美國桂冠詩人的自白

這年頭，詩人不是一個(gè)招人待見的稱號，寫詩也不是一個(gè)安身立命的行當(dāng)。古往今來，不少懷抱理想與激情的詩人只不過在俗世里演繹了一首又一首潦倒的悲歌。但我依舊喜歡寫詩。從少年開始，一直到步入古稀，我始終沒有放下那支寫詩的筆。這不是愚蠢的狂熱，不是一生的職業(yè)追求，當(dāng)然也不是為了吸引異性的目光。我寫詩只是因?yàn)橄矚g，就像魚兒喜歡水一樣自然。

When my mother was very old and in a nursing home， she surprised me one day toward the end of her life by asking me if I still wrote poetry. When I blurted out2) that I still do， she stared at me with incomprehension. I had to repeat what I said， till she sighed and shook her head， probably thinking to herself， “This son of mine has always been a little nuts3).” Now that I’m in my seventies， I’m asked that question now and then by people who don’t know me well. Many of them， I suspect， hope to hear me say that I’ve come to my senses4) and given up that foolish passion of my youth and are visibly surprised to hear me confess that I haven’t yet. They seem to think there is something downright unwholesome5) and even shocking about it， as if I were dating a high school girl， at my age， and going with her roller-skating that night.

Another question poets old and young are typically asked in interviews is when and why they decided to become poets. The assumption is that there was a moment when they came to realize there can be no other destiny for them but to write poetry， followed by the announcement to their families that had their mothers exclaim: “Oh God， what did we do wrong to deserve this?” while their fathers ripped out their belts and chased them around the room. I was often tempted6) to tell the interviewer with a straight face that I had chosen poetry to get my hands on7) all that big prize money that’s lying around， since informing them that there was never any decision like that in my case inevitably disappoints them. They want to hear something heroic and poetic， and I tell them that I was just another high school kid who wrote poems in order to impress girls， but with no other ambition beyond that. Not being a native speaker of English， they also ask me why I didn’t write my poems in Serbian8) and wonder how I arrived at the decision to ditch9) my mother tongue. Again， my answer seems frivolous10) to them， when I explain that for poetry to be used as an instrument of seduction， the first requirement is that it be understood. No American girl was likely to fall for a guy who reads her love poems in Serbian as they sip Coke.

The mystery to me is that I continued writing poetry long after there was any need for that. My early poems were embarrassingly bad， and the ones that came right after， not much better. I have known in my life a number of young poets with immense talent who gave up poetry even after being told they were geniuses. No one ever made that mistake with me， and yet I kept going. I now regret destroying my early poems， because I no longer remember whom they were modeled after. At the time I wrote them， I was reading mostly fiction and had little knowledge of contemporary poetry and modernist poets. The only extensive exposure I had to poetry was in the year I attended school in Paris before coming to the United States. They not only had us read Lamartine11)， Hugo12)， Baudelaire13)， Rimbaud14)， and Verlaine15)， but they made us memorize certain poems of theirs and recite them in front of the class. This was such a nightmare for me as a rudimentary16) speaker of French—and guaranteed fun for my classmates， who cracked up17) at the way I mispronounced some of the most beautiful and justly famous lines of poetry in French literature—that for years afterwards I couldn’t bring myself to take stock of18) what I learned in that class. Today， it’s clear to me that my love of poetry comes from those readings and those recitations， which left a deeper impact on me than I realized when I was young.

There’s something else in my past that I only recently realized contributed to my perseverance in writing poems， and that is my love of chess. I was taught the game in wartime Belgrade by a retired professor of astronomy when I was six years old and over the next few years became good enough to beat not just all the kids my age， but many of the grownups in the neighborhood. My first sleepless nights， I recall， were due to the games I lost and replayed in my head. Chess made me obsessive and tenacious19). Already then， I could not forget each wrong move， each humiliating defeat. I adored games in which both sides are reduced to a few figures each and in which every single move is of momentous significance. Even today， when my opponent is a computer program (I call it “God”) that outwits me nine out of ten times， I’m not only in awe of its superior intelligence， but find my losses far more interesting to me than my infrequent wins. The kinds of poems I write—mostly short and requiring endless tinkering—often recall for me games of chess. They depend for their success on word and image being placed in proper order and their endings must have the inevitability and surprise of an elegantly executed checkmate20).

