Adagio和XW客气地要我介绍西方文学动向,这里专家多多,我也不好意思show off. 以前William Gass在主持国际作家中心时曾编过一本内部发行的小册子,叫"A temple of texts: fifty literary pillars," 里面有不少真知灼见的感想,而且很短,而且很幽默。这里敲上两篇,很咖啡馆里的诗人们分享。
On William Butler Yeats
Wouldn’t we all like to grow old full of lust and rage as Yeats did? Wouldn’t we all like to have a late phase which would unlace the stays, and unwrap everything, and lay it bare for our wise, ripe, appreciative, and lascivious gaze. The Tower is not a volume of the late poems, which I admire even more than the masterpieces here, but this is the book which did its worst and best with me. Poetry has been a beleaguered castle on a cliff for a long time, and my castle had four towers: Yeats, Valery, Rilke, and Wallace Stevens. Their period produced some of the greatest lyric poetry our European culture has ever seen—perhaps its last gasp. These poets understood that poetry was a calling—and to consciousness a complete one. Yeats wanted to be a seer, and if, as it happened, there was nothing to see, he would invent it, not simply for himself, but for everybody else. He sets Byzantium down in Sligo. Yeats invested his language with an original richness, as if every word were a suitcase he would open, rummage around in, and carefully repack, slipping a few extras in among the socks. I read him in one gulp—the Complete Poems—from end to end, and then in small bites, and finally in ruminative chews (here comes Liao Kang’s 反刍--such a good title. I wish I could come up with something like that.) The Tower became a tree, and rooted itself in me. Yeats grew old disgracefully. It is the only way to go.
- posted on 10/03/2004
50柱里谈里尔克就有四篇,可见他对里氏之钟爱。我选了一篇好玩的。
I became a Rilke junkie. I can’t let many days pass without having a fix. The relationship can’t be rationally explained, and I no longer feel the need to. I am not a reader who reads to learn about an author, and I rarely pursue the writer into his or her privacy on account of their public utterance; but in Rilke’s case I did: I collected and read every word I could find whether on or by him, and that is a whole lot of lard. He is the only writer I ever tried seriously to translate, despite his difficulty, and my foreign language handicaps, for the truth is I am really a monoglot. Well, I would buy Rilke's kiddie car at auction if it ever came to the block. Who, if I cried, the Elegies shout, would hear me among the orders of angels? But I felt I had cried long ago and often, only to be heard now by these poems. They gave me my innermost thoughts, and then they gave those thoughts and expression I could never have imagined possible for them. Furthermore, the poet who thought and wrote these things, for all his shortcomings, actuall endeavored to be worthy of his work--and that effort made him, in my eyes, the most romantic of romantics. These poems also have a remarkable compositional history, and many are the result of the most exemplary inspirational storm our weatherkeeping records record.
- Re: Comments on Yeats and Rilkeposted on 10/04/2004
我看叶芝,瓦雷里,里尔克等都是形而上诗人。他们的写诗框架是世界观,不是仅仅个人感受,也许叫做本体论诗派。叶芝的本体论很复杂。不止是他的词是一个宝库中的珍宝,他打开的是从世界主义(阿拉伯的神秘主义)那里过来的,类似现在的奈包尔那样的多元文明关注。后来的拉金,赖特,阿胥伯莱则更加关注形而下的市民命运,诗风为之一变。其中的缘由很深刻,虽然深刻的诗再也少见了。呵呵。 - posted on 10/04/2004
哎呀,最最尊敬的自立先生,从这两段话中我没看出作者想说叶芝,瓦雷里,里尔克三人仅仅想表达个人感受呀! 您看, 说叶芝是个seer,说if there was nothing to see, he would invent it. 说他们answer a calling to consciousness,不是您说的世界观框架是什么? Gass本人的东西就是很形而上的. 至于叶芝和奈包尔的关系,以后在慢慢跟您请教吧! 呵呵.
