对许多人来说，诗歌无关紧要。他们很少求助于莎士比亚、华兹华斯、弗罗斯特，照样可以做从前做的事。当诗歌遭遇比如音乐影碟、卫星电视这样更吸引人的竞争者时，当欣赏诗歌需要更多的注意力、相当程度的分析能力以及对诗歌传统的知识等要求时，人们不由得担心诗歌在二十一世纪是否还能存活。
十九世纪时，司各特、拜伦、朗费罗等在世界各地都有读者。他们的作品是畅销书，他们是公认的文化英雄。不过当时读者没有多少选择。认为诗歌受到大众的喜欢的观点或许是错误的。诗歌的叙述为人们带来快乐、催人奋进，表达了人们的内心感受。民歌和歌谣同样得到人们的喜欢，在某种意义上，音乐和诗歌是携手而行的。
二十世纪出现了一些毛病。诗歌变得“难懂了”。也就是说，诗人开始表达现代文化的复杂性和残酷分裂。庞德、希尔达。杜利特尔（Hilda Doolittle）、艾略特、玛丽安。莫尔（Marianne Moore）、华莱士。斯蒂文森（Wallace Stevens）等人的诗歌对读者要求很高，里面包括众多文化指涉，其中的话题甚至在一九ΟΟ年代初期都是很少人知道的。比如，要轻松地阅读庞德和艾略特，读者需要有希腊和拉丁语诗歌的知识，那种学术水平对于过去受过教育的读者来说是很平常的，因为当时古典文学的学习是任何中产阶级教育的基石。但是对于二十世纪的多数读者来说，就未必如此了，到了今天，教育已经越来越市民化，对于经典的学习已经降级到少数热心人士。高度现代性的权威诗人的诗歌需要大量的注释。
但是诗歌能够给读者的生活带来变化。就我自己来说，我阅读和创作诗歌至少四十年了。每天早上起来新的一天的开始就是在早餐桌上打开的诗集，读一两首诗歌。我思考诗歌，常常在日记里做注释。读诗贯穿在我的生活中，给我的步伐添加亮色，创造感觉上的阴凉，而这些在读诗前是感受不到的。在很多时候，我记得某些诗行，甚至整首诗整天都在我的头脑中流动，就好像歌曲的片断。我坚信如果没有诗歌，没有它的音乐，没有它的深刻智慧的话，我的生活肯定时非常可怜的。
人们倾向于忘记诗歌是智慧。最近我在摩洛哥，一个虔诚的穆斯林给我提及先知穆罕默德在他的格言集《哈迪斯圣经》（the Hadith）中也这样说。但是他也告诉我《古兰经》还教导我们诗人是危险人物，体面的人应该远离诗歌。这让我想起柏拉图，他希望在理想国里限制所有诗人的存在，因为他认为诗人是撒谎者。在柏拉图看来，现实是深刻、完美的思想世界。物质世界代表了那个理想的反映，虽然总是不完美的。因此，对于大自然的艺术表现总是对理想的偏离，是让人怀疑的。
但是柏拉图对于诗人还有其他的担心。在《理想国》中，他抱怨说他们倾向于用无益的方式煽动读者的感情。他们挑动读者的“欲望、愤怒、以及其他感情，渴望、痛苦、欢乐等。”他说“诗歌不是让感情干涸，而是给感情添加燃料和营养”，而只有“上帝的赞美诗和著名人物的称赞”才值得读者阅读。法律和理性要好多了。
尽管柏拉图没有完全贬低诗歌艺术，但他对这个行当充满怀疑，从此后诗人很少对于他们的社会地位感到舒服和自在。甚至著名的浪漫主义诗人拜伦、柯勒律治、济慈、雪莱、华兹华斯等也生活在社会的边缘，并不十分受人尊重。最近的诗人比如艾伦。金斯堡（Allen Ginsberg）嘲笑他们的国家。诗人身上有桀骜不驯的天性，并不是社会餐桌上招人喜欢的客人。
老师和教授长期以来认为诗歌是课程非常有用的组成部分，诗歌成为文化的核心，最后领地之一就是课堂上。在一定程度上，诗人被学术村落“驯化了”，被迎接到小树林。弗罗斯特是第一个在校园受到热烈欢迎的诗人。他一生大部分时间在安默斯特学院（Amherst College）教书，也曾在其他地方短期任教。最后几十年他在全国各地巡回出现，在大学里朗诵诗歌或者做报告。他坚信诗歌是在重要的方式上影响人们心灵的手段。
弗罗斯特在他最好的文章之一“诗歌教育”中说，了解诗歌运作过程是训练智慧必须的过程。他甚至建议除非你能熟练地使用比喻，否则就不是安全的。因为你不能舒服地接受比喻的价值，“你不知道你可以期待乘坐它飞多远，不知道什么时间它会把你摔下来。”这是非常大的主张。
诗人确实提出大主张，而且往往有点夸张。在“为诗歌辩护”中，雪莱的名言是“诗人是世界上没有被确认的立法者”。我更喜欢后来的诗人乔治。奥朋（George Oppen）做的修改，他说“诗人是没有被确认的世界上的立法者。”
我并不特别希望诗人制订法律或者统治世界。在多数情况下，在这些公共领域他们的表现很糟糕。诗人的世界在很大程度上是多数人都生活其中的智慧和感情的内在世界。诗歌支持这个内在的世界。1942年世界还处于战火纷飞的年代，斯蒂文森在普林斯顿大学的演讲中回顾了二十世纪无论在物质上还是精神上变得“如此暴烈”的事实，他简洁地把诗歌定义为“从内部出现的暴力，用来保护我们免于外来的暴力。它是对抗现实压力的想象力，从最终的分析来说，它似乎和我们的自我保护有关，毫无疑问，诗歌表达文字的声音帮助我们过自己的生活。”
现实的压力确实是巨大的，但是诗歌提供了一种抗压力，把试图吞没和消除个人的外部力量推回去。诗人以从前没有被确认的方式向世界发出声音。当我们阅读诗歌的时候，我们在倾听静静的小小的诗歌声音，这个声音和庞大的文化喧闹和社会的爆炸声形成强烈对比。
