【英文原声版02】Gregory Nagy：The Iliad

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Zachary Davis: So, imagine you meet somebody and they have never heard of The Iliad. How do you tell them, what is this book that we're talking about today?

想象一下你遇到了一群人，但他们从来没听说过《伊利亚特》。你怎么告诉他们这本书讲了什么？

Gregory Nagy: It's the story of the Trojan War. Now, what is the Trojan War? If you ask an archaeologist, they will say, “Well, there were so many of them, we can't even count them.” The way the story is told, it’s as if it all happened at one time, and that one time was a very long time: ten years. But even when it comes to those ten years, The Iliad that we have, which is fifteen thousand-plus verses, is focused only on some days of the tenth year of the Trojan War.

《伊利亚特》讲的是特洛伊战争。那什么是特洛伊战争呢？如果你问考古学家，他们会说：“特洛伊战争中的故事太多了，数都数不过来。”《伊利亚特》的叙述方式会让人误以为，战争中所有故事都发生在同一时刻。其实，这所谓的“同一时刻”长达十年。不过，虽然这部史诗长达一万五千多节，它也只讲述了特洛伊战争第十年中的某些日子。

谁创作了《伊利亚特》

Who composed The Iliad

Zachary Davis: The story centers on the Greek warrior Achilles and the Greek king Agamemnon, who are fighting against the Trojans—and against each other. It is among the oldest surviving works of literature, and it’s still read in classrooms around the world—but for a long time, The Iliad wasn’t written down. 

故事围绕着希腊战士阿喀琉斯和希腊国王阿伽门农展开。当时，两人虽然一起攻打特洛伊城，但彼此之间又有矛盾。《伊利亚特》是现存最古老的文学作品之一，并且直到现在，世界各地的人都还能在课堂上读到它。不过在曾经的很长一段时间里，《伊利亚特》都不是以文字形式传播的。

Gregory Nagy: This is a medium where you don't read what is written. You hear what is transmitted orally, generation after generation.

这种传播形式并不需要你去阅读文字，只需要人们一代代地口耳相传。

Zachary Davis: The written version of the text is generally dated to the 7th or 8th century BCE, but the story is likely centuries older. The person who is credited with writing this epic work is Homer. In ancient Greece, Homer was an icon.

《伊利亚特》大概成书于公元前七、八世纪，但此前的几个世纪里，诗里的故事就一直流传着。据说是古希腊人荷马写作了这部史诗。在古希腊，荷马可是个偶像。

Gregory Nagy: Well, Homer is an idealized culture hero who is credited with producing the most perfect form of poetry ever created.

嗯，荷马是个理想化的文化英雄，他被认为创造了有史以来最完美的诗歌形式。

Zachary Davis: He was the perfect author—a single man who wrote the best story there was. But we still don’t know if Homer deserves this credit. It’s more likely that The Iliad was composed by many ancient storytellers—a lot of whom were women.

他是个完美的作者，凭一己之力写出了有史以来最精彩的故事。但我们仍然不确定荷马是否担得起这份荣誉，因为《伊利亚特》看起来更像是由许多古代的故事吟唱者共同创作的，而且其中很多都是女性。

Gregory Nagy: If you ask about the creativity that goes into The Iliad, how much of it is male creativity and how much of it is female creativity? I would say without prejudice that it's about 60 percent female creativity because so much of what is talked about has to do with expression of sadness over human suffering, especially human suffering that leads to death. 

And in the song culture that produced The Iliad, there's a very important component, which is where women lament the dead. They lament the death of their dear ones. And that lamentation is a form of art as well as a form of physical expression. You can cry while you sing and sing while you cry. But that is built into this medium.

如果你要探究《伊利亚特》的创作者，看看这部史诗有多少出自男性之手，又有多少出自女性之手，我会毫无偏颇地告诉你，大概60%都出自女性，因为全书中有非常多笔墨都在刻画人类遭受苦难后的悲痛心情，特别是目睹死亡后的泣血之痛。在孕育了《伊利亚特》的吟唱风俗中，一直有女性悼念逝者的重要传统。她们为亲人的离世呼天抢地，这不仅仅是肢体行为，也是艺术表现形式。人们泪如泉涌，喃喃自语。两声相和，如泣如歌，你可以在吟唱的时候哭泣，也可以在哭泣的时候吟唱。久而久之，这种边痛哭边吟唱的方式就建立了起来。

痛苦的战争现实

The painful realities of war

Zachary Davis: The Iliad is a story of war—but not in the way you might think. It’s not about the triumphs of battle, but about the painful realities of war. Consider what the ancient Greek philosopher Plato wrote.

