叶芝及其《Under Ben Bulben》
William Butler Yeats was both poet and playwright, a towering figure in 20th-century literature in English, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923, a master of traditional verse forms and at the same time an idol of the modernist poets who followed him.叶芝既是诗人又是剧作家，是20世纪英国文学史上的一位伟人，1923年诺贝尔文学奖获得者，传统诗歌形式的大师，同时也是追随他的现代主义诗人的偶像。
Childhood
William Butler Yeats was born into a wealthy, artistic Anglo-Irish family in Dublin in 1865. His father, John Butler Yeats, was educated as an attorney but abandoned the law to become a well-known portrait painter. It was his father’s career as an artist that took the family to London for four years during Yeats’ boyhood. His mother, Susan Mary Pollexfen, was from Sligo, where Yeats spent summers in childhood and later made his home. It was she who introduced William to the Irish folktales which permeated his early poetry. When the family returned to Ireland, Yeats attended high school and later art school in Dublin.叶芝1865年出生于都柏林一个富有艺术气息的盎格鲁-爱尔兰家庭。他的父亲约翰·巴特勒·叶芝（John Butler Yeats）受过律师教育，但却放弃了法律，成为一名著名的肖像画家。叶芝的童年时期，他父亲的艺术家生涯把全家带到伦敦住了四年。他的母亲苏珊·玛丽·波莱克斯芬来自斯莱戈，叶芝小时候在那里度过暑假，后来安家。正是她向威廉介绍了爱尔兰民间故事，这些故事渗透在威廉早期诗歌中。一家人回到爱尔兰后，叶芝上了高中，后来又在都柏林上了艺术学校。
A Young Poet
Yeats was always interested in mystical theories and images, the supernatural, the esoteric and the occult. As a young man, he studied the works of William Blake and Emanuel Swedenborg and was a member of the Theosophical Society and Golden Dawn. But his early poetry was modeled on Shelley and Spenser (e.g., his first published poem, “The Isle of Statues,” in The Dublin University Review) and drew on Irish folklore and mythology (as in his first full-length collection, The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems, 1889). After his family returned to London in 1887, Yeats founded the Rhymer’s Club with Ernest Rhys.叶芝总是对神秘的理论和图像，超自然的，深奥的和神秘的感兴趣。年轻时，他研究威廉·布莱克和伊曼纽尔·斯韦登堡的作品，是神智学会和金色黎明的成员。但他早期的诗歌是以雪莱和斯宾塞为原型（例如，他在《都柏林大学评论》（Dublin University Review）上发表的第一首诗歌《雕像之岛》（Isle of Results）为蓝本），并借鉴了爱尔兰的民间传说和神话（如他第一本完整的诗集《Oisin的漂泊》和1889年的其他诗歌）。1887年，叶芝的家人回到伦敦后，与欧内斯特·里斯一起创办了韵者俱乐部。
Maud Gonne
In 1889 Yeats met Irish nationalist and actress Maud Gonne, the great love of his life. She was committed to the political struggle for Irish independence; he was devoted to the revival of Irish heritage and cultural identity, but through her influence, he did become involved in politics and joined the Irish Republican Brotherhood. He proposed to Maud several times, but she never consented and ended up marrying Major John MacBride, a Republican activist who was executed for his role in the 1916 Easter Rising. Yeats wrote many poems and several plays for Gonne, she earned great acclaim in his Cathleen ni Houlihan.1889年叶芝遇到了爱尔兰民族主义者、演员莫德.冈恩，他一生中最爱的人。她致力于爱尔兰独立的政治斗争；他致力于复兴爱尔兰的遗产和文化特性，但通过她的影响，他确实参与了政治，并加入了爱尔兰共和国兄弟会。他向莫德求婚好几次，但莫德始终没有同意，最后嫁给了约翰·麦克布赖德少校，一位共和党活动家，因在1916年复活节起义中扮演的角色而被处死。叶芝为贡尼写了许多诗和几部戏剧，她在他的作品《凯瑟琳·倪后汉》中赢得了极大的赞誉。
The Irish Literary Revival and the Abbey Theatre
With Lady Gregory and others, Yeats was a founder of the Irish Literary Theatre, which sought to revive Celtic dramatic literature. This project lasted only a couple of years, but Yeats was soon joined by J.M. Synge in the Irish National Theatre, which moved into its permanent home at the Abbey Theatre in 1904. Yeats served as its director for some time and to this day, it plays an active role in launching the careers of new Irish writers and playwrights.叶芝与格雷戈里夫人和其他人一起，是爱尔兰文学剧院的创始人，该剧院试图复兴凯尔特戏剧文学。这个项目只持续了几年，但很快叶芝就加入了爱尔兰国家剧院的J.M.Synge，该剧院于1904年迁入修道院剧院的永久住所。叶芝曾担任过一段时间的导演，时至今日，它在开创爱尔兰新作家和剧作家的事业方面发挥着积极的作用。
Ezra Pound
In 1913, Yeats became acquainted with Ezra Pound, an American poet 20 years his junior who had come to London to meet him, because he considered Yeats the only contemporary poet worth studying. Pound served as his secretary for several years, causing a ruckus when he sent several of Yeats’ poems to be published in Poetrymagazine with his own edited changes and without Yeats’ approval. Pound also introduced Yeats to the Japanese Noh drama, on which he modeled several plays.1913年，叶芝认识了比他小20岁的美国诗人庞德，因为他认为叶芝是当代唯一值得研究的诗人。庞德担任了几年的秘书，在没有得到叶芝同意的情况下，他将叶芝的几首诗在《诗集》杂志上发表，引起了轩然大波。庞德还向叶芝介绍了日本的诺赫戏剧，他在其中模仿了几部戏剧。
