By Rachel Corbett

捷克籍天才詩人雷納·瑪麗亞·里爾克自出生起就充滿了矛盾和困惑。在他誕生的前一年他的姐姐不幸夭折，悲傷的母親把他當作女兒的替身，因此給他取了一個女性名字René Maria Rilke，并且在他上學前一直給他編辮子，讓他穿女孩兒的衣服。母親一直渴望成為貴族，她不顧丈夫的反對，從小培養(yǎng)兒子賦詩作文的能力。作為捷克人，作者終生不會說母語，卻掌握了德語、俄語、法語和丹麥語。瘦弱早熟的他在學校成為霸凌對象；少時的他熱切盼望進入成人世界，因為他無法與資質(zhì)平平的勞動階層的同齡人共處，而他的教養(yǎng)又不足以讓他踏進貴族圈子；他參軍入伍后仍然日夜讀歌德，夢寐作詩文。為了逃避去銀行或律師事務所工作，里爾克沒有選擇藝術界趨之若鶩的巴黎，而是選擇旅居當時作為歐洲思想和知識界“神經(jīng)中樞”的慕尼黑，在那里他受到哲學、社會學、心理學的新學派新思潮的熏陶，最重要的是他遇到了被譽為“歐洲大陸知識沙龍的玫瑰”的著名作家盧·安德烈亞斯·莎樂美，正是莎樂美把他那個女性化的名字改成了Rainer Maria Rilke。

美國作家兼記者雷切爾·科比特（Rachel Corbett）在2016年出版的《你必須改變你的生活：雷納·瑪麗亞·里爾克和奧古斯特·羅丹的故事》（You Must Change Your Life： The Story of Rainer Maria Rilke and Auguste Rodin）一書中向讀者講述了20世紀初雕刻家羅丹和詩人里爾克之間的友情，以及他倆與生活在法國、德國的眾多思想家、文學家和藝術家之間的交集和思想的碰撞。本期摘取書中對里爾克早期經(jīng)歷的敘述。

Indeed， it was a death that chaperoned（陪伴）the poets very entrance into the world， on December 4， 1875. A young housewife from a well-to-do family， Sophia Rilke lost an infant girl a year before giving birth to her only son. From the moment he was born， she saw him as her replacement daughter and christened him with the feminine name René Maria Rilke. Sometimes she called him by her own nickname， Sophie. Born two months prematurely（早產(chǎn)地）， the boy stayed small for his age and passed easily for（很容易被當作）a girl. His mother outfitted（穿戴）him in ghostly white dresses and braided his long hair until he entered school. This splintered（分裂的）identity had mixed consequences for Rilke. On the one hand， he grew up believing that there was something fundamentally mistaken about his nature. But on the other hand， his acquiescence（默許，順從）pleased his mother， which was something no one else seemed able to do， especially not his father.

Josef Rilke worked for the Austrian army as a railroad station master. He never rose to the officers rank that his well-bred wife had hoped for， and he spent the rest of his marriage paying for the disappointment. His good looks and early professional promise initially won his bride over， but Sophia prized status above all else and never forgave Josef for failing to bring her the noble title she bargained for.

Josef， meanwhile， resented the way he babied René， and later blamed her for the boys incessant versifying（作詩）. He was not mistaken. Sophia had decided that if they werent going to be granted nobility， they would fake it， and so she began teaching René poetry in an attempt to “refine” him. She had him memorizing Friedrich Schiller1 verses before he could read and copying entire poems by age seven. She insisted he learn French， too， but certainly not Czech. Under the imperial rule of the Austro-Hungarian Empire， Czech was relegated（被貶為）to the servant classes， while German became the dominant language in Prague.

Born into this segregated（被隔離的）city， Rilke quickly discovered that gender was not the only boundary that proved contradictory in his early life. He was part of Pragues German-speaking minority， which enjoyed vast cultural and economic advantages over the Czech majority. Liberal families like the Rilkes wanted to live peacefully alongside the Slavs（斯拉夫人）， but they kept to their own schools， theatres and neighborhoods， delineated（用……勾畫）by street signs written in their own language. Rilke would go on to speak Russian， Danish and French， but he always regretted never learning the language native to his homeland.