《伊利亚特》讲述了战争，但关注点与我们料想的大相径庭。它讲述的不是战争的胜利，而是战争残酷冰冷的悲伤事实。来看看古希腊哲学家柏拉图是如何看待这一点的。

Gregory Nagy: When Plato says, Oh, Homer teaches us about war. You know what that really means? Homer teaches us about the human condition. What it is like to face death in warfare. And facing death is something that's done not only by the warrior. It's also the loved ones who will be affected by whether somebody is killed, or brutally wounded, or disappears forever in a war. It's all about the sorrow of war.

柏拉图说，荷马让我们真正理解了战争。柏拉图为什么这么说呢？因为荷马让我们了解了战争中人的处境，揭示了战争中直面死亡是什么感受，并且告诉我们面对死亡的不仅仅有战士，还有为他们牵肠挂肚的亲人——他们会担心自己所爱的人会不会被杀，会不会身负重伤？或者在战争中永远消失了。这一切都汇成一曲战争悲歌。

Zachary Davis: Welcome to Writ Large【本课程英文版名称，为喜马拉雅官方自制】, a podcast about how books change the world. I’m Zachary Davis. In each episode, I talk to one of the world’s leading scholars about the impact one book had. For this episode, I spoke with Gregory Nagy, a Harvard professor of classical Greek literature and comparative literature and the director of the Center for Hellenic Studies.

I talked with Professor Nagy about The Iliad, a story that has influenced the world for over three thousand years. But The Iliad isn’t just a story. For the ancient Greeks, it was history.

欢迎收听：100本改变你和世界的书，在这里我们为大家讲述改变世界的书籍。我是扎卡里·戴维斯。每一集，我都会和一位世界顶尖学者探讨某一本书带给世界的影响。在本集，我采访了格雷戈里·纳吉教授，他是哈佛大学古希腊文学和比较文学教授，也是希腊研究中心的主任。我和纳吉教授谈论了《伊利亚特》，这个故事在三千多年里一直影响着世界。但《伊利亚特》不仅仅是一个故事，对于古希腊人来说，它就是历史。

《伊利亚特》如何影响古希腊人

How The Iliad affected the ancient Greeks

Gregory Nagy: For these people, everything that happened really happened. Everything that anybody says, whether it's a hero or whether it's a God, was really said, really spoken. We're dealing with a world where myth was truth. It was a society's way of expressing true moral values by way of what you and I call storytelling.

在古希腊人看来，过往的一切都真实发生过。人们口口相传的一切，不论是有关人还是有关神的事情，都是被切切实实讲述过的。那时人们认为神话传说是真的。古希腊社会通过这种吟唱故事的方式，传递着道德价值观。

Zachary Davis: And so to be an educated, civilized Greek, you would study these works? Were these publicly performed during certain ritual times?

所以，要成为受过教育的、文明的古希腊人，你需要学习这些史诗吗？在一些特定仪式上，人们会公开吟唱它们吗？

Gregory Nagy: Yes. These gigantic poems were performed at the Festival of Our Lady of Athens, Athena.

是的，在雅典护城女神雅典娜的节日里，人们会吟唱这些史诗。

Zachary Davis: But ancient Greeks didn’t just hear this epic poem once.

不过古希腊人不止一次地听到这首史诗。

Gregory Nagy: You're doing this from early childhood, and you keep on doing it until you die. And it's the same thing, notionally, each time. And it is hard wired into your mind and heart.Eventually it gets written down, and that's the only reason why we have it. But I'd like you to think about this other world where it's not a question of writing, where the medium doesn't depend on writing. 

Everything depends on the faithful hearing of what is being told by listeners. And I don't like to say audience because when I hear audience, I think of people sitting in an auditorium with folded arms, ready to like or dislike, accept or not accept. I'm talking about a group mentality where those who are speaking and those who are listening are part of that community and feel that they are a community.

你从孩提时代就一直听着它，一直到你与世长辞。而且可以想象，每次你听到的都是一模一样的内容。它深深地萦绕在你的脑海和内心里。最终它被记载下来了，这就是为什么我们如今能看到《伊利亚特》的唯一原因。不过我希望你可以思考一下当时那个时代，那时候有没有书面形式倒不是什么问题，因为故事不是依托于文字来传播的。所有事物都靠人们原原本本地口耳相传。不过我不喜欢把那些听者称为“听众”，因为一提到“听众”这个词，我就会想到人们双臂交叉坐在听众席上，准备着评头论足的样子。而我说的这个是一种集体心态，吟唱者和听者是群体的一份子，也能感受他们是一个群体。

Zachary Davis: So shifting a bit to go back to the way that the story was embedded in life, I can imagine that parents would say to their children, be like Achilles in this regard, or be like Helen, or be like Hector. And they were used as models for life.