bb wrote:
我看叶芝,瓦雷里,里尔克等都是形而上诗人。他们的写诗框架是世界观,不是仅仅个人感受,也许叫做本体论诗派。叶芝的本体论很复杂。不止是他的词是一个宝库中的珍宝,他打开的是从世界主义(阿拉伯的神秘主义)那里过来的,类似现在的奈包尔那样的多元文明关注。后来的拉金,赖特,阿胥伯莱则更加关注形而下的市民命运,诗风为之一变。其中的缘由很深刻,虽然深刻的诗再也少见了。呵呵。 - Re: Comments on Yeats and Rilkeposted on 10/04/2004
不是的。我是说叶芝们是形而上的——并没有和伽斯的说法有悖。他说他的诗是为所有人,Yeats wanted to be a seer, and if, as it happened, there was nothing to see, he would invent it, not simply for himself, but for everybody else. 作为一个预言家,他要创造一种显象的世界观——这些都是对的。
我只是说后来的诗人没有创造世界观的兴趣了。
千万不要嘲笑我啊,最最。。。。。。。只是对毛主席的。^_^、! - posted on 10/04/2004
谢谢若之敲的这两段,我更喜欢Gass论里尔克,大概是不懂他为何说叶芝 "grew old disgracefully" with that "appreciative, and lascivious gaze"? 再说“塔”应是他晚期作品吧?
Duino Elegies 读过第一节,今年春天在一个枯燥的专业会议上将这首诗反复默诵(总比坐着打盹强吧,再说这诗读进去了,感觉是很好的)。这里贴过来 -
Duino Elegies
The First Elegy
translated by H. Landman
Who, if I screamed, would hear me among the ranks
of angels? and even supposing one clutched
me suddenly to its heart: I would perish from the
power of its presence. For beauty is nothing
but the beginning of a terror we can hardly bear,
and it amazes us so, because it nonchalantly declines
to destroy us. Every angel is terrifying.
And so I restrain myself and choke back the call
of my dark wailing. Oh, who can we turn to
in our need? Not angels, not men,
and the perceptive beasts already sense
that we are not very secure or at home
in the interpreted world. We are left with perhaps
some tree on the mountainside, that we see again
each day; we are left with yesterday's street
and the perverse loyalty of a habit,
that liked us so much that it stayed and never left.
Oh and the night, the night, when the wind full of space
sucks at our face - for whom would it not stay,
deceptive, difficult for the solitary heart
to confront. Is it any easier for lovers?
Ah, they only conceal their fates in each other.
Don't you know yet? Hurl the emptiness from your arms
out to the spaces we breathe; perhaps the birds
will respond to the expanded air with more fervent flight.
Yes, the springtimes needed you. Many stars were
relying on you to perceive them. A wave
surged up to you in the past, or
as you passed by an open window,
a violin martyred itself. These were all lessons.
But did you learn them? Weren't you always
distracted by anticipation, as if they all
heralded a beloved? (Where would you keep her,
with all the immense bizarre thoughts going
in and out of you and often staying the night.)
But if you want, then sing of women in love; for their
celebrated feelings are still not nearly immortal enough.
The forsaken - you almost envied them - whom you found
so much more loving than the satisfied. Always
begin anew the never-quite-adequate praise:
think: the hero was kept alive, even disaster was for him
just the prelude to his ultimate rebirth.
But exhausted nature takes lovers
back, as if it hadn't enough power
to accomplish them twice. Have you adequately considered
Gaspara Stampa, so that any girl
abandoned by her beloved would feel of that
exalted example: if only I could be like her?
Shouldn't this most ancient of agonies finally
become more fruitful for us? Isn't it time we lovingly
freed ourselves from the beloved and endured, trembling:
as an arrow endures the bowstring, so that drawn into leaping
it can be more than itself. For there is no place to stay.
Voices, voices. Listen, my heart, as usually only
saints have listened: till the immense call
lifted them off the ground; but they kept on
kneeling, impossibly, and paid no attention:
so rapt were they. Not that you could bear God's
voice, far from it. But listen to the windblown,
the uninterrupted message that forms out of silence.
It rushes now from those who died young to you.
Whenever you entered a chruch, in Rome or Naples,
didn't their fate quietly address you?
Or an inscription inspired and instructed you,
like that tablet recently in Santa Maria Formosa.
What do they want from me? that I do away with
the appearance of injustice, which sometimes
slightly hinders the pure progess of their spirits.
Still, it is peculiar to inhabit the Earth no longer,
to no more practice barely-learned customs,
for roses and other especially auspicious things
to have no significance for a human future;
what one was in endlessly anxious hands,
to be no more, and to leave behind
even one's own name like a broken toy.
Peculiar, to no longer desire one's desires. Peculiar,
to see everything related to one's self
floating off into space. And being dead is laborious
and full of catching up, before one gradually senses
a trace of eternity - yet the living always
make the mistake of drawing too-sharp distinctions.
