天才与工匠

Many people admire writers for their exquisite stories, but few of them know with what painstaking efforts writers work to bring a story into the world. The following essay discusses the process of conceiving a story and developing it into a perfect work of art.
许多人羡慕作家们的精彩小说，但却很少有人知道作家们是如何辛勤笔耕才使一篇小说问世的。以下的短文将讨论小说的酝酿过程，以及作家是如何将这小说雕琢成一件精致完美的艺术品。

Once on the edge of a woods at twilight I came upon a small peach tree in flower. I stayed there watching until the light was gone. I saw nothing of the tree's origin, nothing of the might which had forced open a pit you could break your teeth on, and nothing of the principle which held it separate from the oaks and the grasses. All that appeared to me was a profound and eerie grace.
有一次，我在暮色中来到小树林边一棵鲜花盛开的小桃树前。我久久站在那里凝视着，直到最后一道光线消逝。我看不到那树原先的模样，看不见曾穿透果核，能崩碎你的牙齿的力量，也看不到那使它与橡树和绿草相区别的原则。显现在我面前的，是一种深邃而神秘的魅力。

So it is with the reader who comes upon an outstanding story: spellbound, he takes it to his heart, no question asked.
当读者读到一部杰出的小说时，他也会这样如痴如狂，欲将小说字字句句刻骨铭心，不提出任何问题。

But even the beginning writer knows there is more to a story's life than the body of words which carries it into the world, and that it does not begin with writing, but with conception in the dark of the mind.
但即使是个初学写作者也知道，除那将小说带到世上的文字之外，还有更多的构成小说生命的因素，小说的生命并不始于写作，而始于内心深处的构思。

It is not necessary to understand the creative function in order to produce original work. Centuries of art, philosophy and science have emerged from the minds of people who may not even have suspected the inner process. It seems to me, however, that at least a degree of understanding of the creative event increases our wisdom in dealing with the emerging story by making us aware of two things.
要创作出有独创性的作品，并不要求懂得创造的功能。多少世纪以来的艺术、哲学及科学创造都出自人们的头脑，而创造者也许从未想到去关注创造的内在过程。然而，在我看来，对创造工作一定程度的了解 ，至少会使我们通过知道两个事实，增长我们处理正在出现的故事的智慧。

First, genius is not the exclusive property of the master craftsman; it is the creative function of the human mind. There is no mastery without it, and there is no person without it, however undeveloped it may be. Mastery is genius afoot. It is genius cultivated, develope

d, and exercised. Your genius works at the level of origins; its business is to create; it is the creator of your story.
首先，天赋不是掌握了技艺的艺术家独有的特性，而是人脑的创造性功能。不仅所有对技艺的掌握都含有天赋，而且每个人都具有天赋，无论他的天赋发展是何等不充分。对技艺的掌握是天赋的显现，是 经过培养的，发展了的和受过训练的天赋。你的天赋在最原始的层面上起作用。它的任务就是创造。它是你的故事的创造者。

Second, the body of words that carries your story into the world is the work of the craftsman's labor, which is as conscious, as canny, and as practical as that of the bricklayer. While genius is a natural part of our mental equipment, like perception, memory, and imagination, craftsmanship is not. It must be learned. It is learned by practice, and by practice it is mastered. If the stories that rise within us are to emerge and flourish, each must be provided with a strong, handsome body of words, and only sound craftsmanship can provide this.
第二，将你的小说带进世界的文字是艺术家的工作，它就和一个泥瓦匠的工作一样 ，有意识、谨慎而实实在在。天赋正如理解力、记忆力和想象力一样是我们的精神禀赋中的天然部分，而技艺却不是。它必须通过实践才能学到，并要通过实践才能掌握。如果要使在我们内心深处浮现的故事跃然纸上，光彩照人，那么，每个故事都须有感染力极强的优雅文笔。只有健全的技艺才能使我们做到这一点。

