我们一起来译庞德的诗"In a Station of the Metro"

林水云风

昨天搜到的解释文章：

In this quick poem，Pound describes watching faces appear in a metro station. It is unclear whether he is writing from the vantage point of a passenger on the train itself or on the platform. The setting is Paris，France，and as he describes these faces as a "crowd，" meaning the station is quite busy. He compares these faces to "petals on a wet，black bough，" suggesting that on the dark subway platform，the people look like flower petals stuck on a tree branch after a rainy night.

Analysis:
The brevity of this poem can be intimidating to analyze; after all, how much can a poet possibly convey in merely two lines? However, the shortness of this poem fits with its topic; when reading, the words flash by quickly, just as a subway speeds away from the platform in an instant. The doors open quickly, revealing a sea of faces, and then close again - the faces are gone after a fleeting glance. This poem's length and quick pace matches the constant motion of a train as it speeds by.
Though short, this poem is very sensory in nature; it allows the reader to imagine a scene while reading the lines. Through Pound's economical description of these faces as "petals on a wet, black bough," he is able to invoke a transient tone.

This poem is also a clear example of the Imagist style. Victorian poets would frequently use an abundance of flowery adjectives and lengthy descriptions in their poems. Yet Pound employs a Modernist approach to "In a Station of the Metro," using only a few descriptive words (and no verbs among them) to successfully get his point across.

Pound uses the word "apparition," which is a ghostly, otherworldly figure, something ephemeral that fades in and out of view. By using this word, Pound reveals surprise at seeing this sea of faces as the subway doors open, which, for a brief moment, fills him with a sense of awe and astonishment. Also, the impermanence of the image gives the poem a melancholy tone, as if Pound is contemplating the fragility of life.

Pound connects images of petals and boughs to a mass of humanity - linking a man-made metropolitan scene with the cycles of nature. Pound's use of living metaphors adds to the fleeting tone of this poem. Flowers and trees, like human beings on a metro, are constantly moving, growing, and changing. This short glimpse through the metro doors is the only time that group of people will be as they are in that instant. Similarly, no two petals will ever look exactly the same, as rains come and go, winters freeze, and new buds bloom.

叶如钢

林水云风 发表于 2016-4-27 14:59
昨天搜到的解释文章：

In this quick poem，Pound describes watching faces appear in a metro station ...

庞德自己的解释：

Three years ago in Paris I got out of a "metro" train at La Concorde, and saw suddenly a beautiful face, and then another and another, and then a beautiful child’s face, and then another beautiful woman, and I tried all that day to find words for what this had meant to me, and I could not find any words that seemed to me worthy, or as lovely as that sudden emotion. And that evening, as I went home along the Rue Raynouard, I was still trying and I found, suddenly, the expression. I do not mean that I found words, but there came an equation . . . not in speech, but in little splotches of colour. It was just that - a "pattern," or hardly a pattern, if by "pattern" you mean something with a "repeat" in it. But it was a word, the beginning, for me, of a language in colour. I do not mean that I was unfamiliar with the kindergarten stories about colours being like tones in music. I think that sort of thing is nonsense. If you try to make notes permanently correspond with particular colours, it is like tying narrow meanings to symbols.

所以， 诗里的 faces 指的是crowd 里面的一小部分， 而不是指全部。 上面的分析和庞德原意不同。 如果解释为全部， 和第二行的a bough单数不一致。
庞德看到的是一串面孔（几个到十几个）， 所以感觉象一个枝干上的花朵。  如果bough 用复数， 第一句就可以解为全部面孔或大多数面孔。


庞德：

The Japanese have had the sense of exploration. They have understood the beauty of this sort of knowing. A Chinaman said long ago that if a man can’t say what he has to say in twelve lines he had better keep quiet. The Japanese have evolved the still shorter form of the hokku.

"The fallen blossom flies back to its branch:
A butterfly."

That is the substance of a very well-known hokku. Victor Plarr tells me that once, when he was walking over snow with a Japanese naval officer, they came to a place where a cat had crossed the path, and the officer said," Stop, I am making a poem." Which poem was, roughly, as follows: --

"The footsteps of the cat upon the snow:
(are like) plum-blossoms."

The words "are like" would not occur in the original, but I add them for clarity.

The "one image poem" is a form of super-position, that is to say, it is one idea set on top of another. I found it useful in getting out of the impasse in which I had been left by my metro emotion. I wrote a thirty-line poem, and destroyed it because it was what we call work "of second intensity." Six months later I made a poem half that length; a year later I made the following hokku-like sentence: --

"The apparition of these faces in the crowd:
Petals, on a wet, black bough."

I dare say it is meaningless unless one has drifted into a certain vein of thought. I a poem of this sort one is trying to record the precise instant when a thing outward and objective transforms itself, or darts into a thing inward and subjective.

