清点传统：戴那·乔亚叙事诗《清点孩子》的新形式主义解读
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摘要
当代美国“新形式主义”诗人戴那·乔亚(1950—)的叙事诗《清点孩子》通过叙述主人公害怕失去孩子的恶梦引发人们对家庭责任和生死轮回的思考。同时,诗歌通过其中人物和事件的隐喻寓言了诗人创作弗洛斯特式中篇叙事诗的传统意识。
故事的主人公是一名姓蔡的华裔会计。他在清算一位刚过世的单身老人的家产时,惊讶地发现一间幽暗的屋子里整齐地排列着老人生前从垃圾桶里捡回的各式各样的布娃娃。当晚,蔡先生梦见自己怎么也算不清帐本上的数目,而他已去世多年的几代家人似乎都前来质问他的无能。梦中的他惊恐地发现,他的无能将会导致自己的孩子落到跟布娃娃同样的下场。从恶梦中惊醒,蔡先生急切地走进女儿的房间。看着睡梦中的女儿,他开始意识到一个家庭中的生生死死远非人力所能左右;而在这个生生死死的世界里,对不朽的追求是渺茫的。
蔡先生对失去孩子的恐惧隐喻了诗人对叙事诗传统遭受排拒的担忧。诗人担心叙事诗传统在经历现代主义之后会被一种集体无意识丢弃在诗歌历史的垃圾桶里。爱与恐惧相生相随:蔡先生呵护自己的孩子,正如诗人偏爱传统的叙事诗一样。诗人不赞成由抒情短篇拼贴在一起的现代史诗的创作,认为现代史诗就像老人摆满布娃娃的房间一样远离大众的视野。诗人赞赏二十世纪早期的美国诗人弗洛斯特、杰弗斯等,认为他们直接继承了华兹华斯和勃朗宁等人的英国叙事诗传统。作为华裔,蔡先生有很强的传宗接代意识;同样,作为“新形式主义者”,诗人对诗歌体裁也应有很强的传统意识。蔡先生感悟到家庭中永恒的生死轮回,而诗人应当担负起叙事诗传统,让这种传统以一代又一代“孩子”的面目获得新生。
然而诗人并没有像蔡先生那样停留在对自己的无力和对命运定数的哀叹上,而是找到了自己对于叙事诗传统的传承方案。以弗洛斯特的叙事诗为范本,诗人倡导一种融合抒情、依赖格律的中篇叙事诗创作。《清点孩子》以但丁惯用的三行诗节为形式外观,以传统史诗的无韵体糅合当代口语,并以丰富的节奏变体突出了韵律的表意功能。全诗几乎是叙述者的戏剧独白,既塑造了人物形象,又浓缩了故事情节。诗歌的创作正值诗人痛失幼子的哀伤时期,然而诗歌并没有成为诗人情感的直接宣泄,而是以虚构的人物和事件为读者呈现一个发人深省的传承与创新的主题。
以《清点孩子》为代表的中篇叙事诗为“新形式主义”诗歌提供了可行的范例,其诗歌表现的叙事功能成为“新形式主义”复兴传统诗歌形式的核心。叙事营造出的自足语境避免了诗歌中抒情成分的过度自指,也使诗歌能够驾驭更为广阔的题材,还能够吸引更多阶层的读者参与。这种叙事诗在沿用传统史诗的格律规则的同时,主张尝试相对短小的篇幅和容易驾驭的题材。这为延续叙事诗传统提供了一种折衷策略,也有助于改变当前美国诗歌受体制化影响导致的读者同质化和体裁单一化倾向。
Counting the Children, a narrative poem by the chief member of the "New Formalist" poet Dana Gioia (1950- ), invites speculation on familial responsibility and immortality in the narration of the protagonist's nightmare of losing his child. Nonetheless, the poem with its full metaphors in characters and event serves as a parable of Gioia's traditionalism of creating the mid-length narratives in Frostian style.
The protagonist of the narrative is a Chinese-American accountant, Mr. Choi. When sent to audit the estate of a single old woman recently dead, he was shocked to find a dim room stuffed with all kinds of dolls which the old woman collected from trash and put in order. That summoned a nightmare of Mr. Choi, in which he could not settle the account anyhow and seemed interrogated by his generations of ancestors, and as a terrible result his daughter would die because of his inability. Roused from the nightmare, Mr. Choi hurried into his daughter's room. Watching his sleeping daughter, he realized in a vision that the eternal circularity of birth-and-death in a family is beyond one's control, and the immortality is tantalizing.
