Everyday Life

Susan Sontag, who died two years ago, left behind a cache of journals, notebooks and jottings. These deeply personal extracts, beginning when she was 26 and in Paris, reveal a passionate woman coming to terms with who she really was - and finding her voice as a writer

Thursday September 14, 2006

Guardian

29 December 1958, Paris
Harriet [Sohmers, author and artist's model]. Finest flower of American bohemia. New York. Jewish. Family apartments in the 70's and 80's. Middle-class business (not professional) father. Communist aunts. Own history of CP flirtation. Negro maid. New York high school, NYU, experimental artsy-craftsy college, San Francisco, flat in Greenwich Village. Early sexual experience, including Negroes. Homosexuality. Writes short stories. Bisexual promiscuity. Paris. Lives with a painter. Father moves to Miami. Trips back to America. Expatriate-type night employment. Writing peters out.
30 December
My relationship to Harriet baffles me. I want it to be unpremeditated, unreflective - but the shadow of her expectations about what an "affair" consists in upsets my poise, makes me fumble. She with her romantic dissatisfactions, I with my romantic needs and longing ... One unexpected gift: that she is beautiful. I had remembered her as definitely not beautiful, rather gross and unattractive. She's anything but that. And physical beauty is enormously, almost morbidly, important to me.

31 December
On Keeping a Journal. Superficial to understand the journal as just a receptacle for one's private, secret thoughts - like a confidante who is deaf, dumb and illiterate. In the journal I do not just express myself more openly than I could to any person; I create myself.

The journal is a vehicle for my sense of selfhood. It represents me as emotionally and spiritually independent. Therefore (alas) it does not simply record my actual, daily life but rather - in many cases - offers an alternative to it.

There is often a contradiction between the meaning of our actions toward a person and what we say we feel toward that person in a journal. But this does not mean that what we do is shallow, and only what we confess to ourselves is deep. Confessions, I mean sincere confessions of course, can be more shallow than actions. I am thinking now of what I read today in H's journal about me - that curt, unfair, uncharitable assessment of me which concludes by her saying that she really doesn't like me but my passion for her is acceptable and opportune. God knows it hurts, and I feel indignant and humiliated. We rarely do know what people think of us (or, rather, think they think of us) . . . Do I feel guilty about reading what was not intended for my eyes? No. One of the main (social) functions of a journal or diary is precisely to be read furtively by other people, the people (like parents + lovers) about whom one has been cruelly honest only in the journal. Will H ever read this?

...

Writing. It's corrupting to write with the intent to moralise, to elevate people's moral standards.

Nothing prevents me from being a writer except laziness. A good writer.

Why is writing important? Mainly, out of egotism, I suppose. Because I want to be that persona, a writer, and not because there is something I must say. Yet why not that too? With a little ego-building - such as the fait accompli this journal provides - I shall win through to the confidence that I (I) have something to say, that should be said.

My "I" is puny, cautious, too sane. Good writers are roaring egotists, even to the point of fatuity. Sane men, critics, correct them - but their sanity is parasitic on the creative fatuity of genius.

2 January, 7.30am
Poor little ego, how did you feel today? Not very well, I fear - rather bruised, sore, traumatised. Hot waves of shame, and all that. I never had any illusion that she was in love with me, but I did assume she liked me.

...

Tonight (last night!) at Paul's place I reely wuz speeking French. For owers 'n owers, with him and his very sweet parents. What great fun!!

