第7章　埃德加?愛倫?坡

7.1　復習筆記

I. Edgar Allan Poe（埃德加·艾倫·坡）

1．Life（生平）

Poe’s childhood was a miserable one. He lost both of his parents when still very small, and was taken care of by a wealthy merchant of Virginia. Father and son enjoyed nothing but an unhappy relationship together. At 17 Poe entered the University of Virginia but did not finish. He went to West Point as a cadet but was dismissed because of misbehavior. Poe wrote and worked as editor most of his short life. He was poor all his life. At 27 he married his thirteen-year-old cousin, whose death in 1847 left him inconsolable and bitter with life than ever. He died, in mysterious circumstances, in October, 1849. For a long time after his death Poe remained probably the most controversial and most misunderstood literary figure in the history of American literature. But today Poe is recognized as a great writer of fiction, a poet of the first rank, and a critic of acumen and insight. His works are read the world over with appreciation and understanding.

坡有著悲慘的童年。他年幼時父母雙亡，他被弗吉尼亞一位富商收養，父子之間關系緊張。17歲時坡進入弗吉尼亞大學學習，但是沒能完成學業。后來去了西點軍校，卻又因為行為不端而被校方開除。他短暫的一生中大部分時間都在從事寫作和編輯工作。他終身貧困潦倒。27歲時，他和13歲的表妹結婚，1847年妻子的離世使他悲痛萬分。1849年10月，他離奇地去世。坡死后相當長的時間里仍是美國文學史上最具爭議性、被誤解最深的文學家。而現在坡被認為是一位偉大的小說家、一流的詩人和具有敏銳洞察力的評論家。他的作品在世界范圍內被廣泛閱讀，并獲得了贊賞和理解。

2．Literary point of view（文學批評觀）

(1) Theories for short story（短篇小說理論）

①The short story must be such length as to be read at one sitting (brevity), so as to ensure the totality of impression.

②The very first sentence ought to help to bring out the “single effect” of the story. No word should be used which does not contribute to the “pre-established” design of the work (compression).

③A tale should reveal some logic with “the fullest satisfaction,” and should end with the last sentence, leaving a sense of finality with the reader.

①短篇小說的篇幅以讀者一口氣讀完為宜（簡潔），這樣可以確保印象的完整性。

②第一句話應當幫助引出故事的“單一效果”。不使用不符合“預先制定”情節的詞（緊湊）。

③小說應當充分表現一些邏輯真理，最后一句應給人一種“完結感”。

(2) Theories for Poetry（詩歌理論）

①Poems should be short, concise and readable at one sitting.

②The aim of poem writing is beauty; the most beautiful thing described by a poem is the death of a beautiful woman; the desirable tone of a poem is melancholy.

③He opposed didactic poems.

④He stressed the form of poem, especially the beautiful and neat rhyme. He defined poetry as “the rhythmical creation of beauty”.

①詩歌應該簡短，使讀者可以一口氣讀完。

②詩歌創作的目的是表現美；最富詩意的美莫過于美麗女子的死亡；詩的最佳基調應是憂郁。

③他反感說教性的詩歌。

④他強調詩歌的形式，尤其強調韻律的美感。他認為“詩是美的節奏性創作”。

3．Theme and style（主題及寫作風格）

He is a romantic poet who is preoccupied with the subject of the death of one’s beloved lover of great intelligence and beauty. He also writes about horror (Gothic) stories, murder, and insanity.

Poe’s style is traditional. It is much too rational, too ordinary to reflect the peculiarity of his theme. Somehow he failed to carry the newness of his idea into his style, which incidentally failed to echo his central theme. He is not easy to read. Poe’s choice of words and his syntax may have been responsible for his difficult prose.

他是浪漫主義詩人，專注于深愛的情人之死這樣的主題，通常她們集智慧與美麗于一身。他也寫恐怖小說（即哥特式小說），謀殺及精神錯亂。

坡的寫作風格很傳統，很重理性，讓人覺得太過平常而不易發掘他寫作主題的特性。他不能將他想法的新意糅進他的風格，從而他難以重申他作品的主題思想。他的作品不好理解，作品的選詞和句法是他散文難以理解的原因。

4．Influence（影響）

His influence is world-wide in modern literature. His aesthetics and conscious craftsmanship, his attack on “the heresy of the didactic”, and his call for “the rhythmical creation of beauty” have influenced French symbolists and the devotees of “art for art’s sake”. Poe is the father of psychoanalytic criticism and the father of detective story.

坡對現代文學的影響是世界性的。他的美學觀點和精湛的寫作技藝，對文學說教功能的抨擊，以及他倡導的“詩是美的節奏性創作”對法國象征主義者和“為藝術而藝術”的信徒產生影響。坡是精神分析之父和偵探小說之父。

5．Major works（主要作品）

Tales of the Grotesque and the Arabesque《奇異怪誕故事集》

“MS. Found in a Bottle”《瓶子里發現的手稿》

“The Murders in the Rue Morgue”《毛格街殺人案》

“The Fall of the House of Usher”《厄舍古屋的倒塌》

“The Masque of the Red Death”《紅色死亡的化妝舞會》

“The Cask of Amontillado”《一桶酒的故事》

“The Raven”《烏鴉》

“Israfel”《伊斯拉菲爾》

“Annabel Lee”《安娜貝爾李》

“To Helen”《致海倫》

The Philosophy of Composition《創作哲學》

The Poetic Principle《詩歌原理》

6．Analysis of major works（主要作品分析）

◆“To Helen”《致海倫》

“To Helen” is one of the most famous of Poe’s lyrics. It was inspired by the beauty of the mother of a schoolmate of Poe’s in Richmond, Virginia. The poem is famous for a number of things, for example, its rhyme scheme, its varied line lengths, its metaphor of a travel on the sea, and its oft-quoted lines, “To the Glory that was Greece / And the grandeur that was Rome.”

《致海倫》是坡最著名的抒情詩之一。這首詩的靈感來源于坡在弗吉尼亞州里士滿上學時一位同學母親的美貌。該詩以其韻律、多變的句子長度、海上旅行這一比喻及經常被引用的詩行“光榮屬于希臘，偉大屬于羅馬”而著稱。

◆“The Raven”《烏鴉》

“The Raven” is an illustration of Poe’s poetic theory. It is about 100 lines (108 in fact), perfectly readable at one sitting. A sense of melancholy over the death of a beloved beautiful young woman pervades the whole poem: the portrayal of a young man grieving for his lost Lenore, his grief being turned to madness under the steady one-word repetition of the talking bird introduced right at the beginning of the poem.

The young man, a neurotic on the brink of a mental collapse, outpours his sorrow in his semi-sleep on the appearance of the bird. Poetic imagination externalizes itself in the phantom of a bird and intermingles with it to enhance the effect of the tragedy of the bereavement. Poe’s poems are heavily tinted in a dreamy, hallucinatory color. And the narrator is in a state of semi-stupor.

《烏鴉》體現了坡的詩歌創作理論。這首詩大概有一百行（實際上是108行），讀者可以一氣呵成，讀完全詩。整首詩彌漫著因心愛的年輕美人逝去而憂郁的氣氛。詩歌描寫了一位年輕人哀悼逝去的麗諾，詩歌開篇出現的鳥兒反復重復一個詞，在此影響下，他的悲傷繼而轉化為瘋狂。

這位年輕人的精神瀕臨崩潰的邊緣，在半夢半醒之間，面對鳥兒傾吐自己的悲傷。鳥兒的幻影是一種詩意的想象，增強了失去愛人的悲劇性。坡的詩歌中夢幻的色調較重，敘述者處于一種半昏迷的狀態。