美国浪漫主义文学

Walt Whitman Emily Dickinson Remark They were called the first two pure American poets because they together initiated a daring experiment both in poetic theme and technique hence creating a special American tradition in poem writing Thematically both extolled an emergent America her expansion individualism Americanness Technically both break free from the conventional iambic pentameter exhibited a freedom in form unknown before and added to the literary independence of the new nation Walt Whitman 1819 1892 an poet essayist journalist and humanist a figure between Transcendentalism and realism incorporating both views in his works one of the most influential poets in the American canon often called the father of free verse His work was very controversial in its time particularly his Leaves of Grass which was described as obscene for its overt sexuality Life story Born on May 31 1819 the second son of a house builder on Long Island New York Largely self taught he read voraciously becoming acquainted with the works of Homer Dante Shakespeare and the Bible Thirsting for experiences Whitman tried a variety of jobs and picked up a first hand knowledge of life and people in the new world He worked as an office boy a printer s apprentice schoolmaster printer editor journalist and volunteer nurse in the Civil War In 1855 the first edition of Leaves of Grass came out and made a stir on the American literary scene Whitman struggled to support himself through most of his life In Washington he lived on a clerk s salary After his death on March 26 1892 Whitman was buried in a tomb he designed and had built on a lot in Harleigh Cemetery Major works Leaves of Grass Whitman s epic which broke with the poetic convention and received harsh criticism for its sexuality and exotic and vulgar language The book went through 9 editions altogether 1855 1856 1860 1867 1871 1876 1881 1889 1891 1892 the Deathbed Edition Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking Song of Myself When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom d O Captain My Captain I hear America singing Crossing Brooklyn Ferry Democratic Vistas Passage to India Why use a blade of grass to symbolize his poems Whitman considered each of his poems to be a separate leaf or blade of grass because they were divine though common because they were symbolic of life and cycles of birth and death ever renewed because they were significant both individually and in the mass 草叶 随处生长草叶 随处生长 最富有生命力 最富有生命力 1 象征普通人 象征普通人 2 象征发展中的美国 象征发展中的美国 3 象征自己关于民主 自由的理想和希望 象征自己关于民主 自由的理想和希望 草叶集 从第一版到第九版 经历了坎坷的历程 其中充满了激烈的争论 这种争论在诗人逝世后 100 多年的 时间里仍然在延续 19 世纪后叶至 20 世纪全世界所有文学大师几乎无一例外地都在一生中的某个时刻向惠特曼的 草叶集 行过注目礼 在惠特曼从事诗歌创作的年代 控制美国诗坛的是所谓 高雅派 诗人 他们一味以模仿英国诗歌为能事 而 当时的英国诗歌也浪漫主义的末流 这种诗风在美国产生的只能是等而下之的仿制品 惠特曼来了 带着手脚上的泥土和草叶 带着汗珠和露水 从码头 田野 矿山 街市走来 放开嗓门 大胆高 歌 带着开天辟地的一个崭新的 人的姿态 他一开口就是一个崭新的文明的声音 这就是 新兴的美国 文明 的声音 这薄薄一册划时代的诗集受到了普遍的冷遇 受到了来自各方的批判 他们谩骂惠特曼 对艺术外行地像公猪不 懂数学一样 是说胡话的精神病患者 认为 草叶集 是 一堆污七八糟的垃圾 预言家的咒文 和忏悔的怪诞的混合曲 有的甚至扬言要用 武力 给以 镇压 在这一片混乱中 唯有著名诗人和理论家爱默生力排众议 对 草叶集 报以热烈的喝彩 爱默生相当英明地意 识到新大陆已 诞生了一个伟人 并给诗人写了一封热情洋溢的信 他认为 我不能对你的 草叶集 所 表现的极好的天赋所产生的价值视而不见 我发现它是迄今对美国做出的最不平凡的机智而睿智的贡献 我十分高 兴地读着它 我对你的自由而勇敢的思想十分赞赏 它有最大的优点 那就是能够加强信念和鼓舞人心 Themes in Whitman s poems Transcendent power of love brotherhood and comradeship Imaginative projection into others lives Optimistic faith in democracy and equality Belief in regenerative and illustrative powers of nature and its value as a teacher Equivalence of body and soul and the unabashed exaltation of the body and sexuality Whitman s works are filled with his concepts of freedom and the dignity of man and his themes of equality individuality sexuality patriotism spiritualism and death are still vehemently studied and celebrated 1 democratic ideals As Whitman saw it poetry could play vital part in the process of creating a new nation It could enable Americans to celebrate their release from the Old World and the Colonial rule It could help them to understand their new status and to define themselves in the new world of possibilities eg Song of Myself I Hear America Singing 2 concern for common people and the city life A celebration of the common people and their industriousness He praised dignity and the self reliant spirit of common man Eg Song of the Broad Axe Song of the Open Road The fast growth of industry and wealth in cities indicated a lively future of the nation eg Crossing Brooklyn Ferry 我听见美国在歌唱 我听见美国在歌唱 我听见各种各样的歌 那些机械工人的歌 每个人都唱着他那理所当然地快乐而又雄伟的歌 木匠一面衡量着他的木板或房梁 一面唱着他的歌 