PBS高端访谈:宗教礼节不仅仅体现在祷告上（在线收听）

JUDY WOODRUFF: Religion and its effects permeate the work of novelist Nathan Englander. Raised in a highly observant Jewish family, Englander turned away from religion and made a decision to live a secular life. But the rituals of religion stayed with him, not in prayer, but in the way he lived his daily life. Tonight, Englander shares his Humble Opinion on the discipline and focus he found, and joy that comes with it.

朱迪·伍德拉夫：宗教及其影响充斥着小说家内森·英格兰德的每部作品。英格兰德在一切循规蹈矩的犹太家庭长大，放弃了原本的宗教，决定做一个无宗教信仰者。但各种宗教礼节依然与他如影随形。这种礼节并不体现在祷告本身上，而是体现在他日常的生活方式上。今晚，英格兰德将与我们分享他关于自律与专注的心得，以及自律与专注带给他的快乐。

NATHAN ENGLANDER, Author: When I left the religious community, I left it with a vengeance. Like a rubber band stretched to breaking and then released, I shot off in the other direction, landing as far as I could from the Orthodox Jewish world in which I had been raised. Instead of being faithful about faith, I turned super faithful about fiction. And for a long time, I saw it as a zero sum game. But the more I wrote, the more i began to realize how the religious rituals of my childhood, they fed the creative routines of that writing life. That is, I may have left the fold, but I seem to have brought two pillars of Orthodox Judaism, sacred time and sacred space, along with me. The time element was an obvious fit. I adopted the six days for creation and a seventh for rest model. I figured, if it worked for building this world, it should work for fictional ones as well. As the writing years piled on, I noticed something else: how I would wait to sit at the same table at the same coffee shop every day, how I would stake out my spot in the library, and I can hardly express how much I now cherish my chair and my desk and my unchanging office window view. This is where the sacred space comes in. I finally understood the bigger idea behind what I was doing. It related directly to the notion of what's called in Hebrew the makom kavua, one's set place. It reminded me of sitting next to my dad in synagogue, how we sat in the same seats in the same row every week, in front of these little brass tags with our last name engraved upon them. I thought that reserved space for my father was about respect. I thought it was about honor. But it was more about engaging with worship or the writing from a fixed place, because it's the combination of those two elements, the daily rituals and the physical routines, that I am convinced are key to whatever kind of transcendence it is you're after. Whether you race to a 6:00 a.m. yoga class or morning mass, whether you need the window seat in your own coffee shop or your shoes kicked off so you can better feel the floor under your feet, providing that kind of continuity for the body is the best way to free up the mind. For the writer, honestly, it helps you build up a kind of creative reflex, so that those synapses fire off, and the images come. And from there, all you need to do is sit back and watch your fingers fly.

内森·英格兰德，作家：我放弃宗教信仰的时候，大有一去不回头之心。就像拉扯到极点的橡皮筋脱离了拉力一样，我向反方向飞驰而去，到了完全没有犹太教的地方，虽然我是在犹太教的影响下长大的。我不再像以前那样对信仰无比忠诚，而是对虚构的世界痴迷。有很长一段时间里，我认为虚构的世界里只有零和博弈。但随着我写作量的增大，我愈发认识到：我童年时候所经历过的宗教礼节正是我写作的创意源泉。说的具体些，虽然我不再是犹太教徒，但正统派犹太教的两大支柱似乎一直深深影响着我。这两大支柱就是：神圣的时间与空间。时间这个支柱十分明显：我会花6天来进行创作，第7天就来完成余下模型的架构。我在想，如果这种方法适用于现实世界，那么也应该适用于虚幻世界。随着我写作年头的累积，我注意到了另一件事：我每天都等待着坐在同一家咖啡厅的同一张桌子上，我也会对自己在图书馆的位置念念不忘，我也无法用言语表达自己有多么珍爱现在的桌椅以及从办公室窗外眺望到的四季如一的风景。这里就不得不提到神圣的空间了。我从自己所做的事情上体会到了更大的意义。它与希伯来语中的一个概念直接相关——个人的空间（makom kavua）。它让我想起了曾经跟爸爸并肩坐在犹太会堂里的场景。那时候，我和爸爸每周都会坐在同一排的同一个位置。在铜制的名牌上有我们的姓刻在上面。我认为，对我父亲来说，保留给个人的空间就是尊重。而我认为这关乎荣誉。但其中更大的意义在于全身心朝拜或者在一个固定的地点写作，因为日常礼节与每日惯性的组合，在我眼中是一个人是否卓越的关键。无论是早上6点赶瑜伽课或者早课，亦或坚持在咖啡馆坐靠窗座位，亦或习惯光脚踩在地上来感受地板的存在，这些都是身体的惯性使然，是解放大脑的最佳方式。说实话，对作家来说，这样的惯性可以打造富有创造性的肌肉，让神经突触保持兴奋，然后画面自然就来了。一旦灵感因此而来的时候，我们只需要坐在那里用笔尖记录飞扬的思绪便好。

JUDY WOODRUFF: Nathan Englander, we thank you.

朱迪·伍德拉夫：感谢内森·英格兰德的分享。