Young Rilke longed only to join the adult world. He was too intellectual to keep company with the workingclass boys and he wasnt refined enough for the aristocratic ones. Solitude might have suited him fine， but he wouldnt be so lucky. To his classmates， René was fragile， precocious（早熟的）and a moral scold—all qualities that aligned into ideal crosshairs（瞄準線，喻指對象）for bullies.

In any case， the sickroom became Rilkes sanctuary（避難所）at military school. It provided immediate asylum from his antagonizers（對抗者）and， more importantly， allowed him time and space to read. Lying in bed， he rolled around with sentences day and night. He cried into pages of Goethe2. His grades in literature classes started to improve， though they dropped in fencing and gym. Despite his failing physical education， Rilke still thought he could be a military officer， and at one point tried to prove it to his instructors by writing an eightypage “History of the Thirty-Years War.”

At the suggestion of teachers， the boy began submitting poems to newspapers， and several were accepted. He survived on these small consolations until he turned fifteen， when， finally， his parents saved him from that “dungeon（地牢）of childhood，” as he called the academy. But he fared（進展，成功）no better at the business school they sent him to next in the Austrian town of Linz3. Noticing with“scorn and uneasiness” that his son was still writing poems， Josef tried to convince René to focus more on his studies and write only on the weekends. He saw no reason why his son couldnt maintain both a job and a hobby， which was how he saw poetry. But to René， his poems were his “dream children，” and nothing was more upsetting than the thought of sacrificing them to a dull office job. He had decided that the artist who only wrote on the weekends was “not an artist at all.”

When Rilkes psychodramatic（心理劇的）playwriting fared no better， he did not consider the possibility that his work was amateur. Instead， he blamed readers for failing to understand it. Prague was a town of the bygone（過去的事）， filled with graveyards， castles and parochial dilettantes（狹隘的藝術愛好者）， he concluded. The people there were so stuck in the past they even looked old. “The only progress they know is when their coffins rot to pieces or their garments fall apart，” he wrote. While Rilke admired many Slavic traditions， including their folk history and reverence for the land， the people were too poor to concern themselves with literary pursuits. The Austrians were worse because they could afford to embrace the arts， but cared only about status and money.

When Rilke turned twenty， he realized that if his poetry didnt take off soon his parents would have their doubts validated（被證實的）. He would be forced to take a job at a bank or law firm in Prague and stay there， maybe forever. The city was not an environment hospitable to creativity， with its air that could hardly“be breathed， thick with stale（空氣污濁的）summer and unconquered childhood，” he wrote.

Rilke had met young people who moved to cities known for nurturing artists. Many had gone to Paris， but Rilke believed the French exerted too much influence over the artistic production of Eastern Europe. He saw a better option in Munich， then the intellectual nerve center of Europe， where the most coveted（夢寐以求的）social seat in town was at the lecture hall. At the cafés， secular youth debated Nietzsches4 declaration of “the death of God，” while the artists revolted against the academy， resulting in the Munich Secession5 of 1892—five years before Gustav Klimt6 led the movement in Vienna.

The German doctor Wilhelm Wundt7 accidentally forged the birth of psychology in the 1860s， while he was conducting some routine research on reaction times. He had rigged（裝置）the pendulum（鐘擺）of a clock into a timer he called a “thought meter，” when it occurred to him that perhaps his experiment measured not only a neurological phenomenon， but an unconscious one. Reaction times seemed to bridge the gap between voluntary attention， between the brain and the mind. If science could measure the former， he couldnt see why it wouldnt also apply to the latter. In 1879， Wundt founded the worlds first laboratory for psychological experimentation in Leipzig（萊比錫，德國城市）.