19 February
Yesterday (late afternoon) I went to my first Paris cocktail party, at Jean Wahl's - in the disgusting company of Allan Bloom. Wahl [a philosopher] very much lived up to my expectations - a tiny slim birdlike old man with lank white hair and wide thin mouth, rather beautiful, but terribly distrait and unkempt. Baggy black suit with three large holes in the rear end through which you could see his (white) underwear, + he'd just come from a late afternoon lecture - on Claudel - at the Sorbonne. Has a tall handsome Tunisian wife (with a round face and tightly-drawn-back black hair) half his age, about 35-40 I'd guess, + three or four quite young children. Also there was a man who looked like Jean-Paul Sartre, only uglier, with a limp, and was Jean-Paul Sartre; and lots of other people whose names meant nothing to me. I talked to Wahl + de Santillana + (unavoidably) to Bloom. The apartment, it's in the rue Peletier, is fantastic - all the walls are drawn + sketched + painted on by the children and by artist friends - there is dark carved North African furniture, ten thousand books, heavy tablecloths, flowers, paintings, toys, fruit - a rather beautiful disorder, I thought.

28 Feb
Heard Simone de Beauvoir talk on "the novel, is it still possible?" last night at the Sorbonne. She is lean and tense and blackhaired and very goodlooking for her age, but her voice is unpleasant, something about the high pitch + the nervous speed with which she talks. In the late afternoon read Carson McCullers's "Reflections in a Golden Eye". Slick, really economical and "written", but I don't go for motivation by apathy, catatonia, animal empathy ... (In a novel, I mean!)

Early 1959, New York City
The ugliness of New York. But I do like it here. In NY sensuality completely turns into sexuality - no objects for the senses to respond to, no beautiful river, houses, people. Awful smells of the street, and dirt ... Nothing except eating, if that, and the frenzy of the bed.

...

March 12, 4:15pm
I am in bad shape. I write it out here; I write slowly and I look at my handwriting which looks OK. Two vodka martinis. My head feels heavy. Smoking is bitter.

October
I'm not pious, but co-pious.

Nov 19
The coming of the orgasm has changed my life. I am liberated, but that's not the way to say it. More important: it has narrowed me, it has closed off possibilities, it has made the alternatives clear and sharp. I am no longer unlimited, ie nothing.

Sexuality is the paradigm. Before, my sexuality was horizontal, an infinite line capable of being infinitely subdivided. Now it is vertical; it is up and over, or nothing.

...

The orgasm focuses. I lust to write. The coming of the orgasm is not the salvation but, more, the birth of my ego. I cannot write until I find my ego. The only kind of writer I could be is the kind who exposes himself ... To write is to spend oneself, to gamble oneself. But up to now I have not even liked the sound of my own name. To write, I must love my name. The writer is in love with himself ... and makes his books out of that meeting and that violence.

Nov 20 (3am)
I have never been as demanding of anyone as I am of [the Cuban-American playwright Maria] I[rene Fornes]. I am jealous of everyone she sees, I hurt every minute she goes away from me. But not when I leave her, and know that she is here. My love wants to incorporate her totally, to eat her. My love is selfish.

...

Tonight she went from work to meet Inez at the San Remo. Ann Morrissett [journalist and playwright] was there. After, the Cedar Bar. She came home at 12:00; I was asleep ... She came to bed, told me about the conversations of the evening, at 2:00 asked that the light be put out, went to sleep. I was paralysed, mute, swollen with tears. I smoked, she slept.

...

Dec 24
My desire to write is connected with my homosexuality. I need the identity as a weapon, to match the weapon that society has against me.

It doesn't justify my homosexuality. But it would give me - I feel - a license.

I am just becoming aware of how guilty I feel being queer.

...

Being queer makes me feel more vulnerable.

Dec 28
Till now I have felt that the only persons I could know in depth, or really love, were duplicates or versions of my own wretched self. (My intellectual and sexual feelings have always been incestuous.) Now I know + love someone who is not like me - eg not a Jew, not a New York-type intellectual - without any failure of intimacy. I am always conscious of I's foreignness, of the absence of a shared background - and I experience this as a great release.

1960
Cogito ergo est

Feb
How many times have I told people that Pearl Kazin [editor] was a major girlfriend of Dylan Thomas? That Norman Mailer has orgies? That [FO] Matthiessen was queer? All public knowledge to be sure, but who the hell am I to go advertising other people's sexual habits.

