Sonnets 2: Shakespeare’s Two Loves

Sonnets -- Part 2 -- Shakespeare’s Two Loves

十四行诗 -- 第2部分 -- 莎士比亚的两个爱人

In our first episode, we discussed how Shakespeare uses the highly conventional form of the sonnet to explore unconventional experiences of desire. In this episode, we’ll focus on the sonnets’ two major “characters” or addressees; the speaker’s relationship with them; and the significance those relationships might have had in Shakespeare’s time. Guiding our discussion is Michael Schoenfeldt, John Knott Professor of English Literature at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor.

在上集节目中，我们讨论了莎士比亚如何运用十四行诗传统严谨的结构探寻那些颠覆传统的爱欲体验。本集我们将聚焦十四行诗的两位主要“人物”，分析讲述者与他们的关系，探究在莎士比亚那个年代，这些关系可能蕴含的重大意义。今天我们依旧邀请了密歇根大学-安娜堡分校的约翰·诺特英语文学教授迈克尔·舍恩菲尔德，他将带领我们探寻这些问题的答案。

One of the things that's most interesting is the ways in which he keeps returning to the question of where desire comes from, what elicits desire, what satisfies desire, and what follows the satisfaction of desire -- the things that pull us to other people, the things that make us feel betrayed by other people and the things that still allow us to continue to explore with other people. There are poems that are about loss, pure loss, and what can redeem loss. Even the most comforting poems, I feel, aspire to comfort and want to sooth but never fail to articulate powerfully the sense of loss and leave the space between loss and recuperation never fully encompassed.

最有意思的是，在这些十四行诗中，莎士比亚不断地追问爱欲的缘由，追问爱欲因何而起，他在不断探寻人们如何才能满足爱欲，爱欲在被满足后又会衍生出哪些情绪。这些问题探究的其实就是我们会因何被他人吸引，又会因何而觉得被他们所背叛，以及是什么推动着我们坚持与他人一道继续追寻爱欲的真相。莎士比亚十四行组诗中，部分诗歌谈论的主题是失落之情，那种纯粹的失落之情，同时诗歌也在探究如何弥补这些失落之情。即便那些温馨慰藉的诗篇，那些意在给予读者温柔与安慰的诗篇，也都带着强烈的失落感，令读者深刻感受到了失去和补偿之间那永远无法完全弥合的沟壑。

Sonnets were conventionally written from a male-gendered speaker to a woman. But the majority of Shakespeare’s sonnets are not addressed to a woman. They either leave the gender of the addressee unstated, or explicitly or implicitly address a young man. The speaker refers to this man as “beauty’s summer” and “the lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell.” The first seventeen sonnets ask this beautiful young man to pass on his beauty by fathering children -- and so preserve a copy of himself for the enamoured speaker.

传统意义上的十四行诗，都是一位男性讲述者对一位女性抒发爱慕之情。但莎士比亚大部分的十四行诗的述说对象却并非女性。诗人要么不提被歌颂对象的性别，要么就明里暗里地表示自己在歌颂一位年轻男性。讲述者称这位男子为“美的夏天”，歌颂着他那“众目共注的可爱明眸”。组诗中的前17首还敦促这位年轻的美男子生育孩子，延续美貌，为这位痴恋的讲述者留下自己的复刻本。

From the opening lines of his sequence, “From fairest creatures we desire increase,” he's telling a young man that he loves him so much and knows that time will do its ravages on him, that he has to reproduce himself because he's so beautiful, it’s his obligation and his own beauty will pass. These poems are so unconventional. They're so unusual, and they're so bizarre. Encouraging a beautiful member of your own sex to have sex with somebody else in order to fulfill his love to you was not the standard erotic narrative then, or probably now.

组诗开篇第一句“对天生的尤物我们要求蕃盛”，讲述者就是在对那位年轻男子述说着自己深沉的爱意，同时也在提醒他爱人的美貌会随着时间的流逝而逐渐凋零。正是由于男子拥有惊人的美貌，所以他有义务繁育后代，延续这种美。这些诗篇挑战了传统。它们太不寻常了，太怪诞离奇了。为了获得一位貌美同性的爱，而鼓励他与另一个人发生关系，这完全不是惯常情色故事的叙述风格，不论是在当时还是在现在，这都不合乎常理。

It was certainly more usual for sonnets to show a man in love with a woman. But what was unusual in this literary context may have been less unusual in other contexts.