咱们稍微回顾一下历史，看看这些故事是如何融入生活的。我可以想象，父母会对孩子们说，在这方面你要像阿喀琉斯、或者某方面像海伦，或者另外某方面像赫克托尔那样。他们被视为人生楷模。

Gregory Nagy: Somebody like Achilles, who is the number one hero of The Iliad—the ancients admired him passionately, but the ancients were also already shocked at some of the things that he was capable of doing. Yes, he's larger than life, but that means that if he makes mistakes, those mistakes, too, are larger than life. And can I play with percentages? 

And this is just subjective. I would say 80 percent of the time, he is somebody who is so admirable—Oh, I wish I could be like him—but then there's 20 percent where he's so unspeakably cruel or even tone-deaf about what's going on, you say to yourself, I never want to be like that. So, yes, models, but selective modeling.

《伊利亚特》中有一些人，比如阿喀琉斯，他是《伊利亚特》中的头号英雄。古人热情讴歌他，但也对他的某些行径深为震惊。没错，他极其引人注目。但这也意味着一旦他犯了错，那些错事也会同样惹人注目。我可以用百分比来说明吗？当然这只是我个人的看法。我觉得80%的时候，阿喀琉斯都让人极为敬仰，让人想要效仿他；但剩下20%的时候，他又残酷到骇人听闻，让人难以置信，让人暗暗告诫自己绝不要像他那样。所以，他确实是个楷模，但不是所有的举动都值得效仿。

为什么《伊利亚特》如此重要？

Why is The Iliad so important?

Zachary Davis: The Iliad was hugely important to the ancient Greeks, but it’s not enough to talk about The Iliad alone. 

《伊利亚特》对古希腊人来说至关重要，但仅仅讨论《伊利亚特》还不够。

Gregory Nagy: When people think about, “Why is The Iliad so important?” They have to keep in mind the other bookend, which is The Odyssey. 

当人们在想为什么《伊利亚特》如此重要的时候，不要忘了另一本书，那就是《奥德赛》。

Zachary Davis: The Odyssey is somewhat of a sequel to The Iliad. It is another epic poem that is also attributed to Homer. The Odyssey tells the story of Odysseus, a Greek warrior who fought alongside Achilles in the Trojan War. But although Odysseus fought at Troy, he is not the hero, and this knowledge haunts him.

《奥德赛》有点像是《伊利亚特》的续集，是荷马编写的另一部史诗。《奥德赛》讲了关于希腊战士奥德修斯的故事，他曾与阿喀琉斯一同参与了特洛伊战争。尽管他也参加了这场战争，却并不是英雄人物，这让他耿耿于怀。

奥德修斯的故事

The story about Odysseus

Gregory Nagy: Here's one way to put it: Odysseus himself, if he is going to become a star of Homeric epic, has to do it in such a way that he has to get over Troy. He has to get over the fact that Achilles will dominate the Trojan war story. And so the only way Odysseus can compete is by literally sailing past The Iliad.

这么说吧，奥德修斯如果要成为荷马史诗中的明星人物，就必须得对特洛伊战争释怀。他必须释怀于一个事实，那就是阿喀琉斯是特洛伊战争中的绝对主角。所以奥德修斯只有脱离《伊利亚特》的故事，他才能和阿喀琉斯比肩。

Zachary Davis: On his voyage home, Odysseus sails past a land filled with mythical creatures called Sirens. The Sirens attempt to lure Odysseus to his death by promising to sing him a song.

在奥德修斯返航回家的途中，他经过了一个岛屿，这个岛屿上有一种被叫做塞壬的神秘生物。塞壬们承诺为他唱歌，试图以此引诱他走向死亡。

Gregory Nagy: What they say, literally, is we know everything in the world, and we also know everything that happened at Troy.

按照《奥德赛》中所写的，塞壬说她们知道世界上的所有事情，也知道在特洛伊发生的所有事情。

Zachary Davis: Odysseus wants to hear the story of Troy, and he wants to hear himself celebrated as the hero.

