那盲目執迷的心---讀葉慈詩二三事(上)

        「..........最後聚首的地方

           我們摸索,不說話

           虛浮河流的岸邊

           什麼也看不見,除非

           那對眼睛重新出現

           像是永恆的星辰

           死亡幽光裡的複葉玫瑰

            ........

           In this last of meeting places

           We grope together

           And avoid speech

           Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

           Sightless, unless

           The eyes reappear

           As the perpetual star

           Of death's twilight kingdom

               ─T.S. Eliot "The Hollow Man"

    是很多年前的一段往事了,那時候我還在念國中,開始因為地利之便(學校增班,教室不夠用,而硬把圖書館的閱覽室隔出兩間教室,我何嘗有幸成為其中一份子)而開始接觸文學,在這之前,我的世界出現最偉大的人物不過是史豔文罷了,然而,透過閱讀,竟開啟一道窗口,讓我自以為窺見到了全世界。

    那時,我鎮日無心上課,抽屜裡擺著從圖書館借來的各種經典,每日為莫比迪克(Moby Dick)與船長間的掙扎驚心動魄不已,也在那時,我開始透過書本間穿插在一大段情節中偶爾出現的幾句短詩,而開始閱讀起詩;偶爾是美而浪漫的一句短詩,如莎士比亞「一想到你的愛,便使我感到如此富有,即使和帝王換位,我也不屑屈就。」,抑或是饒富哲理的泰戈爾「願生如夏夜之清麗,死如秋夜之靜謐。」這些詩作只有簡短的寥寥幾語,卻蘊含了詞韻上的和諧與耐人尋味咀嚼的意境,使得我開始對詩產生號好奇。

    然而,真正的去閱讀詩卻是一次偶然的機會。在看了「現代啟示錄」後,我整個人被震懾了,劇末上校坐在昏暗中喃喃自語的正是卷頭所寫下的這首「The Hollow Man」,作品中那種簡單的味道,深遂的哲學意涵,由星辰、幽光而至複葉玫瑰,說出的莫不是現代人深藏的疑問,到了貪癡的盡頭,生命油枯燈盡的一瞬,真的會出現那樣讓我們難捨的凝望嗎？而是什麼呢？信仰？救贖？真理?還是失之交臂的愛戀？這些疑問盤踞在我心理。第一次,我湧起了讀詩的興趣與念頭,也是第一次,我買下了生平第一本詩集"艾略特詩選 "。

    自此以後,一個寬廣深遂的世界逐漸為我開啟,我買回更多人的詩集:拜倫、惠特曼(在看了春風化雨後,因為captain, my captain而讀)、聶魯達(postman)、濟慈、莎士比亞的十四行詩...... , 我總是在這些詩作中尋求快樂之道,而這些詩作也提供了我靈魂停歇,可以安身立命的地方。

     在宇宙波瀾(Disturbing the Universe )一書中,作者Freeman J. Dyson 引用了一首一個女孩寫給他的詩:

「我深願能用衣裳鋪展在你的腳下

  但是我太窮

  除了夢以外一無所有

  我將我的夢鋪在你的腳下

  請腳步放輕些

  因為你踩的是我的夢」

這首詩很美,但是美的有些不切實際,我看了作者,是葉慈,我想了想,這是誰？

    然後在楊牧的「亭午之鷹」一書中,我又看見了葉慈,這次他帶給我更大的震撼,這首詩我用書法重謄了一遍掛在書桌前:

  「因為我追尋的是一個典型,不是書。

      在作品裏顯得最充滿智慧的,不為別的,

      是因為他們那盲目執迷的心。

      我呼喚那神秘一人, 那人仍將

      沿著河岸的溼沙行走

      其神色如我,或確實就是我的替身,

      可是轉而又證明於一切可思議之中

      最不像我,正是我的反面,

      並且堅持這一切形象性格,展示著

      我追尋的一切;並且細語叮嚀

      彷彿對群鳥有所恐懼,在破曉以前

      那樣大聲啁啾著瞬息之音的鳥,

      怕它們將如此喧噪以訴求那些褻瀆的人。」

Because I seek an image, not a book.

Those men that in their writings are most wise

Own nothing but their blind, stupefied hearts.

I call to the mysterious one who yet

Shall walk the wet sands by the edge of the stream

And look most like me, being indeed my double,

And prove of all imaginable things

The most unlike, being my anti-self,

And, standing by these characters, disclose

All the I seek; and whisper it as though

He were afraid the birds, Who cry aloud

Their momentary cries before it is dawn,

Would carry it away to blasphemous men.