十四行诗中比较常见的是男性向女性倾述爱慕之情。但是如果换一个语境的话，这些不寻常的内容其实也不会显得那么地特立独行。

It's important to remember that there were no women allowed on stage and that this was a culture that could easily imagine a male, a young male, playing a female, and imagine thereby, I would argue, a greater fungibility between sexes and genders than we would, and imagine that almost desire would precede genitalia. So we'll run into this in sonnet 20, Shakespeare's little narrative of how this beautiful young man was originally created.

我们必须牢记，在莎士比亚那个年代，女性是不能登台表演戏剧的，剧中的女性角色都是由男性，由青年男性扮演。这个操作愈发模糊了两性之间的界限，使得爱欲超脱性别的束缚。在十四行诗第20首中，我们就可以体会到这些内容。莎士比亚用短小的篇幅讲述了这位年轻的美男子是如何被创造出来的。

Sonnet 20 plays exactly on this idea of gender being fungible or changeable: we see Mother Nature herself changing her mind midway through creating the beautiful addressee:

十四行诗第20首探讨的是性别的可变换性，诗中说自然造化在创造这位美人时，半途改变了想法。

A woman’s face with Nature’s own hand painted

你有副女人的脸，由造化亲手

Hast thou, the master mistress of my passion;

塑就，你，我热爱的情妇兼情郎；

A woman’s gentle heart, but not acquainted

有颗女人的温婉的心，但没有

With shifting change, as is false women’s fashion;

反复和变幻，像女人的假心肠；

An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling,

眼睛比她明媚，又不那么造作，

Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth;

流盼把一切事物都镀上黄金；

A man in hue all hues in his controlling,

绝世的美色，驾御着一切美色，

Which steals men’s eyes and women’s souls amazeth.

既使男人晕眩，又使女人震惊。

And for a woman wert thou first created,

开头原是把你当女人来创造；

Till Nature as she wrought thee fell a-doting,

但造化塑造你时，不觉着了迷，

And by addition me of thee defeated

误加给你一件东西，这就剥掉

By adding one thing to my purpose nothing.

我的权利--这东西对我毫无意义。

But since she pricked thee out for women’s pleasure,

但造化造你既专为女人愉快，

Mine be thy love, and thy love’s use their treasure.

让我占有，而她们享受，你的爱。

This poem is about how the young man came to be the young man. We hear the story: “And for a woman wert thou first created / Till nature, as she wrought thee, fell a-doting” -- so originally he was going to be a woman, and then Nature falls in love with him, and Nature decides to try to resolve her own desires into something like heterosexuality. So Nature decides to “add one thing, to my purpose, nothing” -- the pun on “thing,” penis.

这首诗讲述了这位年轻男子是如何被塑造成如今的模样。诗中写道：“开头原是把你当女人来创造；但造化塑造你时，不觉着了迷”。由此可以看出，“他”原本应该是一位女性，但自然在塑造“他”的过程中，爱上了“他”，于是为了使内心的欲望符合“异性恋”的要求，就将“他”变成了一位男子。自然决定“加一件东西”，加一件“对我毫无意义”的东西。诗人在这里玩了一个谐音，因为英文中“意义”（purpose）的发音和男性生殖器（penis）的发音很相似。而这里所加的一件东西，其实就是暗指男性生殖器。

One thing about the form of this poem, that Shakespeare so brilliantly exploits -- the rhyme, it has one extra syllable at the end of each line, and that is called feminine rhyme -- that just as the rhymes in the poem play on the idea of adding one syllable to create feminine rhyme, so is one thing added to this beautiful woman to produce the young man who is the “master mistress” in that gorgeous oxymoronic, gender-blending title. So this poem is trying to parse out the mystery of this figure, who “steals men's hearts and woman's souls amazeth” -- is sort of desired by everybody, men and women, heterosexual man, homosexual -- and in that final couplet, which is the one, “but since she pricked thee out,” which means to claim to choose, but also to add a prick to, here the young woman then pricked out “for women's pleasure, / Mine be thy love and thy love’s use their treasure.” How I would argue that sorts out is, you and I can have non- reproductive sex, “mine be thy love,” and “thy love’s use,” the kind of reproductive sex that you can have with women, they get to have. So for me, it's a complete fulfillment of the deep bisexual commitments or ambisexual commitments of this remarkable poem and speaker.

