威廉斯“可变音尺”说的渊源与意义——评傅浩《威廉斯诗选·译者序》

The Origin and the Meaning of William Carlos Williams's Variable Foot Theory

傅浩的《威廉斯诗选·译者序》对"可变音尺"说的发生史进行了探索,发现奥尔森的"投射诗"理论与"可变音尺"说存在联系。"可变音尺"说实际上有更早的渊源,可以进一步探讨。通过对威廉斯诗学的回溯以及对新出文献进行的年代定位,可以发现"可变音尺"说肇始于1917年,威廉斯在《美国、惠特曼和诗歌艺术》一文中主张自由诗是一个错误命名,之后威廉斯多次要求诗体的秩序和节奏单元的灵活性,强调诗行的重要性,并最终在20世纪50年代确定了"可变音尺"的术语。威廉斯"可变音尺"说的真正意义在于,它是本体论自由诗理论的新发展,摆脱了英诗音律,寻找以美国口语为基础的新韵律,树立了分行在自由诗形式中的中心地位。

Mr. Fu Hao＇s Translator＇s Preface to Selected Poems of Williams Carlos Williams explored the history of Variable Foot Theory, and discovered the connection between the theory and the Projective Verse Theory. The Variable Foot Theory, however, has much earlier origin and could be open to further investigation. By tracing back the poetics of Williams, and dating the newly-found article, it will be easy to see that the Variable Foot Theory first appeared in 1917, when Williams declared that free verse is a misnomer in an article entitled America, Whitman, and the Art of Poetry. Afterwards, Williams advocated repeatedly the order of verse and the flexibility of rhythmic unit, valued the verse lineation, and defined the term as Variable Foot eventually. The true meaning of Variable Foot Theory is that it represents the new development of onto- logical free verse theory in searching a new prosody based on American speech and got rid of English meter, and building the central place of verse lineation.