How is a story conceived? It is said that we write from the first twenty years of our lives, perhaps from the first five; it may depend on the individual, as so much does in writing. In any case, the lucid impressions of childhood and early youth, more or less unconditioned, unexplained, unchecked, lie in the memory, live and timeless. Enigma, wonder, fear, rapture, grandeur, and trivia in every degree and combination, these early impressions throb and wait for what? Completion of some kind? For recognition of their own peculiar truth? It would seem their wounds want lancing; their secret knowledge wants telling; the discoveries would be shared, and woes admitted, and the airy tracery of beauty given form.
一个故事是如何酝酿成的呢？据说，我们从一生中的前二十年，或许前五年起就开始写作。这可能取决于个人，而写作中的很多事都取决于个人。无论如何，童年和少年时期的清晰印象，或多或少无条件地存在于我们的记忆中，未被解释，不受约束，而且栩栩如生，永不磨灭。困惑、徬徨、畏惧、喜悦、辉煌和平庸，在各种程度上以各种形式组合在一起。这些对往事的印象在心中悸动着。它们在等待什么？是在等待 某种圆满的结果？还是对它们特有的真理的认可？似乎它们的创

伤需要切开，隐秘的见解需要表露，发现需要与人分享，苦恼需要承认，这种飘渺的美需要形式。

Thus variously laden we move through life, and now and then an experience, often slight, prices the memory and seizes upon one of those live, expectant impressions of long age, and a quickening1 takes place.
我们就这样背负着各种任务渡过一生。时而,一个常常是小小的体验，撬开了记忆之门，抓住了这些虽已年代久远，却依然栩栩如生，呼之欲出的印象。于是，故事就如种子一般开始萌动。

This happens to everyone and more often than is known. But there are times when it happens to the creative writer and causes him to catch his breath because he knows that the seed of a story has quickened and has begun a life of its own.
这种经历人人都有，却鲜为人知。然而，一旦富有创造力的作家有了这种感受，他就会凝神屏息，专注于此，因为他知道这时故事的种子已经萌发并开始了它自己的生命过程。

Like any seed, the seed of a story has its own principle of growth which employs a process of intelligent selection, drawing from the unconscious mind's vast treasury of experience that it needs to fulfill its inherent form: there come together people and their ways, with weather and times and places, and the souls of things. In short, there is produced a world, complete with stars and stumbling blocks.
就象任何一颗种子，故事的种子有它自己的生长规律，要要经过作家对记忆中的素材进行精心筛选，从潜意识博大精深的阅历宝库中提取故事赖以实现其内在形式的素材。于是，各种人物，他们的处世风格、 气候、时间、地点及各种事物的精髓，都聚集起来。简而言之，一个世界产生了，有灿烂的星辰，也有形形色色的障碍。

Thus “made in secret and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth,” the story expands and rises, unhurried, until at last it presents itself to the conscious mind. Here at the threshold, vibrant with expectation, it awaits its body of words.
故事就是这样在“隐秘中构思，在思想土壤的最深处神秘地形成，”并不断地缓缓扩展、生长，直到它最终在意识中显现。就在这意识的门槛上，故事带着希冀的颤栗等待它的文字整体的形成。

Genius, the creative function, has done its work. And only now does the craftsman, the deliverer, begin his.
天赋创造的功能现已完成了它的使命。只是到这时，工匠，这位故事的助产士才开始他的工作。

A story rarely, if ever, presents itself as a whole. Robert Frost said that he never knew where a poem was going when he began it. Until I am almost upon it in a first draft, I do not know a story's end, or even its point; and there are times when only after two, three or more drafts will the story come clearly into focus.

故事完整地呈现，即使有这样的情况，也是罕见的。罗伯特·弗洛斯特说过，他开始作诗时从不知道这诗最终会是什么样。而我往往在小说的第一稿几乎完成时才恍然大悟，意识到小说该怎样结尾，或它的中心思想是什么。有时甚至在写完第二、第三稿，甚至更多稿之后小说才呈现出清晰的轮廓。