在诗歌形式上，莎士比亚炉火纯青地运用了押韵技巧。他在每句诗行的末尾额外增加了一个音节，这种押韵形式被称为“阴性韵”。于是在音韵节奏上，每行诗多了一个音节，形成了“阴性韵”，这就如同在一位美丽的女性身上多加一件东西把“她”变成了一位年轻男子，塑就了那“情妇兼情郎”一样，它们都体现了精妙绝伦的矛盾和性别融合。这首诗描述了倾述对象身上的那种神秘感，他“既使男人晕眩，又使女人震惊”，人人都爱慕他，不论男女，不论异性恋，还是同性恋。在最后两句诗中，诗人写道：“但造化造你”。英文版诗句中的“创造、造化”一词，用作名词的时候还可以指男性的生殖器官。所以这句话的意思是，大自然有意要往这个年轻女子身上加上男性的性特征，“造你既专为女人愉快，让我占有，而她们享受/你的爱”，这两句的意思其实就是，“我和你之间的性爱无法繁育后代”，“让我占有”“而她们享受”就是说这位男子可以女性发生关系，繁衍后代。所以，在我看来，这首不寻常的诗歌，以及诗中这位讲述者是在完全履行双性恋的承诺。

The fluidity of gender and desire in this poem reflects a not dissimilar sense of fluidity around desire in Shakespeare’s own culture.

诗歌中性别和爱欲的易变性和不稳定性反映出了莎士比亚所处文化中常见的易变的爱欲。

As far as we can tell, this was a culture that didn't categorize people by their desires. They seem to have imagined almost all individuals as existing on a kind of continuum -- it seems to have been a culture that imagined a much greater degree of what we would categorize as bisexuality in that regard. And particularly beautiful young men seem to have been the site of heightened erotic attention both of men who preferred same-sex desire, probably heterosexual men and probably heterosexual women -- and maybe even, although we don't have good records of this, women who experienced same-sex desire. Anyway, it's a culture that seemed far more hospitable to a range of desires almost not fully connected to genitalia, that men could think other men were deeply desirous. This sort of category of heterosexual versus homosexual seems not to have existed, and everybody seems to have been on some kind of a possible range there, which is, I think, one of the areas that the sonnets exploit most powerfully and brilliantly, is the ways in which those kinds of loves, same-sex and opposite-sex, might interact and play out. And I mean, the big difference for this culture is that the one kind of love produces children.

就我们目前所了解的情况来看，莎士比亚那时的文化，不会根据性取向对人进行区分，而是把所有的人看作是不可割裂的统一体。这种文化对于双性恋群体的划分似乎比我们更为广泛。尤其是那些美丽的年轻男子，他们对于偏爱同性的男性，爱慕异性的男性，以及异性恋女性都有着极强的性吸引力。甚至那些爱恋同性的女性，虽然没有明确的记载，似乎也会为这样的男子而着迷。总而言之，这种文化对那些无关性特征的欲望更为包容、更为热情，男性与男性之间也会萌生深刻的爱欲，异性恋与同性恋的划分界线仿佛压根不存在，每个人都有可能是异性恋，也可能是同性恋。十四行诗将这些爱，这些同性之爱，异性之爱，以及它们可能相互影响、相互作用的方式表现了出来，这正是这些诗歌最震撼、最精彩的地方。在这种文化中，同性之爱和异性之爱的一大差别可能只是在于能否繁育后代了。

The culturally sanctioned model for romantic sexual love in Shakespeare’s Protestant- Christian England was heterosexual marriage intended to beget children. But, at the same time, the culture’s ideal of perfect friendship -- a “marriage of true minds” as Sonnet 116 puts it -- was not between men and women, but between men and men. Shakespeare dramatizes this dynamic of deep same-sex friendship in numerous plays -- from Twelfth Night to The Winter’s Tale.

在莎士比亚所处的基督教新教英国，文化上认可的爱情是以生育孩子为目的的异性婚姻。但同时，这种文化中理想完美的友谊却是十四行诗第116首中所描述的那种“两颗真心的结合”，这种友谊并非男女之间的情谊，而是男子与男子之间的惺惺相惜。莎士比亚在多部戏剧中刻画了同性之间的这种深刻情谊，比如《第十二夜》和《冬天的故事》。

A lot of patriarchies particularly play this out -- that the highest emotional and intellectual bonds of intimacy were those between equals, which were only men to men. Shakespeare seems repeatedly to pass through a kind of same-sex intimacy towards heterosexuality. Shakespeare’s men who remember how close they were as boys will repeatedly play out something like that. And it's almost like a fall from a kind of intimacy that may never quite get recaptured again, and again, that gets us into the realm of these poems, which are so much about trying to find the language in which a kind of authentic intimacy might be articulated.

