第6章　惠特曼•狄金森

6.1　复习笔记

I. Walt Whitman (1819-1892)（沃尔特·惠特曼）

1．Life（生平）

Whitman was brought up in a working-class background, on Long Island, New York. He had five years schooling and a good deal of “loafing” and reading. Thirsting for experience and gregarious in habit, Whitman tried at a variety of jobs and picked up a first hand knowledge of life and people in the new world. The experience with the people and the country furnished both the material and the guiding spirit for his epic, Leaves of Grass. When the Civil War began, he worked as a “wound dresser” in a military hospital. In 1873, he suffered a paralytic stroke and moved to New Jersey where he was taken good care of by his friends and where he spent the remaining years revising his Leaves of Grass.

惠特曼成长于纽约州长岛一个工人阶级家庭。他上过五年学，大量地游荡并广泛地阅读书籍。由于渴望经验和喜爱社交的习性，他尝试了多种多样的工作并获得了新世界的生活和在这里生活的人们的第一手材料。惠特曼与人们的交往及游览美国大好山河的经历，为他的史诗《草叶集》提供了素材和导向精神。内战开始后，他在战地医院做看护员。1873年患半身不遂迁至新泽西，在那儿受到朋友的照顾，修订《草叶集》直至去世。

2．Literary point of view（文学观点）

(1) Influenced by the leading New Englander Emerson, Whitman states that the greatest poet breathes into the world the grandeur and life of the universe.

(2) Art should be based organically on nature; the poet’s work grows out of nature and cosmic processes and derives its form from within.

(3) Whitman embraces idealism. He relies on insight and intuition.

(1) 受新英格兰领军人物爱默生的影响，惠特曼认为最伟大的诗人给世界注入了宇宙的壮观和生机。

(2) 艺术以自然为基础。诗人的作品来源于自然。

(3) 惠特曼信奉理想主义。他依赖于自己的内心与直觉。

3．Themes（主题）

(1) He shows concern for the whole hard-working people and the burgeoning life of cities.

(2) He advocates the realization of the individual value. Most of the poems in Leaves of Grass sing of the “en-masse” and the self as well.

(3) Pursuit of love and happiness is approved of repeatedly and affectionately in his lines. The individual person and his desires must be respected.

(4) Some of Whitman’s poems are politically committed. Before and during the Civil War, Whitman expressed much mourning for the sufferings of the young lives in the battlefield and showed a determination to carry on the fighting dauntlessly until the final victory. Later, he wrote down a great many poems to air his sorrow over the death of Lincoln, and one of the famous is “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d.”

(1) 他关注辛勤劳动的人民和迅速发展的城市生活。

(2) 他提倡个体价值的实现。《草叶集》中大部分的诗作不仅歌颂了全体，还有个体。

(3) 他的诗行中不断深情地赞颂对爱和幸福的追求。作为个体的人和他的欲望应受尊重。

(4) 惠特曼的一些诗有坚定的政治立场。诗中他向战场上丧失了年轻的生命表达哀思，并展示了坚持无畏战斗直至最后胜利的决心。之后，他写下了很多诗表达对林肯遇刺的悲痛，其中著名的一首为《当紫丁香最近在庭院开放》。

4．Writing style（写作风格）

(1) Whitman broke free from the traditional iambic pentameter and wrote “free verse”, that is, poetry without a fixed beat or regular rhyme scheme.

(2) There is a strong sense of the poems being rhythmical. Parallelism and phonetic recurrence at the beginning of the lines contribute to the musicality of his poems.

(3) Most of the pictures he painted with words are honest, undistorted images of different aspects of America of the day.

(4) Whitman’s language is relatively simple and even rather crude. Another characteristic in Whitman’s language is his strong tendency to use oral English. Whitman’s vocabulary is amazing. He would use powerful, colorful, as well as rarely-used words.

