Eavan Boland Died on April 27th 伊万•博兰(Eavan Boland)于4月27日去世
The Irish poet who recovered and championed women’s voices was 75
这位找回并捍卫女性话语权的爱尔兰诗人，享年75岁
When summernights were warm, Eavan Boland liked to stand in the front doorway of her small suburban house in Dundrum, outside Dublin. She would look at the buddleia, and at the lamplight glossing the leaves of the hedge. Yet these things were not simply visible to her. She saw them with her body. It was as if she was part of some great continuum, or stood in a place of myth, like the women singers she imagined in the hard west of Ireland whose mouths were filled with “Atlantic storms and clouded-over stars/and exhausted birds”.
Eavan Boland住在都柏林郊外的邓德拉姆镇，在温暖的夏夜，她喜欢站在自己小屋子的门口，望着那一株株紫荆花，灯火将树篱的叶子照得煜煜发亮。她不但用目光注视这些景象，她也在用身心体察。Eavan仿佛属于某种宏大整体的一部分，或正身处神话之中；就像她也曾幻想，爱尔兰西部生活悲苦的女歌者们，口中吐纳着 "大西洋的风暴，阴云中的星光 / 和疲累的群鸟"。
This sense of communality, which led her to be one of Ireland’s finest poets, was essentially a woman’s feeling. And it was missing almost entirely from Irish poetry. There the voice was male, bardic, authoritative, grown sweet and self-confident on the flattery of princes. It was “I”, not “we”. The poet was a hero, a seer, a towering figure (Yeats above all), whose themes were history, epic and elegy. This was not a world for women. When they featured in the work they were mostly objectified, passive and silent. No page recorded “the low music/of our outrage”. Their own poems were not encouraged, as if they were women’s-magazine things that would defile the pure, visionary flow. If she were to write in the men’s style, with their assurance, she would fit right in, as she fitted into the clever literary conversations in the pubs round St Stephen’s Green when she was at Trinity College. But once she was married and the mother of two small daughters, happy if she could jot down just one line or one image, that was not her life.
通感能力使她成为爱尔兰最杰出的诗人之一，从本质上说这是女性所独有的，而这在爱尔兰诗歌中几乎是完全缺失的：爱尔兰诗歌的基调是男性的、记事的、权威的，在奉承王子们时则显现出巧言令色、有恃无恐的姿态。这些诗歌只关乎 "我"，而不关乎 "我们"。诗人过去总是英雄、先知、卓绝人物（尤其是叶芝），篇题也只关于历史、史诗和悼辞挽歌。这不是一个属于女性的世界。当女性出现在作品中时，大多是物化了的、顺从的、沉默的。“我们出离愤怒的低吼”从未被记录下来。女性的诗歌创作也不受支持，仿佛它们同“女性杂志”这类玩意儿别无二致，会玷污纯粹高远的主流思想。如果Eavan Boland用男性风格进行创作，借此加持，自然更能融入诗人圈子：就读于圣三一学院时，在圣史蒂芬格林周遭的那些酒馆里，她就在关于文学的高谈阔论中找到了一席之地。但当她结下良缘，诞下双姝，当她因匆匆记录下只言片语或须臾光景而雀跃不已时，一切已经不同以往。
Her days now revolved round cooking, washing up, nappies, feeds; lifting the kettle to the gas stove, setting her skirt over a chair to have it without creases for the morning. They were full of small untidinesses and oversights which assumed huge importance, like the loaf forgotten by the cash register, or washing left wet. They were full, too, of hidden satisfactions: a row of cups winking on their saucers, a copper pan well polished, fresh green celery feathers. Much of this was so ordinary that it might have seemed unremarkable. Certainly it was not named in Irish poetry. But ordinariness, “dailiness”, was precisely what she wanted to capture. The surfaces of things could barely hold what was under them; just as the small, routine gestures of many couples contained the unspoken steadfastness of love.
