當(dāng)然,在《遠(yuǎn)征記》中有一種悲戚的感染力:士卒們歸鄉(xiāng)的渴望,身處異鄉(xiāng)的狼狽,以及不掉隊的努力,因為只要他們還在一起,他們就能把自己的國家放在心中。一支軍隊被領(lǐng)進(jìn)一場并非他們的過錯而敗北的戰(zhàn)爭,任憑自生自滅后掙扎著想要返鄉(xiāng),僅僅是掙扎著開出一條路返回故鄉(xiāng),遠(yuǎn)離他們的盟軍和敵人?!哆h(yuǎn)征記》中的所有這些與近代意大利文學(xué)中的一個主題十分相似:即意大利的阿爾卑斯山地部隊從俄國撤離時寫的回憶錄。這個類比并不是最近才得出的,早在1953年維托里尼[vi]就推出了這類作品的經(jīng)典,馬里奧·利格尼·斯特恩[vii]的《雪中的中士》(Il sergente nella neve),將之譽為“用方言寫成的小《遠(yuǎn)征記》”。而事實上,色諾芬的《遠(yuǎn)征記》中充滿了雪地撤退的章節(jié)(上述引述段落的來源),完全可能都是從利格尼·斯特恩的的書中摘抄下來的。
敘事者——主角是一個優(yōu)秀的戰(zhàn)士,是利格尼·斯特恩以及那些寫從俄國前線撤退的最好的意大利作品的特點之一。就像色諾芬那樣,他有這個能力和責(zé)任來探討軍事行動。對他們及色諾芬而言,在被過分夸大的抱負(fù)雄心崩潰之后,他們回歸到了求實與團(tuán)結(jié)一致的軍人品質(zhì)上,而不是以每個人不僅要能自助且能助人的標(biāo)準(zhǔn)來衡量。(在此值得一提的是努托·雷維利[viii]的《窮人的宣戰(zhàn)》(La Guerra dei poveri),其描述了幻滅軍官的激情與瘋狂,還有另一本被不公正地遺忘的好書《長步槍》(I lunghi fucili),作者是克里斯多佛羅·M·內(nèi)格利[ix])
[i] Xenophon,(前434~前335)。希臘歷史學(xué)家、詩人、蘇格拉底的學(xué)生。他曾參加希臘雇傭軍遠(yuǎn)征波斯的戰(zhàn)爭,《遠(yuǎn)征記》記錄了希臘雇傭軍從波斯腹地穿過美索不達(dá)米亞、亞美尼亞抵達(dá)黑海,返回希臘的冒險經(jīng)歷。
[ii] Parasang,古波斯的長度單位,一帕約為5.6公里。
[iii] Cyrus the Younger(前427~401)波斯阿契美尼德王朝的王子,呂底亞總督,策劃了希臘雇傭軍遠(yuǎn)征波斯?fàn)帄Z王位,在戰(zhàn)斗中被殺,使得遠(yuǎn)征軍深陷異鄉(xiāng),最后艱難地返回希臘。
[iv] Artaxerxes II Mnemon(前404-358)小居魯士的兄長,統(tǒng)治長達(dá)46 年,期間政局穩(wěn)定,人民安定,締造了波斯帝國的繁榮。
[v] T. E. Lawrence(1888~1935),英國作家、冒險家、軍人,一戰(zhàn)時幫助阿拉伯義軍反抗奧斯曼帝國,被稱為“阿拉伯的勞倫斯”,著有《智慧的7柱石》等。
[vi] Elio Vittorini(1908~1966)意大利小說家,參加過抵抗運動,《梅納波》雜志主編,著有《墨西拿的婦女》、《人與非人》等。
[vii] Mario Rigoni Stern(1921~)意大利作家,二戰(zhàn)時已經(jīng)是個老兵了,是納粹集中營的幸存者之一,《雪中的中士》出版于1953年,描寫的是阿爾卑斯山地小組從俄國撤退時一個中士的經(jīng)歷。1999年獲得意大利PEN筆會獎。
[viii] Nuto Revelli(1919~2004),意大利作家。軍校畢業(yè)后加入阿爾卑斯山地小組,指揮過多次戰(zhàn)斗,也經(jīng)歷過從俄國的撤退,戰(zhàn)后開始寫作,他的許多作品都是以抵抗運動,阿爾卑斯山地小組,農(nóng)民為主題的。
http://committeeofpublicsafety.wordpress.com/2009/09/17/xenophon-roundtable-the-shadow-of-herodotus/ By Joseph Fouche Cunaxa is an interesting counter-point to the three traditional pillars of Herodotus’s Histories, Marathon, Salamis, and Plataea. While those three confrontations took place in or near Attica, the cradle of democracy, Cunaxa happens in Mesopotamia, the cradle of despotism. Herodotus skillfully built a narrative of the clash of East and West, Freedom and Slavery, Democracy and Despotism out of the Persian attempts to conquer an obscure people on the fringes of the Known World. His account looms over those of his successors, even the works of the prickly Thucydides, who considered himself superior in every respect to the world traveling gossip from Halicarnassus. Xenophon was no exception. The Anabasis almost reads like a strange mirror version of the Histories. Instead of the Ascent of Darius, Xerxes, or Mardonius into the heart of Hellas, it’s the descent of the Greeks into the heart of Achaemenid power. The squabbling Greeks, under the less than inspired figures of Clearchus, Proxenus, and Menon, appear rather shabby compared to the heroic generation of Miltiades, Themistocles, and Pausanias. Cyrus in his foolish death and disfigured body and Artaxerxes II in his pettiness and undignified scramble to keep his throne fall far short of the power and majesty of Darius and Xerxes, so exalted that Herodotus portrayed them as living embodiments of hubris, pride that not only rivaled but threatened that of the gods themselves. Herodotus portrays the mighty Xerxes, in the full flower of his pride, flogging the Hellespont as punishment for destroying his first pontoon bridge