A Piece of Chalk

I remember one splendid morning, all blue and silver, in the summer holidays, when I reluctantly tore myself away from the task of doing nothing in particular, and put on a hat of some sort and picked up a walking-stick, and put six very bright-coloured chalks in my pocket. I then went into the kitchen (which, along with the rest of the house, belonged to a very square and sensible old woman in a Sussex village), and asked the owner and occupant of the kitchen if she had any brown paper. She had a great deal; in fact, she had too much; and she mistook the purpose and the rationale of the existence of brown paper. She seemed to have an idea that if a person wanted brown paper he must be wanting to tie up parcels; which was the last thing I wanted to do; indeed, it is a thing which I have found to be beyond my mental capacity. Hence she dwelt very much on the varying qualities of toughness and endurance in the material. I explained to her that I only wanted to draw pictures on it, and that I did not want them to endure in the least; and that from my point of view, therefore, it was a question not of tough consistency, but of responsive surface, a thing comparatively irrelevant in a parcel. When she understood that I wanted to draw she offered to overwhelm me with note-paper, apparently supposing that I did my notes and correspondence on old brown paper wrappers from motives of economy.

我记得暑假里一个蓝里透银的灿烂早晨，我很不情愿地从“什么也不做”这件差事上抽身出来，随便戴了一顶帽子，拿起一根手杖，往口袋里装了六支颜色非常鲜艳的粉笔。然后我走进厨房（这间厨房和房子的其余部分一样，属于苏塞克斯一个村子里一位非常方正、非常明理的老太太），问厨房的主人兼住户有没有牛皮纸。她有很多；事实上，她有太多了；而且她误会了牛皮纸存在的目的和道理。她似乎认为，一个人要牛皮纸，一定是想包包裹；而那恰恰是我最不想做的事；说真的，我发现这件事超出了我的智力。所以她再三强调这种纸在韧性和耐久性上的各种品质。我向她解释说，我只是想在上面画画，一点也不希望那些画能经久；所以，在我看来，问题不在于质地坚韧，而在于表面肯不肯着色，而这一点对包裹来说相对无关紧要。等她明白我是想画画，她就要拿信纸把我淹没，显然以为我是出于节俭，才在旧牛皮纸包装上写我的笔记和信件。

I then tried to explain the rather delicate logical shade, that I not only liked brown paper, but liked the quality of brownness in paper, just as I liked the quality of brownness in October woods, or in beer, or in the peat-streams of the North. Brown paper represents the primal twilight of the first toil of creation, and with a bright-coloured chalk or two you can pick out points of fire in it, sparks of gold, and blood-red, and sea-green, like the first fierce stars that sprang out of divine darkness. All this I said (in an off-hand way) to the old woman; and I put the brown paper in my pocket along with the chalks, and possibly other things. I suppose every one must have reflected how primeval and how poetical are the things that one carries in one’s pocket; the pocket-knife, for instance, the type of all human tools, the infant of the sword. Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about the things in my pocket. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.

接着我试图解释一个相当微妙的逻辑层次：我不仅喜欢牛皮纸，而且喜欢纸张中的那种棕色的品质，就像我喜欢十月树林、啤酒或北方泥炭溪流中那种棕色的品质一样。牛皮纸代表着创世最初劳作时那原始的暮色；用一两支颜色鲜艳的粉笔，你就能在上面点出火的光点、金的火花、血红和海绿，就像那些从神圣的黑暗中迸出来的、最初的猛烈的星辰。这一切我都（随口地）对老太太说了；然后我把牛皮纸和粉笔，或许还有别的东西，一起放进了口袋。我想每个人都曾想过，一个人口袋里装着的东西是多么原始、多么富有诗意；比如小刀，它是一切人类工具的典型，是剑的婴孩。我曾经打算写一本诗集，全写我口袋里的东西。可是我发现那会太长；而伟大史诗的时代已经过去了。

With my stick and my knife, my chalks and my brown paper, I went out on to the great downs. I crawled across those colossal contours that express the best quality of England, because they are at the same time soft and strong. The smoothness of them has the same meaning as the smoothness of great cart-horses, or the smoothness of the beech-tree; it declares in the teeth of our timid and cruel theories that the mighty are merciful. As my eye swept the landscape, the landscape was as kindly as any of its cottages, but for power it was like an earthquake. The villages in the immense valley were safe, one could see, for centuries; yet the lifting of the whole land was like the lifting of one enormous wave to wash them all away.

