With respect to Greek tragedy, which of course presents itself to us only as word-drama, I have even intimated that the lack of congruity between myth and expression might easily lead us to regard it as shallower and less significant than it really is, and accordingly to attribute to it a more superficial effect than it must have had according to the testimony of the ancients: for how easily one forgets that what the word-poet did not succeed in doing, namely, attain the highest spiritualization and ideality of the myth, he might very well succeed in doing every moment as creative musician!
至于希腊悲剧,——当然今日我们只能看到剧本,——我甚至指出:因为剧情与台词并不完全一致,我们不难误会,以为悲剧是浅薄无聊的,其实并非如此;因此我们就设想它的效果比古人所指证的更为浅薄。因为我们容易忘记:诗人在语言方面达不到的那种神话的最高净化和理想境界,他作为创造的音乐家随时可以达到!
To be sure, we are almost forced to construct for ourselves by scholarly research the superior power of the musical effect in order to experience something of the incomparable comfort which must have been characteristic of true tragedy.
当然,我们必须苦心钻研去恢复悲剧音乐效果原有的感染力,才能体会到真正悲剧所特有的无比的一些快慰。
Even this musical superiority, however, would only have been felt by us had we been Greeks; for in the entire development of Greek music--as compared with the infinitely richer music known and familiar to us--we imagine we hear only the youthful song of the musical genius modestly intoned.
然而,甚至这种悲剧音乐的感染力,也除非我们变成了古希腊人才能感受:因为古希腊音乐在其全部发展史上,同我们所喜闻乐听的无限丰富的现代音乐比较起来,我相信,在我们听来也不过象年轻腼腆的音乐天才初露才华的歌曲罢了。
The Greeks, as the Egyptian priests say, are eternal children, and in tragic art too they are only children who do not know what a sublime plaything originated in their hands and--was quickly demolished.
埃及祭司们曾说过:古希腊人永远是孩子,在悲剧艺术方面他们也不过是孩子,他们不知道一种多么崇高的玩具由他们亲手创造出来,于是——被破坏了。