內容目錄 CONTENT
夜郵/ Night Mail 1936
一部經典紀錄片。講述了一駕從倫敦開往蘇格蘭的火車如何在夜間收發信件的故事。
奧登特別為這部電影所作的一首詩,節奏模放行駛中的火車,相當有氛圍,導演也將片名取作—夜郵。
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPLHOOtlcnM?wmode=transparent]
百度百科的說明頁面:http://baike.baidu.com/item/%E5%A4%9C%E9%82%AE
Night Mail/ W. H. Auden
This is the Night Mail crossing the border,
Bringing the cheque and the postal order,
Letters for the rich, letters for the poor,
The shop at the corner and the girl next door.
Pulling up Beattock, a steady climb —
The gradient’s against her, but she’s on time.
Past cotton-grass and moorland boulder
Shovelling white steam over her shoulder,
Snorting noisily as she passes
Silent miles of wind-bent grasses.
Birds turn their heads as she approaches,
Stare from the bushes at her black-faced coaches.
Sheep-dogs cannot turn her course;
They slumber on with paws across.
In the farm she passes no one wakes,
But a jug in the bedroom gently shakes.
Dawn freshens, the climb is done.
Down towards Glasgow she descends
Towards the steam tugs yelping down the glade of cranes,
Towards the fields of apparatus, the furnaces
Set on the dark plain like gigantic chessmen.
All Scotland waits for her:
In the dark glens, beside the pale-green lochs
Men long for news.
Letters of thanks, letters from banks,
Letters of joy from girl and boy,
Receipted bills and invitations
To inspect new stock or visit relations,
And applications for situations
And timid lovers’ declarations
And gossip, gossip from all the nations,
News circumstantial, news financial,
Letters with holiday snaps to enlarge in,
Letters with faces scrawled in the margin,
Letters from uncles, cousins, and aunts,
Letters to Scotland from the South of France,
Letters of condolence to Highlands and Lowlands
Notes from overseas to Hebrides —
Written on paper of every hue,
The pink, the violet, the white and the blue,
The chatty, the catty, the boring, adoring,
The cold and official and the heart outpouring,
Clever, stupid, short and long,
The typed and printed and the spelt all wrong.
Thousands are still asleep
Dreaming of terrifying monsters,
Or of friendly tea beside the band at Cranston’s or Crawford’s:
Asleep in working Glasgow, asleep in well-set Edinburgh,
Asleep in granite Aberdeen,
They continue their dreams,
And shall wake soon and long for letters,
And none will hear the postman’s knock
Without a quickening of the heart,
For who can hear and feel himself forgotten?
你是我今生的新娘/ Four Weddings and a Funeral 1994
這一部愛情喜劇的經典,除了大量男女主角幽默諷刺的對白之外,在唯一的一場喪禮上,由一個同志唸出另一位同志所寫的感人的情詩,誰還能說愛情有性別之分?這部片子也讓奧登的這首詩重新翻紅,當年處處可見『他曾經是我的東,我的西,我的南,我的北』這句肉麻的示愛台詞。
Funeral Blues/ W. H. Auden
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of public doves,
Let the traffic ******men wear black cotton gloves.
He was my North, my South, my East and West.
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever; I was wrong.
The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
葬禮藍調/
停止所有的時鐘,切斷電話
給狗一塊濃汁的骨頭,讓他別叫
黯啞的鋼琴,隨著低沈的鼓
抬出靈柩,讓哀悼者前來。
讓直昇機在頭頂悲旋
在天空狂草著信息他已逝去,
把黑纱繫在信鴿的白頸,
讓交通員戴上黑色的手套。
他曾是我的東,我的西,我的南,我的北,
我的工作天,我的休息日,
我的正午,我的夜半,我的話語,我的歌吟,
我以為愛可以不朽:我錯了。
愛在黎明破曉時 / Before Sunrise 1995
男主角模仿Dylan Thomas的口吻朗誦Auden的作品As I Walked Out One Evening/ 夜的遐想。(以下紅字為男主角唸出的詩句):
As I Walked Out One Evening/ W.H.Auden
As I walked out one evening,
Walking down Bristol Street,
The crowds upon the pavement
Were fields of harvest wheat.
And down by the brimming river
I heard a lover sing
Under an arch of the railway:
‘Love has no ending.
‘I’ll love you, dear, I’ll love you
Till China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
And the salmon sing in the street,
‘I’ll love you till the ocean
Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
Like geese about the sky.
‘The years shall run like rabbits, 歲月像兔子一樣奔跑
For in my arms I hold
The Flower of the Ages,
And the first love of the world.’
But all the clocks in the city 但城市裡所有的時鐘
Began to whirr and chime: 開始發出陣陣轟鳴,
‘O let not Time deceive you, 噢,不要讓時間欺騙了你,
You cannot conquer Time. 你無法戰勝時間。
‘In the burrows of the Nightmare
Where Justice naked is,
Time watches from the shadow
And coughs when you would kiss.
‘In headaches and in worry 在頭痛及焦慮之中
Vaguely life leaks away, 生命不知不覺逝去,
And Time will have his fancy 時間的幻想終會實現
To-morrow or to-day. 在今朝或明日。
‘Into many a green valley
Drifts the appalling snow;
Time breaks the threaded dances
And the diver’s brilliant bow.
‘O plunge your hands in water,
Plunge them in up to the wrist;
Stare, stare in the basin
And wonder what you’ve missed.
‘The glacier knocks in the cupboard,
The desert sighs in the bed,
And the crack in the tea-cup opens
A lane to the land of the dead.
‘Where the beggars raffle the banknotes
And the Giant is enchanting to Jack,
And the Lily-white Boy is a Roarer,
And Jill goes down on her back.
‘O look, look in the mirror?
O look in your distress:
Life remains a blessing
Although you cannot bless.
‘O stand, stand at the window
As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbour
With your crooked heart.’
It was late, late in the evening,
The lovers they were gone;
The clocks had ceased their chiming,
And the deep river ran on.
Lay Your Sleeping Head, My Love
Lay your sleeping head, my love,
Human on my faithless arm,
Time and fevers burn away
Individual beauty from
Thoughtful children, and the grave
Proves the child ephemeral:
But in my arms till break of day
Let the living creature lie,
Mortal, guilty, but to me
The entirely beautiful.
Soul and body have no bounds:
To lovers as they lie upon
Her tolerant enchanted slope
In their ordinary swoon,
Grave the vision Venus sends
Of supernatural sympathy,
Universal love and hope;
While an abstract insight wakes
Among the glaciers and the rocks
The hermit’s sensual ectasy.
Certainty, fidelity
On the stroke of midnight pass
Like vibrations of a bell,
And fashionable madmen raise
Their pedantic boring cry:
Every farthing of the cost,
All the dreadful cards fortell,
Shall be paid, but not from this night
Not a whisper, not a thought,
Not a kiss nor look be lost.
Beauty, midnight, vision dies:
Let the winds of dawn that blow
Softly round your dreaming head
Such a day of sweetness show
Eye and knocking heart may bless.
Find the mortal world enough;
Noons of dryness see you fed
By the involuntary powers,
Nights of insults let you pass
Watched by every human love.