Years ago in the early dawn of an October morning, I watched the tiny Sputnik2 cut its brief arc across the sky. Sometime later, a story I knew to be gathering and rising presented itself: An old man who had spent a lonely life in the depth of the city retired to a house on a cove near the sea. Overwhelmed by the beauty of the cove and the kindness of his neighbors, he began to know the desperation of those whose lives are almost over, and who, for one reason or another, have never given, or even shared, anything.
多年以前，十月的一个凌晨时分，我遥望小小的人造卫星划出一道弧线匆匆掠过星空。又过了一段时间，我心中一直萌动的故事呈现出来：一位老人一生在都市中心过着寂寞生活 ，隐居到一个小海湾边的房子里。他为那地方的美景和邻人的善良而激动不已，开始感受到那些生活道路将要走尽，由于某种原因从未付出或从未与人分享过任何东西的人们的绝望。

Knowing only this, I moved swiftly into the first draft and wrote: “The people of Pomeroy's Cove gave Mr. Paradee the sky. They gave it all to him, from dawn to dawn with thunderheads and flights of geese and the red moon rising.”
尽管当时心里朦朦胧胧仅有这点感受，我立刻着手第一稿，写道：“波米洛依湾的人们将蓝天奉献给了帕拉蒂先生。他们将这一切全给了他，每个黎明，一片片雷雨云、 一群群飞翔的野鹅和冉冉升起的红色月亮。”

What was I doing? I wrote of a curious gift: there were more curious gifts to come. I moved into the sky; later I would head toward celestial traffic. I marveled, when I reached the end, that I had not known the whole story from the first paragraph: every word pointed the way. But not knowing, why did I begin to write? What was I doing?
当时我在干什么？我在描绘一个奇怪的 才能：而且还有更多奇怪的才能。接着我升上高空；尔后飞向运行中的万千星辰。当我写到小说的结尾时，我不禁感到诧异，我 开始写第一段时居然对整个小说毫无了解：每一个字都指出方向。然而，我浑然不知时，我为什么动笔写作？我在干什么？

I was fulfilling two of the craftsman's three functions: trust, and the second: write. I was trusting in the inevitability of the story's intelligence, its truth, whatever it might be; I was trusting in its completeness, its form, whenever it might emerge. By writing, I was allowing it, inviting it to emerge: I was providing its vehicle. For how e

lse could it emerge?
我是在实施工匠的三个功能中的两个：信赖，第二：写作。不论我的小说会是什么样，我坚信小说的灵性，它的真实性；不论它可能在何时显现，我都坚信它的完整性和它的形式。在写作中我听任它发展，迎候它的显现。我在为它的显现提供载体，否则它又怎能显现呢？

Trust your genius. It is your creative function and its business is to create. Because it works at the level of origins, the story it creates is original; it is yours alone. No one else can know it or write it. That is a story's value, and its only value. Respect your creative function; rely on it to be intelligent: it is not a thing of random impulse, but a working principle. Trust it, be glad about it, and use it. That is the secret of cultivating it, and the beginning of true ability.
信赖你的天赋吧，它是你的创造性功能，它的任务就是创造。因为它在最原始的层面上起作用，因此，它所创造的小说是独一无二的。这故事完全是你自己的。没其他人能了解它，也没人能写出它。这就是一个小说的价值，唯一的价值。尊重你的创造性功能，依靠它获得智慧：它不是盲目冲动的产物，而是工作的原则。信赖它，为它感到欣喜，运用它。这正是培养天赋的奥秘所在，也是真正能力的开端。

Trust and write. Write your story when you begin to feel its insistent pulse. If you don't know it all, write as much as you know; work respectively and patiently, and it will all come to you presently. If you can't write well, write the best you can, always the best, with all the intelligence and clarity you can command at the moment. If you do that, and persist in it, you will improve steadily. The reason for this is that earnest work literally generates intelligence. Consistent practice generates skill. And to generate skill is the craftsman's third function.
信赖并着手写作。当你开始感到小说急不可待的脉动时，就动笔写作。如果你对它并不完全了解，就尽你所知去写。逐个地写你所知道的那部分，要有耐心，不久你就会完全知道你所写的是什么。假如你写得不好，那就尽你所能去写。务必竭尽全力，以你当时所能驾驭的全部智慧努力写得明白清晰。如果能这样做并坚持不懈，你一定能稳步提高。因为认真踏实的工作可以真正发展智力。不懈的实践可 以真正形成技能，而形成技能就是工匠的第三个任务。

