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thesunlover

#1  英国诗人豪斯曼与他的诗歌

英国诗人豪斯曼与他的诗歌

河北大学外国语学院  毛卓亮  张黎


摘要:豪斯曼的诗歌内容大多是哀叹青春易逝,美景不常,爱人负心,朋友多变,自然虽美却残酷无情。他的诗中有一种浓重的悲观主义色彩。究其原因,与豪斯曼的童年经历有密切关系;同时,也与他陷入同性恋而不能自拔,因而对人生与世界的看法发生根本转变有密切关系。

一、豪斯曼简介

豪斯曼是19世纪未20世纪初英国最负盛名的古典主义学者之一,同时也是著名的诗人。尽管他一生中只出版了为数不多的三本诗集,但他的诗,特别是第一本诗集《什罗普郡一少年》一直受到人们的喜爱,并被广泛传阅。

豪斯曼笔名特里斯特兰姆,1859年生于英国伍斯特郡的福克伯里。豪斯曼是七个兄弟姐妹中的老大,其小弟劳伦斯是著名的戏剧家,其妹妹克莱门斯则是一位小说家,于此可见其家庭教育之一斑。豪斯曼本人入布罗姆斯格罗夫学校学习,该校以重视古希腊与拉丁文研究而著名。豪斯曼身材矮小,身体瘦弱,学术上的成功并不能掩盖他与人交往上的弱势。在他十二岁生日时,母亲去世。这是一个对他有深刻影响并逐步削弱他宗教信仰的诸多事件中的第一个。(叶芝后来写到他时说,他“在十三岁时变成了一个自然神论者,在二十一岁时成为一个无神论者”。)[1](P157)

豪斯曼获得了牛津圣约翰学院的奖学金,于1877年入该校学习,他潜心于古典语言的研究,特别是拉丁文与古希腊文。他还帮助创办了《老圆桌》本科生杂志,该杂志以幽默韵文与讽刺作品见长(这是豪斯曼擅长的技巧,尽管批评家们后来批判他的诗歌死板僵硬,缺乏幽默感)。在开始阶段,他的学习非常出色。然而在1881年他却未能通过毕业考试。对于他这次考试的意外失利,许多年以来,批评家和传记作家做出了不同的猜测。但现在,根据对豪斯曼日记的研究,人们普遍认为,至少一大部原因在于他对和一名叫摩西·杰克逊的同学恋情感到绝望而伤心欲绝,以至发挥失常。因此,他的失败是与摩西·杰克逊,一名年轻的科学院的学生的关系破裂而造成的。杰克逊英俊强壮,豪斯曼居然毫无希望地爱上了他。杰克逊断然拒绝了他朋友的这种钟爱之情,豪斯曼伤心欲绝;他随后的许多诗都谈到了这一没有回报的“爱情”,描述了他“二十一岁时”“被爱拒绝”的痛苦。有的认为他为杰克逊而痛苦,更有的人认为他是故意失败的。不管什么原因,他怀着未能毕业的遗憾很不体面地回到了家中。尽管他一年后又回到了牛津,获得了一个“及格”的学位,然而通向学术生涯的大门似乎关上了。

