天鹅-宙斯-海伦-达芬奇-叶芝

2014-10-17 19:03阅读：

http://blog.sina.cn/dpool/blog/u/1645123774

天鹅-宙斯-海伦-达芬奇-叶芝

无意中看到了飞白老师这首“Leda and the Swan”译本，满心喜欢，收藏，怀念那些在老师小屋里读诗、品咖啡的日子。

故事取材于希腊神话，故事的主角仍是风流宙斯和他的情人。这次，宙斯幻化成天鹅，诱惑了斯巴达王后丽达。诗人用生动的笔触描述了天鹅迷诱美妇的全过程，王后无助的心理也是诗人着墨的重点，同时暗示了人在命运面前的无力抗争。故事并未在迷奸之际结束，诗人的神秘主义伸抵这场人鸟之恋后所引发的特洛伊之战、阿伽门农之死……

故事背景：宙斯化作天鹅与丽达结合后，丽达同一天与国王同床。于是，传奇诞生：丽达受孕并孵出了两颗蛋。蛋里孕育着异父同母的四个孩子，宙斯的孩子是Helen和Castor，国王的孩子是Polydeuces和Clytemnestra。两个女儿Helen和Clytemnestra在历史长河中，都扮演了颠覆男人世界正常运行轨迹的角色，一个引发了特洛伊十年大战，另一个和情人一起杀死了丈夫阿伽门农并随后死于儿子之手。Castor和Polydeuces后来则为了同生死成了双子星

座。

这个故事一直以来成就了无数艺术家和文学家。在叶芝之前，达芬奇曾作画，再现了“蛋人”孵化出壳的瞬间，画中丽达的微笑颇有蒙娜丽莎的影子。

《丽达与天鹅》
——威廉·巴特勒·叶芝
突然袭击：在踉跄的少女身上，
一双巨翅还在乱扑，一双黑蹼
抚弄她的大腿，鹅喙衔着她的颈项，
他的胸脯紧压她无计脱身的胸脯。
手指啊，被惊呆了，哪还有能力
从松开的腿间推开那白羽的荣耀？
身体呀，翻倒在雪白的灯心草里，
感到的唯有其中那奇异的心跳！
腰股内一阵颤栗．竟从中生出
断垣残壁、城楼上的浓烟烈焰
和阿伽门农之死。
当她被占有之时
当地如此被天空的野蛮热血制服
直到那冷漠的喙把她放开之前，
她是否获取了他的威力，他的知识？
“Leda and the Swan” by William Butler Yeats
A sudden blow： the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl， her thighs caressed
By the dark webs， her nape caught in his bill，
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.
How can those terrified vague fingers push
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs？
And how can body， laid in that white rush，
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies？
A shudder in the loins engenders there
The broken wall， the burning roof and tower
And Agamemnon dead.
Being so caught up，So mastered by the brute blood of the air，
Did she put on his knowledge with his power
Before the indifferent beak could let her drop？

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摘录：'Leda and the Swan' is a sonnet by William Butler Yeats first published in the Dial in 1924. Combining psychological realism with a mystic vision, it describes the swan's rape of Leda.

It also alludes to the Trojan war, which will be provoked by the abduction of Helen, who will be begotten by Zeus on Leda (along with Castor and Pollux, in some versions of the myth). Clytaemnestra, who killed her husband, Agamemnon, leader of the Greeks at Troy, was also supposed to have hatched from one of Leda’s eggs.

The poem is regularly praised as one of Yeats's masterpieces. Camille Paglia, who called the poem 'the greatest poem of the twentieth century,' and said 'all human beings, like Leda, are caught up moment by moment in the 'white rush' of experience. For Yeats, the only salvation is the shapeliness and stillness of art.' See external links for a bas relief arranged in the position as described by Yeats. From Wiki

**************************************

摘录：The poet wonders that for a woman like Leda, it was impossible to make herself free from that “feathered glory”. She felt weak against that massive force of Zeus. She started feeling that the bird had already overpowered her and the rape was almost complete.

The final question that arises out of the whole episode is whether any positive gains also came out of this sexual act. In another term when Leda was caught up like this, when she was being mastered in this way by the brute blood of the air was she able to take on to herself part of the divine knowledge and power of Zeus before he became indifferent to her?

The question “Did she put on his knowledge with his power?” is rhetorical. The poet ends the poem by suggesting that Leda didn’t gain the divine knowledge of the god but his violence. From the questions of the second and the last stanzas of the poem, we also see that not only human beings but also gods themselves are a part of a universal (or cosmic) pattern of events, and that they must play their roles as history unfolds.

Yeats believed that the divine power come to the human world once in every two thousand years. Once it comes in the form of a violent animal that forcefully rapes some important woman to give birth to children who will bring about the end of the existing culture and civilization. According to Yeats, the birth of Christ was caused by such an indirect spiritual contact of the divine power with Mary in Jerusalem.

Similarly, the birth of the most beautiful woman Helen and her sister Clytemnestra in Greece was caused by a violent rape of the Greek queen Leda by the god Zeus in the form of a swan. The sexual intercourse between Leda and Swan is not only resulted in the birth of Helen and Clytemnestra but also the new era of physical violence and destruction of the old Greek culture.

The poem can be seen as a criticism of beauty too. Helen is criticized for lack of wisdom. She left her legitimate husband and eloped with Paris, which was so much devastating that it created havoc all around. Similarly, beautiful Clytemnestra killed her own husband. It is an act which could never be forgiven. Both women had beauty but no knowledge at all. Yeats criticizes a beauty where there is a lack of wisdom.

Beauty without knowledge can be devastating and the above poem serves the same example. This sonnet is a powerful description of the union between the human and divine. This poem is a perfect blend of mythological story and Yeats’s imaginations about the history. The poem is beautiful in its descriptive narrative of sexual union also. - See more at: http://www.bachelorandmaster.com/britishandamericanpoetry/leda-and-swan.html#sthash.y5QzXPRS.dpuf

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