最近在网络上读到一段非常精辟的论文，值得介绍给喜欢文艺评论的各界作者和读者参考。这段话的原文颇长，附在文末，谨供有志于钻研优越英文的读者参考。这里是中文试译：

“维吉尼亚. 吴尔芙呼吁的是对于美国诗人华特. 惠特曼所言 ‘我包罗万象’ 的进一步内省，以及对于法国诗人亚瑟. 韩波所言 ‘我即他者’ 的深度透视。她呼吁一个不要求统合认同的环境，因为统合是一种限制，甚至压迫。我们经常注意到，吴尔芙在自己的小说中为各种角色做这种呼吁，也偶尔在论文中以身作则，用调查、评判的口吻予以表扬、延伸，坚持要求多样性，不受削减或复归，追求神秘性，后者亦即事物的持续发生，扩展，无可限制，兼容并蓄。

“吴尔芙的论文经常是对于此一无羁意识、此一不确定原则的宣言以及相关的范例或调查。这些论文也是反批评的范本，毕竟我们经常认为批评的目的在于钉死某一对象。在我从事文艺评论的这些年来，经常开玩笑说，博物馆对于艺术家就像标本制作者对于活生生的野鹿那样喜爱，那是一种渴望获有，要求稳定，追求确信，对于开放、变幻不定而充满冒险性的艺术家的作品做出定义的态度，常见于许多在所谓 ‘艺术界’ 的封闭环境中工作的人。

“在文学批评和学术研究的领域中，针对艺术家企图和意念的隐晦性以及其作品多变性也有类似的侵略态度，总想确认那些无法确认的部份，探知那些难以探知的东西，把天空中的飞鸟转变成餐盘中的烤鸡，凡事都要分门别类，归纳统合。无法归类的东西就无法侦测了。

”有一种反批评追求对于艺术作品的扩展，为其进行联系，开放其意念，邀请各种其他的可能性。优秀的批评可以解放一部艺术作品，促进其完整的体现，保持其生命长存，推动永不止息的对话而持续鼓动想像。这不是反对诠释，而是反对限制，反抗对于灵性的戕害。这种批评本身就是优秀的艺术。

“这种批评不在于评论者和文本的对抗，不追求权威。其着重的是和作品及其意涵一起遨遊，诱导其开花结果，邀请他人一起对话，发现前所未知的境界，开启过去封锁的门户。这种批评对艺术作品本质的神秘性保持尊重，这神秘性正是艺术作品的美和欢悦之所在，不容削减，更充满主观。最坏的批评是坚持己见，让别人都哑口无言：最好的批评则是开展一场永远不必结束的对话。“

这段话出于美国文化历史学家瑞贝卡. 索尔尼 (Rebecca Solnit) 于 2014 年 4 月 24 日在《纽约客》杂志网络版发表的论文 “吴尔芙的黑暗世界：拥抱无解” (Woolf's Darkness: Embracing the Inexplicable，写于 2009 年)，后来收入她在同年出版的《直男为我解说》(Men Explain Things to Me) 一书。关于 “直男” 一词相当有趣，中文有 “直男癌” 一词，形容的就是那些自以为是、好为人师的（男）人经常滔滔不绝地为其他（女）人解释后者早已知道的事物。

不过，在此长篇大论引用索尔尼这段论文的目的，在于和各界作者、读者、论者分享一个观点，希望和大家进行交流、对话。其实 “批评” 一词不如 “评论”，因为后者鼓励论辨，邀请对谈，提倡客观，推广 “百花齐放”，而这也是文艺作品的本质，在唤起 “百家争鸣” 之余更追求知音。“权威” 在当前的网络时代已经不复也不应存在，唯有提倡、坚持并捍卫言论自由，才能确保并提倡网络的民主性，文学和艺术也才能保有活活泼泼的生命。

（作者注：本文开端引用图片中的英文姑且可以翻译为：赞许让你好受，批评却能助你精进。）

以下为英文原文：

"Woolf is calling for a more introspective version of the poet Walt Whitman's 'I contain multitudes', a more diaphanous version of the poet Arthur Rimbaud's 'I is another'. She is calling for circumstances that do not compel the unity of identity that is a limitation or even repression. It's often noted that she does this for her characters in her novels, less often that, in her essays, she exemplifies it in the investigative, critical voice that celebrates and expands, and demands it in her insistence on multiplicity, on irreducibility, and maybe on mystery, if mystery is the capacity of something to keep coming, to go beyond, to be uncircumscribable, to contain more."

"Woolf's essays are often both manifestos about and examples or investigations of this unconfined consciousness, this uncertainty principle. They are also models of a counter-criticism, for we often think the purpose of criticism is to nail things down. During my years as an art critic, I used to joke that museums love artists the way that taxidermists live deer, and something of that desire to secure, to stabilise, to render certain and define the open-ended, nebulous, and adventurous work of artists is present in many who work in that confinement sometimes called the art world."

"A similar kind of aggression against the slipperiness of the work and the ambiguities of the artist's intent and meaning often exists in literary criticism and academic scholarship, a desire to make certain what is uncertain, to know what is unknowable, to turn the flight across the sky into the roast upon the plate, to classify and contain. What escapes categorisation can escape detection altogether."

"There is a kind of counter-criticism that seeks to expand the work of art, by connecting it, opening up its meanings, inviting in the possibilities. A great work of criticism can liberate a work of art, to be seen fully, to remain alive, to engage in conversation that will not ever end but will instead keep feeding the imagination. Not against interpretation, but against confinement, against the killing of the spirit. Such criticism is itself great art."

"This is a kind of criticism that does not pit the critic against the text, does not seek authority. It seeks instead to travel with the work and its ideas, to invite it to blossom and invite others into a conversation that might have been unseen and open doors that might have been locked. This is a kind of criticism that respects the essential mystery of a work of art, which is in part its beauty and its pleasure, both of which are irreducible and subjective. The worst criticism seeks to have the last word and leave the rest of us in silence; the best opens up an exchange that need never end."

“Woolf's Darkness: Embracing the Inexplicable” by Rebecca Solnit, The New Yorker, April 24, 2014.