HSU TSE-MO (徐志摩), A CHILD

Shelly's love affairs are notorious. To Victorian eyes, they are shocking. Matthew Arnold, so very interesting in his views on literature, right or wrong, made a big fool of himself, when he came to touch on Shelly's sexual relations. But Time has vindicated Shelly, cleared him from all mud, and metamorphised him into Ariel—a butterfly, fluttering about from one flower to another, a frail, slight thing, creature of the air, as beautiful as it is innocent. Shelly's Epipsychidion is the song of an ideal lover, who does not love this or that woman, but every woman, in whom he finds a reflection of Ideal Beauty, whether in hand, face or voice.

Well, Tse-mo's relations with women are exactly like Shelly's. Let no woman flatter herself that Tse-mo has ever loved her; he has only loved his own inner vision of Ideal Beauty. Even a pale cast of that Ideal in any woman, Tse-mo loves. His burning incense at many shrines is no disloyalty, but rather it is the essence of his loyalty to his Ideal. Like the shift and play of shadows on a bright summer day, Tse-mo flits about from one girl-friend to another: but inasmuch as the shadows are caused by one sun, so also is Tse-mo's love due to only one thing—his vision of Ideal Beauty. To that he is ever a faithful votary, not only in his relations with women, but also in his writings, in his friendships with men, and even in the vagaries and irregularities of what appears at first sight to be nothing but a disordered kind of existence, at once brief and tragic.

Tse-mo, the man, is much greater than Tse-mo, the poet. We like, many of us, his poetry, because he wrote it. I doubt if there are any who like him, because of his poetry. His personality is his genius. The more of him, therefore, there is in anything he does or says, the more of magical charm it has for us. This is why his prose is so much better than his poetry: there is more of him in it than in his verse. Reading his prose, we become aware, all at once, of the glamour and the unearthly brightness of his personality: his lineaments, the accent of his talk, the rhythm of his speech—its aliveness, at one moment its sinuous retreat into some interesting irrelevancies, at another its victorious return to the main flood of chat, so eager, so ardent, as if nothing matters but chat for chat's sake—they are all there in his prose. His poetry, on the other hand, is one remove from his personality. There is something extraneous about it: it is not a part of, but an excretion, so to speak, from him. Whatever prestige it enjoys is borrowed from his personality. With the passing of the years, as Tse-mo becomes more a memory and less an obsession, his poetry too, I fear, will lose something of the radiance it now has. I am not sure, now that he has been dead two years, if it hasn't already suffered a little fading.

What is the secret of Tse-mo's personality? Is it physical? Something in that. But physically more impressive and more handsome than Tse-mo, there are literally thousands, who yet have not one tenth of his fascination. His nose is too large, his eyebrows too nondescript, his mouth somewhat over-drawn, and his jaw a little heavy looking, to be really beautiful. No, the secret of his charm lies elsewhere. It is to be found, I think, in his temperament and in his mind. They are the temperament and the mind of a bright, clever child, who can never grow old, who has an insatiable curiosity about the things around him, who makes no distinction between the world of wake and the world of dream, who can never hate anyone, and to whom it never occurs that anybody can really dislike him. Experiences brush him by, they cannot transform him. He plays about with things, as a child his toys. Ideas, the Theory of Relativity, Chandra Bose's discoveries in botany, the Irish Renaissance, Tagore, Liang Chi-chao, Cézanne's paintings, Picasso's drawings, Mei Lan-fang, Kreisler—they all provide him with endless entertainment. His life is a continual round of visits to friends. The places he stays in are mere corridors for his friends to go through. The wonder is that he ever finds time to write as much as he does. What to others would be vexatious interruptions, is to him nothing, but joyous variety; and variety is life to a child.

There are sorrows to be sure, in Tse-mo's life: keen and poignant, like those of a child; but lasting no longer than the morning dew. Pain is often inflicted by him on those he associates with; but the pain is robbed of half its hurt, because the hand that inflicts it is innocent. Like a child who kills birds and pulls out the wings of flies, Tse-mo can also, at times, be very cruel to people, without his knowing it. A creature of impulse, wholly innocent, Tse-mo breaks glasses, scatters flowers, and riots through a brake of brambles, as part of the day's play.

Some say, they see signs of maturity in Tse-mo's latter days. If so, a good thing he died when he did. And what a fairytale death it was! Died in an aeroplane crash, and against a mountain too! A poetic death, a child's life: what better fate can the gods grant to mortal man?

