開始接觸 W.H. Auden
Jun 1st, 2009 by Ashley
好不容易出了門, 去圖書館借還書, 吃過午餐, 終於在 Rivermark 的 Peet’s Coffe 坐定. 讀了一會因好奇而借的 Anne Bronte 的 Agnes Grey, 覺得無聊, 於是拿出 W.H.Auden的詩選, 開始看 Edward Mendelson 寫的 Intro.
雖然只讀過 Auden 的兩三首詩, 當 Brit Lit 老師要我們思考一下期末報告想拿哪個 Victorian 或是 Modern 的作家為主題時, 我還是選了 Auden. 第二選擇是 Oscar Wilde, 但是我對 Queer Theory 實在是一點頭緒都沒有. (當老師興高采烈地說著 Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde 裡 Mr. Utterson 跟 Mr. Enfield 在 Jekyll 窗台下的對話充滿了暗示, 我真的完全一頭霧水… 也許該跟 Moni 請教一下, 畢竟她在英美文學專攻 feminism 跟 Queer Theory… 似乎是.) 再來我對 Tennyson 也頗有興趣 (Anne of Green Gables 的遺毒啊. XD) 但我覺得選 Tennyson 會是自找麻煩.
扯那麼多, 在 Selected Poems of W.H. Auden 的 intro 裡, 有一句話給我很大的啟發.
His poems derive much of their unique emotional power from his realization that the only way to be universal is to be individual, that a way to write a love poem that can be moving to everyone was not to write about love in general, but to write about his own unique experience of loving one unique person, with all complexities, extravagances, and absurdities that are part of anyone’s real experience of love.
這是個對我自己寫作很重要的一個認知與提醒.
另外一段我很喜歡的是在說 Auden 在某個時期的短詩, 都著重於 first-person speech 在現今社會的價值.
… the value of first-person speech in a world increasingly dominated by mass media and generalities, and the value of the individual human face were signs of the uniqueness of each human beings; and what all unique individuals had in common, besides uniqueness, was the body with its impersonal instincts and needs, and its indifference to all local, ethnic, political, and national loyalties.
這段讓我想到某人的 “人因不凡而平凡”理論. 然而與 Auden 的態度不同, 他說這話是語帶諷刺, 對於許多人自命不凡的心態感到不以為然. 而這段 “…what all unique individuals had in common, besides uniqueness…” 看似 oxymoron, 實在是讓人忍不住會心一笑.
一些筆記
continuing subject in Auden’s poems: the life of the unique individual person in relation to his neighbors & the special tasks and problems of the present moment of his own life and of the world.
in his earlier poems, he took erotic or political form, where in later poems, ethical or religious.
懶得再謄了. XD