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< >你把全诗都翻译出来吧，我也翻译史蒂文斯，但都是写出分析文字之后才拿出译诗，否则我怕译文讲不通。</P>
<>这里有我一个同学的文章，供参考。</P>
<>I was totally ignorant of Wallace Stevens until I came to Yale and took Professor Harold Bloom\'s course "How to Read a Poem." American poetry, as I, a Chinese student of a non-English major, understood it, is Walt Whitman, T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. In contrast, Wallace Stevens\'s name was strange to most Chinese intellectuals till recently. Even in his native country his rise to a canonical status was not immediate. Eliot\'s The Waste Land and Stevens\' Harmonium debuted around the same time, but the former took all the spotlight. A mysterious "X" recurs in some of Stevens\'s letters and poems. This "X" refers to no other than Eliot, which may reflect a degree of frustration on the part of Stevens. Not until his late years did Stevens slowly but surely receive the recognition he deserved. A lagging effect in cross-lingual translation and interpretation may explain Stevens\'s relative invisibility to the Chinese audience. In addition, Stevens, especially in his later years, was highly meditative and philosophical, at times difficult and obscure, which also affected his accessibility to foreign readers. <BR><BR>Professor Bloom\'s class first initiated me into the force and beauty of Stevens\'s poetry. What intrigues me is that Stevens lived a double life. He was an insurance lawyer in profession and a poet in private, and seemed to have no difficulty alternating between the two seemingly incompatible roles. Just like his work is so original that they defy any easy label, Stevens\'s life is so eccentric that he contradicts the stereotype of what a poet is supposed to be like. This is particularly astonishing in the eyes of the Chinese, for in our tradition commerce and poetry have very little in common. Chinese poets are easily associated with scholars, officials, hermits, monks, artists, but it is hard to think of any example of successful poet-businessmen. <BR><BR>I especially love "The Poems of Our Climate," a short piece written in 1938, when the poet was 59 years old. It was a number of years on from "The Idea of Order in the Key West." For Stevens, it was a central poem. Stevens\'s poetic odyssey spanning over half a century was punctuated by two puzzling breaks: in 1898-1900, Stevens, a Harvard student poet, contributed regularly to Harvard Advocate. After he left Cambridge for New York, his poetry writing stopped short. After a complete silence of seven years when Stevens was struggling with his business career, in 1907 he began to present love songs to his muse Elsie Moll, and his creative faculty seemed to return. In 1923, Stevens, at the age of 44, finally published his first volume of poems, Harmonium. The book\'s poor reception and its author\'s growing domestic and corporate responsibilities almost led him to abandon poetry again. For four years Stevens published little. Not until 1929 did Stevens resume poetry writing. Like the Irish poet W.B.Yeats and the Chinese poet Du Fu, the bulk of Stevens\'s best work was not done until his late years. Interestingly, these three literary lions unanimously fall in love with the fall season: Yeats admires the trees in their autumn beauty in "The Wild Swans at Coole"; Du Fu composed a cycle of regulated poems under the general title of "Autumn Meditations"; Stevens\' last major poetic endeavor is no other than "The Auroras of Autumn." These pieces actually reflect the poets\' "autumnal personality." As they are approaching that season of their life, their works become increasingly sophisticated, retrospective and sublime. The following lines from John Keats\' "Ode to Autumn" might be particularly pertinent to their situations: <BR><BR>Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they? <BR>Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, <BR><BR>"The Poems of Our Climate" was written in this "autumnal period" of the poet\'s life, thus belonging to the poetry of maturity. It is in three numbered sections. There is a break between each of the sections. <BR><BR>I <BR>Clear water in a brilliant bowl, <BR>Pink and white carnations. The light <BR>In the room more like a snowy air, <BR>Reflecting snow. A newly-fallen snow <BR>At the end of winter when afternoons return. <BR>Pink and white carnations - one desires <BR>So much more than that. The day itself <BR>Is simplified: a bowl of white, <BR>Cold, a cold porcelain, low and round, <BR>With nothing more than the carnations there. <BR><BR>Stevens\'s difficulty often lies in referentiality. The first section seems to have nothing to do with the title. There is no direct reference whatsoever to either "poems" or "our climate." Ostensibly the poet-persona is watching a Japanese flower arrangement. Stevens had a passion for oriental arts and philosophies. He was a close reader of Okakura Kakuzo (1862-1913), and his library was full of all kinds of books about Japanese flower arrangement. He was not only deeply read in this subject, but