Of course， it is easy to say all this now. When I was eighteen years old， I had other worries. My parents had split up and I was on my own， working in an office in Chicago and attending university classes at night. Later on， in 1958， when I moved to New York， I led the same kind of life. I wrote poems and published a few of them in literary magazines， but I didn’t expect that any of that activity would amount to much21). People I worked with and befriended had no inkling22) that I was a poet. I also painted a little and found it easier to confess that interest to a stranger. All I knew with any certainty about my poems is that they were not as good as I wanted them to be and that I was determined， for my own peace of mind， to write something I wouldn’t be embarrassed to show my literary friends. In the meantime， there were other more pressing things to attend to， like getting married， paying the rent， hanging out in bars and jazz clubs， and every night before going to bed baiting the mousetraps in my apartment on East 13th Street with peanut butter.

母親遲暮之年住在養(yǎng)老院里，在她生命最后的那段日子里，有一天她突然出乎意料地問我是否還在寫詩。我不假思索地回答說還在寫。她兩眼瞪著我，帶著一種不可思議的表情。我只好重復(fù)了一遍剛才的回答，她嘆了口氣，搖了搖頭，心里也許在想：“我這個(gè)兒子一直都有點(diǎn)兒呆氣。”現(xiàn)在，我自己也已經(jīng)七十多歲了，有些不太了解我的人時(shí)常會問我同樣的問題。我想，他們中的許多人大概都希望聽我說我已經(jīng)恢復(fù)了理智，放棄了年輕時(shí)愚蠢的狂熱。但聽到我坦言還沒有放棄時(shí)，他們臉上都露出明顯的驚訝之色。他們似乎認(rèn)為這種事大大地不妥，甚至感到震驚，就好像我到了這個(gè)年齡還在和中學(xué)生約會，并且當(dāng)晚還和她一起溜旱冰似的。

在采訪中，老老少少的詩人們經(jīng)常被問及的另一個(gè)典型問題就是：你是什么時(shí)候以及為何決定成為詩人的？問這樣問題的人認(rèn)定在某個(gè)特定的時(shí)刻，詩人們意識到他們命中注定只能寫詩，除此以外別無選擇，然后便向家人宣布這一決定；聽到這一決定，媽媽們驚呼：“天哪，我們到底造了什么孽，要遭到這種報(bào)應(yīng)??？”而父親們則扯下腰帶把他們追得滿屋子亂跑。我知道，如果告訴他們在我生命中從來就沒有過這樣的決定，他們一定會大失所望的，所以我往往忍不住繃著臉告訴采訪者：我之所以選擇寫詩，是因?yàn)榈教幎加写蠊P大筆的詩歌獎(jiǎng)金，我就是想大撈一把。他們想要聽的是某個(gè)英勇的、充滿詩意的故事，但我告訴他們，我當(dāng)時(shí)就是個(gè)普普通通的中學(xué)生，寫詩無非是想吸引女孩子，沒有別的遠(yuǎn)大理想。由于英語不是我的母語，他們也問我為什么不用塞爾維亞語寫詩，還想知道我是怎么決定要放棄母語的。同樣，我的回答在他們看來過于淺薄了，我告訴他們：詩歌要作為泡妞的工具，其首要條件就是能被人理解。沒有哪個(gè)喝可樂的美國女孩會愛上一個(gè)用塞爾維亞語向她讀情詩的男孩。

對我來說，不可思議的是，雖然我早已不再需要為追女孩子而寫詩，我卻依然筆耕不輟。我早期寫的詩真的很糟，說起來都不好意思，而之后寫的那些也沒有提高多少。我這輩子見過一些年輕詩人，他們非常有才華，但卻放棄了寫詩，即使有人告訴他們說他們是天才。雖然從沒有人誤把我當(dāng)做天才，我卻從未放棄過。現(xiàn)在我有些后悔把我早期的詩作都?xì)У袅?，因?yàn)槲乙延洸磺迥切┳髌肥窃谀７抡l了。在我創(chuàng)作那些詩作時(shí)，我讀的大部分都是小說，對當(dāng)代詩歌和現(xiàn)代派詩人幾乎一無所知。我唯一廣泛接觸詩歌的時(shí)機(jī)是我來美國之前在巴黎上學(xué)的那一年。在巴黎，老師不但要我們讀拉馬丁、雨果、波德萊爾、蘭波和魏爾倫的詩作，還要我們記住他們的某些詩歌并在全班同學(xué)面前背誦出來。這對于只會點(diǎn)法語皮毛的我來說，無異于一場噩夢：我毫無疑問地成了全班同學(xué)的笑柄，聽到我將法國文學(xué)中那些最美麗、也理所應(yīng)當(dāng)是最著名的詩句讀得面目全非時(shí)，他們總是哄然大笑，這導(dǎo)致我在以后的幾年里都難以讓自己好好回味在課堂上學(xué)到的東西。而今天，我意識到，我對詩歌的愛好顯然正是來自于那個(gè)時(shí)期的大量閱讀和背誦，它對我的影響遠(yuǎn)比我年輕時(shí)所意識到的要大得多。

