那盲目執迷的心---讀葉慈詩二三事(下)

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand         10

The Second Coming.  Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again; but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,   20

And what tough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

    The Second Coming 一詞是由新約馬太福音二十四章所出,描寫耶穌在橄欖山上向門徒講說世界末日、人子再臨的種種情景：

「閃電從東邊發出,直照到西邊。人子降臨,也要這樣。

屍首在哪裡,鷹也必聚在那裡。那些日子的災難一過去,日頭就變黑了,月亮也不放光,眾星要從天上墜落,天勢都要震動。那時人子的兆頭要顯在天上,地上的萬族都要哀哭。他們要看見人子,有能力,有大榮耀,駕著天上的雲降臨。....」

    Yeats並不信基督教,他引用這個典故,來寓意文明的變遷興衰與再生。第一段描寫世界分崩離析,戰火暴行氾濫的現象,第二段則講由此混亂現象中所產生出的啟示與預言。

      其實,Yeats的價值觀念往往相互矛盾,他相信,如果新的要來到,舊的必然崩潰,新舊交替之際,必然有一段狂暴和動亂的時期(如行3~行6)；那時價值混亂,觀念模糊,每個人只有堅持自己的信仰(如行7~行8)。

在第12行「a vast image」與第14行「A shape with lion body and the head of man」,Yeats引用伊底帕斯的故事暗示西方文明發展至今,機器怪獸橫行,人的價值不但不被尊重瞭解,反而造成屍橫遍地,食屍鳥到處飛翔的慘劇。

    Yeats痛恨暴力與偏執,厭惡工業文明,在詩中其實可以看出Yeats對於人道的關懷與對工業、戰爭的深惡痛覺,在他的詩作中,對於新文化與人類存在、信仰定位也十分關心,因此在最後兩行：

「And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

  Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?」