美国自白派灵魂人物罗伯特·洛厄尔诗四首
罗伯特·洛厄尔（Robert Lowell, 1917-1977）
《一人在外吃饭》
我内心的孤独是一个场所，
哈佛，没有人会永远是个人物。
当我们在一边孤单着，我们跑离的那些人
变得神秘而美——
我独自坐在小白桌上吃饭，
人们视而不见……这考验灵魂的时刻、
一位探险者在极地的白茫茫中变得盲目。
而每一个坐客都是一个炮友，
或者保罗·克洛岱尔，在邻桌声称：
“格罗顿学院，啊，就是猪的学校。”
他声音很响，从被杀的英语到杀人的法语，
每个词都听过，没一句有人听懂——
词汇量足以吓傻了拉辛……
牛头怪在高谈阔论的迷宫中冒着热气。
The loneliness inside me is a place,
Harvard where no one might always be someone.
When we're alone people we run from change
to the mysterious and beautiful--
I am eating alone at a small white table,
visible, ignored...the moment that tries the soul,
an explorer going blind in polar whiteness.
Yet everyone who is seated is a lay,
or Paul Claudel, at the next table declaiming:
"L'Academie Groton, eh, c'est une ecole des cochons."
He soars from murdered English to killing French,
no word unheard, no sentence understood--
a vocabulary to mortify Racine...
the minotaur steaming in a maze of eloquence.
一个微缩的疯天才？西尔维娅·普拉斯，
谁会抹去你的操守吐出的痰，
从马鞍里升起，对着奥斯维辛猛砍，
生活撕裂着这个那个，我是个女人？
谁在婚姻里会睡一个女研究生，
蜂后，赤裸、没有女王范儿，羞辱其羞耻？
每个英语专业学生都声称“我便是西尔维娅，
我憎恶婚姻，我必须憎恨小孩。”
甚至男人也都有生小孩的恐惧，
妈妈级尺寸的婴儿将我们一劈两开，
每年，美国就有六万婴儿，U.I.D.了,
无法解释的婴儿死，他们出生时
体格完好、血气旺盛，可就是拒绝活下去，
西尔维娅……你的攻击是日渐扩张的洪涛。
A miniature madtalent? Sylvia Plath,
who'll wipe off the spit of your integrity,
rising in the saddle to slash at Auschwitz,
life tearing this or that, I am a woman?
Who'll lay the graduate girl in marriage,
queen bee, naked, unqueenly, shaming her shame?
Each English major saying, "I am Sylvia,
I hate marriage, I must hate babies."
Even men have a horror of giving birth,
mother-sized babies splitting us in half,
sixty thousand American infants a year,
U.I.D., Unexplained Infant Deaths,
born physically whole and hearty, refuse to live,
Sylvia...the expanding torrent of your attack.
像千万人一样，我有正当的自傲，且不止如此，
擦几根火柴，让自己的血液沸腾；
把河水点着的诀窍，我也记住了几个——
但不知为何我从未写过可以回顾的东西。
也许我可以说，塑料花我不玩了，
我已在帕纳索斯山的小坡上挣得了一块草地……
无法制造出蜂巢，除非一只蜜蜂
一格一格地添、一圈一圈地加，
一座蜂蜡与蜂蜜的陵墓——
这圆形拱顶证明建造者还活着；
这虫子的尸骨泡在蜂蜜中生存，
祈祷它易腐的作品会长存不朽，
让偏爱甜食的熊亵渎为口腹之欲——
这本打开的书……我打开的棺材。
Reading Myself
Like thousands I took just pride and more than just,
struck matches that brought my blood to a boil;
I memorized the tricks to set the river on fire--
somehow never wrote something to go back to.
Can I suppose I am finished with wax flowers
and have earned my grass on the minor slopes of Parnassus...
No honeycomb is built without a bee
adding circle to circle, cell to cell,
the wax and honey of a mausoleum--
this round dome proves its maker is alive;
the corpse of the insect lives embalmed in honey,
prays that its perishable work live long
enough for the sweet tooth bear to desecrate--
this open book...my open coffin.
那些有如神助的结构、情节和韵脚——
为什么现在于我已无用处，
当我要创造
一种想象而成而非回忆出来的东西？
我听得到我自己说话如聒噪：
画家的灵视绝非一个透镜，
它摩挲光线便会颤抖。
但有时我眼光的技巧陈俗，
以此写出的一切
看似一张快照，
刺激、应景、花哨、按组贴签，
从生活中拔高，
但又被事实瘫痪。
一切都是失当的联盟。
然而为何不直说发生了什么？
祈求达到维米尔的准确所具有的
优雅，他那个满溢思念的女孩
受到太阳的启示，被他描绘得
犹如潮水流经一张地图。
我们都是仓促而过的可怜事实，
受到这事警示，要让
照片中的每一个形象
具有一个活生生的名字。
Epilogue
Those blessèd structures, plot and rhyme--
why are they no help to me now
I want to make
something imagined, not recalled?
I hear the noise of my own voice:
The painter's vision is not a lens,
it trembles to caress the light.
But sometimes everything I write
with the threadbare art of my eye
seems a snapshot,
lurid, rapid, garish, grouped,
heightened from life,
yet paralyzed by fact.
All's misalliance.
Yet why not say what happened?
Pray for the grace of accuracy
Vermeer gave to the sun's illumination
stealing like the tide across a map
to his girl solid with yearning.
We are poor passing facts,
warned by that to give
each figure in the photograph
his living name.
