Whitman (USA)
Love! Love! Love!
The back wave caresses the front wave intimately,
There is another wave behind, hugging and impacting, and one wave is tightly wrapped in another.
But my love is not caressing me, not caressing me!
The late moon hangs low on the horizon,
Stumbling.-Ah, I think it's love.
A heavy burden, a heavy burden of love.
Ah, the ocean is also kissing the land madly, full of love, full of love.
Ah, a clear night! I didn't see my lover on the waves.
Flying?
What's that little shadow in the white waves?
Speak up! Speak up! Speak up!
I call you, my love!
I shouted at the waves,
You'll know who's here, here,
You will know who I am, you, my love!
Your drooping moon,
What's the little black dot in your yellow light?
Ah, that's her shadow, that's my lover's shadow!
Oh, moon, don't detain her any more, so she can't come back to me.
Land! Land! Land!
Wherever I go, ah, I always think you can
If you like, send my love back,
Because no matter where I look, I seem to be really in the haze.
I saw my love.
Ah, the stars in your sky!
Maybe people who are so eager for me are also rising together with you.
Ah, your voice, your trembling voice!
Sing clearly in the atmosphere!
Let your voice go deep into the earth and penetrate the Woods!
The person I long for will definitely hear you somewhere!
Raise your voice,
This lonely night song,
This sad and lonely song of love and death,
Singing under the dim moonlight,
Ah, that song under the waning moon that almost sank into the sea!
Ah, the song of indulgence and despair!
But be gentle and keep your voice down!
Let me whisper,
Stop, you noisy ocean,
Because I seem to hear my lover promise me somewhere,
So slight, I must listen quietly, quietly,
But don't be completely silent, because then she may not
Come to me at once.
Come here, dear!
I am here! I am here!
I call you in this continuous tone,
I make this tender call for you, dear,
This is for you.
Don't be misled to other places,
That's the sea breeze whistling, that's not my voice.
That's the agitation of the waves, agitation,
That's the shadow of leaves.
Ah, darkness, all in vain!
Ah, how painful and sad I am.
Ah, the yellow halo of the moon in the sky hangs low on the sea!
Ah, the muddy reflection in the sea!
Ah, the singing voice, ah, the beating heart!
I sing in vain, I sing in vain all night.
Ah, it's over! Ah, a happy life! Ah, the song of happiness!
In the atmosphere, in the Woods, in the fields,
Once loved! Loved! Loved! Loved! Loved!
But my lover is no longer with me!
We can't live together anymore!
(translated by Chu Tunan)
This poem is selected from "From the cradle that swings forever" in Leaves of Grass (1859, 34 sections long, *** 182 lines), and the title is added later. Just as Gorky's Song of Haiyan is a song sung by birds in his Melody of Spring, Whitman's Elegy is also a song sung by birds in his cradle that shakes forever. The poem Cradle was published in the third edition of Leaves of Grass. Before that, I recited it at a friend's house, and explained that it was about a mockingbird, "based on a real event." "But what is the event, the poet is secretive, and critics always guess in vain. Some critics assert that the poet takes the feeling of listening to a widowed bird in childhood as an opportunity to sprout the spirit of his poetry, thus connecting himself with calling for some kind of yearning for love or ideal and being like that mockingbird all his life. This assumption seems reasonable. It is generally believed that the highest artistic achievement of Cradle lies in its musicality, and the poet himself said that it was inspired by Italian opera. This can be said to be another development of Whitman's poetic art. " Indeed, The Cradle is autobiographical. The child who got out of bed in the middle of the night and wandered lonely in the desert and fields was the poet himself. In his hometown of Long Island (that is, the poem "Bamenok"-this is Indian), two distant mockingbirds flew in. The female bird has four eggs, and the male bird sings about their hometown and love. Suddenly, the female bird disappeared, probably killed, so the male bird called his lover and sang a lonely "lamentation". The poet is a barefoot child, hiding in the dark, eavesdropping on this lamentation, and firmly remembering it. This ghost song makes children wake up, mature, know why they were born, and thus transition to adults. He felt a thousand trembling echoes come alive in his life. Although the sea whispers "death, death, death, death", it is not like the songbird or the heart of the poet's excited child. The poet will never forget that lamentation and write the lamentation of birds in the cradle of retrospection.