Give every story, every letter, every entry in your daily journal, if you keep one, the best writing of which you are capable. Write well. Write skillfully. Write beautifully, or write superbly, if you can. Be watchful and objective about what goes down on paper. Anything less than the degree of excellence of which you are capable at any given time is not craftsmanship. It is dabbling.
以你最

好的文笔尽你所能写每一个故事，每一封信，如果你写日记的话，要 这样在日记中记每一件事。要写好。要写得有技巧。要写得优雅，如果你能够的话，要写得完美。对任何成文的材料都应力求谨慎、真实。任何低于当时你所能达到的完美程度的文字都谈不上是技艺，而是浅尝輒止的儿戏。

The beginning writer saves time and effort by being prompt and businesslike about finding a method of work which suits him. Look into methods. We know that writing cannot be taught, that it can only be learned. But common sense, the canny handmaid of genius, tells us that practicing writers, like practicing plumbers, politicians and goldsmiths, who get the job done day in and day out, know what they are talking about when they talk about work. Read them and listen to them, and you will recognize in their working habits many tendencies and impulses of your own. You will see that they are not your private vagaries, but in many cases unique and vital aspects of the writing temperament, things in your favor that can work for you.
初事写作者总是力图尽量快捷、高效地找到适合他的写作方法，以求省时省力。谈起方法，我们都知道写作不是教会的，而是学会的。但是常识——天赋的 狡诘的侍女却告诉我们，实际从事写作者象日复一日干着同一工作的管子工、从政者和金银首饰匠一样，谈起他们的工作都很在行。读作家们所写的书，听作家们所说的话，你就可以发现他们的工作习惯中有许多与自己相同的偏爱和冲动。你会发现这些不仅是你自己独有的癖好，而往往是从事写作者的性情中特有的，极其重要的几种癖性。它们对你有利，可以为你所用。

I wrote four hours a day for ten years before I was published. Working without teachers and books on writing, I was a long time discovering a method of work. Years later when a very fine teacher remarked: “You know, a good story is not written, but rewritten,” I replied somewhat wistfully: “ Yes, I know. I wish someone had told me that long ago.”
我每天写作四小时，一连写了十年之后，才发表作品。在写作过程中，我没有老师指导，也没有写作的书籍可供参考。我花了很长时间才发现了一种写作方法。多年之后，一位十分优秀的教师说:“要知道，好小说不是写成的而是改成的。”当时，我沉思着回答说：“是啊！我明白。但愿早就有人告诉我。”

My way of dealing with a story is simple and it works. When a story presents itself and I catch a glimpse of what I have, I capture it in a swift, skeletal draft. Presently perhaps the next day, I rewrite from the very beginning, inevitably adding more, filling out, and always treating the story as a whole. I continue to rewrite at intervals, letting it cool in between times, and rewrite as many tim

es as needed until the words seem to fit the story smoothly and comfortably, always trying for a wording that clings as wet silk clings, and always reaching for that mastery which can fashion a body of words that is no more than a filament3.
我处理小说的方法简单而行之有效。当一个故事在我脑海中呈现出来，当我朦胧地感觉到它的显现，就迅速将它草拟成一个提纲。不久，也许就在次日，我就通篇重写，这一次不可避免地会加进更多内容并填补很多缺漏。我总是对小说进行整体处理。每隔一段时间 我就继续重写，再将其搁在一边冷一段时间，然后根据需要反复重写，直到文字流畅、妥贴。我总是试图用词准确，贴切，就象将湿绸缎紧裹在身上那样，努力使文字简明练达。

There is magic in intention. When you work with the intention of excellence, no matter how hard you work, it is never drudgery. No matter how far short of the mark you fall, it is never failure － unless, of course, you are willing to stop there. Rewriting it this way is not a chore, but an adventure in skill. When you treat the story as a live, intelligent whole, rewriting is dynamic because three things happen:
目的是有魔力的。当你以追求卓越为目的而写作时，无论你的工作如何艰辛，它绝不会单调乏味。不论你的工作成果如何不如人意，只要你不愿裹足不前就绝不是失败。以这种方式重写不是乏味的苦工而是技艺上的探索。如果你将小说当作活生生、有灵性的整体来对待，修改就有活力，因为在此过程中有三件事同时发生：

