Translation: True Thoughts
Auden's poem "Funeral Blues" was first published in 1936 and later filmed in the 1994 film "Four" >
Weddings and a Funeral" was quoted by Matthew (John Hannah) in a eulogy for his gay partner
Gareth (Simon Callow), thus becoming widely known.
W.H. Auden is one of the few great poets of the 20th century. His poems do not focus on the grand themes of the times like Eliot, nor do they have the vast poetic style of Pound, unlike Frost. Poems rooted in field life are also very different, and they are not the purely speculative poetry of Stevens. His writing is highly intellectual and is a typical intellectual writing. He is well versed in history and art and can put it into context. Profound philosophical thinking is placed into real-life scenes, creating a fascinating intellectual tone without being boringly abstract.
For a long time, W.H. Auden is an English poet who has been ignored in Chinese translation, and his late poems are almost unknown to Chinese readers. In 2014, Shanghai Translation Publishing House published "Selected Poems of Auden: 1927-1947" translated by Ma Mingqian and Cai Haiyan and proofread by poet Wang Jiaxin. This collection of poems compiles for the first time more than 130 poems written by Auden in the past twenty years. It includes not only the inspired creations when he was a college scholar, but also a group of more profound and outstanding poems produced by Auden after he stayed in the United States. Poetry.
Auden is considered to be the best English poet after Eliot. He and Lewis, MacNeice, Spender and others who also studied at Oxford University dominated the poetry world in the 1930s and were regarded as Known as the "Auden Generation". Auden, who was only in his twenties at the time, had already written masterpieces such as "The Art Museum", "Twelve Ballads", "Miss Gee", and "Letter to Lord Byron". Jeffrey Grigson, the editor-in-chief of New Poetry, called Auden a "behemoth" and Dylan Thomas complimented the older man for his "breadth and depth." You can imagine how popular Auden was at that time. .
Fascinated with restoring traditional poetic forms
In the era when Auden first started writing poetry, old poets such as Hardy and Yeats were still around, Eliot was in his prime, and Larkin , Hughes, Dylan Thomas and others are a generation later than him. He regarded Hardy as his "poetic father" and learned from him the "eagle's vision" - the ability to overlook life from a high place; he had complicated feelings towards Yeats, "He is, of course, A very great poet", on the other hand, he believed that Yeats (and Rilke) had a bad influence on him--they had tempted him into a rhetorical language of exaggeration. Eliot, as editor of Faber Press and editor-in-chief of the poetry magazine "The Standard," played the role of mentor to young people. He was a great supporter of Auden. Although he rejected Auden's poetry collection when reviewing for a publishing house, he still published Auden's debut work in the poetry magazine "Standard" he edited.
Auden said that Eliot "is a very special poet, inimitable." The so-called inimitability is simply that the originality in style is too obvious, imitation is death. Therefore, Auden would rather go back, be obsessed with restoring traditional poetic forms, and open up his own world in a conservative position, instead of being a "successor of modernism" as a matter of course. In style, Auden and Eliot are also very different. Auden paid more attention to the communicability of poetry. "Without the desire to communicate with others, you will not become an artist, but will only become a mystic or a madman." If he wants to achieve a universal state of communication, his works must be "light" in style, that is to say, "he will not feel that he is different, and his language will be very direct and close to universal expression."
When a poet can express himself easily and freely using images from his daily life, it means that the poet has reconciled with that era and has a stable and comfortable position. But more often than not, the poet's relationship with the times was hostile, and they were kicked out of the general population. At this time, the poets will form a kind of peer friendship, "they become introspective, obscure and have a high opinion of themselves." This turning away from the audience makes the poet's observation of the times clearer, but it also increases the difficulty of conveying what he sees. No one can understand it, or no one wants to listen at all. The poet's sense of isolation becomes even stronger, and he turns more and more to the private world.
Full of interest in the exploration of poetic forms
Auden has been making various attempts for this purpose. For example, there are many changes in poetry style, including various rhymes based on traditional styles. Verse poetry also has styles
Bright ballads, pastoral poems, limericks, etc. Especially in the early days when his politics were slightly left-leaning, he tried to "write the musings of wise men in the language of the people", even at the expense of the nature of poetry. But he found that the majority of the "people" he was trying to please did not buy his account. No matter how clear and direct he wrote, it could not really reach the ears of the proletarians.
In addition, the richness of his poetic style and enthusiasm for exploration have also earned him the reputation of being "obscure". Some critics believe that although Auden is skilled in technique, the result is that he "seems to be relying on language to operate on autopilot." Just carry on.” (Roger Kimball) There are also critics who think that he is too complex and deals with too many things, just like an encyclopedia compiler. The final result is that the poem falls into a "glued state". American critic James Fenton said that when Auden was writing, there were two people sitting next to him. "Blake sat on his left, urging him to use plain language, write concisely, and make his points clear. Henry James Sit to his right, give him hints of charming syntax and ways to lengthen sentences, and let him continue to work on the details." ("Blake/Auden and James/Auden") Auden seems to have always been there. In this kind of mutual struggle, I constantly adjust myself.
