Lesson Eght The Case for Greater Clarity in Writing.docVIP

Lesson Eight The Case for Greater Clarity in Writing 写作中写得更清楚的理由 The literary fashion of these days is not to know what you mean and, if challenged, to shrug a careless shoulder and say that you write what you write and the reader must make his oen interpretation. The author’s observations are presumed to be pregnant; the reader is to be midwife and bring the child to birth. It is no business of genius to make itself plain. 如今的文学时尚就是不知道你说什么，假如你受到挑战，你就耸一耸无所谓的肩膀，说你写你的，读者需要去作自己的阐释，作者所说的话被假定孕育着意义，读者需要去做助产师把孩子生出来。天才作品的任务不是要把话说得明白。 This was the line taken up by T.S. Eliot in an interview given after the first production of The Cocktail Party at the Edinburgh Festival of Arts in 1949. The play later acted with immense success in London and New York was, I think, a simplified and improved version of the original. But that does not affect Eliot’s replay to the charge of being obscure and his tenet that the artist is under no obligation to be explicit. He projects his thoughts, feeling, and fancies: on the task of interpretation the public must bring its own wits to bear 这就是1949年爱丁堡艺术节首次演出了“鸡尾酒会”后T.S. Eliot在接受采访时采取的路线。 该剧后来在伦敦和纽约上演获得了巨大的成功，我认为，该剧本是在原版上进行了简写和改进的版本。但这并不影响Eliot对他晦涩难懂的指控的回答，也不影响他的关于艺术家没有责任把话说得明白易懂的信条。艺术家就是去投射自己的思想，感情，和想像，读者大众必须用自己的智慧去诠释。 I suggest in return that this attitude betrays either laziness or affectation. It is the abdication of authorship. It is the business of the literary artist to know his mind and to speak it. Mr. Eliot, after all, was dramatizing certain problems of conduct and of human relations and he presented a Psychotherapeutic Sage as moral preceptor. He was not just fetching up thoughts that lie too deep for tears: he was informing us about destiny and salvation, important matters on which we have a right to clear instruction. In that cause we surely are entitled to know what his opinions on these great matters are. The fact that the play was written in what might be called conversational verse does not affect the proposition that an autho