How many times have I reviled myself for that, which is only a little less offensive than my habit of name-dropping (how many times did I talk about Allen Ginsberg last year while I was on Commentary?) and my habit of criticising people if other people invite it ... I have always betrayed people to each other. No wonder I've been so high-minded and scrupulous about how I use the word "friend"!

Saturday:
awake at 7

Museum at 10:30

I. arrives at 1

coffee + lunch in Museum

3:00 "Trouble in Paradise"

4:30-5:15 coffee with I; talk

she comes with me in the cab to 118th St.

pick up David [Rieff, Sontag's seven-year-old son]

drop I at 79th St - she is going to Alfred [Chester, author and literary critic]

I feed D + put him to bed

A calls to urge me to come to the party

I read the Listener - call Jack, Harriet - leave at 9:30

cab to 14th St - I buy tickets for [film director Kenneth] Anger film and Pirandello party - I leave - Times Sq

Bardot movie - home at 4

Sunday:
awake at 7:00 - rage

call A at 9:00

Jack picks us up at 9:15

breakfast at Rumpelmayer's

walk in Central Park

Hotel Pierre with Jack + Ann + 2 friends (Jack and Harriet)

cab to Alfred's

lunch with I + A, at Bocce place

matinee off - I and I go to the Commons

our talk

we return to Alfred's at 6:45

I calls Ann - we all go down, I to Ann's, A + David + I to Frank's Pizza.

we pick I up at 8 on Hudson St - go to films at Carnegie Hall Playhouse

10:30 - cab home, put D to bed - I wants to eat - sex - no talk - sleep

...

March 8 (noon)
There is no stasis. To stand still is to fall away from the truth; the inner life dims and flickers, starts to go out, as soon as one tries to hold fast. It's like trying to make this breath serve for the next one, or making today's dinner do the work of next Wednesday's as well ... Truth rides the arrow of time.

August 8
Monday Morning

I must help I to write. And if I write, too, it will stop this uselessness of just sitting and staring at her and begging her to love me again.

...

It hurts then to love. It's like giving yourself to be flayed and knowing that at any moment the other person may just walk off with your skin.

August 14
I SHOULDN'T TRY TO MAKE LOVE

WHEN I AM TIRED.

I SHOULD ALWAYS KNOW WHEN I AM

TIRED. BUT I DON'T.

I LIE TO MYSELF. I DON'T KNOW

MY TRUE FEELINGS.

(Still?!)

12/3/61
Becoming aware of the "dead places" of feeling - Talking without feeling anything. (This is very different from my old self-revulsion at talking without knowing anything.)

...

9 Dec 1961
The fear of becoming old is born of the recognition that one is not living now the life that one wishes. It is equivalent to a sense of abusing the present.

Sept 3, 1962
I am sitting on the grass by the river. David is play[ing] ball with a Puerto Rican boy and man.

Alone, alone, alone. A ventriloquist's dummy without a ventriloquist. I have brain-fatigue and heart-ache. Where is peace, the centre?

There are seven different kinds of grasses where I am lying. Dandelions, squirrels, little yellow flowers.

...

I want to be able to be alone, to find it nourishing - not just a waiting.

Hippolyte says, blessed is the mind with something to occupy it other than its own dissatisfactions.

I dreamed of Nat[han] Glazer last night. He came to borrow a black dress of mine, a very beautiful dress, for his girlfriend to wear at a party. I tried to help him find it. He lay on a single bed + I sat beside him and stroked his face. His skin was white except for patches of black moss-like beard on his face. I asked him how his face got so white, + told him he should get into the sun. I wanted him to love me but he didn't.

Sept 12, 1962
Premature pliability, agreeableness

so that the underlying stubbornness is never touched

accounts for 80% of my notorious flirtatiousness, seductiveness

10/16/62
Sentimentality. The inertia of the emotions. They are not light, buoyant. - I am sentimental. I cling to my emotional states. Or do they cling to me?