from Asia into Europe. Artaxerxes II, on the other hand, barely escapes with his life and throne, blusters at the Ten Thousand, flees cravenly when the Ten Thousand post him up, and proceeds to engage in all sorts of gutter intrigue. With great insight, Xenophon convinces the leaderless Greeks that the Great King would never negotiate with them in good faith. Artaxerxes II knew he looked pathetic. If I were Artaxerxes II, I wouldn’t want my vulnerabilities broadcast to all the world either, especially when I’d been shown up by a bunch of country bumpkins from Arcadia, the armpit of Greece. I would kill every last man, woman, child, beast of burden, or slave of the Ten Thousand. Being routed is one depth of humiliation. Being routed by rednecks, however, is a depth of humiliation that Persians hadn’t faced since the Spartans reacted to a demand for earth and water by throwing the Great King’s emissaries down a well into the bowels of Mother Earth. Xenophon continues Herodotus’s amateur anthropology by observing the Oriental Other. However Xenophon lacks the cosmic depths of Herodotus’s cosmopolitanism. Xenophon goes up country a Greek and comes down it a Greek. The locals are primarily defined by their non-Greekness, suffering from the irreversible disease of original high barbarity. Bar bar they all say. Bar we are shifty. Bar we are treacherous. Bar we betray even the gods with our lies. Bar we are unable to rule ourselves. Bar we are slaves. Bar we are sheep. Bar we are strange. Some of the Oriental world is familiar, a terrain populated by agrarian villages bursting with provisions and ripe for plunder. Some of it lies behind an iron cage that Xenophon, trapped in his Greekness, is barred from opening. Everything Xenophon does is in deadly earnest. While this is largely because Xenophon’s fate and the fate of the Ten Thousand were delicately balanced on the edge of a knife blade, Xenophon doesn’t strike me as a bon vivant in any of his other works. In contrast, Herodotus is a damned hippie, cheerfully imbibing and inhaling whatever the locals would offer. Herodotus is Mr. Fun, painting the world in bright fun Deluxe Crayola colors, a literary Expressionist for all time. Xenophon is more like Thucydides, a gloomy and bitter exile justifying the vagaries of his career by pouring out apologia galore. Like Seurat, he paints the world as a summation of pinpricks, with himself cast as the most prominent prick. I’m more sympathetic with Herodotus, who toiled away making his living through readings before a democratic mob, than with Xenophon, who spent much of his career as a literary Vyshinsky for the totalitarian Spartans. But with his descent into Mesopotamia, the birthplace of autocracy, Xenophon demonstrates that there are differing degrees of tyranny and even the citizens of Sparta had not fallen to the depths of the Great King’s slaves, driven into battle and corvee with whips. Of course tyranny, like influenza, is catching and the Ten Thousand may have brought the virus back with them from Mesopotamia, setting the scene for the passing of vigorous Greek liberty at Chaeronea a mere 63 years later. It is not without a touch of truth that the great historian Arrian’s history of the first flowering of Oriental despotism in the free soil of Greece is called the Anabasis of Alexander.