[No. 11; Mar. 15, 1934]

徐志摩¹，一个孩子

雪莱²的爱情故事已经尽人皆知，在维多利亚时代³的人们看来，那是惊世骇俗的。马修·阿诺德⁴的文学评论，无论正确与否，都能引人入胜，但是一触及雪莱和女性的关系，他却变成了一个大傻瓜。但是，时光老人已经为雪莱辩诬，洗清了他身上所有的泥污，把他变成了爱丽儿⁵——一只在花朵与花朵之间飞来飞去的、轻盈而脆弱的蝴蝶，一个在空中飞舞的美好而且天真的生灵。雪莱的《心之灵》，是一曲理想的情人之歌，他爱的并不是这个或那个女人，而是每一个女人。在她身上，无论是手上、脸上或是说话的声音里，他发现了理想美的某种反映。

是的，志摩和女人们的关系就和雪莱完全一样。哪一个女人也不要以被徐志摩爱过而自鸣得意，他爱过的只是他内心理想美的幻象。即使只是那种理想在某个女人身上的苍白投影，他也爱。他在许多神龛前烧香并非不忠，倒是忠于理想的本质表现。志摩用情于一个又一个女友，就像晴朗夏日飘忽不定的影子；也像影子全都由太阳引起一样，志摩的情爱也只有一个来源——他理想美的幻象。他永远是这种理想美的忠实信徒，不仅表现在他和女人的关系上，也表现在他的写作里、他和男人的友谊上，甚至表现在他乍看起来杂乱无章、短暂而可悲的一生的异常怪诞之中。

作为人的志摩，要比作为诗人的志摩伟大得多。我们许多人都喜欢他的诗，就因为诗是他写的。我不知道是否有人因为他写的诗而喜欢上他。他的个性就是他的天才。所以，他的一言一行越是富有个性，对于我们来说，就越是富有魅力。这就是为什么他的散文会比他的诗好那么多：他的散文比诗更富有个性。读他的散文，我们能立刻感受到他个性的美和脱俗的光彩。他的面部表情、说话的腔调、语言的节奏（活跃而富有生气，有时会委曲婉转涉及有趣的题外事物，继而又会顺利回归闲聊的中心主流，是那么急切、那么热情，好像什么都不为，只是为了聊聊而已）——这一切在散文中随处可见。他的诗则不然，总是和他的个性保持着距离。诗对于他总有些异己，而不是他的一部分，可以说是他的排泄物。无论享有何等声誉，诗都是他个性的余晖。随着岁月的流逝，志摩变得越来越是个回忆中的人物，人们不再像从前那样对他着迷，他的诗恐怕也会丧失掉一些现今具有的光彩。志摩去世两年了，他的诗是不是已经有点褪色，我说不准。

志摩个性魅力的秘密究竟何在？在于形象吗？有点。但是在形象上比志摩英俊出色的，何止千万，而这成千上万人的魅力也不及他的十分之一。他的鼻子太大，眼眉缺乏特点，嘴巴有点夸张，下颚看来略显沉重，因此很难算得上漂亮。不，他的魅力的秘密在别处——我想，可以从他的气质、他的头脑中找到。那是一个聪明伶俐的孩子的气质和头脑，这个孩子永远也长不大，对周围的一切怀有无穷的好奇，不分辨是清醒的还是梦幻中的世界，不懂得憎恨任何人，也不曾想过任何人会不喜欢他。人生的经历擦身而去，未能改变他。他与人间事物游戏，像孩子之于玩具。各种主张、相对论⁶、钱德拉·博斯⁷的植物学新发现、爱尔兰的文艺复兴⁸、泰戈尔⁹、梁启超¹⁰、塞尚¹¹的绘画、毕加索¹²的作品、梅兰芳¹³、克莱斯勒¹⁴——全都给了他无尽的娱乐。他的生活是对朋友无休无止的探访。他所居住的住所，不过是朋友们从中通过的走廊。令人惊奇的是，他总能找到时间写出那么多作品来。工作被打断，对于别人会是讨厌的事情；在他则不然，只不过是愉快的变换花样。对于孩子而言，变换花样就是生活。

不错，志摩的生活中也有烦恼：尖锐而且辛酸，就像孩子的烦恼那样；但是有如朝露，转瞬即逝。他也常使他的亲朋好友遭受痛苦，但是这种痛苦不会造成很大伤害，因为他本无意为害。就像孩子会弄死小鸟、撕掉昆虫的翅膀一样，志摩有时也会对别人非常残酷而不自知。他完全是个容易冲动、天真无邪的孩子，有时会摔碎杯子、乱扔花朵、在刺藤丛中喧哗笑闹，这都是嬉戏的一部分。

有人说，他们在志摩的后期看到了成熟的迹象。果真这样，他倒死得其时。而他的死，又多么像个童话！飞机失事，而且撞到了山上！死得富有诗意，活得像个孩子：神明还能给凡人安排出更好的命运吗？

［第11期，1934年3月15日］