[On a loose scrap of paper, probably from 1964]

I will be all right by 7:00 am this morning.

...

M [Mildred Jacobsen, Sontag's mother] didn't answer when I was a child. The worst punishment - and the ultimate frustration. She was always "off" - even when she wasn't angry. (The drinking a symptom of this.) But I kept trying.

Now, the same with I. Even more agonising because for four years she did answer. So I know she can.

...

My faults:

- to censor [sic] others for my own vices*

- to make my friendships into love affairs

- to ask that love include (and exclude) all

* but, perhaps this becomes most hectic and obvious - reaches a climax, when the thing in myself is deteriorating, giving way, collapsing- like: my indignation at Susan [Taubes]'s and Eva [Kollisch]'s physical squeamishness

NB: my ostentatious appetite - real need - to eat exotic and "disgusting" foods = a need to state my denial of squeamishness. A counter-statement.

...

July 4, Bled [Yugoslavia]
In every important modern American writer you feel a struggle with the language - it's your enemy, doesn't naturally work for you. (Completely different in England, where the language is taken for granted.) You have to subdue it, reinvent it.

July 16, Paris
I haven't learned to mobilise rage - (I perform militant actions, without militant feeling)

Nov 8
Through 2/3 of Greta Garbo's "Private Potato Patch" I wanted to be Garbo (I studied her; I wanted to assimilate her, learn her gestures, feel as she felt) - then, toward the end, I started to want her, to think of her sexually, to want to possess her. Longing succeeded admiration - as the end of my seeing her drew near. The sequence of my homosexuality?

In NY, little or no "community" but a great sense of "scene".

...

Nov 24
Lillian [Hellman] identified with Becky Sharp - always wanted to be a bitch, to bait people.

I never got past admiring and envying her for being able to throw the dictionary back at the drippy schoolmistress. All that manipulative stuff with men was beyond me.

...

[Not dated, late 1965]

The unpleasantness of the feedback - other people's reactions to my work, admiring or adverse. I don't want to react to that. I'm critical enough (+ I know better what's wrong).

I like to feel dumb. That's how I know there's more in the world than me.

my intellectual formation:

a) Knopf +M[odern] L[ibrary]

b) P[artisan] R[eview] (Trilling, Rahv, Fiedler, Chase)

c) University of Chicago

P & A via Schwab-Mckeon

Burke

d) Central European "sociology"

The German Jewish refugee intellectuals Strauss, Arendt, Scholem, Marcuse, Gourevitch, [Jacob] Taubes, etc. (Marx, Freud, Spengler, Nietzsche, Weber,Dilthey, Simmel, Mannheim, Adorno et etc.)

e) Harvard Wittgenstein

f) the French - Artaud, Barthes, Cioran, Sartre

g) more history of religion

h) I - mailer, anti-intellectualism

i) Art, art-history

Jasper [Johns]

[John] Cage

[William S] Burroughs

end result: Franco-Jewish Cageian?

Jan 4, 1966
The situation in painting is tight: like science. Everyone conscious of "problem", what needs to be worked on. Each artist by his recent work issuing "white papers" on this or that problem, + the critics judging whether their chosen problems are interesting or trivial ... While in literature, everything is so loose textured. One could make a parachute jump blindfolded - anywhere you land, if you push it hard enough, you're bound to find interesting unexplored valuable terrain. All the options are lying about, barely used.

...

Jasper is good for me. (But only for a while.) He makes it feel natural + good + right to be crazy. And mute. To question everything. Because he is crazy.

...

[Not dated, late winter 1966]

NYC with its intelligentsia, its liberal consensus, is in relationship to the rest of USA like Vatican in the midst of Italy, a tiny private state with immense power + wealth, but separate

...

June 1
One of my strongest and most fully employed emotions: contempt. Contempt for others, contempt for myself.

...

I'm impatient (' contemptuous) of people who don't know how to protect themselves, stand up for themselves.

