《博闻强记的富内斯》

确切的是在生活中凡是能往后拖的事我们总是往后拖；也许我们都深信自己是不朽的，深信人迟早都会无所不能、无所不知。

巴比伦、伦敦和纽约以它们的辉煌灿烂使人们浮想联翩、目不暇接；但是在它们的摩肩接踵的高楼和熙熙攘攘的大街上，谁都不像在南美洲城郊不幸的伊雷内奥那样日也感到沸腾现实纷至沓来的热力和压力。

思维是忘却差异，是归纳，是抽象化。在富内斯的满坑满谷的世界里有的只是伸手可及的细节。

《死亡与指南针》

在三层楼，也就是最后一层，他觉得房子大得无边无际，并且还在扩展。他想，房子实际上并没有这么大。使它显得大的是阴影、对称、镜子、漫长的岁月、我的不熟悉、孤寂。

《结局》

他点点滴滴地回想起现实，回想起再也不能改变的日常事物。他并不惋惜地瞅着自己大而无用的躯体和裹在腿上的粗羊毛斗篷。窗户栏杆外面延伸着下午的平原；他睡了一觉，但天空仍旧很亮。

傍晚有一个时刻，平原仿佛有话要说；它从没有说过，或许地老天荒一直在诉说而我们听不懂，或许我们听懂了，不过像音乐一样无法解释……

《南方》

现实生活喜欢对称和轻微的时间错移；达尔曼是坐出租马车来到疗养院的，现在也坐出租马车到孔斯蒂图西昂。经过夏季的闷热之后，初秋的凉爽仿佛是他从死亡和热病的掌握中获得解救的自然界的象征。

他要了一杯咖啡，缓缓加糖搅拌，尝了一口（疗养院里禁止他喝咖啡），一面抚摸猫的黑毛皮，觉得这种接触有点虚幻，仿佛他和猫之间隔着一块玻璃，因为人生活在时间和时间的延续中，而那个神秘的动物却生活在当前，在瞬间的永恒之中。

MoMA’s Introduction on Hanare goze Orin (Ballad of Orin): One of the most sublime color films ever made, Ballad of Orin follows the hardscrabble life of a wandering outcast goze (blind female musician) in early 20th-century Japan. Cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa and director Masahiro Shinoda interviewed surviving goza of the time to capture “a sense of the ideal beauty that these blind women had inwardly visualized.”

Film Society Lincoln Center’s Introduction on First Reformed: Paul Schrader’s newest film, about a middle-aged pastor named Toller (Ethan Hawke, in a truly extraordinary performance) who is shocked out of his self-inflicted torment when he is called to minister to a troubled young environmental activist and his wife (Philip Ettinger and Amanda Seyfried), is as deeply personal as it is politically and spiritually urgent. The film also stars Cedric the Entertainer as the leader of the megachurch that oversees Toller’s 250-year-old landmarked structure and his ever-dwindling congregation. Schrader has created a potent cinematic experience, a carefully constructed, beautifully crafted communion with one lonely soul that allows us to gaze right into the eye of modern media- and money-fueled horror.

Film Society Lincoln Center’s Introduction on Series Visconti: A Retrospective: A leader in the neorealismo movement who also worked with international stars like Burt Lancaster, Helmut Berger, Alain Delon, and Dirk Bogarde, Visconti produced an oeuvre of modest and humane dramas as well as decadent, sprawling historical spectacles. Deftly aware of the subtle and rich means of cinematic expression, he uniquely imposed the narrative customs of opera and the novel onto film, yet remained sharply attuned to the social and political climates of the 20th century.

Film Society Lincoln Center’s Introduction on The Leopard: With fastidious attention to period detail, Visconti evokes a gilded world fading into oblivion, his camera gliding over baroque palazzos, magnificent banquets, and ornate ceremonies. It all culminates in a majestic, dusk-to-dawn ball sequence that is as poignant as it is breathtaking.

