I read about the good, the beautiful, the self and love. *The better part of my heart is open.
异端的摇篮曲
1. Lullaby,摇篮曲,一般是父母唱给孩子的安眠歌谣,而这里是诗人献给他的爱人的悲伤小调。考虑到奥登的同志身份,这首情诗借用 lullaby 的外壳,讴歌的却是男性之间的隐秘情愫。这首诗写作的年代,同志性行为在英国尚未去罪化,依然笼罩在王尔德案件留下的 gross indecency 的阴影里。换句话说,奥登在这首诗里以一种委婉的方式对加诸同志情爱之上的罪名进行回应,是诗人看似温柔,实则坚韧的抵抗。
2. 奥登选择的对抗策略是与主流的爱情观为敌。世人皆向往稳定且长久的亲密关系,诗人却格外珍视他和爱人之间短暂的露水情缘。世人容易被 universal love and hope 感召,受 fashionable madman(据考证指的是希特勒)的蛊惑,而诗人留恋的是爱人身上的 individual beauty,他试图铭记的是爱人 “mortal, guilty, but to me/ the entirely beautiful” 的身影。
3. 如果说主流的爱情观,罪孽观,价值观是一种无坚不摧的信仰,当诗人说 “Lay your sleeping head, my love,/ human on my faithless arm” 的时候,就已经宣告自己是这种信仰的异端。虽然诗人说自己 faithless,他的内心却没有丝毫愧疚,因为他是一个骄傲的异端。用现在的眼光来看,奥登通过这首诗试图传达的是一份可贵的 queer pride。
4. 当我们听到诗人坚定地宣告 “but from this night/ Not a whisper, not a thought,/ Not a kiss nor look be lost.”,以为他试图用文字来抵抗遗忘,为两人的相遇塑造一个永恒的雕像,却发现他早已和有朽的人类世界达成了和解。当诗人劝告 “Find the mortal world enough” 的时候,他显得无比真诚。
5. 和绝大部分人不同,奥登并不试图在永恒中寻找慰藉,无论这种永恒是 Venus 和 hermit 所代表的形而上渴望,还是 madman 精心营造的意识形态幻觉。他甚至不相信文字的不朽,不相信莎士比亚所说的,“my love shall in my verse ever live young”。
6. 正是这种悲观主义让诗人在有朽的世界始保持清醒。在有限的生命力里,他将记得这个夜晚发生的一切。这对他而言是真正重要的事情。
POEM-LOVE-5/10
Lullaby(1937)
/W.H. Auden
Lay your sleeping head, my love,
Human on my faithless arm;
Time and fevers burn away
Individual beauty from
Thoughtful children, and the grave
Proves the child ephemeral:
But in my arms till break of day
Let the living creature lie,
Mortal, guilty, but to me
The entirely beautiful.
Soul and body have no bounds:
To lovers as they lie upon
Her tolerant enchanted slope
In their ordinary swoon,
Grave the vision Venus sends
Of supernatural sympathy,
Universal love and hope;
While an abstract insight wakes
Among the glaciers and the rocks
The hermit's carnal ecstasy.
Certainty, fidelity
On the stroke of midnight pass
Like vibrations of a bell,
And fashionable madmen raise
Their pedantic boring cry:
Every farthing of the cost,
All the dreaded cards foretell,
Shall be paid, but from this night
Not a whisper, not a thought,
Not a kiss nor look be lost.
Beauty, midnight, vision dies:
Let the winds of dawn that blow
Softly round your dreaming head
Such a day of welcome show
Eye and knocking heart may bless,
Find the mortal world enough;
Noons of dryness find you fed
By the involuntary powers,
Nights of insult let you pass
Watched by every human love.
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