英文诗歌赏析——Fire and Ice
2012-11-16 12:29阅读：
Fire and Ice
Robert
Frost
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
火与 冰
（英） 弗罗斯特 屠 岸译
有人说世界将毁于烈火，
有人说毁于冰。
我对于欲望体味得够多，
所以我赞同这意见：毁于火。
但如果世界须两次沉沦，
那么对憎恨我懂得深切，
我会说，论破坏力量,冰
也同样酷烈，
足能胜任。
【单词注释】
1. perish: v. 毁灭，消失,，腐烂
2. destruction: n. 破坏，毁灭
3. suffice:v. 使足够
【诗文赏析】
《火与冰》（Fire and
Ice）是20世纪美国著名诗人罗伯特·弗罗斯特颇受欢迎的一首抒情诗，作于1923年。在始终，弗罗斯特比较分析了火与冰这两个极具毁灭性的力量，在开头两句道出世界毁灭于火或者是冰的可能，并用火象征激情与欲望，用冰象征冷酷和仇恨。罗伯特·弗罗斯特的诗多以田园生活为题材，语言朴实无华，但却处处蕴涵着人生的真谛。
【英文赏析】
'Fire and Ice' is one of
Robert Frost's most
popular poems, published in
December 1920 in
Harper's
Magazine[1]
and in
1923 in his
Pulitzer-prize winning book
New
Hampshire. It discusses the
end of the world,
likening the elemental force of
fire with the emotion of
desire, and
ice with
hate. It is one of
Frost's best-known and most anthologized poems.
[2]
Inspiration
According to one of Frost's biographers, 'Fire and Ice' was
inspired by a passage in Canto 32 of
Dante's
Inferno, in which the worst offenders of
hell, the traitors,
are submerged, while in a fiery hell, up to their necks in ice: 'a
lake so bound with ice, / It did not look like water, but like a
glass ... right clear / I saw, where sinners are preserved in
ice.'
[3]
In an anecdote he recounted in 1960 in a 'Science and the Arts'
presentation, prominent astronomer
Harlow Shapley
claims to have inspired 'Fire and Ice'.
[2]
Shapley describes an encounter he had with Robert Frost a year
before the poem was published in which Frost, noting that Shapley
was
the astronomer of his day, asks him how the world will
end. Shapley responded that either the sun will explode and
incinerate the Earth, or the Earth will somehow escape this fate
only to end up slowly freezing in deep space. Shapley was surprised
at seeing 'Fire and Ice' in print a year later, and referred to it
as an example of how science can influence the creation of art, or
clarify its meaning.
[4]
[Style and structure
It is written in a single 9-line
stanza, which greatly
narrows in the last two lines. The poem's meter is an irregular mix
of
iambic tetrameter and
dimeter, and the rhyme
scheme (which is ABAABCBCB) also follows no regular pattern.
Critiques
Marveled at for its compactness, 'Fire and Ice' signaled for Frost
'a new style, tone, manner, [and] form'. Its casual tone masks the
serious question it poses to the reader.
[5]
