丁尼生《过沙洲》新译与赏析
2011-09-27 22:39阅读：
Neo-translation, Appreciation and
Analysis of Tennyson’s Crossing the
Bar
丁尼生《过沙洲》新译与赏析
河北农业大学 外国语学院 李绍青 071001
Abstract：As a world-widely popular
poem, Tennyson’s Crossing the Bar attracts more and more
people to appreciate and analyze it. And this paper aims at translating it
in a new way, and analyzing it in a fully scientific
way.
Key words: Tennyson; Crossing the
Bar; new translation; appreciation; analysis
Introduction
Alfred Tennyson（1809-1892) is the
most outstanding poet of England in the 1
9
th century. He was favored by Victorian Queen. In 1850,
Tennyson became the Poet Laureate of England. He was also given the
title of “Poet of the People” and the key role of “The Big Three of
Victorian poets” as well. All his poems mainly concern the topics
of life, death and immortal.
Crossing the Bar is perhaps the last and best poem
written by the oldest poet within shortest time (only 10 minutes or
so). In this poem, the poet depicts himself crossing the bar by
boat on the sea to see God with a peaceful mind, which shows he has
a very detached attitude towards death.
This essay will present the latest translation of this world-famous
poem and discuss the poem’s theme, form, poetic devices and
rhetoric methods.
Neo-translation
In Crossing the Bar,
Tennyson uses an extended
metaphor to compare death to crossing the
“sandbar”
between the tide or river of life, with its outgoing “flood”, and
the ocean that lies beyond death, the “boundless deep” as follows:
“
Crossing the Bar 过沙洲
By
Tennyson 李绍青 译析
Sunset and evening star,
日落星辰眨眼，
And one clear call for me!
将吾召唤！
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
沙洲不闻浪拍岸，
When I put out to sea,
出海登船，
But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
汹涌潮水似眠，
Too full for sound and foam,
浪静沫闲，
When that which drew from out the boundless
deep大海深处巨浪掀，
Turns again home.
潮退悄然。
Twilight and evening bell,
钟鸣暮色突现，
And after that the dark!
黑暗一片！
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
远行无视人伤感，
When I embark;
弃岸扬帆；
For though from out our borne of Time and Place
洪流时空无限，
The flood may bear me far,
将吾携远，
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
盼与舵手面对面，
When I have crossed the bar.
沙洲前边。”[1]
Theme
analysis
The poem describes his
fearlessness toward death and his firm belief in God and the
eternity of life. The title “Crossing the Bar” itself symbolizes
travelling from life to death. It is thought that Tennyson wrote it
as his own elegy,
as the poem has a tone of finality about it.
Form
analysis
This poem
consists of 4 quatrains with a rhyme scheme of “abab cdcd efef
gaga.” The ABAB rhyme scheme of the poem echoes the stanzas’
thematic patterning: the first and third stanzas are linked to one
another as are the second and fourth. To most note-worthy is that
the first and third lines of each stanza are always longer than the
2nd and 4th lines, although the line lengths
vary among the stanzas. The form of the poem follows the content:
The wavelike quality of the long-then-short lines parallels the
narrative thread of the poem. In other words, the staggering lines
pictographs the waves of the sea, which knocks the heart of the
poet and along with which the heart boats of readers
floats.
The differing lengths of
lines evoke the movement of a tide washing upon a beach, which is
something that we all recognize to be cyclic, therefore, when I
translated the poem, I made a great effort to realize this unique
form by means of Foreignization and to rhyme consistently at the
end of all the lines through the methods of Internization. Only in
this way, I believe, can the hearts of the poet, the translator and
the readers resonate harmoniously on the same
platform!
Rhetoric methods
analysis:（辞美）
In this poem
Tennyson employs figures
of speech, each at a proper place in a proper
way:
First let’s take a look
at the title. Tennyson uses the metaphor of a sand bar to describe
the barrier between life and death. And “cross” here is a pun: for
one thing, it has some Christian connotations, i.e. Jesus was
hanged on the cross; for another it means crossing over into the
next world. Hence, put “cross” and “bar” together, and we will get
the meaning of the whole title: Leaving this world and entering the
next world.
Also, the poet make good
use of metaphor：Pilot literally is the sailing director, but actually it
refers to God. The Pilot on board all the
while to the passenger is what God always steering everybody’s life
is to everyone. Pilot (capitalized, as is done with “He” and “Him”
in literature when referring to God), is a guiding and personal
figure, the one who was steering his life. Christ is the Pilot in
our earthly life, who guides us to the eternal God the
Father.
