Reclaiming Travel
What compels us to leave home, to travel to other places? The great travel writer Bruce Chatwin described nomadism as an “inveterate impulse, ” deeply rooted in our species. The relentless movement of the modern world bears this out: our relative prosperity has not turned us into a sedentary species. The World Tourism Organization, an agency of the United Nations, reported nearly a billion tourist arrivals in 2011. Some 200 million people are now living outside their country of birth.是什么促使人们离家旅行？ 著名旅游撰稿人Bruce Chatwin将这种游荡主义称为扎根于人类这个物种的”习惯性的冲动“。现代社会的大规模流动也证明了当今时代的繁荣并没有使人类演变成安分的物种。联合国世界旅游组织报告显示：2011年，有近10亿人旅过行，2亿人生活在他们的出生国之外。
This type of massive movement — the rearrangement, temporary or permanent, of multitudes — is as fundamental to modern life as the Internet, global trade or any other sociopolitical developments. Certainly, many of our most intractable collective challenges as a society are directly linked to our mobility: urbanization, environmental depletion, scarcity and, of course, immigration. An immigrant is a traveler without a return ticket.
无论是暂时还是永久， 这种形式的大规模流动与网络、全球贸易以及社会政治发展一样，是现代生活必不可少的一部分，也与许多难以解决的挑战息息相关，如城市化、环境破环、资源稀缺以及移民问题——移民是没有返程票的旅行。
In the Bible, the human journey begins with an expulsion. God’s chosen people are also those condemned to wander. Not only wander, but wonder: Why are we in exile? Where is home? Can this rupture ever be repaired? “Gilgamesh, ” the Icelandic sagas and “The Odyssey” are all about the itinerant life. Yet these characters don’t see travel as we moderns do. They embark on journeys of mythic significance — the literature of travel in the premodern era did not recognize travel for leisure or self-improvement. Today, our approach to travel is defined not by archetypal imagery but, rather, according to our own mostly prosaic trips. Literature, to be sure, still produces grand quests; likewise, there are still many people whose journeys are precarious and momentous on an epic scale.
《圣经》中的人类旅行源自一次驱逐。那些上帝选择驱逐的人们同时也被指责"漫游“——不仅仅是漫游，同时也疑惑：为什么我们被流放？我们的家在哪里？我们和家乡之间的分离可能结束吗？冰岛史诗《基亚美修》和《奥德赛》都与旅途中的生活相关。然而，这些作品中的角色对旅行的看法与现代人类并不相同。古时关于旅行的文学作品并不认为旅行的作用在于休闲和自我提升，而赋予旅行神秘的意义。而现在，人们更偏向于根据自己平淡无奇的经历来定义旅行。不过文学作品仍将旅行描绘得十分宏伟，也仍然有很多人的旅行如史诗般危险而宏大。
For the most fortunate among us, our travels are now routine, devoted mainly to entertainment and personal enrichment. We have turned travel into something ordinary, deprived it of allegorical grandeur. We have made it a business: the business of being on the move. Whatever impels us to travel, it is no longer the oracle, the pilgrimage or the gods. It is the compulsion to be elsewhere, anywhere but here.
对于幸运的人来说，旅行是习惯性的、以娱乐或个人发展为目的的活动。我们将旅行从寓言般的宏伟中剥离，变成日常事务——正在处于”行动“状态的日常事务。旅行的动因不再是为了甲骨文、为了朝圣、为了上帝，它已经变成去到任何一个地方，只要不是现在这里就好。
St. Augustine believed that “because God has made us for Himself, our hearts are restless until they rest in Him.” We often think of restlessness as a malady. Thus, we urgently need to reclaim the etymology of restlessness — “stirring constantly, desirous of action” — to signal our curiosity toward what isn’t us, to explore outside the confines of our own environment. Getting lost isn’t a curse. Not knowing where we are, what to eat, how to speak the language can certainly make us anxious and uneasy. But anxiety is part of any person’s quest to find the parameters of life’s possibilities.
圣奥古斯汀相信：“上帝为他自己创造了人，因此人类的心将永远躁动不安，直到它驻入上帝的心中。”我们总将躁动不安视为弊病，因此焦急地追溯它的词源——“持续的躁动、对行动的渴望”——来说明我们对自身及自身环境之外的好奇心。但迷失方向并不是诅咒——对于我们身处何方、吃何种食物、使用何种语言本来就会使我们感到焦虑不安——焦虑本身就是人们寻找生命多种可能性的钥匙。
Leif Parsons
Leif Parsons 作品
The act of traveling is an impossibly broad category: it can encompass both the death march and the cruise ship. Travel has no inherent moral character, no necessary outcome. It can be precious or worthless, productive or destructive. It can be ennobling or self-satisfied. The returns can be only as good as what we offer of ourselves in the process. So what distinguishes meaningful, fruitful travel from mere tourism? What turns travel into a quest rather than self-serving escapism?
旅行的范畴十分广泛：它是致命的远征，也是奢华的邮轮之旅；它没有内在的道德特征，也没有必要结果；它可以珍贵，也可以一文不值；可以生产，也可以破坏；可以使人崇高，也可以自我满足。旅行的回报可以仅仅是在过程中我们给予自己的。那什么将意义深远、硕果累累的旅行与旅游区分开？ 什么将旅行由自私的逃走主义转化成寻觅？
George Steiner wrote that “human beings need to learn to be each other’s guests on this small planet.” We usually focus on the ethical imperative of hospitality, on the obligation to be a generous host. When we travel, though, we are asking for hospitality. There’s great vulnerability in this. It also requires considerable strength. To be a good guest — like being a good host — one needs to be secure in one’s own premises: where you stand, who you are. This means we tend to romanticize travel as a lonely pursuit. In fact, a much deeper virtue arises from the demands it makes on us as social beings.