我总是向学生把诗歌定义为足够描述经验的语言，描述包括内部的河谷、高峰、广阔的平原在内的充分经验。它表达微小的思想声音，描述苏格兰诗人和学者阿拉斯塔尔雷德（Alastair Reid）在一首可爱的诗歌中称为“零星的迹象、征兆的瞬间”的东西。人们不指望诗歌能改变世界。奥登（Auden）在写济慈挽歌的时候写到“诗歌不能造就任何事情。”它不能改变股票价格走向，不能劝说独裁者下台，也不能总是把群众送上街头抗议战争或者呼吁经济正义。它以静悄悄的方式起作用，改变读者的内在空间，在他们的思想上增添一些精细深刻，为他们把世界弄得复杂一些。
语言让我们和动物区别开来。我们说话，因此我们存在。我们有神奇的能力用文字表达手势、做出声明和请求、表达感情、论证观点、得出结论。诗歌语言的重要性是因为它精确和具体，把我们带到离物质世界更近的地方去。在《自然》中，爱默生认为文字的物质性把我们指向一个可以称为“精神的”方向。他提出了值得考虑的三个原则：
“文字是自然事实的符号。”
“具体的自然事实是具体的精神事实的象征。”
“自然是精神的象征。”
这些命题形成了某种追求形而上学运动的平台，仔细研究自然以发现精神生活的迹象。原则仍然值得我们反思。在一定程度上，文字显示自然事实：“岩石、河流、小鸟、云彩”。跳跃出现在第二个命题，假设一个精神世界。我认为，人们可以在这里超越精神性的传统概念，承认一个深刻的内在世界在我们每个人生活中，不管宗教信仰如何。我想到的诗行杰拉尔德。曼尼。霍普金斯（Gerard Manley Hopkins）“啊，思想啊，思想时有山和瀑布的悬崖峭壁，可怕、陡峭、深不可测。”
思想有高度和深度。多数人都能认识到它们，充满敬畏地看到其可怕的威严。那是人们可以朝任何方向延伸的精神领域。最后自然变成了爱默生的“精神的象征”，诗歌本身体现了那个自然，成为自然的一部分。它反映了庞大的内在世界，用形象和短语占满了空间，为个人生活提供了现实的基础。
我不能离开诗歌而生活。它帮助我生活得更具体、更深刻。它塑造了我的思想，活跃了我的精神，为我提供了忍受生活的新方式（这里引用约翰逊博士的话），甚至让我能够享受生活。
作者简介：杰恩。帕里尼（Jay Parini）小说家，诗人，米德尔伯里学院（Middlebury）英语教授。新著《诗歌为什么重要？》今年四月由耶鲁大学出版社出版。
译自：“Why poetry matters？”by Jay Parini
（吴万伟 译）
最新回复
但是，国情不同 社会发展阶段不同
就怕杰恩·帕里尼根本没有吃过中国的“臭豆腐”，不知何味呢
它帮助我生活得更具体、更深刻。它塑造了我的思想，活跃了我的精神，为我提供了忍受生活的新方式（这里引用约翰逊博士的话），甚至让我能够享受生活。
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谢谢大兴兄转的多篇好文。总能那么恰巧地给了我一些提示，(*^__^*)
Poetry doesn't matter to most people. They go about their business as usual, rarely consulting their Shakespeare, Wordsworth, or Frost. One has to wonder if poetry has any place in the 21st century, when music videos and satellite television offer daunting competition for poems, which demand a good deal of attention and considerable analytic skills, as well as some knowledge of the traditions of poetry.
In the 19th century, poets like Scott, Byron, and Longfellow had huge audiences around the world. Their works were best sellers, and they were cultural heroes as well. But readers had few choices in those days. One imagines, perhaps falsely, that people actually liked poetry. It provided them with narratives that entertained and inspired. It gave them words to attach to their feelings. They enjoyed folk ballads, too. In a sense, music and poetry joined hands.
