On Home

论家

By John Berger

约翰•伯格著

“Philosophy is really homesickness, it is the urge to be at home everywhere.”—Novalis

哲学是怀着乡愁的冲动去寻找精神的家园。——诺瓦利斯

【1】The transition from a nomadic life to a settled one is said to mark the beginning of what was later called civilization. Soon all those who survived outside the city began to be considered uncivilized. But that is another story—to be told in the hills near the wolves.

【1】据说人们从游牧生活向定居生活转变后，文明才悄然而至，所以那些城市外的居民很快就被扣上了野蛮的帽子。但是山涧中的狼群里流传的却是另一个版本。

【2】Perhaps during the last century and a half an equally important transformation has taken place. Never before our time have so many people been uprooted. Emigration, forced or chosen, across national frontiers or from village to metropolis, is the quintessential experience of our time. That industrialization and capitalism would require such a transport of men on an unprecedented scale and with a new kind of violence was already prophesied by the opening of the slave trade in the sixteenth century. The Western Front in the First World War with its conscripted massed armies was a later confirmation of the same practice of tearing up, assembling, transporting, and concentrating in a “no-man′s land.” Later, concentration camps, across the world, followed the logic of the same continuous practice.

【2】150多年前出现了同样等级的变革。在此之前，从未有如此大规模的迁徙。无论是被迫无奈还是自由选择，无论是横跨国土还是城乡之迁，移民绝对是我们那个时代发生的最重要的事。16世纪的奴隶贸易就预示了工业化和资本主义即将出现，而这也意味着随之而来的是人类空前的迁徙和一种新式的暴力。一战的西线应征了大量的士兵，不久，这些军队就印证了什么叫“无人之境”的分崩、聚合、转移及稳定。后来，全世界的集中营实行的都是同样的管理模式。

【3】All the modern historians from Marx to Spengler have identified the contemporary phenomenon of emigration. Why add more words? To whisper for that which has been lost. Not out of nostalgia, but because it is on the site of loss that hopes are born.

【3】从马克思到斯宾格勒，所有当代历史学家都试图探索现代移民现象背后的秘密。何必多言去私语已丢失的本质？移民早已不是因为思乡，而是因为无望。

【4】The term home (Old Norse Heimer, High German heim, Greek kōmi, meaning “village”) has, since a long time, been taken over by two kinds of moralists, both dear to those who wield power. The notion of home became the keystone for a code of domestic morality, safeguarding the property (which included the women) of the family. Simultaneously the notion of homeland supplied a first article of faith for patriotism, per¬suading men to die in wars which often served no other interest except that of a minority of their ruling class. Both usages have hidden the origi¬nal meaning.

【4】很久以前，家这个字眼（古冰岛语是Heimer，高地德语是heim，希腊语是kōmi，其含义是“村庄”）就被两类贪图掌权的卫道士滥用。家的概念是家庭道德的基石，守卫着家庭财富（包括女人）。同时，家园的概念也开启了爱国主义信念的首篇，人们战死沙场，多数时候却只是为了少数统治阶层的利益牺牲。但无论是哪种用法，家都隐去了其原本的含义。

【5】Originally home meant the center of the world—not in a geo¬graphical, but in an ontological sense. Mircea Eliade has demonstrated how home was the place from which the world could be founded. A home was established, as he says, “at the heart of the real.” In traditional soci¬eties, everything that made sense of the world was real; the surrounding chaos existed and was threatening, but it was threatening because it was unreal. Without a home at the center of the real, one was not only shelter¬less, but also lost in nonbeing, in unreality. Without a home everything was fragmentation.

【5】家原本的含义是世界中心——不是地理概念的中心，而是就本体论而言，家就是世界中心。米尔恰•伊利亚德曾展示过家形成世界的过程。正如他所说，家建立在“存在之心”上。在传统社会，世界上任何有意义的事必是真实存在的；周围嘈杂的环境如此恐怖，因为这都是虚幻。如果存在之心没有家，人不仅无所居，更无所在，皆是虚无。没有家，一切皆破碎。

【6】Home was the center of the world because it was the place where a vertical line crossed with a horizontal one. The vertical line was a path leading upwards to the sky and downwards to the underworld. The hori¬zontal line represented the traffic of the world, all the possible roads lead¬ing across the earth to other places. Thus, at home, one was nearest to the gods in the sky and to the dead in the underworld. This nearness promised access to both. And at the same time, one was at the starting point and, hopefully, the returning point of all terrestrial journeys.

【6】家是世界中心因为它是纵横交点。家之纵上达苍穹下到地府。家之横指错落交通，是连接彼此的道路。因此，在家的时候，人是最接近天之上帝也是最接近地之死神的。这种接近使人可以通向两方。同时，也使人站在了所有大陆旅途的起点，希望也是终点上。

【7】The crossing of the two lines, the reassurance their intersection promises, was probably already there, in embryo, in the thinking and beliefs of nomadic people, but they carried the vertical line with them, as they might carry a tent pole. Perhaps at the end of this century of un¬precedented transportation, vestiges of the reassurance still remain in the unarticulated feelings of many millions of displaced people.

【7】两线的交叉，相聚的安慰，也许在胚胎时期就已存在于游牧人民的思想和信仰当中，只不过他们将纵线——帐篷杆随身携带。也许在本世纪末的空前大迁徙中，成百上千万流离失所的民众心中仍然有一种说不清道不明的感受在诉说着这一丝一毫的家之抚慰。

【8】Emigration does not only involve leaving behind, crossing water, living amongst strangers, but also, undoing the very meaning of the world and—at its most extreme—abandoning oneself to the unreal which is the absurd.

【8】移民不仅意味着忘掉过去、跨过洪流或者与陌生人共舞，还意味着否定世界的终级意义——将自己遗弃到虚无中去，真是可笑至极。

【9】Emigration, when it is not enforced at gunpoint, may of course be prompted by hope as well as desperation. For example, to the peasant son the father′s traditional authority may seem more oppressively absurd than any chaos. The poverty of the village may appear more absurd than the crimes of the metropolis. To live and die amongst foreigners may seem less absurd then to live persecuted or tortured by one′s fellow coun¬trymen. All this can be true. But to emigrate is always to dismantle the center of the world, and so to move into a lost, disoriented one of frag¬ments.

【9】即使不是枪口下的逼迫，人们也有可能因为怀揣希望或倍感失望而选择移民。比如说，一个农民的儿子，父亲传统的专治或许比任何外部的混乱都要让他感到压迫和荒唐。乡村的贫穷或许比城市的犯罪还要残忍。在异域生死也许比被同乡迫害或折磨更可以忍受。这都是真的。但无论如何，移民就是分解世界中心，然后形成迷失、无方向的碎片。