Film Society Lincoln Center’s Introduction on Rocco and His Brothers: Visconti’s rich and expansive masterpiece has an emotional intensity and tragic grandeur matched by few other films. The director turned to Giovanni Testori, Thomas Mann, Dostoevsky, and Arthur Miller for inspiration, … …. In one beautifully realized scene after another, we observe a tightly knit family coming apart, one frayed thread at a time. … … One of the defining films of its era, Rocco and His Brothers has been beautifully restored, and Giuseppe Rotunno’s black and white images are as pearly and lustrous today as they were always meant to be.

Film Society Lincoln Center’s Introduction on White Nights: Visconti’s adaptation of a classic short story by Dostoevsky is a ravishing romantic reverie in incandescent black and white. Marcello Mastroianni is the lonely flâneur who meets and falls in love with a fragile young woman (Maria Schell) amidst the fog-shrouded night world of the Tuscan canal city of Livorno. The resulting tale of all-consuming love and loss is a swooning dream vision elevated to the nearly operatic by Visconti’s rapturously stylized direction.

Film Society Lincoln Center’s Introduction on Death in Venice: Opening with the otherworldly image of a steamship emerging ghostlike from inky blackness and closing with one of the most transcendent denouements in all of cinema, Visconti’s exquisite adaptation of Thomas Mann’s novella is a piercing meditation on mortality, sexuality, beauty, and the longing for youth. … … Visconti’s painterly compositions enter the realm of the sublime thanks to the tension-swelling, never-resolving strains of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony.

1 – 介绍自己的工作，和书本的关系，表达了对书本和知识的热爱。书籍充实了每天的生活。

我的学识是在无意中获得的，实际上我很难分辨哪些思想属于我本人，来自我自己的大脑，哪些来自书本，因此三十五年来我同自己、同周围的世界相处和谐，因为我读书的时候，实际上不是读，而是把美丽的词句含在嘴里，嘬糖果似的嘬着，品烈酒似的一小口一小口的呷着，直到那词句像酒精一样溶解在我的身体里，不仅渗透到我的大脑和心灵，而且在我的血管中奔腾，冲击到我每根血管的末梢。

通过阅读，我从书本中认识到天道不仁慈，一个有头脑的人因而也不仁慈，并非他不想仁慈，而是这样做违背常情。

在我心里有一盏小小的羯摩灯，瓦斯冷却器中的小火苗，一盏永恒的小油灯，每天我把思想的油注入这盏灯，是我劳动时不由自主从书籍中，就是我装在皮包里带回家去的书籍中读到的思想。

……我有幸孤身独处，虽然我从来并不孤独，我只是独自一人而已，独自生活在稠密的思想之中，因为我有点儿狂妄，是无垠和永恒中的狂妄分子，而无垠和永恒也许就喜欢我这样的人。

2 – 目睹普鲁士藏书被军车运走，想到母亲去世，舅舅发现她的骨灰分量有假。地下室的耗子。堆满了房间直到天花板上的书，似乎在谋划着怎样“复仇”。

我呆呆地望着，望着远去的车尾铁钩上挂着的红灯，我身在靠在一根电线杆上站在那里，跟达·芬奇一样，他也曾靠在一根柱子上站在那儿，呆望着法国兵怎样把他的一尊骑士像当做练习射击的靶子，一节一节地把马和骑士摧毁。达·芬奇那次也像我一样站在那儿用心地、满意地观看这可怕的一幕，因为达·芬奇当时已经认识到天道不仁慈，因而有头脑的人也不仁慈。

那时候，当我开动机器处理那些美丽的图书，当机器哐啷作响，最后以二十大气压的重力把图书轧碎时，我仿佛听到了人骨被碾碎的声音，古典名著在机器中被轧碎恰似头颅骨和骨骼在手推磨中碾磨一样，我仿佛在轧碎犹太教法典中的词句：我们有如橄榄，唯有被粉碎时，才释放出我们的精华。