Mysticism & Marriage
At 51, determined to marry and have children, Yeats finally gave up on Maud Gonne and proposed to Georgie Hyde-Lees, a woman half his age whom he knew from his esoteric explorations. In spite of the age difference and his long unrequited love for another, it turned out to be a successful marriage and they had two children. For many years, Yeats and his wife collaborated in a process of automatic writing, in which she contacted various spirit guides and with their help, Yeats constructed the philosophical theory of history contained in A Vision, published in 1925.51岁时，叶芝决心结婚生子，最终放弃了莫德·冈恩，向乔治·海德·利斯求婚，乔治·海德·利斯是一个年龄只有他一半大的女人，他从他深奥的探索中认识了她。尽管年龄不同，而且他对另一个孩子的爱一直没有回报，但最终还是成功地结婚了，他们生了两个孩子。多年来，叶芝和他的妻子在一个自动写作的过程中合作，在这个过程中，她联系了各种精神导师，在他们的帮助下，叶芝构建了包含在1925年出版的《幻象》中的哲学历史理论。
Later Life
Immediately after the formation of the Irish Free State in 1922, Yeats was appointed to its first Senate, where he served for two terms. In 1923 Yeats was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. It is generally agreed that he is one of a very few Nobel laureates who produced his best work after receiving the Prize. In the last years of his life, Yeats’ poems became more personal and his politics more conservative. He founded the Irish Academy of Letters in 1932 and continued to write quite prolifically. Yeats died in France in 1939; after World War II his body was moved to Drumcliffe, County Sligo.
Irish Nobel laureate poet William Butler Yeats penned "Under Ben Bulben" as the last poem he would ever write. It is fitting that he wrote the last three lines to be the epitaph inscribed on his gravestone.
The poem is a last will and testament for Yeats' artistic and spiritual vision. His uses the legendary women and horsemen of the area to embody the spiritual wholeness and immortality. He calls on humanity, artists, and poets to continue to produce their art.
Ben Bulben is the rock formation in County Sligo, Ireland, where Yeats is buried as he foretells in this poem. Ben, or binn means peak or mountain. Bulben comes from ghulbain, which means jaw or beak. The mountain is a destination for those following the passport trail of Yeats' life.
The last line of Under Ben Bulben is used as the title for Larry McMurtry's first novel, "Horseman, Pass By."
Under Ben Bulben
by William Butler Yeats (1938)
I
Swear by what the sages spoke
Round the Mareotic Lake
That the Witch of Atlas knew,
Spoke and set the cocks a-crow.
Swear by those horsemen, by those women
Complexion and form prove superhuman,
That pale, long-visaged company
That air in immortality
Completeness of their passions won;
Now they ride the wintry dawn
Where Ben Bulben sets the scene.
Here’s the gist of what they mean.
II
Many times man lives and dies
Between his two eternities,
That of race and that of soul,
And ancient Ireland knew it all.
Whether man die in his bed
Or the rifle knocks him dead,
A brief parting from those dear
Is the worst man has to fear.
Though grave-diggers’ toil is long,
Sharp their spades, their muscles strong.
They but thrust their buried men
Back in the human mind again.
III
You that Mitchel’s prayer have heard,
“Send war in our time, O Lord!”
Know that when all words are said
And a man is fighting mad,
Something drops from eyes long blind,
He completes his partial mind,
For an instant stands at ease,
Laughs aloud, his heart at peace.
Even the wisest man grows tense
With some sort of violence
Before he can accomplish fate,
Know his work or choose his mate.
IV
Poet and sculptor, do the work,
Nor let the modish painter shirk
What his great forefathers did.
Bring the soul of man to God,
Make him fill the cradles right.
Measurement began our might:
Forms a stark Egyptian thought,
Forms that gentler Phidias wrought.
Michael Angelo left a proof
On the Sistine Chapel roof,
Where but half-awakened Adam
Can disturb globe-trotting Madam
Till her bowels are in heat,
Proof that there’s a purpose set
Before the secret working mind:
Profane perfection of mankind.