1882年豪斯曼通过了政府公务员考试,并在伦敦专利局获得了一个职位——他做出这一选择实际上是受杰克逊的影响。因为杰克逊就在那个部门工作。在专利局工作十年中的头四年,他与摩西·杰克逊及他的弟弟阿达尔伯特·杰克逊合住在伦敦西区的一套公寓里。晚上,豪斯曼就在大英博物馆里研读古希腊文与拉丁文。1888年摩西·杰克逊离开英国去印度卡拉奇从事教学工作。豪斯曼于是搬到一处修士式的僻静去处,在那里他深居简出,埋头于学术研究与写作。他的许多文章在诸如《古典文学评论》、《语文学杂志》等刊物上发表。这些文章为他赢得了声誉,他被学术界称为“出色而严谨的学者”。1892年豪斯曼被聘为伦敦大学拉丁文教授。1892年10月,阿达尔伯特·杰克逊死于伤寒——他在摩西离开后成为豪斯曼最亲密的朋友。这一创伤促使了他的一次感情爆发而导致了他写作《什罗普郡一少年》,这是一本由63首诗汇编成册的诗集,内容主要围绕死亡、宗教、理想的军事生活这几大主题,其基调基本上是悲观的。由于1895年奥斯卡·王尔德遭受迫害与被监禁,豪斯曼非常谨慎地与《什罗普郡一少年》中描写的同性恋保持远离的态度,经常采用同本人真实品格不一样的形象“泰伦斯·赫赛”(Terence Hearsay, Hearsay 的意思为传闻或道听途说)作掩饰。他这部诗集是在1896年首次自费出版的。不管是他自费的第一版,还是两年后由不同的出版商出版的第二版,销售都不理想。然而,当1899年布尔战争(the Boer War)爆发时,读者却重新发现了许多有关显示爱国精神的军人方面的诗歌,因而销售量直线上升,此后,他用了三十多年的实践与精力校勘马尼利乌斯的诗集。

豪斯曼的诗歌作品起初如激流喷涌,而后却成了涓涓细流,直到1922年他才出版了第三部诗集《最后》的诗。尽管离他第一部诗集出版已隔了四分之一世纪之久,他在《最后的诗》中所表现的主题、内容与用词与他早期的诗歌大致相同。1923年,摩西·杰克逊去世,豪斯曼的灵感也随之消失。在摩西·杰克逊去世到豪斯曼去世的十三年间,他只写过数量极少的散文。尽管自他的首部诗集问世以来,人们对豪斯曼的作品贬褒不一,他仍然是一个受人们喜爱的诗人,其作品仍被广泛阅读。他诗歌中压倒一切的病态主题被人们描绘成枯燥乏味与不成熟,但他对死亡之神秘的不加掩饰的调查与对人类本性的双重性的考察,使他作为现代诗歌的先驱而得到广泛的承认。

豪斯曼出生的1865年,正是美国国内战争结束之时。他从小就不断听到英国殖民者在殖民地屠杀的新闻,内心总感不安,并深受其影响。再加上幼年不幸的生活经历(母亲早亡),早期事业上遭受的挫折(在牛津大学的失利),以及同性恋的失败。因此,少年时他就心情压抑、性格内向、沉默寡言,进入成年,他甚至变得悲观而愤世嫉俗。他这种对生活的看法最初就反映在他的诗作中。他诗歌主题总体上悲观的。

二、豪斯曼的作品特色

豪斯曼的悲观主义最主要的表现就是,他诗歌中有一半是关于死亡的。豪斯曼对死亡有其独特的见解。在他的代表作《致弥留之际的一个年轻运动员》一诗中就表现了这样的主题:一个人在其生命和事业的黄金时期死去是一件非常幸运的事,因为他的纪录将会被打破,他的名声迟早会被人遗忘,这样他就不会去面对年龄衰老、荣耀逝去所带来的痛苦。此诗中,豪斯曼不仅发出了对生命短暂的感叹与悲哀,也表达了他对生命的绝望。在这首诗的第四节中,豪斯曼这样写道:

紧闭的双眼——有如在阴霾的夜里

再也看不到记录被打破,
即使难堪的沉默取代昔日的喝采
耳朵也无法听到——因为大地已将它们阻隔:

豪斯曼的许多诗歌都直接或间接地触及到死亡这一主题,他常借助这一主题来感叹青春易逝,美景不常,爱人负心,朋友多变,自然虽美却残酷无情。人们熟知那首《可爱的树》的结尾中他这样写道:

看看那些花儿吧,
你就知道——五十年的光阴转瞬流逝,
我要去那树丛中,
雪一般的樱桃花正怒放枝头。

诗歌暗示生命的短暂,因为一年中能看到树如此美丽也不过是几天的事。樱桃花如雪,而雪在太阳出来之后便会消融——雪是白花的一个比喻,象征着死亡。

豪斯曼的悲观主义倾向表现在许多诗里,如一首无标题诗中有这样的句子:

太阳与月亮给予运气机会之日
正是烦恼将至之时……

还有比这更悲观的论调么?还有这样的诗句:

有一种令人陶醉的空气,
从远处的乡村吹进我心里。
那是些什么样的记忆中的青山
什么样的塔尖,什么样的农田?

这是失去满足的土地,
我看见它照耀着原野,
和我离开的公路,
而我却不再回来。

豪斯曼的悲观主义倾向是19世纪末期英国作家的特点。这种悲观主义倾向更清楚地表现在他的诗《切斯纳特扔掉火把》中。该诗的第三节有这样的句子:

当然我们不是最先
坐在酒馆里的人
当暴风雨将希望的算盘
掷向虚无,并诅咒
造就世界的残忍与野蛮的一切。

是呀,暴风雨粉碎了如意算盘,一切都变得虚无,变得毫无希望,现实是那么的残酷,世界充斥着野蛮与残忍。而对虚无,而对这无望的现实,还能做些什么呢?只能闷坐在酒馆里,借酒浇愁了。这首诗表达了一种孩子气的自怜。诗的末尾,豪斯曼试图给我们一种温和的劝告,叫我们“忍受”这种烦恼。但这种结尾对于西方世界中大多数基督徒来说却是悲哀的,因为基督徒懂得,生活远比豪斯曼所了解的要丰富得多,有希望得多。

宗教是豪斯曼作品中另一个重要主题,这一主题往往和他的同性恋紧密联系在一起。豪斯曼似乎不能调和传统的基督教与他的同性恋及他病态的压抑之间的矛盾。在豪斯曼生活的年代 ——19世纪未20世纪初的英国,传统的力量还很强大,同性恋者遭到基督教卫道者甚至全社会的强烈批判和反对。1895年英国著名诗人、小说家、剧作家奥斯卡·王尔德被控同性恋入狱两年。这件事对豪斯曼影响很大。一方面,他压抑着自己对同性恋的渴望,但总是想找机会表达与倾诉,在他的诗中,这种渴望总是罩着一层薄薄的面纱。他的诗中也有许多年轻的女子,但这些女子不过只是作为爱情的一个比喻罢了;另一方面,他对自己的同性恋有着深深的负罪感,而且永远无法摆脱这种感觉。在《诗友前的辩护》中他说:“

我对着高高的天空沉思
在难以捉摸的夜空深处
我觉得我对你的爱
决不会让你死去
天庭的上帝将会原谅我们今世的罪恶
那个男孩和男人可能会以这样的方式
度过这样的夜晚。

在这首诗中,一种绝望与对同性恋的一种渴望跃然纸上。在《我的耕畜在犁地吗?》一诗中的结尾处,豪斯曼写道:

我亲爱的朋友
现在我已是松柏下白骨一堆
同我的床比,是否他,已找到一张更舒适的床
是的,朋友,我躺在那里很舒适、安详
像所有小伙子那样,我选择,躺在那儿
同一个姑娘调情,她的男人已经死去
不要问我他的名字。

在这首诗中,“同我的床比,是否他,已找到一张更舒适的眠床”暗指这个死去的男人生前和对话者有同性恋关系,而“姑娘”的出现,表明他(活着的男人)对自己以前的同性恋行为很懊悔,并转向异性恋。这首诗非常明白地表现了豪斯曼矛盾的心理。这种和传统的宗教思想相互冲突的主题在19世纪末20世纪初是非常普遍的。