如今她的生活被日常琐事围绕：做饭、洗碗、哺乳、换尿布、烧开水，还要记得把裙子铺在椅子上，免得第二天起了折痕。生活里充斥着零乱和疏忽，比如忘记结账的面包，或是新洗未晾的衣服，但这些日常琐事于她却显得意义非凡。生活中也充满了隐秘的欢喜：托盘上一排亮晶晶的杯子，擦得发亮的铜锅，还有新鲜的绿芹菜叶——日常总是如此平淡以至于不值一提，爱尔兰的诗歌中也自然没有它们的一隅。但“平凡”和“日常”，正是她想要捕捉的点滴。表面的庸常无法掩盖生活的诗意，正如伴侣间习以为常又不足为道的柔情蜜意，无需言语已经山海难移。
Other “women’s subjects” needed tackling more forcefully. She had no qualms about that. The whole poetic tradition had to be scrubbed and abraded with the wash stones of resistance. So an anorexic torched her witch-body, its “curves and paps” until, “thin as a rib”, she could slip back into Adam again, “as if I had never been away”. A menstruating woman confronted the moon, “dulled by it/thick with it…a water cauled by her light…barren with her blood.” Shockingly, a wife who believed “I was not myself, myself” in her everyday dutifulness felt herself remade when her husband, coming home tight, split her lip and knuckled her neck “to its proper angle”; and was grateful for his remodelling.
其他的 "女性问题 "则务须以更激烈的方式得到解决，对此她毫不怀疑。诗歌的全部传统必须以反抗的方式来洗刷和磨灭。于是，厌食者点燃自己“女巫的身体”、焚烧自己的“曲线与乳头”，直到“消瘦如肋骨”，滑回亚当的身体，“犹如我从来未曾离开”（《厌食（Anorexic）》）。经期中的女子面对着月亮，“因此迟钝，因此沉重……一汪被月亮的光芒兜起的水……我因她的血而荒瘠”（《月经（Menses）》）。恭顺的妻子相信 "我不是我自己，不是自己 "，而令人震惊的是，即使醉酒归家的丈夫打裂她的嘴唇，“指节抵出她脖颈的弧度”——她仍觉得自己被丈夫所“重塑”，并对这种“改造”心存感激（《按他自己的形象（In His Own Image）》）。
Yet the all-too-ordinary often slipped into something else. She was too deeply read in the myths and epics of Ireland for it to be otherwise. The life that was lived in a brick house could still have a visionary quality. In “Night Feed”, she noticed not only the rosy zipped sleeper, the hard suckling, the silt of milk left in the bottle, but the movements of earth and stars, and the “long fall from grace” as the feed ended. The stopping of the tumble-dryer, like death, began “to bury/The room in white spaces.” An old florin, brushed on a shelf, turned into a silver salmon.
俗世凡人常常陷入生活琐碎的旁骛之中，但于爱尔兰的神话与史诗中的浸润，令她虽然身处砖瓦砌成的庸俗居所，却使生活中梦幻的气质仍然保持鲜活。在她的《夜哺（Night Feed）》一诗中，使她投去目光的不止有孩童身上玫瑰色的拉链睡衣、困扰母亲的哺乳时刻、或者瓶壁上残留的奶渍，还有斗转星移的变迁，以及哺乳结束的时刻，人类失去了神灵的恩宠。烘干机停止了声响，像死亡一样的寂静，“将房间埋葬在白色的时空之中”，一枚硬币划过礁石，化身为一条银色的鲑鱼。
That everyday life was als7o not remote from history. But she preferred to call it The Past: a place of shadows, fragments, defeats, rather than heroics. The Troubles appeared, through an ancient television set, as “grey and greyer tears” and “moonlight-coloured funerals”. Emigration to America was a woman in a gansy-coat on the deck of theMary Belle, holding her half-dead baby to her. In “Quarantine” the worst year of the famine, 1847, was encapsulated in a couple found frozen, he still carrying her, holding her feet against his breastbone to try to warm them. Just two people’s deaths, how they had lived, what they had suffered