also had a habit of ordering fresh flowers from shops. The opening sentence introduces the image of flower arrangement by creating a pleasing word picture of balance, harmony and form. "Clear water" seems to be redundant, yet this rhetorical excess emphasizes the crystalline transparency of water. "Brilliant" etymologically means "to emit light, to reflect light," thus accentuating the shiny surface of the container. The combination of "pink and white carnations" brings a festival of inviting colors and textures that are traditionally associated with feminine innocence, charm and gentility. The origin of the word "carnation" in Latin confirms the connection between the flower and human flesh. Behind this image of sexual provocation is a male observer\'s voyeuristic and fetishistic desire. The first sentence sketches the key components of a flower arrangement (through three nouns: water, bowl and carnations), with an emphasis on their optical and chromatic effects in the eyes of a spectator (through four adjectives: clear, brilliant, pink and white), and thus anticipates the "light" in the following sentence. "[...]. The light / in the room more like a snowy air, / Reflecting snow" embraces and extends the aura around the flower arrangement: the interior light is not like snow falling, but rather like air reflecting fallen snow. The observer is so subtle that he cannot help but elaborating the snow image: during the winter the afternoons have been very brief; but now, with afternoons elongating, winter is near the end and somehow meets early spring, and a fresh snow lies immaculate on the ground, like a breathtaking artwork of Nature, which gives a pure, refreshing and ethereal tone to the air reflecting snow. This late-winter scene suggests that the observer, like "the snowman," wants "a mind of winter," but not a mind of deep winter. The light that gives luster to the flower arrangement, like the rainwater that glazes a red wheelbarrow (William Carlos Williams, "A Red Wheelbarrow"), works beautifully on both formal and metaphorical levels. It represents a natural light, but as part of an art world it also becomes an aesthetic light. <BR><BR>So far the language is very pictorial, in the manner of a still life. When Stevens portrays an object, he often builds a simple yet powerful image, omitting all insignificant details. Therefore, his image is at once concrete and abstract, familiar and unfamiliar, and appropriately distances itself from reality. In the first stanza of "The Poems of Our Climate," the image is very concrete and real: this is about a Japanese flower arrangement. Meanwhile, there is no extravagant description of the object, but a word picture almost in the style of a Chinese xieyi ("to convey the spirit") painting. It highlights the principal components of the flower arrangement (water, bowl and carnations), and throws away lesser details (such as the spatial disposition of flowers, the effect of foliage). The aesthetic atmosphere is not only created by the description of the object itself; it is also a product of the language. To use minimalism to achieve maximal effect - this is also the case for the language. The diction is basic English words, mostly monosyllabic and disyllabic. Stevens only suggests and expects the reader to complete the picture by himself. <BR><BR>"Pink and white carnations" recurs verbatim in line 6, implying that the observer moves his meditative eyes back to the core image. Then the poem abruptly takes another direction: "One desires / so much more than that." This jump from imagistic to argumentative language is visually strengthened with the use of a hyphen to connect a noun phrase and a full sentence. Meanwhile, "desire" corresponds to the etymological hint of carnation, and the whole question about desire will continue to inform the rest of the poem. "The day" is in opposition to whatever "in the room," designating the world external to the flower arrangement. Thus "[...] The day itself / is simplified" suggests that art reduces the outside world. "[...] a bowl of white, / Cold, a cold porcelain, low and round, / With nothing more than the carnations there." Once again, Stevens returns to visual imagery, but this is not a wanton repetition of the earlier lines, but rather a repetition with nuanced variations or a deliberate revision, as if the observer observes through a closer perspective. "Cold, a cold porcelain, low and round" introduces new details about the container and unmistakably echoes the "cold pastoral" in Keats\'s "Ode on a Grecian Urn." While "a bowl of white" seems a neutral description of what is seen, the "cold porcelain," just like Keats\'s cold urn, implies that this is a lifeless, artificial work. Although Stevens appreciates the aesthetic effect of the flower arrangement, subliminally he is not satisfied with its lifelessness and otherness to human world. He desires more: in the closure of the next stanza, he will repeat the word "more" thrice, where "more" becomes almost obsessive. <BR><BR>Now, get back to the title. How to justify "The Poems of Our Climate"? There are poets whose titles are throwaways, but not Stevens. Stevens cares a great deal about titles. His titles are always precise and integral to his poems. The first stanza seems to totally leave out the title, yet on a deeper level flower arrangement is a metaphor for poem writing. Metaphor is not an ordinary association of one object with another, but a figuration or trope which suggests the essence of one object by identifying it with certain qualities of another. Like Whitman, Stevens has an amazing command of figuration. For him, metaphor is a powerful means through which imagination imposes order on reality. "The Poems of Our Climate" opens with an objective description of clear water, brilliant bowl, pink and white carnations, and snowy light. As the poet is projecting his imaginary magic on those things, they will go through a metamorphosis and become metaphorical references to poetry writing, for both are the objects of formal arrangement, and both use delicate minimalism to achieve elaborate effect. Because this transfiguring act of mind is rooted in an objective world, the aura of duality shines through the images: they are at once flower arrangement and poetry writing. Indeed, what makes this poem "poetic" is the dynamic shifting back and forth between the real object and the metaphorical meanings it prompts. <BR><BR>II <BR>Say even that this complete simplicity <BR>Stripped one of all one\'s torments, concealed <BR>The evilly compounded, vital I <BR>And made it fresh in a world of white, <BR>A world of clear water, brilliant-edged, <BR>Still one would want more, one would need more, <BR>More than a world of white and snowy scents. <BR><BR>Stevens desires "complete simplicity," but such "simplicity" is a trope for reduction and deprives him of the necessary pain and suffering in writing a poem. The capitalistic "I" is arresting, since Stevens always uses the impersonal "one" ("one" occurs four times in this stanza and six times in the whole poem), yet here he says "The evilly compounded, vital I." In "Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction," "I" stands out again: "What am I to believe? ..." There is rhetorical power in the Stevensian "I," which is almost electrifying. It recalls Whitman\'s "real me" or "me myself" in "Song of Myself," for all these terms suggest a self that is one\'s consciousness but is a deeper and unknown part of one\'s consciousness. Stevens was very evasive about Whitman, one of his prime precursors. He never had anything good to say about Whitman in prose. Actually he blamed Whitman for Whitman\'s tramp persona. Yet, as Harold Bloom observes, "Whitman is a deeper and darker presence/absence in Stevens\'s work." Good poetry in any language always depends on allusiveness. This stanza echoes a couplet in "Song of Myself": <BR><BR>Dazzling and tremendous how quick the sun-rise would kill me, <BR>If I could not now and always send sun-rise out of me ... <BR><BR>As self-contradictory as the Whitmanian "real me" or "me myself," the Stevensian "I" is both "evilly-compounded" and "vital" (this word is never negative). Bloom unravels the paradox by arguing that "The `Vital I\' is compounded evilly only because it is compounded at all." In other words, Stevens is talking about a radical duality of self or even a plurality of selves, on which he will not give a stable judgment. "Vital" is also to find its compelling resonance in "the never-resting mind" in the succeeding stanza. A critic believes that Stevens\'s inward peering "I" also implies its externally seeing homophone "eye." I agree with this insightful reading, for the whole poem is built upon the act of looking and seeing. "Still one would want more, one would need more, / More than a world of white and snowy scents" builds a crescendo of "mores" and reinforces the theme of desire. Stevens was from New Jersey and in his native language "scents" allegedly sounds like "senses," so here he might be making another homonymic pun. <BR><BR>In this stanza, "a world of white" recurs once more. This time, it is the word "brilliant-edged" that unfolds new information. The edge is between what two sides? Japanese flower arrangement draws materials from nature; meanwhile, it is cut and placed by people. Thus, it is a product of setting art against nature, so is poetry. The edge makes clear the dichotomy of art vs. nature. Fundamentally, high literature, especially poetry, is a continuous tradition. This poem explores a single motif that emerges again and again in a succession of strong poets - the relation between art and nature. Stevens is concerned with creating some shape of order in the wilderness and chaos of reality. On the other hand, he refuses to transform and harmonize reality at the cost of making violent imposition upon it. Shelley, in "A Defense of Poetry," realizes that "even the greatest poetry will, through time, become nothing more than signs for classes of thought, loosing its poetic edge as a result." To find the finer edge of words, Stevens urges us to get