杨炼：一只海蝴蝶

杨炼

杨炼：一只海蝴蝶
—— 2018匈牙利雅努斯·潘诺尼乌斯国际诗歌大奖 (Janus Pannonius International Poetry Grand Prize) 受奖辞

  纳博科夫的回忆录《说吧，记忆》既重又轻。

  重，基于他二十世纪第一代流亡者的经历，包括柏林街头射杀他父亲的子弹; 轻，因为纳博科夫又是一位蝴蝶专家，那本书每一页上翩翩飞舞着绚丽的蝴蝶，其中最美的那只，正是他清澈、优雅的文学风格。

  诗歌正像蝴蝶，在沉重的人生之上飞舞，保持着心灵的骄傲。

  匈牙利和中国，虽然处于巨大俄国的两侧，但仿佛有一条蝴蝶迁飞的连线，让我感觉并不遥远。在一个 “HUN” 字里，我听到两千多年前的马蹄声在继续震响。而我们共同亲历的当代现实，更是一片风暴之海，其变幻之急速、震荡之猛烈，令人晕眩。

  1989年，一位前东德军官喃喃着 “No Tiananmen in my hand”，打开了柏林查理检查站的大门，那标志了冷战时代的结束。可没过多久，后冷战的世界上，到处新建的 “柏林墙” 在关门，又标志着全球化时代的开始。但，“全球化”是什么意义? 当一只苹果手机里，汇集了中国农民工血汗、台湾老板、全球巨额利润，它让冷战意识形态划分、黑白分明的群体口号，一夜间失效。今天多么逻辑化的 “真实” : 价值混乱—— 精神真空——自私自利+玩世不恭。奥维尔式的可见的老大哥，让位给那个看不见的老大哥，把手伸进每个人欲望里，无所不在地操控我们。 利益大一统中，黑暗完美无缺。

  我的《一九八九年》一诗，结尾于 “这无非是普普通通的一年”，那个诡谲的句子，曾令很多朋友大惑不解，如今有现实为证，还难懂吗?

  问题是: 诗歌蝴蝶还在吗? 没有方向的大海上，她能朝哪儿飞?

  幸运的是，诗歌对逆境并不陌生。恰恰相反，它从诞生之初，就在不停汲取 “噩梦的灵感” 。我想到两千三百年前的屈原，那汉语诗歌史上的第一个名字，他在流亡中郁郁自沉，像个谶语，说出后来一代代诗人的命运。可同时，他的巨作《天问》，从 “曰遂古之初，谁传道之? 上下未形，何由考之? ” 开始，用近二百个提问层层递进，却不予回答，一举奠定了古往今来诗人 “提问者” 的形象。

  当今世界的大风暴，不仅对国家社会、更对每个人构成大提问、 大考验: 社会主义、资本主义、专制、民主、东方、西方......以前的群体套话，已无从依托，面对最深的精神困境，诗歌的版图，是缩小了? 还是增大了? 个性的天地，是在闭合，抑或在打开? 头晕目眩的 “变” 之深处，我们能否认出一种 “不变” ? 处境的、命运的、应对方式的不变——诗人对自我定位的加倍自觉。

  “暮色垂落 反衬小小明艳的一跃” （《蝴蝶——柏林》），灾难越深，蝴蝶原版的美越清晰。

今天的诗歌，是个体诗学的时代。深度，同时衡量着人与诗的个性。诗歌沉潜在海底，漆黑、冷静地审视着风波险恶的世界。请别误会，这不是 “反抗”，诗歌无须反抗什么。这是诗歌的天性使然，它生而享有自身赋予的思想和言论自由，它拒绝假借任何名义的柏林墙禁锢。

  今天的诗歌，在语言之内，重新发现人类文明——或甚至重新发明它。一个意象 “海蝴蝶”（《蝴蝶——柏林》），秉持着诗歌的逻辑，突破一切权力的、商业的、实用的逻辑。一个句子 “这是从岸边眺望自己出海之处”（《大海停止之处》），用诗歌的透视之眼，把所有外在漂泊，归纳进一个人 (每个人) 的内心之旅。一首诗，同时建构起语言和人生的形式。书写的元隐喻，越体会到佳句结尾的 “不可能” ——越要从那 “不可能” 开始。

  “小小明艳的一跃”，从不是孱弱的，它照亮了无边阴郁的大海。

  或许，诗歌一直在定义绝对的流亡。在这个 “他者” 成为套话的世界上，诗人选定了位置: 作一个主动的、自觉的——诗意的他者。我们 要坚守自己的选择。

  笔会，是笔与人的联结体。感谢匈牙利笔会的诗歌奖，肯定了我对诗歌和对人生的责任。它跨越地理和文化，印证了那个格言: “诗歌是我们唯一的母语” 。

  蝴蝶娇嫩而强大，它理应骄傲。

杨炼 2018年8月29日

英文受奖辞由Brian Holton 翻译：
Translated by Brian Holton August 2018


    A SEA BUTTERFLY

    Yang Lian

    Acceptance Speech
    Janus Pannonius International Prize for Poetry


​    Nabokov’s memoir Speak, Memory is both heavy and light.

