Whitman and his Poems

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1、Whitman and his PoemsI. Review1. First, lets read again the following, and try to think each of them:Example 1:When we speak of nature in this manner, we have a distinct but most poetical sense in mind. We mean the integrity of impression made by manifold natural objects. It is this which distinguis

2、hes the stick of timber of the wood-cutter, from the tree of the poet. (Nature by Ralph Waldo Emerson, par. 3, p. 62)当我们这样谈论自然时，我们在心里有一种最明确但也最富诗意的意义。我们指的是多种多样的自然物体所造成的印象的完整性，就是这一点使伐木工人的树枝和诗人的树枝区别开来。Please read the following poem, and try to know the distinction of the willow twigs between the poet a

3、nd timber of the wood-cutter. 咏柳碧玉妆成一树高，万条垂下绿丝绦。不知细叶谁裁出，二月春风似剪刀。唐 贺知章 “碧玉妆成一树高，万条垂下绿丝绦”，深深地抓着了垂柳的特征，在诗人的眼中，它似美女的化身。高高的树干，就像她亭亭玉立的风姿，下垂的柳条，就像她裙摆上的丝带。在这里，柳就是人，人就是柳，两者之间仿佛没有什么截然的分别。而且“碧玉”也有双关的意义。既在字面上与柳树的翠色相合，又指年轻貌美的少女，与下面的“二月春风”恰相呼应这是早春的垂柳，还未到夏秋之际亭亭如盖、树荫清圆的时候。然而，更妙的以下两句：“不知细叶谁载出，二月春风似剪刀。” 把乍暖还寒的二月春风由无

4、形化为有形，它显示了春风的神奇灵巧，并使咏柳成为咏物诗的典范之作。Example 2: To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature. Most persons do not see the sun. At least they have a very superficial seeing. The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the heart of the child. (Nature by Ralph Waldo Emerson

5、, par. 4, p. 62)老实讲，您能够看见自然的成年人很少，人们大都看不见太阳。即使看见，他们的印象也很浮浅。太阳只会照亮成人的眼睛，却能照进孩子的眼睛和心理。Read the following poems on the sun, trying to understand different poets different feelings and perspectives to the same object:Poem 1:太阳太阳，你是灯光，给宇宙照明。没有了你， 宇宙将会一片漆黑。太阳，你是肥料，让花草树木茁壮生长。没有了你，地球就会变成枯枝败叶的海洋。太阳，我们不能离开你，离

6、开了你，宇宙就一团糟。 太阳，你是光明，你是温暖。太阳，我爱你！Poem 2:阳光灿烂灿烂的阳光，在这个严寒冬日的早晨，略微让人感到一丝的温暖。啊！美好的阳光啊，你带给了人类温暖，你带给了人类美好。在每一个灰暗的日子里，有了你的陪伴，世界将一片光明！Poem 3:七月的太阳七月的太阳，最好你不要出来。你总是高高在上，盛气凌人。即便是你，淹没在云头半隐半藏，大气层也透着你的火气和高温。作为军人，我走在你的光焰照耀之下，更渴望晴天霹雳，让闪电把你的光芒退走，让细雨给我们送一丝清凉。七月的太阳，你不要心痛军人的汗水而长时间离开。天空有了太多的绵绵阴雨，洪水泛滥，人们才知道你热烈和奔放的真诚。七月的太

7、阳，绿色的军装在你热诚中，走向田野。军人的忠诚和果敢，离不开你火爆的锤炼，大地的丰富和色彩，也离不开你电闪雷鸣的泪雨。火红的七月，我们顶着太阳出发。一路阳光，一路剪影。满眼都是绿色，未来的收成。满眼都是绿色，流汗的钢枪。Example 3:Not the sun or the summer alone, but every hour and season yields its tribute of delight; for every hour and change corresponds to and authorizes a different state of the mind, fro

8、m breathless noon to grimmest midnight. Nature is a setting that fits equally well a comic or a mourning piece. In good health, the air is a cordial of incredible virtue. Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of specia

9、l good fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. (Nature by Ralph Waldo Emerson, line 6 to line 13 from the top, p. 63) 不仅仅是太阳或夏天，而是每一时刻、每一季节都产生了自己快乐的贡物；因为从闷热的中午到最冷酷的午夜，一切时间和变化都应和着不同的心境，并且认可这种心境。自然是喜剧或悲剧情节都配合得同样恰当的布景。身体健康的情况下，空气是一种令人难以相信的美德的兴奋剂。薄暮时分，在多云的天空下，走向雪泥纷乱的荒原去，心里没想到任何特别幸运的事情，我享受着完全的欣喜。

