悲劇的誕生The Birth Of Tragedy 第143 神話的喪失
Whoever wishes to test rigorously to what extent he himself is related to the true aesthetic listener or belongs to the community of the Socratic-critical persons needs only to examine sincerely the feeling with which he accepts miracles represented on the stage: whether he feels his historical sense, which insists on strict psychological causality, insulted by them,whether he makes a benevolent concession and admits the miracle as a phenomenon intelligible to childhood but alien to him, or whether he experiences anything else.
For in this way he will be able to determine to what extent he is capable of understanding myth as a concentrated image of the world that, as a condensation of phenomena, cannot dispense with miracles.
因爲這樣，他才能夠測量他了解神話的能力畢竟有多少。神話是集中的世界畫景，作爲現象的縮寫來說，是不能缺少奇蹟的。It is probable, however, that almost everyone, upon close examination, finds that the critical-historical spirit of our culture has so affected him that he can only make the former existence of myth credible to himself by means of scholarship, through intermediary abstractions.
然而，很有可能，幾乎每個人在嚴格檢查之下，總覺得自己被現代文化的歷史批判精神腐蝕得這麼深，以致只有在學術上，通過間接的抽象，才相信昔日也許有神話存在。
But without myth every culture loses the healthy natural power of its creativity: only a horizon defined by myths completes and unifies a whole cultural movement. Myth alone saves all the powers of the imagination and of the Apollinian dream from their aimless wanderings.
但是，沒有神話，則任何一種文化都會失掉它的健康的、天然的創造力，正是神話的視野，約束着全部文化運動，使之成爲一個體系。正是依賴神話的救濟，一切想象力，一切夢境的幻想，才得免於漫無目的的彷徨。The images of the myth have to be the unnoticed omnipresent demonic guardians, under whose care the young soul grows to maturity and whose signs help the man to interpret his life and struggles. Even the state knows no more powerful unwritten laws than the mythical foundation that guarantees its connection with religion and its growth from mythical notions.
神話的形象，必須是肉眼不見，但無所不在的護守神靈：在神鬼的庇佑下，年輕的心靈逐漸長成；憑鬼神的指點，成年人明白了自己的生存和鬥爭的意義；甚至國家也承認，最有力的不成文法莫過於神話的根據，它保證國家與宗教的聯繫，證明國家從神話觀念長成。By way of comparison let us now picture the abstract man, untutored by myth; abstract education; abstract morality; abstract law; abstract state; let us imagine the lawless roving of the artistic imagination, unchecked by any native myth;
另一方面，我們試設想不靠神話指導的抽象的的人，抽象的教育，抽象的道德，抽象的正義，抽象的國家；let us think of a culture that has no fixed and sacred primordial site but is doomed to exhaust all possibilities and to nourish itself wretchedly on all other cultures--there we have the present age, the result of that Socratism which is bent on the destruction of myth.
我們試設想，不受本國神話約制的藝術想象力如何想入非非；我們試設想這樣一種文化：它沒有固定的神聖的發祥地，而命定要耗盡它的一切潛能，要依靠一切外來文化艱苦度日，——這就是今日的時代，蘇格拉底主義因爲剷除神話而招致的惡果。And now the mythless man stands eternally hungry, surrounded by all past ages, and digs and grubs for roots, even if he has to dig for them among the remotest antiquities.
今日，喪失神話的人們，總是飢腸轆轆，徘徊在過去時代中，竭力去探尋，去掘發一些根苗，哪怕是必須向最遙遠的古代探掘。The tremendous historical need of our unsatisfied modern culture, the assembling around one of countless other cultures, the consuming desire for knowledge--what does all this point to, if not to the loss of myth, the loss of the mythical home, the mythical maternal womb?
我們如飢如渴的現代文化的強烈的歷史興趣，我們集無數其它文化之大成，我們如火如荼的求知慾；——這一切表示甚麼呢，可不是表示喪失了神話，喪失了神話的故鄉，喪失了神話的母懷嗎？Let us ask ourselves whether the feverish and uncanny excitement of this culture is anythingbut the greedy seizing and snatching at food of a hungry man--and who would care to contribute anything to a culture that cannot be satisfied no matter how much it devours, and at whose contact the most vigorous and wholesome nourishment is changed into "history and criticism"?
試問這種文化的狂熱不安的興奮，不是像飢者貧得無厭，飢不擇食，還像甚麼呢？這樣一種狼吞虎嚥，不知饜足的文化，即使接觸到最滋補最有益的東西，也往往把它化爲“歷史與批評”，試問誰願意給它更多一些營養呢？
