Walter Benjamin: "Unpacking my Library: A Talk About Book Collecting"


【Excerpt】 
中譯：張旭東 
英譯： HARRY ZOHN

我正在打開我的藏書。是的，我在做這件事。書本還未上架，還沒沾染歸列有序的淡淡乏味，我還不能在它們的行列前來回巡視，向友好的觀眾展示。這你們不用擔心。相反，我得邀請你們跟我一道進入打開的、狼藉遍地的箱簍中。空氣中瀰漫著木屑塵埃，地板上遍佈紙屑，我得請你們跟我涉足於在黑暗中待了兩年後重見天日的成堆書卷，從而你們興許能夠和我分享一種心境。這當然不是哀婉的心緒，而是一種企盼，一個真正的收藏家被這些書籍激發的企盼。因為這樣一位收藏家正在跟你們談話，而細心觀察你會發現他不過是在談論他自己。假如我為了要顯得客觀實在而令人信服，把一個藏書的主要部分和珍品向你們一一列數；假如我向你們陳述這些書的歷史，甚至它們對一個作家的用處，我這不是太冒昧了嗎？我本人至少有比這更明確、更不隱晦的意圖：我真正關心的是讓你們了解一個藏書家與他所藏書籍的關係，讓你們了解收藏而不是書冊的蒐集。如果我通過詳談不同的藏書方式來論說收藏，那完全是隨意的。這種或別的做法僅僅是作為一個堤壩，阻擋任何收藏家在觀賞其藏物時都會受其拍擊的記憶春潮。任何一種激情都瀕臨混沌，但收藏家的激情鄰於記憶的混沌。事情還不止於此：那貫注於過往年代，在我眼前浮現的機遇和命運在這些書籍習以為常的混亂中十分醒目。因為，這堆藏書除了是習慣已適應了的混亂，以至於能顯得秩序井然，又會是別的什麼呢？你們當中誰都聽說過有人丟了書就臥病不起，或有人為了獲得書而淪為罪犯。正是在這些領域裡 ，任何秩序都是千鈞一髮、岌岌可危的平衡舉措。 “ 唯一準確的知識 ” ，安納托 · 法朗士（Anatole France）說， “ 是出版日期和書籍格式的知識 ” 。的確，如果一個圖書館的混亂有什麼對應，那就是圖書目錄的井然有序。

I am unpacking my library. Yes, I am. The books are not yet on the shelves, not yet touched by the mild boredom of order. I cannot march up and down their ranks to pass them in review before a friendly audience. You need not fear any of that. Instead, I must ask you to join me in the disorder of crates that have been wrenched open, the air saturated with the dust of wood, the floor covered with torn paper, to join me among piles of volumes that are seeing daylight again after two years of darkness, so that you may be ready to share with me a bit of the mood - it is certainly not an elegiac mood but, rather, one of anticipation - which these books arouse in a genuine collector. For such a man is speaking only about himself. Would it not be presumptuous of me if, in order to appear convincingly objective and down-to-earth, I enumerated for you the main sections or prize pieces of a library, if I presented you with their history or even their usefulness to a writer? I, for one, have in mind something less obscure, something more palpable than that; what I am really concerned with is giving you some insight into the relationship of a book collector to his possessions, into collecting rather than a collection. If I do this by elaborating on the various ways of acquiring books, this is something entirely arbitrary. This or any other procedure is merely a dam against the spring tide of memories which surges toward any collector as he contemplates his possessions. Every passion borders on the chaotic, but the collector’s passion borders on the chaos of memories. More than that: the chance, the fate, that suffuse the past before my eyes are conspicuously present in the accustomed confusion of the books. For what else is this collection but a disorder to which habit has accommodated itself to such an extent that it can appear as order? You have all heard of people whom the loss of their books has turned into invalids, or those who in order to acquire them became criminals. These are the very areas in which any order is a balancing act of extreme precariousness. “The only exact knowledge there is,” said Anatole France, “ is the knowledge of the date of publication and the format of books.” And indeed, if there is a counterpart o f the confusion of a library, it is the order of its catalogue.

......


現在我已收拾到最後一個半開的箱子，時間已過了半夜。我心中充滿與現在所談很不同的想法——並不是思想而是意象，是記憶。我發現那麼多東西的各種城市的記憶：里加，拿波里，慕尼黑，丹茲格，莫斯科，佛羅倫薩，菲色，巴黎；記憶中還有羅森塔爾（Rosenthal）在慕尼黑豪華的住房，丹茲格證券交易所，已故的漢斯·勞爾（Hans Rhaue）的期票在那兒支付，蘇森古在柏林北部的霉氣薰人的書窯。記憶呈現這些書所在的房間，我在慕尼黑的學生宿舍，在波恩的房間，伯蓮茲湖畔的伊色瓦德的幽靜，最後是我兒童時代的房間，現在我擁有的數千本書中有四五千本先前就在那個地址。
啊，收藏家真幸福，閒人真快樂。人們對這種人要求最少，他們中最能自適愜心者，莫如那個戴著史畢茲維格“書蟲”（Spitzwegs Bookworm）面具，能過名譽不佳生活的那個角色。因為他內在有種精神，或至少是小精靈。這精靈確保一個收藏家——我指的是真正的、名副其實的收藏家——擁有藏物，使之成為他與身外物品所能有的最親昵的關係。並不是物品在他身上復活，而是他生活於物品之中。於是我在你們面前建構了他的居室，用書籍作為建築的磚瓦，現在他就要退隱內室了，這也理應如此。

Now I am on the last half-emptied case and it is way past midnight. Other thoughts fill me than the ones I am talking about -not thoughts but images, memories. Memories of the cities in which I found so many things: Riga, Naples, Munich, Danzig, Moscow, Florence, Basel, Paris; memories of Rosenthals sumptuous rooms in Munich, of the Danzig Stockturm where the late Hans Rhaue was domiciled, of Süssenguts musty book cellar in North Berlin; memories of the rooms where these books had been housed, of my students den in Munich, of my room in Bern, of the solitude of Iseltwald on the Lake of Brienz, and finally of my boyhood room, the former location of only four or five of the several thousand volumes that are piled up around me.
O bliss of the collector, bliss of the man of leisure! Of no one has less been expected, and no one has had a greater sense of wellbeing than the man who has been able to carryon his disreputable existence in the mask of Spitzwegs "Bookworm." For inside him there are spirits, or at least little genii, which have seen to it that for a collector-and I mean a real collector, a collector as he ought to be-ownership is the most intimate relationship that one can have to objects. Not that they come alive in him; it is he who lives in them. So I have erected one of his dwellings, with books as the building stones, before you, and now he is going to disappear inside, as is only fitting.