In the 20th century, something went amiss. Poetry became "difficult." That is, poets began to reflect the complexities of modern culture, its fierce disjunctions. The poems of Ezra Pound, Hilda Doolittle, T.S. Eliot, Marianne Moore, and Wallace Stevens asked a lot of the reader, including a range of cultural references to topics that even in the early 1900s had become little known. To read Pound and Eliot with ease, for instance, one needed some knowledge of Greek and Latin poetry. That kind of learning had been fairly common among educated readers in the past, when the classics were the bedrock of any upper-middle-class education. The same could not be said for most readers in the 20th century — or today, when education has become more democratized and the study of the classics has been relegated to a small number of enthusiasts. The poems of the canonical poets of high modernism require heavy footnotes.
Yet poetry can make a difference in the lives of readers. I've always known that myself, having read and written poems for at least four decades. Every morning I begin the day with a book of poems open at the breakfast table. I read a poem, perhaps two. I think about the poetry. I often make notes in my journal. The reading of the poem informs my day, adds brightness to my step, creates shades of feeling that formerly had been unavailable to me. In many cases, I remember lines, whole passages, that float in my head all day — snatches of song, as it were. I firmly believe my life would be infinitely poorer without poetry, its music, its deep wisdom.
One tends to forget that poetry is wisdom. I was in Morocco recently, and a devout Muslim mentioned to me that the Prophet Muhammad, in his book of sayings, the Hadith, had said as much. But the Koran also teaches, I was told, that poets are dangerous, and that decent people should avoid them. That reminded me of Plato, who wished to ban all poets from his ideal republic because he thought they were liars. Reality, for Plato, was an intense, perfect world of ideas. The material world represents reflections of that ideal, always imperfect. Artistic representations of nature were thus at several removes from the ideal, hence suspicious.