在许多父权国家，这种感情尤为突出。情感和智力上最亲密的关系只存在于两个平等个体之间，而这两个平等个体只会是男性与男性。莎士比亚似乎一再地通过一种同性间的亲密关系进而去触及异性恋。在莎剧中，那些记得孩童时期亲密关系的男性角色之间，不断会产生这种爱慕之情。但这种爱慕之情却不会如他们当初的关系那样亲密，那种亲密是无法再次重温、再次体验的。于是，这就促使我们进入诗歌的国度，让我们借用语言再次去感受那种真挚的亲密之情。

When Shakespeare’s sonnet sequence does shift its focus to a woman, it don’t offer heterosexual relations as a clearly superior alternative to the homoerotic attachment previously depicted.

即便在莎士比亚的十四行组诗将焦点转移到女性身上时，诗歌也并没有明确表示异性恋关系优于之前所描述的同性恋爱关系。

We do get one of the “dark lady” poems which imagines the speaker with a good angel and a bad angel. What's fascinating in that poem, particularly for largely heterosexist society, is that the good angel is the young man and the bad angel is the woman. So heterosexuality becomes almost the temptation from a kind of more ideal same-sex attachment, and the speaker of that poem finally tells us, he starts getting jealous thinking, Maybe they're having sex together when they're not with him. And then he says, I'll never know that till my “bad angel fire my good one out,” and “to fire out” meant “to infect with venereal disease” -- the love triangles become almost nightmarish, in the later poems. I do find a kind of deepening of the shadows.

的确，在“黑女士”系列诗篇中，其中一首诗歌的讲述者想象出了一位善的天使和一位恶的天使。这首诗最有趣的地方是，在以异性恋为主导的社会里，善的天使是个男子，而恶的天使是个女人。异性恋诱惑着人们远离更理想的同性恋，而且这首诗的讲述者在最后也表示，他开始产生了嫉妒的感觉，他猜疑这个善的天使和恶的天使扔下了自己，而偷偷互相结合。接着讲述者继续说自己一直没有意识到那一点，直到“恶的天使把善的撵走”，这里的“撵走”指的是让他“感染性病”。甚至在后续的诗篇中，三角恋情几乎都如噩梦般恐怖，我也发现这些阴暗的内容在不断深化。

The term “the dark lady poems” -- which Professor Schoenfeldt notes is quite problematic -- is often used to describe Sonnets 127 to 152. These poems are addressed explicitly or implicitly to a woman, and some describe her hair, eyes, skin, and beauty as brown or black. This woman’s beauty is not the cultural standard, as Sonnet 127 notes: “In the old age, black was not counted fair.” But, the speaker continues, “now is black beauty’s successive heir.” Sonnet 132, praising the addressee’s black eyes, concludes: “Then will I swear beauty herself is black, / And all they foul that thy complexion lack.” Sonnet 130, beginning “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun,” lists all the woman’s traits that do not match poetic conventions of beauty, including her black hair and “dun,” or brown-colored, skin. But it concludes: “And yet by heaven, I think my love as rare / As any she belied by false compare.” Shakespeare is here referring to the way that sonnets tended to “fals[ify]” their subject with exaggerated comparisons -- eyes like suns, skin like snow, cheeks like roses, hair like gold. His poem eschews those worn-out Petrarchan metaphors in favor of his beloved’s real, remarkable qualities.

一般来说，“黑女士诗篇”是指组诗的第127至152首，但舍恩菲尔德教授之前也说过，“黑女士诗篇”这个表述其实存在不少问题。这些诗篇都是或明确或含蓄地写给一位女性，部分诗篇用“棕色”“黑色”这样的词描述她的头发、眼睛、皮肤，以及她的美貌。她的美貌背离了传统的标准，十四行诗第127首中这样写道：“在远古的时代黑并不算秀俊”。但后面他又继续说：“如今黑既成为美的继承人”。同样，在第132首中，诗句在赞美完这位女士黑色的双眸之后，总结到：“黑是美的本质（我那时就赌咒），一切缺少你的颜色的都是丑。”第130首，开篇第一句就说“我情妇的眼睛一点不像太阳”，诗篇中所列举的女性特征完全不符合传统诗歌中对“美”的定义，她的头发是黑色的，她的皮肤是“暗褐色”，是棕色的。但诗篇结尾却称赞说：“可是，我敢指天发誓，我的爱侣/胜似任何被捧作天仙的美女。”在这里，莎士比亚暗指传统十四行诗倾向于用夸张的比喻塑造主人公外貌形象，例如眼睛像太阳，皮肤像白雪，脸颊像玫瑰，发丝像黄金。但是莎士比亚却摒弃了那些被用滥了的彼特拉克式隐喻，转而描写爱人真实不凡的品质。