泥水匠在准备开始工作或离开工作的时候唱着他的歌 船夫在他的船上唱着属于他的歌 舱面水手在汽船甲板上唱歌 鞋匠坐在他的凳子上唱歌 做帽子的人站着唱歌 伐木者的歌 牵引耕畜的孩子在早晨 午休或日落时走在路上唱的歌 母亲或年轻的妻子在工作时 或者姑娘在缝纫或洗衣裳时甜美地唱着的歌 每个人都唱着属于他或她而不属于任何其他人的歌 白天唱着属于白天的歌 晚上这一群体格健壮 友好相处的年轻小伙子 就放开嗓子唱起他们那雄伟而又悦耳的歌 3 Individualism In celebrating self he gave emphasis to the physical dimension of the self and openly and joyously celebrated sexuality Sexual love a rather taboo topic of his time is displayed candidly as something adorable in his poetry eg Children of Adam I Sing the Body Electric A Woman Waits for Me Under the influence of Emersonian Transcendentalism Whitman believed the individual and his desires must be respected Though sex was taboo Whitman wrote of the beauty of the body and shamelessness of sexual relations He wrote poetry that explicitly described the body the man and woman and the sexual love between them The most controversial section in Leaves of Grass was Children of Adam readers objected to the open references of sexual acts 4 Pursuit of love and happiness 5 politically committed He responded enthusiastically to the American Civil War He expressed the sufferings of the young men in the battle field and showed a determination to carry on the fighting bravely until the final victory eg Drum Taps After the death of Lincoln he wrote down a great many poems to air his sorrow eg When Lilacs last in the Dooryard Bloom d Oh Captian my Captian 哦 船长 我的船长 哦 船长 我的船长 我们险恶的航程已经告终 我们的船安渡过惊涛骇浪 我们寻求的奖赏已赢得手中 港口已经不远 钟声我已听见 万千人众在欢呼呐喊 目迎着我们的船从容返航 我们的船威严而且勇敢 可是 心啊 心啊 心啊 哦 殷红的血滴流泻 在甲板上 那里躺着我的船长 他已倒下 已死去 已经冰凉 哦 船长 我的船长 起来吧 请听听这钟声 起来 旌旗 为你招展 号角 为你长鸣 为你 岸上挤满了人群 为你 无数花束 彩带 花 环 为你 熙攘的群众在呼唤 转动着多少殷切的脸 这里 船长 亲爱的父亲 你头颅下边是我的手臂 这是甲板上的一场梦啊 你已倒下 已死去 已经冰凉 我们的船长不作回答 他的双唇惨白 寂静 我的父亲不能感觉我的手臂 他已没有脉搏 没有生命 我们的船已安全抛锚碇泊 航行已完成 已告终 胜利的船从险恶的旅途归来 我们寻求的已赢得手中 欢呼 哦 海岸 轰鸣 哦 洪钟 可是 我却轻移悲伤的步履 在甲板上 那里躺着我的船长 他已倒下 已死去 已经冰凉 other major themes There are other several major themes in Song of Myself 6 Celebrating yourself in all of your glory and faults 7 Reveling in the beauty of nature and feeling a connection to it 8 The connectedness and unity of life and all living beings Artistic features Whitman was a daring experimentalist He employed brand new means in poetry which could be discerned in his style and language Style 1 use of a certain pronoun I Speaking in the voice of I he can become all the people in his poem and yet remains Whitman himself 2 Use of free verse poetry without a fixed beat or regular rhyme scheme 3 parallelism or rhythm of thought and phonetic recurrence two techniques used to achieve strong sense of rhythm Phonetic recurrence the systematic repetition of words and phrases at the beginning in the middle or at the end of the phonetic lines The two principles coordinate with and reinforce each other 4 Use of snapshots 5 Use of conventional images 6 Contrary to the rhetoric of traditional poetry Whitman s poetry is relatively simple and even rather crude his innovation in diction 7 He has a strong tendency to use oral English Whitman s Language 1 Strong tendency to use oral English 2 Idiosyncratic spelling and punctuation 3 Use of language from several disciplines anatomy astronomy botany Businesses and professions such as carpentry Military and war terms nautical terms 4 vocabulary powerful colourful rarely used words of foreign origins some even wrong 5 a looser and more open ended syntactic structure Free Verse 自由诗体自由诗体 1 Definition free verse also known as open form verse is the verse without regular meter line length rhyme scheme or stanza form depending on natural speech rhythms related to the actual cadence of the poet expressing himself 2 Differences from conventional verses Meter Regular meter or controlled rhythmic pattern is essential to conventional poetry but free verse is based on the irregular rhythmic cadence of the recurrence with variation of phrases and syntactical patterns rather than the recurrent metrical patterns Rhyme Rhyme occurs in most traditional poetry except blank verse and often with various schemes In free verse however rhyme may or may not be present Unit In conventional verse the unit is often foot or the line but in free verse the units are much larger sometimes being paragraphs or strophes If the free verse unit is the line as it is in Whitman the line is usually determined by qualities of actual speech rhythm and thought rather than feet or syllable count thus the line may be as short as one word or as long as a passage In comparison with conventional verse free verse may be composed with rhythms and melodies more