奥德修斯想听听她们口中特洛伊的故事，想亲耳听到自己被传颂为大名鼎鼎的英雄。

Gregory Nagy: But you see, if he stayed at the island of the sirens and listened to his exploits at Troy, he'd still be there. Odysseus has to make his own epic by going back home successfully and reclaiming his kingship.

但如果他呆在塞壬岛上，听着自己在特洛伊的功绩，他就会一直留在那里。奥德修斯必须成功返乡，夺回王位，才能缔造属于自己的史诗。

 Usually everything that is very important in Greek civilization has a rival.

希腊文明中不少重要作品往往都会遇上与其难分伯仲的佳作。

Zachary Davis: The Iliad’s rival is The Odyssey.

与《伊利亚特》平分秋色的便是《奥德赛》。

赫西俄德：荷马的对手

Hesiod: the rival of Homer

Gregory Nagy: Homer is the most important poet in all Greek civilization, but he has a rival, too, called Hesiod.

荷马是整个希腊文明中最重要的诗人，但还有位诗人与他不相上下，那就是赫西俄德。

Zachary Davis: Hesiod was another celebrated Greek poet. Two of his complete epics survive today: Theogony and The Works and Days. But while these works, and Hesiod himself, were foundational to Ancient Greeks, Homer is the one we remember now. 

赫西俄德是另一位希腊著名诗人，他有两部完整的史诗流传至今，那就是《神谱》和《工作与时日》。不过尽管赫西俄德和他的作品对古希腊人至关重要，但我们如今记住的还是荷马。

《伊利亚特》影响罗马文明

The Iliad influence the Roman culture

Zachary Davis: So once the story gets written down and is foundational to Greek society, it's part of education, it’s part of being civilized. Take us a little past that time. So, it then gets carried into Roman culture, and then through the influence of the Roman culture, it continues to be seen as sort of the urtext of civilization. What's your understanding of the continuing impact that The Iliad had in culture from the Greek period onward.

一旦故事被写下来，成为希腊社会的基础，它就成了教育的一部分。我们稍微回顾一下历史，《伊利亚特》后来在罗马文化中依旧延续，而且得益于罗马文化的影响力，它也得以一直被视为文明的原始文本。您是何看待《伊利亚特》在希腊时期之后对于文化持续不断的影响的呢？

Gregory Nagy: Think back all the way to the split between the Western Roman Empire and the Eastern Roman Empire. Once that happens, essentially the Homeric legacy is cut off from the west and really can't get back there till the Western Renaissance. Meanwhile, in the east, the Homeric Iliad and the Homeric Odyssey together are chugging along as the number one piece of literature, and it always stayed as number one. There never was any lapse in the reception of Homeric tradition.

让我们回溯到罗马帝国分裂时期。自从罗马帝国分裂成东罗马帝国和西罗马帝国，荷马的文化遗产在西罗马帝国就中断了，直到文艺复兴时期才被重拾起来。同时，在东罗马，《伊利亚特》和《奥德赛》合称荷马史诗，在一众文学作品中一骑绝尘，摘得桂冠，而且一直稳居文学榜首。荷马的文化遗产在这儿得以留存延续。

Zachary Davis: The Iliad and The Odyssey remained influential through the Byzantine Empire, also known as the Eastern Roman Empire. And of the two Homeric works, The Iliad was always the more important. 

在拜占庭帝国，它也被叫做东罗马帝国，《伊利亚特》和《奥德赛》有着持续的影响力。并且在这两部荷马的作品中，《伊利亚特》总是更为重要。

Gregory Nagy: The hard fact is that The Odyssey was never more important than The Iliad in Greek traditions. It's different with the Virgilian transmission.

事实确实如此是，在希腊传统中，《奥德赛》的地位从未超过《伊利亚特》。不过，但在在维吉尔的传播下，情况就有所不同了。

《伊利亚特》被重新发现

The Iliad becomes rediscovered

Zachary Davis: The Homeric tradition lived on in the west thanks to Virgil, an ancient Roman poet who lived from the first century BCE to the first century CE. Virgil authored an epic, twelve-scroll poem called The Aeneid, which tells the story of a Trojan hero who appeared in The Iliad. Virgil modeled the tale after The Iliad and The Odyssey—but there was one significant change.

古罗马诗人维吉尔生活在公元前一世纪至公元一世纪期间，多亏了他，荷马式传统在西方世界才得以留存。维吉尔创作了一部十二卷史诗，名为《埃涅阿斯纪》，讲的是在《伊利亚特》里出现过的一个特洛伊英雄的故事。维吉尔模仿了《伊利亚特》和《奥德赛》，但仍做出了一处重要改变。

Gregory Nagy: The first six scrolls of the Aeneid are an old homage to The Odyssey, and only the next six scrolls are an homage to The Iliad. That is a very serious flip in values.