Although there is no shortage of defenders like Marianne More (she believes that Auden "is a master of rhythm and rhythm, and his works are never dull"), as far as Auden is translated into Chinese As far as the works are concerned, even if we don't say "obscure", it is difficult to say that they are clear and light. The information he dealt with in one poem was too complex, coupled with various intertexts, allusions, annotations, and metaphors. As Larkin accused, "he became a reader rather than a writer, 'annotation' - 8 Eleven pages, about James, Kierkegaard, Chekov, Rilke, Nietzsche, Goethe, Spinoza, etc., while the main text is only fifty-eight pages--foreshadowing his role in poetry Substituting materials for experience has gone a long way”. (Larkin's "What Becomes of Wystan") And his various rhyme poems became nondescript after being reluctantly accommodated in Chinese. Auden has always been interested in exploring various poetic forms. He believes that even from a hedonist perspective, "How can a person enjoy the pleasure of writing if he has no sense of form at all?"
Pay attention to the spiritual life and moral dilemmas of modern people
In the eyes of many British colleagues, Auden, who left Britain for the United States, is no longer the "that" Auden of the 1930s. , he is not only suspected of evading war responsibility, but also slips into a dangerous trend in his creation: ambiguous attitude, detached stance, turning from left-leaning to introverted.
"Crazy Ireland stimulates you to immerse yourself in poetry. / The madness and weather in Ireland are still the same today, / Because poetry will not make anything happen." Poetry will not make anything happen. Auden later reiterated this view in an interview: "I did not lose my interest in politics, but I came to realize that in dealing with social or political injustice, only two things work: political action and direct reporting of the facts. Art in There is nothing that can be done about it... If not a single poem had been written, not a single picture had been painted, not a piece of music had been composed, human history would have remained essentially what it was." (Auden, "The Public and the Later Yeats." 》) Auden seems to be using one pole of poetry to oppose the other. Before that, he had been noticed as a left-leaning poet who paid attention to current affairs and emphasized intervention. His early poetry was a mixture of Marxist youth trends and Freudian eroticism. He hopes to use Marxism to cure the ills of the times and Freudism to redeem his own sins.
Larkin criticized that Auden, who went to the United States on the eve of the outbreak of World War II, "in an instant, he lost his core themes and emotions - Europe and the fear of war - and at the same time abandoned the reader. , along with their everyday vernacular and concerns, would have seemed irreparable to another poet." (Larkin's "What Becomes of Wystan") Larkin believed that Auden became exaggerated and cynical after going to the United States. When he relieved himself of the social responsibility of poetry, he was just "playing with the luck of words."
Of course Auden could not accept this kind of criticism. He believed that if he needed to go to the battlefield, he would have the duty to write poetry. You must know that everyone will change. He believes that this is a natural change brought about by age and life experience. "It is really important for a writer to adapt to his own age, that is, not to appear younger and more naive than his actual age, nor to appear too old and decadent." ". This concept of his has always remained the same. When he was young, he wrote poems about youth, passionate poems, and poems full of passion. After going to the United States, Auden began to pay more attention to the spiritual life and moral dilemmas of modern people, and began to consciously eliminate political factors in his poems. This purging even smacks of paranoia. Compared with the artificially elevated poet roles of "saint" (Keats's words), "educator" (Wordsworth's words), and "the world's unrecognized legislator" (Shelley's words), Auden prefers Have a "private face in the public domain". In Auden's view, the more personal it is, the more public it is, and the more the poet lives like a normal person, which is the greatest "politics".
After going to the United States, Auden reconverted to Christianity, and the religious and ascetic flavor in his poems became increasingly strong, with humility, kindness and love becoming the most common themes. Returning to Christianity, Auden undoubtedly regarded "love" as the power of salvation. This change in Auden's faith also allowed his poetry to turn to a new dimension - turning the object of appeal to God, summoning the nobility of human nature in his appeal to divinity.
In the hall of divine poetry, there are such people gathered: Holderlin, Rilke, Yeats, etc., who "sing the traces of the departed gods" (Holderlin), bringing the light of divinity The advent of poetry serves as a power to save all sentient beings, and poetry also becomes the way to salvation in this sense.
Based on this "faith of love", Auden is convinced that although our real world is full of corruption and sin, it is still redeemable. Every successful poem must embody this saving power and show a heavenly scene.
“The landscape presented by every good poem is infinitely close to utopia.
”
More exciting content, all in the special topic: My Translation of Famous Poems
It is constantly being updated, so stay tuned for advice!