In Ireland, Chasing the Wandering Soul of Yeats1

By Russell Shorto

I will arise and go now.

…

Surprisingly often, when I get up from a chair to leave a room, those six melodramatic words will unfurl in my mind.2. melodramatic: 戲劇性的，情感夸張的；unfurl: 展開，顯露。Somehow William Butler Yeats’s poem “The Lake Isle of Innisfree,” which, like millions of other people, I first read in college, stays rooted in me:3. “The Lake Isle of Innisfree”: 《茵納斯弗里島》，葉芝早期的代表作，isle指“（主要用于文學(xué)作品和群島名稱中的）島，島嶼”；rooted: 根深蒂固的，難以改變的。

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree.

…

And I’m off, not to the dentist or the shopping mall but, mentally,striding emerald slopes,4. stride: 大步走，闊步行走；emerald:翠綠色的，鮮綠色的；slope: 山坡，斜坡。making for a place of myth.

Yeats named the poem after an actual place, an island in the middle of Lough Gill, a lake that spreads itself languidly across five miles of furiously green landscape in County Sligo in northwest Ireland.5. Lough Gill: 吉爾湖；languidly: 無精打采地，懶洋洋地；furiously: 強烈地；landscape: 風(fēng)景，自然景色； County Sligo: 斯萊戈郡。A few years ago, I found myself in Dublin6. Dublin: 都柏林，愛爾蘭首都。and decided to do it for real: go to Innisfree. It would be a four-hour detour7. detour: 繞道，繞路。from the research I was doing for an article, but I had not the slightest doubt the journey would be worthwhile.

你所了解的Innisfree是什么呢？悅詩風(fēng)吟化妝品？香水？旅館？……它其實是愛爾蘭一處隱蔽的美景，是葉芝用詩句贊美的地方。那里走過千古不歇的風(fēng)，湖面蕩漾著如綾的波紋，湖心點綴著幾座小島，沿岸蓬勃生長著蒼繁草木……在那里，葉芝追憶過往，尋求內(nèi)心的平靜，在喧囂的工業(yè)時代，堅守自己的初衷。你可有聽到，那湖水在靜靜地述說？

Thanks to the popularity of the poem (voted by readers of The Irish Times in 1999 as their all-time favorite work of Irish poetry), “Innisfree”is a bit of a brand. There are Innisfree cosmetics, an Innisfree Eau de Parfum, an Innisfree B&B, an Innisfree Hotel and a Rose of Innisfree tour boat that does the lake.8. cosmetics: 化妝品，美容品；Eau de Parfum: 香水；B&B: 全稱bed and breakfast，含早餐旅館。

But I know these things only from Google. Thankfully, none of it was evident on my drive. I didn’t use a GPS; I just relied on a couple of tiny handmade-looking road signs that popped up as I entered the region,9. a couple of: 幾個；pop up: 突然出現(xiàn)，不經(jīng)意冒出。which pointed the way to “Lake Isle of Innisfree.” T he last stage of the journey involved no tourism bric-a-brac, only small, twisty, increasingly difficult to navigate roads, mossy tree trunks, wind, willows, heather,cloud knuckles and gray rock.10. bric-a-brac: 小飾物，小擺設(shè)；twisty:（指路、小道或河）迂回曲折的；navigate: （駕車者）確定行車路線；mossy: 布滿苔蘚的，長滿青苔的；trunk: 樹干；willow: 柳樹；heather: 石南花，杜鵑花科植物；knuckle: 指節(jié)狀突出物。

When I reached the lakeshore, I found the opposite of a tourist site.I could barely make my way out to the water to get a view, so thick was the shoreline with trees and brush.11. barely: 勉強，僅僅；shoreline: 湖濱線，河岸線；brush: 灌木叢。A farmhouse with a couple of S.U.V.s parked outside stood nearby, and there was a little concrete dock jutting out into the lake, pointed almost directly at Innisfree a few hundred yards away.12. S.U.V.: 全稱Sports Utility Vehicle，多功能越野車；concrete: 混凝土的；dock: 碼頭，船塢；jut out:凸出，伸出；yard: 碼（長度單位，約91.4厘米）。I got out on the dock, sat cross-legged facing the island, and let the wind say what it had to say.For decades, this place had reverberated13. reverberate: 回響，回蕩。in my mind; now I was actually there.

威廉·巴特勒·葉芝

Yeats, born in 1865, the son of an artist, was a childlike intellectual.14. childlike: 孩子般的，單純的；intellectual: 知識分子，腦力勞動者。He would forget to eat, or put food in the oven and let it burn. He was devoted to mysticism and séances.15. mysticism: 神秘主義（指通過冥想和禱告尋求真理、知識以及與神靈相通的宗教行為）；séance: 降神會（設(shè)法與亡靈對話的集會）。He spent decades in love with the Irish nationalist and proto-feminist Maud Gonne; after she rejected his marriage proposal for a final time,16. proto-: 最初的，原始的；feminist:女權(quán)主義者；Maud Gonne: 茅德·岡（1866—1953），愛爾蘭女演員、民族獨立運動戰(zhàn)士；marriage proposal: 求婚。he shifted his attention to her daughter.

