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女士先生、男孩女孩、畢業生們,早安。受邀在這個重大場合說幾句話令我深感榮幸,你或許會發現,在這個重要日子,我在這所傑出學府所說的確實值得一聽。我原本打算在說完以下這句話之後提出一些好建議:將「善」視為理所當然是主觀的極致。但後來我意識到這是馬克.吐溫的地盤,於是我決定今天所有的評論都必須以他這句名言衍伸:「問題不在於世上滿是傻子,而在於閃電沒有適當分佈。」他曾獲得牛津大學榮譽學位,共同獲頒榮譽學位的有魯迪亞德.吉卜林、雕刻家和畫家奧古斯特.羅丹,以及作曲家卡米爾.聖桑。之後媒體詢問這位密蘇里奴隸主之子有何想法,他說:「榮譽學位是不錯,但最帥氣的是學位袍。」之後會談到更多馬克.吐溫。
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Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, graduating students, good morning. I am deeply honored that you have asked me here to say a few words at this momentous occasion, that you might find what I have to say worthy of your attention on so important a day at this remarkable institution. It had been my intention this morning to parcel out some good advice at the end of these remarks -- the "goodness" of that being of course subjective in the extreme -- but then I realized that this is the land of Mark Twain, and I came to the conclusion that any commentary today ought to be framed in the sublime shadow of this quote of his: "It's not that the world is full of fools, it's just that lightning isn't distributed right." More on Mr. Twain later.
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我以歷史為業,我的工作是辨別一些過去事件的模式和主題,藉此幫助我們瞭解人類令人困惑、有時甚至令人沮喪的存在。沒有過去的知識,我們如何得知我們身在何處?最重要的是,我們將前往何方?多年來,我想我終於明白一個重要事實,我們並非如同老生常談、或如我們喜歡引用的格言所說:「注定會重蹈覆轍」,對那些我們早已遺忘的事重蹈覆轍。這是睿智、甚至充滿詩意的語句,但與事實不符,學術界定期增添的歷史週期亦然。我認為聖經傳道書所言既明確又正確:「已有的事後必再有,已行的事後必再行,日光之下並無新事。」這意味著人性永遠不會改變,幾乎不曾改變。我們不斷在人類活動隨機過程中添加人類複雜和矛盾的本質,我們所有固有的優勢和弱點、貪婪和慷慨、清心和慾望一一呈現在我們眼前,一代接一代,這往往給我們歷史重演的印象。並非如此,這只是押韻-馬克.吐溫應該會這麼說,但他沒有,之後會談到更多馬克.吐溫。
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I am in the business of history. It is my job to try to discern some patterns and themes from the past to help us interpret our dizzyingly confusing and sometimes dismaying present. Without a knowledge of that past, how can we possibly know where we are and, most important, where we are going? Over the years I've come to understand an important fact, I think: that we are not condemned to repeat, as the cliché goes and we are fond of quoting, what we don't remember. That's a clever, even poetic phrase, but not even close to the truth. Nor are there cycles of history, as the academic community periodically promotes. The Bible, Ecclesiastes to be specific, got it right, I think: "What has been will be again. What has been done will be done again. There is nothing new under the sun." What that means is that human nature never changes. Or almost never changes. We have continually superimposed our complex and contradictory nature over the random course of human events. All of our inherent strengths and weaknesses, our greed and generosity, our puritanism and our prurience parade before our eyes, generation after generation after generation. This often gives us the impression that history repeats itself. It doesn't. It just rhymes, Mark Twain is supposed to have said... but he didn't (more on Mr. Twain later.)
