当确定的是，在他的整个生涯里他从未真正对什么表示过赞赏。技巧战胜和克服了困难，而战胜技巧的则是美的事物。仿佛困难一旦被控制住，便能自然地将技巧转化为自如和优雅；仿佛困难终究会被克服，一定不费吹灰之力。最细小的笨拙或缺少柔韧性或不够泰然自若，都会令整个过程戛然而止。这是魔法在起作用，向孩子炫耀。

一些其他技艺也相当令人好奇和叹服——诸如让人造的树平衡，然后用一根羽毛管从每个树枝射鸟，尽管没有哪种技艺像抛球那般优雅或者需要特殊的技能。你对最后的结果感到苦恼，或者在试验结束后感到欣然；他们并没有像玩抛球时那样伴随着同样纯粹和未加遏制的快乐；而我，再也不会在陶醉其间的同时，只顾惊叹了。至于吞剑，警察应该制止以免发生意外。

记得以前观看印第安耍把戏者做同样的事情时，我注意到他光着脚，脚趾上拴着很大的指环，在表演时一直转圈，仿佛这些指环会飞似的。

在国会听尊敬的议员或高贵的大人故意拖长腔调的演讲，他们企图让陈词滥调听上去富有变化，其实任何人都可以像他们一样重复这些老生常谈，没有任何东西能让我为之动容——根本不会动摇我自认为正当的意见。我不禁会问，我能做什么。什么也做不了。我终其一生一直致力的到底是什么呢？我一直在虚度光阴，或者对我所有的辛劳和苦恼我就没一点想要阐明的吗？抑或，我把时间都打发在像水一样往空空的漏勺里倾倒词语，不停地朝山上推石头，石头又不停地滚下来，企图证明显而易见的事实中的论点，指望在黑暗中寻找原因，而不是发现真理上了吗？就没有一件我能向竞争发起挑战，以此作为完美的例子，而其他人无从置喙的事情吗？

我最觊觎的就是详细描绘一下这种人到底能做什么事情。我可以写一本书，那些甚至连拼写都没学会的人也能看明白。多少这样的文章都胎死腹中了啊！多么愚蠢的错误，拼凑得何其拙劣的过渡，多么荒谬的理由，多么蹩脚的结论！让人如堕云雾，而流弊何其多也！然而，我能做的也就是这些了。

就一个主题，我极力回想所有我曾经听到的或者有关的思考，尽可能恰到好处地表述出来。我当然不会一次就四个主题侃侃下笔，这远非我能力所及，我能做到的就是使一篇文章的线索清晰和简单化。我也把有限的时间用在纠正我的观点和修饰词藻上；但是，有的我不能做，而其他的我又不会做。我热衷于辩论；然而，借此产生的许多苦恼和经验，通常都会极大地挫伤自我，尽管他也许是非常平庸的一个人。一般的剑术家会在眨眼之间令对手怒气全消，除非他是一个顾影自怜的教授。风趣有时就有这种效果，但是在理性或推理层面上，没有这样的感染力或优越感。那里没有显示出对技巧的完美掌握和驾驭，从粗鲁无礼的觊觎高位者或者纯粹行为荒诞不经的人看法出发，你根本无法洞悉这位教授的内心世界。