10、Read another poem depicting the “sun”:遥望太阳 我站在地平线上，遥望刚刚醒来的太阳。它双手揉着惺忪的眼眶，单纯又天真纯洁而可爱，像幼小的孩童一样！我站在地平线上，遥望天路中央的太阳。它刺目耀眼的光。照射着四面八方，每个角落都有它的影子掩藏，忽来一层浓重的云彩把它遮挡。又怎能遮挡住它一身的能量？我站在地平线上，遥望将要睡下的太阳。它一路奔忙，累得只剩下一点微弱的光，像是从一家农户的窗里，射出的一缕昏黄的灯光。难道它已经找好了地方在西山的一张席梦思上，进入甜美的梦乡？Please read and appreciate some ancient Chinese

11、 poems or lines describing “snow”:梅花逊雪三分白，雪却输梅一段香。卢梅坡白雪纷纷何所似，撒盐空中差可似。北风卷地百草折，胡天八月即飞雪。忽如一夜楚风来，千树万户梨花开。岑参雪-这个冬天不能承受之轻漫天飞舞的白色精灵，亲吻着大地。那是天使的眼泪坠落凡间，带着沉淀的凄美。 明知道凡间是你生命的终点，却飞蛾扑火般决绝，铺天盖地，无声无息，将大地的阴霾涤清，唤醒春心，片片白雪，你的生命是这个冬天不能承受。II. An Introduction to Whitman1. WhitmanPoet of the PeopleThe other major writer at

12、 mid-century, Walt Whitman, was unique. His Leaves of Grass (1855) was new in form and in content. Whitman wrote about his country in a way never done before. At first the little book of strange verse seemed a failure. Emerson, however, recognized its greatness, and now most people agree that it was

13、 the first book of truly American poetry.Here, at last, was the fresh, distinguished but destined to create an art wholly American. Through Whitmans poetry the new nation is caught in its largeness, its variety, and its great energy. Ones-Self I Sing and his major poem, Song of Myself, are brilliant

14、 and complex utterances of the human spirit freed in the New World.Walt Whitmans poems are a love letter to his country. To accomplish his purpose of singing the praise of the untrammeled American spirit, Whitman forsook the confining poetic forms of his day. His poems are melodic chants, suited to

15、the ear.Readers around the world have turned to Whitman as the spokesman for the new democratic society. No poet has celebrated that society with more enthusiasm or more poetic genius than Walt Whitman. His verses are a striking contrast to the neat meters and rhymes of conventional poetry previousl

16、y written. Since Whitmans death, his writing has influenced many other American poets. (See also Whitman, Walt.)III. 自由诗（Free Verse）自由诗（free verse）比传统的素体诗或无韵诗更加自由，它没有尾韵，根本不考虑节奏的一致、诗行的整齐。也就是说，自由诗在格律上不受约束，不仅仅押韵上不受约束，在对仗，字数上也没有很多要求。但是自由诗又往往以排比（parallelism ）、反复（repetition）等手段鲜明独特的节奏，以头韵（alliteration ）及其

17、他行内韵形式来形成特有的韵律。自惠特曼以来的现代诗人有很多都写无韵的自由诗。惠特曼就擅长用排比、反复、诗行长度有规律的增减等手段来取代传统的格律和韵律，营造一种前所未有的节奏。尽管如此，惠特曼的诗歌中仍然依稀可辨出抑扬格形式，而在他之后的诗人走得更远，对格律和韵律更加淡化，从而形成一种完全不同于传统素体诗的诗体。如杰出的英国诗人飞利普拉金（Philip Larkin）下面的这一首诗：DaysWhat are days for?Days are where we live.They come, they wake usTime and time over.They are to be happy

18、 inWhere can we live but days?Ah, solving that questionBring the priest and the doctorIn their long coatsRunning over the fields日子日子有何用？我们过的就是日子。日子来临，把我们唤醒，一遍又一遍。日子里应该有快乐没有了日子我们还能怎么过？呵，为着解决这个问题来了医生和教士穿着长袍在尘世间奔波。 罗良功译在这首诗中，我们还可以看到传统诗歌的格律和韵律吗？IV. 素体诗或无韵诗（Blank Verse）格律和韵律是诗歌音乐性的重要内容，但并不是全部内容。有些诗人认为格律和

19、韵律在某些情况下会束缚思想，影响自然奔放的思想表达，所以在创作中往往根据表达的需要而放弃尾韵。素体诗和自由诗就属于这类诗。素体诗 (blank verse) 没有尾韵，但并非没有格律，相反，素体诗有着较固定的格律，即以抑扬格五音步建行。也就是说，素体诗或无韵诗，对于字数，对仗上还有一定的要求，只是不要求用韵而已。这种诗体为英国文学史留下了辉煌的篇章。莎士比亚的诗剧有许多是以素体诗写成的，米尔顿的失乐园（Paradise Lost），丁尼生的尤利西斯（Ulysses）也是用这种诗体写成的。如米尔顿的向光呼吁（Light）就是一种素体诗，现摘录其中一部分为例：But Cloud / in stea