personal and individual more appropriate to the subject and the theme In the hands of the gifted poets free verse very often acquires rhythms and melodies of its own There is in free verse greater flexibility of the form and greater agreement between sound and sense 3 Evolution of free verse There are signs of it in medieval alliterative verse and in the translation of the Authorized King James Bible which attempts to approximate the Hebrew cadences The Psalms and The Song of Solomon are noted examples of free verse Milton opposed the tyranny of strict versification Milton in order to set off the vexation hindrance and constraint of traditional verse experimented with free verse in Lycidas and Samson Agonistes After Milton European poets including Blake Arnold Heine Goethe Hugo and Baudelaire continued the experiment with free verse And the French poets of the late 19th century established the verse libre movement from which the term free verse comes Walt Whitman did more and better than anyone else to develop it to maturity and Whitman startled the literary world with Leaves of Grass by using lines of variable lengths which depended for their rhythmic effect on cadenced units and on repetition balance and variation of words phrases clauses and lines instead of on recurrent metric effect Whitman s Poetic Techniques Lack of metrical regularity and conventional rhyme Use of repeated images symbols phrases and grammatical units as substitutes for regular rhythm and rhyme Use of enumerations and catalogs Use of anaphora initial repetition in lines Use of varying line lengths with varying numbers of syllables per line Idiosyncratic spelling and punctuation Emily Dickinson 1830 1886 Themes of Dickinson s poetry Her poems are usually based on her own experiences her sorrows and joys But within her little lyrics she addresses the issues about the whole human being which include religion death and immorality love and nature 1 doubt and belief about religious subjects While she desired salvation and immortality she denied the orthodox view of paradise She believed in God but doubted about His Benevolence 2 Death and immortality closely related to her religious poetry are her poems concerning death and immortality ranging over the physical as well as the psychological and emotional aspects of death 1 3 of all her poems talked about these two themes For Dickinson death leads to immortality 3 Love It is another subject Dickinson dwelt on One group treats the suffering and frustration love can cause the other deals with marriage Showed her confusion and doubt about the women s role in the 19th century America 4 Nature more than 500 poems were about nature She expresses her general skepticism about the relationship between human and nature Dickinson sees nature as both gaily benevolent and cruel On one hand she shared with her romantic and Transcendental predecessors who believed a mythical bond between man and nature on the other hand she felt strongly about nature s inscrutability and indifference to the life and interests of human beings 5 Ethics on the ethical level Dickinson holds that beauty truth and goodness are ultimately one Artistic features of Dickinson s poetry Dickinson like Whitman is a courageous experimentalist never imitated others unique and unconventional in her own way no titles hence are always quoted by the first lines particular stress pattern in which dashes are used as a musical device to create cadence and capital letters as a means of emphasis rhymed stanzas most of her poems borrow the repeated four line rhymed stanzas of traditional Christian hymns with two lines of four beat meter alternating with two lines of three beat meter Diction Direct and plain language Her poetic idiom is noted for its laconic brevity directness and plainness severe economy of expression Her poems are usually short rarely more than 20 lines and many of them are centered on a single image or symbol and fused on one subject matter Due to her deliberate seclusion her poem tends to be very personal and meditative Despite its ostensible formal simplicity her poetry is remarkable for its variety subtlety and richness Her limited private world have never confined the limitless power of her creativity and imagination Her poetry abounds in telling images original images In the best of her poems every word is a picture seen the precursor of Imagist movement great influence on the Imagist Movement in the 20th century Strong influence of Puritanism on