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在多年的實際經驗中,我意識到歷史並非固定的事物,並非確切日期、事實和事件、甚至具說服力之畢業演講金句的集合,組合成可計量的確知事實。歷史是神秘而具延展性的事物,藉由每一代重新發現、重新審視過去事件,形成當下的歷史。最重要的是,賦予其未來新的意義、新的可能性和新的動力。聽著,過去四十年來,我多半在製作歷史紀錄片,職業生涯早期一場精彩演講中的幾句話一直縈繞在我腦海,讓我深受啟發,演講地點就在附近伊利諾州斯普林菲爾德的路上。1838年1月,一位即將過29歲生日的高瘦律師、一副憂鬱症快發作的模樣,在Young Men’s Lyceum演講。當天的演講主題是國家安全,他問聽眾:「我們預計危險何時會來臨?我們該預計大西洋彼岸的強大軍隊一舉踏平地球、摧毀我們嗎?」然後他回答自己的問題:「不可能,歐洲、亞洲和非洲所有軍隊都無法藉由武力喝上一口俄亥俄河的水,即使他們嘗試一千年也無法在藍嶺山脈留下足跡。如果毀滅是我們的命運,我們必定是啟動和結束一切的人。身為自由人組成的國家,我們必須堅持到最後一刻,或自盡而亡。」
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Over the many years of practicing, I have come to the realization that history is not a fixed thing, a collection of precise dates, facts and events (even cogent commencement quotes) that add up to a quantifiable, certain, confidently known, truth. It is a mysterious and malleable thing. And each generation rediscovers and reexamines that part of its past that gives its present, and most important, its future new meaning, new possibilities and new power. Listen. For most of the 40 years I've been making historical documentaries, I have been haunted and inspired by a handful of sentences from an extraordinary speech I came across early in my professional life by a neighbor of yours just up the road in Springfield, Illinois. In January of 1838, shortly before his 29th birthday, a tall, thin lawyer, prone to bouts of debilitating depression, addressed the Young Men's Lyceum. The topic that day was national security. "At what point shall we expect the approach of danger?" he asked his audience. "...Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant to step the Earth and crush us at a blow?" Then he answered his own question: "Never. All the armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa... could not by force take a drink from the Ohio [River] or make a track on the Blue Ridge in a trial of a thousand years ... If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide."
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這是相當令人震撼的聲明。那名年輕男子,當然,就是亞伯拉罕.林肯。之後他主導使這個國家最接近自殺的事件-南北戰爭,為自由在美國的意義而戰。在他精彩、令人不安、具前瞻性的話語中,暗示在地理因素作用下,兩片遼闊的海洋和南北兩個好鄰居提供給我們的基本樂觀。自從英國在1812年戰爭中燒毀白宮之後,在超過一個半世紀的時間當中,我們仰賴亞伯拉罕.林肯導正這一切。當這些人類活動的暗潮威脅淹沒我們時,我們總是因這種歷久彌新的觀點而擁戴他。為何美國人仍同意凝聚?為何我們不像世上其他國家?我們仍凝聚在一起,因為這些話語,最重要的是因為這些話語危險的衍生物-理想。我們因團結、良知和民族使命感而擁戴他,避免已故歷史學家小亞瑟.史列辛格所說我們今天的問題:「群體過多,團結不足。」在我看來,林肯給我們脆弱的實驗一個有力的衝擊,使它擺脫自建國以來所承襲的偽善奴隸制度,使我們所有人,無論奴隸主或奴隸,擁有「自由的新生」,如他在蓋茲堡演講中所言。
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It is a stunning, remarkable statement. That young man was, of course, Abraham Lincoln, and he would go on to preside over the closest this country has ever come to near national suicide, our Civil War -- fought over the meaning of freedom in America. And yet embedded in his extraordinary, disturbing and prescient words is a fundamental optimism that implicitly acknowledges the geographical force-field two mighty oceans and two relatively benign neighbors north and south have provided for us since the British burned the White House in the War of 1812.
We have counted on Abraham Lincoln for more than a century and a half to get it right when the undertow in the tide of those human events has threatened to overwhelm and capsize us. We always come back to him for the kind of sustaining vision of why we Americans still agree to cohere, why unlike any other country on earth, we are still stitched together by words and, most important, their dangerous progeny, ideas. We return to him for a sense of unity, conscience and national purpose. To escape what the late historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., said is our problem today: "too much pluribus, not enough unum." It seems to me that he gave our fragile experiment a conscious shock that enabled it to outgrow the monumental hypocrisy of slavery inherited at our founding and permitted us all, slave owner as well as slave, to have literally, as he put it at Gettysburg, "a new birth of freedom."
