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Expressionism
Expressionism is an art movement that produced a wealth of wonderful works of art, and the lives of the artists who created them were no less colorful and exciting. The word "expressionism" can be used to describe art from different times and places, most of them were part of a movement that took place in Germany from 1905 to 1920. They shared some of the beliefs. Those beliefs were that art should try to change society, to make it less conservative. It should express the energy of nature-following in the footsteps of Vincent van Gogh--and personal feeling rather than simply representing nature. It should feel "uncomfortable", which means it should challenge the traditional ways of looking at the world. This differed from the opinion of Henri Matisse who believed that art should be "comfortable". Expressionist art should be inspired by folk art, and the art of what were then called "primitive" people, for example from Africa.
The aim of the Expressionists was to express personal feeling about what they were painting rather than representing it exactly as it was. It should have strong colors and shapes, be relatively direct, untutored and unplanned and should still contain recognizable things, but not be realistic. The lines could be distorted, and the colors could be strengthened or changed as in the art movement that began in 1905 called Fauvism.
Expressionism was more than a style in painting. It could be found in theatre and cinema, literature and architecture. It was a sharing of ideas and experiences across all these media. The life stories of the Expressionist artists show just how much they had in common. Many began by studying applied art, such as furniture design, often to please their parents. Although they later made more personal art, they continued to make use of those technical skills. Both art critics and the public received this new movement with derision and outrage. Expressionist artists were trying to shock by challenging the traditional, conservative views held by many people. Gradually, however, it became accepted and even admired.
All the Expressionists were affected by World War I (1914-18). Some fled from Germany and spent the war years in exile. Some never returned to their homeland. Most served in the war and some were killed. At first some of them hoped a war would change society for the better but they were soon disillusioned when they saw the destruction and suffering that it caused. In the years after the war, many Expressionist artist revealed the horrors they experienced in their work.
After World War I, Expressionism became very fashionable in Germany, where art was allowed to flourish. This freedom ended in 1933 when Hitler declared all Expressionists were "degenerate". This led to them being sacked from their jobs or forced to leave Germany. In 1937 the Nazis took thousands of art works from German museums and put them in an enormous exhibition called the Degenerate Art Exhibition, to show how bad and decadent this art was. It presented a view of the world that went against their political and cultural ambitions to rid Germany of all inferior races.
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表现主义
表现主义是20世纪初至30年代盛行于欧美一些国家的艺术流派。它首先出现于美术界，后来在音乐、文学、戏剧以及电影等领域得到重大发展。艺术家们从丰富多彩的现实生活中提取素材，创作了大量优秀的艺术作品。虽然表现主义涵盖的范围很广，但本书中所提到的这些表现主义画家是1905年至l920年间，活跃在德国表现主义运动的舞台上的那部分群体。书中其他被提及的作家，有的是用作品影响了这些画家的创作，有的与这些画家有着共同的创作理念。在理念上，表现主义强调反传统，他们对社会现状不满，要求变革。受凡·高艺术的影响，在创作上，他们不满足于对客观事物的摹写，要求进一步表现事物的内在实质，突破对人的行为和人所处的环境的描绘，揭示人的灵魂和内心的感情世界，以此来引起观众的强烈震撼和共鸣，它给人们提供了看待周围世界的全新视角。表现主义的这一创作观点与野兽派亨利·马蒂斯的观点很不一致，后者认为艺术应该能给人带来内心的祥和与平静，起到抚慰的作用。
表现主义画家在创作过程中改变了以往以写实为主的油画传统，注重通过作品来表达画家个人的真实情感。表现主义的创作受到民间艺术和原始艺术，如非洲艺术的启发。其作品大都色彩鲜艳，轮廓粗犷，虽然在其间也能看见具体的形象，但绝不写实。它们直接、纯朴、直觉地表达了画家的情感。与野兽派的技法较为相近，它擅长运用扭曲的线条或是粗犷的色彩轮廓。
表现主义的影响不仅仅局限于美术界，其创作理念在戏剧、电影、文学以及建筑领域中都有所体现。表现主义画家的生平也有着许多共同之处，比如为了讨好父母，他们大都从学习应用工艺美术起步，如家居设计等。尽管他们后来也有了自己个性化的创作，但这些实用技巧仍会在他们的作品中有所体现。因为试图通过这种新的创作方式向传统而保守的社会观念发起挑战，在出现之初，便受到艺术评论家的公然嘲笑，引起了公众的极度愤慨。不过，随着时代的变迁，它逐渐为人们所接受，甚至成为年轻人崇拜的对象。
第一次世界大战对表现主义画家影响很大。战争期间，他们有的逃离了德国，过着流亡的生活，有些从此就再也没能回去。他们中的大多数都参加了战争，有的在战斗中不幸牺牲。参战之初，他们对战争抱有幻想，期望它能使这个腐化的世界变得更美好，但是战争爆发后不久，这个幻想就破灭了。在亲眼目睹了无数的流血、牺牲、人们流离失所、痛苦挣扎的情景之后，这些画家的精神受到了极大的摧残，战后纷纷在作品中对当时所经历的恐惧和伤害进行了刻画。
