《星期天早晨》是史蒂文斯第一本诗集里的主要作品，也是他全部作品里的代表作之一。

对这首诗的传统解读是：史蒂文斯通过一个妇人的自述，反映了他对基督教义的质疑和世俗生活的赞美。

这种解读是不全面的。仔细玩味他的诗句并结合他的深受东方文化影响的事实，史蒂文斯在这首诗里表达的是他对万物生死更替和或兴衰循环的吟唱。

Death is the mother of beauty（死是美之母），这是该诗的核心诗句，在诗中出现了两次（第五节和第六节）。美，史蒂文斯心目中的含义包括了自然、自由、崇高以及和谐。或者就如车尔尼雪夫斯基在《艺术与现实的审美关系》中所说的：“美是生活”。《星期天早晨》这首诗从字面上解读，史蒂文斯就是在歌颂世俗生活。

就连这首诗的题目《星期天早晨》也隐含着时间或生命循环的密码：

2:2 到第七日，上帝造物的工已经完毕，就在第七日歇了他一切的工，安息了(旧约 创世纪)。

在犹太教中，星期天是安息日，这是上帝造物后的安息日。而基督教称呼每周的第一天为星期日，基督徒按照新约的记载,相信耶稣的复活发生在“七日的第一日”。这样，星期天即是一个时间周期循环的结束又是新的开始。就像早晨，即是黑夜的结束，又是新的一天的开始。

所以，对死亡的吟唱就是对时间和生命循环的赞美。

史蒂夫•乔布斯在斯坦福大学2005年毕业典礼上的演讲中这样说：死亡就是生命中最好的一个发明。乔布斯是一个佛教徒。

一位老藏人对死亡的理解与史蒂文斯的诗句亦有异曲同工之妙：

“死亡是必然的，应把它看作是另一种存在的开始”（《微观西藏》第9页》）。

 

这首诗很长，我把第八节（最后一节）翻译如下：

 

星期天早晨

史蒂文斯/诗

秋子树/译

八

在无声的水面，她听到

有人在叫喊：“巴勒斯坦的坟墓

不是神灵徘徊的走廊，

它是耶稣的墓穴，他就躺在那里。”

我们生活在古老的太阳混沌

或者依附于由来已久的日夜更替，

或者在大海里的一个孤岛上，

无拘无束，也无他处可走。

鹿群游走在我们的山岗，还有鹌鹑

在我们周围自在地鸣叫；

荒野里的甜浆果熟了；

这时，孤独的天空里，

黄昏，随性的鸽群

在下沉中波浪般地起伏不定，

然后张开双翅，沉入黑暗。

 

原诗：

Sunday Morning

by Wallace Stevens

 

I

Complacencies of the peignoir, and late

Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair,

And the green freedom of a cockatoo

Upon a rug mingle to dissipate

The holy hush of ancient sacrifice.

She dreams a little, and she feels the dark

Encroachment of that old catastrophe,

As a calm darkens among water-lights.

The pungent oranges and bright, green wings

Seem things in some procession of the dead,

Winding across wide water, without sound.

The day is like wide water, without sound,

Stilled for the passing of her dreaming feet

Over the seas, to silent Palestine,

Dominion of the blood and sepulchre.

II

Why should she give her bounty to the dead?

What is divinity if it can come

Only in silent shadows and in dreams?

Shall she not find in comforts of the sun,

In pungent fruit and bright, green wings, or else

In any balm or beauty of the earth,

Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven?

Divinity must live within herself:

Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow;

Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued

Elations when the forest blooms; gusty

Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights;

All pleasures and all pains, remembering

The bough of summer and the winter branch.

These are the measures destined for her soul.

III

Jove in the clouds had his inhuman birth.

No mother suckled him, no sweet land gave

Large-mannered motions to his mythy mind

He moved among us, as a muttering king,

Magnificent, would move among his hinds,

Until our blood, commingling, virginal,

With heaven, brought such requital to desire

The very hinds discerned it, in a star.

Shall our blood fail? Or shall it come to be

The blood of paradise? And shall the earth

Seem all of paradise that we shall know?

The sky will be much friendlier then than now,

A part of labor and a part of pain,

And next in glory to enduring love,

Not this dividing and indifferent blue.

IV

She says, "I am content when wakened birds,

Before they fly, test the reality

Of misty fields, by their sweet questionings;

But when the birds are gone, and their warm fields

Return no more, where, then, is paradise?"

There is not any haunt of prophecy,

Nor any old chimera of the grave,

Neither the golden underground, nor isle

Melodious, where spirits gat them home,

Nor visionary south, nor cloudy palm

Remote on heaven's hill, that has endured

As April's green endures; or will endure

Like her remembrance of awakened birds,

Or her desire for June and evening, tipped

By the consummation of the swallow's wings.

V

She says, "But in contentment I still feel

The need of some imperishable bliss."

Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her,

Alone, shall come fulfilment to our dreams

And our desires. Although she strews the leaves

Of sure obliteration on our paths,

The path sick sorrow took, the many paths

Where triumph rang its brassy phrase, or love

Whispered a little out of tenderness,

She makes the willow shiver in the sun

For maidens who were wont to sit and gaze

Upon the grass, relinquished to their feet.

She causes boys to pile new plums and pears

On disregarded plate. The maidens taste

And stray impassioned in the littering leaves.

VI

Is there no change of death in paradise?

Does ripe fruit never fall? Or do the boughs

Hang always heavy in that perfect sky,

Unchanging, yet so like our perishing earth,

With rivers like our own that seek for seas

They never find, the same receding shores

That never touch with inarticulate pang?

Why set the pear upon those river-banks

Or spice the shores with odors of the plum?

Alas, that they should wear our colors there,

The silken weavings of our afternoons,

And pick the strings of our insipid lutes!

Death is the mother of beauty, mystical,

Within whose burning bosom we devise

Our earthly mothers waiting, sleeplessly.

VII

Supple and turbulent, a ring of men

Shall chant in orgy on a summer morn

Their boisterous devotion to the sun,

Not as a god, but as a god might be,

Naked among them, like a savage source.

Their chant shall be a chant of paradise,

Out of their blood, returning to the sky;

And in their chant shall enter, voice by voice,

The windy lake wherein their lord delights,

The trees, like serafin, and echoing hills,

That choir among themselves long afterward.

They shall know well the heavenly fellowship

Of men that perish and of summer morn.

And whence they came and whither they shall go

The dew upon their feet shall manifest.

VIII

She hears, upon that water without sound,

A voice that cries, "The tomb in Palestine

Is not the porch of spirits lingering.

It is the grave of Jesus, where he lay."

We live in an old chaos of the sun,

Or old dependency of day and night,

Or island solitude, unsponsored, free,

Of that wide water, inescapable.

Deer walk upon our mountains, and the quail

Whistle about us their spontaneous cries;

Sweet berries ripen in the wilderness;

And, in the isolation of the sky,

At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make

Ambiguous undulations as they sink,

Downward to darkness, on extended wings.

Source:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunday_Morning_(poem)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallace_Stevens