Poetry to Me 《我眼中的诗歌》
By Major Jackson
文/梅杰·杰克逊 译/任东升 王振平
第十届 “中国海洋大学-《英语世界》杯”翻译大赛
「英译汉」参考译文
One of the abiding principles and important reasons why I turn to poetry, both as a reader and a maker, is the laying bare of the mystery of the self. The writing of a poem begins in ignorance. Responding to an inner imperative, the stimulus beneath most of my poems is the Greek Delphic aphorism “Know Thyself,” which also emerged in another form in Socrates’s final declarations while on trial and facing imminent death: The unexamined life is not worth living.
我之所以投入诗歌的怀抱,读诗也好、作诗也罢,一个重要原因是诗歌能揭示自我的奥秘,这也是一条永恒不变的原则。写诗始于懵懂。作为对内心需要的回应,我的多数诗歌都是在古希腊德尔菲神庙箴言“认识你自己”的驱动下创作的。苏格拉底受审和赴死之际的最后告白中有句话与此相当:人生不反思,活着无价值。
Since a young man, poetry became my means of knowing and gave my life substance. By marking language such that it sings our self-hood, by making a linguistic record of our observations in memorable speech, poetry offers the opportunity to not only examine but to penetrate the abstract and nebulous nature of existence and to lay the foundation for an authentic self who serves as a witness to their times.
自年少时起,诗歌就成了我认识世界的工具,使我的生命有了意义。如此使用语言,能歌颂自我。用令人难忘的话语记录所见所闻,诗歌为我们提供检视人生的机会,不仅如此,还让我们得以洞察抽象而模糊的生命本质,为可成为时代见证的真实自我打下基础。
In a sense, poetry writes, or rather, sings us. I deliberately use the word “sing” because I am one of those who, maybe perversely, believes in the indissoluble relationship between sound and sense, that our most profound utterances, at their purest, carry the truth and embodiment of song.
从一定意义上说,诗歌在书写人生,或更确切地说,在歌唱我们 的人生。我之所以特意用“歌唱”这个词,是因为我是那种相信声音与意 义不可分割的人,或许这有些较真吧。我相信最深刻的语言,用最纯粹的 方式,可以承载歌曲要表达的真实世界与象征意义。
Harkening back to the roots of lyric poetry, poets are communal singers. The ritualistic act of calling forth words into a series of synthesized memories and ordered impressions into artful language (whether metered or not) elevates human expression to a divine act of witnessing and being in the world.
回望抒情诗的来源,我们会发现,诗人都是大众歌手。他们的惯 常做法是,将词语融入一系列合成的记忆,将有序的印象变成精巧的语言(不 管押韵与否)。由此人类的语言得以升华,成为世间神圣的见证与存在。
In the 20th century, Walt Whitman says “I am large; I contain multitudes” and Langston Hughes states “I, too, am America.” These pronouncements reflect as much their individual spirit as it does the tenor of the times they lived. If we understand, today, this work of poetry as both shaping and giving expression to unique consciousness, while at the same time, countersigning the age out of which it is born, then we understand how poetry maps both inner lives and the public realms of engagement. It is no accident that interiority and territory share in sound and meaning, two near common Latin roots: inter (“within”) and terra (“land”).
20 世纪,诗人沃尔特·惠特曼写到“我是大我,我就是芸芸众生”, 诗人兰斯顿·休斯则宣称“我,也是美国”。他们的宣言既是个人意志的体现, 也是时代精神的反映。诗歌既能塑造和表现独特的意识,同时又能见证它所诞生的那个时代,于是,我们就能理解诗歌在描绘内在的人生和外在的世界所起的作用。interiority(内在人生)与 territory(外在世界)共享声音和意义绝非偶然,这两个词有着相近的两个常用拉丁词根:inter(内部)和 terra(内陆)。
In writing a poem, language emerges from the most undivided sense of ourselves; it is a concentrated moment of human cognition, improvisational and incantatory. Much of the music in my life has taught me to listen deeply, not merely to notes but to the underlying swell of human emotion that informs both chords and words.
写诗的时候,语言从最专一的自我意识中涌现,这一刻,人的认知高度集中,出口成章,如醉如痴。生活中听过的许多音乐教会了我深入倾听,不仅倾听音符,还要倾听音符背后人类的情感澎湃,这种情感在和弦与歌词中都会有所体现。
I inherited an abiding love of jazz and blues from my grandfather. What I long for in my own work is the exuberance of life I first heard as a child, a time in our lives when sounds are most impressionable. As a result, I aim to write poems in which language dramatically changes into feeling. I long to stylize language such that it becomes a new encounter for the reader and honors the idioms of our age. To that end, each poem I write attempts to capture the concerns and sensibilities of our times while expressing my unique relationship to language.
受祖父的影响,我钟爱爵士乐和布鲁斯。我渴望把生命中充满激情的语言写入我的诗歌,那是我早在童年时就听到的声音,而那时的声音最让人动情。因此,我的目标是写出能从言辞中迸发情感的诗歌。我渴望写出风格独特的语言,给读者新的阅读体验,为我们这个时代的语言增光。为了这个目标,我的每一首诗都试图捕捉这个时代的种种关切和情感,同时表达我对于语言的特别情愫。
Because language is my material, I also strive to maintain a limber attitude (and ear!) so that I am doing more than transcribing what I merely see or feel, but also to listen and hear the subaltern transactions and ideas between words and what they signify so that not only does language captures an experience or moment in time but somehow transcends the context and conditions by which it is made.
因为语言是我的创作材料,所以我还要努力保持灵活的态度(和 耳朵!),如此,我写诗就不仅仅是摹写所见所感,还要倾听话语间的逻辑 关系及其意义,于是,语言不仅能捕捉人生体验或某个瞬间,而且在一定 程度上能超越产生语言的环境和条件。
This represents for me the idea of lyric freedom, when the poem is not bound by the space/time axis but bridges shared experiences and becomes emblematic of the human journey. It is when I believe most Walt Whitman’s opening to Song of Myself: “I celebrate myself, and sing myself, / And what I assume you shall assume, / For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.”
以上所说阐释了我对自由抒情的观点,每当这时,诗歌不再受时空 的束缚,而成为分享体验的桥梁和人类旅途的象征。此刻,我最信奉惠特曼 《自我之歌》的开篇辞:“我赞美自己,歌唱自我 / 我有所思,你有所想 / 因 为每一个属于我的原子,同样属于你。
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