一战结束后，百废待兴，表现主义也在德国风靡一时，成为主流艺术。1933年，希特勒上台，情况随之发生了变化。在表现主义作品中，希特勒看到了不利于德国当时所采取的种族灭绝政策的倾向，便宣布表现主义画家都是“堕落分子”。他们在德国社会中已无立足之地，纷纷失去了工作，被迫离开祖国。1937年，纳粹当局从德国博物馆搜罗出上千幅表现主义作品，并组织了一场名为“堕落艺术”的大型展览，以此来宣扬这种艺术形式的腐朽和败坏。
Thoughts in Westminster Abbey
When I am in a serious humour, I very often walk by myself in Westminster Abbey;
where the gloominess of the place, and the use which it is applied, with the solemnity of the building, and the condition of the people who lie in it, are apt to fill the mind with a kind of melancholy, or rather thoughtfulness, that is not disagreeable. I yesterday passed a whole afternoon in the churchyard, the cloisters, and the church, amusing myself with the tombstones and inscriptions that I met with in those several regions of the dead. Most of them recorded nothing else of the buried person, but that he was born upon one day, and died upon another：the whole history of his life being comprehended in those two circumstances, that are common to all mankind. I could not but look upon these registers of existence, whether of brass or marble, as a kind of satire upon the departed persons；who had left no other memorial of them, but that they were born and that they died. They put me in mind of several persons mentioned in the battles of heroic poems, who have sounding names given them, for no other reason but that they may be killed, and are celebrated for nothing but being knocked on the head. The life of these men is finely described in holy writ by the path of an arrow, which is immediately closed up and lost.
Upon my going into the church, I entertained myself with the digging of a grave；and saw in every shovelful of it that was thrown up, the fragment of a bone or skull intermixt with a kind of fresh mouldering earth, that some time or other had a place in the composition of a human body. Upon this I began to consider with myself what innumerable multitudes of people lay confused together under the pavement of that ancient cathedral；how men and women, friends and enemies, priests and soldiers, monks and prebendaries, were crumbled amongst one another, and blended together in the same common mass；how beauty, strength, and youth, with old age, weakness and deformity, lay undistinguished in the same promiscuous heap of matter.
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西敏寺内的遐想
每当心情沉重的时候，我总是独自一人去西敏寺教堂；那里肃穆的气氛，教堂特有的神圣，庄重的建筑，在那里安息的人们的身份地位，无不给人的心里注满一种忧郁，或不妨说令人沉思，令人欣然。昨天我在教堂草地、回廊和教堂里度过了整整一个下午，在好几个墓区里，打量墓碑和碑文，聊以自娱。大部分的墓碑上只刻着死者姓名和生卒年月：人们对其一生的了解也只在于人类所共有的生死两字。对于那些逝去的人们的生死记录，不管是刻在铜牌上还是刻在大理石碑上，我都不由自主地将它们看作是对死者的一种讽刺；他们没有留下任何别的记录，只是生与死。他们使我想到了英雄诗歌中描写战争时提到的几个人物，他们有响亮的名字，不为别的原因，只是因为他们可能战死，只是因为他们的死亡而为人纪念。圣经中的句子“如箭飞过”恰如其分地描写了这些人的一生：一闪而过，不见踪影。
我走进教堂，观看别人挖一座坟墓；只见挖出来的每一铲新的腐土中，都混杂着骨头或头颅的碎块，曾几何时，这些碎块还是人身体的一部分呢。看见这个情景，我暗自思忖，在这座古老的大教堂的路底下，混埋着何等众多的人啊；男人和女人，朋友和敌人，牧师和士兵，修士和受俸牧师，全都变成了碎块，混在一起；美丽、强壮、年轻的人和年老力衰、畸形的人，毫无区别地杂处在一堆之中。
If I have called in the cuckoo to illustrate the ordinary man's ignorance, it is not because I can speak with authority on that bird. It is simply because, passing the spring in a parish that seemed to have been invaded by all the cuckoos of Africa, I realized how exceedingly little I, or anybody else I met, knew about them. But your and my ignorance is not confined to cuckoos. It dabbles in all created things, from the sun and moon down to the names of the flowers. I once heard a clever lady asking whether the new moon always appears on the same day of the week. She added that perhaps it is better not to know, because, if one does not know when or in what part of the sky to expect it, its appearance is always a pleasant surprise. I fancy, however, the new moon always comes as a surprise even to those who are familiar with her time-tables. And it is the same with the coming-in of spring and the waves of the flowers. We are not the less delighted to find an early primrose because we are sufficiently learned in the services of the year to look for it in March or April rather than in October. We know, again, that the blossom precedes and not succeeds the fruit of the apple-tree, but this does not lessen our amazement at the beautiful holiday of a May orchard.
