希腊古瓮颂翻译及简要赏析

希腊古瓮颂你委身“寂静”的、完美的处子，受过了“沉默”和“悠久”的抚育，呵，田园的史家，你竟能铺叙一个如花的故事，比诗还瑰丽：在你的形体上，岂非缭绕着古老的传说，以绿叶为其边缘，讲着人，或神，敦陂或阿卡狄？呵，是怎样的人，或神！在舞乐前多热烈的追求！少女怎样地逃躲！怎样的风笛和鼓铙！怎样的狂喜！听见的乐声虽好，但若听不见却更美，所以，吹吧，柔情的风笛；不是奏给耳朵听，而是更甜，它给灵魂奏出无声的乐曲；树下的美少年呵，你无法中断你的歌，那树木也落不了叶子；卤莽的恋人，你永远，永远吻不上，虽然够接近了——但不必心酸；她不会老，虽然你不能如愿以偿，你将永远爱下去，她也永远秀丽！呵，幸福的树木！你的枝叶不会剥落，从不曾离开春天，幸福的吹笛人也不会停歇，他的歌曲永远是那么新鲜；呵，更为幸福的、幸福的爱！永远热烈，正等待情人宴飨，永远热情的心跳，永远年轻；幸福的是这一切超凡的情态：它不会使心灵餍足和悲伤，没有炽热的头脑，焦渴的嘴唇。

这些人是谁呵，都去赴祭祀？这作牺牲的小牛，对天鸣叫，你要牵它到哪儿，神秘的祭司？花环缀满着它光滑的身腰。

是从哪个傍河傍海的小镇，或哪个静静的堡寨的山村，来了这些人，在这敬神的清早？呵，小镇，你的街道永远恬静；再也不可能回来一个灵魂告诉人你何以是怎么寂寥。

哦，希腊的形状！唯美的观照上面缀有石雕的男人和女人，还有林木，和践踏过的青草；沉默的形体呵，你象是“永恒”使人超越思想：呵，冰冷的牧歌！等暮年使这一世代都凋落，只有你如旧；在另外的一些忧伤中，你会抚慰后人说：“美即是真，真即是美，”这就包括你们所知道、和该知道的一切。

(查良铮译，选自《济慈诗选》，人民文学出版社，1958年)一个古瓮会给我们带来什么呢？造型的美丽和雕饰的华美？一般来说只有这些。

但是，在英国大诗人济慈（1795年---1821年）眼里可就不一样了，竟然铺叙出一篇华美的乐章——《希腊古瓮颂》。

“瓮”是古希腊人用来盛放骨灰或作为装饰品的一种大理石或玻璃器皿，上面多画有人与物的形象。

但在诗人笔下，古瓮上的人与物已经不是简单的形象和干枯的线条，而是具有鲜明个性的生命。

开始，诗人点明这个瓮的古老：它曾“委身寂静的、完美的处子，受过了沉默和悠久的抚育”，经过“田园的史家”再造，“竟能铺叙一个如花的故事，比诗还瑰丽”，于是，在它的形体上，“岂非缭绕着古老的传说，以绿叶为其边缘，讲着人，或神，敦陂或阿卡狄？”诗人叹赏道：“呵，是怎样的人，或神！在舞乐前多热烈的追求！少女怎样地逃躲！怎样的风笛和鼓铙！怎样的狂喜！”这是诗人对古瓮热烈的感情，为整首诗定下基调。

据说，诗人曾看到过数种不同的希腊古瓮。

他凝视着古瓮上那些栩栩如生的画面曾长长地陷入沉思，在冥冥的想象中，他看到古希腊的古老传说——敦陂和阿卡狄谷地人神共处的那种奇瑰的生活，即古希腊人田园诗般的生活。

这是一个何等纯洁，何等美丽，何等自由，何等欢乐的世界啊！那里树木长青，鲜花盛开，人们欢乐地歌唱，跳舞，姣美的少男少女无拘无束地恋爱，到处充满狂热、幸福的气氛！诗人被深深地激动了，他情不自禁地为这种生活唱起赞歌。

