#e#

　　by C. Day Lewis

　　"The best lack all conviction,

　　While the worst are full of passionate intesity."

　　Those two lines of Yeats for me sum up the matter as it stands today when the very currency of belief seems debased. I was brought up in the Christian church. Later I believed for a while that communism offered the best hope for this world. I acknowledge the need for belief, but I cannot forget how through the ages great faiths have been vitiated by fanaticism and dogmatism, by intolerance and cruelty, by the intellectual dishonesty, the folly, the crankiness or the opportunism of their adherents.

　　Have I no faith at all, then? Faith is the thing at the core of you, the sediment that's left when hopes and illusions are drained away. The thing for which you make any sacrifice because without it you would be nothing - a mere walking shadow. I know what my own core is. I would in the last resort sacrifice any human relationship, any way of living to the search for truth which produces my poem. I know there are heavy odds against any poem I write surviving after my death. I realize that writing poetry may seem the most preposterously useless thing a man can be doing today. Yet it is just at such times of crisis that each man discovers or rediscovers what he values most. My poet's instinct to make something comes out most strongly then, enabling me to use fear, doubt, even despair as creative stimuli. In doing so, I feel my kinship with humanity, with the common man who carries on doing his job till the bomb falls or the sea closes over him. Carries on because of his belief, however inarticulate, that this is the best thing he can do.

　　But the poet is luckier than the layman, for his job is always a vacation. Indeed, it's so like a religious vacation that he may feel little need for a religious faith, but because it is always trying to get past the trivial and the transient or to reveal these as images of the essential and the permanent, poetry is at least a kind of spiritual activity.

　　Men need a religious belief to make sense out of life. I wish I had such a belief myself, but any creed of mine would be honeycombed with confusions and reservations. Yet when I write a poem I am trying to make sense out of life. And just now and then my experience composes and transmutes itself into a poem which tells me something I didn't know I knew.

　　So for me the compulsion of poetry is the sign of a belief, not the less real for being unformulated ... a belief that men must enjoy life, explore life, enhance life. Each as best he can. And that I shall do these things best through the practice of poetry.

　　我希望我能相信

　　塞(西爾)·戴·劉易斯

　　“優(yōu)秀的人們信心盡失，

　　壞蛋們則充滿了熾烈的狂熱。”

　　對(duì)我來(lái)說(shuō)，葉芝的這兩行詩(shī)概括了今天的現(xiàn)實(shí)，信仰的貨幣似乎已經(jīng)貶值了。我是在__的熏陶下長(zhǎng)大的。后來(lái)有一段時(shí)間我相信共產(chǎn)主義給這個(gè)世界帶來(lái)了最大的希望。我承認(rèn)信仰的必要性，但我無(wú)法忘記歷代的偉大信仰是如何因其擁護(hù)者的狂熱、教條、褊狹、殘忍、學(xué)術(shù)欺詐、愚蠢、偏執(zhí)或機(jī)會(huì)主義而遭到損害的。

　　那么，難道我就沒(méi)有信仰嗎?信仰存在于你的心靈深處，當(dāng)希望和幻想漸漸枯竭，沉淀下來(lái)的就是信仰。為了它，你甘愿做出任何犧牲，因?yàn)闆](méi)有它，你的存在就毫無(wú)意義——你只不過(guò)是一個(gè)會(huì)行走的影子。我知道我的內(nèi)心深處有什么。在別無(wú)選擇的情況下，我愿意犧牲任何人際關(guān)系、任何生活方式去尋找使我能創(chuàng)作詩(shī)歌的真理。我知道很有可能我寫(xiě)的每一首詩(shī)在我死后都不能流傳。我也明白詩(shī)歌創(chuàng)作在今天或許是一個(gè)人所能做的最荒謬、最無(wú)用的事情。然而，正是在這樣的危難之時(shí)，每一個(gè)人才能發(fā)現(xiàn)或重新發(fā)現(xiàn)他最珍視的東西。于是我那詩(shī)人渴望創(chuàng)作的本能在胸中涌動(dòng)，使我能讓恐懼、懷疑，甚至絕望激發(fā)自己創(chuàng)作。在詩(shī)歌創(chuàng)作中，我覺(jué)得我和人類，和平凡的人緊密相連，他們堅(jiān)守著自己的崗位，直到炸彈落下或是海浪席卷而來(lái)將他們淹沒(méi)。堅(jiān)守是因?yàn)樗嘈胚@是他最能做的事情，盡管這信仰難以用語(yǔ)言傳達(dá)。但詩(shī)人比普通人幸運(yùn)，因?yàn)樗墓ぷ魇冀K是他的天職。他就像肩負(fù)著一種宗教使命一樣，或許并不需要有宗教信仰，但因?yàn)樵?shī)歌或是不涉及瑣事和瞬息即逝的事物，或是將它們作為本質(zhì)和永恒的意象，詩(shī)歌至少是一種精神活動(dòng)。

　　人需要有一種宗教信仰使他的生活有意義。我希望我也能有這樣的信仰，但我的任何信念總會(huì)充滿困惑和保留看法。然而，我寫(xiě)詩(shī)就是努力發(fā)掘生活的意義。偶爾，我用詩(shī)歌表現(xiàn)自己的經(jīng)歷和感受，從中也明白了我不曾意識(shí)到自己已經(jīng)懂得的道理。因此，對(duì)我來(lái)說(shuō)，詩(shī)歌創(chuàng)作的沖動(dòng)表現(xiàn)出來(lái)的，不是因?yàn)椴幌到y(tǒng)而不太真實(shí)的東西……而是一種信仰，那就是，人必須享受生活，探索生活的真諦，提高生活的品質(zhì)。人可各盡其能，而我則通過(guò)寫(xiě)詩(shī)盡善盡美地完成我的使命。