My mind = King Kong. Aggressive, tears people to pieces. I keep it locked up most of the time - and bite my nails.

June 27, Paris
When the provos stage "happenings" at night in the streets of Amsterdam, there is a risk. They provoke the police, they "say" something, they try to make something happen. (More liberty, etc.)

Happenings in NY are not only apolitical. They risk nothing. They are witty exercises in irrationality - entirely safe.

...

If only my novel could have the speed - and the range, the relevance - that Godard's last two films have. The ulcer of Vietnam, the sound of guns going off -

Aug 6, London
Peter Brook: very intense, high-pitched, pale blue eyes - balding - wears black turtleneck sweaters - warm generous handshake - fleshy, meaty face

Studied with Jane Heap (famous Little Review lady from 20's) living at end of her life in Hampstead; a pupil of Gurdjieff; her Sunday afternoons

brain-picker

...

Aug 9
I've got the Novel ... I think! Thanks to Brook + Grotowski, the final pieces have fallen into place.

Oct 8
Jap [Jasper Johns]; of a young painter's work he saw this afternoon. "The paintings are very beautiful. But that's all."

Jap's authority, his elegance. He is never flustered, apologetic, guilty, ashamed. Perfect certitude. So, if he picks his nose or eats in the Automat, he's being elegant.

...

[Not dated, late 1966]

Joe [Chaikin] asks me tonight how I feel when I discover, say, three-fours through something I'm writing that it is mediocre, inferior. I reply that I feel good and plow on to the end. I'm discharging the mediocre in myself. (My excremental image of my writing.) It's there. I want to get rid of it. I can't negate it by an act of will. (Or can I?) I can only allow it its voice, get it "out". Then I can do something else. At least, I know I won't need to do that again.

Feb 22, 1967, 3am
I'm finishing the "[Story of] O" review which has turned into a 35-page essay. It's OK. Still, I don't believe a word I'm saying.

April 6
In Calif, a stranger is a [potential] friend until he proves otherwise; in NY, a stranger is an enemy until he proves otherwise. One uses up a lot of energy in NY by that hypothesis.

...

The ideal life: doing only things which are indispensable.

Two ways to be - a saint or a thief.

My image of myself since age 3 or 4 - the genius-schmuck. I allow one to pay off the other. Develop relationships to satisfy principally one or the other.

...

Sartre (cf "Les Mots") the only other person I know of who had this "certainty" of genius. Living already a posthumous life, even as a childhood. (The childhood of a famous man.) A kind of suicide - with the "work" of genius you know you'll do when adult your tombstone. The most glorious tombstone possible.

Sartre was very ugly - and knew it. So he didn't have to develop "the schmuck" to pay off the others for being "the genius". Nature had taken care of the problem for him. He didn't have to invent a cause of failure or rejection by others. As I did, by making myself 'stupid' in personal relations. (For "stupid", also read "blind".)

©The estate of Susan Sontag 2006.

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

讀罷王安憶作品《香港情與愛》中的一段描述舊金山中國移民的文字，引述於此，與大家細味。


「...唐人街上的婚姻帶有種族同盟的意味，還帶有同舟共濟的意味。他們在一起，幹活吃飯的時間多，談情說愛的時間少。他們的婚姻是最本質的一種，兩個無根無攀無援無助的人在了一起；他們的婚姻還是起源性質的一種，好像荒島上唯有的一男一女，合二而一繁衍人類。這幾乎是所有移民的面目，愛情對於他們是奢侈，生存是最要緊的。

他們是邊緣上的一群人，他們必須手拉手，才不致滑落下去，然後前仆後繼地向中心接近。他們的一生是辛勞、沒有休憩、逆水行舟不進則退的一生，是沒有逃避的一生。他們的人生都是實打實的。他們的宗教是具有現實意義的，是要求回報的虔信，他們的神是有實際功能、分工明確的。他們早起一炷香，嘴裏就念念叨叨地分派了任務，或是福，或是祿，或是壽。

