巴克斯特:矛盾中的真实

Baxter:Truth in Contradiction

在其不长而丰富的一生中,新西兰诗人詹姆斯·凯尔·巴克斯特(1926—1972)创作了大量的诗歌、随笔和评论。他的诗歌虽然几经变化,但始终保持着对新西兰政治和社会事件的积极参与。他的早期诗歌,在展示其运用语言的非凡能力之际,极大地建基于那不明确的、主观的同生活的争吵,这造就了他诗歌中时显时隐的矛盾性。但真实是其最看重的品质,他晚年在耶路撒冷创作的一批重要诗作更为鲜明地体现了这一点,在那些晚期诗作中,他毕生追求的个人诚实引导他放弃了修辞。他貌似简单的词汇和短语显示了对语言的精通,它们也摹写了他在自己生命中渴望的简单与自由,他的最后诗篇以绝对的真实表达了一个激烈的、复杂的和忧心忡忡的男人的经验与信念。

In his short and rich life,James K.Baxter(1926—1972)wrote a large number of poems, essays and reviews.His poetry was always changing, but they kept active participation in the political and social events of New Zealand.His early poetry, while demonstrating an unusual facility with language, was largely founded in that obscure, subjective quarrel with life, which caused explicit or implicitcontradictions in his poetry. However, the quality he most valued was truth, which was more obviously embodied in the poems he wrote in Jerusalem. In those late poems, his lifelong search for personal integrity had led him to abandon rhetoric. While his deceptively simple words and phrases indicate a mastery of language, they also duplicate the simplicity and freedom he longed for in his own life. His last poems expressed with absolute authenticity the experiences and convictions of a passionate, complex and haunted man.