"The best lack all conviction,

While the worst are full of passionate intesity."

“優秀的人們信心盡失，

壞蛋們則充滿了熾烈的狂熱。”

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.

對我來說，葉芝的這兩行詩概括了今天的現實，信仰的貨幣似乎已經貶值了。我是在基督教的熏陶下長大的。后來有一段時間我相信共產主義給這個世界帶來了最大的希望。我承認信仰的必要性，但我無法忘記歷代的偉大信仰是如何因其擁護者的狂熱、教條、褊狹、殘忍、學術欺詐、愚蠢、偏執或機會主義而遭到損害的。

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.

那么，難道我就沒有信仰嗎？信仰存在于你的心靈深處，當希望和幻想漸漸枯竭，沉淀下來的就是信仰。為了它，你甘愿做出任何犧牲，因為沒有它，你的存在就毫無意義——你只不過是一個會行走的影子。我知道我的內心深處有什么。在別無選擇的情況下，我愿意犧牲任何人際關系、任何生活方式去尋找使我能創作詩歌的真理。我知道很有可能我寫的每一首詩在我死后都不能流傳。我也明白詩歌創作在今天或許是一個人所能做的最荒謬、最無用的事情。然而，正是在這樣的危難之時，每一個人才能發現或重新發現他最珍視的東西。于是我那詩人渴望創作的本能在胸中涌動，使我能讓恐懼、懷疑，甚至絕望激發自己創作。在詩歌創作中，我覺得我和人類，和平凡的人緊密相連，他們堅守著自己的崗位，直到炸彈落下或是海浪席卷而來將他們淹沒。堅守是因為他相信這是他最能做的事情，盡管這信仰難以用語言傳達。但詩人比普通人幸運，因為他的工作始終是他的天職。他就像肩負著一種宗教使命一樣，或許并不需要有宗教信仰，但因為詩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和永恒的意象，詩歌至少是一種精神活動。

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.

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充滿困惑和保留看法。然而，我寫詩就是努力發掘生活的意義。偶爾，我用詩歌表現自己的經歷和感受，從中也明白了我不曾意識到自己已經懂得的道理。因此，對我來說，詩歌創作的沖動表現出來的，不是因為不系統而不太真實的東西……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。人可各盡其能，而我則通過寫詩盡善盡美地完成我的使命。

實習生：李帥男