再读奥登的诗歌《美术馆》
2014-11-29徐俭
徐俭
奥登是二十世纪英语诗歌的巨人,于1907年1月21日出生在英格兰中北部临海的约克郡,毕业于牛津大学,32岁移居纽约,并加入美国籍,在美国皈依了新教。1973年秋天,奥登在维也纳的一次诗歌朗诵之后,因心脏病发作突然去世。
本文讨论的诗作《美术馆》写作于1938年12月,首次出版于1939年春,是奥登参观了布鲁塞尔的美术馆,欣赏了古代大师的绘画后,有感而作的。
下面先来读作品的原文:
Musee des Beaux Arts
by W.H.Auden
About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters;how well,they understood
Its human position;how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How,when the aged are reverently,passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth,there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen,skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner,some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturers horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughels Icarus,for instance:how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster;the ploughman may
Have heard the splash,the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure;the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water;and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing,a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
再看一些詞的理解:
dull:1.lacking in alertness or speedy responsiveness
2.lacking in energy or enthusiasm
dreadful:causing fear or suffering
forsake:to leave somebody or something,especially when you have a responsibility to stay
failure:lack of success in doing or achieving sth;an act of not doing sth,especially sth that you are expected to do
对于别人的悲剧或苦难,人们大都淡然处之,退避三舍。诗歌先概括后具体,主要分成两个部分描绘,深化主题,发人深省。
奥登曾写道:至于诗歌,或任何艺术,都可以说具有这样的潜在目的:通过讲出真话来根除人们的幻想,使人们不再陶醉。(“In so far as poetry,or any of the arts,can be said to have an ulterior purpose,it is,by telling the truth,to disenchant and disintoxicate.”)
诗歌通过把平淡的琐事和宏大的事件并置,取得反讽(irony)和突降(bathos)的效果。
结合上面单词的英文解释,再看一些词句的理解:
it takes place,
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
此处呈现了两幅画面:一个人在遭罪;而别的人或吃东西,或开窗户,或麻木地前行。也许看见了别人的苦痛,却熟视无睹?此处的dully不应该理解为“无聊的”。
dreadful martyrdom must run its course可以说是杀猴儆鸡式的白色恐怖,dreadful不应该理解成“悲惨的”,must也不是“必须”,而是终归、必然、自然——不管怎样,总有结束的时候。Have heard the splash,the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure;
也许听到了落水的声音,听到了呼救的声音,却两耳不闻身外事,置之不理,因为救不救那个落水的人对他来说无关紧要。笔者认为failure指对呼救(cry)不予理睬(forsaken)—failure to respond to the cry(was of no importance for him.)—不去救人,无所谓的。“不是了不得的/重要的/重大的失败”,这样的译文有点让人不知所云。
再读这首诗歌,越发体会到诗人在轻描淡写中蕴含沉郁的悲凉,也许这就是诗人看了先贤的画作后有感,又通过自己的文字想向读者传达信息。