A few weeks after she, in turn, spurned his marriage offer, he proposed to another woman, Georgie Hyde-Lees, who, despite knowing where she ranked, became his devoted life partner.17. spurn: 拒絕，擯棄；propose: 向……求婚；rank: v. 具有……等級（地位）；devoted: 摯愛的，忠誠的。As she essentially said after his death, she saw the shimmer of his soul.18. essentially: 大體上，基本上；shimmer: 微光，閃光?！癋or him, every day he lived was a new adventure,” she once told the Yeats scholar Curtis B. Bradford. “He woke every morning certain that in the new day before him something would happen that had never happened before.”

Yeats was in his 50s when he married. “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” is a young man’s poem, written when he was 23. It is filled with a romantic longing for the past: the Irish past, the mythic past and also Yeats’s own. He had spent his childhood in County Sligo before moving to Dublin and then London. This countryside,the lake and its islands, this composition of greens and grays and blues, was fused within him.19. 那鄉(xiāng)村、湖水和湖心小島，那相映的綠植、灰白的石頭和藍藍的天空，全都與他融為一體。composition:組成，構(gòu)成；fuse: 合二為一，合為一體。

When he was a boy, his father had read him Thoreau’s Walden,and its pastoral message resonated with the landscape of his childhood.20. Thoreau: 全名Henry David Thoreau，亨利·戴維·梭羅（1817—1862），美國作家、哲學(xué)家；Walden: 梭羅代表作《瓦爾登湖》；pastoral: 田園式的；resonate with: 引起共鳴。As a young man living in London, trying to make a go of it amid the industrial throb, Yeats reached back to his youth and crafted the poem.21. make a go of it: 干好，使獲得成功；throb:（引擎或機器等）發(fā)出有規(guī)律的震動聲；craft: 精心制作，周密制定。The first line signals the self-consciously antiquated style he chose.22. 詩的首行表明，他著意選用了舊體詩的風(fēng)格。antiquated: 陳舊的，老式的。(Even back in 1888, when the poem was written, people didn’t “arise.”) He filled it with rhyme, pumped it with unapologetically forceful rhythm.23. rhyme: 押韻，成韻；pump: 注入；unapologetically: 無可置辯地；forceful: 強有力的；rhythm: 節(jié)奏，韻律。He made it, for all its romance,compact24. compact: 簡潔的，精煉的。, athletic. This is the entire poem.

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,

And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:25. clay: 黏土，陶土；wattle: 籬笆編條。

Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive26. hive: 蜂房，蜂箱。for the honey-bee;

And live alone in the bee-loud glade27. glade: 林中空地。.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,

Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;28. veil: 面紗，面罩；cricket: 蟋蟀，蛐蛐。

There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,29. glimmer: 微光；glow: 光亮，光輝。

And evening full of the linnet’s30. linnet: 朱頂雀。wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day

I hear lake water lapping31. lap: （水）輕輕拍打。with low sounds by the shore;

While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,

I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

Of course, as I approached the lake, the poem was reverberating in my mind, and at first the imagery seemed to live up to it.32. imagery: 意象；live up to: 符合，不辜負（期望）。The lake is five miles long, fringed with greenery; moody hills rise on the opposite shore.33. 湖長五英里，沿岸草木青蔥，對岸青山綿延起伏。be fringed with: 周邊是……的，以……作為邊緣的；greenery: 綠色植物，青蔥的草木；moody: 心情多變的，悶悶不樂的。The furrowed water was dotted with little islands, some of them very atmospheric.34. 湖面波紋如，湖心點綴著幾座小島，其中幾座還頗有情調(diào)。furrowed: 布滿皺紋的；be dotted with: 散布著，點綴著；atmospheric: 有藝術(shù)氛圍的，有神秘美感的。As it happens, though, Innisfree is not one of the atmospheric ones. It’s tiny, and looks like a bur, a bristling seed pod, almost angrily sprouting trees and brush from its humpy back.35. bur: 刺果；bristling: 豎立的；pod:莢，豆莢；sprouting: 萌芽的，抽枝的；humpy: 隆起的，駝峰狀的。

Some have speculated that Yeats chose it because of the poetry in the syllables of its name,36. speculate: 推測，猜測；poetry: 詩意；syllable: 音節(jié)。and the last syllable’s suggestion of freedom. You’d have a hard time building a cabin on it, and it’s too lumpen for a glade.37. cabin: （尤指森林、群山中的）小木屋；lumpen: 笨重的，大塊的。

But to leave it at that—to say that Yeats picked a dud38. leave it at that: 暫時停止?fàn)幷?；dud:沒用的東西，廢物。—would be like declaring that you had no music in your soul. The whole landscape echoes the poem. You realize, sitting there, identifying the sound of the lake water with the deep heart’s core, that the Yeats who wrote the poem does not actually intend to retreat from39. retreat from: 遠離（計劃、生活方式等），從……中隱退。the world and move to this spot. He is reaching for something. He is aware, at 23, of death and the inexorability40. inexorability: 冷酷，無情。of change. He is searching, trying to find his balance, his center. He knows he left it somewhere in his past, as we all have done.

