翻译天堂  2016-09-17

Sarah Green Carmichael

The Daily Routines of Geniuses

Juan Ponce de León spent his life searching for the fountain of youth. I have spent mine searching for the ideal daily routine. But as years of color-coded paper calendars have given way to cloud-based scheduling apps, routine has continued to elude me; each day is a new day, as unpredictable as a ride on a rodeo bull and over seemingly as quickly. 胡安·庞塞·莱昂（Juan Ponce de León）终其一生都在寻找不老泉。而我此生追求的是完美的日常生活轨迹。尽管用了多年的纸质彩色编码日历已经让位于高级的云应用日程软件，日程安排依然让我困扰；每天都是新的一天，就像骑在公牛背上一样，前景难料，瞬息万变。

Naturally, I was fascinated by the recent book, Daily Rituals: How Artists Work. Author Mason Curry examines the schedules of 161 painters, writers, and composers, as well as philosophers, scientists, and other exceptional thinkers. 很自然地，我对最近出版的《每日的仪式：大师们如何工作》很感兴趣。作者马森·柯里（Mason Curry）研究了161位大师的日程安排，包括画家、作家和作曲家，以及哲学家、科学家和其他特立独行的思想家。

As I read, I became convinced that for these geniuses, a routine was more than a luxury — it was essential to their work. As Currey puts it, “A solid routine fosters a well-worn groove for one’s mental energies and helps stave off the tyranny of moods.” And although the book itself is a delightful hodgepodge of trivia, not a how-to manual, I began to notice several common elements in the lives of the healthier geniuses (the ones who relied more on discipline than on, say, booze and Benzedrine) that allowed them to pursue the luxury of a productivity-enhancing routine: 读过之后，我开始相信，对于这些天才来说，日程安排并非奢侈品——而是他们工作的必需品。柯里说：“固定的日程安排能够培养习以为常的心态，有助于克服糟糕的情绪。”尽管这本书本身就是令人开心的琐事大杂烩，而非指导手册，但我开始注意到，更健康（更依靠规则而不是酒精和安眠药）的天才们的生活存在下面几个共同点，使得他们能够追求多产高效的日程安排这种奢侈享受：

A workspace with minimal distractions. Jane Austen asked that a certain squeaky hinge never be oiled, so that she always had a warning when someone was approaching the room where she wrote. William Faulkner, lacking a lock on his study door, just detached the doorknob and brought it into the room with him — something of which today’s cubicle worker can only dream.  Mark Twain’s family knew better than to breach his study door — if they needed him, they’d blow a horn to draw him out. Graham Greene went even further, renting a secret office; only his wife knew the address or telephone number. Distracted more by the view out his window than interruptions, if N.C. Wyeth was having trouble focusing, he’d tape a piece of cardboard to his glasses as a sort of blinder. 最无干扰的工作环境。简·奥斯汀（Jane Austen）要求用一种从来不用上油的特制门轴，那样每当有人走进她的书房时，她都能有所警觉。威廉·福克纳（William Faulkner）的书房门不上锁，而是拆下门把手，由他带进房间——如今在格子间里工作的人只能做做这样的梦了。马克·吐温（Mark Twain）的家人都知道不要进书房打扰他，如果要找他，他们宁可吹喇叭叫他出来。格雷厄姆·格林（Graham Greene）更甚，租用了一间秘密办公室；只有他妻子知道地方和电话号码。窗外的景色比打扰更容易让N.C.怀斯（N.C. Wyeth）分心，如果他无法集中精力，他就在自己的眼镜前贴上一张硬纸片，当作一种眼罩。

每天散步一次。对于多数人来说，每天有规律地散步，对大脑机能是很有好处的。索伦·齐克果（Soren Kierkegaard）发现他的散步习惯能激发如此多的灵感，以至于他经常冲回书桌旁继续写作，帽子、手杖或雨伞都来不及放下。查尔斯·狄更斯（Charles Dickens）以每天下午花3个小时散步而闻名——他所观察到的东西会直接写进他的著作。柴可夫斯基（Tchaikovsky）通过散步2个小时来寻找灵感，不过他绝不会早回来一分钟，他相信自欺欺人地认为自己散够了120分钟会害自己生病。贝多芬（Beethoven）午饭后会闲逛很久，随身带上铅笔和纸，以备灵感迸发之需。埃里克·萨蒂（Erik Satie）从巴黎市区步行回到他居住的郊区工人聚居区时也会随身带上纸笔，在路灯下记录途中想到的曲谱；据传，战争期间这些路灯熄灭，他的创作力也就衰退了。A daily walk. For many, a regular daily walk was essential to brain functioning. Soren Kierkegaard found his constitutionals so inspiring that he would often rush back to his desk and resume writing, still wearing his hat and carrying his walking stick or umbrella. Charles Dickens famously took three-hour walks every afternoon — and what he observed on them fed directly into his writing. Tchaikovsky made do with a two-hour walk, but wouldn’t return a moment early, convinced that cheating himself of the full 120 minutes would make him ill. Beethoven took lengthy strolls after lunch, carrying a pencil and paper with him in case inspiration struck. Erik Satie did the same on his long strolls from Paris to the working class suburb where he lived, stopping under streetlamps to jot down notions that arose on his journey; it’s rumored that when those lamps were turned off during the war years, his productivity declined too.