rid of the illusion of things and get to the truth. In Stevens\'s own words, "the hum of thoughts evaded in the mind." ("Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction") <BR><BR>This stanza is syntactically distinguished from the other stanzas for a single sentence runs through all seven lines, creating an extended "suspension system." The effect is to have the completion of meaning constantly delayed, and to make the delay a means of defamiliarizing the process of conferring meanings. "Say even that," like "more like" in line 3, is an American idiom, meaning "granted that." It introduces a concessive clause and distantly echoes the adverb "still" five lines later. This pair of connectives frames the whole sentence or stanza. While in the first stanza, imagery is the dominant device and noun structures prevail, this stanza is characterized by strong statements and powerful verbs. "Stripped," "concealed," "made it fresh" are positioned either at the beginning or the end of lines, and in sequence they make a set of structural parallels. This compels us to recognize their weight in the meaning-making process. <BR><BR>III <BR>There would still remain the never-resting mind, <BR>So that one would want to escape, come back <BR>To what had been so long composed. <BR>The imperfect is our paradise. <BR>Note that, in this bitterness, delight, <BR>Since the imperfect is so hot in us, <BR>Lies in flawed words and stubborn sounds. <BR><BR>If the last stanza closes with a litotes or an understatement in which one\'s desire is expressed by negating its opposite ("a world of white and snowy scents"), this stanza will directly address that keen desire of "the never-resting mind": "one would want to escape, come back / To what had been so long composed." Again and again in this poem, Stevens plays upon opposition and apposition. We have encountered "Stripped" and "concealed," "evilly-compounded" and "vital" before, and now the oxymoronic "escape" and "come back to" again force us to pause and think hard. "What had been so long composed" sounds like a Nietzschean cosmos, whose nut is hollow and lacking any purpose or unity. It also reminds us of the Shakespearean motto: "This is an art, which does mend nature, change it rather, but the art itself is nature" (Winter\'s Tale). <BR><BR>"The imperfect is our paradise" invites multiple readings as well. The first thing comes to mind is the famous biblical allusion. Since the fall, Adam and Eve had been expelled from the perfect Eden and living in the far-from-perfect earth. So, from the start human beings are destined to accept imperfection as our living paradise. This sentence also echoes the Robert Browning quote "A man\'s reach should exceed his grasp," suggesting that poetry writing is a tantalizing project. To achieve artistic perfection, one should attempt even those seemingly impossible things, despite all necessary pains and suffering. Moreover, "imperfect" in Latin means "unfinished." By brings back the etymological meaning of "imperfect," Stevens revisits the Whitmanian theme: "Nothing is final, he chants. No man shall see the end." <BR><BR>This imperfect world demands an imperfect language, that is to say "flawed words and stubborn sounds." The closing sentence starts with an imperative expression "Note that" and takes on the tone of an academic lecture. The shift of pronouns from "one" or "I" to "our" or "us" strengthens this sense of reaching out to others. As the poem moves towards closure, it is getting more and more disturbing, and the reader can feel a profound malaise on the part of the poet. Again, "bitterness" and "delight" are set in opposition, suggesting a puzzling psychic construction. "The imperfect is so hot in us" means the desire for imperfection is so fierce in us. "Hot" is used to contrast the earlier "cold" ("Cold, a cold porcelain"), and both words can apply respectively to their core meaning and extended meaning. "Lies" is an even more intriguing polyseme: delight tells us untruth in flawed words and stubborn sounds, and also consists in such words and sounds. In "Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction," Stevens brings forward three fundamental functions of poetry: It Must Be Abstract; It Must Change; It Must Give Pleasure. So, he shares Shelley\'s view that joy is what poetry emanates from ("A Defense of Poetry"). Yet such a joy is achieved by flawed words and stubborn sounds, in other words, the stylistic eccentricity and strangeness in Stevens\'s word choice and his experiment with the musical quality of poetry. <BR><BR>Finally, in what sense do we know Stevens? Stevens is a poet of profound subjectivity. He is always working on wordplays, suggestions and subtlety. He is endless. We go down and down and down, and cannot reach the bottom, and would still want more and need more. He carries us so deep into nature and art and their intricate interplay.<BR></P> |
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发表于 2007-8-4 13:37:13
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发表于 2007-8-4 13:37:31