Now, the darkness of the dark lady - blackness could be dark hair, black could be darkly complected -- somebody who was not light-skinned, light-haired, blue eyes, that Northern European model that had set for the longest time the standards of purported beauty -- she doesn't fulfill all the exaggerated compliments of standard Petrarchan beauty, but yet, she's great.

“黑女士”的之所以是“黑女士”可能是因为她的头发乌黑、皮肤黝黑，她没有白皙的皮肤、淡色的头发和蓝色的眼睛，她和一直以来主流审美所认同的那种北欧式美女很不一样，不符合彼特拉克式隐喻中所描绘的那夸张的“美”，但她却是妩媚动人，令人心动不已。

Recent scholarship has shown that there were significant numbers of black people living in late-sixteenth and early-seventeenth century London, and that Shakespeare himself must have encountered black people. So we can’t assume the imagined addressee of these poems wasn’t a black woman. This makes it all the more important to consider the range of meanings associated with the terms “dark” and “black” in Shakespeare’s culture.

最近的有学术研究显示，16世纪晚期和17世纪早期，在伦敦生活着大量黑人，莎士比亚自己一定也与黑人打过交道。因此我们不能说这些诗歌所歌颂的对象一定不可能是黑人女性。所以，思考莎士比亚文化中与“黑色”和“深色”相关的广泛内涵有着极重大的意义。

I think it's a kind of pre racialized, but deeply denigrated notion of that color, that hardens into the racism of the 18th century and after. You can feel in these poems, and throughout the culture, and throughout the culture’s language of praise, of beauty, and all of that, a kind of profound hierarchy of Northern European aesthetic features. They hadn't yet let race harden in the ways we're now trying to undo. At the same time, a play like Othello does pick up on a powerful racist -- something that demeans, repeatedly, darkness, blackness.

我认为这种观点带有早期的种族化倾向，是在诋毁黑色人种，甚至在18世纪以及之后的时期，还形成了“种族主义歧视”。在这些诗篇中，在当时整个文化环境中，以及在当时整个文化语言对“美”的赞美中，我们可以深切感受到北欧式美学特征的绝对地位。不过在那时这些美学特征还没有固化我们现在正在试图消除的种族主义思想。与此同时，《奥赛罗》这类戏剧也让人们鲜明地感受到了一种强大的种族偏见，这种偏见在不断地贬损诋毁黑色人种。

Scholars debate exactly when “race” and “racism” emerged as the concepts we understand today. But scholars like Kim Hall and Peter Erickson argue that by the seventeenth century, “whiteness” was understood as a race in opposition to “blackness.” And skin color and religion often functioned together to mark certain groups as “other” in relation to white English Protestants. The term “Moor,” for example, was associated both with Islam and with dark skin. In the literature of the time, we also find deep undercurrents of racialized thinking, mapping hierarchies of beauty, purity, and nobility onto a hierarchy of skin color. In Shakespeare’s play Othello, the Moor of Venice, the Duke compliments the black Othello’s character by saying he is “far more fair than black.” In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Lysander insults Hermia’s looks with terms that refer to brown- and black-skinned foreigners: “Out, tawny Tartar!” “Away, you Ethiop!”

学者们仍在争论“种族”和“种族主义”究竟在什么时候定型为我们如今所理解的概念。但金·霍尔和彼得·埃里克森等学者认为，在17世纪，人们所理解的“白种人”其实不过只是“黑种人”的反义词。肤色往往需要和宗教信仰相结合，才能够将某些特定的群体确定为异于英国新教教徒的“另类”。例如“摩尔人”这个词，不仅指向黝黑的肤色，它还代表着伊斯兰教教义。在当时的文学作品中，我们能深刻感受到潜在的种族主义思想，这些思想根据肤色“等级”将美丽、纯洁和崇高划分为不同的级别。在莎剧《奥赛罗，威尼斯的摩尔人》中，公爵称赞黑皮肤的奥赛罗胜过翩翩白人少年。在《仲夏夜之梦》中，拉山德用指向棕色和黑色肤色的词汇辱骂赫米娅的容貌，他对着赫米娅怒骂：“走开，黑鞑子！”“走开，你这黑丫头！”