(1) 惠特曼打破了五步抑扬格的传统，并创作“自由体”诗歌，也就是没有固定韵律的诗歌。

(2) 惠特曼的诗歌有很强的节奏感，诗行前几句排比和语音重复使他的诗歌颇具音乐美感。

(3) 他用语言描述的大部分画面都是反映美国社会当时各个方面的真实景象。

(4) 惠特曼语言相对简单朴实，甚至十分粗犷，另一个特点是口语化。惠特曼词汇惊人，他总能用有力的、生动的、别人不常用的语言。

5．Whitman’s influence（惠特曼的影响）

Whitman’s influence over modern poetry is great in the world as well as in America. Whitman has been compared to mountain in American literary history. For his innovations in diction and versification, his frankness about sex, his inclusion of the commonplace and the ugly and his censure of the weakness of the American democratic practice—these have paved his way to a share of immortality in American literature.

惠特曼对当代诗歌的影响在美国以致在世界范围内都同样深远。惠特曼被比作美国文学历史上的高山，因他在措辞和诗律方面的创新，对性这一话题的坦率，诗作中反映有平凡和丑陋的题材，以及他对美国民主弊端的指责，这些都为他在美国文学上的不朽地位奠定了基础。

6．Major works（主要作品）

Leaves of Grass《草叶集》

“Song of Myself”《自我之歌》

“The Poet” 《诗人》

“When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d”《当紫丁香最近在庭院开放》

“O Captain, My Captain”《哦，船长，我的船长》

“I Hear America Singing”《我听到美国在唱歌》

“There was a Child Went Forth”《有一个孩子向前走去》

“Out of Cradle Endlessly Rocking”《从永久摇荡的摇篮里》

Two Riverlets《两条小河》

Drum Traps《桴鼓集》

7．Analysis of major works（主要作品分析）

◆Leaves of Grass《草叶集》

(1) Grass, the most common thing with the greatest vitality, is an image of the poet himself, a symbol of the then rising American nation and an embodiment of his ideals about democracy and freedom.

(2) In this giant work, openness, freedom, and above all, individualism (the belief that the rights and freedom of individual people are most important) are all that concerned him.

(3) In this book he also praises nature, democracy, labor and creation, and sings of man’s dignity and equality, and of the brightest future of mankind. Most of the poems in Leaves of Grass sing of the “en-masse” and the self as well.

(1) 草叶，最为平凡却也最有生机，是诗人自己的形象，也是崛起中美国的象征和诗人关于民主自由理想的体现。

(2) 在这部巨作中，开放，自由，尤其是个体主义（主张个人的权利和自由最为重要）是他最为关注的。

(3) 这部作品中他也赞美了自然，民主，劳动和创新，也歌颂了人的尊严和平等，憧憬了人类最美好的未来。《草叶集》中大部分诗歌赞颂了大众和自我。

◆“Song of Myself”《自我之歌》

Whitman extols the ideals of equality and democracy and celebrates the dignity, the self-reliant spirit, and the joy of the common man, “Song of Myself” reveals a world of equality, without rank and hierarchy.

惠特曼赞美了平等和民主的理想，赞美了人的高尚、自力更生的精神和普通人的快乐。《自我之歌》呈现了一个没有阶层和等级的平等世界。

◆“When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d”《当紫丁香最近在庭院开放》

It deals with the typical Whitmansque love-and-death motif. It was written as part of the memories of President Lincoln. In the poem, when the poet looks up, he sees the western fallen star, and then when he looks around, he spots the lilac bush blossoming in the dooryard. Here the star is associated with the thought of death, the lilac with a token of life for the dead. Death is not the end, but the beginning of life.

这首诗体现了典型的惠特曼作品中的爱与死的主题。他为纪念林肯总统而作。在这首诗中，当诗人仰望天空，他看到西天星星陨落；当他环望四周，他发现了紫丁香花在庭院的开放。这里陨落的星星是死亡的象征，丁香花丛是死者生命的象征。死亡不是终点，而是新生的开始。

II. Emily Dickinson(1830-1886)（艾米莉·狄金森）

1．Life（生平）

Dickinson was born into a Calvinist family. Her father, an old Puritan, with a heart “pure and terrible”, influenced his daughter in no small way. She was shy, sensitive, sometimes rebellious. It was during her mid-twenties that Emily became a recluse. She wanted to live simply as a completely independent person.

狄金森生于一个信奉加尔文教的家庭。她的父亲，有着“纯洁而可怕的心”的一位虔诚清教徒，对女儿产生了很大的影响。她害羞，思想敏感，有时具有反叛精神。在她二十多岁时她成为一名隐士。她希望完全独立，简单生活。

2．Themes（主题）

(1) Based on her own experiences, joys or sorrows, she writes about doubt and belief about religious subjects, suffering and frustration caused by love, success and failure.

