译者胡桑按：决定翻译这首诗歌之前，我犹豫不决。奥登的诗以晦涩著称，这首又是他的代表作，草率的翻译可能会背上成为亵渎诗歌的罪名。幸好一直在阅读布罗
茨基的随笔《析奥登的〈1939年9月1日〉》，对这首诗歌稍有领会，加上这篇文章引用了《1939年9月1日》的大部分句子，而这些句子连同这篇文章已
经被翻译成汉语。我记得中文版《文明的孩子》中收录了刘文飞翻译的《1939年9月1日》全诗，身边没有此书，无从参考，但是我当时读到，并不太喜欢刘文
飞的译文，主要是他的语感。刘文飞的译文一直被我认为是佳品，但他翻译的这首诗瑕疵太多，虽然总体把握较好。相反的是，《从彼得堡到斯德哥尔摩》中收录的
王希苏的译文某些细节翻译得特别好，整体的处理却很有问题。我这次重译，仍然要感谢王、刘两位先生，我私下里综合了他们不少词语。当然，我也修正了一些我
所认为的他们的错译。
仅以译文献给100年前诞生的伟大诗人奥登。奥登是永远的，而我们这个时代的大多数诗人是瞬时的。
September 1, 1939
W.H.Auden
I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.
Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.
Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.
Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism’s face
And the international wrong.
Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.
The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.
From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow;
‘I will be true to the wife,
I’ll concentrate more on my work,’
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the deaf,
Who can speak for the dumb?
All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.
Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.