But Plato also had other worries about poets. In the Republic, he complained that they tend to whip up the emotions of readers in unhelpful ways. They stir feelings of "lust and anger and all the other affections, of desire and pain and pleasure." Poetry "feeds and waters the passions instead of drying them up," he said, while only the "hymns of the gods and praises of famous men" are worthy of readers. The law and reason are far better.
Although Plato didn't quite sink the art of poetry, he cast suspicion on the craft, and poets since then have rarely been comfortable with their place in society. Even the popular Romantic poets — Byron, Coleridge, Keats, Shelley, Wordsworth, and others — lived on the edge of the social whirl, not quite respectable. More recently figures like Allen Ginsberg have derided their country. Poets have an unruly streak in them, and have not been the most welcome guests at the table of society.
Teachers and professors have long considered poetry a useful part of the curriculum, and one of the last places where poetry remains a central part of the culture is the classroom. To a degree, poets have been "domesticated" by the academic village, welcomed into its grove. Frost was among the first poets to get a big welcome on the campus, and he taught at Amherst College for much of his life, with stints elsewhere. He spent his last decades crisscrossing the country, appearing at colleges, reading and lecturing to large audiences. He believed firmly in poetry as a means of shaping minds in important ways.
In "Education by Poetry," one of his finest essays, Frost argued that an understanding of how poetry works is essential to the developing intellect. He went so far as to suggest that unless you are at home in the metaphor, you are not safe anywhere. Because you are not at ease with figurative values, "you don't know how far you may expect to ride it and when it may break down with you." Those are very large claims.
Poets do make large claims, and they are usually a bit exaggerated. In his "Defense of Poetry," Shelley famously wrote: "Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world." I prefer the twist on that offered by a later poet, George Oppen, who wrote: "Poets are the legislators of the unacknowledged world."
I don't especially want poets to make laws or rule the world. For the most part, they would perform very badly in those public ways. The world of the poet is largely an interior world of the intellect and the emotions — where we mostly live, in fact. And poetry bolsters that interior realm. In a talk at Princeton University in 1942, when the world was aflame, Stevens reflected on the fact that the 20th century had become "so violent," both physically and spiritually. He succinctly defined poetry as "a violence from within that protects us from a violence without. It is the imagination pushing back against the pressure of reality. It seems, in the last analysis, to have something to do with our self-preservation; and that, no doubt, is why the expression of poetry, the sound of its words, helps us to live our lives."
The pressure of reality is indeed fierce, and yet poetry supplies a kind of counterpressure, pushing back against external forces that would overwhelm and obliterate the individual. Poets give a voice to the world in ways previously unacknowledged. We listen to the still, small voice of poetry when we read a poem, and that voice stands in ferocious contrast to the clamor in the culture at large and, often, to the sound of society's explosions.
I always define poetry for my students as a language adequate to our experience — to our full experience, taking into account the interior valleys, the peaks, the broad plains. It gives voice to tiny thoughts, to what the Scottish poet and scholar Alastair Reid, in a lovely poem, calls "Oddments Inklings Omens Moments." One does not hope for poetry to change the world. Auden noted when he wrote in his elegy for Yeats that "poetry makes nothing happen." That is, it doesn't shift the stock market or persuade dictators to stand down. It doesn't usually send masses into the streets to protest a war or petition for economic justice. It works in quieter ways, shaping the interior space of readers, adding a range of subtlety to their thoughts, complicating the world for them.
Language defines us as human beings. We speak, therefore we exist. We have the miraculous ability to gesture in words, to make statements and requests, to express our feelings, to construct arguments, to draw conclusions. Poetic language matters because it is precise and concrete, and draws us closer to the material world. In Nature, Emerson argues that the sheer physicality of words points us in directions that might be called "spiritual." He puts forward three principles worth considering:
"Words are signs of natural facts."
"Particular natural facts are symbols of particular spiritual facts."
"Nature is the symbol of the spirit."