3 – 历史就是无休止的战争和分裂。回忆起往事，姑娘曼倩卡，永远与荣誉无缘的曼倩卡。

我从这些受过高等教育的淘沟工口中得知，这场战争一结束，取胜的一方又将立刻合乎辩证法地分裂为两个阵营，正如瓦斯、金属以及世界上一切有生命的东西要分裂一样，使生命通过斗争向前发展，然后通过寻求解决矛盾的愿望而取得一分钟又一分钟的平衡，因此从整体上看，世界一秒钟也不曾跛掉一条腿。我于是看到了兰波说得多么正确：精神斗争之可怕绝不亚于任何一场战争。

天道不仁慈，因而人，一个有头脑的人，也不可能仁慈，我一捆一捆地打着包，每个包里放进一本翻开的书，翻在最动人的一页。我站在压力机前操作着，心里想着曼倩卡，那天晚上我们两个喝香槟，喝光了所有的钱，但是哪怕喝白兰地，也无法实现我们的渴望……

4 – 幻觉中出现耶稣和老子，和两个茨冈女人，她们的生活也不轻松。《戏剧报》的评论家接着让我找三十年代的评论。我把《早上好，高更先生》打包好送走。

我总算还有力气拿起尼采的书翻到那页写他同理查德·瓦格纳建立星辰般友谊的段落，我像把孩子放进澡盆似的把这本书放在槽内，随后连忙双手驱赶那一大群蓝色和绿色的苍蝇，它们像风暴中的柳枝一般抽打着我的脸颊。

有不少茨冈人从事道路建设工程，他们的劳动按定额付酬，因此他们干得劲头十足，规定的指标使他们忘记了疲劳。我一向喜欢看他们干活，他们脱光了上身，用铁锹和十字镐同坚硬的泥土和铺路石拼搏。我喜欢看他们半个身躯藏在马路下面，仿佛在给自己挖掘坟墓。

升降梯里司机的脑袋探了出来，于是我把包一个个装上手推车，两眼仍在《早上好，高更先生》上流连，真遗憾它们必须从我的地下室里运走。不过，没关系，我心里说，等我退休了，我买下这台压力机，那时候我打的每个包我都将留下来，我不办展览会，也许有人要买一个我签了字的包，也许一个外国人，在我不走运的时候，为了不让任何人买走我的包，我将把价格定为一千马克，我若不走运，那个外国人可能会付我一千马克，把我的包运走，不知运往哪里，我就不知道上哪儿再去看它一眼了……

5 – 舅舅去世，翻看康德，心里注满了辽阔感。茨冈姑娘跟着我回家，一起放风筝，后来突然就消失了。

我找来一本康德的著作，翻到那永远使我感动不已的段落……有两样东西总使我的心里充满了新的、有增无减的惊叹——头上的星空和我内心的道德法则……不过，我想了一想之后翻到了更为动人的一段，是康德年轻时写下的……夏天的晚上，当满天繁星在抖动的光亮中闪烁，一轮明月高悬时，我便渐渐陷入一种对友情倍加敏感，对世界和永恒不屑一顾的心态之中……我把书翻到这一页放在舅舅的手里。

我干着活儿，装点耗子墓，不时跑出去，读着《天国论》，每次只读一句，含咳嗽糖似的含在嘴里。这样我工作的时候心里就注满了一种辽阔感，无边无涯，极为丰富，无尽的美从四面八方向我喷溅。

我最爱苍茫的黄昏，唯有在这种时刻我才会感到有什么伟大的事情可能要发生。当天色渐暗，黄昏来临时，万物就变得美丽起来，所有的街道，所有的广场，所有在暮色中行走的人，都像蝴蝶花一般美丽，我甚至觉得自己也是一个漂亮的小伙子了。