At the same time there is, perhaps, a special pleasure in re-learning the names of many of the flowers every spring. It is like re-reading a book that one has almost forgotten. Montaigne tells us that he had so bad a memory that he could always read an old book as though he had never read it before. I have myself a capricious and leaking memory. I can read Hamlet itself and The Pickwick Papers as though they were the work of new authors and had come wet from the press, so much of them fades between one reading and another. There are occasions on which a memory of this kind is an affliction, especially if one has a passion for accuracy. But this is only when life has an object beyond entertainment. In respect of mere luxury, it may be doubted whether there is not as much to be said for a bad memory as for a good one. With a bad memory one can go on reading Plutarch and The Arabian Nights all one's life. Little shreds and tags, it is probable, will stick even in the worst memory, just as a succession of sheep cannot leap through a gap in a hedge without leaving a few wisps of wool on the thorns. But the sheep themselves escape, and the great authors leap in the same way out of an idle memory and leave little enough behind.
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我请杜鹃来做例子以说明普通人的无知，并不是因为我有什么权威对这种鸟儿发发议论。不过，我曾在某个教区暂住，而那年春天从非洲飞来的杜鹃似乎全集合在那个地方，因此我也就有了机会了解到我自己以及我所碰见的每一个人对这种鸟儿的知识是如何地微不足道。但是，你我的无知并不限于杜鹃这一方面。它涉及到宇宙万物，从太阳、月亮一直到花卉的名字。有一天，我听见一位聪明伶俐的太太提出了这样一个问题：新月是不是总在星期几露面?她接着又说：不知道倒好，正因为人不知道在什么时候、在天空的哪一带能看见它，新月一出现才给人带来一场惊喜。然而我想，哪怕人把月亮盈亏时间表记得再熟，看见新月出现还是不免又惊又喜，春回大地，花开花落，也莫不如此。尽管我们对一年四季草木节令了如指掌，知道樱草开花在三月或四月而不在十月，不过看见一株早开花的樱草，我们还是照样地高兴。另外，我们知道苹果树先开花，后结果，可是五月一旦到来，果园里一片欢闹的花海，我们不是仍然惊为奇观吗？
倘在每年春天，把许多花卉之名重温一遍，还另有一番风味。那就像把一本差不多忘得千干净净的书再重新念一遍。蒙田说过，他的记忆力很坏，所以他随时都能拿起一本旧书，像从未读过的新书一样地念。我自己的记忆力也漏洞百出、不听使唤。我甚至能拿起《哈姆雷特》和《匹克威克外传》，当作是初登文坛的新作家刚刚印成白纸黑字的作品来念，因为自从上回念过以后，这两部书在我脑子里的印象已经模模糊糊了。这样的记忆力，在某些场合自然叫人伤脑筋，尤其当人渴望精确的时候。不过，在这种时候，人不仅想得到娱乐，还追求着什么目的。如果只讲享受的话，记忆力坏比记忆力好究竟差到哪里去，还真是大可怀疑呢。记忆力坏的人可以一辈子不断地念普卢塔克的《英雄传》和《天方夜谭》，而永远感到新鲜。很可能，最坏的记忆力也难免粘粘连连地留下一星半点的印象，恰如一只只绵羊从篱笆洞里接连通过，总不免在那刺条上留下一丝半缕的羊毛。然而，绵羊终归逃出去了，正像伟大的作家从我们不争气的记忆中消失，所留下的东西简直微不足道。