Those statements formed a platform of sorts for the Transcendental movement, which studied nature closely for signs of spiritual life. The principles remain worthy of reflection. At some level, words suggest natural facts: "rock," "river," "bird," "cloud." The leap comes in the second statement, which posits a spiritual world. One can, I think, leap beyond conventional notions of spirituality here and acknowledge a deep interior world wherein each of us lives, no matter what our religious persuasion. I think of a line from Gerard Manley Hopkins: "O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall/Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed." The mind has those heights and depths, and few have not sensed them, stood in awe of their terrifying majesty. That is the spiritual realm, which one can extend in any direction. Nature becomes, at last, Emerson's "symbol of the spirit," and poetry itself embodies that nature. It is part of it. It mirrors the vast interior world, populates it with images and phrases, provides a basis for the reality of individual lives.
I could not live without poetry, which has helped me to live my existence more concretely, more deeply. It has shaped my thinking. It has enlivened my spirit. It has offered me ways to endure my life (I'm rephrasing Dr. Johnson here), even to enjoy it.
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Jay Parini is a novelist, poet, and professor of English at Middlebury College. His latest book, Why Poetry Matters, was published in April by Yale University Press.
美国有一位自闭症患者写了一本书：《我们为什么不说话》。在她看来，自闭症患者的大脑更接近动物。这是很能启发思路的。说起来，大脑由三部分构成：最低等的爬行动物大脑，掌管基本的生理需求；哺乳动物大脑掌管基本的情感；最后就是大脑新皮质，尤其是其中的额叶，掌管各路信息的整合。不用说，灵长类，尤其是人类，具有发达的大脑新皮质，它能对基本情感进行加工整理，使人类的情感世界以丰富多变的面目出现，如多愁善感、爱恨交加。自闭症患者的问题就在于，他们的额叶功能有所障碍，因而他们的情感世界更显单纯。由于动物天生额叶就不够发达，就此而言，自闭症患者似乎更接近于动物。儿童由于额叶功能尚未发育完善，因而他们也更接近于动物。比如，一条狗对主人的感情往往很单纯，很少有变心之说。我们以赤子之心来形容儿童，说的也正是儿童情感的单纯透明。记得丰子恺曾在文中记述，当他在外奔波回家后给孩子分糖果时，小的孩子往往表现出单纯的喜悦，但大女儿却已知道父亲谋生的不易，反而无法流露同样的喜悦，丰子恺不由得为女儿长大后的懂事感到些许悲凉，也许他更愿孩子永葆赤子之心。但若从神经生理学的角度来看，儿童时期那份不加掩饰的纯真倒是额叶功能尚未健全的表现。