……我整整干了两天，清出了地下室，使数以百计的小耗子丧了命。这些温驯的小动物，它们也是一无所求，只是啃点儿书本，在废纸堆里做个窝，繁衍后代，在安逸的洞穴里哺乳幼崽，幼耗子把身体蜷成一个团，恰像我的茨冈小姑娘在寒冷的晚上身子蜷作一团睡在我身旁。天道不仁慈，但也许有什么东西比这天道更为可贵，那就是同情和爱，对此我已经忘记了，忘记了。

6 – 遇见布勃内的巨型压力机，新时代的工人。女教师带领儿童来参观撕书。曼倩卡成为了一个她从来不曾梦想过的人。

……对于所有我的打包工同伙来说，对于我来说，一切都已结束。我们这些老打包工都是在无意中获得学识的，不知不觉中家里都有了一个规模不小的书库，这些书是我们在废纸中发现的，我们阅读它们，感到幸福，希望有一天我们读的书将会使我们的生活有质的改变。然而，给予我最大打击莫过于看到这些年轻工人竟不知羞耻地喝着牛奶和软饮料，他们两腿叉开，一只手叉在腰上，嘴巴直接对着瓶口津津有味地喝着，于是我知道以往那个时代确实结束了。

我一个劲儿地干着干着，打成一个个包，没有裹上古代或现代绘画大师的复制品，只是一包一包完成我的任务，我领工资就为这个，什么艺术、创造美，只是干活而已。我开始明白，我倘若这个样子地干活，我一个人就可以成立一个社会主义突击队，自己立下保证书提高生产率百分之五十，为此我不仅肯定能去工人疗养所，而且能去美丽的希腊度假，在那里我将穿着长内裤绕着奥林匹克竞技场跑一圈，去亚里士多德的故乡斯塔吉茹斯朝圣。

7 – 主任把我调去印刷厂的地下室捆白报纸。最后一次给史都尔姆送书。

8 – 尾声。

《看澡》

我只是记得在遥远的北方冬夜，在没有风的黑河的原野，气温零下三十二度，我步入雪地去洗澡。读者一定疑虑，那是在室外？是附近一个发电厂的露天冷却池，水很干净，水温也合适，远看如一座厚雪中冒气的温泉。我在池边脱衣下水，当时满天星斗，一切沉在暗蓝的天幕里。池壁是厚厚的桦木板做的，我的鼻子前面就是池沿，积了很厚的冰，它们并不融化。水很热，我泡了一会，可以把头枕在池沿的冰上，并不感到冷。头上是银河，在很暗的电厂的四周，只有天穹是那样醒目和深远，有牛在叫，一两声狗吠，真是静，还有就是暖和。好像就是，一个人可以逐渐远离孤独的人生，一种赤条条的解脱与满足，也许，此生再也不会有这样宁静的感觉了，当时我想，如就这样昏沉睡去，即使我不再醒来，也是好的。

《锁琳琅》

黄昏接近尾声，底楼“美美”的门面正逐渐沉陷下去。街区绵延的黑色瓦脊，在浑浊中演化，爬入苍茫夜色。闸北民居繁星样的黄浊灯光，发着抖，哆哆嗦嗦，点点盏盏，不断闪烁出来，逐渐化为大面积的光晕，逐渐浸染洇湿。如密集的菌丝体，细微而旺盛，这就是阿强的闸北。电台女人滚珠般报出股价，如昏呓呢喃，如咒，如诵经文。胡琴声，车铃的叮叮声。生煎，荠菜香干，油焖茭白，腌鲜，葱烤鲫鱼的镬气，一个妇人叫：“小妹！小妹呀！”新闸桥上，西风里是匆匆不绝的归人，东南方面，屏风般无以计数，直插天穹的是宝顶玉宇，耀眼广告牌的明亮海洋。苏州河在阴影里凝止停当，如今驳船稀少，不再有嗡嗡的汽笛声了。