《埃涅阿斯纪》的前六卷致敬了《奥德赛》，而在后下六卷才去致敬《伊利亚特》。这反映出，维吉尔认为《奥德赛》价值更高。

Zachary Davis: So in the Latin speaking west, the reading and appreciation of the Homeric Iliad wanes, and in the Aeneid presumably is the way that people are familiar with at least that heritage. Can you tell us a little bit about the context and the circumstances in which it becomes rediscovered?

在讲拉丁语的西方世界中，读《伊利亚特》的人少了，对它的欣赏也在减弱，而《埃涅阿斯纪》情况不同，或许是因为人起码对它的文化传统更为熟悉。您能否告诉我们，对《伊利亚特》的重新发掘是在怎样的背景下进行的呢？

Gregory Nagy: So, once we get to late Renaissance, then the Age of Enlightenment and then modernity in the West, The Iliad becomes more and more important until we reach today, whereas we look back at the most recent centuries, The Iliad towers over most other forms of Greek literature, and in fact, most other forms of literature, period.

嗯，对它的重新发掘首先要追溯到文艺复兴晚期，然后是启蒙运动时期，再到西方现代时期，这个过程中《伊利亚特》变得越来越重要，直到今天，当我们回看近几个世纪最重要的那些时期，《伊利亚特》的地位超过了大多数其他形式的希腊文学，其实甚至可以说超过了一定时期大多数的其他文学作品。

Zachary Davis: The European Renaissance was characterized by a new emphasis on ancient texts, like The Iliad, and a focus on the human world, rather than the divine. The thinkers and artists behind this movement are called humanists.

欧洲文艺复兴时期的一大特点，就是重新重视起了像《伊利亚特》这样的古代文学作品，并把关注点放在了人类世界，而不是那些神圣的东西，这一运动背后的思想家和艺术家也被称为人文主义者。

《伊利亚特》的现代性

The modernity of The Iliad

Zachary Davis: Did The Iliad and, you know, The Odyssey together, did these texts give strength to humanistic impulses of thinking about if this world is all we have, if human values are all that we have, what resources do you think some of these humanists found in these texts?

在您看来，《伊利亚特》和《奥德赛》，这两个作品能否给人文主义以力量，进而使人思考“现世”以及人类本身的价值，是否就是我们拥有的全部？您认为人文主义者们又在这些文本中发现了什么样的精神财富？

Gregory Nagy: I think the best way to put it is that the heroes of The Iliad and Odyssey, but let's concentrate on the heroes of The Iliad, and let's concentrate on Achilles, are even more interesting than the gods. What can be better than that? And in many ways, their suffering, their facing of mortality, makes them more interesting and more important for modernity, where the values of belief in afterlife or belief at all, are questioned.

Here, we have a world where there are no beliefs. In fact, you can't find a word that really means belief the way we say, “I believe in God,” or to be new age about it—I hate this expression—” I believe in myself.” There is no such thing in the Greek language. For that matter, there's no such thing in the pre-Christian Latin language either. 

You don't believe in somebody. What you do is you have a set of values, and you hope that your own personal cosmos will match the cosmos that is out there. But basically, that's it. And sure, I spent eternities in my study of Homeric poetry showing that even Homeric poetry had built into it the idea of the afterlife, but it is glossed over. It's more important for Homeric poetry to see how interesting it is to face mortality, to face your own death and not be sure of what happens after that.

我觉得这么说最贴切：《伊利亚特》和《奥德赛》中的英雄人物，让我们聚焦在《伊利亚特》中的英雄们，比如其中的阿喀琉斯，这些英雄比神更有趣。还有什么能比他们更棒呢？这些英雄饱经磨难，直面死亡，这方方面面都让他们的形象丰满有趣，也让他们更具重要的现代性。现代性的表现之一是愈发动摇对来生的信念，乃至怀疑一切信仰。荷马史诗里面很少提及信仰。实际上，我们在全书都找不到一个词，与“我相信上帝”或我们当今挂在嘴边的“我相信我自己”中的“相信”涵义相同。顺便插一句，我挺不喜欢“我相信我自己”这句话的。说回到刚刚这两句话，希腊语里面压根就没有这样的说法。基督教流行前，拉丁语里面也没有这样的表述，不存在“相信某人”这样的说法。一般都是你有自己的一套价值观，你希望自己这一套能和社会上普遍的价值观相契合，而且也基本止步于此了。我经年累月研究荷马史诗，可以确定即使是荷马的诗歌里暗含了一些有关来生的想法，但仅仅是暗含其中。荷马的诗歌中，最重要的是看人如何面对死亡，如何面对死后未知的一切。这才是更有意思的地方。

