悲剧的诞生The Birth Of Tragedy 第24期:希腊悲剧之起源

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.

现在，我们必须使用上述一切艺术原理，以便在希腊悲剧之起源这个可谓“迷宫”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.

我想我颇有理由来说，悲剧起源这问题直到现在尚未认真地提出，更谈不上解决了。虽则古代传说，这件褴褛破衣，曾经东补西缝，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.

古代传说十分明确地告诉我们：希腊悲剧是从悲剧歌队产生的，初时不过是歌队，仅仅是歌队而已。

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.

所以我们有责任去探察这种悲剧歌队的核心，把它当作真正的原始戏剧。我们无论如何不能满足于流行的艺术理论，说歌队是理想的观众，或者说歌队代表人民以对抗剧中的贵族分子。

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.

后一种解释，在许多政治家听来是使人兴奋的，它认为雅典平民把颠扑不破的道德规律体现为人民歌队，这歌队常常克服了帝王们的愤怒的暴行与专横。这一说虽然可以用亚里士多德的一段话予以有力的阐明，可是对悲剧起源问题却无甚影响，因为人民与帝王的一切对立，总之，任何社会政治范围，是在悲剧的纯粹宗教根源之外的。

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，以埃斯库罗斯与索福克勒斯的歌队的古典形式而论，我们甚至可以认为：若果说诗人预料到“立宪国民代议制”，那真是“亵渎神明”，但是就有人不怕亵渎神明。

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

古代政治制度在实践上（inpraxi）并没有立宪国民代议制，而且可以料想，他们也不曾在悲剧方面“预料”到这种制度。