在整首诗中，诗人以“永恒”和“超越思想”为着眼点，从声觉和视觉两方面铺写开来。

在声觉方面，诗人写道：“听见的乐声虽好，但若听不见却更美，所以，吹吧，柔情的风笛；不是奏给耳朵听，而是更甜，它给灵魂奏出无声的乐曲；树下的美少年呵，你无法中断你的歌”。

“幸福的吹笛人也不会停歇，他的歌曲永远是那么新鲜”。

“这作牺牲的小牛，对天鸣叫，你要牵它到哪儿，神秘的祭司”。

在视觉方面，诗人写道：“那树木也落不了叶子；卤莽的恋人，你永远，永远吻不上，虽然够接近了——但不必心酸”。

“呵，幸福的树木！你的枝叶不会剥落，从不曾离开春天”。

“是从哪个傍河傍海的小镇，或哪个静静的堡寨的山村，来了这些人，在这敬神的清早”。

这些描写，加上超时空的笔调，让人感觉既神秘，又优美。

而这首诗中，诗人着墨最多的，还是对少男少女无拘无束的恋爱的描写。

如：“树下的美少年呵，你无法中断你的歌，那树木也落不了叶子；卤莽的恋人，你永远，永远吻不上，虽然够接近了——但不必心酸；她不会老，虽然你不能如愿以偿，你将永远爱下去，她也永远秀丽！”“他的歌曲永远是那么新鲜；呵，更为幸福的、幸福的爱！永远热烈，正等待情人宴飨，永远热情的心跳，永远年轻；幸福的是这一切超凡的情态：它不会使心灵餍足和悲伤，没有炽热的头脑，焦渴的嘴唇！”既生动，又热烈。

