莎士比亞十四行詩第十八首的英文評論和賞析

◎ 莎士比亞十四行詩第18首　　◇ 曹明倫 譯　　18 18　　我是否可以把你比喻成夏天？ Shall I compare thee to a summer"s day?　　雖然你比夏天更可愛更溫和： Thou art more lovely and more temperate:　　狂風會使五月嬌蕾紅消香斷， Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,　　夏天擁有的時日也轉瞬即過； And summer"s lease hath all too short a date:　　有時天空之巨眼目光太熾熱， Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,　　它金燦燦的面色也常被遮暗； And often is his gold complexion dimmed,　　而千芳萬艷都終將凋零飄落， And every fair from fair sometime declines,　　被時運天道之更替剝盡紅顏； By chance, or nature"s changing course untrimmed:　　但你永恆的夏天將沒有止盡， But thy eternal summer shall not fade,　　你所擁有的美貌也不會消失， Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow"st,　　死神終難誇口你遊盪於死蔭， Nor shall death brag thou wander"st in his shade,　　當你在不朽的詩中永葆盛時； When in eternal lines to time thou grow"st,　　只要有人類生存，或人有眼睛， So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,　　我的詩就會流傳並賦予你生命。 So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.　　註：第11行語出《舊約·詩篇》第23篇第4節：「雖然我穿行於死蔭之幽谷，但我不怕罹禍，因為你與我同在……」　　英文賞析：　　This is one of the most famous of all the sonnets, justifiably so. But it would be a mistake to take it entirely in isolation, for it links in with so many of the other sonnets through the themes of the descriptive power of verse; the ability of the poet to depict the fair youth adequately, or not; and the immortality conveyed through being hymned in these "eternal lines". It is noticeable that here the poet is full of confidence that his verse will live as long as there are people drawing breath upon the earth, whereas later he apologises for his poor wit and his humble lines which are inadequate to encompass all the youth"s excellence. Now, perhaps in the early days of his love, there is no such self-doubt and the eternal summer of the youth is preserved forever in the poet"s lines. The poem also works at a rather curious level of achieving its objective through dispraise. The summer"s day is found to be lacking in so many respects (too short, too hot, too rough, sometimes too dingy), but curiously enough one is left with the abiding impression that "the lovely boy" is in fact like a summer"s day at its best, fair, warm, sunny, temperate, one of the darling buds of May, and that all his beauty has been wonderfully highlighted by the comparison。　　這是整體賞析　　1. Shall I compare thee to a summer"s day?　　This is taken usually to mean "What if I were to compare thee etc?" The stock comparisons of the loved one to all the beauteous things in nature hover in the background throughout. One also remembers Wordsworth"s lines:　　We"ll talk of sunshine and of song,　　And summer days when we were young,　　Sweet childish days which were as long　　As twenty days are now.　　Such reminiscences are indeed anachronistic, but with the recurrence of words such as "summer", "days", "song", "sweet", it is not difficult to see the permeating influence of the Sonnets on Wordsworth"s verse.　　2. Thou art more lovely and more temperate:　　The youth"s beauty is more perfect than the beauty of a summer day. more temperate - more gentle, more restrained, whereas the summer"s day might have violent excesses in store, such as are about to be described.　　3. Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,　　May was a summer month in Shakespeare"s time, because the calendar in use lagged behind the true sidereal calendar by at least a fortnight.　　darling buds of May - the beautiful, much loved buds of the early summer; favourite flowers.　　4. And summer"s lease hath all too short a date:　　Legal terminology. The summer holds a lease on part of the year, but the lease is too short, and has an early termination (date).　　5. Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,　　Sometime = on occasion, sometimes;　　the eye of heaven = the sun.　　6. And often is his gold complexion dimmed,　　his gold complexion = his (the sun"s) golden face. It would be dimmed by clouds and on overcast days generally.　　7. And every fair from fair sometime declines,　　All beautiful things (every fair) occasionally become inferior in comparison with their essential previous state of beauty (from fair). They all decline from perfection.　　8. By chance, or nature"s changing course untrimmed:　　By chance accidents, or by the fluctuating tides of nature, which are not subject to control, nature"s changing course untrimmed.　　