英譯習作：羅伯特·潘·沃倫《變遷世界裏的鳥類》

Ornithology in a World of Flux.
《變遷世界裏的鳥類》

By Robert Penn Warren
作者：羅伯特·潘·沃倫

Translated by Tweeting Green （忒綠）


It was only a bird call at evening, unidentified,
那隻是傍晚的一聲鳴叫，聽不出是來自什麽鳥，

As I came from the spring with water, across the rocky back-pasture;
我正汲泉水回來，穿過滿是石頭的後院草甸；

But so still I stood sky above was not stiller than sky in pail-water.
我卻是穩穩地佇立著以至於水桶裏的天與頭上的天一樣平靜。


Years pass, all places and faces fade, some people have died,
多年後，那些地方和麵孔都從記憶中退去，一些人已身亡魂消，

And I stand in a far land, the evening still, and am at last sure
而我站立在一個遙遠的地方，夜色沉靜，終於洞見

That I miss more that stillness at bird-call than some things that were to fail later.
比起那些慢慢消散的事物，那份鳥鳴時的寧靜多麽地讓我魂牽夢縈。

 

[忒忒綠]

變遷世界裏鳥類的作用

[忒忒綠]

詩人當時應該懷著一種強烈的情感。一前一後，都是在傍晚，都是站立著，一個是鳥鳴、泉水、家鄉，一個卻是離別家鄉歲月多、近來人事半消磨…詩人以那一聲遠去的鳥鳴，傾訴內心的不可名狀的nostalgia。

[忒忒綠]

Lingyang,I appreciate your elaborate explanations. They added so much to understanding of the poem. It is really a discovery about the poem that you pointed out “eureka and wake-up call”, which hit the mark and was dead on the target, birds and their therapeutical functions to human being. Your comment means and is worth a lot. My heartfelt thanks to you. I honor you sincerely. Tweeting Green

[忒忒綠]

A man’s house is his castle and you are asking a guest of yours to re-arrange your home furniture. I would think twice before I chime in, and I did think twice and I am chiming in.Personally, I care less about the title than the content. The title may be the head(line), but the content is where we are supposed to find the poet's heart, and his heart matters most. Let the head take care of science. The heart always owns poetry and therefore also the poet's voice.The poet's voice that I heard was all about this: Eureka!Suddenly, the poet stumbled upon something when he caught a bird call, which let his imagination fly, no pun intended. There he was, realizing that all the flux he bothered so much about was wholly and solely his own making. The bird call was a wake-up call, period. No wonder he fixed on the sky which came across as what stillness looked like and felt like. Eureka! It's the Archimedes moment. It's a science moment, of course.Here we are. Thanks to the poet, we found a moment of science and poetry coming together, which was a union (or reunion) of heart and mind (head). Still wonder why ornithology is part and parcel of the title?My "comment" is worth two cents, I know. (From e-pal Lingyang Jiang)

[忒忒綠]

Robert Penn Warren (April 24, 1905 – September 15, 1989) was an American poet, novelist, and literary critic and was one of the founders of New Criticism. He was also a charter member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. He founded the literary journal The Southern Review with Cleanth Brooks in 1935. He received the 1947 Pulitzer Prize for the Novel for All the King's Men (1946) and the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1958 and 1979. He is the only person to have won Pulitzer Prizes for both fiction and poetry.這首詩作於他五十多歲的時候。

[忒忒綠]

有賀知章 回鄉偶書 其二 的味道：離別家鄉歲月多，近來人事半消磨。惟有門前鏡湖水，春風不改舊時波。