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林肯在斯普林菲爾德的演講也顯示居住在這個幸福美好國家的人民多麼優秀,這正是你們現在所繼承的世界。我們的職業道德、我們的不安、我們的創新、我們的即興創作、我們的社區、我們高等院校、我們對權利的質疑,事實上我們似乎堅決致力於解析個人和集體自由的含義。我們致力於理解湯瑪斯.傑佛遜真正的意圖,當他寫下「追求幸福的權利」這句令人費解的話語。但女士先生們,這兩片遼闊海洋的隔離也有助於培養對我們不太有利的習慣和模式。我們對金錢和槍支的狂熱、我們對一切事物的確信、我們固執地堅持「美國例外主義」,讓我們無視於需要修正之處。我們總是將錯誤歸咎於他人,無論以個人或全球層面來說。還有種族問題,早在1838年,這就是林肯心目中最重要的問題,如今這個問題依然存在。爵士小號手溫頓.馬沙利斯告訴我,解決種族問題是「國泰民安必行之事」。在林肯準確預測之內戰發生150年後,法規和法律平等的巨大進步將難以實現,這歸因於我們尚不完美的人性和虛偽,且盲目的政治家在歷經四世紀的種族歧視之後,如今這種歧視以嶄新、巧妙、不明顯、但依然充滿惡意的形式呈現。
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Lincoln's Springfield speech also suggests what is so great and so good about the people who inhabit this lucky and exquisite country of ours (that's the world you now inherit): our work ethic, our restlessness, our innovation and our improvisation, our communities and our institutions of higher learning, our suspicion of power; the fact that we seem resolutely dedicated to parsing the meaning between individual and collective freedom; that we are dedicated to understanding what Thomas Jefferson really meant when he wrote that inscrutable phrase "the pursuit of Happiness." But the isolation of those two mighty oceans has also helped to incubate habits and patterns less beneficial to us: our devotion to money and guns; our certainty -- about everything; our stubborn insistence on our own exceptionalism, blinding us to that which needs repair, our preoccupation with always making the other wrong, at an individual as well as global level. And then there is the issue of race, which was foremost on the mind of Lincoln back in 1838. It is still here with us today. The jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis told me that healing this question of race was what "the kingdom needed in order to be well." Before the enormous strides in equality achieved in statutes and laws in the 150 years since the Civil War that Lincoln correctly predicted would come are in danger of being undone by our still imperfect human nature and by politicians who now insist on a hypocritical color-blindness -- after four centuries of discrimination. That discrimination now takes on new, sometimes subtler, less obvious but still malevolent forms today.
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奴隸制度的鎖鏈已被斬斷-感謝上帝,以及仰賴佃農的封建制度和某種程度上已成為遙遠過去的吉姆.克勞(種族隔離制度倡導者)時代,但如今在某些地方-不僅這些地方-例如在距此直線距離幾英哩處,你們另一個鄰居-佛格森。我們目睹令我們深感恥辱的陋習依然存在,林肯認為將導致國家自毀的恥辱。我們無視於除了膚色之外的特質,這是自建國以來一直伴隨我們的恥辱。當湯瑪斯.傑佛遜在不朽的獨立宣言第二段開頭寫道:「我們認為這些真理是不言而喻的,人人生而平等。」但他同時卻蓄奴上百人,他不曾看出其中的矛盾,不曾看出其中的虛偽,更重要的是,他一生中不曾認為釋放其中任何一人是適當的做法,導致擁有與生俱來榮譽感的年輕美國飽受種族問題折磨,進而藉由血腥的內戰矯正這種失衡。
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The chains of slavery have been broken, thank God, and so too has the feudal dependence of sharecroppers as the vengeful Jim Crow era recedes (sort of) into the distant past. But now in places like -- but not limited to -- your other neighbors a few miles as the crow flies from here in Ferguson, we see the ghastly remnants of our great shame emerging still, the shame Lincoln thought would lead to national suicide, our inability to see beyond the color of someone's skin. It has been with us since our founding. When Thomas Jefferson wrote that immortal second sentence of the Declaration that begins, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal...," he owned more than a hundred human beings. He never saw the contradiction, never saw the hypocrisy, and more important never saw fit in his lifetime to free any one of those human beings, ensuring as we went forward that the young United States -- born with such glorious promise -- would be bedeviled by race, that it would take a bloody, bloody Civil War to even begin to redress the imbalance.