战争也是豪斯曼诗歌的一个重要主题。尽管他的生活距离战争很遥远,但他却对军戎生活持有一种特殊而且强烈的兴趣。豪斯曼早期的作品中体现出他对“战争美德”的推崇,这一点和他认为青春是人生的黄金时期紧密地联系在一起的。在诗集《什罗普郡一少年》中,和平、安定是一个大的时代背景。在这种背景下,战争只不过是英雄式的幻想,是乡村恋人耳边轰鸣的战车声,但这战车却永远也不可能越过帝国的国界线。

豪斯曼最好的诗集是1896年他自费出版的《什罗普郡一少年》。之后又出版了许多别的诗集。他的大多数诗都具有相似的内容和风格。这些诗歌包含了豪斯曼对生活哲学的解释。豪斯曼与他同时代的一些作家与诗人颇为相似,如哈代。哈代也是一个悲观主义者,既不相信人类,也不相信上帝。他们诗歌的有趣之处在于反映了诗人们似乎并不了解生活中的幸福,他们似乎生活在一个怀疑是否有造物者与天父存在的世界里。在豪斯曼与哈代成名不久,C. S. 刘易斯与他的一群朋友开始写作品捍卫基督教信仰。他们的作品可能更为英语国家所接受。但进入20世纪以后,豪斯曼的作品以其简单朴素的风格,丰富的哲理性开始逐渐受到人们的喜爱。自1903年以后,豪斯曼诗集,特别是他的第一部诗集《什罗普郡一少年》的销量逐年上升,对人们产生了很大的影响。许多年以来,他的诗在欧美国家一直被人们广泛阅读。但一直以来,豪斯曼的作品只有为数不多的一部分被介绍给我国读者,而且由于各种原因,我国学者对他的作品研究得很少。本文通过对豪斯曼及其作品的简要评价,希望读者能对他的作品有所了解,有所借鉴,籍以更深入地了解19世纪未20世纪初的英国文学。

参考文献:
1. Poetry Criticism [M].Gale Criticism. Gale Research Inc, Gale Group
2. A.E.Housman. 1896, A Shropshire Lad[M].London: K. Paul, Trench, Treubner.
3. Contemporary Authors.1989.[C]. Gale Criticism. Gale Research Inc, Gale Group
4. Major 20th –Century Writers[C]. Gale Criticism. Gale Research Inc, Gale Group
5. The Norton Anthology of English Literature.1993 [C]. W.W.Norton & Company, Inc.

(责任编辑:曹正波、李元元、李芳芳、刘蕾)



因为我和黑夜结下了不解之缘 所以我爱太阳
2007-1-12 14:07
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thesunlover

#2  

Housman,Alfred Edward (1859-1936),中文译作“霍斯曼”或“豪斯曼”。
他的成名诗集 A Shropshire Lad 有译作《什罗普郡一少年》或《西罗普郡少年》。

20年前我读他,就感觉挺不错,心境相投吧。我欣赏他那朴素的悲郁诗风。
他的诗中文翻译不多,网上不易找到。这许多年了,竟还记得几句呢:

时常当太阳落山
风标失去了返照
我会登上风火台
西向威尔士凭眺
遥看着一天的终了

.................

村外的小溪边
埋葬着多少如花的少女
安卧着多少矫健的少年



因为我和黑夜结下了不解之缘 所以我爱太阳
2007-1-12 14:33
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thesunlover

#3  

A. E. Housman

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Alfred Edward Housman (March 26, 1859 – April 30, 1936), usually known as A.E. Housman, was an English poet and classical scholar, now best known for his cycle of poems A Shropshire Lad.

Life:

Housman was born in Fockbury, Worcestershire, the eldest of seven children of a country solicitor. His brother Laurence Housman and sister Clemence Housman also became writers.