It took a philosopher from the next generation， Theodor Lipps8 to draw the link between Wundts new discipline and his own， aesthetics. Lipps had been forerunner in the creation of phenomenology（現(xiàn)象學）， but started to break away from the field and its figurehead， Edmund Husserl9， in order to pursue a psychological approach to his central question： Why does art give us pleasure？

Lipps found a name for his theory in an 1873 dissertation（論文）by a German aesthetics student named Robert Vischer. When people project their emotions， ideas or memories onto objects they enact a process that Vischer called einfühlung， literally “feeling into.” The British psychologist Edward Titchener translated the word into English as “empathy”（移情）in 1909， deriving it from the Greek empatheia， or “in pathos（同情）.”

Empathy explained why people sometimes describe the experience of “l(fā)osing themselves” in a powerful work of art. Maybe their ears deafen to the sounds around them， the hair rises on the backs of their necks or they lose track of the passage of time. Something produces a “gut feeling”（直覺）or triggers a flood of memory， like Prousts10 madeleine（瑪?shù)铝盏案猓? When a work of art is effective， it draws the observer out into the world， while the observer draws the work back into his or her body. Empathy was what made red paint run like blood in the veins（靜脈）， or a blue sky fill the lungs with air.

But it was psychologists who transformed the obscure term from German art history into the cornerstone of human emotion that we understand as empathy today. In Vienna， the young professor Sigmund Freud11 wrote to a friend in 1896 that he had “immersed”himself in the teachings of Lipps， “who I suspect has the clearest mind among present-day philosophical writers.”Several years later， Freud thanked Lipps for giving him“the courage and capacity” to write his book Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious.

Apart from Lippss class， Rilke signed up for courses on Darwin and Renaissance art， taking an especially keen interest in the paintings of Sandro Botticelli12， whose sad， pleading-eyed Madonnas（圣母瑪利亞）seemed to “stand at the heart of the longing of our time.”

Soon enough， Rilke found himself moving within social circles alongside Siegfried Wagner， the composers son， and Jakob Wassermann， the German writer， Jens Peter Jacobsen，13 whose book about a young “dreamer，floundering（掙扎）around in a slough（泥沼）of doubts and self-analysis，” Niels Lyhne， would become an essential source of comfort to Rilke for years to come. But even this would not compare with the gift Wassermann gave him when， in 1897， he introduced the poet to Lou AndreasSalomé14. For a woman of any era， Andreas-Salomés intellectual influence was extraordinary. For a radical Russian feminist in the nineteenth century， it was almost inconceivable（不可思議的）.

Louise von Salomé， as she was named at birth， was an accomplished philosopher and writer， but today she is better remembered as a muse（繆斯，靈感的源泉）. She had rejected two marriage proposals from Friedrich Nietzsche， who once called her “by far the smartest person I ever knew，” and another from Nietzsches friend the philosopher Paul Rée15. Although she didnt want to marry either man， she was fascinated by their minds and suggested they all live together in an intellectual “holy trinity.” Astonishingly， they agreed.

Andreas-Salomés main gift was her acutely analytical（善于解析的）mind. She had an uncanny（神秘的，離奇的）ability to comprehend abstruse（深奧的）ideas from the eras most formidable（令人敬畏的）thinkers， often illuminating aspects of their own arguments that they had not even conceived. She was a kind of intellectual therapist（治療師）： listening， describing， analyzing and repeating back their ideas in order to illuminate the places where shadows fell in their logic.

Rilke added himself to Andreas-Salomés long list of admirers almost from the moment he learned of her existence. He had just written his “Visions of Christ” cycle， a Nietzsche-inspired challenge to Christian dogma， when an editor friend suggested he read her essay on similar themes， “Jesus the Jew.”