带着我的手杖和小刀、我的粉笔和牛皮纸，我走上了宽广的丘陵。我在那些巨大的起伏之间爬行，它们表现了英格兰最好的品质，因为它们既柔和又强壮。它们的平滑和高大的拉车马的平滑、山毛榉树的平滑有着同样的含义；它当着我们那些怯懦而残酷的理论的面宣告：强大者是仁慈的。我的目光扫过这片风景，它像它的任何一座农舍一样和蔼，可论力量，它却像一场地震。人们看得出，那广阔山谷里的村庄已经安然存在了好几个世纪；然而整片大地的隆起，却像一个巨大浪头的涌起，要把它们统统冲走。

I crossed one swell of living turf after another, looking for a place to sit down and draw. Do not, for heaven’s sake, imagine I was going to sketch from Nature. I was going to draw devils and seraphim, and blind old gods that men worshipped before the dawn of right, and saints in robes of angry crimson, and seas of strange green, and all the sacred or monstrous symbols that look so well in bright colours on brown paper. They are much better worth drawing than Nature; also they are much easier to draw. When a cow came slouching by in the field next to me, a mere artist might have drawn it; but I always get wrong in the hind legs of quadrupeds. So I drew the soul of the cow; which I saw there plainly walking before me in the sunlight; and the soul was all purple and silver, and had seven horns and the mystery that belongs to all the beasts. But though I could not with a crayon get the best out of the landscape, it does not follow that the landscape was not getting the best out of me. And this, I think, is the mistake that people make about the old poets who lived before Wordsworth, and were supposed not to care very much about Nature because they did not describe it much.

我越过一道又一道活生生的草坡，寻找坐下来画画的地方。看在老天的分上，不要以为我是要写生。我要画的是魔鬼和六翼天使，是人们在公义的黎明之前崇拜过的盲目的古老神祇，是身穿愤怒的深红长袍的圣徒，是奇异的绿色的海洋，是所有那些用鲜艳的颜色画在牛皮纸上非常好看的神圣的或怪诞的象征。它们比大自然更值得画；而且也容易画得多。一头母牛懒洋洋地从我旁边的田里走过时，一个只是画家的人也许会把它画下来；可我画四足动物的后腿总是画错。所以我画了那头母牛的灵魂；我在阳光里清清楚楚地看见它在我面前走着；那灵魂全是紫色和银色的，长着七只角，带着一切野兽都有的那种神秘。可是，我虽然不能用一支蜡笔从风景里得到它最好的东西，却不能因此就说风景没有从我身上得到我最好的东西。我想，这正是人们对华兹华斯以前的那些老诗人所犯的错误：人们以为他们不怎么在乎大自然，因为他们很少描写它。

But as I sat scrawling these silly figures on the brown paper, it began to dawn on me, to my great disgust, that I had left one chalk, and that a most exquisite and essential chalk, behind. I searched all my pockets, but I could not find any white chalk. Now, those who are acquainted with all the philosophy (nay, religion) which is typified in the art of drawing on brown paper, know that white is positive and essential. I cannot avoid remarking here upon a moral significance. One of the wise and awful truths which this brown-paper art reveals, is this, that white is a colour. It is not a mere absence of colour; it is a shining and affirmative thing, as fierce as red, as definite as black. When (so to speak) your pencil grows red-hot, it draws roses; when it grows white-hot, it draws stars. And one of the two or three defiant verities of the best religious morality, of real Christianity for example, is exactly this same thing; the chief assertion of religious morality is that white is a colour. Virtue is not the absence of vices or the avoidance of moral dangers; virtue is a vivid and separate thing, like pain or a particular smell. Mercy does not mean not being cruel or sparing people revenge or punishment; it means a plain and positive thing like the sun, which one has either seen or not seen. Chastity does not mean abstention from sexual wrong; it means something flaming, like Joan of Arc. In a word, God paints in many colours; but He never paints so gorgeously, I had almost said so gaudily, as when He paints in white. In a sense our age has realized this fact, and expressed it in our sullen costume. For if it were really true that white was a blank and colourless thing, negative and non-committal, then white would be used instead of black and grey for the funeral dress of this pessimistic period. We should see city gentlemen in frock coats of spotless silver satin, with top hats as white as wonderful arum lilies. Which is not the case.