Mr. Choi's terror of losing his child is a metaphor of Gioia's deep worry about the narrative tradition being rejected. Gioia is afraid that the narrative tradition would be thrown into the trash of poetry by a collective unconsciousness after the age of Modernism. As terror is always attended by love, Mr. Choi's love for his child resembles Gioia's personal taste for traditional narratives. Gioia dislikes the modern epic composed of short lyrics, which he deems as the room of the collected dolls, isolated from general people and finally abandoned. He appreciates Frost, Jeffers, etc, the American poets in the early twentieth century, who wrote narratives with the inheritance of Wordsworth and Browning. As a Chinese descendant, Mr. Choi attached great importance to continuing the family line. Likewise, a "New Formalist" as Gioia ought to have a deep historical sense of poetic genres. As Mr. Choi perceived the familial immortality, Gioia proposes that poets take the responsibility of inheriting the narrative tradition and getting its rebirth as "children" of one generation after another.
Unlike Mr. Choi left himself lamenting for personal helplessness and fatal determinacy, Gioia has found his identity in developing the narrative tradition. Following Frostian style, Gioia advocates a mid-length narrative with lyric intensity and metric regulations. Based on this, Counting the Children is composed of tercets in prosaic blank verse, which recalls traditional meter and Dante's stanza. To further the virtues of form, Gioia makes the consummate interplay of meter and rhythm with rhetorical variation. And dramatic monologue, which consists of almost the total narrative, serves effectively for characterization and meanwhile condenses the plot. The lyrical mode is not rendered to the poet's natural outburst of his mourning emotion even then he was suffering from his first son's death. Rather Gioia had recomposed the poem, with his recovery from deep sorrow, to illustrate a certain intellectual and moral problem of inheritance and innovation in a fictional narrative.
The mid-length narrative represented by Gioia's Counting the Children provides a practicable strategy for the "New Formalist" poetry, and establishes the centrality of narrative to the "New Formalism" which aims at the revival of traditional forms. Since narrative constructs a self-contained context, it is capable of preventing the lyrical element from the over self-referential, and making poetry competent to cover a wide variety of literary materials and attract a multiple levels of readership to participate. Further, this model of narrative, which insists on the applications of traditional meter and manageable subjects in mid-length, has become a modest but fruitful proposal to continue the narrative tradition, and meanwhile played a part in reversing the homogeneity of readership and the monotony of genres influenced by the institutionalization of contemporary American poetics.
故事的主人公是一名姓蔡的华裔会计。他在清算一位刚过世的单身老人的家产时,惊讶地发现一间幽暗的屋子里整齐地排列着老人生前从垃圾桶里捡回的各式各样的布娃娃。当晚,蔡先生梦见自己怎么也算不清帐本上的数目,而他已去世多年的几代家人似乎都前来质问他的无能。梦中的他惊恐地发现,他的无能将会导致自己的孩子落到跟布娃娃同样的下场。从恶梦中惊醒,蔡先生急切地走进女儿的房间。看着睡梦中的女儿,他开始意识到一个家庭中的生生死死远非人力所能左右;而在这个生生死死的世界里,对不朽的追求是渺茫的。
蔡先生对失去孩子的恐惧隐喻了诗人对叙事诗传统遭受排拒的担忧。诗人担心叙事诗传统在经历现代主义之后会被一种集体无意识丢弃在诗歌历史的垃圾桶里。爱与恐惧相生相随:蔡先生呵护自己的孩子,正如诗人偏爱传统的叙事诗一样。诗人不赞成由抒情短篇拼贴在一起的现代史诗的创作,认为现代史诗就像老人摆满布娃娃的房间一样远离大众的视野。诗人赞赏二十世纪早期的美国诗人弗洛斯特、杰弗斯等,认为他们直接继承了华兹华斯和勃朗宁等人的英国叙事诗传统。作为华裔,蔡先生有很强的传宗接代意识;同样,作为“新形式主义者”,诗人对诗歌体裁也应有很强的传统意识。蔡先生感悟到家庭中永恒的生死轮回,而诗人应当担负起叙事诗传统,让这种传统以一代又一代“孩子”的面目获得新生。