The poem is a mental exercise, a meditation41. meditation: 打坐，冥想。. You could perform the exercise in a parking garage42. parking garage: 停車庫。. It isn’t meant to be enacted43. enact: 表演，演出。.

Then I realized that my meditation was different from Yeats’s.If he was using his mind to find his center, I was using him—using history, poetry, travel—to get to the same place.

And there I was. All of County Sligo is “Yeats Country.” He mined it, traced its contours, translated them to verse: “black wind,”“wet winds,” “noisy clouds,” “thorn-trees,” “the clinging air.”44. 他發(fā)現(xiàn)了這里，描其輪廓，化之為詩：“黑色的風(fēng)”，“潮濕的風(fēng)”，“喧鬧的云”，“帶刺的樹”，“黏人的空氣”。mine: 開采，采掘；trace:勾畫……的輪廓，描繪；contour: 輪廓，外形；verse: 詩；thorn-tree: 荊棘，帶刺的樹；clinging: 有黏性的。He did it so thoroughly, it’s almost as if the craggy loveliness of the countryside were carved to suit his poetry, rather than the other way around.45. thoroughly: 全面的，徹底的；craggy: 陡峭的，多巖石的；carve:雕刻；the other way around: 相反，倒過來。

“Where the wandering water gushes / From the hills above Glen-Car,” from Yeats’s poem “The Stolen Child,” describes a misty waterfall to the north that seems like something out of Peter Jackson’s Hobbit.46. gush: 涌出，噴出；misty: 多霧的，霧蒙蒙的；Peter Jackson: 彼得·杰克遜，出生于新西蘭，電影導(dǎo)演；Hobbit: 電影《霍比特人》。

A few miles away from the lake, the stupendous mountain slab called Ben Bulben rises like a natural acropolis, the home of some ancient race of Irish gods, a height whose purpose can only be to evoke awe.47. stupendous: 極大的，令人驚嘆的；slab:（石頭或木頭等硬物的）大塊平板，大塊厚板；acropolis:（古希臘城市的）衛(wèi)城；evoke: 喚起，引起； awe: 敬畏，驚嘆。It became another geographic touchstone for Yeats—so much so that in his poem “Under Ben Bulben,” he eerily directs the reader to his own grave, in the nearby cemetery of Drumcliffe.48. touchstone: 試金石，檢驗標(biāo)準(zhǔn)；“Under Ben Bulben”: 《在本布爾山下》，葉芝的一首長詩；eerily: 怪異地，可怕地；grave:墓穴，墳?zāi)梗?cemetery: 墓地，公墓。Actually it’s the grave of another Yeats he refers to, an ancestor. But after his own death, in France, his body was transferred there,as if people treated his poem as a last will and testament49. last will and testament: 臨終遺囑，臨終遺言。.

It’s only a four-mile drive from the shore of Lough Gill to Sligo town, and civilization50. civilization: 大城市。. Sligo is an ancient and lively enough little center, dominated by its cathedral and ringed with pubs where there’s nonstop rugby and soccer on the telly and you can order not just Irish stew and Guinness,but also chicken curry and New Zealand sauvignon blanc.51. cathedral: 大教堂；be ringed with: 裝滿……；telly: 電視機；Irish stew: 愛爾蘭燉肉；Guinness: 吉尼斯黑啤酒；chicken curry: 咖喱雞；sauvignon blanc: 白索維農(nóng)（一種白葡萄酒，又名長相思）。For a tourist, it’s the practical base. But pleasant as this is, it was the antithesis52. antithesis: 對立面，形成對立的事物。of why I had come. Yeats’s meditations weren’t urban, and neither was mine.

I am told that there are enormous salmon lurking beneath the waters of Lough Gill, and that otters make the lake their home, and that the lush forest along the banks called Slish Wood, which Yeats in “The Stolen Child” calls Sleuth Wood, harbors rare orchids,ivies and thistles,53. enormous: 巨大的，很多的； salmon: 鮭魚；lurk: 潛伏，潛藏；otter: 水獺；lush:蔥郁的，蔥蘢的；orchid: 蘭花；ivy: 常春藤；thistle: 薊（葉片帶刺、開紫色花的野生植物）。and that, yes,the evening can be full of the linnet’s wings. I saw none of these remarkable things.

But I saw others.