美国文学16讲-作品赏析
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1. The Soul Selects Her Own Society
The Soul selects her own Society---
Then---shuts the door---
To her divine Majority---
Present no more---
Unmoved ---she notes the Chariots---pausing---
At her low Gate---
Unmoved---an Emperor be kneeling
Upon her Mat---
I’ve known her---from an ample nation--- Choose One---
Then---close the Valves or her attention--- Like Stone---
1) the soul made its choice and wanted no more.
This showed her resolution and determination.
2) Unmoved by any other temptation
3) Since I have made my choice, I will stick to it
and will never be tempted by other things. Soul, one: art , poetry, love, ideal
2. Anecdote(奇闻，轶事) of the Jar
I placed a jar in Tennessee,
And round it was, upon a hill.
It made the slovenly wilderness
Surround that hill
The wilderness rose up to it,
And sprawled around, no longer wild.
The jar round upon the ground
And tall and of a port in air
It took dominion everywhere.
The jar was gray and bare.
It did not give of bird or bush
Like nothing else in Tennessee.
Interpretation:
the setting is the wild, chaotic and Tennessee, a symbol of the world of nature. Then “I” of the poem places in i8t a tall, round jar, a man-made object, a symbol of the world of art, and by extension, it controls the whole disorderly landscape, so that “The wilderness rose up to it, / And sprawled around , no longer wild.” The poem seems to talk about the relationship between art and nature. The world of nature, shapeless and slovenly, takes shape and order from the presence of the jar. The world of art and imagination gives form and meaning to that of nature and reality, this suggesting that any society without art is one without order and that man makes the order he perceives, and the world he inhabits is one he half creates
On the other hand the world of reality exists to determine the limits of art, and
imagination can construct only on the basis of the world of nature. Stevens manages to keep a balance between art and life in his creative work. It is true that the jar imposes order and form on the sprawling wilderness around, but the two concluding lines, “It did not give of bird or bush,/Like nothing else in Tennessee”, render the jar something dependent on the physical world as its “central reference.”