Some of Shakespeare’s sonnets, as we’ve seen, acknowledge this traditional association of blackness with ugliness while also seeking to undo it. But other sonnets use the terms “dark” and “black” to describe, not the woman’s beauty, but her apparently immoral actions. Sonnet 131 toggles between these two meanings of “black,” saying, “Thy black is fairest in my judgment’s place. / In nothing art thou black save in thy deeds.” Here and elsewhere, the speaker expresses a strong sense of self-division over his attraction to a woman that his culture doesn’t find desirable:

如我们所见，莎士比亚部分十四行诗在努力消除肤色偏见的同时，也承认了传统上这种认为黑色皮肤代表丑陋的观点。而且在一些十四行诗，“深色”“黑色”这些词描述的不只是女性的美貌，而是她明显的不道德行为。十四行诗第131首中“黑”的意思就在美貌和不道德这两个意思中来回切换，诗中写到：“对于我，你的黑胜于一切秀妍。你一点也不黑，除了你的人品”。不仅如此，在其他很多诗篇中，我们都可以感受到诗歌讲述者那强烈的自我分裂，一方面他所处的文化不认同这种美，但另一方面他却又被这种“美”深深吸引：

For well thou know’st to my dear doting heart /

因为你知道我的心那么糊涂，

Thou art the fairest and most precious jewel. / 

把你当作世上的至美和至珍。

Yet in good faith some say that thee behold, / 

不过，说实话，见过你的人都说，

Thy face hath not the power to make love groan. / 

你的脸缺少使爱呻吟的魅力：

To say they err I dare not be so bold, /

尽管我心中发誓反对这说法，

Although I swear it to myself alone.

我可还没有公开否认的勇气。

Sonnet 147 expresses similar self-division over a love that wastes the speaker like a disease. He expresses this love’s demonic qualities through the language of blackness:

十四行诗第147首，也表达了类似的“自我分裂”，这种自我分裂是由于如疾病般折磨讲述者的爱情而引起的。他运用“黑色”的语言描写了这种爱情那些恶魔般的特质：

My love is as a fever, longing still /

我的爱是一种热病，它老切盼

For that which longer nurseth the disease, /

那能够使它长期保养的单方，

Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill, /

服食一种能维持病状的药散，

Th’ uncertain sickly appetite to please. / 

使多变的病态食欲长久盛旺。

My reason, the physician to my love, / 

理性（那医治我的爱情的医生）

Angry that his prescriptions are not kept, / 

生气我不遵守他给我的嘱咐，

Hath left me, and I desperate now approve / 

把我扔下，使我绝望，因为不信

Desire is death, which physic did except. / 

医药的欲望，我知道，是条死路。

Past cure I am, now reason is past care, / 

我再无生望，既然丧失了理智，

And, frantic-mad with evermore unrest, / 

整天都惶惑不安、烦躁、疯狂；

My thoughts and my discourse as madmen’s are, / 

无论思想或谈话，全像个疯子，

At random from the truth vainly expressed. / 

脱离了真实，无目的，杂乱无章；

For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright, / 

因为我曾赌咒说你美，说你璀璨，

Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.

你却是地狱一般黑，夜一般暗。

One of the reasons the poems are so valuable to us is because of their brilliant account of how turbulent and unsettling desire is and how once you satisfy it, and how you move from desire to satiation, to nausea, back to desire -- for Shakespeare, it was almost a treadmill that I think the form of the sonnet, the little 14-line poem, that you'd then start over and then you start over, became a very good way to think about.

这些诗篇之所以如此宝贵重要，其中一个原因在于它们以绝妙的文笔记录了爱欲的动荡与混乱，记录了人们在爱欲被满足后，是如何由渴望变成满足，再变成厌恶，继而重新开始渴望爱欲的过程。对莎士比亚而言，创作十四行诗，运用这种14行的短小诗篇结构，就像是在跑步机上跑步，你可以不断地重新开始，循环往复，这是一种非常好的思维模式。

Love in this period wasn't just something to be worshiped and praised and idealized, but it was something that could make you do all kinds of mad and crazy things. Love was thought to be a heated passion, a passion that heats you up. Shakespeare takes that and turns it into a full-fledged disease here. “My love is a fever.” And you tend to desire exactly what makes you sicker, which is stunning -- that longing still, always, “for that, which longer nurseth the disease.” Shakespeare, I mean, he knows something about the ways in which the things we desire shorten our lives, make us do crazy wild, weird things that drive us to madness. “I desperate now approve, desire is death,” and the speaker who is “frantic mad with evermore unrest,” one of the most anxious lines I know in all of English verse about the challenges of desire. Then we get this bizarre, weird couplet that pretends to explain the previous disease, but for me only expands upon it: “For I have sworn thee fair and thought thee bright / Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.” Here blackness begins, I think, to take on not just a color, but a moral complexion.

