“My poems represent, on the whole, the main movement of mind of the last quarter of a century... It might be fairly urged that I have less poetical sentiment than Tennyson and less intellectual vigour and abundance than Browning; yet because I have perhaps more of a fusion of the two than either of them, and have more regularly applied that fusion to the main line of modern development, I am likely enough to have my turn as they have had theirs.”
阿诺德的一个特点是他以文字反应时代的要求。这首《多佛尔海岸》成诗于1850年左右,1867年出版。诗中意象或许指向整个现代世界。诗歌起首,我们(“we”,可能是诗人和他的同伴,也可能包括了读者)是海水的观众和聆听者。至第三节,诗人点出了他的比喻:“the Sea of Faith”;海水的退落在诗人的眼中象征着世人信仰的丢失,而退潮后的裸砂和战场般的平原与诗歌开头那月光下静谧的海水也形成了鲜明对比。
有文学评论家认为诗歌最后一节与前文有些脱节,但是雪梨觉得诗歌的结尾很耐人寻味。举一个细节为例。这节的开头两行是一句完整的句子。读者先是听到一个宏大的期许——“Ah, love, let us be true”——随后才听见附加条件“To one another”,仿佛无条件的、一视同仁的、对整个世界的坦诚已经不复可能,人们只能要求与最亲的人彼此信任。当然,这只是对这句话的一种解读方式,但是韵律、停顿等外在形式上的不可捉摸,正是诗歌的美妙之处啊。
BGM:Murron's Burial - James Horner (from Braveheart OST)
“雪梨读诗”第三集推送的是由英国诗人Louis MacNeice于二战时期写的一首著名诗歌“Prayer before Birth”。
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诗歌文本与翻译(王佐良译)
Prayer before Birth
by Louis MacNeice
出生前的祷告
路易斯·麦克尼斯
I am not yet born; O hear me.
Let not the bloodsucking bat or the rat or the stoat or the
club-footed ghoul come near me.
我还没生;啊,听我一言:
莫让吸血的蝙蝠、鼠、鼬、跛脚的食尸鬼接近我。
I am not yet born, console me.
I fear that the human race may with tall walls wall me,
with strong drugs dope me, with wise lies lure me,
“Poetry in my opinion must be honest before anything else and I refuse to be 'objective' or clear-cut at the cost of honesty.”
雪梨觉得,这首诗是很诚实的。
BGM:Rise - John Dreamer
诗歌文本及译本(曹明伦译)
Translated by Cao
诗歌解析
Background
埃德加·爱伦·坡(Edgar Allan Poe,1809-1849),美国作家、诗人和文学评论家,美国浪漫主义运动的要员。他的短片悬疑和惊悚小说很负盛名。萧伯纳称爱伦·坡和马克·吐温为美国两个伟大的作家,法国诗人波德莱尔也很推崇爱伦·坡。
爱伦·坡年仅四十就去世,报纸登载死因是“脑充血”(congestion of the brain)或“脑部炎症”(cerebral inflammation),一说在当时这是酒精中毒的委婉语。但其实他的死因一直没有定论。
雪梨看《盗梦空间》这部电影的时候就想到这首诗。电影里有壮大的海岸和悬崖,可是那些都是镜花水月。对于盗梦者来说,一枚小小的陀螺才是现实的象征。这首诗里,诗人将现实的实体存在比作握不住的流沙。“梦中之梦”的说法有很多种解释,但是想到柏拉图说诗歌是“twice removed from reality”,如果诗歌中的生活是“梦中之梦”,那么爱伦·坡的诗歌大约是thrice removed from reality吧。
在序言中,华兹华斯给诗歌下了定义:“诗是强烈情感的自然流露。它起源于在平静中回忆起来的情感。”(Poetry is the spontaneous overflow ofpowerful feelings:it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.)这首《水仙》就是最好的例证。语言朴素、清新,最后一段的抒情让人意识到,前面的写景其实是作者的回忆。
这首诗歌最初出版时收到的文学评论大多是负面的;拜伦评价说这首诗用词幼稚( "Mr. W[ordsworth] ceases to please, ... clothing [hisideas] in language not simple, but puerile")。现在,《水仙》却成为了浪漫主义新诗的代表作。
雪梨读诗”第八集推送的是阿根廷诗人豪尔赫·路易斯·博尔赫斯(Jorge Luis Borges, 1899-1986)的诗歌"What Can I Hold You with? "
诗歌朗诵(程雪梨)
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诗歌文本及译文
What Can I Hold You with?