他們的娛樂也是實打實的，比如吃和賭這兩種。口舌之慾是最貼近生存含義的歡情，這是民以食為天的生存原則的模擬遊戲，它又飽腹又有口舌快樂。賭也是有生存含義的娛樂，而且有宿命的含義，它是對變幻無常命運的模擬遊戲。它那無從捉摸又確實無疑的概率原則，是幻想的動力。賭的時候人們容易投入，它是將發財和破產概括化又典型化的遊戲。

這種實打實的人生是加倍辛勞的人生，工作是勞，奮鬥是辛勞，娛樂是辛勞，婚姻是辛勞加辛勞。這是密不透氣無縫可鑽的人生。他們沒有材料開闢一個精神的避難所和休憩地，精神對於他們是個虛無的東西。這就是唐人街上的人生。」

在友好部落格上被點名，列出五本影響自己的書籍。書單如下：

1. 《聖經》。研讀它是一件充滿甜酸苦辣的事情，從其中的見證裏看到，上帝竟然愛我。

2. T. F. Torrance ed., Belief. 這本書在求學的時候常讀。當時我對信仰跟科學之間的關係很好奇，它為我解了疑難，提出兩者互補的關係。

3. Susan Sontag(蘇珊‧桑塔格)：《疾病的隱喻》。雖然書中只以肺結核和愛滋病作話語研究，但它使我在遇到別人及自身的疾病時，給予了一種坦然對待的力量。

4. Edward Said, Out of Place. 薩依德的童年至成長，一直將思想關連至自己的民族，那份所寫所做均誠實地反映自己的氣骨，為我所景仰，也常在自己的失敗中向他學習，讓自己可以懷有赤誠之心生活。

5. Henri Nouwen, The Return of the Prodigal Son. 盧雲默想著Rembrandt的畫作，進入聖經中「浪子回頭」的故事，其反省很感動我。這也是其中一個我最愛的聖經故事。

2006年，胃口不錯，從書架上挑十本書閱讀，希望令生活愉快充實。若你案頭有這些書目，不妨分享交流一二。

1. Creston Davis, John Milbank, and Slavoj Zizek eds. Theology and The Political: The New Debate. Duke. 2005. 

2. Jacques Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. Norton, 1998.

3. Jacques Lacan, On Feminine Sexuality: The Limits of Love and Knowledge, 1972-1973. Norton, 1999.

4. Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project. Harvard, 2002. paperback edition. 

5. Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life. U. of California, 1988. paparback edition.

6. David Boyle, The Communist Manifesto, Ivy Press, 2004.

7. 戴維‧赫爾德等著：《馴服全球化》。 上海譯文出版社。2005。

8. Arthur Bradley, Negative Theology and Modern French Philosophy. Routledge, 2004.

9. 許寶強、汪暉選編：《發展的迷思》。牛津出版社。1999。

10. John Milbank, Being Reconciled: Ontology and pardon. Routledge, 2003.

我對長長篇幅的文字如小說類的讀物不大感興趣，原因有二：一、我讀字的速度不快，一整天讀上二三百頁書的情況少之又少，大概是人容易疲惓；二、我記憶力不好，轉過頭來便忙記了二十頁前所讀的東西。

不知是否年紀開始漸長，經歷也多了，知道快不一定好，慢也不一定差的常識，我除了仍然熱愛讀散文這些速成的文字外，還開始愛上小說。最愛讀的是王安憶。她那細膩的筆觸——甚至幾近複雜，游走於大城市和小人物之間見證著歷史巨輪轉呀轉呀，有趣得很。

之所以轉變/擴闊，是因為生活的取向慢了下來，心靈空間便擴大了，能容更多的文字在腦中起舞。篇幅長了，要求靜下來的時間也多了，選取這份休閑來換更多的體會，其實別有味道。

將前天買來的幾本書封面放在「私墊」上，有興趣可到圖書館或書店逛逛，打打書釘吧。

下面是節錄於http://www.kylie.com的資料。

Kylie is currently undergoing tests at a first class medical facility in Melbourne in preparation for an operation this week by one of Australia's leading surgeons. Thankfully tests so far have confirmed the earlier diagnosis that the cancer appears to be confined to the breast.