Zachary Davis: There's a Canadian philosopher named Charles Taylor, and he wrote a book called A Secular Age. And he has this phrase to describe the environment in which we all live, where belief in God is not really taken for granted, and it’s not particularly alive. And he calls it “the immanent frame.” And in the immanent frame, this life is all we have. And when we think about The Iliad, the clash of bodies and the clash of wills, and the only mortality available really, or at least what one can perceive is glory.

有一位加拿大哲学家叫查尔斯·泰勒，他写了一本书叫《世俗时代》。这位哲学家提出了一个词组来描述我们所有人所处的环境，叫做“内在框架”，在这个词描述的环境中，对上帝的信仰既非理所当然，也非不可或缺。在内在框架中，我们所拥有的全部就是自己的身体和我们这一世的生命。当我们思考《伊利亚特》时，我们会发现，身体的对抗、意志的交锋，而死亡是唯一可以触及的，或者至少能让人感知到的，是荣誉。

Gregory Nagy: It seems to be the case. That is the Iliadic emphasis. It's definitely that. And thoughts of afterlife are de-emphasized. I'm not saying they're absent altogether, but that's not what it's all about.

看起来确实如此。这就是《伊利亚特》所强调的。关于来世的思想反而鲜有提及。我并不是说这种思想完全不存在，但它并不是全部。

如何理解战争和死亡

How to understanding war and death

Zachary Davis: Many characters in The Iliad do die, and even some gods come close. Ares, the god of war, for example, has a brush with mortality.

《伊利亚特》中许多角色都死了，甚至有的神也险些陨落。比方说，战神阿瑞斯就和死亡来了次亲密接触。

Gregory Nagy: He goes through the motions of death in The Iliad, but our impression is it's funny because we know the gods can't die, whereas when humans die, it's for real. And it's that reality of death that really stays with you.

阿瑞斯在《伊利亚特》中险些经历死亡，但我们对它的印象是，这很有趣，因为我们知道神不会死。但当人类死亡的时候，那就是真正的死亡，在你脑海中挥之不去的，正是这真正的死亡。 

Plato’s Socrates often says, well, The Iliad is the best handbook for understanding war. Homer might as well be a general. And people misunderstand that. People think, oh, if I read The Iliad, I'll understand military tactics. No. What is really being said, and sometimes in a joking way, by Plato’s Socrates is The Iliad teaches you how to die, how to face death, how to be a mortal.

柏拉图笔下的苏格拉底经常说，《伊利亚特》是理解战争的最佳手册，荷马可能的确是一位将军。但人们对这一点的理解有误。他们认为，如果读了《伊利亚特》，就能理解各种军事战术。柏拉图笔下的苏格拉底真正想说的不是这个。他要表达的是：《伊利亚特》教你如何死亡，如何面对死亡，如何做一名最终会死的人。

《伊利亚特》是一味治愈良药

The Iliad is a source of healing

Zachary Davis: So let's go back to the Age of Enlightenment and beyond. You know, in depictions of English and American prep schools, it's a fixture. To be sophisticated is to, you know, read The Iliad. What can you tell us about the place of it in elite education?

让我们回到启蒙时期以及更远的时代。那时，描述英美预科学校时总会提到这种观点：想要通达人情世故，就必须阅读《伊利亚特》。您能告诉我们这本书在精英教育中地位如何吗？

Gregory Nagy: I would agree with you that The Iliad, to focus on The Iliad, but I would also say the same for The Odyssey, is in its earlier years for the elite only. But I would say it becomes very popular. And because of its earthiness, there's a resonance with people who are not elite. And I think of all the people after World War Two who were on the G.I. Bill and who read The Iliad in translation for the first time in college. 

Or how after the trauma of the Vietnam War, veterans can really relate to The Iliad the way they can't relate to Virgil's Aeneid. I'm not putting down Virgil's Aeneid, but I'm saying there's something very visceral, something beyond elite. And in general, I would say the reception of The Iliad is as strong as it is not because of elite strata of education but because it has percolated, I think, all the way down. And it's a grassroots phenomenon of reception, especially in the United States.

