哈特·克兰诗7首

克兰的诗广泛使用象征和暗示，形象奇美，色彩瑰丽，有时古怪奇谲，很难索解。他的诗和他匆匆自我了结的生活一样奇特。他在诗中努力把惠特曼的豪迈开阔和爱伦·坡的神秘主义结合起来，以表现现代城市的精神。从他留在世上的薄薄几本诗集推测，他本应有一个成果丰富的诗歌前程。克兰自杀后，尽管新批评派如退特等人曾大力推荐他的力作《桥》，但都没有大获成功，这或许也说明了：在现代，惠特曼式的对科学与民主的美国的希望注定破灭，当前的文明已无法容纳乐观主义的浩歌。

My Grandmother's Love Letters

There are no stars tonight

But those of memory.

Yet how much room for memory there is

In the loose girdle of soft rain.

There is even room enough

For the letters of my mother's mother,

Elizabeth,

That have been pressed so long

Into a corner of the roof

That they are brown and soft,

And liable to melt as snow.

Over the greatness of such space

Steps must be gentle.

It is all hung by an invisible white hair.

It trembles as birch limbs webbing the air.

And I ask myself:

"Are your fingers long enough to play

Old keys that are but echoes:

Is the silence strong enough

To carry back the music to its source

And back to you again

As though to her?"

Yet I would lead my grandmother by the hand

Through much of what she would not understand;

And so I stumble. And the rain continues on the roof

With such a sound of gently pitying laughter.

时间那么遥远

脚步必须放轻。

信悬于一根看不见的白发，

颤抖，像白桦树枝在风中织网。

我问自己：

“你的手指那么长

能弹已成回音的琴键吗：

寂静的力量那么强

能把音乐带回声源

再传回给你

就像传给她？”

但是我还得拉着外婆的手

领她穿过那么多她不懂的东西；

我迟疑。雨依旧打着屋顶

那声音像怜悯的笑，很轻。

Black Tambourine

The interests of a black man in a cellar

Mark tardy judgment on the world's closed door.

Gnats toss in the shadow of a bottle,

And a roach spans a crevice in the floor.

Æsop, driven to pondering, found

Heaven with the tortoise and the hare;

Fox brush and sow ear top his grave

And mingling incantations on the air.

The black man, forlorn in the cellar,

Wanders in some mid-kingdom, dark, that lies,

Between his tambourine, stuck on the wall,

And, in Africa, a carcass quick with flies.

伊索，被迫思考，他发现了

一个有龟，有兔的天堂；

狐尾和猪耳长在他的坟头

把神秘的咒文混入风中。

那黑人，被抛弃在地窖里，

在一个黑暗的中央王国漫游，

一边是他挂在墙上的手鼓，

一边是在非洲很快长蛆的尸首。

North Labrador

A land of leaning ice

Hugged by plaster-grey arches of sky,

Flings itself silently

Into eternity.

"Has no one come here to win you,

Or left you with the faintest blush

Upon your glittering breasts?

Have you no memories, O Darkly Bright?"

Cold-hushed, there is only the shifting moments

That journey toward no Spring—

No birth, no death, no time nor sun

In answer.

“从来没人来赢取你，

或者让你闪光的

胸脯上微微起点红晕？

你没记忆吗，哦黑暗的光明？”

寒气噤口，只有时间变化

旅程没有春天——

没有生，没有死，没有时间和太阳

来给你回答。

At Melville's Tomb

Often beneath the wave, wide from this ledge

The dice of drowned men's bones he saw bequeath

An embassy. Their numbers as he watched,

Beat on the dusty shore and were obscured.

And wrecks passed without sound of bells,

The calyx of death's bounty giving back

A scattered chapter, livid hieroglyph,

The portent wound in corridors of shells.

Then in the circuit calm of one vast coil,

Its lashings charmed and malice reconciled,

Frosted eyes there were that lifted altars;

And silent answers crept across the stars.