Today Kylie said: "My heartfelt thanks to the incredible number of people who have sent messages of love and support over the last two days. I want to reassure you that I am being well taken care of. Olivier is by my side and I have a lot of family and friends around me. I would also like to extend my best wishes to all of the other women around Australia and around the world who are dealing with the same illness".

Kylie's been touched by the many fans who have asked if they can send cards or flowers. She has suggested that instead well-wishers might like to make a small donation to the charities fighting Breast Cancer.

我記得美國女作家Susan Sontag在她的《疾病的隱喻》中提出了對疾病看法其實是一種建構性行為，將諸如TB和癌症，以致愛滋病都加添了不用的隱喻，讓它們變得神秘、鬼魅。

唐慕華。陳永財譯：《真情真性：性偶像文化的批判》(香港：學生福音團契，2005)。


我是怎樣的人？我要成為怎樣的人？教會是怎樣的群體？教會要成為怎樣的群體？以上四個問題，大概可以更深入地引導我們研讀當今極具影響力的文化神學家唐慕華(Marva J. Dawn)的小書Sexual Character: beyond technique to Intimacy (中譯：《真情真性：性偶像文化的批判》)。

全書以品格倫理學的進路，大量引用候活士(Stanley Hauerwas)在The Community of Character的觀念，以創建基督教會按聖經應有的德性群體。短短一百五十頁的小書，具體地切入「性」這主題之中，展現時下(美加背景)對「性」的態度，抽出其匱乏和渴望永恆的精神底蘊，並引帶出品格倫理學在實踐上如何可能作為現世在這方面的另類選擇。

品格倫理學關心到基督教會是一個怎樣的群體這基本思考。你是怎樣的人/群體，便有怎樣的表現；你想成為一個怎樣的人/群體，你便需努力地實踐出來，讓表現與身份相稱。在「性」這議題之上，作者認為品格倫理學能幫助我們對事情提出更好的問題(頁35)，它擺脫了以僵化的規條作為行為的法則，將焦點放於上帝恩典積極的邀約，以及人的順服帶來令人喜悅的結果上(頁30)。這樣的做法，帶來更大的和平，除去自義造成的暴力。

全書開首，作者針對因「性」觀念的混亂而人性被扭曲這危機提出強而有力的批判。她借助以祿(Jacques Ellul)對科技的評論，指出人與人、代與代之間關係的急劇疏離，也是造成對「性」走差路的具大助力。當鋪天蓋地對「性」錯謬觀念在蔓延，教會以其獨特的身份，究竟可以提出甚麼樣的新問題，來理解這樣的處境？並為活在這樣文化環境的人提出甚麼可以依從的方向？

對性的了解，作者認為聖經的教導重點不是歡愉、不是無止境的滿足，而是忠貞和委身。這種跟世界狂轟濫炸宣傳的快感追求可以說截然不同。作者認為人的價值不在於由性和能否得到性滿足、性高潮來定義的(參頁16)。正因如此，作者花了很大的力度在建立一個社群交往安全網(作者以「彈床」比喻)的敘事，透過代代相傳，教會努力建立一個更穩健的兩性交往模型，讓年輕一代可以清楚認識上帝對性的設計。當我們在群體中能找到愛、體諒和接納時，我們合乎聖經的社交和兩性關係才得以正當地發展。