在这个时期，爱情并不是什么让人崇拜、赞美或是视作理想的东西，相反，爱情会让人作出各种疯狂不理智的行为。当时的人们认为，爱情是一种火热的激情，会让人激动，会让人疯狂。莎士比亚吸收了这种观点，并进一步将爱情描述为“一种狂热的疾病”，他说“我的爱是一种热病”。但令人吃惊的是，人们却又总是渴望着那让自己生病的东西，“它老切盼那能够使它长期保养的单方”。莎士比亚知道，我们所渴望的东西，会缩短我们的寿命，会让我们做出各种疯狂怪异的举动，把我们逼向癫狂的境地，它“使我绝望，......是条死路。”讲述者“整天都惶惑不安、烦躁、疯狂”，这一句对于爱欲所带来的困苦，是我读过的所有英国诗篇中，最焦虑、最不安的一句。紧接着，我们又读到了最离奇古怪的两句诗。作为诗篇的最后两行，它们假意在解释这种疾病的缘由，但在我看来，它们其实是在进一步深化这种疾病的恐怖，诗行写到：“因为我曾赌咒说你美，说你璀璨，你却是地狱一般黑，夜一般暗。”我认为，在这里“黑”已经不仅仅是一种肤色了，而变成了一种道德的表现。

The closing couplet does assume a moral hierarchy associated with color -- indeed, with skin color. As Kim Hall and others have shown, the term “fair” connects aesthetic attractiveness with goodness and with whiteness. All three connotations of “fair” are at work in Sonnet 144, which opens:

最后两句诗行认为道德的分级颜色，再具体说的话，其实就是与肤色有关。正如金·霍尔和其他学者所认为的那样，诗篇中表示“风姿错约”（fair）的英文单词，不仅仅有“美貌”的意思，还指“白皙的肤色”，在美学上不仅指“善良”这个品质所具备的吸引力，也代表“白种人”才拥有的那种魅力。在十四行诗第144首中，我们可以感受到“风姿错约”（fair）的这三种涵义。诗歌开篇写到：

Two loves I have, of comfort and despair, / 

两个爱人像精灵般把我诱惑，

Which like two spirits do suggest me still. / 

一个叫安慰，另外一个叫绝望：

The better angel is a man right fair, /

善的天使是个男子，丰姿绰约；

The worser spirit a woman colored ill. 

恶的幽灵是个女人，其貌不扬。

“Fair” is linked to the goodness of the “better angel,” and to beauty and whiteness by contrast with the “worser spirit colored ill.” The word “fair” appeared in the very first line of the first sonnet: “From fairest creatures we desire increase.” The first 17 sonnets urge the young man, who is often called “fair,” to father an heir and uphold his “fair house” -- linking notions of fairness also to notions of class. In Shakespeare’s society, it was particularly the nobility who were concerned with inheritance and perpetuating a family line. This concern is absent from the later poems.

“丰姿绰约”不仅仅体现在“善的天使”的善良上，还体现在美貌与白皙肤色上，这与的那“其貌不扬”的、有着深色皮肤的“恶的幽灵”很不一样。十四行组诗第一首诗的第一句说到“对天生的尤物我们要求蕃盛”，“尤物”（fairest）也对应了“丰姿绰约”的美貌。前17首十四行诗就经常用“丰姿绰约”“俊俏”这类词形容所歌颂的年轻男子，同时还催促他繁育后代，不要让自己那华丽的大厦倾颓，这里的形容词“华丽的”（fair）又一次对应着“丰姿绰约”。于是，外表的白皙美貌又与阶级的概念建立起了联系。在莎士比亚生活的社会，贵族阶层尤其关心自己的继承问题，关心自己家族血脉的延续。但是，这些内容在后续的诗篇中却都不见了。

One of the things that's always troubled me about the poems, again, we call the “dark lady poems,” is how, even though they’re aggressively heterosexual for the most part, there's no talk of progeny. There's no talk of reproduction. The very theme that inaugurated the sequence as it comes down to us has completely evaporated at that point.