《合欢》

以后，蓓蒂再没有见过阿宝。教堂的废墟建起一座临时建筑，里面有一尊近十米的领袖挥手塑像，巍峨耸立，耀眼极了。这座临时的上海油画雕塑工作室以及洁白的塑像，仿佛是一夜之间，从泥里长出来的，如火箭装配车间的格局。一些人员工蜂一样在塑像周围的脚手架上忙碌，十分壮观。这是“复课闹革命”期间蓓蒂突乎其然的发现。那时的她，已经变得沉静和害羞了，她的脸庞很白，前额明净而有光泽。她透过学校的北窗，最后呆呆地看着那个雕塑工作室。

时间通常就是这样，白天在飞快地溜走，仿佛夜就在眼前。

《嚎叫》

一位长辈患了老年痴呆，已不认识所有家人了，两个月前还摔坏了胯骨，一直躺在医院，经常去看她，谁也认不出来了，没有表情。只是前几天尝到小排黄鳝汤，据说她眉毛一扬，显然知道滋味很好。这反应。说明她的病还不重。书上说如果病人忘记如何吃鱼，如何吃螃蟹的程序，是一个阶段，最后，会忘记如何咀嚼，如何吞咽，那才是彻底的遗忘。

想到了一部日本电影，记不得片名，一位热爱俳句的老教授，喜爱一种习惯，每临湖畔夕照，就吟哦经典，对准落日高声朗诵。之后，他得了老年痴呆，最后糊涂到吃屎的地步，但电影结尾有一个细节——孙子领他走到湖畔的老地方欣赏落日，当他看到久违的平静湖水，一轮即将沦落的夕阳，他忽然如一头困兽，一只受伤老狼那样断断续续，语焉不详地大肆嚎叫起来。

《上海水晶鞋》

几年光阴，如南京西路耀眼车流一样滑过去，光华夺目，却看不到可以捏紧手中的贵重记录，结婚的念头与时俱进，生活却洋洋朦胧，跟常人一式一样，看清的永远是面前的风景，不断换改的日程表，聚散分合，朝九晚五，日寝夜出，南京西路传送了多少滑过去的新面孔，似曾相识的饭局，咖啡气息，衣裙与手袋的过时展览。简一直笃定如泰山，拈花作一笑，保持镜子里好相貌，好神彩。只是有一日，做脸的小芳轻声对简讲，她眼角旁边的角质层明显增厚了。简一声不响。

Chapter One: Fusion

• Since 2009, the US economy expanded by 2% a year. Yet it took until 2015 for the median income to regain the level it enjoyed before the Great Recession.The median income in 2007 was below what it was in 2002, at the start of the business cycle that lasted for most of G.W.Bush’s presidency. What is good for Apple may not be good for America. The Bush expansion was the first on record where middle-class incomes were lower at the end of it than at the start.
• Daniel Bell: “Economic growth has become the secular religion of advancing industrial societies.” He was right. It follows that in its absence, many people lapse into the equivalent of atheism.
• Tyler Cowen: “We are using the acceleration of information transmission to decelerate changes in our physical world.” The biggest ‘ideological carriers’ of the new complacency are the millennials – [they] are the least angry generation in society.
• In the US, the more liberal a city’s politics, the higher the rate of inequality.
• Europe and America’s populist right wants to turn the clock back to the days when men were men and the West ruled. It is prepared to sacrifice the gains of globalisation to protect jobs that have already vanished. Populists have little to say about automation, though it is a far larger threat to people’s jobs than trade.

