 Brahms Love for Clara Schumann 勃拉姆斯對克拉拉的愛 By Peter Y. Chou On February 12, 1856, he wrote Clara one of the most revealing letters of his life.It always saddens me to think that after all I am not yet a proper musician; but I have more aptitude for the calling than probably many of the younger generation have as a rule. It gets knocked out of you. Boys should be allowed to indulge themselves in jolly music; the serious kind comes of its own accord, although the lovesick does not. How lucky is the man who, like Mozart and others, goes to the tavern of an evening and writes some fresh music. For he lives while he is creating.He concluded jokingly, 'What a Man!' and crushed his quill pen onto the page. In fact, he was fighting despair. (p. 153) 1856年2月12日，他給克拉拉寫了封他一生中最刻骨銘心的信：想到我畢竟還不是一個合格的音樂家，我總是感到難過；但我比許多年輕一代更有能力從事這項工作。這個想法使我潰不成軍。應(yīng)該允許男孩縱情聲色；嚴(yán)肅的音樂是自然產(chǎn)生的，盡管相思病不是這樣的。像莫扎特和其他人一樣，晚上去酒館寫一些新鮮的音樂是多么幸運啊。因為他在創(chuàng)造中活著。這些人看似戲謔地說：“人就應(yīng)該這樣活著！”說完，他把筆尖踩在書頁上。事實上，他是在與絕望作斗爭。 I wish I could write to you as tenderly as I love you and tell you all the good things that I wish you. You are so infinitely dear to me, dearer than I can say... If things go on much longer as they are at present I shall have sometime to put you under glass or to have you set in gold. If only I could live in the same town with you and my parents... Do write me a nice letter soon. Your letters are like kisses. For all the extravagant language— which sounds like a true lover's in all senses— the distance still lingers between the lines: set you in gold, live in the same town with you and my parents. To set one's lover in gold in the presence of one's parents is not a prospective husband's fantasy. It means: I want to admire you, be near you, but stay with my own and not touch you. (p. 159) 勃拉姆斯致克拉拉的信： 我希望我可以像戀人一樣柔情蜜意地給你寫信，告訴我你所珍視的東西。你對我來說是無以言表的珍貴。如果時間不會流逝，我想把你嵌入玻璃之中，或者把你鑄成金石。要是我能和你和我父母住在同一個城鎮(zhèn)就好了。一定要盡快給我寫封漂亮的信。你的信就像親吻。盡管所有這些華麗的語言聽起來就像一個真正的情人，但言語之間的距離也太過遙遠(yuǎn)：在父母面前給愛人鍍金不是未來丈夫應(yīng)有的幻想。它的意思是：我想欣賞你，在你身邊，但是我卻踟躕不前，盡量不要去碰你。(p.159) He came as a true friend, to share with me all my sorrow; he strengthened my heart as it was about to break, he lifted my thoughts, lightened, when it was possible, my spirits. In short, he was my friend in the fullest sense of the word. I can truly say, my children, that I have never loved a friend as I loved him; it is the most beautiful mutual understanding of two souls. I do not love him for his youthfulness, nor probably for any reason of flattered vanity. It is rather his elasticity of spirit, his fine gifted nature, his noble heart that I love... Joachim, too, as you know, was a true friend to me, but... it was really Johannes who bore me up... Believe all that I, your mother, have told you, and do not heed those small and envious souls who make light of my love and friendship, trying to bring up for question our beautiful relationship, which they neither fully understand nor ever could. (p. 164)
勃拉姆斯像一個真正的朋友來到我的身邊，與我分享我所有的悲傷；他使我即將破碎的心堅強起來，他喚起我的思想，減輕我精神的重壓。總之，他是我的朋友，名如其實。我可以非常肯定地說，孩子們，我從來沒有如此真摯地愛過朋友；那是兩個靈魂之間最美麗的相互理解。我愛他不是因為他年輕，也并非不是因為虛榮。我愛的是他的精神張力，他善良的稟性，他高尚的心……你知道，勃拉姆斯對我來說也是一個真正的朋友，但是……真的是勃拉姆斯讓我振作起來…請相信媽媽，媽媽把一切都告訴你們，不要理會那些輕視我們愛與友誼，試圖對我們的美好關(guān)系提出質(zhì)疑的渺小而嫉妒的靈魂，他們完全無法也永遠(yuǎn)不能理解媽媽和勃拉姆斯之間的感情。 Clara may have had her own misgivings about marrying someone as young, inexperienced, and egocentric as Brahms. That summer of 1856 she was 36, he 23. She wanted to be done with childbearing and was determined to perform full-time. Yet it is inescapable that Clara did want him, for the same reason she had wanted Robert, however unrealistic that had been. She loved and admired Johannes, and for all her gravity Clara respected passion and had always followed hers, purely and directly... In 1856, she wrote down what she wanted her children, and history, to know about the relations between herself and Brahms. Her journal, written for the record as much as for herself, did not note unseemly intimacies. She wrote a testament transparently idealized and evasive, perhaps self-deluding, extraordinarily forgiving. 克拉拉對于嫁給這樣一個年輕缺乏經(jīng)驗并且以自我中心的勃拉姆斯的確有所顧慮。1856年的那個夏天，她36歲，他23歲。她希望不再生孩子，并決心做全職工作。克拉拉確實需要勃拉姆斯，這也是不可避免的，就像她需要要羅伯特的原因一樣，盡管這種依戀非常不切實際?？死瓙鄄⑶覛J佩勃拉姆斯，盡管她嚴(yán)肅，但她尊重激情，并且一直純粹地、直接地追隨她的感情。1856年，她通過日記的形式記述下自己同勃拉姆斯的感情，以便她的孩子和歷史能夠正確解讀二人的關(guān)系。她的日記中并沒有描繪她與勃拉姆斯不正當(dāng)?shù)挠H密行為。她寫了一份遺囑，并在其中理想化回避這些問題，也許也是自我欺騙，她對這段關(guān)系表現(xiàn)得異常寬容。 Yet if Brahms denied Clara as a wife, in his heart he could never desert her. To the end of his life he loved Clara Schumann to the extent of his crippled capacity to love. But always he placed that in some other time, some other world. She was the virginal priestess, going to the stage as to the altar. So in his mind and in his music only the past would seem tryly alive. Maybe for that reason, some of the warmest and most haunting moments in his music seem to voice a lyrical Romantic evocation of what was or could have been: the lost idyll, the unattainable lightness of life. (p. 165) 然而，即使勃拉姆斯不承認(rèn)克拉拉是他的妻子，但在他心里他決不會拋棄她。在他生命的盡頭，他對克拉拉·舒曼的愛已達到了他無法去愛的程度。這份感情象征著另一個時間，另一個世界?？死瓕λ鹑缫粋€貞潔的女祭司，走上舞臺，就像走向祭壇。因此，在他的思想和音樂中，只有過去的回憶散發(fā)著光彩。也許正因為如此，他的音樂中一些最溫暖、最令人難忘的時刻似乎總在表達一種抒情的浪漫，喚起人們對曾經(jīng)或可能發(fā)生過的事情的回憶：追憶逝去的田園生活，和難以企及的生命的輕盈感。   
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