翻译天堂  2016-09-08

诗运动的轨迹

Abstraction is an old story with the philosophers, but it has been like a new toy in the hands of the artists of our day. Why can’t we have any one quality of poetry we choose by itself? We can have in thought. Then it will go hard if we can’t in practice. Our lives for it. 抽象对哲学家来说是老生常谈，但它在当代艺术家手中却还像是一种新鲜玩意儿。我们为何不能有自己选择的任何一种诗所固有的特性呢？我们心中可以有。可要是我们实际上不能有，那它也难有结果。我们的生命向往那种特性。

Granted no one but a humanist much cares how sound a poem is if it is only a sound. The sound is the gold in the ore. Then we will have the sound out alone and dispense with the inessential. We do till we make the discovery that the object in writing poetry is to make all poems sound as different as possible from each other, and the resources for that of vowels, consonants, punctuation, syntax, words, sentences, metre are not enough. We need the help of context- meaning-subject matter. That is the greatest help towards variety. All that can be done with words is soon told. So also with metres-particularly in our language where there are virtually but two, strict iambic and loose iambic. The ancients with many were still poor if they depended on metres for all tune. It is painful to watch our sprung-rhythmists straining at the point of omitting one short from a foot for relief from monotony. The possibilities for tune from the dramatic tones of meaning struck across the rigidity of a limited metre are endless. And we are back in poetry as merely one more art of having something to say, sound or unsound. Probably better if sound, because deeper and from wider experience. 如果诗仅仅是一种声调的话，让我们假定只有人文学者才关心这种声调有多纯正。这声调是矿石中的金子。那么我们只把金子淘出，而将其他可有可无的东西摒弃；直到我们发现写诗的宗旨是要让每首诗都尽可能发出不同的声调，而要做到这点，现有的元音、辅音、标点、句法、词汇、句型和格律并不够用。我们还需要借助于语境——意义——题材。这对于声调之变化是莫大的帮助。词汇能造成的变化三言两语就可讲清。格律的变化也同样——尤其在英语中，因为英语诗歌实际上只有两种格律，即严谨的抑扬格和不严谨的抑扬格。古代诗人有许多格律，但如果他们仅依靠格律来形成旋律，那他们的格律仍然不够用。看我们的弹性节奏派诗人为避免单调而使劲从一个音步中略去一个短音，那可真叫惨不忍睹。其实要让源自充满激情且富于意义的声调之旋律穿越因受限制而呆板的格律，其可能性可谓无穷无尽。我们可以后退一步，把诗仅仅看成又一种有意义要表达的艺术，不管它纯正还是不纯正。也许纯正更好，因为更深远，来自更丰富的经历。

Then there is this wildness whereof it is spoken. Granted again that it has an equal claim with sound to being a poem’s better half. If it is a wild tune, it is a Poem. Our problem then is, as modern abstractionists, to have the wildness pure; to be wild with nothing to be wild about. We bring up as aberrationists, giving way to undirected associations and kicking ourselves from one chance suggestion to another in all directions as of a hot afternoon in the life of a grasshopper. Theme alone can steady us down. just as the first mystery was how a poem could have a tune in such a straightness as metre, so the second mystery is how a poem can have wildness and at the same time a subject that shall be fulfilled. 这下就有了我们要谈的这种野性。让我们再假设这种野性和声调一样，理应成为诗不可或缺的要素，那么一种野性的旋律就可以是诗。于是我们要解决的问题就是像现代抽象派艺术家那样使这种野性保持纯洁，使之成为一种野而不狂的野性。我们爱偏离正道，爱陶醉于漫无目标的联想，像充满活力的蚌蠕在炎热的下午东蹦西跳，从一个偶然的启示跳向另一个偶然的启示。只有主题能让我们镇静下来。我们先前的困惑是：在格律这种一成不变的框架之中，一首诗怎么能获得一种变化的旋律。同先前的困惑一样，我们现在的困惑是：一首诗何以能既具有野性，同时又有一个要实现的主题。