untrimmed - this can refer to the ballast (trimming) on a ship which keeps it stable; or to a lack of ornament and decoration. The greater difficulty however is to decide which noun this adjectival participle should modify. Does it refer to nature, or chance, or every fair in the line above, or to the effect of nature"s changing course? KDJ adds a comma after course, which probably has the effect of directing the word towards all possible antecedents. She points out that nature"s changing course could refer to women"s monthly courses, or menstruation, in which case every fair in the previous line would refer to every fair woman, with the implication that the youth is free of this cyclical curse, and is therefore more perfect.　　9. But thy eternal summer shall not fade,　　Referring forwards to the eternity promised by the ever living poet in the next few lines, through his verse.　　10. Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow"st,　　Nor shall it (your eternal summer) lose its hold on that beauty which you so richly possess. ow"st = ownest, possess.　　By metonymy we understand "nor shall you lose any of your beauty".　　11. Nor shall death brag thou wander"st in his shade,　　Several half echoes here. The biblical ones are probably "Oh death where is thy sting? Or grave thy victory?" implying that death normally boasts of his conquests over life. And Psalms 23.3.: "Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil " In classical literature the shades flitted helplessly in the underworld like gibbering ghosts. Shakespeare would have been familiar with this through Virgil"s account of Aeneas" descent into the underworld in Aeneid Bk. VI.　　12. When in eternal lines to time thou grow"st,　　in eternal lines = in the undying lines of my verse. Perhaps with a reference to progeny, and lines of descent, but it seems that the procreation theme has already been abandoned.　　to time thou grow"st - you keep pace with time, you grow as time grows.　　13. So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,　　For as long as humans live and breathe upon the earth, for as long as there are seeing eyes on the eart.　　14. So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.　　That is how long these verses will live, celebrating you, and continually renewing your life. But one is left with a slight residual feeling that perhaps the youth"s beauty will last no longer than a summer"s day, despite the poet"s proud boast.　　這是逐句賞析　　中文版：以莎氏十四行詩第18首為例，以往從未有人指出過它的缺點，但筆者根據教學實踐得來的體會，認為它至少有兩大缺點，一是在音韻方面，其韻腳、頭韻和韻格均不同程度的破壞了詩歌的音美和形美；二是某些比喻和描述的平淡或離奇破壞了詩歌的意美。　　一、音韻參差，破壞了音美和形美　　全詩的基本格律是五音步抑揚格（iambic pentameter），包括三個四行組（quatrain）和一個對偶句(couplet)，採用典型的莎氏十四行的韻式，即abab cdcd efef gg。但本詩音韻並不十分齊整。　　在韻腳（end rhyme）方面，第二行的temperate與第四行的date押韻，但兩個詞的重音位置卻不同，這一韻就既非陽韻（masculine rhyme）也非陰韻（feminine rhyme），顯得不倫不類，與其它嚴整的韻對比，這一韻念起來令人頗感突兀，破壞了詩歌的音韻美。　　頭韻（alliteration）方面，第六和第七行都以And 起頭，形成頭韻，但這兩個並列的簡單陳述句從意義上看，造成了語意在同一水平上徘徊而不是遞進，而且用相同的And起頭使兩句不僅在語意也在形式上顯得拖沓而無變化，破壞了詩歌的音韻美和形式美。　　韻格(meter)方面，五音步抑揚格的詩歌是常有破格的，特別是在詩歌首行的第一個音步，經常是前重音後輕音。適當的破格可使詩歌免於呆板，增加變化，使音韻更顯其美。但過多的破格就會打亂詩歌的格式，使其音律顯得零碎，給詩歌帶來負面影響，本詩即是如此。第一行「Shall I compare thee to a summer』s day?」中的「thee to」是無法按輕重音的順序來念的，第二行「Thou art more lovely and more temperate」中的兩個more是強調，要念重音，因此這一行的韻格就不是抑揚格了。第六行「And often is his gold complexion dimm』d」中前兩個音步的輕重音位置是模糊的。第十行「Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest」中的第一個音步可以看作是破格，第十一行「Nor shall Death brag thou wander』st in his shade」中的「Nor shall Death brag」重音和輕音順序應是「重輕重重」，也不是抑揚格。可見，本詩因為破格過多，格律形式有點混亂，詩歌齊整的音韻美受到了損害。實際上，學生也經常反映這首詩歌讀起來有些地方很拗口，主要就是因為韻律破格太多所致。　　二、比喻和描述有時平淡或離奇，破壞意美　　詩歌之美，不僅體現在音美和形美上，而且還有語意層面的美。通過語法、辭彙或使用比喻等，可以建構詩歌的意美。本詩中有美麗的語言，如「darling buds of May」（五月的嫩蕊）、「eternal summer」（長夏）、「thou wander』st in his shade」（在他的暗影里蹉跎），但也有平常的比喻和描述，如詩中將「你」比喻為「夏季」，把太陽比成「天上的眼睛」，有「金色的面容」，這當然不是平淡的描述，但至少也不是新鮮的。而說死神能「誇口」，這種擬人的手法多少有些平淡了。詩中又說夏天有「租期」，租期又「太短」，則令人感到有些陌生，難有美感了。時光匆匆是人人皆知的常識，詩中用複雜的表述來說明淺顯的道理，很難令人感到親切，這樣的比喻並未達到增強表現力的效果。這種將簡單複雜化從而使人產生隔膜的例子還有「nature』s changing course untrimm』d 」以及「that fair thou owest」。而「And every fair from fair」則讓一般讀者感到很抽象，難以理解。「So long as men can breathe or eyes can see」也是一句很平常的散文句。　　以上所述，是莎氏十四行詩第18首在詩藝上的缺陷。當然詩中古雅的用詞和句法也會給普通讀者帶來閱讀上的不適，但這是古今語言演變造成的隔膜，並非詩歌本身的原因，正如其多個漢譯文，現在看起來也有時代距離感一樣。莎士比亞十四行詩第18首是一首經典詩歌，其美妙自不待言，但是從另一個角度檢視和觀察，認識其缺點和不足，以避免盲目吹捧和過度美化，應該是對待文學經典的更全面因而是更可取的方法。　　PS:都是非原創，是我在各個論壇，空間里找的。但是希望可以啊幫到你~~~~~~~·
推薦閱讀：