“便携纪念碑”:谢默斯·希尼的《贝奥武夫》与文化记忆

“A Portable Monument”:Seamus Heaney’s Beowulf and Cultural Memory

希尼认为,诗歌是文化记忆的重要载体,翻译是更新文化记忆,突破狭隘民族、政治和文化意识的方式。通过追溯家乡方言中的古英语词汇,希尼破除二元对立的语言观念,将《贝奥武夫》视为不同英语族群共有的文化乡愁,翻译《贝奥武夫》实则为拓展和贯通文化记忆。就翻译路径而言,希尼结合归化与异化策略,在《贝奥武夫》中加入厄尔斯特方言,也是意在建构文化记忆共同体。通过阐发《贝奥武夫》的主题,希尼强调了其中的多面向记忆,使这部古英语史诗成为沟通过去和当下,连接个人、民族和世界的文化记忆。

For Seamus Heaney, poetry communicates cultural memory, and therefore poetry translation renews cultural memory and expands people's national, political and cultural consciousness. By tracing the history of Anglo-Saxon words assimilated into the Ulster dialect, Heaney discovers in Beowulf a cultural nostalgia for English-speaking peoples including the Irish. In terms of his translation method, Heaney both domesticates and foreignizes Beowulf by integrating Ulster dialectal words into standard modern English so as to construct a community of cultural memory, and by expounding the themes of Beowulf, Heaney highlights the multidirectional memory in the Old English epic and renders it a work of universal cultural memory in the context of globalization.