20、d, / and e/verdu/ring darkSurrounds / me from / the chear/ful waies / of menCut off / and for / the Book / of know/ledge fairPresen/ted with / a u/niver/sal blancOf Na/tures works / to meet/ expund / and rasd,And wis/dome at / one en/trance quite / shut out.恰恰相反，我的周围是乌云，和永不散化的黑暗，人间的交往，已跟我绝断，知识的书本已阖起

21、，自然现象，好像在眼前涂抹掉，汇然一片，恰如无字的纸篇，智慧的一重门户已被关严。 殷宝书译这节诗无韵，但每行均为标准的抑扬格五音步，是典型的的素体诗形式。V. 惠特曼的诗歌（Whitmans Poems）1. The embodiment of Walt Whitmans Democratic Ideals in his poetic creationLeaves of Grass has always been considered a monumental work which commands great attention because of its uniquely poetic

22、embodiment of American democratic ideals as written in the founding documents of both the Revolutionary War in the United States and the Civil War, and the author of the book is a giant of American letters. This man is Walt Whitman.2. Shakespeare and Miltons strong influence on Whitmans poetic creat

23、ionIn his early age, Whitman had already shown his strong love for literature, reading a great deal on his own, especially the works of Shakespeare and Milton, and developed his potential for the writing career in the future.3. Whitmans creating experience and his aesthetic principlesWhitman worked

24、as an office boy in a law firm, took up journalism, and turned to the manual work of carpentry. At the same time, he widened his reading to a new scale and made it systematic. It was during these years that Whitmans democratic ideals gradually took shape, which governed his poetry-writing, and thats

25、 why he could later put forward his own set of aesthetic principles. Leaves of Grass was just the expression of these principles.4. The openness, freedom, and individualism embodied in Whitmans poetic creationWalt Whitman is a poet with a strong sense of mission, having devoted all his life to the c

26、reation of the “single” poem, Leaves of Grass. In this giant work, openness, freedom, and individualism are all concerned him. His aim was nothing less than to express some new poetical feelings and to initiate a poetic tradition in which difference should be recognized. 5. Whitmans understanding of

27、 the spirit of a nation and his concern for the theme of his poetic creationAs Whitman saw it, poetry could play a vial part in the process of creating a new nation. It could enable Americans to celebrate their release from the Old World and the colonial rules. And it could also help them understand

28、 their new status and to define themselves in the new world of possibilities. He showed concern for the whole hardworking people and the burgeoning life of cities.6. The Style of Whitmans Poems Whitmans poetic style is marked, first of all, by the use of the poetic “I”. Speaking in the voice of “I”,

29、 he becomes all those people in his poems（用诗表达了所有人的心声）, and yet still remains “Walt Whitman” . He is dramatizing a triangle one（三者的关系）: “I” the poet, the subject in the poem, and “you” the reader. In such manner, Whitman invites us, as we read his lines, to participate in the process of sympathetic

30、identification. 7. The feature of the Free Verse created by WhitmanWhitman is radically innovative in terms of the form of his poetry. What he prefers for his new subject and poetic feelings is “free verse”, that is , poetry without a fixed beat or regular rhyme scheme. A looser and more open-ended

31、syntactical structure is frequently favored. By means of “free verse”, Whitman believed, he has turned the poem into an open field, an area of vital possibility where the reader can allow his own imagination to play（引起读者自由想象和共鸣）. And as the poet, Whitman can be conversational and casual, in the flui

32、d（不定的）, expansive（可扩张的）, and unstructured style of talking, like one of the ordinary men. However, there is still a strong sense of the poems being rhythmical. So when we read his poems, we can feel the rhythm of Whitmans thought and cadences（韵律，节奏） of his feeling. Parallelism and phonetic recurrenc

33、e （音韵再现） at the beginning of the lines also contribute to the musicality（音乐感） of his poems.8. The language style of Whitmans poemsContrary to the rhetoric（华丽辞藻） of traditional poetry, Whitmans is relatively simple and even rather crude. Most of the pictures he pained with words are honest, undistort

34、ed（逼真的） images of different aspects of America of the day. Another characteristic in Whitmans language is his strong tendency to use oral English, which has a lot to do with his early career as a newspaperman and the Americans traditional love for orations and orators. Whitmans vocabulary is amazing