在過去的生活中，還有一些別的因素促使我仍在堅(jiān)持寫詩，只是直到最近我才意識到而已，那就是我對國際象棋的酷愛。我六歲的時(shí)候，在戰(zhàn)時(shí)的貝爾格萊德，一位退休的天文學(xué)教授教會了我下象棋。幾年后，我的棋藝突飛猛進(jìn)，不但可以打敗所有同齡的孩子，就連附近一帶許多成年人也不是我的對手。我至今仍記得，我最早的那些不眠之夜就是因?yàn)槲逸數(shù)袅讼笃?，在腦子里一遍又一遍回放下棋的過程。下棋讓我上癮著迷，也培養(yǎng)了我堅(jiān)忍不拔的個(gè)性。那時(shí)，我已經(jīng)能夠記住每一步走錯(cuò)的棋，每一次恥辱的失敗。那種雙方都只剩下幾個(gè)棋子，每走一步都極為關(guān)鍵的比賽是我最為喜歡的。即使今天，在我和十回戰(zhàn)勝我九回的電腦程序(我稱之為“神”) 對壘時(shí)，我也不僅僅是驚嘆于它高超的智能，而是發(fā)現(xiàn)，對我來說，失敗遠(yuǎn)比偶爾的獲勝更有意思。我所寫的詩歌——大多是短詩，而且需要無休止的錘煉——常常讓我想起棋盤上的角逐。詩歌的成敗在于其用詞和意象能否以適當(dāng)?shù)捻樞蚺帕校浣Y(jié)尾必須如下象棋。最后“將死”的那步棋，要泰然自若、揮灑自如，既水到渠成，又出人意料。

當(dāng)然，這一切現(xiàn)在說起來似乎很容易。我18歲時(shí)，還有其他一些煩惱。當(dāng)時(shí)，我的父母已離異，我獨(dú)自一人生活，在芝加哥的某個(gè)辦公室工作，晚上還要去大學(xué)上課。后來，在1958年，我搬到紐約，也是過著同樣的生活。我寫了一些詩，還在文學(xué)雜志上發(fā)表了幾首，但我并沒指望這種愛好能產(chǎn)生多么了不起的結(jié)果。我的同事和朋友根本不知道我在寫詩。我同時(shí)也在繪畫，我發(fā)現(xiàn)向陌生人承認(rèn)自己有繪畫的愛好更容易些。對于自己寫的詩，我唯一可以肯定的是它們沒有我希望的那么好，為求心靈上的寧靜，我決心要寫出一些能拿出手給文學(xué)圈里的朋友們看的東西。但同時(shí)，我還有更為緊迫的事情要處理，比如結(jié)婚啊，付房租啊，泡酒吧和爵士俱樂部啊，等等。而且，每天夜晚，在睡覺之前，我還要在我東13大街的公寓里用花生醬做誘餌擺放捕鼠夾。

1.Charles Simic：查理斯·西米克(1938～)，出生于前南斯拉夫的貝爾格萊德，1954年移民美國，1973年起執(zhí)教于新罕布什爾大學(xué)。西米克迄今已在美國和其他國家出版了六十多本著作，其中散文詩《世界尚未終結(jié)》贏得了1990年普利策詩歌獎(jiǎng)，詩集《溜黑貓》1996年出版后入圍美國國家圖書獎(jiǎng)。此外他還翻譯了大量法國、塞爾維亞、克羅地亞和斯洛文尼亞詩歌。2007年，他榮獲華萊士·史蒂文斯詩歌獎(jiǎng)，并當(dāng)選美國第15任桂冠詩人。本刊在2012年5月號刊登過查理斯·西米克的《電影相伴夜未央》(When Movies Kept Us Awake at Night)一文。

2.blurt out：(因?yàn)楦吲d或緊張而)不假思索地脫口而出

3.nuts [n?ts] adj. 〈俚〉笨的，傻的

4.come to one’s senses：清醒過來，恢復(fù)理性

5.unwholesome [??n?h??ls(?)m] adj. 有害身心健康的

6.tempt [tempt] vt. 吸引，引起……的興趣

7.get hands on：成功獲得

8.Serbian [?s??bj?n] n. 塞爾維亞語

9.ditch [d?t?] vt. 拋棄，丟棄

10.frivolous [?fr?v?l?s] adj. 輕浮的，無價(jià)值的

11.Lamartine：即阿爾方斯·馬里·路易斯·普拉·德拉馬丁(Alphonse Marie Louise Prat de Lamartine， 1790～1869)，法國著名浪漫主義詩人、作家和政治家