Angels (they say) often don't know, whether they pass among
the living or the dead. The eternal torrent
sweeps through both realms carrying all ages
with it and drowns them out in both.
In the end they no longer need us, those carried off early;
one is gently weaned from the mundane, as one outgrows
the mother's soft breasts. But we, who do need
such great mysteries, whose grief is so often
the source of spiritual progress: could we exist without them?
Is it for nothing, the myth that once in lament over Linus
the first perilous music sliced through sterile paralysis;
that first in the shocked space that a near-godlike youth
had suddenly vacated forever, emptiness rang with the
vibration that now enthralls and consoles and helps us.
- posted on 10/09/2004
正因为觉得你们的观点没有多大出入, 所以才从伽斯(国内译成伽斯? 台湾好像译成盖斯.)文里找材料支持你的观点呀! :-) 哪里敢嘲笑, 当时到了快闭网的时间了, 所以没细读你的贴, 一急, 小时候学的"最最"也脱口而出了.^_^ 抱歉抱歉!
同一个作家, 看看他们在中英文两种符号系统里的境遇(甚至只是两个人脑海里的理解), 应该是件很有意思的事情. 希望听到你更多的意见.
bb wrote:
不是的。我是说叶芝们是形而上的——并没有和伽斯的说法有悖。他说他的诗是为所有人,Yeats wanted to be a seer, and if, as it happened, there was nothing to see, he would invent it, not simply for himself, but for everybody else. 作为一个预言家,他要创造一种显象的世界观——这些都是对的。
我只是说后来的诗人没有创造世界观的兴趣了。
千万不要嘲笑我啊,最最。。。。。。。只是对毛主席的。^_^、! - posted on 10/09/2004
谢谢adagio贴的这首长诗. 看专业会议还能读进诗? 真佩服你! 你对叶芝肯定比我了解得多. 我查到这一个资料, 大概可以解释为什么Gass提到lascivious gaze: "In 1934 he underwent the Steinach operation (a procedure that stimulates the production of sexual hormones), which, he believed, rejuvenated his flagging creativity and stimulated the intensely sexual themes and imagery of many of the late poems."
此外, 还有他政治上的这一过节: "Despite illness and old age, Yeats's last 15 years or so bristled with astonishing energies. True to the principles of a lifetime, he refused to abandon the attempt to bend the world and himself to his imaginative pattern. One regrettable result of this ambition was his approval during the 1930s of the social and political tenets of fascism. Consonant with his abiding conception of reality as a struggle between Blakean "contrarieties" of chaos and design, and responsive to his apocalyptic vision of a universal descent into barbarous ruin--prophesied in "The Second Coming," 1920--the flaw in this unfortunate allegiance lies in the blunt literalism with which Yeats applied his aesthetic principles to the world of politics. "
不过, Gass在这里说叶芝grew old disgracefully, 含有欣赏之意(特别是从创造力和active sexuality方面来讲). graceful估计是Gass很讨厌的一个词. H. Landman翻译的The First Elegy, 我觉得比盖斯本人翻译的要好, 只看第一段:
The first elegy
Who, if I cried, would hear me among the Dominions
of Angles? And even if one of them suddenly
held me against his heart, I would fade in the grip
of that completer existence--a beauty we can barely
endure, because it is nothing but terror's herald;
and we worship it so because it serenely disdains
to destroy us. Every Angel is awesome.
这最后一句"Every Angel is awesome"简直terrible. 相比较之下,Landman的Every angel is terrifying就要好得多.
adagio wrote:
谢谢若之敲的这两段,我更喜欢Gass论里尔克,大概是不懂他为何说叶芝 "grew old disgracefully" with that "appreciative, and lascivious gaze"? 再说“塔”应是他晚期作品吧?
Duino Elegies 读过第一节,今年春天在一个枯燥的专业会议上将这首诗反复默诵(总比坐着打盹强吧,再说这诗读进去了,感觉是很好的)。这里贴过来 -
Duino Elegies
The First Elegy
translated by H. Landman
Who, if I screamed, would hear me among the ranks
of angels? and even supposing one clutched
me suddenly to its heart: I would perish from the
power of its presence. For beauty is nothing
but the beginning of a terror we can hardly bear,
and it amazes us so, because it nonchalantly declines
to destroy us. Every angel is terrifying.
