Scepticism was her watchword. She eschewed political causes; her fight was against the bad poet who is prone to usingtoo many words. Her favourite phrase was I dont know. She told the Nobel audience: Its small, but it flies on mighty wings. It expands our lives to include the spaces within us as well as those outer expanses in which our tiny Earth hangs suspended. Without it, she said, Isaac Newton would have gobbled apples rather than pondering the force that makes them drop. Her compatriot Marie Sklodowska-Curie would have wound up teaching chemistry at some private high school for young ladies from good families. 辛波丝卡常把怀疑论挂在嘴边。她有意避开政治运动,斗争对象常是那些话多的诗人。她最喜欢的短语是不知道。 诺贝尔奖授奖演说时,她如此说道:这两个词虽然小,却插上了有力的翅膀,扩大了我们内心中的生活范围,还有我们这小小地球悬于其中的天地。如果伊萨克牛顿没有对自己说我不知道,便不会去想哪种力量使其落下,最多也只不过躬下身去拾起来,津津有味地吃下去;而同胞居里夫人则愿在私立高中教导贵少妇化学而终此一生。 An accretion of answers 答案徒增 It was the same for poets. Each poem was a kind of answer, but as soon as the last full stop hit the page the result seemed inadequate. So the poets keep on trying, and sooner or later the consecutive results of their self-dissatisfaction are clipped together with a giant paper clip by literary historians and called their oeuvre |