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但恥辱依然存在:黑人青年塞滿監獄,幾乎每週都有黑人青年死於警察手中。將有色人種視為負擔的腐敗市政當局更類似過去時代的掠奪者,而非負責的現代地方政府。我們的城鎮和郊區不能成為殖民地,這是不公平的。當你們在特權庇護下誕生,距此幾英哩處以及幾乎美國任何地方:巴爾的摩、紐約、北查爾斯頓、克里夫蘭、奧克拉荷馬、佛羅里達桑福德,幾乎所有其他地方仍上演著一部全然美國化的故事,與導致內戰相同的矛盾狀態和情緒仍栩栩如生且令人不快地上演。就在今天,此時此刻,太陽底下無新事。
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But the shame continues: prison populations exploding with young black men, young black men killed almost weekly by policemen, whole communities of color burdened by corrupt municipalities that resemble more the predatory company store of a supposedly bygone era than a responsible local government. Our cities and towns and suburbs cannot become modern plantations. It is unconscionable, as you emerge from this privileged sanctuary, that a few miles from here -- and nearly everywhere else in America: Baltimore, New York City, North Charleston, Cleveland, Oklahoma, Sanford, Florida, nearly everywhere else -- we are still playing out, sadly, an utterly American story, that the same stultifying conditions and sentiments that brought on our Civil War are still on such vivid and unpleasant display. Today, today. There's nothing new under the sun.
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內戰後多年,在1883年,馬克.吐溫開始認真撰寫一部過去數年他幾次提筆又放棄的小說。這是與他著名的《湯姆歷險記》大不相同的故事,這次是以平鋪直敘的方式敘述他兒時在密蘇里的經歷,這成為他的傑作。故事背景設定於附近,時間則是南北戰爭和奴隸解放前。《頑童歷險記》是兩個離家出走孩子的故事,一個是白人男孩湯姆.索亞的老友哈克,他意圖逃離文明生活﹔一個是黑人吉姆,他意圖逃離奴隸生活。他們一起登上木筏,沿密西西比河逃離。小說中探討道德的高潮是,哈克面臨一個艱難的選擇,他認為幫助吉姆逃跑是犯了嚴重的罪,最後他寫了一封信,告訴吉姆的主人在哪裡可以找到她脫逃的奴隸。這麼做最初令哈克感覺良好,他說:「我差點就迷失而萬劫不復了。」但後來他猶豫了,想起吉姆在冒險過程中對他多好。哈克說:「不知何故,我似乎無法對他硬下心腸,而且情況剛好相反,我看見他才值完班就替我值班,而不是來叫我,讓我能繼續睡覺。我看見當我從濃霧中或類似情況下出現時他多麼高興,他總是叫我甜心,盡可能設身處地為我著想。他總是對我這麼好。」然後哈克想起他寫的信,他說:「我拿起它,握在手中。我在發抖,因為我得在兩條路中選擇一條,永遠不能反悔,我心知肚明。我考慮了一分鐘,屏住呼吸,然後對自己說:『好吧,就讓我下地獄吧!』然後撕了那封信。」
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Many years after our Civil War, in 1883, Mark Twain took up writing in earnest a novel he had started and abandoned several times over the last half-dozen years. It would be a very different kind of story from his celebrated Tom Sawyer book, told this time in the plain language of his Missouri boyhood -- and it would be his masterpiece. Set near here, before the Civil War and emancipation, 'the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn' is the story of two runaways -- a white boy, Tom Sawyer's old friend Huck, fleeing civilization, and a black man, Jim, who is running away from slavery. They escape together on a raft going down the Mississippi River. The novel reaches its moral climax when Huck is faced with a terrible choice. He believes he has committed a grievous sin in helping Jim escape, and he finally writes out a letter, telling Jim's owner where her runaway property can be found. Huck feels good about doing this at first, he says, and marvels at "how close I came to being lost and going to hell." But then he hesitates, thinking about how kind Jim has been to him during their adventure. "...Somehow," Huck says, "I couldn't seem to strike no place to harden me against him, but only the other kind. I'd see him standing my watch on top of his'n, 'stead of calling me, so I could go on sleeping; and see how glad he was when I come back out of the fog;...and such like times; and would always call me honey...and do everything he could think of for me, and how good he always was..." Then, Huck remembers the letter he has written. "I took it up, and held it in my hand," he says. "I was a-trembling because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself: 'All right then, I'll go to hell' -- and tore it up."