                 (Ego Dominus Tuus)

    是的,讀到這首詩時,我就像是童話故事裡的那個國王,看見兩隻鶴在花園裡散步,突然發覺自己聽懂了鶴的私語。之前,為了別人所提供出的典範拼命追趕,企望自己的不平凡與超越,然而,這首詩為我提出了解答,我知道,為什麼自己要這樣做了,原來我也有顆盲目執迷的心。

    在翻閱了葉慈的作品後,我發現自己竟然非常喜愛他的作品,他的作品風格迥異,尤其是晚期,更是詰屈聱牙,但是,這都無損於葉慈在我心目中的地位。我愛他的詩,尤其是探討心靈存在、虛無、富有哲理的詩作更令我著迷,不同於一些現代詩人的無病呻吟,葉慈總是能透過文字營造出一個令人深思的意境,每每讓人為之動容。讀葉慈的詩,就像是看楚浮的電影,他表達的手法也許令人難懂,但營造出的整體氣氛卻又讓人能去領悟瞭解。Yeats創造出一個世界,一個讓我驚奇卻又感動的世界,儘管很多書評批評他過度象徵化與神靈化,儘管他的一些作品真的也讓人半信半疑、半猜半懂,但我相信,真正傳世的作品是不需要受每個人推崇的,一如Yeats 再詩作裡寫道:

 「在作品裡顯得最充滿智慧的,不為別的,

     是因為他們那盲目執迷的心」

二、詩作研究與剖析

 「群星,沒有憑白無故地閃爍,

  雖然黑夜裡沒有人能看見它們,

  也不會想天下需要人間的觀望者,或

  上帝想聽見誰頌揚祂至高無上。」

                     ~ Milton失樂園

    我,不懂詩,也不懂詞。但是,我卻感受到詩樣般的人生與詞澤般的朋友。因此,我願意試著用我所理解感受到的Yeats的詩情,來為作品中令我心動折服的詩句,尋找出脈絡與道理。

    開始前,也曾博覽群書,企望能從旁人的先知灼見中找到一絲真理,無奈,所找到的詩無不介紹的都是我不喜歡的那幾首,如(Leda and the Swan), (Sailing to Byzantium), (The Wild Swans at Coole), (The Scholars)...,雖然資料豐富,但卻久久無法下筆,因此,我試著用一個愛詩人(非讀詩人,因為未曾飽讀「詩」書)來分析我喜歡的幾首詩─(When You are Old), (Ego Dominus Tuus), (The Second Coming)。

    在Yeats 的作品中,我最喜歡這首(Ego Dominus Tuss), 藉著Hic與Ille的對話(多像柏拉圖與蘇格拉底的對話),牽引出關於自我與典型(image),常人與上帝的對比思考。

 「Hic. On the grey sand beside the shallow stream

   Under your old wind-beaten tower, where still

   A lamp burns on beside the open book

   That Michael Robartes left, you walk in the moon 」

   And though you have passed the best of life still trace

   Enthralled by the unconquerable delusion,

   Magical shapes.

 Ille.         By the help of an image

   I call to my own opposite, summon all

   That I have handled least, least looked upon.

  Hic.  And I would find myself and not an image.                              10

  Ille. That is our modern hope and by its light

   We have lit upon the gentle, sensitive mind

   And lost the old nonchalance of the hand;

   Whether we have chosen chisel, pen or brush,

   We are but critics, or but half create,

   Timid, entangled, empty and abashed,

   Lacking the countenance of our friends.

  Hic.                        And yet

   The chief imagination of Christendom,

   Dante Alighieri, so utterly found himself

   That he has made that hollow face of his    20

   More plain to the mind's eye than any face

   But that of Christ.

  Ille.             And did he find himself

   Or was the hunger that had made it hollow

   A hunger for the apple on the bough

   Most out of reach?  and is that spectral image

   The man that Lapo and that Guido knew?

   I think he fashioned from his opposite

   An image that might have been a stony face

   Staring upon a bedouin's horse-hair roof

   From doored and windowed cliff, or half upturned                                30

   Among the coarse grass and the camel-dung.

   He set his chisel to the hardest stone.

   Being mocked by Guido for his lecherous life,

   Derided and deriding, driven out

   To climb that stair and eat that bitter bread,

   He found the unpersuadable justice, he found

   The most exalted lady loved by a man.

  Hic. Yet surely there are men who have made their art

   Out of no tragic war, lovers of life,

   Impulsive men that look for happiness     40

   And sing when they have found it

  Ille.                          No, not sing,

   For those that love the world serve it in action,

   Grow rich, popular and full of infllluence,

   And should they paint or write, still it is action:

   The struggle of the fly in marmalade.

