悲劇的誕生The Birth Of Tragedy 第129 歌劇的特點

Therefore, the features of the opera do not by any means exhibit the elegiac sorrow of an eternal loss, but rather the cheerfulness of eternal rediscovery, the comfortable delight in an idyllic reality which one can at least always imagine as real.

所以，歌劇的特點絕不帶有哀歌的遺恨千古的悲痛，反而表現出永遠恢復的歡欣，牧歌生活的閒情逸致，而人至少可以暫時把牧歌生活幻想爲現實生活。

But in this process one may some day grasp the fact that this supposed reality is nothing but a fantastically silly dawdling, at which everyone who could judge it by the terrible seriousness of true nature, and compare it with actual primitive scenes of the beginnings of mankind, would be impelled to call out, nauseated: Away with the phantom!

然而，人也許一朝恍然大悟，明白這種假想的現實不過是無聊幻想的遊戲，若以真正自然的可怕嚴威予以衡量，若以人類初期的原始實況予以比較，任何人都會厭惡地喊道：幻象，滾開！

Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to imagine that it is possible merely by a vigorous shout to frighten away such a playful thing as the opera, as if it were a specter.

雖然如此，但是如果你以爲只要高聲一呼就可以斥退這種無聊的歌劇，象斥退幽靈那樣，那末你就錯誤了。

He who would destroy the opera must take up the struggle against Alexandrian cheerfulness, which expresses itself so naïvely in opera concerning its favorite idea. Indeed, opera is its specific form of art.

誰要消滅歌劇，就必須負起反對亞歷山德里亞樂天思想的鬥爭；這種思想對它所喜愛的概念這樣天真地發表意見，其實它就是這些概念的特殊藝術形式。

But what may art itself expect form the operation of an art form whose beginnings lie entirely outside of the aesthetic province and which has stolen over from a half-moral sphere into the artistic domain, deceiving us only occasionally about its hybrid origin?

然而，如果一種藝術形式完全是在審美範圍之外產生的，如果它不過是從一半道德範圍潛入藝術領域，從而只能偶然瞞過我們它的雜種血統，你能期望這種形式對藝術本身有甚麼作用呢？

By what sap is this parasitic opera nourished, if not by that of true art?

這種寄生的歌劇形式，若不以真正藝術爲營養，又能吸取甚麼乳漿呢？

Must we not suppose that the highest, and, indeed, the truly serious task of art--to save the eye from gazing into the horrors of night and to deliver the suspect by the healing balm of illusion from the spasms of the agitations of the will--must degenerate under the influence of its idyllic seductions and Alexandrian flatteries to become an empty and merely distracting diversion?

這種最高的而且可謂真正嚴肅的藝術使命，也就是說，使肉眼不致見到黑夜之恐怖，以假象的靈藥救人於意志衝動之痙攣；——這個使命，在牧歌生活的誘惑下，在亞歷山德里亞思想的諂諛下，就會蛻化而變爲空虛渙散的玩物喪志，我們豈不能料想到這樣的結果嗎？