牧羊人

Blake

In 1783 a book called Poetical Sketches by W. B. was privately printed. The friend responsible adverted readers that its contents “were the production of untutored youth, commenced in his twelfth, and occasionally resumed by the auther till his twentieth year; since which time, his talents having been wholly directed to the attainment of excellence in his profession, he has been deprived of the leisure requisite to such a revisal of these sheets, as might have rendered them less unfit to meet the public eye.” With such an introduction, readers may have been expecting something like Stephen Duck, the Thresher Poet. If so, they must have been surprised to encounter a book of considerable sophistication, its poems reflecting an unusual range of the literary interests of the later eighteen century: the Elizabethan lyric, Spenser’s Hymnes, the Shakespearean history play, the ballads of Percy’s Reliques, the Ossianic prose poem, and Gothic charnel house poetry. Yet these poems are by no means merely imitative. The opening addresses to the four seasons, perhaps the finest achievements in the volume, handle their central, Age-of-sensibility personifications in such a way as to make them borde on myth:

       O thou, with dewy locks, who lookest down

       Thro’ the clear windows of the morning; turn

       Thine angel eyes upon our western isle,

       Which in full choir hails thy approach,        O Spring!

An “untutored youth” who could so delicately combine the abstract and the sensuous was clearly headed for a remarkable poetic career. The particular nature of that career was to be deeply affected by his “attainment of excellence in his profession.”

布莱克

1783年一本名为《诗歌小品》的书悄然出版，书作者正是威廉姆·布莱克。负责出版的朋友向读者宣传说，该书的内容“出自一位没有受过教育的少年之手，作者从十二岁开始着手，断断续续写至弱冠之年，从那时起，他在这一领域获得的杰出成就使他的天赋显露无余，他所有的闲暇全被用来修订诗稿，以便它们更完美地呈现于公众眼帘。”基于这样一个介绍，读者可能期待某些地方会像打谷者诗人史蒂芬·达克一样，倘若果真如此，他们会惊奇地遇到一本相当精密复杂的书。与18世纪后期的文学：伊丽莎白时代的抒情诗、斯宾塞的赞美诗、莎士比亚的历史剧、有裴西遗风的民谣、奥西恩的散文诗、哥特的墓地诗相比，它的诗歌表现出独特的文学志趣。然而，书中的这些诗歌并非单纯地模仿。面对四季开放的演说，或可称为本书最精妙的成就，它触及到该书的核心：用感性时代的拟人化手法来触摸神秘：

       
    噢，青丝上夜露未曦，你

    透过清晨明亮的窗口俯视；移转

    你天使般的眼神，落在我们西边的小岛

    小岛遍满天使的欢呼，欢呼你的来临，噢，春天！

这个未受过教育的少年，能够精妙地融合抽象和感觉，他被清楚地导向卓越的诗歌职业。这一职业特有的本质深深受到他在专业领域的杰出成就的影响。