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這或許是美國文學史上最美妙的時刻,海明威認為所有美國文學都始於那一刻。吐溫在內戰和重建失敗後寫這本書,在這個被誤認為致力推行民權的時期,是為了表達他對美國仍存在種族分歧深感失望。種族主義仍在這片美麗的土地上肆虐,建立於人類最崇高的原則-人人生而平等之上。內戰不曾洗淨我們的原罪,一個我們如今依然每天面對的罪惡在這個本應「不存在種族歧視」的時期。我擔心你們踏入這個失去方向、有時令人失望的世界,失去家庭和學校的保護。你們擁有嶄新的前程和真實的夢想,我希望你們每一個人都精益求精,但我現在呼籲各位加入一個新的聯合軍隊,必須致力維護早已存在於美國人特質中的價值觀、幽默感和凝聚力。你們沒有選擇,你們已接受召喚,這是你們雖困難卻偉大而富挑戰性的責任:幫助造成改變,讓一切回歸正軌。容我先向現場所有人致歉,我們破壞它,但你們必須修復它。你們加入的是必須投入最多精力的運動-無論以職業或個人發展而言-保存這個國家最不朽的理想。你們必須學習,然後再教育其餘的人,平等,真正的平等,是所有美國人的特質和與生俱來的權利。值得慶幸的是,你將成為對抗似乎已對我們造成影響之新分離主義的先鋒,成為對抗那些以偉大的民主之名設法削弱我們之勢力的先鋒,然後你可以稍微改變人性,如林肯對我們的呼籲:召喚「人類本性的善良面」。這是客觀的做法,我知道你們能做到。
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That may be the finest moment in all of American literature. Ernest Hemingway thought all of American literature began at that moment. Twain, himself, writing after the Civil War and after the collapse of Reconstruction, a misunderstood period devoted to trying to enforce civil rights, was actually expressing his profound disappointment that racial differences still persisted in America, that racism still festered in this favored land, founded as it was on the most noble principle yet advanced by humankind -- that all men are created equal. That civil war had not cleansed our original sin, a sin we continue to confront today, daily, in this supposedly enlightened "post-racial" time. It is into this disorienting and sometimes disappointing world that you now plummet, I'm afraid, unprotected from the shelter of family and school. You have fresh prospects and real dreams and I wish each and every one of you the very best. But I am drafting you now into a new Union Army that must be committed to preserving the values, the sense of humor, the sense of cohesion that have long been a part of our American nature, too. You have no choice, you've been called up, and it is your difficult, but great and challenging responsibility to help change things and set us right again. Let me apologize in advance to you. We broke it, but you've got to fix it. You're joining a movement that must be dedicated above all else -- career and personal advancement -- to the preservation of this country's most enduring ideals. You have to learn, and then re-teach the rest of us that equality -- real equality -- is the hallmark and birthright of ALL Americans. Thankfully, you will become a vanguard against a new separatism that seems to have infected our ranks, a vanguard against those forces that, in the name of our great democracy, have managed to diminish it. Then, you can change human nature just a bit, to appeal, as Lincoln also implored us, to appeal to "the better angels of our nature." That's the objective. I know you can do it.