Similarly, “Time” and
“Place” are capitalized like proper nouns, such as names and
locations, suggesting that Tennyson sees “Time and Place” as a
specific location, which he knows for sure as well as “ London”. In
a word, the three capitalized words remind readers naturally of
God. This adds to the color of certainty in the poem, which shows
that the poet takes death as going home, for he is going to the
heaven instead of the hell! Here we can see Tennyson’s faith was
Christianity, and Jesus as Christ is the root of that faith. The
hero hopes that he will be able to reside in heaven with his
creator.
Alliteration, a rhetoric
device with English unique characteristics, can be obviously
observed in “And one clear call for me!” and “Too
full for sound and foam” of the poem.
Clearly we can also see
that the poet uses assonance
to achieve beautiful sound effect like “seems asleep” and
“from out our borne”; that he employs personification to make vivid
image as in moaning in L3 where a voice-like sound was made by the
sea; and that he utilizes powerful parallel structure to enhance its
coherence as in “When I put out to sea,
…When I
embark，…When I have crossed the bar,
…”
Poetic devices
analysis: (意美、音美)
Tennyson uses several
poetic devices to express his theme.
Firstly, Tennyson uses
imagery to carry his ideas. That is to say, Tennyson employs quite
a few images in the poem.
The foremost two images
are “Crossing” and “the bar” in the title. Now that the cross was
where Jesus died, “Crossing” here is used as a euphemism for death.
“Crossing” is an image of what we Chinese
call“人间弥留之际”. Now as Tennyson himself dies, he evokes the
image again in hope of complementing this metaphorical link with a
spiritual one: he hopes that he, as a chosen citizen, will see the
God. As for “the bar”, a sandbar to be exact, is a ridge of sand
built up by currents along a shore. It is physically a bar of sand
in shallow water. In order to reach the shore, the waves
must crash against the sandbar, creating a sound that Tennyson
describes as the “moaning of the bar.” However, metaphorically it
means“阴阳界”in Chinese legend.
Other images are a few temporal
words symbolizing the late
stage in the poet's life. From the sunset, twilight, and evening
star, which place the reader in
a setting at the end of the day, until dark,
who sees the writer “turns again home”, the
time passing signifies the poet’s approaching step by step toward
death as the poem develops. For each progressing physical time
Tennyson makes a personal psychological
reference to his “moving on toward
his final destination”. After all, one’s whole life is but
travelling from cradle to crave.
And images of
“tide” and
“flood” are symbols of
life.
In a word, the poet
creates sight and sound images to make the readers
have a lifelike feeling.
Secondly, repetition and
contrast can also be easily noticed in this
poem.
The repetition of when in
“When I put out to sea”, “When I embark” and “When I have crossed
the bar” makes it clear to the reader that the event the poet is
discussing is firmly placed in the future; it will happen, but
hasn't happened yet. We can contrast this to the use of
indefinite phrases in the poem: “And may there be no moaning of the
bar”, “And may there be no sadness of farewell” and “I hope to see
my Pilot face to face”. Through contrast Tennyson makes a clear
distinction between events which he knows will happen, and events
which he hopes will happen. The narrator himself has moments of certainty and uncertainty concerning his own
death in this poem to that effect.
Conclusion:
From the
above appreciation and
analysis we can see that Tennyson’s Crossing the
Bar is perfect in form, proper in
image, and powerful in device, whether rhetoric or
poetic. It is rich in imagery, picturesque in description. And what
most merits our particular mentioning is his using long and short
lines alternatively to symbolize the wave both physically and
psychologically. Tennyson also handled rhythm
masterfully. His use of the musical qualities of words to
emphasize his rhythms and meanings is sensitive. In the readers’
mind this poem is really a crystallization of a beautiful picture,
a wonderful song and a graceful poem as well. It veritably embodies
the trinity of “three beauties”------ the beauty of sound, the
beauty of form, and the beauty of imagery. After reading
this poem we can’t help admiring the Poet
Laureate himself not only because of his
poetic art but due to his spirit of taking death as natural as
travelling. No wonder it is spread all over the world and carried
on from generation to generation.
Bibliography
[1]
李绍青. Crossing the
Bar译析[J]. 英语世界，2011，（8）：16.
[2]
郭栖庆.
英语专业考研 考点精梳与精练
英美文学[M].
天津：天津科学技术出版社，2011.
[3]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossing_the_Bar
转自《海外英语》2011年第9期