唐慕華的著作實而不華，用字淺簡，生活性例子很多，行文之中見誠意，所以可讀性甚高。

早陣子寫過一些關於《泳裝高跟鞋》的文字，網友嘉在回應欄上引出了「纏足」問題；而近期我又多次說著「痛」的感受。

巧合地，今天看到一篇文章，是楊念群寫的〈從科學話語到國家控制〉(載於汪民安主編：《身體的文化政治學》。河南大學出版社，2004)。裏面以纏足為研究事件，探討整個反纏足運動的發展與經過，相當有趣。

有幾點值得在此分享，以結合一下討論過的高跟鞋、纏足與疼痛的關係。

楊念群引用了不少文獻，指出纏足其實與民間審美觀念極為相關。纏足並不是純粹為男性觀賞而存在的，它本身也由女性主動參與詮釋的過程，儘管她們大多數時常處於失語的狀態中。很多女性議論都說著，纏足具有「美術價值」，並有極端者認為應以神聖視之。

在這些議論中，「並沒有刻意迴避纏足與疼痛的關係，而是突出強調疼痛後所造成的審美效果的補償作用，甚至反其道而行之。」楊念群引用嚴珊英女士對纏足下的結論，認為纏足所要經過的痛苦的代價，「導致了一件藝術品的誕生，是十分值得的，即使偶有痛苦，輒以此等精神克制之，無不化苦為飴。」

楊念群又論，「纏足之美不僅僅是表現在日常生活中對女性身體姿態的評價，而且還逐漸移植到戲曲舞台藝術中，賦予了更為抽象的審美涵義。比如古典京劇中扮演花旦的男演員都要練習「蹺功」，即模仿纏足女性的姿態。」而練習蹺功的過程跟纏足一樣的痛苦。雖然，蹺功有被認為對身體不好而最終被廢除，「但作為藝術觀賞的對象卻始終沒有被遺忘。就是至20世紀90年代在男女演員的記憶中仍不乏正面的評價。」

武旦男演員李金鴻在1994年一次訪問中便提出，應把纏足的痛苦跟其美觀區分開來對待。所以，小腳走起路來和大腳就是不一樣，就跟現在時裝表演的模特兒似的，走的是「貓步」(catwalk)。因此，踩蹺作為纏足的藝術化表現形式，與纏足的步態近似。

對於纏足，它不獨是一種女性為男性的觀看而有的行為，她有其自主的部份，甚者，她在書寫著自己文化的特性。當然，我們還可以說，女性進一步參與這種行為的緣故是基於對男性觀賞的不可逃避。但起碼在進一步的演進過程中，纏足明顯地在女性當中有其自存的詮釋系統。這個系統通過一種對疼痛的經驗而進一步強化它的美觀性，就如高跟鞋一樣， 三寸高的高跟，難度不也是從一種疼痛而引帶出來「女性自覺的美」嗎？

疼痛，在高跟鞋和纏足上，帶來對美的一種獨特審視作用。在生活中不同痛的經驗，是否也暗暗地說著生活的美的可能？

哲學，愛智也。智為何用？處世。

新買了兩本哲學入門書(請參「私墊：好書推介」欄)，翻來看看，發覺很值得推介給對哲學感到陌生甚至敬而遠之的朋友。因為內文沒有艱深的用詞，只有哲學應用處理生活的實驗。

在勵志電郵泛濫的今天，充斥著太多似是而非，缺乏深度的思考理論。這兩本書，深入淺出重要的哲學觀念，讓你頓時充滿智慧。

據悉兩本都有中文簡體字版。

The Sciences of language are probably only one more sign of what representations have become. The Techniques of suspicion, psychoanalytic and sociological alike, depend on the society they analyze. Speech, as well, by becoming critical, avows in its own way what it is denoucing. Already on billboards the name that is adjoined to the object being shown is the ironic evocation of its absence, The argument of the image contradicts it. But by endlessly designating things, words are in a position that differs from theirs. Words name that position precisely because they have nothing to give; they spell out absences by distinguishing realities. Signs of distancing, they postulate dispossession as the very condition of designation. They represent, with respect to every form of happiness, a critical moment.-----La Culture au Pluriel