Housman was educated first at King Edward's School, then Bromsgrove School, where he acquired a strong academic grounding and won prizes for his poetry. In 1877 he won an open scholarship to St John's College, Oxford, where he studied classics. He was a brilliant student, gaining first class honours in classical moderations, but a withdrawn person whose only friends were his roommates Moses Jackson and A. W. Pollard. Housman fell in love with the handsome, athletic Jackson who, being heterosexual, rejected him, though the two remained friends. This experience, reflected in some of his poems, may be an explanation of Housman's unexpected failure in his final exams (the "Greats") in 1881. Housman took this failure very seriously but managed to take a pass degree the next year, after a brief period of teaching in Bromsgrove School.

After graduating, Jackson got a job as a clerk in the Patent Office in London and arranged a job there for Housman as well. They shared an apartment with Jackson's brother Adalbert until 1885 when Housman moved in to lodgings of his own. Moses Jackson married and moved to Ceylon in 1887 and Adalbert Jackson died in 1892. Housman continued pursuing classical studies independently and published scholarly articles on such authors as Horace, Propertius, Ovid, Aeschylus, Euripides and Sophocles. He gradually acquired such a high reputation that in 1892 he was offered the professorship of Latin at University College London, which he accepted.

Although Housman's sphere of responsibilities as professor included both Latin and Greek, he put most of his energy into the study of Latin classics. His reputation in this field grew steadily, and in 1911 he took the Kennedy Professorship of Latin at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he remained for the rest of his life. It was unusual at the time for an Oxford man such as Housman to be hired at Cambridge. During 1903–1930, he published his critical edition of Manilius's Astronomicon in five volumes. He also edited works of Juvenal (1905) and Lucan (1926). Many colleagues were afraid of his scathing critical attacks on those whom he found guilty of unscholarly sloppiness. To his students he appeared as a severe, reticent, remote authority. The only pleasures he allowed himself in his spare time were those of gastronomy which he also practised on frequent visits to France and Italy.

Housman always found his true vocation in classical studies and treated poetry as a secondary activity. He never spoke about his poetry in public until 1933 when he gave a lecture, "The Name and Nature of Poetry", in which he argued that poetry should appeal to emotions rather than intellect. He died two years later in Cambridge. His ashes are buried near St Laurence's Church, Ludlow, Shropshire.


Poetry:

During his years in London, A E Housman completed his cycle of 63 poems, A Shropshire Lad. After several publishers had turned it down, he published it at his own expense in 1896, much to the surprise of his colleagues and students. At first the book sold slowly, but Housman's nostalgic depiction of brave English soldiers struck a chord with English readers and his poems became a lasting success. Later, World War I had a further increasing effect on their popularity. Several composers, Arthur Somervell first, found inspiration in the seeming folksong-like simplicity of the poems. The most famous musical settings are by George Butterworth and Ralph Vaughan Williams, with others by Ivor Gurney, John Ireland and Ernest John Moeran.

Housman was surprised by the success of A Shropshire Lad because it, like all his poetry, is imbued with a deep pessimism and an obsession with all-pervasive death, with no place for the consolations of religion. Set in a half-imaginative pastoral Shropshire, "the land of lost content" (in fact Housman wrote most of the poems before ever visiting the place), the poems explore themes of fleetingness of love and decay of youth in a spare, uncomplicated style which many critics of the time found out of date compared with the exuberance of some of his late Victorian contemporaries. Housman himself acknowledged the influence of the songs of William Shakespeare, the Scottish Border Ballads and Heinrich Heine, but specifically denied any influence of Greek and Latin classics in his poetry.

In the early 1920s, when Moses Jackson was dying in Canada, Housman wanted to assemble his best unpublished poems together so that Jackson could read them before his death. These later poems, most of them written before 1910, show a greater variety of subject and form than those in A Shropshire Lad but also a certain lack of the kind of consistency found in the earlier poems. He published them as his Last Poems (1922) because he thought that his poetic inspiration was running out and that he would not publish any more poems in his lifetime. This proved true.

