2012.06.25 乔治-奥威尔谈作者的四个主要动机

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Why I Write: George Orwell on an Author's 4 Main Motives
By Maria Popova
JUNE 25, 2012
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Embrace the ego, revel in beauty, and write with a purpose

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Literary legend Eric Arthur Blair, better known as George Orwell, would have been 109 today. Though he remains best remembered for authoring the cult-classics Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, he was also a formidable, masterful essayist. Among his finest short-form feats is the 1946 essay "Why I Write" (public library), a fine addition to other timeless insights on writing, including Kurt Vonnegut's eight rules for a great story, David Ogilvy's 10 no-bullshit tips, Henry Miller's 11 commandments, Jack Kerouac's 30 beliefs and techniques, John Steinbeck's six pointers, and various invaluable insights from other great writers.

Orwell begins with some details about his less-than-idyllic childhood—complete with absentee father, school mockery and bullying, and a profound sense of loneliness—and traces how those experiences steered him towards writing, proposing that such early micro-traumas are essential for any writer's drive. He then lays out what he believes to be the four main motives for writing, most of which extrapolate to just about any domain of creative output.

I give all this background information because I do not think one can assess a writer's motives without knowing something of his early development. His subject matter will be determined by the age he lives in—at least this is true in tumultuous, revolutionary ages like our own—but before he ever begins to write he will have acquired an emotional attitude from which he will never completely escape. It is his job, no doubt, to discipline his temperament and avoid getting stuck at some immature stage, in some perverse mood; but if he escapes from his early influences altogether, he will have killed his impulse to write. Putting aside the need to earn a living, I think there are four great motives for writing, at any rate for writing prose. They exist in different degrees in every writer, and in any one writer the proportions will vary from time to time, according to the atmosphere in which he is living. They are:
(i) Sheer egoism. Desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death, to get your own back on the grown-ups who snubbed you in childhood, etc., etc. It is humbug to pretend this is not a motive, and a strong one. Writers share this characteristic with scientists, artists, politicians, lawyers, soldiers, successful businessmen—in short, with the whole top crust of humanity. The great mass of human beings are not acutely selfish. After the age of about thirty they almost abandon the sense of being individuals at all—and live chiefly for others, or are simply smothered under drudgery. But there is also the minority of gifted, willful people who are determined to live their own lives to the end, and writers belong in this class. Serious writers, I should say, are on the whole more vain and self-centered than journalists, though less interested in money.

(ii) Aesthetic enthusiasm. Perception of beauty in the external world, or, on the other hand, in words and their right arrangement. Pleasure in the impact of one sound on another, in the firmness of good prose or the rhythm of a good story. Desire to share an experience which one feels is valuable and ought not to be missed. The aesthetic motive is very feeble in a lot of writers, but even a pamphleteer or writer of textbooks will have pet words and phrases which appeal to him for non-utilitarian reasons; or he may feel strongly about typography, width of margins, etc. Above the level of a railway guide, no book is quite free from aesthetic considerations.

(iii) Historical impulse. Desire to see things as they are, to find out true facts and store them up for the use of posterity.

(iv) Political purpose.—Using the word 'political' in the widest possible sense. Desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other peoples' idea of the kind of society that they should strive after. Once again, no book is genuinely free from political bias. The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude.

It can be seen how these various impulses must war against one another, and how they must fluctuate from person to person and from time to time.

After a further discussion of how these motives permeated his own work at different times and in different ways, Orwell offers a final and rather dystopian disclaimer:

Looking back through the last page or two, I see that I have made it appear as though my motives in writing were wholly public-spirited. I don't want to leave that as the final impression. All writers are vain, selfish, and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. For all one knows that demon is simply the same instinct that makes a baby squall for attention. And yet it is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one's own personality. Good prose is like a windowpane. I cannot say with certainty which of my motives are the strongest, but I know which of them deserve to be followed. And looking back through my work, I see that it is invariably where I lacked a POLITICAL purpose that I wrote lifeless books and was betrayed into purple passages, sentences without meaning, decorative adjectives and humbug generally.
This, of course is to be taken with a grain of salt—the granularity of individual disposition, outlook, and existential choice, that is. I myself subscribe to the Ray Bradbury model:

Writing is not a serious business. It's a joy and a celebration. You should be having fun with it. Ignore the authors who say 'Oh, my God, what word? Oh, Jesus Christ...', you know. Now, to hell with that. It's not work. If it's work, stop and do something else.
Why I Write is part of Penguin's Great Ideas series, excellent in its entirety.

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This post also appears on Brain Pickings, an Atlantic partner site.

Maria Popova is the editor of Brain Pickings. She writes for Wired UK and GOOD, and is an MIT Futures of Entertainment Fellow.



