翻译:庞德(Ezra Pound)

Ezra Pound(Noel Stock

埃兹拉·庞德(诺伊尔·斯多克)

翻译:Jason Hu


As war in Europe drew near, Pound returned home (1939) in the hope that he could help keep the peace between Italy and the United States. He went back to Italy a disappointed man, and between 1941 and 1943, after Italy and the United States were at war, he made several hundred broadcasts over Rome Radio on subjects ranging from James Joyce to the control of money and the U.S. government by Jewish bankers and often openly condemned the American war effort. He was arrested by U.S. forces in 1945 and spent six months in a prison camp for army criminals near Pisa. Despite harsh conditions there, he translated Confucius into English (The Great Digest & Unwobbling Pivot, 1951) and wrote The Pisan Cantos (1948), the most moving section of his long poem-in-progress.

1939年,随着欧洲战争的临近,庞德回到家乡,希望他能帮助维持意大利和美国之间的和平。1941年至1943年间,在意大利和美国交战之后,他通过罗马广播电台进行了数百次广播,主题从詹姆斯·乔伊斯到犹太银行家对金钱的控制以及美国政府,并经常公开谴责美国的战争努力。他于1945年被美军逮捕,并在比萨附近的军队罪犯监狱中度过了六个月。尽管那里的条件恶劣,他还是将孔子翻译成英文,并写了《比萨诗章》(The Pisan Cantos,1948年),这是他正在进行的长诗中最动人的部分。


Returned to the United States to face trial for treason, he was pronounced “insane and mentally unfit for trial” by a panel of doctors and spent 12 years (1946–58) in Saint Elizabeth’s Hospital for the criminally insane in Washington, D.C. During this time he continued to write The Cantos (Section: Rock-Drill, 1955; Thrones, 1959), translated ancient Chinese poetry (The Classic Anthology, 1954) and Sophocles’ Trachiniai (Women of Trachis, 1956), received visitors regularly, and kept up a voluminous and worldwide correspondence. Controversy surrounding him burst out anew when, in 1949, he was awarded the important Bollingen Prize for his Pisan Cantos. When on April 18, 1958, he was declared unfit to stand trial and the charges against him were dropped, he was released from Saint Elizabeth’s. He returned to Italy, dividing the year between Rapallo and Venice.

回到美国接受叛国罪的审判后,他被一个医生小组诊断为“精神错乱,精神上不适合审判”,并在华盛顿特区的圣伊丽莎白医院度过了12年(1946-58)。在此期间,他继续创作《诗章》,翻译了中国古代诗歌(《诗经》,1954年)和索福克勒斯的《特拉奇斯的女人》,1956年)。1958 年 4 月 18 日,他被宣布不适合接受审判,对他的指控被撤销,他被从圣伊丽莎白释放。他回到意大利,在拉帕洛和威尼斯之间度过了这一年。


Pound lapsed into silence in 1960, leaving The Cantos unfinished. More than 800 pages long, they are fragmentary and formless despite recurring themes and ideas. The Cantos are the logbook of Pound’s own private voyage through Greek mythologyancient China and Egypt, Byzantium, Renaissance Italy, the works of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, and many other periods and subjects, including economics and banking and the nooks and crannies of his own memory and experience. Pound even convinced himself that the poem’s faults and weaknesses, inevitable from the nature of the undertaking, were part of an underlying method. Yet there are numerous passages such as only he could have written that are among the best of the century.

庞德在1960年彻底陷入沉默,那时候《诗章》还未完成。诗章长达 800 多页,尽管主题思想反复出现,但它们是零碎和无形的。《诗章》是庞德自己通过希腊神话、古代中国和埃及、拜占庭、文艺复兴时期的意大利、约翰·亚当斯和托马斯·杰斐逊的作品以及许多其他时期和主题的私人航行日志,还有经济学和银行业的理解以及他自己记忆和经验的角落和缝隙。庞德说服自己这首诗的缺点和弱点不可避免——这也是诗歌创作方法中的一部分。但事实上,《诗章》中有许多段落是本世纪最好的诗句,且只有他能写出来。


Pound died in Venice in 1972. Out of his 60 years of publishing activity came 70 books of his own, contributions to about 70 others, and more than 1,500 articles. A complete listing of his works is in Donald Gallup, A Bibliography of Ezra Pound (1963; rev. ed 1983). Most of the writing on which Pound’s fame now rests may be found in Personae (The Collected Poems; 1926, new ed. 1949), a selection of poems Pound wished to keep in print in 1926, with a few earlier and later poems added in 1949; The Cantos (1970), cantos 1–117, a collection of all the segments published to date; The Spirit of Romance (1910); Literary Essays (1954), the bulk of his best criticism, ed. with an introduction by T.S. Eliot; Guide to Kulchur (1938); and The Letters of Ezra Pound, 1907–1941, ed. by D.D. Paige (1950), an excellent introduction to Pound’s literary life and inimitable epistolary style.

庞德于1972年在威尼斯去世。在60年的出版活动中,他自己出版了70本书,为大约70本书做出了贡献,并发表了1,500多篇文章。他的作品的完整列表见唐纳德·盖洛普(Donald Gallup),《埃兹拉·庞德的参考书目》(A Bibliography of Ezra Pound,1963年;1983年修订版)。庞德现在声名鹊起的大部分作品都可以在《人物》(《诗集》;1926 年,1949 年新版)中找到,这是庞德希望在 1926 年出版的诗选,1949 年增加了一些早期和后来的诗歌。还有《诗章》(1970)和《诗章1-117》,这是他迄今为止出版的所有片段的集合;《浪漫精神》(1910);《文学散文》(1954),里面精选了一部分他最出色的批评和编辑,由T.S.艾略特向读者介绍;《库尔丘尔指南》(1938);以及由D.D. Paige(1950)编辑的《艾兹拉·庞德的信,1907-1941》,这是对庞德文学生活和无与伦比的书信体风格的精彩介绍。