Housman's brother Laurence edited his posthumous poems which appeared in More Poems (1936) and Complete Poems (1939). In these poems, Housman appears more candid about his homosexuality and atheism than in his lifetime, though the essay De Amicitia, published by Laurence Housman in 1967, is even more revealing. Housman also wrote a parodic Fragment of a Greek Tragedy, in English, and humorous poems published posthumously under the title Unkind to Unicorns.

Housman's most familiar poem is surely "When I was one-and-twenty," number XIII from A Shropshire Lad. The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations includes no fewer than fourteen of its sixteen lines:

    When I was one-and-twenty
        I heard a wise man say,
    "Give crowns and pounds and guineas
        But not your heart away;
    Give pearls away and rubies
        But keep your fancy free."
    But I was one-and-twenty,
        No use to talk to me.

    When I was one-and-twenty
        I heard him say again,
    "The heart out of the bosom
        Was never given in vain;
    'Tis paid with sighs a plenty
        And sold for endless rue."
    And I am two-and-twenty
        And oh, 'tis true, 'tis true.

This poem is, in fact, a good example of the style and melancholy tone of the whole collection. Many of its poems dwell on mortality: "With rue my heart is laden/For golden friends I had,/For many a rose-lipt maiden/And many a lightfoot lad."

Poem XXVII, "Is my team ploughing?," is a dialogue between a dead youth and a friend who has survived him. The dead youth asks "Is my girl happy/That I thought hard to leave/And is she tired of weeping/As she lies down to eve?" The living replies "Ay, she lies down lightly/She lies not down to weep/Your girl is well contented/Be still, my lad, and sleep." As the reader has begun to suspect, two stanzas later the living man acknowledges "I cheer a dead man's sweetheart/Never ask me whose."

Poem LXII, "Terence, this is stupid stuff," is a dialogue in which the poet, asked for "a tune to dance to" instead of his usual "moping melancholy" verse, offers (perhaps ironically) the respite of drunkenness as a way to inure oneself to the pain of existence -- "Malt does more than Milton can/To justify God's ways to man" -- and pessimism as a longer-lasting immunization:

    Therefore, since the world has still
    Much good, but much less good than ill,
    And while the sun and moon endure
    Luck's a chance, but trouble's sure,
    I'd face it as a wise man would,
    And train for ill and not for good.

The uniform style and tone of A Shropshire Lad make it an easy target for parody, as in this example by Humbert Wolfe:

    When lads have done with labor
        in Shropshire, one will cry
    "Let's go and kill a neighbor,"
        and t'other answers "Aye!"

    So this one kills his cousins,
        and that one kills his dad;
    and, as they hang by dozens
        at Ludlow, lad by lad,

    each of them one-and-twenty,
        all of them murderers,
    the hangman mutters: "Plenty
        even for Housman's verse."

Another great poem by Housman, contrasting death with fleeting beauty and physical prowess, is the following:

To An Athlete Dying Young
By Alfred Edward Housman

    The time you won your town the race
    We chaired you through the market-place;
    Man and boy stood cheering by,
    And home we brought you shoulder-high.

    Today, the road all runners come,
    Shoulder-high we bring you home,
    And set you at your threshold down,
    Townsman of a stiller town.

    Smart lad, to slip betimes away
    From fields where glory does not stay
    And early though the laurel grows
    It withers quicker than the rose.

    Eyes the shady night has shut
    Cannot see the record cut,
    And silence sounds no worse than cheers
    After earth has stopped the ears:

    Now you will not swell the rout
    Of lads that wore their honors out,
    Runners whom renown outran
    And the name died before the man.

    So set, before its echoes fade,
    The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
    And hold to the low lintel up
    The still-defended challenge-cup.

    And round the early-laureled head
    Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
    And find unwithered on its curls
    The garland briefer than a girl’s


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Edward_Housman#Poetry



因为我和黑夜结下了不解之缘 所以我爱太阳
2007-1-12 14:42
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Xiaoman

#4  

good


2016-8-27 06:44
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