   The rhetorician would deceive his neighbours,

   The sentimentalist himself; while art

   Is but a vision of reality.

   What portion in the world can the artist have

   Who has awakened from the common dream 50

   But dissipation and despair?

  Hic.                     And yet

   No one denies to Keats love of the world;

   Remember his deliberate happiness.     

  Ille. His art is happy, but who knows his mind?

   I see a schoolboy when I think of him,

   With face and nose pressed to a sweet-shop window,

   For certainly he sank into his grave

   His senses and his heart unsatisfied,

   And made-being poor, ailing and ignorant,

   Shut out from all the luxury of the world,   60

   The coarse-bred son of a livery-stable keeper-

   Luxuriant song.

  Hic.           Why should you leave the lamp

   Burning alone beside an open book,

   And trace these characters upon the sands?

   A style is found by sedentary toil

   And by the imitation of great masters.

  Ille. Because I seek an image, not a book.

   Those men that in their writings are most wise

   Own nothing but their blind, stupefied hearts.

   I call to the mysterious one who yet       70

   Shall walk the wet sands by the edge of the stream

   And look most like me, being indeed my double,

   And prove of all imaginable things

   The most unlike, being my anti-self,

   And standing by these characters disclose

   All that I seek; and whisper it as though

   He were afraid the birds, who cry aloud

   Their momentary cries before it is dawn,

   Would carry it away to blasphemous men.」

      在第10行Hic言:(And I would find myself and not an image )與67行(because I seek an image),就可以看出Yeats 在創作過程中,一個左右詩作的重點─    對比性。余光中在「英美現代詩選」中評論「要瞭解葉慈的深厚與偉大,我們必須把握他詩中所呈現的對比性」。在Yeats的作品中,我們幾乎可以找到這些極端點,想像與現實、心靈與形體、高貴與下賤、美與醜、逝去與留存、短暫與永恆,無不是相反相成、相剋相生。在這首詩中,Hic與Ille的對話,亦正亦反,為心靈的追求互相贊同,亦又互相辯駁,為萬世留芳而努力(永恆),又為不願步上前人後塵而遲疑(自我),追崇典型(形體),卻又更加奉執著精神為圭臬(心靈),Yeats就在這些極端的杆格中尋找平衡點創作。

    1908年,龐德闖進了他的世界,挾美國新大陸的朝氣和稍後的意象主義運動,迫使中年的Yeats在半迎半拒的心情下,接受年輕一代的影響。於是Yeats從早期的浪漫主義和愛爾蘭神話掙脫出來,開始展開一種正視現實的簡樸與誠摯詩風。這首詩Ego Dominus Tuus寫於1915年,詩中對於自我,明顯可以看出Yeats的不安與質疑,我想,Yeats或多或少可以感受到創作上的一些衝擊,也因此在這首詩中,他不斷去思考創作著作本身的問題(究竟創造了什麼？),在14行中,他疑問：

「Whether we have chosen chisel, pen or brush,

  We are but critics, or but half create,...」

第22行,他又言:

「And did he find himself

  Or was the hunger that had made it hollow

  A hunger for the apple on the bough

  Most out of reach?.......」

    Yeats,究竟是怎麼樣的一個人？他提出了令人深思的問題,卻又解答了最無解的難題。自古到今,多少人被夙昔的典型所左右。如我,年少時為超越前人而茲茲業業,直到後來看見L.Auer所寫─{我的小提琴演奏教學法},才被當頭棒喝,書中所言：要超越誰永遠是不可能的,唯一之道 --------樹立自己的風格   。

    在侯會所著的{文學之旅}中,曾提及Yeats在「前拉菲爾時期」後(余光中也曾略分為四期,此詩創作於第二期),作品風格逐漸趨向心靈探索。在此詩中看到Yeats對Keats的評論即見端倪:

54行「His art is happy, but who knows his mind?」

    旁人只知作品之份量,有誰窺見其背後,貝多芬所作合唱交響曲,有誰看見原是一個又窮又聾的人僅剩對生命最後的反擊？一如Keats,出身微寒卻能製作華美的歌,然而,誰又能真的瞭解his mind？作品中,Yeats算是也給了自己一個交代,在尋找Ego Dominus Tuus 的過程中,與其追尋書本、風格、手法,倒不如找到他們背後那盲目執迷的心。

    讀Yeats的詩,真有一種直達心扉、深得我心的快感,他那逼視現實懷抱生命的氣魄,總讓人感受到一般股強大的生命力,繼而找到鼓舞,獲得力量。

       然而,在Yeats的作品中,心靈層面是如此直達心坎；存在層面卻有些令我匪夷所思。在Yeats中後期,迷上了神秘主義與通靈術,因此