我赞同你所说的，《伊利亚特》确实是这样，但我还要强调一下，《奥德赛》早些年也同样是精英们的专属，但在之后《伊利亚特》变得非常流行。由于这本书通俗易懂，所以也引起了非精英阶层的共鸣。比如第二次世界大战所有受惠于《美国退伍军人权利法案》的人，还有在大学里第一次读到《伊利亚特》的译本的那些人，以及那些在越南战争遭受精神创伤的老兵，在战后也能与《伊利亚特》建立心灵上的沟通，而他们与维吉尔的《埃涅阿斯纪》之间就没有产生这样的联系。不是说《埃涅阿斯纪》不好，但《伊利亚特》中有些直击心灵深处的东西，这些不是精英阶层独享的，所有人都会为之触动。总之，大家对《伊利亚特》的接受程度之所以如此之高，并不是精英教育的功劳，而是因为它扩散到了所有人心中。它得到了草根群体的接纳，在美国尤其如此。

Zachary Davis: I'm so fascinated by the stories you just mentioned. Do you have any more details about former soldiers reading this text?

你刚才提到的故事太让我着迷了。可以讲更多关于老兵读到这本书的细节情况吗？

Gregory Nagy: Well, I still remember having, as one of my students, a very smart person, and she once brought her dad to class. And dad turned out to be Jonathan Shay, who wrote a very influential book called Achilles in Vietnam and then followed up with a book on Odysseus. And here was a professional healer of post-traumatic stress disorder who discovered that contact with The Iliad is a healing medium. And that's just one example. In general, the trauma of war needs the kind of healing that the Homeric Iliad can offer, and I've seen it.

好吧，我仍然记得我有个非常聪明的学生，有次她带她父亲来上课。她的父亲就是乔纳森·谢伊，谢伊写过一本很有影响力的书，叫《阿喀琉斯在越南》，之后又写了本关于《奥德赛》的书。还有一位创伤后应激障碍专业治疗师，他发现读《伊利亚特》是一种治疗这种病症的方式。这只是一个例子。总而言之，战争带来的精神创伤，可以通过荷马的《伊利亚特》来治疗，而且我亲眼见证了它的疗效。

Zachary Davis: It's such a profoundly beautiful thing to think of PTSD sufferers who read a work of literature and find healing in it.

这真是件很动人的事，想想看，PTSD患者竟然可以从文学作品中找到治愈的办法。

Gregory Nagy: Exactly. Exactly. The Iliad is a source of healing. So, that's what I think Plato's Socrates means when he says that the Homeric Iliad teaches about war. It's not about military maneuvers, believe me.

对，太对了。伊利亚特是一个治愈创伤的力量源泉。所以我想，柏拉图笔下的苏格拉底认为《伊利亚特》能教你懂得战争，并不是要教你怎么打仗。

《伊利亚特》如何改变世界

How has The Iliad changed the world?

Zachary Davis: How, in your judgment, has The Iliad changed the world?

那么依您之见，《伊利亚特》如何改变了世界？

Gregory Nagy: The Iliad has changed the world by making us never think of war the way we did before. It will change our minds and hearts about what war is and therefore what death in war is. And I think that's a very important contribution to our understanding of humanity. And here is a medium that doesn't preach peace because it comes from a world where peace was impossible. So it's how to, how to engage with life with the evil of war always intruding in ways sometimes that we can't predict. How do we stay human? How do we struggle to stay human?

《伊利亚特》改变了世界，是因为它改变了我们思考战争的方式，我们不再用老观点看待它。什么是战争？战争中的死亡又意味着什么？《伊利亚特》改变了我们思考这两个问题时的思想观念。我认为这对我们了解人性意义非凡。这本书不是个宣扬和平的媒介，因为它来自于一个没有和平的世界。因此这本书讨论的问题是，在那样的世界里，我们该怎样活着？战争的邪恶猝不及防地降临时，我们又该怎样应对？我们如何保持人性，如何努力地保持人性？

Zachary Davis: It's a beautiful answer, and I imagine, if you don't really know this work, you could think that it glorifies violence.

您回答的太好了。而且我想，如果人们不能真正理解这个作品，很可能就会认为它是在美化暴力。

Gregory Nagy: It so doesn't. Sometimes when you read The Iliad, you feel stunned by all the violence, but the violence, which is programmatically described with great accuracy, with stunning realism, is, I think, a way to connect with the suffering of humanity. And there are many cues for how to connect by way of how the story is told. It's a very compassionate telling.