然而诗人并没有像蔡先生那样停留在对自己的无力和对命运定数的哀叹上,而是找到了自己对于叙事诗传统的传承方案。以弗洛斯特的叙事诗为范本,诗人倡导一种融合抒情、依赖格律的中篇叙事诗创作。《清点孩子》以但丁惯用的三行诗节为形式外观,以传统史诗的无韵体糅合当代口语,并以丰富的节奏变体突出了韵律的表意功能。全诗几乎是叙述者的戏剧独白,既塑造了人物形象,又浓缩了故事情节。诗歌的创作正值诗人痛失幼子的哀伤时期,然而诗歌并没有成为诗人情感的直接宣泄,而是以虚构的人物和事件为读者呈现一个发人深省的传承与创新的主题。
以《清点孩子》为代表的中篇叙事诗为“新形式主义”诗歌提供了可行的范例,其诗歌表现的叙事功能成为“新形式主义”复兴传统诗歌形式的核心。叙事营造出的自足语境避免了诗歌中抒情成分的过度自指,也使诗歌能够驾驭更为广阔的题材,还能够吸引更多阶层的读者参与。这种叙事诗在沿用传统史诗的格律规则的同时,主张尝试相对短小的篇幅和容易驾驭的题材。这为延续叙事诗传统提供了一种折衷策略,也有助于改变当前美国诗歌受体制化影响导致的读者同质化和体裁单一化倾向。
Counting the Children, a narrative poem by the chief member of the "New Formalist" poet Dana Gioia (1950- ), invites speculation on familial responsibility and immortality in the narration of the protagonist's nightmare of losing his child. Nonetheless, the poem with its full metaphors in characters and event serves as a parable of Gioia's traditionalism of creating the mid-length narratives in Frostian style.
The protagonist of the narrative is a Chinese-American accountant, Mr. Choi. When sent to audit the estate of a single old woman recently dead, he was shocked to find a dim room stuffed with all kinds of dolls which the old woman collected from trash and put in order. That summoned a nightmare of Mr. Choi, in which he could not settle the account anyhow and seemed interrogated by his generations of ancestors, and as a terrible result his daughter would die because of his inability. Roused from the nightmare, Mr. Choi hurried into his daughter's room. Watching his sleeping daughter, he realized in a vision that the eternal circularity of birth-and-death in a family is beyond one's control, and the immortality is tantalizing.
Mr. Choi's terror of losing his child is a metaphor of Gioia's deep worry about the narrative tradition being rejected. Gioia is afraid that the narrative tradition would be thrown into the trash of poetry by a collective unconsciousness after the age of Modernism. As terror is always attended by love, Mr. Choi's love for his child resembles Gioia's personal taste for traditional narratives. Gioia dislikes the modern epic composed of short lyrics, which he deems as the room of the collected dolls, isolated from general people and finally abandoned. He appreciates Frost, Jeffers, etc, the American poets in the early twentieth century, who wrote narratives with the inheritance of Wordsworth and Browning. As a Chinese descendant, Mr. Choi attached great importance to continuing the family line. Likewise, a "New Formalist" as Gioia ought to have a deep historical sense of poetic genres. As Mr. Choi perceived the familial immortality, Gioia proposes that poets take the responsibility of inheriting the narrative tradition and getting its rebirth as "children" of one generation after another.
Unlike Mr. Choi left himself lamenting for personal helplessness and fatal determinacy, Gioia has found his identity in developing the narrative tradition. Following Frostian style, Gioia advocates a mid-length narrative with lyric intensity and metric regulations. Based on this, Counting the Children is composed of tercets in prosaic blank verse, which recalls traditional meter and Dante's stanza. To further the virtues of form, Gioia makes the consummate interplay of meter and rhythm with rhetorical variation. And dramatic monologue, which consists of almost the total narrative, serves effectively for characterization and meanwhile condenses the plot. The lyrical mode is not rendered to the poet's natural outburst of his mourning emotion even then he was suffering from his first son's death. Rather Gioia had recomposed the poem, with his recovery from deep sorrow, to illustrate a certain intellectual and moral problem of inheritance and innovation in a fictional narrative.
