中山大学中国语言文学系专业选修课西方诗学作业：

By “civilization” I mean the totality of man’s achievement in shaping his distinctively human life, his domination and exploitation of nature, his creation of familial, tribal, and civic organizations, his establishment of ethical and religious values, and that subordination of instinct to reason, of “nature” to “convention,” which is the precondition of all these. Until recently, western man’s view of civilization has been based on the modern idea of progress, a total confidence in the power of reason, and especially scientific reason, to master nature with ever-expanding control and increasingly beneficent results.

关于“文明”一词，我认为最基本的含义是人类对于塑造自己独特的人类生活，对于人的天性的探索与掌握，对于家庭、部落、组织的创立，确立了伦理道德和宗教价值观。以及本能地服从是由于从“人的天性”到“习俗规矩”的转变，这是所有建树的前提条件。直到最近，西方人类学关于文明的观点已经确立在了现代发展观念的基础上，尤其是科学理性，对于理性的力量有完全的信心，用不断扩展的能力运用人的天性以得到越来越有益的结果。

For the Greeks civilization (for which there is no single Greek word) is something more basic and also more precarious. Within the structure of Greek thought, civilization—the totality of man’s social organization and cultural attainment—occupies a mediate position between the “savage” life of the bcasts on the one hand and the eternal happiness of the blessed gods on the other. Civilization is the impersonal forces of nature and his own potential violence on the one hand and the remote powers of the gods on the other.

对于希腊文明而言，这是更为基础的而又稍显不稳固。在希腊观念的基本架构中，文明——完全是人类的社会组织和文化造诣——在野蛮人的生活与上帝祝福下的永恒幸福之间占据了协调的位置。文明是不受个人情感影响的天性，也是人类潜在的更强大的能力和诸神们拥有的凡人不能及的力量。

The next chapter will explore more fully some of these implicit definitions of civilization relevant to tragedy. As a preliminary statements, Vico’s “three human customs” come close to the essentials of the classical views: “ All [nations] have some religion, all contract solemn marriages, all bury their dead. And in no nation, however savage and crude, are any human actions performed with more elaborate ceremonies and more sacred solemnity than the rites of religion, marriage and burial… From these three institutions humanity began among them all, and therefore they muse be most devoutly guarded by them all, so that the world should not again become a bestial wilderness.”

下一章节将会更全面地探究那些含蓄的悲剧文化释义。作为初步的陈述，维柯的“三个人类习俗”理论更加接近于传统观念的实质。即：“所有的民族都其宗教信仰，都包括订立庄严的婚约；对死亡进行丧葬；任何一个民族，无论其野蛮和粗鲁的程度如何，人类的行为都以更加周密的典礼和比宗教仪式、婚礼和葬礼更加庄重的仪式呈现出来。在这三条习俗之下，人性开始生成，也正因此人类必须更加虔诚地尽全力守护它，以保证这个世界不会重新变成野蛮的荒野。

What is particularly characteristic of classical Athens, however, is the focus of definitions of civilization on the polis, the city-state. Aristotle’s Politics, the culmination of this attitude, virtually hypostatizes the polis as the fundamental unit of civilization. Man is a being who by nature is political. He is lawful and amenable to law; political action—deliberation, decision, legislation, and, alas, litigation—is his most human activity. Civilized life for the fifth century is unthinkable without the polis, a bounded space dividing the human world from the wild. The polis shelters its citizens, grouped by interrelated families, within its walls; harbors its meeting places, assemblies, law courts, theater in its central area; is nourished by its tilled farmland in the agros beyond its walls; is in touch with other city-states through sea-borne commerce and travel; and is politically autonomous, safeguarding its territory through alliances and war.

什么是古代雅典所特有的型格，或者说，是对于城邦和城邦文明释义的关键。亚里士多德在《政治学》一书中，将城邦实体化作为文明的基本单位，是这种观点的巅峰时期。人类的天性是政治化的，他的存在是合法的且必须遵从法律。包括商议、决策、立法以及诉讼在内的政治活动都是他最为普遍的人类活动。五世纪的文明生活如果没有城邦则是不可想象的，这是人类世界和野蛮的清晰划界。在城墙之内，城邦庇护由相关联的氏族组合而成的它的人民。在城邦的中心区，包含着它的议政厅、集合场、法庭和剧场。城邦受到了在城墙之外位于阿戈斯的耕地的滋养，并且与通过商业贸易和彼此游历方式和其他城邦保持联系。城邦在政治上独立自主，通过结盟和战争包围它的版图领土。

In Sophoclean tragedy the city is also the focus for the hero’s problematical relation to civilized values. This is especially true of the Theban plays but applies also to Electra and even to the three plays not actually set in a polis, Ajax, Philoctetes, Trachiniae. The first two merely project a polis society upon its extension, the Greek army at Troy. The Trachiniae is properly the tragedy of a house rather than a city, but even here the collapse of civilized values has the destruction of a polis in the background.

在索福克勒斯的悲剧中，城邦同样是和英雄的文化价值观的相关问题。忒拜剧尤为能体现这一点，但是在《伊莱克特拉》甚至是在《埃阿斯》《菲洛克忒忒斯》《特拉基斯少女》这三部并不完全以城邦为背景的剧中也同样适用。前两部仅仅是在希腊军队在特洛伊的这一剧情的延伸中展现了城邦社会。与其说《特拉基斯少女》是一个室内悲剧，不如说是一部城邦悲剧，然而文化价值观的崩溃带来的背景是一个城邦的毁灭。

The Greek view the human condition, as they view so much else, in terms of a set of spatial configurations, a structure whose spatial and moral coordinates coincide. Man is the threatened by the best world pushing up the below, but he is also illuminated by the radiance of the Olympian god above. Myths of heroes attaining Olympus express the highest possible human achievement. Heroes like Tantalus and Ixion in Pindar, who betray the gods’ trust in them, are sent from the radiance of Olympian feasts to the utter darkness of Hades. The vicissitudes endured by heroes like Pelops and Bellerophon take the form of upward and downward movement,which represents the task of achieving the proper mediation between earth and Olympus, lower and upper realms.

从整个空间结构，一个空间上和道德坐标相一致的架构来看，希腊人考察人类状况的观点，和他们看到很多其他的事物是一样的。人类受到由上至下的不同类别的野兽之威胁，但他同样也被奥林匹亚诸神的光芒所照耀。奥林匹斯山的英雄人物的故事极尽可能地展现人类的最高成就。品达笔下的英雄，如背叛了诸神信任的坦塔罗斯和伊克西翁，从奥林匹斯山盛会的光芒中被驱逐到哈德斯之冥府的黑暗之中。如珀罗普斯和柏勒洛丰般的英雄长时间忍受贬至人间和回归天庭的来去变化，则代表着在人世和奥林匹斯山，人间与神界之间寻求适当调和的使命。

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