First, you gain a complete knowledge of the story. You can scarcely believe how little you know of your story in a first or second draft until you reach the fourth or fifth. Layer upon layer reveals itself; small things, at first unnoticed, expand in importance; areas of vagueness or confusion become sharp and clear. Things which slip past the eye in rereading leap at you and demand attention. Such expert knowledge of this one story gives you control; and control allows you to do your best writing on that story because you know what you are doing. To know one story thoroughly prepares you for your knowledge of the next: you won't puzzle and perhaps despair over a first draft, assuming that, with all its imperfections, its haziness and poor writing, it is the best you can do. You will rewrite with confidence, knowing the story will certainly improve.
第一，你达到了对整个故事的完全了解。你几乎不能相信，在写第一、第二稿时,你对这 个故事的了解是何等不足，直到第四第五稿，你才能领悟到这一点。它一层层地显示出来；起先不受关注的小事件渐渐变得重要；含混处变得清晰。在反复阅读的过程中闪过眼前的事物向你跳跃 ，以引起注意。对这个故事的彻底理解给了你控制力，而这种

控制力使你能将故事写到最好。因为你知道你在做什么。彻底了解一个故事也为你了解下一个故事做好了充分的准备。你在写它的第一稿时就不会再感到困惑或束手无策。尽管还会有种种缺憾，内容模糊不清或行文粗劣，你仍可以认为这是你 写的最好的东西。你会自信地去修改，确信它会逐步完善。

Second, you gain a facility which no other exercise, no book, no teacher, however knowledgeable, can possibly give you. In dealing again and again with the same story problems and the same writing problems, you learn to do things efficiently; you learn new ways and, most important, you learn your way. Rereading tends to condone errors in writing; rewriting tends to reveal them. Self-conscious flamboyance shows up for what it is; what you considered a clever understatement is often revealed as an evasion of something difficult to state, but which is vital to the story and worthy of clarity. Your judgment and sensitivity sharpen as you are forced to face, word by deadly word, the ill-written ungainly passages. You cannot improve one sentence, one paragraph without improving your skill. You begin to see that mastery is no pipe dream4, but a possibility.
第二，你取得了一种其它任何练习、书籍乃至无论知识如何渊博的老师都所不能给你的技能。在一次又一次解决情节问题、写作问题的过程中，你学会了如何高效地工作；你学习了新的方法，而最重要的是，你获得了自己的方法。重读往往宽容写作中的错误，而重写则往往揭示出错误。不自然地过分炫耀词藻 ，常常在重写时暴露无遗；你自认为机智含蓄的东西，往往是对难以表述的问题的故意回避。而这些问题对于故事而言，恰恰是至关重要而务必清晰表述的。你的判断力和敏感性 ，由于你被迫面对那一个个枯燥乏味的字眼和粗劣笨拙的段落而变得敏锐起来。每改进一个句子、一个段落，你都在提高你的技能。渐渐地，你会看到追求卓越并非空泛的梦想，而是一种可能。

Third, rewriting is rewriting, and writing is a writer's work. Reading, attending classes, talking to working writers are all helpful activities, but only if you work at writing. Rewriting provides steady work with a distinct purpose, and that purpose provides an ever-present reward: continually improving skill. Work of this kind is habit-forming, and there is nothing known to man that stimulates genius like the habit of work.
第三，修改是修改，作家的工作是写作。阅读、听课、与专事写作的作家们交谈都是极为有益的，但它们只在你致力于写作时才有帮助。修改为脚踏实地的写作指明了目标，而这一目标会给予你终身受益的回报，即不断提高的技能。修改有助于形成习惯，而世上再也没有比工作的习惯更能激发才智的了

。

Never impose a limit on your ability, and never allow anyone else to. When working with the intention of excellence becomes a habit with you, you will understand that the masterpiece is not a mystery and not an accident, but that it is the by-product of a way of life.
绝不要强加给你的能力任何限制，也绝不允许任何人这样做。一旦力求完美成为你的习惯，你就会领悟到杰作并不神秘，也绝非偶然，而是一种生活方式的结果。