Compass, quadrant and sextant contrive

No farther tides... High in the azure steeps

Monody shall not wake the mariner.

This fabulous shadow only the sea keeps.

沉船驶过，没有敲钟，

死亡的猎获物开出花萼送回

断章残简，青黑的象形文字，

贝壳走廊里缠绕着不祥物。

此后，大圆圈中的沉静小圈子，

它的抽击被惑住，解了恨，

迷糊的眼睛高筑起祭坛；

无声的回答爬过星群。

罗盘、四分仪、六分仪，再无法

催起潮水……在蔚蓝的陡岸之上

挽歌无法唤醒水手。

只有大海保存这奇异的影子。

Island Quarry

Square sheets—they saw the marble into

Flat slabs there at the marble quarry

At the turning of the road around the roots of the mountain

Where the straight road would seem to ply below the stone, that fierce

Profile of marble spiked with yonder

Palms against the sunset's towering sea, and maybe

Against mankind. It is at times—

In dusk it is at times as though this island lifted, floated

In Indian baths. At Cuban dusk the eyes

Walking the straight road toward thunder—

This dry road silvering toward the shadow of the quarry

—It is at times as though the eyes burned hard and glad

And did not take the goat path quivering to the right,

Wide of the mountain—thence to tears and sleep—

But went on into marble that does not weep.

岛上采石场

方石板——他们把大理石

锯成平板，在那山脚

道路转弯处的采石场上

笔直的路好像撬进石缝，那粗暴的

尖矛般的大理石和远处的

手掌一起，插进日暮那高耸的大海，可能

也插进人类世界。在某些时刻——

黄昏就是这种时刻，似乎这岛在升起，漂浮在

印第安温泉上。在古巴的黄昏，眼睛

沿着笔直的路，走向雷电——

这干燥的路银光闪闪，伸向采石场的阴影

——有时候，似乎眼睛被强烈地灼烧，庆幸，

不走上右边那条颤抖的，远远离开大山的，

山羊走的小道——不走向眼泪，不走向睡眠——

而是走进永不哭泣的大理石。

The Bridge

Proem: To Brooklyn Bridge

How many dawns, chill from his rippling rest

The seagull's wings shall dip and pivot him,

Shedding white rings of tumult, building high

Over the chained bay waters Liberty—

Then, with inviolate curve, forsake our eyes

As apparitional as sails that cross

Some page of figures to be filed away;

—Till elevators drop us from our day…

I think of cinemas, panoramic sleights

With multitudes bent toward some flashing scene

Never disclosed, but hastened to again,

Foretold to other eyes on the same screen;

And Thee, across the harbor, silver-paced

As though the sun took step of thee, yet left

Some motion ever unspent in thy stride,—

Implicitly thy freedom staying thee!

Out of some subway scuttle, cell or loft

A bedlamite speeds to thy parapets,

Tilting there momently, shrill shirt ballooning,

A jest falls from the speechless caravan.

Down Wall, from girder into street noon leaks,

A rip-tooth of the sky's acetylene;

All afternoon the cloud-flown derricks turn…

Thy cables breathe the North Atlantic still.

And obscure as that heaven of the Jews,

Thy guerdon... Accolade thou dost bestow

Of anonymity time cannot raise:

Vibrant reprieve and pardon thou dost show.

O harp and altar, of the fury fused,

(How could mere toil align thy choiring strings!)

Terrific threshold of the prophet's pledge,

Prayer of pariah, and the lover's cry,—

Again the traffic lights that skim thy swift

Unfractioned idiom, immaculate sigh of stars,

Beading thy path—condense eternity:

And we have seen night lifted in thine arms.

Under thy shadow by the piers I waited;

Only in darkness is thy shadow clear.

The City's fiery parcels all undone,

Already snow submerges an iron year…

O Sleepless as the river under thee,

Vaulting the sea, the prairies' dreaming sod,

Unto us lowliest sometime sweep, descend

And of the curveship lend a myth to God.