And so I restrain myself and choke back the call
of my dark wailing. Oh, who can we turn to
in our need? Not angels, not men,
and the perceptive beasts already sense
that we are not very secure or at home
in the interpreted world. We are left with perhaps
some tree on the mountainside, that we see again
each day; we are left with yesterday's street
and the perverse loyalty of a habit,
that liked us so much that it stayed and never left.
Oh and the night, the night, when the wind full of space
sucks at our face - for whom would it not stay,
deceptive, difficult for the solitary heart
to confront. Is it any easier for lovers?
Ah, they only conceal their fates in each other.
Don't you know yet? Hurl the emptiness from your arms
out to the spaces we breathe; perhaps the birds
will respond to the expanded air with more fervent flight.
Yes, the springtimes needed you. Many stars were
relying on you to perceive them. A wave
surged up to you in the past, or
as you passed by an open window,
a violin martyred itself. These were all lessons.
But did you learn them? Weren't you always
distracted by anticipation, as if they all
heralded a beloved? (Where would you keep her,
with all the immense bizarre thoughts going
in and out of you and often staying the night.)
But if you want, then sing of women in love; for their
celebrated feelings are still not nearly immortal enough.
The forsaken - you almost envied them - whom you found
so much more loving than the satisfied. Always
begin anew the never-quite-adequate praise:
think: the hero was kept alive, even disaster was for him
just the prelude to his ultimate rebirth.
But exhausted nature takes lovers
back, as if it hadn't enough power
to accomplish them twice. Have you adequately considered
Gaspara Stampa, so that any girl
abandoned by her beloved would feel of that
exalted example: if only I could be like her?
Shouldn't this most ancient of agonies finally
become more fruitful for us? Isn't it time we lovingly
freed ourselves from the beloved and endured, trembling:
as an arrow endures the bowstring, so that drawn into leaping
it can be more than itself. For there is no place to stay.
Voices, voices. Listen, my heart, as usually only
saints have listened: till the immense call
lifted them off the ground; but they kept on
kneeling, impossibly, and paid no attention:
so rapt were they. Not that you could bear God's
voice, far from it. But listen to the windblown,
the uninterrupted message that forms out of silence.
It rushes now from those who died young to you.
Whenever you entered a chruch, in Rome or Naples,
didn't their fate quietly address you?
Or an inscription inspired and instructed you,
like that tablet recently in Santa Maria Formosa.
What do they want from me? that I do away with
the appearance of injustice, which sometimes
slightly hinders the pure progess of their spirits.
Still, it is peculiar to inhabit the Earth no longer,
to no more practice barely-learned customs,
for roses and other especially auspicious things
to have no significance for a human future;
what one was in endlessly anxious hands,
to be no more, and to leave behind
even one's own name like a broken toy.
Peculiar, to no longer desire one's desires. Peculiar,
to see everything related to one's self
floating off into space. And being dead is laborious
and full of catching up, before one gradually senses
a trace of eternity - yet the living always
make the mistake of drawing too-sharp distinctions.
Angels (they say) often don't know, whether they pass among
the living or the dead. The eternal torrent
sweeps through both realms carrying all ages
with it and drowns them out in both.
In the end they no longer need us, those carried off early;
one is gently weaned from the mundane, as one outgrows
the mother's soft breasts. But we, who do need
such great mysteries, whose grief is so often
the source of spiritual progress: could we exist without them?
Is it for nothing, the myth that once in lament over Linus
the first perilous music sliced through sterile paralysis;
that first in the shocked space that a near-godlike youth
had suddenly vacated forever, emptiness rang with the
vibration that now enthralls and consoles and helps us.
- Re: On Rainer Maria Rilkeposted on 10/09/2004
若之好,我正好也在线上。
怎么说呢,有时我看东西的角度巩怕有些形而下。比如说你和自立象
是总览在一座森林,而我一直在树丛里穿梭着呢。
但还是渴望有你们指点迷津。。。
- posted on 10/10/2004
象罔, 可惜又和你错过了. 我可是谈不上总览森林的哟, 可能自立是. :-) 对诗歌我没有多少第一手感觉可谈, 还是你们诗人们多谈吧.
看了今天"纽约时报书评"吗? 哈金的新作"War Trash" made the front page, a really big deal. It's his first book not set in China. I have a hunch that this one will sell well, which reminds us that we all need to work harder. Got to go.
xw wrote:
若之好,我正好也在线上。
怎么说呢,有时我看东西的角度巩怕有些形而下。比如说你和自立象
是总览在一座森林,而我一直在树丛里穿梭着呢。
但还是渴望有你们指点迷津。。。
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