悲劇的誕生The Birth Of Tragedy 第24期:希臘悲劇之起源

At this point we need to call upon every aesthetic principle so far discussed, in order to find our way through the labyrinthine origins of Greek tragedy.

現在，我們必須使用上述一切藝術原理，以便在希臘悲劇之起源這個可謂“迷宮”中找到去路。

I believe I am saying nothing extravagant when I claim that the problem of these origins has never even been posed, much less solved, no matter how often the elusive rags of ancient tradition have been speculatively sewn together and ripped apart.

我想我頗有理由來說，悲劇起源這問題直到現在尚未認真地提出，更談不上解決了。雖則古代傳說，這件襤褸破衣，曾經東補西縫，可是一再把它撕破。

That tradition tells us in no uncertain terms that tragedy arose out of the tragic chorus and was, to begin with, nothing but chorus.

古代傳說十分明確地告訴我們：希臘悲劇是從悲劇歌隊產生的，初時不過是歌隊，僅僅是歌隊而已。

We are thus bound to scan the chorus closely as the archetypal drama, disregarding the current explanations of it as the idealized spectator, or as representing the populace over against the noble realm of the set.

所以我們有責任去探察這種悲劇歌隊的核心，把它當作真正的原始戲劇。我們無論如何不能滿足於流行的藝術理論，說歌隊是理想的觀衆，或者說歌隊代表人民以對抗劇中的貴族分子。

The latter interpretation, which sounds so grandly edifying to certain politicians (as though the democratic Athenians had represented in the popular chorus the invariable moral law, always right in face of the passionate misdeeds and extravagances of kings) may have been suggested by a phrase in Aristotle, but this lofty notion can have had no influence whatever on the original formation of tragedy, whose purely religious origins would exclude not only the opposition between the people and their rulers but any kind of political or social context.

後一種解釋，在許多政治家聽來是使人興奮的，它認爲雅典平民把顛撲不破的道德規律體現爲人民歌隊，這歌隊常常克服了帝王們的憤怒的暴行與專橫。這一說雖然可以用亞里士多德的一段話予以有力的闡明，可是對悲劇起源問題卻無甚影響，因爲人民與帝王的一切對立，總之，任何社會政治範圍，是在悲劇的純粹宗教根源之外的。

Likewise we would consider it blasphemous, in the light of the classical form of the chorus as we know it from Aeschylus and Sophocles, to speak of a "foreshadowing' of constitutional democracy, though others have not stuck at such blasphemy.

然而，以埃斯庫羅斯與索福克勒斯的歌隊的古典形式而論，我們甚至可以認爲：若果說詩人預料到“立憲國民代議制”，那真是“褻瀆神明”，但是就有人不怕褻瀆神明。

No ancient polity ever embodied constitutional democracy, and one dares to hope that ancient tragedy did not even foreshadow it.

古代政治制度在實踐上（inpraxi）並沒有立憲國民代議制，而且可以料想，他們也不曾在悲劇方面“預料”到這種制度。