Jorge Luis Borges
I offer you lean streets, desperate sunsets, the moon of the jagged suburbs.
I offer you the bitterness of a man who has looked long and long at the lonely moon.
I offer you my ancestors, my dead men, the ghosts that living men have honoured in marble:my father's father killed in the frontier of Buenos Aires, two bullets through his lungs, bearded and dead, wrapped by his soldiersin the hide of a cow; my mother's grandfather -just twenty four- heading a charge of three hundred men in Peru, now ghosts on vanished horses.
I offer you whatever insight my books may hold. whatever manliness or humour my life.
I offer you the loyalty of a man who has never been loyal.
I offer you that kernel of myself that I have saved somehow -the central heart that deals not in words, traffics not with dreams and is untouched by time, by joy, by adversities.
I offer you the memory of a yellow rose seen at sunset, years before you were born.
I offer you explanations of yourself, theories about yourself, authentic and surprising news of yourself.
I can give you my loneliness, my darkness, the hunger of my heart; I am trying to bribe you with uncertainty, with danger, with defeat.
博尔赫斯家族有失明病史,年近四十时这位诗人开始逐渐失去视力。他在小说《另一个人》(The Other)里写,逐渐失明的过程并不悲剧,它仿佛缓慢到来的夏暮(Gradual blindness is not a tragedy. It's like a slow summer dusk)。1955年,他被起用为阿根廷国立图书馆馆长,然而当时他双目已近全明。诗人这样写道:
No one should read self-pity or reproach
Into this statement of the majesty
Of God; who with such splendid irony,
Granted me books and night at one touch.
这首诗是1934年博尔赫斯写的两首英语诗歌(Two English Poems, To Beatriz Webster de Bullrich)中的第二首。博尔赫斯生前不允许这两首诗歌被翻译成其他语言,或许是为了守护诗行间直白而坦诚的感情。诗歌的文字已经很有力量,雪梨不必做太多解析。
“雪梨读诗”第九集推送的是智利诗人巴勃罗·聂鲁达(1904-1973)的诗歌"I Like for You to Be Still ".
诗歌朗诵(程雪梨)
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诗歌文本及译文(李宗荣译)
I Like for You to Be Still
Pablo Neruda
I like for you to be still
It is as though you are absent
And you hear me from far away
And my voice does not touch you
It seems as though your eyes had flown away
And it seems that a kiss had sealed your mouth
As all things are filled with my soul
You emerge from the things
Filled with my soul
You are like my soul
A butterfly of dream
And you are like the word:Melancholy
I like for you to be still
And you seem far away
It sounds as though you are lamenting
A butterfly cooing like a dove
And you hear me from far away
And my voice does not reach you
Let me come to be still in your silence
And let me talk to you with your silence
That is bright as a lamp
Simple, as a ring
You are like the night
With its stillness and constellations
Your silence is that of a star
As remote and candid
I like for you to be still
It is as though you are absent
Distant and full of sorrow
So you would've died
One word then,
One smile is enough
And I'm happy;
Happy that it's not true
我喜欢你是寂静的
巴勃罗·聂鲁达
我喜欢你是寂静的,仿佛你消失了一样,
你从远处聆听我,我的声音却无法触及你。
好像你的双眼已经飞离去,如同一个吻,封缄了你的嘴。
如同所有的事物充满了我的灵魂,
你从所有的事物中浮现,充满了我的灵魂。
你像我的灵魂,一只梦的蝴蝶。你如同忧郁这个词。
我喜欢你是寂静的,好像你已远去。
你听起来像在悲叹,一只如鸽悲鸣的蝴蝶。
你从远处听见我,我的声音无法触及你:
让我在你的沉默中安静无声。
并且让我借你的沉默与你说话,
你的沉默明亮如灯,简单如指环,
你就像黑夜,拥有寂寞与群星。
你的沉默就是星星的沉默,遥远而明亮。
我喜欢你是寂静的,仿佛你消失了一样,
遥远而且哀伤,仿佛你已经死了。
彼时,一个字,一个微笑,已经足够。
而我会觉得幸福,因那不是真的而觉得幸福。
诗歌解析
巴勃罗·聂鲁达(1904-1973),智利诗人。1971年凭作品《情诗·哀诗·赞诗》获诺贝尔文学奖,获奖理由:“诗歌具有自然力般的作用,复苏了一个大陆的命运与梦想”(“fora poetry that with the action of an elemental force brings alive a continent's destiny and dreams”)。