所以，这些“黑女士诗篇”中一直令我疑惑不解的一个问题是，虽然这些诗篇都围绕异性恋这个主题，但里面却并没有任何文字涉及繁衍后代这个问题，它们根本没有提过生育孩。“繁衍后代”这个话题，从“黑女士诗篇”的第一首开始就完全消失了。

It may be, as Hall suggests, that this woman is imagined as a less desirable reproductive partner because she’s seen as such a contrast to the young man’s moral, social, and physical fairness. Sonnet 144 demonizes the woman “colored ill” by associating her with “devil[s]” and “fiend[s].” In the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, devils were represented as black. Sonnet 147 similarly calls the addressee “black as hell.” Yet these poems still express a powerful erotic desire.

这也许就像霍尔所说的，这位女士并不是理想的繁衍后代的对象，因为在道德上、社会地位上，以及肤色上，她都是之前那位年轻男子的对立面。十四行诗第144首甚至把这位“其貌不扬”的女士与“恶魔”“妖魅”联系在一起，把她妖魔化了。在中世纪和文艺复兴时期，人们认为恶魔就是黑皮肤的。十四行诗第147首就把诗歌就形容这位女士“是地狱一般黑”。但同时，这些诗篇中却又透着强烈的情色爱欲。

That completely divided consciousness comes out in the profound and self-defeating desire for that which both “longer nurseth the disease” as he says, and which completely belies all other possible meanings of aesthetic beauty. If the poems are in the sequence, and I don't think they are, this is a story that starts happy and ends horror, you know, this is deeply tragic.

这种完全分裂的意识体现在那深刻却又自我否定的爱欲中，这种爱欲一方面是能使人“长期保养的单方”，一方面又都完全背离了其他所有可能的美学内涵。如果这些诗篇是按顺序发展的话，虽然我不这么认为，那么诗篇所讲述的这个故事是由美好的开篇发展到了一个恐怖的结局，这是一个十分悲剧性的故事。

The sequence as a whole is strongly overlaid with a sense of tragedy and of loss. Sometimes the relationship itself is represented as a source of destruction; sometimes the relationship is transcendently rewarding or uplifting -- which only makes it more painful when the speaker must face the fact that the relationship and the other person will inevitably come to an end.

整个组诗都笼罩在一种悲剧的氛围中，都带着深深的失落之情。在一些诗句中，这种爱恋关系本身就是毁灭的源头；而在另一些诗句中，这种爱恋关系却又令人无比满足、令人鼓舞振奋，但是即便是在这类诗篇中，这种爱联关系却依旧让讲述者痛苦万分，因为他明白这种关系，以及这个美好的爱恋对象最终都不可避免地会走向毁灭，这是他不得不面对的残酷现实。

It's something I've wrestled with. I tend to find those poems all the more powerful, those tender expressions of love, which are gorgeous, even “Shall I compare thee to a summer's day,” I would say, is haunted by impermanence. And that's the thing about it. A summer's day is gorgeous and long, but it goes away. And part of the power of that poem is trying to figure out a way to imagine a desire that might last longer than the gorgeous, sensuous beauty of a summer's day.

这也是我一直在纠结的事情。我认为诗歌其实比我们所想象的更加震撼，诗中那些对爱的细腻表达，那些旖旎动人的表述都蕴涵着“世事无常且易逝”的意思，即便是“我怎么能够把你来比作夏天？”这一句也都透着这种感觉。它想表达的其实就是：夏日很美好，也很漫长，但它终有结束的一天。而诗歌的魅力在于，它在试图寻找到一种保留爱欲的方法，努力让爱欲比夏日的绚烂华美更为持久。

In our next episode, we’ll analyze the sonnet “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” alongside another haunting representation of desire as madness. But we’ll start with reading strategies that will enable you to track the techniques and ideas of every sonnet in the sequence.

下集节目，我们将欣赏“我怎么能够把你来比作夏天？”这首诗，同时分析另一个令人印象深刻的关于“欲望就是疯狂”表现。但在此之前，我们会先介绍一些诗歌的阅读技巧，帮助各位听众朋友们找到阅读莎士比亚十四行组诗中每一首诗篇的技巧，领会每一首诗歌的主旨大意。