July 17, 2015

英美散文菁華

陳榮吉 編譯

1.      Literature and Life 文學與人生

       William Henry Hudson, 1841 – 1922, English writer and naturalist

       Literature is a vital record of what men have seen in life, what they have experienced of it, what they have thought and felt about those aspects of it which have the most immediate and enduring interest for all of us. It is thus fundamentally an expression of life through the medium of language. Such expression is fashioned into the various forms of literary art. But it is important to understand, to begin with, that literature lives by virtue of the life which it embodies. By remembering this, we shall be saved from the besetting danger of confounding the study of literature with the study of philology, rhetoric, and even literary technique.

        文學是人們對生活的觀察，生活的體驗，以及對生活各方面的思索和感受的重要紀錄，這些生活層面帶給我們每個人立即卻又永恆的趣味｡基本上，文學透過語言作為媒介來表現人生，而這種表現又形成了各種不同形式的文學藝術｡不過，首先我們要理解的重點是，文學藉由體現人生而存在｡記住這一點，我們始可免於陷入文學研究與語言學修辭學研究、甚至於文學技巧之間，混淆不清、一概而論的危險｡