我为什么写作？乔治-奥威尔谈作者的四个主要动机
作者：玛丽亚-波波娃
2012年6月25日
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拥抱自我，陶醉于美，有目的的写作

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文学传奇人物埃里克-阿瑟-布莱尔（Eric Arthur Blair），也就是众所周知的乔治-奥威尔，今天应该是109岁。尽管人们对他印象最深的是他创作的经典作品《动物农场》和《一九八四》，但他也是一位了不起的、高超的散文家。在他最优秀的短篇作品中，1946年的文章《我为什么要写作》（公共图书馆）是对其他永恒的写作见解的良好补充，包括库尔特-冯内古特关于伟大故事的八条规则、大卫-奥格威的10条无废话提示、亨利-米勒的11条戒律、杰克-凯鲁亚克的30条信念和技巧、约翰-斯坦贝克的六个要点，以及其他伟大作家的各种无价见解。

奥威尔首先介绍了他不太美好的童年的一些细节--有缺席的父亲、学校的嘲笑和欺凌，以及深刻的孤独感--并追溯了这些经历如何引导他走向写作，提出这种早期的微观创伤对任何作家的动力都是必不可少的。然后，他列出了他认为的写作的四个主要动机，其中大部分都可以推断出任何领域的创造性产出。

我提供所有这些背景信息，是因为我认为如果不了解一个作家的早期发展，就无法评估他的动机。他的主题将由他所处的时代决定--至少在像我们这样动荡不安的革命时代是如此，但在他开始写作之前，他已经获得了一种情感态度，他将永远不会完全摆脱这种态度。毫无疑问，他的工作是约束自己的性情，避免陷入某个不成熟的阶段，陷入某种反常的情绪；但如果他完全摆脱了早期的影响，他就会扼杀自己的写作冲动。撇开谋生的需要不谈，我认为有四个伟大的写作动机，至少是写散文的动机。它们以不同的程度存在于每个作家身上，而且在任何一个作家身上，其比例都会根据他所处的环境而时有变化。它们是
(i) 纯粹的利己主义。渴望显得聪明，渴望被人谈论，渴望死后被人记住，渴望在童年时冷落过自己的大人身上得到自己的回报，等等。假装这不是一个动机，而且是一个强烈的动机，那是虚伪的。作家与科学家、艺术家、政治家、律师、士兵、成功的商人--总之，与整个人类的上层社会一样，都具有这种特征。绝大多数人都不是极端自私的人。30岁以后，他们几乎放弃了作为个人的意识--主要是为他人而活，或者干脆被繁重的工作所淹没。但也有少数有天赋、有意志的人，他们决心将自己的生活进行到底，而作家就属于这一类。应该说，严肃的作家总体上比记者更虚荣，更以自我为中心，尽管他们对金钱不那么感兴趣。

(二) 审美的热情。对外部世界中的美感的感知，或者说，在文字和它们的正确安排中。在一种声音对另一种声音的影响中，在好的散文的坚定性或一个好的故事的节奏中获得快乐。渴望分享一种自己认为有价值的、不应该错过的经验。很多作家的审美动机都很弱，但即使是小册子作者或教科书作者，也会有吸引他的非功利性的词和句子；或者他可能对排版、页边宽度等有强烈的感觉。在铁路指南的层面上，没有一本书能完全摆脱美学考虑。

(iii) 历史冲动。渴望看到事物的真相，发现真实的事实，并将其储存起来供后人使用。

(iv) 政治目的。--在尽可能广泛的意义上使用 "政治 "一词。渴望将世界推向某个方向，改变其他民族对他们应该努力追求的社会的想法。再次，没有一本书是真正没有政治偏见的。认为艺术应该与政治无关的观点本身就是一种政治态度。

可以看出，这些不同的冲动必须如何相互斗争，它们必须如何因人而异、因时而异地波动。

在进一步讨论了这些动机如何在不同时期以不同方式渗透到他自己的作品中之后，奥威尔提出了最后的、颇具神秘色彩的免责声明。

回顾过去的一两页，我发现我让人觉得我的写作动机是完全出于公共目的的。我不想留下这样的最后印象。所有的作家都是虚荣的、自私的、懒惰的，在他们的动机的最底层，有一个谜团。写书是一场可怕的、令人筋疲力尽的斗争，就像某种痛苦的疾病的长期发作。如果不是被某种既不能抗拒也不能理解的恶魔所驱使，人们是不会做这种事的。因为人们都知道，这个恶魔只是让婴儿呼唤注意的那种本能。然而，同样正确的是，如果一个人不不断地努力消除自己的个性，就无法写出可读的东西。好的散文就像一张窗户纸。我不能肯定地说，我的哪些动机是最强烈的，但我知道其中哪些动机值得遵循。回顾我的作品，我发现，正是在我缺乏政治目的的地方，我写出了毫无生气的书，被出卖了，变成了紫色的段落，没有意义的句子，装饰性的形容词和一般的胡闹。
当然，这应该被看作是一种盐--个人性格、观点和生存选择的颗粒度，即。我自己赞成雷-布雷德伯里的模式。

写作不是一项严肃的事业。它是一种快乐和庆祝。你应该从中获得乐趣。不要理会那些说'哦，我的上帝，什么词？哦，耶稣基督......"，你知道。现在，让这些都见鬼去吧。这不是工作。如果是工作，那就停下来，做别的事情。
我为什么要写作》是企鹅出版社《伟大的思想》系列的一部分，全部内容都很精彩。

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这篇文章也出现在Brain Pickings上，这是一个大西洋的合作伙伴网站。

Maria Popova是Brain Pickings的编辑。她为《连线》英国版和《GOOD》撰稿，是麻省理工学院的 "娱乐的未来 "研究员。