诗篇最后，诗人理性地思考了“永恒”的问题。

艺术能获得永久的生命，是因为它已凝固在这永恒的画面中，它不仅是“唯美的观照”，而且真实地再现了古希腊的生活。

正因为它具有美和真的品格，因而才能“永恒”。

诗人从艺术和生活相互为用，完美结合，因而双双获得永久魅力的情形受到启发，写出了“美即是真、真即是美”这样高度哲理化的结句，成为诗歌艺术中的万古绝唱。

诗人济慈从古希腊艺术获取灵感，经过想象力的再创造，在读者眼前展现出一幅意象鲜明、色彩斑斓的风景画；同时，诗人又以激情奔放的诗句歌颂这瓮上的画。

真正做到了诗中有画，画中有诗，不愧为传世佳作。

Ode on a Grecian Urn"Ode on a Grecian Urn" is a poem by John Keats, written in 1819 and first published in January 1820. Its inspiration is considered to be a visit by Keats to the exhibition of Greek artifacts accompanying the display of the "Elgin Marbles" at the British Museum.[citation needed] The poem captures aspects of Keats's idea of "Negative Capability", as the reader does not know who the figures are on the urn, what they are doing, or where they are going. Instead, the speaker revels in this mystery, as he does in the final couplet (mentioned below), which does not make immediate, ascertainable sense but continues to have poetic significance nonetheless. The ode ultimately deals with the complexity of art's relationship with real life.The poem begins:Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time,and ends with the famous lines:'Beauty is truth, truth beauty, - that is allYe know on earth, and all ye need to know.'Because this ending couplet is in direct contrast to many of Keats' poems, for example "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" or "Lamia", in which a man is deceived by a woman's beauty, literary critics have begun interpreting it in a new way. It is now believed that the narrator, representative of Keats, was criticizing the Urn, saying that all it will ever need to know is that beauty is truth and truth beauty. This is also a sign of jealousy as the narrator admires this simplicity just as he criticizes yet admires the characters on the urn, who will never achieve climax yet are forever passionate.StyleThe ode is an ancient form originally written for musical accompaniment.The word itself is of Greek origin, meaning "sung." While ode-writers from antiquity adhered to rigid patterns of strophe, anti strophe, and epode, the form by Keats's time had undergone enough transformation that it really represented a manner-rather than a set method for writing a certain type of lyric poetry. In general, the ode of the Romantic era is a poem of 30 to 200 lines that meditates progressively upon or directly addressesa single object or condition. In addition to "Ode on a Grecian Urn," Keats wrote odes about the season of autumn and the song of a nightingale as well as about indolence, melancholy, and even the poet John Milton's hair. Keats's odes are characterized by an exalted and highly lyrical tone, and while they employ specific stanza forms and rhyme schemes, these can vary from ode to ode.Notes Compiled by Michael J. Cummings...? 2005Type of Work."Ode on a Grecian Urn" is a romantic ode, a dignified but highly lyrical (emotional) poem in which the author speaks to a person or thing absent or present. In this famous ode, Keats addresses the urn and the images on it. The romantic ode was at the pinnacle of its popularity in the 19th Century. It was the result of an author’s deep meditation on the person or object. The romantic ode evolved from the ancient Greek ode, written in a serious tone to celebrate an event or to praise an individual. The Greek ode was intended to be sung by a chorus or by one person to the accompaniment of musical instruments. The odes of the Greek poet Pindar (circa 518-438 B.C.) frequently extolled athletes who participated in athletic games at Olympus, Delphi, the Isthmus of Corinth, and Nemea. Bacchylides, a contemporary of Pindar, also wrote odes praising athletes. The Roman poets Horace (65-8 B.C.) and Catullus (84-54 B.C.) wrote odes based on the Greek model, but their odes were not intended to be sung. In the 19th Century, English romantic poets wrote odes that retained the serious tone of the Greek ode. However, like the Roman poets, they did not write odes to be sung. Unlike the Roman poets, though, the authors of 19th Century romantic odes generally were more emotional in their writing. The author of a typical romantic ode focused on a scene, pondered its meaning, and presented a highly personal reaction to it that included a special insight at the end of the poem (like the closing lines of “Ode on a Grecian Urn”).Writing and Publication Dates"Ode on a Grecian Urn" was written in the spring of 1819 and published later that year in Annals of the Fine Arts, which focused on architecture, sculpture, and painting but sometimes published poems and essays with themes related to the arts. Structure and Meter"Ode on a Grecian Urn" consists of five stanzas that present a scene, describe and comment on what it shows, and offer a general truth that the scene teaches a person analyzing the scene. Each stanza has ten lines written in iambic pentameter, a pattern of rhythm (meter) that assigns ten syllables to each line. The first syllable is unaccented, the second accented, the third unaccented, the fourth accented, and so on. Note, for example, the accent pattern of the first two lines of the poem. The unaccented syllables are in lower-cased blue letters, and the accented syllables are in upper-cased red letters.thou STILL un RAV ished BRIDE of QUI et NESS,thou FOS ter - CHILD of SI lence AND slow TIMENotice that each line has ten syllables, five unaccented ones in blue and five accented ones in red. Thus, these lines--like the other lines in the poem--are in iambic pentameter. Iambic refers to a pair of syllables, one unaccented and the other accented. Such a pair is called an iamb. "Thou STILL" is an iamb; so are "et NESS" and "slow TIME." However, "BRIDE of" and "FOS ter" are not iambs because they consist of an accented syllable followed by an unaccented syllable. Pentameter--the first syllable of which is derived from the Greek word for five--refers to lines that have five iambs (which, as demonstrated, each have two syllables). "Ode on a Grecian Urn," then, is in iambic pentameter because every line has five iambs, each iamb