12.Hugo：即維克多·雨果(Victor Hugo， 1802～1885)，法國浪漫主義作家，法國文學(xué)史上卓越的資產(chǎn)階級民主作家

13.Baudelaire：即夏爾·皮埃爾·波德萊爾(Charles Pierre Baudelaire， 1821～1867)，法國19世紀(jì)最著名的現(xiàn)代派詩人，象征派詩歌先驅(qū)

14.Rimbaud：即阿爾蒂爾·蘭波(Arthur Rimbaud， 1854～1891)，19世紀(jì)法國著名詩人，超現(xiàn)實(shí)主義詩歌的鼻祖

15.Verlaine：即保羅-瑪利·魏爾倫(Paul-Marie Veriaine， 1844～1896)，法國詩人

16.rudimentary [?ru?d??ment(?)ri] adj. 初步的，粗淺的

17.crack up：大笑

18.take stock of：(對某人某事)作出評估；仔細(xì)審度

19.tenacious [t??ne???s] adj. 堅(jiān)忍不拔的，堅(jiān)毅的

20.checkmate [?t?ek?me?t] n. 將死(指國際象棋比賽中取勝的局面)

21.amount to much：有重要性，了不起

22.inkling [???kl??] n. 略知，模糊的概念

查理斯·西米克詩作賞析

Paradise Motel

Millions were dead; everybody was innocent.

I stayed in my room. The President

Spoke of war as of a magic love potion.

My eyes were opened in astonishment.

In a mirror my face appeared to me

Like a twice-canceled postage stamp.

I lived well， but life was awful.

There were so many soldiers that day，

So many refugees crowding the roads.

Naturally， they all vanished

With a touch of the hand.

History licked the corners of its bloody mouth.

On the pay channel， a man and a woman

Were trading hungry kisses and tearing off

Each other’s clothes while I looked on.

With the sound off and the room dark

Except for the screen where the color

Had too much red in it， too much pink.

天堂旅館

數(shù)百萬人死去；每個(gè)人都很無辜。

我待在自己房間里?？偨y(tǒng)談起戰(zhàn)爭

就好像談起一副神奇的春藥。

我睜大眼睛，感到很震驚。

鏡子里我的臉孔看起來

就像一張蓋了兩次郵戳的郵票。

我住得很好，但生活一團(tuán)糟。

那一天有太多的士兵，

太多的難民擠滿每一條街道。

輕輕地用手一點(diǎn)

自然而然，他們?nèi)枷Я恕?/p>

歷史舔了舔它血淋淋的嘴角。

在付費(fèi)頻道，一男一女

在饑渴地接吻，撕扯掉

彼此的衣服，我在一邊旁觀。

關(guān)掉聲音，房間里漆黑一片，

只有屏幕閃爍著亮光，

那里有太多的鮮紅，太多的粉色。

賞析

這首小詩表面看來寫的是一個(gè)人住在旅館里，無聊地看著電視，變換頻道，實(shí)則是一篇充滿象征元素的反戰(zhàn)檄文。詩歌題目《天堂旅館》一語雙關(guān)，“天堂”既暗指旅館這一方可逃避世俗責(zé)任的“世外桃源”，也令人想起美國這個(gè)富庶的社會。然而，就在美國這個(gè)天堂里，總統(tǒng)發(fā)布了戰(zhàn)爭的命令，把戰(zhàn)爭當(dāng)做解決各種矛盾的“神奇春藥”，結(jié)果造成數(shù)百萬人死亡，而他們?nèi)际菬o辜的民眾?？粗娨暲餄M大街的士兵和難民，身處“世外桃源”的“我”大概感到了厭倦，便“用手一點(diǎn)”，變換了頻道，于是“他們?nèi)枷Я恕?，被長著血盆大口的“歷史”吞噬。此時(shí)出現(xiàn)在屏幕上的是男歡女愛的場景。這里詩人大概是在暗示：戰(zhàn)爭的血腥絲毫沒有影響到人們尋歡作樂，普通美國人對戰(zhàn)爭毫不關(guān)心。詩歌最后以兩個(gè)鮮明的意象結(jié)束：“鮮紅”與“粉色”。它們一個(gè)暗示血腥的戰(zhàn)爭，一個(gè)象征欲望的追逐，形成發(fā)人深省的鮮明對比。