任务指标。安东尼·特罗洛普（Anthony Trollope）每天只写作3个小时，但是他要求自己达到每分钟250个词的速度，如果在3小时结束之前他完成了一部小说，他会立即开始写新的一部。欧内斯特·海明威（Ernest Hemingway）会在图表上标记他每天完成的字数，那样才“不会自己骗自己”。BF·斯金纳（BF Skinner）根据定时器来开始和结束他的写作，“他会认真计划时间和每段的字数”。Accountability metrics. Anthony Trollope only wrote for three hours a day, but he required of himself a rate of 250 words per 15 minutes, and if he finished the novel he was working on before his three hours were up, he’d immediately start a new book as soon as the previous one was finished. Ernest Hemingway also tracked his daily word output on a chart “so as not to kid myself.” BF Skinner started and stopped his writing sessions by setting a timer, “and he carefully plotted the number of hours he wrote and the words he produced on a graph.”

明确区分重要工作和琐事。在电子邮件出现以前，人们写信。每一位大师花在回信上的时间让我深感惊讶（也自惭形秽）。多数人会把一天的时间分配给真正的工作（比如上午作曲或者作画）和琐事（下午回信）。其他人会在真正的工作不顺利的时候转而去做琐事。但是，如果他们通信的数量跟现在的一样多，这些历史上的天才也的确拥有一项优势：邮差是定期来，而不是像电子邮件一样随时来。A clear dividing line between important work and busywork. Before there was email, there were letters. It amazed (and humbled) me to see the amount of time each person allocated simply to answering letters. Many would divide the day into real work (such as composing or painting in the morning) and busywork (answering letters in the afternoon). Others would turn to the busywork when the real work wasn’t going well. But if the amount of correspondence was similar to today’s, these historical geniuses did have one advantage: the post would arrive at regular intervals, not constantly as email does.

在一切顺利而不是工作受挫时停下的习惯。海明威这样写道：“你一直写，直到你还有东西可写也知道下面会发生什么的时候，就停下来，尽量忍住，到第二天再继续写。”亚瑟·米勒（Arthur Miller）说：“我不相信文思如泉涌，你明白吗？我相信从打字机旁起身，离开它，而我还有可说的。”有一位例外，沃尔夫冈·阿马德乌斯·莫扎特（Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart）——早上6点起床，一整天忙于讲音乐课、开音乐会、参加社交活动，经常直到半夜1点才睡觉——很多人在上午写作，中午停笔吃午餐、散步，然后花一两个小时回信，在下午2点或3点再开始工作。“我认为，在觉得疲劳需要休息的时候还继续工作的人是傻瓜。”卡尔·荣格（Carl Jung）写道。或者，是莫扎特。A habit of stopping when they’re on a roll, not when they’re stuck. Hemingway puts it thus: “You write until you come to a place where you still have your juice and know what will happen next and you stop and try to live through until the next day when you hit it again.” Arthur Miller said, “I don’t believe in draining the reservoir, do you see? I believe in getting up from the typewriter, away from it, while I still have things to say.” With the exception of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart — who rose at 6, spent the day in a flurry of music lessons, concerts, and social engagements and often didn’t get to bed until 1 am — many would write in the morning, stop for lunch and a stroll, spend an hour or two answering letters, and knock off work by 2 or 3. “I’ve realized that somebody who’s tired and needs a rest, and goes on working all the same is a fool,” wrote Carl Jung. Or, well, a Mozart.