林水云风

叶如钢 发表于 2016-4-27 23:56
庞德自己的解释：

Three years ago in Paris I got out of a "metro" train at La Concorde, and s ...

当然要按庞德解释来译，faces 指的是crowd 里面的一小部分， 而不是指全部。我的译文就是按庞德的解释译的。

He compares these faces to "petals on a wet，black bough，" suggesting that on the dark subway platform，the people look like flower petals stuck on a tree branch after a rainy night.

我主要是感到这个解释很好。petals on a wet，black bough，这句看起来很好译，随手就可译成：湿漉漉的黑树枝上的花瓣。大量译文多是这样翻译的。可我对这个翻译不满意，诗人说他是按日本的俳句而写的，而且诗人也很喜欢中国古诗，我觉得日本诗人不会写出“湿漉黑枝”这样的俳句，中国诗人也写不出“湿漉黑枝”这样的绝句或对句。

我想到“青枝”这个词，这是中国诗词常用词，可青枝的青，几乎都指的是绿色，不指黑色，所以用这个词翻译black bough不合适。我又想到“寒枝”，觉得这个词当可用。

我在网上继续搜索资料，看到了rainy night这个说法，又看到关于这首诗的几幅画，都是枝上的花瓣在夜色中。我这才体会出wet和black的意思，不是说树枝是湿黑的，而是说树枝在雨中、夜中，所以“寒枝”也就弃了。

雨夜，是当时一战下的气氛；人群、树枝，处在那种气氛下，压抑、无奈；幻脸、花瓣，诗人感受到还有明亮、美丽。

当时看到rainy night这个说法，看过就关了，没有摘下。这回又看到这个说法（是否与上次看到的是同一文，不记得了），遂摘下贴在这里。

叶如钢

林水云风 发表于 2016-4-28 11:59
当然要按庞德解释来译，faces 指的是crowd 里面的一小部分， 而不是指全部。我的译文就是按庞德的解释译 ...

庞德从俳句获得启发： 一是用两三行就写成一首诗， 一是某些韵味。 但他写的和日本俳句有明显不同。
他并没有试图写成日本俳句那样的味道。事实上， 他的写法是完全现代的。 在诗歌评论版有一篇文章谈到这首诗。
其作者就完全没有领会庞德这首诗的现代，或者超现实的意味。 尤其是他把两件完全不同的事物并列在一起， 以它们的内在
微妙共性建立结构。

你的翻译很优美。 但你把一首超现实现代诗改造成了一首古典小诗。

林水云风

叶如钢 发表于 2016-4-28 12:20
庞德从俳句获得启发： 一是用两三行就写成一首诗， 一是某些韵味。 但他写的和日本俳句有明显不同。
...

文章题目是什么，现在哪一页？

叶如钢

林水云风 发表于 2016-4-28 12:55
文章题目是什么，现在哪一页？

我说的是我的分析。 庞德的文章在这里：

http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/m_r/pound/metro.htm

林水云风

叶如钢 发表于 2016-4-28 13:07
我说的是我的分析。 庞德的文章在这里：

http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/m_r/pound/metr ...

你说“在诗歌评论版有一篇文章谈到这首诗”，我说的是怎么找到这篇文章。

叶如钢

林水云风 发表于 2016-4-28 13:09
你说“在诗歌评论版有一篇文章谈到这首诗”，我说的是怎么找到这篇文章。

http://www.zgsglp.com/thread-495559-1-1.html

火星闪烁

林水云风 发表于 2016-4-27 14:59
昨天搜到的解释文章：

In this quick poem，Pound describes watching faces appear in a metro station ...

谢谢林水云风同学!
这首诗是三行,共20个词。标题入诗了。
原诗中有三个大的诗歌意境，有许多意象。
把一个意境表达完整翻译就成功了。
成功由自己定义。
大师的作品是可以翻译的，同时大师的作品也是有瘕疵的。

您发的这篇文章我以前没读过，文中的部分观点应该说是支持了我的翻译。

林水云风

叶如钢 发表于 2016-4-28 12:20
庞德从俳句获得启发： 一是用两三行就写成一首诗， 一是某些韵味。 但他写的和日本俳句有明显不同。
...

英语与日语、汉语的巨大差异，英语是无法写出日语、汉语的古诗的，只能是模仿其形式，借鉴其味道。所谓超现实的意味，也就是意象，而意象，是中国古典文学自有的概念，庞德的意象派或许有源自东方的影响。一些分析文章说这首诗的写作，受到了维多利亚诗风及日本俳句善写花的影响。

And this Yugen in the Zenrin Kushu:
Wind subsiding，the flowers still fail，
Bird crying，the mountain silence deepens.

这首俳句译成英文，也就是译成现代诗体。

我的译文最后保留了两首，一个是仿古的，一个是现代自由体。

我觉得这首诗似能写成中文的对句。树枝对人群；花对容；夜雨，其意也在上行中，可找对词而对之。