第231期：世界太忙，何妨躺躺

想成为我们的主播，欢迎加微信 xdfbook 投稿。 一段美文，一首英文歌，或是一点生活感想，全由你做主。 《世界太忙，何妨躺躺》 Here’s to the Lost Art of Lying Down The legendary Roman dining couch, known as the klinai1), was made from wood or stone, covered with cloth, and designed for lying down. I sometimes wonder how comfortable it really was. Then again, since people 2,000 years ago weren’t acquainted with comfort in the modern, well-cushioned sense, they probably enjoyed it much more than we would today. The klinai was perfectly adequate for the purpose of munching grapes, drinking wine, exchanging philosophical opinions, and meeting potential lovers. As a sophisticated art form, however, lying down was perfected much later. Take the divan2). The word means different things under different circumstances: a Turkish divan consists of a mat on the floor or a flat ledge that can run along an entire wall. In a French boudoir3), a divan means an upholstered4) bench, often decorated with tassels5) and fringe6), in the middle of the room. The term can even be used for a row of chairs clustered around a raised platform. Ultimately, divans and couches came to be associated with “oriental” behaviour and a kind of literary dilettantism7)—thanks to the likes of Thomas De Quincey, the 19th-century English essayist and wastrel8), who succumbed to opium while reclining on a chaise. Later, writers ranging from Truman Capote to the former US poet laureate Charles Simic would confess to producing their best work while horizontal. Until recently, lying down was seen as the horizontal counterpart to the dreamy rambling9) of the melancholy flâneur10), walking about without pursuing any goal in particular. When we lie on our backs and direct our gaze up toward the ceiling or sky, we lose our physical grasp of things. We relax our state of hyper-vigilance11), and our thoughts soar. Indeed, the general disdain for lying down was “unhealthy” and “hypocritical”, according to G K Chesterton, the English critic renowned for his contrarian12) wit. In the essay On Lying in Bed (1909), he championed each person’s freedom and flexibility to decide when to get out of bed, or to enjoy lunch “sometimes in the garden, sometimes in bed, sometimes on the roof, sometimes in the top of a tree.” Although Chesterton recommended that these bouts of leisure (which did not include sleep) be “very occasional”, he insisted that it was unnecessary to justify such aimlessness, except in cases of serious illness. “If a healthy man lies in bed,” he explains, “let him do it without a rag of excuse; then he will get up a healthy man.” However, he warns, if he lies down with a scientific or medical purpose in mind, ‘he may get up a hypochondriac13)’. The Chinese author Lin Yutang wrote in 1937 that “our senses are the keenest in that moment” when we are lying down, and added that “all good music should be listened to in the lying condition.” Our mental makeup and even the structure of our perception can change with a shift of posture. Responses that seemed perfectly natural a few minutes earlier, when we were standing upright or sitting, become inexplicable. Questions that were so important appear in a different light when