her thought pessimism and tragic tone of her poems Exploring human s inner world psychology description in her poems Her weakness is a reliance on rhythmic cadences and meters from hymns and popular jingles Her modernity is her articulation of psychological experience and skeptical desire for faith Summary Abundant use of dashes irregular and idiosyncratic punctuation and capitalization Clear cut delicately original imagery precise and simple diction fragmentary and enigmatic metrical pattern Short poetic lines condensed by using intense metaphors and by extensive use of ellipsis Conventional meters iambic tetrameter off rhymes Visual and audible effects great imagination sincere emotions Dickinson s View On Poetry 1 She thought that poetry should be powerful and touching The inspiration of the poet came from his inner world or intensity of his emotions and the past literary traditions and the noble heroes 2 Like Emerson she thought that only the real poet could understand the world Truth virtue and beauty are all the one thing The most dignified beauty was embodied by the active affirmative dignity 3 Poetry should express ideas through concrete images It was the poet s duty to express abstract ideas through vivid and fresh imagery She was against the restriction of the traditional doctrines and argued for the depiction of one s inner world Appreciation of Dickinson s poetry I Died for Beauty but was scarce I Heard a Fly Buzz when I died Because I could not stop for death I Died for Beauty but was scarce 我死于美 却依然匮乏 于是在坟墓里调校着 邻室躺着 一个 死于真的人 他轻声问 为何我落败了 因为美 我回答 而我 因为真 它们本是一体 我们原是兄弟 他说 因此 如同亲人 相遇在夜晚 我们隔着墙壁交谈 直到苔藓长上我们的嘴唇 并且覆盖 我们的名字 Comments on I Died for Beauty This bizarre 奇异的 allegorical death fantasy recalls Keats Beauty is Truth Truth Beauty from Ode on a Grecian Urn but its manner of presentation belongs uniquely to Dickinson Stanza 1 I died pursuing the beauty of art and immediately as I became accustomed to the new circumstance of a tomb I was told that there was another who died for truth and arrived in the next room Stanza 2 I died for beauty and he died for truth Since beauty is truth and truth beauty we are as close as brothers or like twins Stanza 3 The two of us are like kinsmen who met at night and we talked in separated rooms for a very long time until we have harmoniously united into one and have been completely forgotten by the human world In this short lyric Dickinson manages to include a sense of the macabre physicality of death Until the Moss had reached our lips the high idealism of martyrdom I died for Beauty One who died for Truth a certain kind of romantic yearning combined with longing for Platonic 理想的 不切实际的 companionship And so as Kinsmen met a Night and an optimism about the afterlife it would be nice to have a like minded friend with barely sublimated 理想化的 terror about the fact of death it would be horrible to lie in the cemetery having a conversation through the walls of a tomb As the poem progresses the high idealism and yearning for companionship gradually give way to mute cold death as the moss creeps up the speaker s corpse and her headstone obliterating both her capacity to speak covering her lips and her identity covering her name The ultimate effect of this poem is to show that every aspect of human life ideals human feelings identity itself is erased by death But by making the erasure gradual something to be adjusted to in the tomb and by portraying a speaker who is untroubled by her own grim state Dickinson creates a scene that is by turns grotesque and compelling frightening and comforting It is one of her most singular statements about death and like so many of Dickinson s poems it has no parallels in the work of any other writer Versification of the poem This poem follows many of Dickinson s typical formal patterns the abab rhyme scheme the rhythmic use of the dash to interrupt the flow but has a more regular meter so that the first and third lines in each stanza are iambic tetrameter while the second and fourth lines are iambic trimeter creating a four three four three stress pattern in each stanza I Heard a Fly Buzz when I died 我死时听见一只苍蝇嗡嗡 房间里一片寂静 像空气的寂静 在风暴的涌动之间 周围的眼睛 泪已哭干 人们正在屏住呼吸 等待最后的一击 当死 神 被目睹 在房间里 我遗赠我的纪念品 签字 送走我能够转让的 东西 就在那时 一只苍蝇插了进来 发蓝 飘忽 跌跌撞撞地 嗡鸣 在光明与我之间 然后窗户暗淡了 然后 我再也无法看见 I Heard a Fly Buzz when I died Stanza 1 When I was dying I heard the buzz of a fly which reminded me of the stillness in the air Staza2 Before the absolute power of death I was helpless so were my relative and fri