当然不是。我们读《伊利亚特》，有时会震惊于其中的暴力描写。作者用近乎骇人的写实手法，一步步精心描绘暴行。但我认为在这部书里，暴力从某种程度上也与人物的苦难遭遇相关联。作者巧用叙事手法来暗示我们这些情节如何串联，并借助众多此类暗示传递悲悯之情。

如此唯美的人类忧伤

human sorrow so beautifully

Gregory Nagy: And I like the fact that Achilles, the number one hero of The Iliad, means he who has the sorrow of the people. Sorrow is primarily expressed in this civilization by the singing of songs, primarily by women. And so when Achilles has a name like he who has the sorrow of the people, that shows you this is not some exercise in macho entertainment. Oh, how exciting. We're going to see scenes of violence, which only men like to see because, oh, they're so tough and macho. It's really all the pain that goes with war. And to me, if you ask me what makes The Iliad so special, why is it a world classic? Maybe the world classic? It's that it expresses human sorrow so beautifully, so creatively, that you'll never be the same after you experience these beautiful lines.

And if I may cheat and say one thing about The Odyssey, the most beautiful moment, I think, in The Odyssey is when Helen, who is now safely back in Sparta and is being hostess to Telemachus, who's trying to find his father and is frustrated at every turn. 

Helen says to Telemachus and to the hosts who are hosting Telemachus, including her husband, Menelaus, “Now, all of you sit back, relax, and I'm going to tell you an epic.” And before she does that, she puts into the drink of those who are going to listen to a story of Troy—and what is the story of Troy? It's an Iliad—she, in a sense, cancels the value of epic, the value of The Iliad, because the drug that she puts into the drink is called nē-penthes, which means non-lamentation. 

And it's described as a drug where if you take it, even if your loved ones are slaughtered in front of you, you'll say, “Wow, that's a great piece of epic entertainment.” So epic without compassion is drugged epic and is not real. And the only way epic can become real—and that's what The Iliad is all about—is to experience the violence of war in every gory detail, because ultimately it is a purifying experience. To use the Greek word, it is cathartic.

我很喜欢其中的一处巧妙设计。《伊利亚特》中，头号英雄阿喀琉斯的名字在希腊语中意为“众人之哀”。在当时，哀痛之情大多由女性吟唱的方式来表达。所以当我们看到阿喀琉斯这个有关众人之哀的名字时，我们脑海中很难浮现出充满阳刚气息的画面。真实的是，所有的伤痛伴随战争而来。对于我来说，如果你问我《伊利亚特》为何如此特别，为何能成为世界经典，我会说——因为它如此美妙、如此富有创意地传递了人类的悲怮，只需读上几行，你就会深受感染，内心颤动而焕然一新。

如果坦白说《奥德赛》里哪个片段最美好，我会觉得是这个：在《奥德赛》中最美好的时刻是海伦安全地回到了斯巴达，并以女主人的身份招待了忒勒玛科斯，忒勒玛科斯当时正在寻找他的父亲但却处处碰壁。海伦对忒勒玛科斯以及招待他的人们，包括她的丈夫墨涅拉俄斯说：“现在，请大家坐下来，放松，我要给你们讲你一个史诗般的故事。”。她讲的故事就是特洛伊的故事，那特洛伊的故事是什么？就是伊利亚特。海伦在讲故事之前，她在准备听故事的人们的酒中加了些东西，因此从某种意义上说，她剥离了《伊利亚特》这部史诗的价值，因为她放入酒中的药物名为 “没有悲伤”。服了这种药的人，即使最亲爱的人被杀死在他面前，他也会说：“哇，这真是太好玩了！”所以，不带同情心去读史诗就像是吃了这种药，这样根本读不出史诗的真情实感。让《伊利亚特》变得真实的唯一方法，就要从每一处血淋淋的细节中体味战争的残酷。根本上来说，这其实是一种自我净化的过程，用希腊语来形容，这是种宣泄强烈情感（cathartic）的体验。

Zachary Davis: Writ Large【本课程英文版名称，为喜马拉雅官方自制】 is an exclusive production of Ximalaya. Writ Large is produced by Galen Beebe and me, Zachary Davis, with help from Feiran Du, Ariel Liu, Wendy Wu, and Monica Zhang. Music is by Blue Dot Sessions. Don’t miss an episode—subscribe today in the Ximalaya app. Thanks for listening.

本节目由喜马拉雅独家制作播出。感谢您的收听，我们下期再见！

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