we view them horizontally. Voices and even the ringing of a telephone might no longer reach us with the same urgency as when we were standing. Yet, these days, the art of repose is under assault. With the advent of smartphones, hardly any vertical or horizontal position is safe from the disturbances of the outside world. We ruin our sleep by exposing our retinas14) to the bright blue light of our screens just before bed. We put our phones next to our pillows or on the bedside table, and our first action in the morning is to reach over to check the messages that have arrived overnight. The concern about the scarcity of our attention is not without precedent—or at least it can be seen as the latest chapter in a long-running story. With the rise of the novel in the 18th century, long reading sessions became common practice among the educated classes. Paintings abound of women lolling on couches. A reclined pose was seen as a proof of indolence in a fast-changing world. Now that idleness is harder and harder to find, even sleeping might soon be regarded as a mere necessity, a way of simply making yourself ready to be productive the next day. With the rise of sleep-tracking apps—and technologies to radically reduce how much shut-eye we need—the instrumental and quantifying logic of the market has finally conquered one of the last domains that was reasonably free from economic concerns. “There will be sleeping enough in the grave,” said Benjamin Franklin, the wakeful polymath and a founding father of the United States. If both dreaming and daydreaming are under attack, will lying around be reserved for late age and, perhaps, death? 传说中罗马人的餐桌叫餐榻，以木头或石头制成，上面以布覆盖，专门为躺卧而设计。我有时会好奇它们是否真的舒服。话说回来，由于2000年前的人们并没有享受过由厚厚的垫子带来的现代意义上的舒适感，他们或许比我们更喜欢这种卧榻。躺在这样的餐榻上，吃吃葡萄，喝喝酒，交流一下哲学思想，会一会潜在的情人，真是再合适不过了。 然而，作为一种成熟的艺术形式，躺卧直到很晚才得以完善。以divan为例，该词在不同场合具有不同的意义：土耳其人的divan就是地板上放置的一个垫子，或者沿着整面墙搭建的平整的壁架；在法国人的闺房里，divan是一种带有软垫的长凳，上面通常饰以流苏和穗子，置放于房间中间。这个词甚至还可以指一排围绕在某种高台边的椅子。最终，divan与couch就和“东方”行为 与文学爱好联系在一起，这要感谢像托马斯·德·昆西这样的人物，他是19世纪英国散文家，一个挥霍无度的人，经常斜躺在沙发上抽鸦片。后来，一些作家，从杜鲁门·卡波特到前美国桂冠诗人查尔斯•西米克，都承认在躺着的时候创造出了他们最优秀的作品。 直到最近，躺卧一直被认为是一种躺着的梦幻漫游，如同忧郁的漫步者漫无目的地闲逛一般。当我们仰面而卧，目光凝视着天花板或者天空，就会失去对万物的外在掌控，神游物外。我们从高度紧张的状态中放松下来，让思想自由翱翔。 以反向思维而闻名的英国批评家G·K·切斯特顿认为：的确，人们鄙视躺卧的原因一般是“不健康”“太矫情”。在《论卧床》(1909)一文中，他赞同每个人都要有决定自己何时起床或何处享用午餐的自由和灵活性，“可以在花园里，可以在床上，可以在房顶，也可以在树顶上”。尽管切斯特顿建议这种休闲行为(不包括睡眠)只能“偶尔为之”，但他坚持认为没必要为这类随意性的行为去找理由，除非是重病在身之类的原因。“如果一个健康的人躺在床上，”他解释说，“那就让他躺着好了，没必要去找任何理由，那么他起来时仍然会是个健康的人。”但是，他警告说，如果他是头脑中带有某种科学或医学目的而躺下的，“他起床后有可能疑神疑鬼，怀疑自己得了病。” 中国作家林语堂在1937年曾这样写道：躺下的时候，“我们的感官在那一刻是最为敏感的”，他还说，“所有美妙的音乐都应该在躺卧状态下聆听欣赏”。我们头脑的构成甚至知觉的结构都会随着姿势的改变而改变。在直立或坐姿状态下看似非常自然的反应，几分钟后换个姿势有可能会变得不可思议。有些看似非常重要的问题，在我们躺下来重新审视时，往往会呈现出不同的样子。站立时听起来非常紧急的声音甚至电话铃声，在我们躺下时听起来或许也不那么紧迫了。 然而，现如今，静卧的艺术正受到侵扰。随着智能手机的出现，无论站立或躺卧都有可能受到外界的干扰。睡觉之前，我们将视网膜暴露于手机屏幕刺眼的蓝光之下，从而毁掉睡眠。我们将手机放到枕边或床头柜上，早上醒来第一个动作就是拿手机，查看夜间发来的信息。 人们对注意力缺乏的忧虑并非史无前例——或至少可以看作是历史长河中最近的一章。在18世纪，随着小说的兴起，在受教育阶层，长时间阅读已十分普遍。油画上经常可以看到懒洋洋倚靠在卧榻上的女人形象。而在现今飞速变化的世界里，斜躺的姿势被认为是懒惰的证明。 现如今，享受悠闲变得越来越难，甚至睡眠也可能很快被认为只是一种需要，仅仅是为了使自己第二天更有效地工作。随着睡眠跟踪程序的兴起，以及可以大大降低我们所需睡眠时间的技术的成熟，市场的工具性以及量化逻辑终于征服了最后一个原本无关经济利益的领域。“在坟墓里最充足的就是睡眠。”清醒、博学的美国开国元勋本杰明·富兰克林如是说。如果连梦与梦幻都备受抨击，那么躺卧是不是只能留给晚年，甚至或许留给死亡呢？ 文章摘自：《新东方英语》杂志2017年6月号