关于情感，研究人员概括出的四种基本类型——愤怒、恐惧、追逐猎物的冲动以及好奇心，在人类和动物身上都存在。说起恐惧，那可是一种古老的情感，缺乏恐惧感的无畏者在自然界必将被淘汰，因为动物，尤其是被食动物，生存于一个危机四伏的环境之中。但人类与动物不同，我们还多了一种情感：焦虑。大脑中的杏仁核与恐惧有关；而焦虑却源于新皮质中的额叶，难怪焦虑更多属于人类。两者的区别在于：恐惧来自于外部对象；焦虑来自于内心体验。如果你不小心踩到一条蛇，你会有恐惧感；但若你想到踩蛇这件事，就会感觉到焦虑。就此而言，焦虑更难摆脱。这一区分不由得让人想到存在主义哲学家海德格尔曾经论述过的两种基本情绪：怕和畏。怕源于某种具体对象；畏却是弥漫于心灵深处的一种情绪。也许在海德格尔看来，畏正是人之存在的具体表现，它与我们有限的生命如影相随。用孟子的话来说，人生于忧患，死于安乐。可是如今的世界，到处都有恐惧，却少畏惧和忧虑。我们也许会害怕一种具体现象，比如，害怕肥胖，害怕水质不好，但我们却忘了这一切正是因我们现代生活方式而起。莫非人性果真在向动物性退化？
还有一种情感值得一提，这就是好奇心。动物天生就具有好奇心，因为所有的动物都必须在变化的环境中寻找食物和配偶，因此，它不得不对外界环境始终保持敏锐的警觉。曾有研究表明，大脑释放的多巴胺与快乐有关，比如吸毒上瘾者的多巴胺含量会上升。但最新的研究表明，多巴胺刺激的是大脑中的搜寻系统而非快乐中心。当动物感觉到周围有食物时，大脑的相应部分会表现活跃从而进入搜寻过程；一旦食物就在眼前，这一过程即停止。也就是说，真正使得动物感到兴奋的是搜寻的过程，而非食物本身。这似乎令人吃惊，但仔细想来却能解释动物和人的许多行为特征。猫捉老鼠，有时就是为了过瘾，享受捕猎过程而非真为果腹。人类的许多行为又何尝不是如此，我们出去探险旅行，所愿享受的就是人在路上的那份新奇和刺激。难怪叔本华有这样的名言：世界上的痛苦有两种：得不到的痛苦以及得到后的痛苦。就此而言，所有动物——人更是如此——本质上都具喜新厌旧性。儿童对此可谓表现得淋漓尽致，他们的兴奋点始终落在新鲜玩具、新鲜环境上。倒是驯化动物，因为过着安稳的生活，猎奇心理有所退化。好奇心还是学习的最大动力，但如今的教育却处处遵循驯化原则，由此更有可能磨灭学生与生俱来的好奇心。
休谟曾把联想看作是人类思维中与生俱来的能力，如今的动物行为学研究表明，动物和人类都天生具有这一能力，亦即我们生来就相信，如果两件事情接连发生，那么这一定不是偶然，而是有着某种因果关系。正是凭借这一能力，我们学会许多事情，在人类中，它更是成了一种推理习惯。事实上，要我们相信，两件接连发生的事情是巧合而非必然，倒是需要经过专门训练。比如统计学上就要强调，大量相关现象之间仅具统计意义而非因果联系。在这一方面，最突出的误解，或许就是相信 “天生我才必有用”，相信世界是为我、为人类而存在。但要人类抛弃这类联想，谈何容易？
生活中我们常常为这样的问题而困惑：情感重要还是理智重要？也许是多年文明熏陶的结果，我们大多会倾向于认为，理智比情感更重要，动物也有情感，但惟有人类才有理智。记得休谟曾有这样的说法：理智受情感奴役。对此，我曾经怎么也想不明白，作为哲学家而不是诗人，休谟怎能把情感放于理智之先？但如今的实证科学却给出了合理的解释，相比于理智，情感更古老，情感的要义就是帮助动物生存下去，因而正常的情感系统要比认知系统更重要。其实当大脑工作时，情感与理智本是两个浑然难分的过程。有这样一种病人，他们的认知能力或智商完全正常，但生活却无法自理。问题出在哪儿？经过费力寻找才发现，原来这些病人缺少适当的情感反应，他们确是处于一种无忧无虑、与世无争的境界，同时却也失去了预测未来并据此做出决策的能力。原来正是情感，令我们从心动到行动。
谁都知道莎士比亚的经典台词：“生还是死？”这是一种理性的算计或较量，此时若不投入情感，哈姆雷特就会徘徊在两者之间，一事无成。欧洲中世纪曾有“布里丹的驴子”一说，源出于当时一位神学家布里丹的设想：当一头驴子面对两个同等距离、完全相同的干草堆时，它或许会因拿不定主意吃哪一堆而活活饿死。布里丹的原意是要证明自由意志的存在。但此中确有深意。以今天大脑生理学的研究成果来看，哲学家钟爱的“自由意志”或许就蕴藏于我们的情感之中。正是情感令我们摆脱因果律的束缚，自由地采取行动。人类的情感更为丰富发达，人类享有的自由也就比动物更多。
对于人性，哲学家曾经说过不少精辟的见解。而现在，随着神经生理学、动物行为学及其心理学的进步，哲学家的见解正在受到检验，我们已比过去的哲学家们掌握了更多的材料和资源，我们理应作出更深入的探讨。
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其实，老农最重要。