其实，所谓“中国现代文学”，从时间维度来说，它以1917年胡适发表的《文学改良刍议》、陈独秀发表的《文学革命论》为标志，直到1949年7月全国第一次文代会的召开为止，这一历史区间的新文学则称为中国现代文学；但是就其性质来说，中国现代文学是有别于古代文学的现代型的文学，标志着中国文学真正走上了现代化的道路，以五四文学为起点开始了中国文学现代化的艰难曲折的历程。经过30多年的从文学革命到革命文学、从左翼文学到抗战文学的演变，虽然中国文学现代化的程度不能估计太高，但其现代性却在文学运动形态、文学理论形态与文学创作形态上明显地显示出来。不论五四文学运动、左翼文学运动、抗战文学运动甚至工农兵文学运动，都是为了推动中国文学实现现代化，尽管它们所起到的作用大小不同，所产生的效应正负有别，但却为中国文学现代化作出了积极探索。文学现代化最内在的涵义是文学观念的现代性，也就是现代意识在文学思想上的显现，从五四文学革命到抗战文学的理论形态多姿多彩，但大多数的文学主张、思想见解、批评标准和美学意识都是现代性的文学观念。与现代性文学观念相联系的各种体裁的文学作品，从内容到形式到风格，都显示出五彩缤纷的现代性色调。从这一特定意义上说，作为中国现代文学学科范畴的各种文学样态应是现代性的文学。

如何认识中国当代文学

1950年代后期，以《新民主主义论》为依据，将中国新文学的历史分为两个时期：1919年至1949年为“中国现代文学”，这是新民主主义性质的文学；1949年以后的文学则为“中国当代文学”，它区别于现代文学的根本点在于其“社会主义性质”。对此区别，周扬在1950年代初发表的《发扬“五四”文学革命的战斗传统》中作了这样的表述：“‘五四’以来的新文艺从一开始就是向着社会主义现实主义发展的，这是指它的整个发展的趋向而言”；而“一九四二年毛泽东同志的《在延安文艺座谈会上的讲话》及其在文艺上所引起的变革，是‘五四’文学革命在新的历史条件下的继续和发展”  。这不仅指明了“当代文学”是在《讲话》指引下向着文学运动的新阶段发展，而且也昭示出这“新阶段”的文学形态必然是社会主义性质的“当代文学”。建国十周年之际出版了名为“当代文学”或“新中国文学”的文学史，并提出一套“当代文学”的编史模式，即“把新文学的发展过程描述为无产阶级文艺由产生、发展到获得自己‘新质’的过程，贯穿于这一过程中的基本线索是两条路线的斗争（即无产阶级文艺路线和资产阶级文艺路线斗争）”  。山东大学中文系编写的《中国当代文学史》（山东人民出版社1960年）、华中师范学院中文系编写的《中国当代文学史稿》（科学出版社1962年）、中国社会科学院文学研究所编写的《十年来的新中国文学》（作家出版社1963年），大都采用了此种编史模式。

“文革”结束后，伴随着“思想解放潮流”和文学艺术界的“拨乱反正”，高校开始了学科重建工作，五六十年代的当代文学编史模式被赋予了“重写文学史”的新涵义。1978年教育部制定的“高等院校中文专业现代文学教学大纲”，规定了“当代文学”作为学科分支独立设课，于是多部中国当代文学史问世。中国当代文学的学科建制并非只是对五六十年代的“当代文学”的复原，而是在社会和思想转型期对“当代文学”的“重建”，不仅“当代文学”的性质发生了新变，“十七年”时期那些处于“边缘”或“非主流”位置的文艺观念与文学作品渐次成为“主流”；而且80年代以后的被称为“当代文学”的新时期文学已与1950—1970年代的“当代文学”发生了裂变，重建了一种有别于“文革”及其以前“革命文学”的多元的文学景观，致使“中国当代文学”的编史模式也发生了多次改写或调整。

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