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好,第三段,容我直接對畢業生喊話。注意,以下是我的忠告:記住,黑人的生命是重要的,所有生命都是重要的。只要原教旨主義萌生醜陋的芽,立刻將其消滅,這不是文明。選擇住在《風雲人物》中的貝德福鎮,而非主角未出生情況下悲慘的波特斯維爾。別在專長上過於鑽研,從事各方面的學習,你會更健康。用傳統的預防方式-保持懷疑-代替憤世嫉俗,別將賺錢能力與才能混為一談。詩人羅伯特.潘.華倫曾警告我:「追求名利等於找死。」盡量別將錯誤歸咎於他人,保持好奇心,別太冷漠。記住,不安使我們都變成騙子。聽爵士樂,盡量多聽,這是屬於我們的音樂。閱讀﹔書籍仍是最偉大的人造機器,不是汽車、不是電視、不是電腦或智慧手機。別讓社群媒體將我們區分成更小的團體,激烈、有時適當地忠於我們的團體也可能轉變成對他人極度不信任。為國家服務,藉由任何方式為國家服務,但必須堅持要打正確的戰爭,政府總是忘了這一點。說服你的政府,如林肯所言,真正的威脅來自內部,政府同樣總是忘了這一點。別讓政府將誠實、透明或公正外包,別讓政府將民主外包。去投票,選出優秀的領導者。富蘭克林.德拉諾.羅斯福於1936年被提名時說:「本著慈善精神偶爾犯錯的政府,遠勝於始終保持冷漠的不作為政府。」我們都應擁有前者那樣的政府,堅持這個理念,堅持支持科學和藝術。尤其是藝術,它們與國家實際防禦力量無關,它們只是使國家值得捍衛的事物。重視「團結」,而非「群體」。最重要的是,別失去熱情。在希臘詞源中,「熱情」這個詞意味著「上帝在我們心中」。即使閃電依然無法適當分配,也盡量別成為傻子,這只會惹惱馬克.吐溫。如果你發現自己陷入哈克的處境,如果你必須「在兩條路中選擇一條」,做正確的決定。別忘了把信撕掉,他不會下地獄,你也不會。今天的演講即將結束,這對你們來說也是十分特別的開始,願上帝賜福給所有人。
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Ok. I'm rounding third. Let me speak directly to the graduating class. (Watch out. Here comes the advice.) Remember: Black lives matter. All lives matter. Reject fundamentalism wherever it raises its ugly head. It's not civilized. Choose to live in the Bedford Falls of "It's a Wonderful Life," not its oppressive opposite, Pottersville.
Do not descend too deeply into specialism. Educate all your parts. You will be healthier. Replace cynicism with its old-fashioned antidote, skepticism. Don't confuse monetary success with excellence. The poet Robert Penn Warren once warned me that "careerism is death." Try not to make the other wrong. Be curious, not cool. Remember, insecurity makes liars of us all. Listen to jazz. A lot. It is our music. Read. The book is still the greatest manmade machine of all -- not the car, not the TV, not the computer or the smartphone. Do not allow our social media to segregate us into ever smaller tribes and clans, fiercely and sometimes appropriately loyal to our group, but also capable of metastasizing into profound distrust of the other. Serve your country. By all means serve your country. But insist that we fight the right wars. Governments always forget that. Convince your government that the real threat, as Lincoln knew, comes from within. Governments always forget that, too. Do not let your government outsource honesty, transparency or candor. Do not let your government outsource democracy. Vote. Elect good leaders. When he was nominated in 1936, Franklin Delano Roosevelt said, "Better the occasional faults of a government that lives in a spirit of charity than the consistent omissions of a government frozen in the ice of its own indifference." We all deserve the former. Insist on it. Insist that we support science and the arts, especially the arts. They have nothing to do with the actual defense of the country -- they just make the country worth defending. Be about the "unum," not the "pluribus." Do not lose your enthusiasm. In its Greek etymology, the word enthusiasm means simply, "God in us." And even though lightning still isn't distributed right, try not to be a fool. It just gets Mark Twain riled up. And if you ever find yourself in Huck's spot, if you've "got to decide betwixt two things," do the right thing. Don't forget to tear up the letter. He didn't go to hell -- and you won't either. So we come to an end of something today --and for you also a very special beginning. God speed to you all.