分享：阿木古朗讲述“怎样欣赏英语诗歌”

How to appreciate an English poem: Theme and stanzas.

怎样欣赏英语诗歌：主题和诗段

Needless to say, the English poetry is different from its Chinese equivalent. Therefore, while many people say that they enjoy a poem, they should really say that they appreciate it, especially in the case of an English poem. This is because many themes in English poems are not necessarily pleasurable or enjoyable but rather, they are there for you to try to analyze so as to understand the value of poets' communicating them, thus appreciation.

无需赘言，英语诗歌与中文诗歌是不同的。因此，当很多人说他们喜欢诗歌的时候，他们其实更应该说他们欣赏诗歌，尤其在提到英文诗歌时更是如此。这是因为英文诗歌中的许多主题并不一定是那么赏心悦目，令人愉悦；而是它们需要你自己去分析以便理解诗人传递这些主题的价值。故曰：欣赏。

Instead of wasting time and energy translating an English poem into sophisticated Chinese words in an attempt to appreciate it better, the Chinese learners of the English poetry should focus their energy on understanding the poems as they are.

The first thing Chinese readers of English poems fail to pay enough attention to is that an English poem usually has a unique theme, which is the answer to the question: "What is this poem about? " For example, the following poem "Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone" by W. H. Auden is a poem of mourning. It mourns the death of a loved one.

Another feature of an English poem is that it is usually divided into stanzas. Today I'll use the W. H. Auden's poem to demonstrate the importance of stanzas in an English poem. Let's begin with reading the poem carefully first.

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone

By W. H. Auden

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,

Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,

Silence the pianos and with muffled drum

Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead,

Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,

Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,

Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves,

He was my North, my South, my East and West,

My working week and my Sunday rest,

My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song,

I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out everyone;

Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;

Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;

For nothing now can ever come to any good.

The first stanza contains scenes within a house and immediately outside one's gate. Whereas in the second stanza, the speaker apparently comes outside, into a public space where he can see the sky, the doves in public squares and people including the traffic police. The third stanza extends into the the four directions of space and time, in the forms of day and night, and daily routines such as work and rest. Finally, the last stanza goes beyond this world into the space where the stars, the Moon, the Sun are. Notice, the poet's thoughts come back to this world again when he mentions the the ocean and the wood.

The proceeding of the stanzas from a house into the streets, the wide, wide world and then into the space, and finally back into the earth resembles a funeral procession, except this particular one is impossibly extended into the space by the power of the poet's sadness. By paying attention to the development of the stanzas in the poem, a reader will appreciate the meaning of this poem, and feel the immensity of the poet's loss and his devastating sadness.