Chapter Two: Reaction

• It is no accident that the heyday of stable Western party politics coincided with the post-war golden decades of the rising middle and working classes. Starting with the Third Way in the 1990s, voters ceased on any real scale to participate in the political process: instead they become consumers. The new left’s chosen politics was a form of anti-politics in which ‘whatever works’ had apparently replaced ideology. All of which would have been fine if the blue-collar classes had disappeared. The left-behinds looked more numerous than the cosmopolitans had supposed.
• The populist right only began to do really well at the ballot box after they began to steal the left’s clothes. Populists broke with centre-right orthodoxy to argue in favour of a government safety net. Donald Trump was the first Republican presidential nominee to promise to increase spending on Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare.
• (One Dutch scholar) Western populism is an ‘illiberal democratic response to undemocratic liberalism.‘
• Evgeny Morozov: sometimes the illusion of freedom is all people need.

Chapter Three: Fallout

• Kissinger: Both the US and China see themselves as exceptional. But China has rarely sought to export its model by force or colonise other lands
• In the late Soviet era, no one believed in communism any more but they were forced to carry on their lives as if they did. Now they live in a society of simulations in which the pretence of democracy has replaced that old set of beliefs
• America’s democracy has been linked to its foreign policy. Even where it proved hypocritical, the idea of America proved greater than its faults. Trump is inverting that link

Chapter Four: Half Life

• Most of the West is moving either towards populism or plutocracy. The US is falling into a kind of hybrid pluto-populism that looks increasingly Latin American. Trump’s plans to deregulate Wall Street are a perfect illustration. In the meantime, he plans to satisfy the populist urge by demonising illegal immigrants and Muslims

All pictures were taken by the author during his visit to The Met Fifth Avenue, New York. Texts sourced from exhibit label scripts.

Although best known for his visionary and mystical works, Vedder developed a lifelong interest in painting the Italian countryside during the 1860s while living in Florence. He associated with a group of artists known as the Macchiaioli, who eschewed academic practice and drew inspiration directly from nature. Probably painted in Rome in the 1880s, Cypress and Poppies reflects the enduring influence of the Macchiaioli landscapes on Vedder, with its soft atmosphere and splashes of bright color.

Boboli Gardens in Florence were designed in the mid-sixteenth century for the Medici court. Sargent’s depiction of a sculpture by Giovanni Battisca Caccini of a figure playing a pipe, set against lush foliage, is a study of contrasting light and shadow. He employs layers of dark pigments of varying opacity to suggest depth and shadow in the background, and renders the sunlight filtering through the branches with pale-hued pigments. He depicts the pietra serena (a light-colored Tuscan limestone) of the statue with warm tones applied in transparent washes.

Lucca, a charming Renaissance walled city in Tuscany, where Sargent spent the autumn of 1910. Here, Sargent uses a low vantage point to set off the richly carved urn against a brilliant blue sky. He enlivens a static subject by placing the urn close to the top edge of the composition and depicting the vine of vivid pinkish blue blossoms as if it is cascading from the urn, using feathery brushstrokes.

Sargent’s interest in geometric of the scene, with its numerous horizontal and vertical divisions, is apparent in the carefully ruled underdrawing visible at the left. The proximity of the building’s facade to the picture plane is underscored by the precise rendering of the bright white, carved spiral stone column at the left in contrast to the recession of the dark corridor. By leaving the illuminated area at the rear of the sotto portego ambiguous, Sargent evokes the tangle of streets and passageways so characteristic of Venice.

A picturesque charm has long been associated with Giudecca, attracting artists for many centuries — both Francesco Guardi and Joseph Mallord William Turner painted view of it. However, their images almost always include recognizable landmarks. In his rendering, Sargent avoids identifiable Venetian monuments in recording the characteristics of a typical neighborhood. The inclusion of sailing vessels invoke the city’s historical importance as an Adriatic port.

For the focal point of this watercolor, Sargent chose the relatively obscure yet scenic eleventh-century tower of the Church of San Barnaba. He positioned himself close to the water to present the view looking down the Rio de San Barnaba toward the Grand Canal. Sargent’s watercolors are admired for their fluid spontaneity, evident here in his rendering of the rippling water of the canal as it reflects the nearby architecture and bright sunlight.