那段平凡的日子和历史息息相关。但Eavan Boland更愿意称其为 "过去"：它代表着阴影、分裂、失败，而非英勇果敢。在电视上，北爱问题常伴随着 "灰蒙蒙的宴会 "和 "月白色的葬礼 "出现。在她的《我的岛（Mise Éire）》一诗中，在“玛丽-贝尔号”（the Mary Bell）的甲板上，一个意图逃往美国的女人穿着针织大衣紧紧地抱着她奄奄一息的婴孩。在她的《隔离（Quarantine）》一诗中：1847年是饥荒最严重的时候，画面定格于一对冻死的夫妻身上，丈夫仍保持着抱着妻子的姿势，试图以胸膛的温度为妻子取暖。在两具尸骸之下，有过怎样的生活、遭受过怎样的苦难。
注：The Troubles指北爱尔兰问题，简称北爱问题，是用来描述从1960年代后期开始，到1990年代后期由1998年4月10日签订北爱和平协议中止，在北爱尔兰发生的包括共和派与保皇派准军事组织、皇家阿尔斯特警队，英国陆军与其他人员的公众暴力活动，是爱尔兰的周期性暴力冲突中的最新一轮。
And what there is between a man and woman. 以及男人和女人之间存在些什么 And in which darkness it can best be proved. 和什么样的黑暗最能证明它的存在
Such themes were inevitable, for her discovery of her woman’s voice in poetry was meshed to her discovery of Ireland. She had left that home at the age of six, when her diplomat father was posted to London and then New York. When at 14 she returned, she did not know the secret language of the country, especially of Dublin, which she grew to love. As a woman she saluted “Anna Liffey” as the river rose in the hills above her house, flowing through black peat and bracken, then claiming and “retelling” the city for her, putting the pieces together, as she went on trying to.
这些主题的出现并非偶然，因为她在诗歌中对女性话语的发掘，与她对爱尔兰的探索是息息相关的。六岁那年Eavan便背井离乡，随同她的外交官父亲前往伦敦，而后又前往纽约。等到她十四岁重回故土时，她对这个国家所知甚少——尤其是对于都柏林，虽然日后此处正是她所热爱的地方。她以一位女性的身份向 "安娜-利菲 "（Anna Liffey）河致敬，河水发源自她屋后的山丘，流过水底的蕨叶和泥沼。利菲河宣誓着她对都柏林的主权，又向Eavan重述关于这座城市的所有故事，拼凑出爱尔兰的全貌。这也正是Eavan为之不懈努力的事业。
Ireland, though, could still disappoint her. In 1991, when the monumental Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing came out, she was one of only three contemporary women poets included. Furious, she fired up her campaign for women to be noticed and, through poetry workshops, for poetry to be extended to all who had no voices. After 1996 a professorship at Stanford, alternating with trips home, allowed her to check on progress from abroad. By the 21st century, to her delight, women poets were flourishing in Ireland, and two new Field Day volumes were devoted to women’s writing. Though she never liked to take credit, she had been a voice and a constant encouragement; she had changed the conversation.
尽管如此，爱尔兰仍有让她失望的时刻。1991年，具有里程碑意义的《爱尔兰写作选集（Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing）》出版问世，然而仅有包括她在内的三位当代女性诗人的作品被收录。愤慨之中，她发起了一场呼吁关注女性的运动，并用诗歌研讨会的形式，意图将诗歌的力量传递给所有声微言轻者。自1996年起，Eavan于斯坦福大学担任教授。在美国与爱尔兰之间的往返，给了她了解国外平权事业发展情况的机会。时至21世纪，爱尔兰女性诗人们的事业欣欣向荣，两册专门收录女性作家作品的《写作选集》被出版，这些都令她十分欣喜。尽管她从不渴求美名，但她一直都在为女性发声，支持激励着女性同胞和平权事业的发展；终于，她改变了性别之间的对话。
Make of a nation what you will Make of the past What you can— 你会怎样看待一个民族？ 你能如何理解那些过往？ There is now A woman in a doorway. 如今一位女士就站在门口 Ithas taken me All my strength to do this.我穷尽所有气力， 成就如此这番。
原文链接：
https://www.economist.com/obituary/2020/05/16/eavan-boland-died-on-april-27th