It should be of the pleasure of a poem itself to tell how it can. The figure a poem makes. It begins in delight and ends in wisdom. The figure is the same as for love. No one can really hold that the ecstasy should be static and stand still in one place. It begins in delight, it inclines to the impulse, it assumes direction with the first line laid down, it runs a course of lucky events, and ends in a clarification of life-not necessarily a great clarification, such as sects and cults are founded on, but in a momentary stay against confusion. It has denouement. It has an outcome that though unforeseen was predestined from the first image of the original mood-and indeed from the very mood. It is but a trick poem and no poem at all if the best of it was thought of first and saved for the last. It finds its own name as it goes and discovers the best waiting for it in some final phrase at once wise and sad-the happy-sad blend of the drinking song. 若让一首诗自己来说明这点，那应该是一件令人愉快的事。一首诗自有其运动轨迹。它始于欢欣，终于智慧。这条轨迹对爱情也是一样。谁也不可能真正相信那种强烈的感情会在一个地方静止不动石它始于欢欣，它喜欢冲动，随着第一行写出它就开始设定方向，然后经历一连串的偶然和侥幸，最终到达生命中的一片净土——那片净土不必很大，不必像各教派学派立脚的地盘那么大，但应在与混乱相对的片刻清净之中。它有结局。它有一种虽说意外但却早已在原始情绪的第一意象中就注定了的结局——结局的确是来自情绪。若它的最佳部分早就被想到并被刻意保留到最后，那它就是首伪诗，而不是真正的诗。诗应该在运动过程中发现自己的名字，并发现最精彩的部分就在最后的某个语句中等着它——在某个同时包含了智慧和悲伤的语句之中，在某个酒歌般悲喜交融的语句之中。

No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader. For me the initial delight is in the surprise of remembering something I didn’t know I knew. I am in a place, in a situation, as if I had materialized from cloud or risen out of the ground. There is a glad recognition of the long lost and the rest follows. Step by step the wonder of unexpected supply keeps growing. The impressions most useful to my purpose seem always those I was unaware of and so made no note of at the time when taken, and the conclusion is come to that like giants we are always hurling experience ahead of us to pave the future with against the day when we may Want to strike a line of purpose across it for somewhere. The line will have the more charm for not being mechanically straight. We enjoy the straight crookedness of a good walking stick. Modern instruments of precision are being used to make things crooked as if by eye and hand in the old days. 诗人没有眼泪，读者亦不会流泪。诗人没有惊喜，读者亦不会惊喜。对我而言，最初的欢欣就在突然回想起我不知自己所知的某事或某物的惊喜之中。我会身在某处，处于某种状态，仿佛我是从云中钻出或是从地面高高升起，心中怀着一种因认出早已淡忘的事物而感到的喜悦，其余的一切接踵而来。意想不到的惊喜一点点地增加。最有助于我实现目的的印象似乎总是那些我当初获得时未加留心因而没有记录下来的印象，而结果是我们总像巨人似的把经历抛到前方去铺我们未来的路，以防有朝一日我们也许会想另觅一条实现目的的路，超越以往的经历去什么地方。那条路也许更有魅力，因为它不会笔直得单调乏味。我们总喜欢一根漂亮拐杖的直中有曲。现代精密仪器正在被用来使东西弯曲，就像过去人们凭眼睛和手工所做的一样。

