他山之石 | 人们为什么需要诗歌？（一）
栏目说
“ 他山之石，为「是光」固定栏目。通过定期翻译国外关于现代诗歌的朗读、创作、活动的文章，实现诗歌更大程度上的探索和借鉴推广。 ”
人们为什么需要诗歌
TEDGLOBAL 2013
Stephen Burt
（中文翻译来自TED字幕）
I read poetry all the time and write about it frequently and take poems apart to see how they work because I'm a word person. I understand the world best, most fully, in words rather than, say, pictures or numbers, and when I have a new experience or a new feeling, I'm a little frustrated until I can try to put it into words. I think I've always been that way.
我从未停止过读诗，经常写诗，句句细读，品味诗歌的奥妙，因为，我为文字而生。唯落于文字，我才能完全理解世界，而不是通过图片或数字。每每有了新的经历，新的感受，只有表达成文字，我才会心安。一直以来，概莫能外。
I devoured science fiction as a child. I still do. And I found poems by Andrew Marvell and Mathew Arnold and Emily Dickinson and William Buller Yeats because they were quoted in science fiction, and I loved their sounds and I went to read about ottava rima and medical caesuras and enjambment and all that other technical stuff that you care about if you already care about poems, because poems already made me happier and sadder and more alive. And I became a poetry critic because I wanted to know how and why.
小时候，科幻小说，我嗜之如命，至今依然。科幻小说引用了安德鲁·马维尔，马修·阿诺德，艾米莉·迪金森，威廉·巴特勒·叶芝等诗人的诗歌，我便与他们笔下美丽的篇章相遇，我深爱着这些无声的音符，进而，我认识了八行诗体，以及居中停顿、跨行联系这些诗歌艺术形式，如果你也深爱诗歌，你一定知道这些概念，因为诗歌赋予我快乐，带给我忧伤，也让我发现更多生命的意义。为探索其中的奥妙，我做了一名诗评人。
Now, poetry isn't one thing that serves one purpose any more than music or computer programming serve one purpose. The Greek word poem, it just means "a made thing", and poetry is a set of techniques, ways of making patterns that put emotions into words. The more techniques you know, the more things you can make, and the more patterns you can recognize in things you might already like or love.
诗歌的作用，并不比音乐或电脑编程多，一个就够了。“诗歌”，在希腊语里的意思是“人造的东西”，以一定的艺术技巧，按照音节、声调和韵律等体裁、格式要求，把情感在文字中呈现出来，这就是诗歌。知道越多的艺术技巧，悟出的感受会越多，那些原本就喜爱的事情，你会从另外的角度发现它们的美。
That said, poetry does seem to be especially good at certain things. For example, we are all going to die. Poetry can help us live with that. Poems are made of words, nothing but words.
也就是说，在某些方面，诗歌的确是无法被取代的。比如，我们终将逝去，诗歌让我们坦然接受这一事实。诗歌由词语组成，除此之外，别无他物。
The particulars in poems are like the particularities, the personalities, that distinguish people from one another. Poems are easy to share, easy to pass on, and when you read a poem, you can imagine someone's speaking to you or for you, maybe even someone far away or someone made up or someone deceased. That's why we can go to poems when we want to remember things or someone, to celebrate or to look beyond death or to say goodbye, and that's one reason poems can seem important, even to people who aren't me, who don't so much live in a world of words.
诗歌的独特性，要从细节上去把握，要结合诗人的性格去体会，诗歌便于分享，便于传播，品读一首诗歌，宛如有人在你耳旁，为你诵读，此人，或远，或幻，或在天国。这就是为何，每当我们缅怀这人，那事，便会拾起一篇篇诗文，或纪念，或超脱，或道别，诗歌为何不可或缺，这便是原因之一，即便对于那些不像我这样生活在文字堆砌成的世界的人。
The poet Frank O'Hana said, "If you don't need poem, bully for you", but he also said when he didn't want to be alive anymore, the thought that he wouldn't write any more poems had stopped him. Poetry helps me want to be alive, and I want to show you why by showing you how, how a couple of poems react to the fact that we're alive in one place at one time in one culture, and in another we won't be alive at all.
诗人弗兰克·欧哈拉曾说，“你说不需要诗歌，那你真了不起。”他曾坦言，当有了不想活下去的念头时，一想到这意味着没法再写诗，就不会再有那种念头了。诗歌让我热爱生命，我为你诵读一些诗歌，你就会明白，你会从这些诗歌中感受到，此地，此刻我们在呼吸行走，而在另一个世界里我们可能根本没有这种感觉。
So here's one of the first poems I memorized. It could address a child or an adult.
这是我记诵的第一首诗歌，无关年龄，皆可品读。
From Far, from eve and morning
From yon twelve-winded sky,
The stuff of life to knit me
Blew hither; here am I.
Now — for a breath I tarry
Nor yet disperse apart —
Take my hand quick and tell me,
What have you in your heart.
Speak now, and I will answer;
How shall I help you, say;
Ere to the wind's twelve quarters
I take my endless way.
(A. E. Housman)
来自远方 来自黄昏和清晨
来自十二重高天的好风清扬
飘来生命气息的吹拂
吹在我身上
快 趁生命气息逗留
盘桓未去
拉住我的手
告诉我你的心声
告诉我，我便能回答
告诉我，我怎样才能够帮助你
在我向那十二风彼方行进
踏上无尽旅途的前夕
（A E 霍斯曼《趁生命气息逗留》）
Now, this poem has appealed to science fiction writers. It's furnished at least three science fiction titles, I think because it says poems can brings us news from the future or the past or across the world, because their patterns can seem to tell you what's in somebody's heart.
这首诗吸引了科幻小说作家的目光，三篇科幻小说题目的灵感皆来源于此，因为，这首诗带我们遥望远方，回首往昔，跨越疆土；因为，透过字里行间，仿佛触碰到了心灵。
It says poem can bring people together temporarily, which I think is true, and it sticks in my head not just it rhymes but for how it rhymes, cleanly and simply on the two and four, "say" and "way", with anticipatory hints on the one and three, "answer" and "quarters", as if the poem itself were coming together. It plays up the fact that we die by exaggerating the speed of our lives.
诗歌让我们萍水相逢，诚然，对此我深信不疑，不只因为诗歌的韵律美，还在于美的方式，第二和第四节工整而简介，“say"和“way”，第一和第三节往往不出预料，“answer”和“quarter”，诗歌仿佛浑然天成，对死亡的话题驾轻就熟，加速了时光的脚步。
A few years on earth become one speech, one breath. It's a poem about loneliness--- the "I" in the poem feels no connection will last --- and it might look like a plea for help until you get to the word "help", where this "I" facing you, taking your hand, is more like a teacher or a genie, or at least that's what he wants to believe. It would not be the first time a poet had written the poem that he wanted to hear.
在作者的笔下，人间数年，一呼一吸，弹指挥过，这首诗描写的是孤独——诗中的“我”无处寻觅关怀，再读到“帮助”这个词之前，“我”仿佛在祈求帮助，“我”与你相顾无言，唯执子之手，如一位师长，又如一个精灵，抑或，如他所想所愿。这已经不是第一首描述作者内心希冀聆听的诗歌了。
整理 | 苏岩
本期编辑 | 小悦“光”
校对 | 靖“光”
插画 | 莫奈
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