​    Heavy, in that it is based on the experience of a first-generation exile in the twentieth century, and includes the bullet that shot his father down on the streets of Berlin; light, because Nabokov was also a lepidopterist, and on every page is the fluttering of gorgeous butterflies, the loveliest of which is his limpid and graceful literary style.

    ​oetry dances like a butterfly in flight above heavy life, preserving the soul’s pride.

​    Hungary and China, though situated at either end of the immensity of Russia, seem to be connected by the migration of butterflies, which makes me feel they are not actually so far apart. I hear in the syllable hun the two-thousand-year-old thunder of horses’ hooves. Yet the contemporary reality we experience together, more like a stormy stretch of sea, is dizzying in the speed of its unpredictable change and the violence of its shock.

    In 1989 an officer in the former East German army, muttering No Tiananmen at my hand, opened the gate of Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin, which symbolized the end of the Cold War era. But not long after that, newly-built Berlin walls were slamming gates shut everywhere in the post-Cold War world, symbolizing the beginning of the Era of Globalization. So what does Globalization mean? The Apple iPhone, bringing together the blood and sweat of Chinese peasants, Taiwanese bosses, and vast global profits, has overnight rendered ineffectual the slogans of the Cold War ideological divide and the black and white slogans of social groups. How logical today’s digital ‘reality’ is: values in confusion - spiritual vacuum – selfishness plus cynicism. The visible Orwellian Big Brother has given way to an invisible Big Brother whose hand reaches into each person’s material desires, manipulating us wherever we are. In the grand unified totality of Profit, the darkness is perfect and complete.

    The last line of my poem 1989 is This is no doubt a perfectly ordinary year: this cryptic line baffled many friends at the time, but with reality as witness, is it still incomprehensible?

    The question is this: is the butterfly of poetry still here? On the great directionless ocean, where can she fly?

    Luckily, poetry is no stranger to adversity. Quite the opposite, for from its birth it has endlessly drawn on the inspiration of nightmares. I am thinking of Qu Yuan two thousand three hundred years ago, the first ever name in the history of poetry in Chinese, who drowned himself in despair while in exile, and like a prophecy, expressed the destiny of poets down all the generations to come. But, at the same time, his masterpiece Heavenly Questions starts with the lines

Who passed down the story
of the far-off ancient beginnings of things?
How can we be sure what it was like
before the sky above and the earth below had taken shape?

    He asks almost two hundred questions piled on upon the other, yet refuses to give answers, thereby establishing at one stroke the image of poets through all time as Questioners.

​    The great storm of the world today is constituted of many deep questions and great tests, not just for nations and societies, but even more for each and every person: socialism, capitalism, dictatorship, democracy, East, West… The clichés of bygone groups can no longer be relied on, for, facing the profoundest spiritual dilemma, has the domain of poetry contracted, or expanded? Is the world of individuality closing down, or opening up? Can we recognise the unchanging in the depths of dizzying changes? Unchanging situations, destinies, as well as ways of reacting – the poet’s doubled awareness of self-position.

​    The falling evening sets off a little shining leap (from my Butterfly-Berlin). The greater the catastrophe, the clearer the prototypical beauty of the butterfly.

    Today is the age of Individual Poetics. Profundity is simultaneously evaluating the individuality of both the person and the poem. Poetry lies low on the seabed, darkly and dispassionately scrutinizing a world of dangerous storms. Please don't misunderstand: this isn't ‘resistance’, for poetry has no need to ‘resist’ anything. It is poetry’s very nature, for, born with self-generated freedom of thought and speech, poetry refuses the shackles of the Berlin Wall under any name.

    Today’s poetry rediscovers in language human civilization – even reinvents it. The image of the Sea Butterfly in my Butterfly-Berlin upholds a poetic logic, and breaks through all the logic of power, commerce or practicality. In my poem cycle Where The Sea Stands Still, the line this shore is where we see ourselves set sail asserts by induction, in the penetrating vision of poetry, and brings all outer wandering into the inner journey of one person (every person). At the same time, a poem constructs a shape in language and the shape of life. The primordial metaphor of writing, the more it learns the impossibility of a beautiful line-ending, the more it must be willing to start again from the impossible.

    That little shining leap is never fragile, and it lights up an endless gloomy ocean.

    Perhaps poetry has always meant definitive and unconditional exile. In a world where the Other has become a cliché, the poet has chosen this position, to be an active, self-aware, poetic Other. We must hold fast to our choices.

    PEN is a body which links pens with people. I thank Hungarian PEN for this prize, which reaffirms my obligations to poetry and to life. It crosses geography and culture, and confirms the truth of the maxim, Poetry is our one and only mother tongue.

    The butterfly is delicate yet powerful, and has every right to be proud.


Yang Lian
29th August 2018

朱峰

祝贺！