consisting of an unaccented syllable followed by an accented one. The purpose of this stress pattern is to give the poem rhythm that pleases the ear.Situation and SettingIn England, Keats examines a marble urn crafted in ancient Greece. (Whether such an urn was real or imagined is uncertain. However, many artifacts from ancient Greece, ones which could have inspired Keats, were on display in the British Museum at the time that Keats wrote the poem.) Pictured on the urn, a type of vase, are pastoral scenes in Greece. In one scene, males are chasing females in some sort of revelry or celebration. There are musicians playing pipes (wind instruments such as flutes) and timbrels (ancient tambourines). Keats wonders whether the images represent both gods and humans. He also wonders what has occasioned their merrymaking. A second scene depicts people leading a heifer to a sacrificial altar. Keats writes his ode about what he sees, addressing or commenting on the urn and its images as if they were real beings with whom he can speak.Text, Summary, and AnnotationsEnd-Rhyming Words Are HighlightedSummary and AnnotationsStanza 1Keats calls the urn an “unravish’d bride of quietness” because it h as existed for centuries without undergoing any changes (it is “unravished”) as it sits quietly on a shelf or table. He also calls it a “foster-child of silence and time” because it is has been adopted by silence and time, parents who have conferred on the urn eternal stillness. In addition, Keats refers to the urn as a “sylvan historian” because it records a pastoral scene from long ago. (“Sylvan” refers to anything pertaining to woods or forests.) This scene tells a story (“legend”) in pictures framed with leaves (“leaf-fring’d”)–a story that the urn tells more charmingly with its images than Keats does with his pen. Keats speculates that the scene is set either in Tempe or Arcady. Tempe is a valley in Thessaly, Greece–between Mount Olympus and Mount Ossa–that is favored by Apollo, the god of poetry and music. Arcady is Arcadia, a picturesque region in the Peloponnesus (a peninsula making up the southern part of Greece) where inhabitants live in carefree simplicity. Keats wonders whether the images he sees represent humans or gods. And, he asks, who are the reluctant (“loth”) maidens and what is the activity taking place?Stanza 2Using paradox and oxymoron to open Stanza 2, Keats praises the silent music coming from the pipes and timbrels as far more pleasing than the audible music of real life, for the music from the urn is for the spirit. Keats then notes that the young man playing the pipe beneath trees must always remain an etched figure on the urn. He is fixed in time like the leaves on the tree. They will remain ever green and never die. Keats also says the bold young lover (who may be the piper or another person) can never embrace the maiden next to him even though he is so close to her. However, Keats says, the young man should not grieve, for his lady love will remain beautiful forever, and their love–though unfulfilled–will continue through all eternity.Stanza 3Keats addresses the trees, calling them “happy, happy boughs” because they will never shed their leaves, and then addresses t he young p iper, calling him “happy melodist” because his songs will continue forever. In addition, the young man's love for the maiden will remain forever “warm and still to be enjoy’d / For ever panting, and for ever young. . . .” In contrast, Keats sa ys, the love between a man and a woman in the real world is imperfect, bringing pain and sorrow and desire that cannot be fully quenched. The lover comes away with a “burning forehead, and a parching tongue.”Stanza 4Keats inquires about the images of people approaching an altar to sacrifice a "lowing" (mooing) cow, one that has never borne a calf, on a green altar. Do these simple folk come from a little town on a river, a seashore, or a mountain topped by a peaceful fortress. Wherever the town is, it will be forever empty, for all of its inhabitants are here participating in the festivities depicted on the urn. Like the other figures on the urn, townspeople are frozen in time; they cannot escape the urn and return to their homes.Stanza 5Keats begins by addressing the urn as an “attic shape.” Attic refers to Attica, a region of east-central ancient Greece in which Athens was the chief city. Shape, of course, refers to the urn. Thus, attic shape is an urn that was crafted in ancient Attica. The urn is a beautiful one, poet says, adorned with “brede” (braiding, embroidery) depicting marble men and women enacting a scene in the tangle of forest tree branches and weeds. As people look upon the scene, they ponder it–as they would ponder eternity–trying so hard to grasp its meaning that they exhaust themselves of thought. Keats calls the scene a “cold pastoral!”–in part because it is made of cold, unchanging marble and in part, perhaps, because it frustrates him with its unfathomable mysteries, as does eternity. (At this time in his life, Keats was suffering from tuberculosis, a disease that had killed his brother, and was no doubt much occupied with thoughts of eternity. He was also passionately in love with a young woman, Fanny Brawne, but was unable to act decisively on his feelings–even though she reciprocated his love–because he believed his lower social status and his dubious financial situation stood in the way. Consequently, he was like the cold marble of the urn–fixed and immovable.) Keats says that when death claims him and all those of his generation, the urn will remain. And it will say to the next generation what it has said to Keats: “Beauty is truth, truth beauty.” In other words, do not tr y to look beyond the beauty of the urn and its images, which are representations of the eternal, for no one can see into eternity. The beauty itself is enough for a human; that is the only truth that a human can fully grasp. The poem ends with an endorsement of these words, saying they make up the only axiom that any human being really needs to know。