一个贤内助。玛莎·弗洛伊德（Martha Freud），西格蒙德的妻子，“帮他收拾衣服，挑选领带，甚至帮他挤牙膏”，柯里提到。格特鲁德·斯泰因（Gertrude Stein）更喜欢在户外写作，望着岩石和牛群——于是在他们前往法国乡村的旅途中，他会找个地方坐下，直到爱丽丝 B.·托克拉斯（Alice B. Toklas）把一些牛驱赶到作家的视野之内。古斯塔夫·马勒（Gustav Mahler）的妻子用歌剧票贿赂邻居，让他们在她丈夫工作的时候使他们的狗保持安静——尽管丈夫要她放弃她自己很有前途的音乐事业时她极其失望。那些单身的大师们也有帮手：简·奥斯汀的姐姐，卡珊德拉（Cassandra）承担了绝大部分的家务，使得简有时间写作——“在我满脑子想着羊骨头和一份份药材的时候，根本无法下笔。”简曾经写道。安迪·沃霍尔（Andy Warhol）每天上午都会叫上朋友兼助手帕特·哈科特（Pat Hackett），一起详细地复述前一天的活动。 他们称之为“记日记”，这工作能持续整整2个小时——忠于职守的哈科特会做记录并负责打字，从1976年开始每个工作日的上午都是如此，直到1987年沃霍尔去世。A supportive partner. Martha Freud, wife of Sigmund, “laid out his clothes, chose his handkerchiefs, and even put toothpaste on his toothbrush,” notes Currey. Gertrude Stein preferred to write outdoors, looking at rocks and cows — and so on their trips to the French countryside, Gertrude would find a place to sit while Alice B. Toklas would shoo a few cows into the writer’s line of vision. Gustav Mahler’s wife bribed the neighbors with opera tickets to keep their dogs quiet while he was composing — even though she was bitterly disappointed when he forced her to give up her own promising musical career. The unmarried artists had help, too: Jane Austen’s sister, Cassandra, took over most of the domestic duties so that Jane had time to write — “Composition seems impossible to me with a head full of joints of mutton & doses of rhubarb,” as Jane once wrote. And Andy Warhol called friend and collaborator Pat Hackett every morning, recounting the previous day’s activities in detail. “Doing the diary,” as they called it, could last two full hours — with Hackett dutifully jotting down notes and typing them up, every weekday morning from 1976 until Warhol’s death in 1987.

Limited social lives. One of Simone de Beauvoir’s lovers put it this way: “there were no parties, no receptions, no bourgeois values… it was an uncluttered kind of life, a simplicity deliberately constructed so that she could do her work.” Marcel Proust “made a conscious decision in 1910 to withdraw from society,” writes Currey. Pablo Picasso and his girlfriend Fernande Olivier borrowed the idea of Sunday as an “at-home day” from Stein and Toklas — so that they could “dispose of the obligations of friendship in a single afternoon.”

This last habit — relative isolation — sounds much less appealing to me than some of the others. And yet I still find the routines of these thinkers strangely compelling, perhaps because they are so unattainable, so extreme. Even the very idea that you can organize your time as you like is out of reach for most of us — so I’ll close with a toast to all those who did their best work within the constraints of someone else’s routine. Like Francine Prose, who began writing when the school bus picked up her children and stopped when it brought them back; or T.S. Eliot, who found it much easier to write once he had a day job in a bank than as a starving poet; and even F. Scott Fitzgerald, whose early writing was crammed in around the strict schedule he followed as a young military officer. Those days were not as fabled as the gin-soaked nights in Paris that came later, but they were much more productive — and no doubt easier on his liver. Being forced to follow the ruts of someone else’s routine may grate, but they do make it easier to stay on the path.

有限的社交活动。西蒙娜·波伏娃（Simone de Beauvoir）的一位情人这样描述：“没有聚会、没有款待、没有中产阶级价值观……那是一种非常整洁的生活，简单而精致，因此她能够写她的书。”马塞尔·普鲁斯特（Marcel Proust）“在1910年做出了一个明智的决定，退出社交圈”，柯里写道。巴勃罗·毕加索（Pablo Picasso）和他的女友费尔南德·奥利弗（Fernande Olivier）从斯泰因和托克拉斯那里借用了把星期天作为“居家日”的想法——以使得他们可以“在一个下午的时间里卸下友情债”。

最后一个习惯——疏远亲人——听起来不像其他几点那么吸引我。但我还是发现，那些思想家的生活轨迹很奇特、很引人注意，也许因为他们难以企及，所以显得有些极端。对我们大多数人来说，即使是按照自己的意愿安排时间都无法做到——因此我以一句祝愿来作为结束语：祝福所有那些受困于他人生活轨迹的人们。比如弗朗辛·珀丝（Francine Prose），在校车接走孩子们之后开始写作，在校车送他们回来之后暂停；还有，T.S.艾略特（T.S. Eliot），他发现白天在银行上班之后，进行创作更容易了，而不是当一个饿肚子的诗人； F•斯考特•菲茨杰拉德（F. Scott Fitzgerald），早年著作颇丰，而他当时是一位遵守严格作息制度的年轻军官。那段日子不像后来在巴黎那样夜夜纵酒狂欢，但那时候他更加有创作力——毋庸置疑，他的肝脏也更加轻松。不得不遵循别人的生活轨迹可能会让人烦恼，但是这也更易于保持正轨。

And that of course is what a routine really is — the path we take through our day. Whether we break that trail ourselves or follow the path blazed by our constraints, perhaps what’s most important is that we keep walking. 毫无疑问，生活轨迹就是——我们每一天走过的人生之路。不论是我们自己刻画的印迹，还是依照别人为我们铺就的轨道，很可能，最重要的是，我们一直在走。