The mid-length narrative represented by Gioia's Counting the Children provides a practicable strategy for the "New Formalist" poetry, and establishes the centrality of narrative to the "New Formalism" which aims at the revival of traditional forms. Since narrative constructs a self-contained context, it is capable of preventing the lyrical element from the over self-referential, and making poetry competent to cover a wide variety of literary materials and attract a multiple levels of readership to participate. Further, this model of narrative, which insists on the applications of traditional meter and manageable subjects in mid-length, has become a modest but fruitful proposal to continue the narrative tradition, and meanwhile played a part in reversing the homogeneity of readership and the monotony of genres influenced by the institutionalization of contemporary American poetics.
引文
[1]陶洁.论20世纪晚期的美国诗歌[J].四川外语学院学报,2004(1):26-32.
[2]陶洁.灯下西窗--美国文学和美国文化[M].北京:北京大学出版社,2004,99-116.
[3]董衡巽.美国文学简史(修订本)[M].北京:人民文学出版社,2003,715-725.
[4]刘海平,王守仁.新编美国文学史(第四卷)[M].王守仁主撰.上海:上海外语教育出版社,2002,213-240.
[5]刘雪岚,丁晓君,肖静.中国“十五”期间美国诗歌与戏剧研究[J].外国文学研究,2005(3):11-21.
[6]Mcphillips,Robert.The New Formalism:A Critical Introduction[M].Textos Books,2005,33-58.
[7]Gioia,Dana and Gloria Brame.Paradigms Lost[URL].http://www.danagioia.net/about/brame.htm,2008-10-04.
[8]张致祥主编.西方引语宝典[M].北京:商务印书馆,2001.
[9]Abrams,M.H.A Glossary of Literary Terms[M].Beijing:Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press,2004.
[10]Eliot,T.S.Notes Towards the Definition of Culture[M].London:Faber& Faber,1948,43-44.
[11]Eliot,T.S.Selected Essays(third English edition)[M].London:Faber& Faber,1951.
[12]Eliot,T.S.On Poetry and Poets[M].London:Faber& Faber,1957,58.
[13]Moody,David(ed.).The Cambridge Companion to T.S.Eliot[M].Shanghai:Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press,2000.
[14]Gioia,Dana.Can Poetry Matter?:Essays on Poetry and American Culture[M].Saint Paul:Graywolf Press,1992.
[15]Gioia,Dana and Robert McPhillips.Interview with Robert McPhillips[URL].http://www.danagioia.net/about/mcphillips.htm,2008-10-04.
[16]聂珍钊.英语诗歌形式导论[M].北京:中国社会科学出版社,2007,49-55.
[17]黄玫.韵律与意义:20世纪俄罗斯诗学理论研究[M].北京:人民出版社,2005,130-131.
[18]Guerin,Wilfred L.etc,.A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature[M].Beijing:Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press,2004,307-311.
[19]Faggen,Robert(ed.).The Cambridge Companion to Robert Frost[M].Shanghai:Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press,2004.
[20]Brooks,Cleanth and Robert Penn Warren.Understanding Poetry[M].Beijing:Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press,2004,493-576.
[21]Gioia,Dana and Christina Vick.Interview with Christina Vick[URL].http://www.danagioia.net/about/vick.htm,2008-10-04.
[22]Frost,Robert.Collected Poems,Prose,and Plays[M].edited by Richard Poirier and Mark Richardson.New York:Library of America,1995.
[23]杨自伍编.英国散文名篇欣赏[M].上海:上海外语教育出版社,1995.
[24]脱剑鸣.美国当代“新叙事诗"运动和戴那·乔亚的叙事诗创作[J].当代外国文学,2007(3):47-55.
[25]Trawick,Leonard M.Poetry in America:an End-of-the-Century Report[J].Foreign Language Education,1999(2):8-21.
[26]Beach,Christopher.The Cambridge Introduction to Twentieth-Century American Poetry[M].Chongqing:Chongqing Publishing House,2006,151-153.
[27]Gioia,Dana.Daily Horoscope[M].Saint Paul:GraywolfPress,1986,81-85.
[28]Gioia,Dana.The Gods of Winter[M].Saint Paul:GraywolfPress,1991,39-52.
[29]Gioia,Dana.Nosferatu[M].Saint Paul:Graywolf Press,2001.
[30]樊志华.从接受美学看弗洛斯特诗歌的艺术生命力[J].忻州师范学院学报,2005(5):18-21.
[31]脱剑鸣.评提摩太·斯蒂尔的“新形式主义”诗歌理论[J].外国文学研究,2004(1):32-36.