Elegy consists of 17 sections, which is different from other poems of the poet. The stanzas of those poems are very long, but the stanzas of elegies are no more than six lines. This 17 verse is composed of 2 lines and 6 sentences, 3 lines and 2 sentences, 4 lines and 6 lines 1 sentence. It can be seen that the verse is short. Short stanzas show the sadness and shortness of singing. The song is full of exclamation points "!" And the exclamations "Ah", "Yo" and "Ba" have many overlapping words: "Caress! Love! Caress! " "Go ahead! Speak up! Speak loudly! " "land! Land! Land! " "loved! Loved! Loved! Love! " To show the singer's nostalgia, sadness and grief.
From the whole poem "Cradle" to "Lisao", the same emotional background and situation are used to set off the sadness of birds: the waning moon hangs low in the sky, scattering yellow light; The waves beat against the coast; The stars in the sky are twinkling; The howling sea breeze; Fields and Woods. The poet center wrote this lamentation: sing high, jump into the waves; It is sung with a trembling voice, but it has a beating heart. This lamentation is a lonely night song, a lonely song of love and death, a song of indulgence and despair, and a cry of "persistence", "pain and sorrow" and "futility". From this background and the revelation of nocturnal songs, the despair of heartbreaking and the cry of male birds crying blood are revealed.
As a lyric poem, it highlights the sound of birds: it calls for the lost lover, sometimes screaming, sometimes whispering, sometimes gentle and sometimes trembling; It asks everything that can be seen and touched whether it has seen its lover. However, those "clear night, waning moon, waves, land, stars and darkness" did not answer it. This way of calling for non-existent objects and silent nature obviously comes from folk poetry.
The poet also wrote desperate fantasies and impossible hopes, which aroused people's sympathy. The male bird took the little shadow in the white waves as his lover; Take the small black spots in the dim light of the moon as the shadow of the lover; When it looks at the earth, its eyes are hazy, but it seems that it really sees a lover; It seems to hear the voice of its lover's response from the noisy ocean sound. From fantasy to reality: nature remains the same, but he can't find the person he is looking for in two places, so he can only end his sad song in despair.
After the elegy, the poet expressed his profound meaning and distant thoughts with gloomy poems:
The song is silent,
Everything goes on, the stars shine,
The sea breeze is blowing, blowing, the echo of this song,
The sea keeps making a sound of grief and indignation.
……
The absent child, the waves washed his barefoot, the sea breeze blew his hair,
……
The meaning of this song, this sense of hearing and soul, quickly condensed,
Strange tears, running down my cheeks,
Are you a bird or a ghost? (The child's soul is talking.)
Are you really singing to your lover? Or are you really singing to me?
……
Ah, you lonely singer: you sing alone, but you make me feel that you are me, "you are."
I "-the male bird is a poet. Whitman was a rural teacher when he was young until he was paralyzed at the age of 54. In order to maintain spiritual freedom and physical purity, she has never been married. Because he didn't have a lover who dropped four eggs. However, he won admiration many times, and finally failed to live up to the love and pursuit of the woman he called "the most beautiful and noble in the world", Mrs. Gilchris. It can be seen that there is a poet who has lost the experience of love. The poet who is out of tune with the upper class is "lonely", so he wrote his loneliness on the bird, and the bird became the embodiment of the poet. His "lover" is not necessarily a certain opposite sex, but may also be synonymous with freedom, love, friendliness and nobility. An unattainable hope is like a lost female bird. Nothing is more vivid than turning dissatisfaction with reality into despair of birds.