I tell how there may be a better wildness of logic than of inconsequence. But the logic is backward, in retrospect, after the act. It must be more felt than seen ahead like prophecy. It must be a revelation, or a series of revelations, as much for the poet as for the reader. For it to be that there must have been the greatest freedom of the material to move about in it and to establish relations in it regardless of time and space, previous relation, and everything but affinity. We prate of freedom. We call our schools free because we are not free to stay away from them till we are sixteen years of age. I have given up my democratic prejudices and now willingly set the lower classes free to be completely taken care of by the upper classes. Political freedom is nothing to me. I bestow it right and left. All I would keep for myself is the freedom of my material-the condition of body and mind now and then to summons aptly from the vast chaos of all I have lived through. 较之非逻辑的野性，我知道怎么会有一种更逻辑的野性。但这种逻辑是后来的。是在行动之后，在回忆之时才有的。它必须是被感觉到，而不是像预言那样被预见到。不管对诗人还是对读者，它都必须是一种启示，或一连串启示。因为情况应该是这样：素材在任何时间空间都必须有最充分的自由在这种逻辑中运动，并在其中建立各种关系，包括先前的关系，以及除类同之外的一切关系。我们爱空谈自由。因为我们16岁之前没有离开学校的自由，我们就认为我们的学校自由。我已经放弃了我的民主偏见，现在我乐意让下层民众自由地被上层阶级全面照管。政治自由于我可有可无。我可以把它送给左邻右舍。我要替自己保留的就是我运用素材的自由，我身心状态随时能响应我所经历过的大混乱之召唤的自由。

Scholars and artists thrown together are often annoyed at the puzzle of where they differ. Both work from knowledge; but I suspect they differ most importantly in the way their knowledge is come by. Scholars get theirs with conscientious thoroughness along projected lines of logic; poets theirs cavalierly and as it happens in and out of books. They stick to nothing deliberately, but let what will stick to them like burrs where they walk in the fields. No acquirement is on assignment, or even self-assignment. Knowledge of the second kind is much more available in the wild free ways of wit and art. A schoolboy may be defined as one who can tell you what he knows in the order in which he learned it.  The artist must value himself as he snatches a thing from some previous order in time and space into a new order with not so much as a ligature clinging to it of the old place where it was organic. 学者和艺术家相聚时往往会恼于说不清他们之间的差别。他们都凭其学识立业，但我认为两者间最大的差别就在于他们获取知识的方式。学者总是沿设计好的逻辑路线谨慎而周密地获取知识，诗人的方式则可谓潇洒，总是随缘凑巧地从书里书外获取。他们并不刻意附着于什么，而是让愿意附着他们的东西来附着他们，就像在旷野中行走时芒刺附着于他们身上那样。诗人并不把求知作为必修课，甚至不作为选修课。这第二类知识更适合凭借艺术才智随心所欲地去获取。可以这么说，学者能用其获取知识的那种条理告诉你他的所识所知；艺术家则肯定会夸耀，说他能从某个在时空上都先有的条理中取出其不可分割的某一部分，然后放进一个甚至于与之无关的新条理中。

More than once I should have lost my soul to radicalism if it had been the originality it was mistaken for by its young converts. Originality and initiative are what I ask for my country. For myself the originality need be no more than the freshness of a poem run in the way I have described: from delight to wisdom. The figure is the same as for love. Like a piece of ice on a hot stove the poem must ride on its own melting. A poem may be worked over once it is in being, but may not be worried into being. Its most precious quality will remain its having run itself and carried away the poet with it. Read it a hundred times: it will forever keep its freshness as a petal keeps its fragrance. It can never lose its sense of a meaning that once unfolded by surprise as it went. 如果激进主义就是被一些青年阪依者误认为的独创性，那我可能早就不止一次地阪依它了。独创性和进取心是我为自己的祖国祈求的东西。对我而言，独创性只须是一首诗的新颖之处，而那首诗之形成是依照我上文所描述的轨迹一从欢欣到智慧。这条轨迹对爱情也是一样。像热炉子上的冰块，诗必须经历它自己的融化过程。一首诗完成之后可以被修饰润色，但不可绞尽脑汁地拼凑而成。一首诗只要能自己运动并带着诗人和它一道行进，它最珍贵的特性就将永远保持。它将会让人百读不厌，就像金属永远保持其香味。它永远都不会失去它在运动过程中意外呈现的意蕴。

曹明伦（译）