35、. He would use powerful, colorful, as well as rarely-used words, words of foreign origin and sometimes even wrong words.9. Whitmans influence over the following generationsWalt Whitman has proved a great figure in the literary history of the United States because he embodies a new ideal, a new world

36、 and a new life-style, and his influence over the following generations is significant and incredible. Love for Whitman and his poetry is bound to increase to an unprecedented height.四、如何欣赏英语诗歌VI. 英语诗歌的欣赏角度由于人们的审美能力、审美趣味千差万别，对于阅读诗歌的体验和欣赏角度也不尽相同。一般来说，读者可根据自身的实际，适当地调整自己的阅读欣赏角度。概括起来，可归纳为以下三种欣赏角度：1. 以作品

37、本体为中心的阅读欣赏角度从这一角度欣赏英语诗歌作品，就是将注意力放在诗歌作品本身的语言结构、修辞手段、文体风格、意象、韵律、节奏等纯形式的因素上，而不去理会作者、作品所处的社会环境、作品的形成与流变，读者的反应等。这是一个最重要最具有审美价值的欣赏角度。有助于读者提高对语言（尤其是诗歌语言）的理解力。2. 从作者的角度来领悟评判一首英语诗歌对于一首诗歌的欣赏，常常必须对作者有所了解。从作者的角度欣赏诗歌就是注重作者本人的生活经历、文学素养、哲学和社会观念、思维方式和心理特点、个人特征，以及作者的文学主张与实践等因素，尤其是注重这些要素与具体诗作的关系，极力地从诗作中寻找诗人的影子。但要注意的是

38、：过分强调作者的因素，无疑会影响读者对诗作本身的审美判断。3. 读者从自身的角度理解、欣赏诗作这一角度是指读者发挥自己的主体性，充分运用自己的主观欣赏能力去阅读诗作。读者角度可分为两类：一是被动读者角度，即读者受外界评论的影响，在他人先有定论或暗示的前提下去欣赏作品，这时读者也会发挥自己的主体性和主观能动性，但往往是带着别人的观点去阅读。二是主动读者角度，即读者无视他人的评价和观点，无视诗作者的地位和影响，而全凭读者自身的喜好和领悟来评介一首诗。此时即使读者对诗作的评价是相当片面甚至是荒诞的，他也能获得较强烈的诗歌欣赏的美感经历和乐趣。当然，被动读者同样能够给予读者审美快感。以上三个角度常常被

39、视为是文学欣赏的三大基本角度。除此之外，读者也可以从社会、政治、历史、人伦等角度审视作品。然而，无论怎样，一首诗的欣赏不是单从某一角度就可以完成的，应该多种角度变换使用，才有可能尽量接近完整的理解，才有可能获得更深入更充分的审美享受。4. 中国读者欣赏英语诗歌的角度中国人阅读英语诗歌或英译汉诗歌，常常感觉困难、甚至有隔膜或挫折感，究其原因，主要是因为英汉诗歌传统之间存在巨大差异。中国人受中国诗歌传统的影响和东方文化的熏陶，形成了自己独特的诗歌阅读的经验视野，而有着不同传统和文化背景的英语诗歌则与中国读者的经验视野存在着根本的差异。中国读者要达到阅读和欣赏英语诗歌的目的，必须要调整自己的经验视野

40、，尽量站在英语诗歌传统的角度去解读。第一，中国读者应接受英语诗歌的美学风格，调整自己的期待视野。英语诗歌以叙事为主流，抒情诗次之，诗歌以写实为主，按时间、空间顺序展开铺陈，显得朴实、直率、刚毅。英语抒情诗深受这种风格影响，思想情感的表现往往借助于外化的事件或对客观现实的描述，以对现象和事件的写实去揭示对人生和社会的认识，具有较强的思辨性。而汉语诗歌，尤其是古典诗歌，以抒情诗为主，叙事处于从属地位。即便是叙事诗体也力避铺陈，不以时间和空间顺序进行描述，呈现“时间空间化”的态势。中国诗讲究凝练，着意空白的制造，最求写意手法，强调以有限的笔墨来表现最丰富的意义，达到一种言不尽意的效果，能给读者留下很大的想象空间。即使是抒情诗，也存在着审美角度的不同。英语抒情诗侧重于通过对客观外在事件的描述来揭示人与自然、人与社会的关系，强调理性的思辨；即使有景物的描写，也只是一种外在的客观的东西，只有通过诗人的主观感悟之后，才有了人的思想感情，这纯粹是诗人移情的结果。汉语诗歌则寓情于景，“一切景语皆情语”，景的描写即是情的流露。也就是说，在英语诗歌中外界与内心的关系总是十分清楚明了、界限分明的，而在汉语诗歌中情与景交汇融合，没有分界，景即是情的背景、气氛、又是情本身。