George Steiner写道：“在这个小小的星球上，人类应学会作客。”我们通常关注这种“好客”的道德要求以及做一位慷慨宽容的主人的责任。然而，在旅途中时，我们开始寻求“好客”。这当中既体现了我们的脆弱，又要求具备一定的力量。正如同做一位好主人，做一位好客人需要确认自己的前提条件：你在哪里？你是谁？ 这表明我们趋向于将旅行浪漫化，成为一种孤独的追逐。实际上，我们作为社会性动物的更深层次的需求应运而生。
Travel is a search for meaning, not only in our own lives, but also in the lives of others. The humility required for genuine travel is exactly what is missing from its opposite extreme, tourism.
旅行是对意义的寻觅——不仅在我们自己的生命中，也在别人的生命中。真正的旅行所需要的谦卑正是它的相反极端——旅游所缺少的。
Modern tourism does not promise transformation but rather the possibility of leaving home and coming back without any significant change or challenge. Tourists may enjoy the visit only because it is short. The memory of it, the retelling, will always be better. Whereas travel is about the unexpected, about giving oneself over to disorientation, tourism is safe, controlled and predetermined. We take a vacation, not so much to discover a new landscape, but to find respite from our current one, an antidote to routine.
现代的旅游并不保证转变，而仅仅是离开、归来，没有任何变化或挑战。也许仅仅因为过程十分短暂， 游客十分享受；而关于旅游的回忆，总是会比它本身来的更好。旅行是意料之外的、得以改变人生方向的，而旅游是安全的、受控制的、事先决定的。我们休假不是为了发掘一个新世界，而只是为了从当下平淡的生活中获得一丝喘息。
There are still traces of the pilgrimage, even in tourism, though they have become warped and solipsistic. Holy seekers go looking for oracles, tombs, sites of revelation. Tourists like to visit ruins, empty churches, battlefields, memorials. Tourist kitsch depends on a sterilized version of history and a smug assurance that all of our stories of the past are ultimately redemptive — even if it is only the tourists’ false witness that redeems them. There’s no seeking required, and no real challenge, because the emotional voyage is preprogrammed. The world has become a frighteningly small place.
尽管扭曲并自我，旅游中仍然有朝圣的痕迹。朝圣者们在旅行中寻找碑文、坟墓，去废墟、空荡的教堂、占地、纪念碑等处。他们的媚俗建立在被清洗的历史以及胸有成竹的保证上——保证所有过去的故事终将得到救赎，即使仅仅是游客错误的到访救赎了它们。没有追寻、没有挑战，因为情感上的旅程已经被提前设计好——这世界小得可怕。
The planet’s size hasn’t changed, of course, but our outsize egos have shrunk it dramatically. We might feel we know our own neighborhood, our own city, our own country, yet we still know so little about other individuals, what distinguishes them from us, how they make their habitat into home.
我们的星球没有变化，但我们过分膨胀的自我却使它剧烈地缩小。我们自以为了解我们的邻里、城市、国家，可实际上我们对其他的个体了解甚少：不知道他们与我们的不同之处，不知道他们为什么把栖息地当成家。
This lack of awareness is even more pronounced when it comes to different cultures. The media bombards us with images from far-away places, making distant people seem less foreign, more relatable to us, less threatening. It’s a mirage, obviously. The kind of travel to which we aspire should tolerate uncertainty and discomfort. It isn’t about pain or excessive strain — travel doesn’t need to be an extreme sport — but we need to permit ourselves to be clumsy, inexpert and even a bit lonely. We might never understand travel as our ancestors did: our world is too open, relativistic, secular, demystified. But we will need to reclaim some notion of the heroic: a quest for communion and, ultimately, self-knowledge.
当指向不同的文化时，这种缺乏了解显得尤为明显。媒体对我们狂轰乱炸，发送大量远方的图片，使我们认为远方的人们看上去不那么陌生，并不是与我们毫无关联，不那么有威胁。不过这很明显是幻象。我们梦想的旅行应该经得起不确定与不舒适。尽管旅行不是极限运动、不必然带来痛苦和精疲力竭，我们仍需要允许自己显得笨拙、不专业甚至有点孤单。对于旅行，也许我们永远都不能与祖先持有相同的看法：世界是开放的、关联的、世俗的、不神秘的，但我们将需要对旅行这项英雄事迹进行追溯：它是对交流和最终自我认知的追寻。
Our wandering is meant to lead back toward ourselves. This is the paradox: we set out on adventures to gain deeper access to ourselves; we travel to transcend our own limitations. Travel should be an art through which our restlessness finds expression. We must bring back the idea of travel as a search.
我们的漫游以回归自我为目的。这多么矛盾：我们出发去冒险以更深刻地认识自己，我们旅行去超越自己的极限。旅行是我们的躁动不安寻找表达的出口，我们必须重新相信，旅行是一种寻觅。
Ilan Stavans is a professor of literature at Amherst College. Joshua Ellison is the editor of the literary journal Habitus.
Ilan Stavans是Amherst College的文学教授。Joshua Ellison是文学期刊Habitus的编辑。
This article appeared in print on July 7, 2012.
该文章于2012年7月7日发表。
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