[32]Rosenthal,M.L.The Modern Poets:A Critical Introduction[M].Beijing:Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press,2004,122-131.
[33]黎志敏.英语诗歌形式研究的认知转向[J].外国文学研究,2008(1):163-170.
[2]陶洁.灯下西窗--美国文学和美国文化[M].北京:北京大学出版社,2004,99-116.
[3]董衡巽.美国文学简史(修订本)[M].北京:人民文学出版社,2003,715-725.
[4]刘海平,王守仁.新编美国文学史(第四卷)[M].王守仁主撰.上海:上海外语教育出版社,2002,213-240.
[5]刘雪岚,丁晓君,肖静.中国“十五”期间美国诗歌与戏剧研究[J].外国文学研究,2005(3):11-21.
[6]Mcphillips,Robert.The New Formalism:A Critical Introduction[M].Textos Books,2005,33-58.
[7]Gioia,Dana and Gloria Brame.Paradigms Lost[URL].http://www.danagioia.net/about/brame.htm,2008-10-04.
[8]张致祥主编.西方引语宝典[M].北京:商务印书馆,2001.
[9]Abrams,M.H.A Glossary of Literary Terms[M].Beijing:Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press,2004.
[10]Eliot,T.S.Notes Towards the Definition of Culture[M].London:Faber& Faber,1948,43-44.
[11]Eliot,T.S.Selected Essays(third English edition)[M].London:Faber& Faber,1951.
[12]Eliot,T.S.On Poetry and Poets[M].London:Faber& Faber,1957,58.
[13]Moody,David(ed.).The Cambridge Companion to T.S.Eliot[M].Shanghai:Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press,2000.
[14]Gioia,Dana.Can Poetry Matter?:Essays on Poetry and American Culture[M].Saint Paul:Graywolf Press,1992.
[15]Gioia,Dana and Robert McPhillips.Interview with Robert McPhillips[URL].http://www.danagioia.net/about/mcphillips.htm,2008-10-04.
[16]聂珍钊.英语诗歌形式导论[M].北京:中国社会科学出版社,2007,49-55.
[17]黄玫.韵律与意义:20世纪俄罗斯诗学理论研究[M].北京:人民出版社,2005,130-131.
[18]Guerin,Wilfred L.etc,.A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature[M].Beijing:Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press,2004,307-311.
[19]Faggen,Robert(ed.).The Cambridge Companion to Robert Frost[M].Shanghai:Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press,2004.
[20]Brooks,Cleanth and Robert Penn Warren.Understanding Poetry[M].Beijing:Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press,2004,493-576.
[21]Gioia,Dana and Christina Vick.Interview with Christina Vick[URL].http://www.danagioia.net/about/vick.htm,2008-10-04.
[22]Frost,Robert.Collected Poems,Prose,and Plays[M].edited by Richard Poirier and Mark Richardson.New York:Library of America,1995.
[23]杨自伍编.英国散文名篇欣赏[M].上海:上海外语教育出版社,1995.
[24]脱剑鸣.美国当代“新叙事诗"运动和戴那·乔亚的叙事诗创作[J].当代外国文学,2007(3):47-55.
[25]Trawick,Leonard M.Poetry in America:an End-of-the-Century Report[J].Foreign Language Education,1999(2):8-21.
[26]Beach,Christopher.The Cambridge Introduction to Twentieth-Century American Poetry[M].Chongqing:Chongqing Publishing House,2006,151-153.
[27]Gioia,Dana.Daily Horoscope[M].Saint Paul:GraywolfPress,1986,81-85.
[28]Gioia,Dana.The Gods of Winter[M].Saint Paul:GraywolfPress,1991,39-52.
[29]Gioia,Dana.Nosferatu[M].Saint Paul:Graywolf Press,2001.
[30]樊志华.从接受美学看弗洛斯特诗歌的艺术生命力[J].忻州师范学院学报,2005(5):18-21.
[31]脱剑鸣.评提摩太·斯蒂尔的“新形式主义”诗歌理论[J].外国文学研究,2004(1):32-36.
[32]Rosenthal,M.L.The Modern Poets:A Critical Introduction[M].Beijing:Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press,2004,122-131.
[33]黎志敏.英语诗歌形式研究的认知转向[J].外国文学研究,2008(1):163-170.