可是，当我坐在那里在牛皮纸上胡乱涂着这些傻里傻气的形象时，我渐渐发觉，叫我大为懊恼的是，我落下了一支粉笔，而且是一支最精美、最要紧的粉笔。我翻遍了所有的口袋，可是找不到白粉笔。凡是懂得在牛皮纸上作画这门艺术所代表的全部哲学（不，应该说是宗教）的人都知道，白色是积极的、本质的。我在这里不能不说一说它的道德意义。这种牛皮纸艺术所揭示的一个明智而可畏的真理就是：白色是一种颜色。它并不仅仅是颜色的缺席；它是一种闪耀的、肯定的东西，像红色一样猛烈，像黑色一样确定。可以说，当你的铅笔烧得通红时，它画出玫瑰；当它烧得发白时，它画出星星。而最好的宗教道德——例如真正的基督教——有两三条大胆的真理，其中一条恰恰就是这件事；宗教道德的主要主张就是：白色是一种颜色。美德并不是没有恶习，也不是避开道德上的危险；美德是一种鲜明的、独立的东西，就像疼痛或某种特别的气味一样。慈悲并不意味着不残忍，或者饶过别人、不报复不惩罚；它意味着一种明明白白的、积极的东西，就像太阳一样，一个人要么看见过，要么没看见过。贞洁并不意味着戒绝性方面的过错；它意味着某种燃烧着的东西，就像圣女贞德。一句话，上帝用许多种颜色作画；可是他作画从没有像画白色时那样绚丽——我差点要说那样俗艳。在某种意义上，我们这个时代已经认识到了这个事实，并且用我们阴沉的服装把它表达了出来。因为，如果白色真是一种空白的、无色的、否定的、不置可否的东西，那么在这个悲观的时代，人们就会用白色而不是黑色和灰色来做丧服了。我们就会看见城里的绅士们穿着一尘不染的银白缎子的礼服大衣，戴着像奇妙的马蹄莲一样白的高顶礼帽。而事实并非如此。

I sat on the hill in a sort of despair. There was no town nearer than Chichester at which it was even remotely probable that there would be such a thing as an artist’s colourman. And yet, without white, my absurd little pictures would be as pointless as the world would be if there were no good people in it. I stared stupidly round, racking my brain for expedients. Then I suddenly stood up and roared with laughter, again and again, so that the cows stared at me and called a committee. Imagine a man in the Sahara regretting that he had no sand for his hour-glass. Imagine a gentleman in mid-ocean wishing that he had brought some salt water with him for his chemical experiments. I was sitting on an immense warehouse of white chalk. The landscape was made entirely out of white chalk. White chalk was piled mere miles until it met the sky. I stooped and broke a piece off the rock I sat on: it did not mark so well as the shop chalks do; but it gave the effect. And I stood there in a trance of pleasure, realizing that this Southern England is not only a grand peninsula, and a tradition and a civilization; it is something even more admirable. It is a piece of chalk.

我坐在山上，有点绝望。离这里最近、还有一点点可能找到美术颜料店的城镇，就是奇切斯特了。可是，没有白色，我那些荒唐的小画就会变得毫无意义，就像一个没有好人的世界一样毫无意义。我傻乎乎地四下张望，绞尽脑汁想办法。突然，我站起身来，放声大笑，笑了一阵又一阵，笑得母牛们都盯着我看，还召开了一个委员会。请想象一个人在撒哈拉沙漠里懊悔没有沙子装他的沙漏。请想象一位绅士在大洋中间，希望自己带了些海水来做化学实验。我正坐在一座巨大的白垩仓库上。这片风景完全是由白垩构成的。白垩一路堆上去，不过几英里，便接上了天空。我弯下腰，从我坐着的岩石上掰下一块；它画起来不如商店里的粉笔那么好用，可是效果有了。我站在那里，欣喜得出了神，领悟到这片南英格兰不仅是一个伟大的半岛，一个传统，一个文明；它还是一样更值得赞美的东西。它是一块白垩。