OWNED BY PARROT01

And that search has led me to ancient Greece and ancient Rome.

这一寻找最后把我带到了古希腊和古罗马。

So stay with me, because it does circle around and back.

所以请耐心听我讲，因为最后会绕回到我们的问题。

But, ancient Greece and ancient Rome — people did not happen to believe that creativity came from human beings back then, OK?

在古希腊和古罗马，人们并不认为创造力来自于人类本身。

People believed that creativity was this divine attendant spirit that came to human beings from some distant and unknowable source, for distant and unknowable reasons.

人们相信，创造力是一种神圣的守护精灵，从遥远而不可知的地方来到艺术家身边，带着某种遥远而不可知的目的。

The Greeks famously called these divine attendant spirits of creativity “daemons.”

希腊人普遍地称这种伴随着创造力的守护精灵为“守护神”。

Socrates, famously, believed that he had a daemon who spoke wisdom to him from afar.

当时人们普遍地认为苏格拉底就有这样一个守护神，从远处赋予他智慧。

The Romans had the same idea, but they called that sort of disembodied creative spirit a genius.

古罗马人有着相似的观点，他们把这种无形的创造精灵称为“天才”。

Which is great, because the Romans did not actually think that a genius was a particularly clever individual.

这种观点很妙，因为罗马人并没有认为“天才”是某个特别聪慧的个人。

They believed that a genius was this, sort of magical divine entity, who was believed to literally live in the walls of an artist’s studio,

他们认为“天才”是某种奇妙的神圣存在，他们甚至认为“天才”居住在艺术家工作室的墙壁中，

kind of like Dobby the house elf, and who would come out and sort of invisibly assist the artist with their work and would shape the outcome of that work.

就像小精灵多比一样，它们会悄悄地钻出来，无形地帮助艺术家创作，并影响作品成败。

So brilliant — there it is, right there, that distance that I’m talking about —

这个观点简直绝了，这就是我在找寻的那个安全距离，

that psychological construct to protect you from the results of your work.

这就是让人免受作品成败影响的心理保护机制。

And everyone knew that this is how it functioned, right?

我们都可以理解它的运作模式，不是吗？

So the ancient artist was protected from certain things, like, for example, too much narcissism, right?

古代艺术家由这个观点而得到保护，避免了过度自恋。

If your work was brilliant, you couldn’t take all the credit for it, everybody knew that you had this disembodied genius who had helped you.

如果你的作品很伟大，那可不能完全归功于你，因为大家都知道你是在一个无形的“天才”帮助下完成作品的。

If your work bombed, not entirely your fault, you know? Everyone knew your genius was kind of lame.

如果你的作品很烂，同样也不全是你的错，人人都知道那是因为你的“天才”很差劲。

And this is how people thought about creativity in the West for a really long time.

这就是西方人在过去很长一段时间里看待创作力的方式。

And then the Renaissance came and everything changed, and we had this big idea, and the big idea was,

接着文艺复兴来临，一切都变了，人们产生了一个伟大的想法：

let’s put the individual human being at the center of the universe above all gods and mysteries,

“让我们把人类置于宇宙中心，超越众神和神秘未知”，

and there’s no more room for mystical creatures who take dictation from the divine.

于是再也没有空间留给传递神圣意志的小精灵。

And it’s the beginning of rational humanism, and people started to believe that creativity came completely from the self of the individual.

这就是理性人文主义的开端，人们开始相信创造力完全来源于人类个体本身。

And for the first time in history, you start to hear people referring to this or that artist as being a genius, rather than having a genius.

有史以来，人们第一次将某个艺术家称为“天才”，而非拥有一个“天才”。

演讲简介：

对于那些不可思议的伟大艺术作品，当代社会常将之归功于创作者本身，人们从而对艺术天才抱有超乎寻常的期望，伊丽莎白.吉尔伯特对这一点进行了探索和思考，提出了对于创造天才的独到观点：与其认为某个个人是“天才”，不如说他/她在创作中获得了“天才”的帮助。这一演讲生动有趣、充满个人色彩、令人感动而充满启发。