Quattrocento put in paint
On backgrounds for a God or Saint
Gardens where a soul’s at ease;
Where everything that meets the eye,
Flowers and grass and cloudless sky,
Resemble forms that are or seem
When sleepers wake and yet still dream.
And when it’s vanished still declare,
With only bed and bedstead there,
That heavens had opened.
Gyres run on;
When that greater dream had gone
Calvert and Wilson, Blake and Claude,
Prepared a rest for the people of God,
Palmer’s phrase, but after that
Confusion fell upon our thought.
V
Irish poets, learn your trade,
Sing whatever is well made,
Scorn the sort now growing up
All out of shape from toe to top,
Their unremembering hearts and heads
Base-born products of base beds.
Sing the peasantry, and then
Hard-riding country gentlemen,
The holiness of monks, and after
Porter-drinkers’ randy laughter;
Sing the lords and ladies gay
That were beaten into the clay
Through seven heroic centuries;
Cast your mind on other days
That we in coming days may be
Still the indomitable Irishry.
VI
Under bare Ben Bulben’s head
In Drumcliff churchyard Yeats is laid.
An ancestor was rector there
Long years ago, a church stands near,
By the road an ancient cross.
No marble, no conventional phrase;
On limestone quarried near the spot
By his command these words are cut:
Cast a cold eye
On life, on death.
Horseman, pass by!
班磅礴山麓下
1
凭着围绕马理奥提克的轻波的
那些圣人所说的一切，起誓说，
阿特勒斯的女巫确确实实知道，
讲了出来，还让一只只鸡叫。
凭着那些骑士、女人——体形和肤色
都证明了他们真是超人，起誓说，
脸色苍白、面容瘦长的伴侣，
永远、永远充满了生机的空气，
赢得了他们激情的完整；
此刻，他们疾驶在冬日的黎明，
本布尔本山是他们身后的景致。
这些，是他们想说的要旨。
2
许多次，一个人死，一个人生
在他们那两个来世之中，
民族的来世，灵魂的来世，
古老的爱尔兰熟悉这一切．
无论人是死在他的床上，
或送他命的是一声枪响，
与亲爱的人们的暂时分离
是人都恐惧的最糟的事。
虽然挖坟者的劳作悠长，
他们的铁锹锋利，肌肉强壮，
他们只是把他们埋葬的人
重新推进了人类的思想中。
3
你听到过米切尔的祷告声声：
“主呵，结我们的时代带来战争！”
你知道，当一切话儿都已说完，
而一个人正在疯狂地鏖战，
从早巳瞎的眼睛里落下了什么，
他完整了他不完整的思索．
于是有一会儿站得消停，
高声大笑，心里一片宁静。
甚至最聪明的人在使命实现、
工作认识、伙伴选择之前，
也全因为某种暴力行为，
心里总是感到那么惴惴。
4
诗人和雕塑家，干你们的工作，
别让那种时髦的画家一味去躲
他的伟大的祖先曾做过的事，
把人的灵魂给上帝带去，
使他把摇篮正确地填好。
衡量开始了我们的力量，
——个典型的埃及人把形状思想，
温和的费迪阿斯做出的形状。
在西斯汀教堂的屋顶中，
米开朗琪罗留下了证明；
那里，只是一个半醒的亚当
就能够使走遍地球的女人惶惶，
最后她的内心一片激情洋溢，
证明有一个预先确定的目的，
在那秘密工作的思想之前，
人类的完美实际上平凡。
十五世纪的意大利的大师，
设计上帝和圣人的背景时，
总画着花园，那里灵魂安宁，
人们看到的一切东西，
花朵、芳革．还有无云的天空，
多像睡觉的人醒了又在梦中，
看到的那些仿佛如此的形状
这种形状消失了，只剩下床
和床架，依然在声言
天国的门打开了。
哦旋转
一场更大的梦已经消逝，
卡尔弗特和威尔逊、布莱克和克劳德，
为信上帝的人准备了一种休息，
是帕尔默的话吧，但在那之后，
我们的思想就充满了混乱、忧愁。
5
爱尔兰诗人，学好你们的专业，
歌唱那美好地做成的一切，
轻视那种正从头到脚
都已失去了模样的奥妙，
他们缺乏记忆的头和心——
低卑的床上的低卑的产品。
歌唱农民们，然后是
策马疾驶的乡间绅士，
修士们的神圣，仿效
饮完苦啤酒的人狂笑；
歌唱那些欢乐的爵士和夫人，
那是在英勇的七个世纪中
形成的最根本的本质；
让你的头脑想着其它的日子，
这样．我们在将来依然能
成为不可征服的爱尔兰人。
6
在光秃秃的本布尔本山头下面，
叶芝躺于特拉姆克力夫墓地中间。
一个祖先曾是那里的教区长，
许多年之俞，一座教堂就在近旁，
在路旁，是一个古老的十字架，
没有大理石碑，也没有套话；
在附近采来的石灰石上，
是按他的指示刻下的字样：
投出冷眼
看生，看死
骑士，策马向前！
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