Rilke felt for Andreas-Salomé the kind of reckless passion he would later ascribe to young people who “fling themselves at each other， when love takes possession of them， scatter themselves， just as they are， in all their untidiness， disorder， confusion.” Andreas-Salomé did not return Rilkes unhinged（錯亂的）adoration， but she began to genuinely appreciate his talent and believed that the qualities she disliked in him could be fixed with a little grooming（調(diào)教）. She began to mold the poet into a version of himself that she found more attractive. She advised him to copy her courtly（典雅的）style of handwriting and to cultivate his masculinity（男子氣概）. The name René was too French and feminine， she said， and suggested he change it to the sturdier， Gemanic Rainer.

The poet hungered to become her creation. More than his first great lover， Andreas-Salomé was his confidante（知己）， his mentor， his muse， even a kind of mother—if not to the young man， then at least to the artist maturing inside him. “I am still soft， I can be like wax in your hands. Take me， give me a form， finish me，” he wrote in an autobiographical story when he met her. Rilke welcomed her rechristening him with this enigmatic（謎一般的）new name， which would take on an almost mythical identity of its own. To the author Stefan Zweig16， the letters looked as if they ought to be hammered into find threads of gold.“Rainer Maria Rilke，” wrote another friend， “your very name is a poem.”

1. 弗里德里克·席勒（1759—1805），德國詩人、劇作家，對德國文學具有重要和深遠的影響。

2. 歌德（1749—1832），德國最偉大的作家之一，他還是著名的思想家、科學家，代表作有《少年維特之煩惱》和《浮士德》。

3. 林茨，奧地利第三大城市。

4. 尼采（1844—1900），德國哲學家、語言學家、文化評論家、詩人和思想家。主要著作有《權力意志》《悲劇的誕生》《不合時宜的考察》等。

5. 慕尼黑分離派，是一些視覺藝術家于1892年創(chuàng)辦的協(xié)會，反對慕尼黑藝術家協(xié)會的保守和家長制作風，他們以合作的形式增加影響力以便確保獲得傭金并得以生存，促進和捍衛(wèi)他們的藝術。

6. 古斯塔夫·克利姆特（1862—1918），奧地利象征主義畫家，“維也納分離派”奠基人。

7. 威廉·馮特（1832—1920），德國生理學家、心理學家和哲學家，被公認為是實驗心理學之父。

8. 西奧多·立普斯（1851—1914），德國哲學家，以其美學的理論而聞名，將“移情”定義為“將自己投射到感知對象上”，并開辟了心理學和哲學之間跨學科研究的新分支。

9. 埃德蒙·胡塞爾（1859—1938），德國唯心主義哲學家，現(xiàn)象學創(chuàng)始人。

10. 普魯斯特（1871—1922），《追憶逝水年華》的作者，20世紀法國最偉大的小說家之一，意識流文學的先驅(qū)與大師。

11. 西格蒙德·弗洛伊德（1856—1939），奧地利精神病醫(yī)師、心理學家、精神分析學派創(chuàng)始人，著有《夢的解析》。

12. 桑德羅·波堤切利（1445—1510），意大利著名畫家，歐洲文藝復興早期佛羅倫薩畫派的代表畫家，以圣母子像而聞名。

13. 此處提及的三個人依次為：西格弗里·瓦格納（1869—1930），德國作曲家及指揮，著名作曲家理查德·瓦格納的兒子；雅各布·瓦色爾曼（1873—1934），德國猶太裔作家、小說家；延斯·彼得·雅各布森（1847—1885），丹麥小說家，詩人和科學家。他開始了丹麥文學中的自然主義運動，并成為北歐“現(xiàn)代突破”文學運動的一部分，代表作為《尼勒斯·萊尼》。

14. 盧·安德烈亞斯·莎樂美（1861—1937），一位才華橫溢的女作家，她是俄羅斯流亡貴族的女兒，特立獨行的女權主義者；她為尼采所深愛、受弗洛伊德賞識、與里爾克同居同游，是19世紀晚期歐洲大陸知識沙龍界的“玫瑰”。

15. 保羅·李（1849—1901），德國作家和哲學家，也是尼采的朋友。

16. 斯蒂芬·茨威格（1881—1942），奧地利著名作家、小說家和傳記作家。