(2) The largest portion of Dickinson’s poetry concerns death and immortality. For Dickinson, death leads to immortality.

(3) Dickinson sees nature as both gaily benevolent and cruel.

(4) On the ethical level, Dickinson holds that beauty, truth and goodness are ultimately one.

(5) She emphasizes free-will and human responsibility.

(1) 基于她个人的经历，喜与悲，她的诗歌是关于宗教主题的疑惑和信仰，爱情中的痛苦和挫折，成功与失败。

(2) 狄金森的大部分诗歌是关于死亡与永生的。对狄金森来说，死亡导向永生。

(3) 狄金森视自然为仁慈并冷酷残忍的。

(4) 在伦理的层面上，狄金森认为真善美是合而为一的。

(5) 她强调自由意志和人类责任。

3．Writing styles（写作风格）

(1) Her poetry abounds in telling images. In the best of her poems, every word is a picture. So she is regarded as the precursor of Imagism poetry.

(2) Her poetic idiom is noted for its conciseness, directness and plainest words.

(3) Dickinson’s poems are usually short, and the first line of Dickinson’s poems is used to be the title.

(4) The capital letters in her poems are used for emphasis.

(1) 她的诗歌描绘有各种意象。在她创作的最好的诗歌中，每一个词都是一幅画。所以她被视作意象派诗歌的先驱。

(2) 她诗歌的风格简明，直接，善用最平易的词。

(3) 狄金森的诗歌通常篇幅较短，第一句往往是诗歌的题目。

(4) 诗歌中用做强调的词均大写。

4．Comparison: Whitman VS. Dickinson（比较：惠特曼VS.狄金森）

Similarities:（相同点）

(1) Thematically, they both extolled, in their different ways, an emergent America, its expansion, its individualism and its Americanness, their poetry being part of “American Renaissance”.

(2) Technically, they both added to the literary independence of the new nation by breaking free of the convention of the iambic pentameter and exhibiting a freedom in form unknown before: they were pioneers in American poetry.

(1) 主题选择上，他们都用不同的方式歌颂了一个新兴的美国，辽阔，个体主义和自身特色，他们的诗歌是“美国文艺复兴”的组成部分。

(2) 写作技巧上，他们打破了传统诗歌创作的五步抑扬格，给诗歌创作形式上以很大的自由，在新兴的国家独立地创作，这是史无前例的。他们是美国诗歌的先驱。

Differences:（不同点）

(1) Whitman seems to keep his eye on society at large; Dickinson explores the inner life of the individual.

(2) Whereas Whitman is “national” in his outlook, Dickinson is “regional”.

(3) Dickinson has the “catalogue technique” (direct, simple style) which Whitman doesn’t have.

(1) 惠特曼更细致地关注社会生活，而狄金森更倾向于探索人的内心世界。

(2) 惠特曼的视野放眼“全国”，而狄金森关注“地方”。

(3) 狄金森创作风格直接简洁，而惠特曼并非如此。

5．Influence（影响）

Her poetry abounds in telling images. Her poetic idiom is noted for its laconic brevity, directness and plainest words. All these characteristics of her poetry were to become popular through Stephen Crane with the Imagists such as Ezra Pound and Amy Lowell in the twentieth century. She became the precursor of the Imagist movement.

她的诗歌意象丰富，诗歌风格简洁，直接，用词平易。这些特点很受斯蒂芬·克莱恩和20世纪意象派诗人艾兹拉·庞德和艾米·洛威尔的欢迎。她被视作意象派诗歌的先驱。

6．Major works（主要作品）

“The Soul selects her own Society”《心灵选择了自己的友伴》

“My life closed twice before its close”《我的生命在结束之前已结束了两次》

“Because I could not stop for Death”《因为我不能等待死神》

“I heard a fly buzz when I died”《我死时听到了苍蝇的嗡嗡声》

“Mine—by the Right of the White Election”《我的——根据白色选举的权利》

“Wild Nights—Wild Nights”《狂风夜——狂风夜！》

“Death is a Dialogue between”《死是一场对话》

“I died for Beauty—but was scarce”《我为美而死》