Waste Land

　　The most notable surface fact about "The Waste Land" is of course its extreme disconnection. I do not know just how many parts the poem is supposed to have, but to me there are something like fifty parts which offer no bridges the one to the other

　　and which are quite distinct in time, place, action, persons, tone and nearly all the unities to which art is accustomed. This discreteness reaches also to the inside of the parts, where it is indicated by a frequent want of grammatical joints and marks of punctuation; as if it were the function of art to break down the usual singleness of the artistic image, and then to attack the integrity of the individual fragments. I presume that poetry has rarely gone further in this direction. It is a species of the same error which modern writers of fiction practice when they laboriously disconnect the stream of consciousness and present items which do not enter into wholes. Evidently they think with Hume that reality is facts and pluralism, not compounds and systems. But Mr. Eliot is more enterprising than they, ause almost in so many words he assails the philosophical or cosmical principles under which we form the usual images of reality, naming the whole phantasmagoria Waste Land almost as plainly as if he were naming cosmos Chaos. His intention is evidently to present a wilderness in which both he and the reader may be bewildered, in which one is never to see the wood for the trees.

　　Against this philosophy--or negation of philosophy--the critic must stand fast. It is good for some purpose, but not for art. The mind of the artist is an integrity and the imaginative vision is a single act which fuses its elements. It is to be suspected that the author who holds his elements apart is not using his imagination, but using a formula, like a scientist gests far too much strain and tension. For imagination things cohere; pluralism cannot exist when we relax our obsessions and allow such testimony as is in us to come out. Even the most refractory elements in experience, like the powerful opposing wills in a tragedy, arrive automatically" title="ad.自动地；无意识地">automatically at their "higher synthesis" if the imagination is allowed to treat them.

　　There is a reason besides philosophical bias which makes the disconnection in the poem. The fragments could not be joined on any principle and remain what they are. And that is ause they are at different stages of fertilization/ they are not the children of a single act of birth. Among their disparities one notes that scraps from many tongues are juxtaposed; and yet one knows well that we are in different languages on our lips; we do not quote ek tragedy and modern cockney with the same breath or with the same kinds of mind. We cannot pass, in "The Waste Land", without a convulsion of the mind from "OOOO that Shakespearian Rag," to "Shantih, Shantih, Shantih" And, likewise, the fragments are in many meters, from the comparatively formal meter which we know as the medium of romantic experiences in the English thesaurus to an extremely free verse which we know as the medium of a half-hearted and disillusioned art. But above all, some fragments are emotions recollected in tranquility and others are emotions kept raw and bleeding, like sores we continue to pick. In other words, the fragments vary through almost every stage, from pure realism to some point just short of complete fertilization by the romantic imagination, and this is a material which is incapable of synthesis.

　　A consequence of this inequality of material is a certain novelty of Mr. Eliot's which is not fundamentally different from parody. To parody is to borrow a phrase whose meaning lies on one plane of intelligence and to insert it into the context of a lower plane; an attempt to compound two incommensurable imaginative creations. Mr. Eliot inserts beautiful quotations into ugly contexts. For example:

　　When lovely lady stoops to folly, and

　　Paces about her room again, alone,

　　She smooths her hair with automatic hand,

　　And puts a record on the gramophone.

　　A considerable affront against esthetic sensibilities. Using these lovely borrowed lines for his own peculiar purposes, Mr. Eliot debases them every time; there is not, I believe, a single occasion where his context is as mature as the quotation which he inserts into it; he does not invent such phrases for hilf, nor, evidently, does his understanding quite appreciate them, for they require an organization of experience which is yet beyond him. The difficulty in which he finds hilf is typically an American one. Our native poets are after novelty; they believe, as does Mr. Eliot in one of his prose chapters, that each age must has its own "form". The form in which our traditional poetry is cast is that of another generation and therefore No-thoroughfare. What the new form is to be they have not yet determined. Each of the new poets must experiment with a few usually, it appears, conceiving forms rather naively, as something which will give quick effects without the pains and delays of complete fertilization. Mr. Eliot has here tried out such a form and thereby reverted to the frailties of his nativity. The English poets, so far as they may be generalized, are still content to work under the old forms and, it must be said in their favor, it is purely and empirical question whether these are unfit for further use; the poets need not denounce them on principle. But it may be put to the credit of Mr. Eliot that he is a man of better parts generally than most of the new poets, as in the fact that he certainly bears no animus against the old poetry except as it is taken for a model by the new poets; he is sufficiently sensitive to its beauties at least to have held on with his memory to some of its ripest texts and to have introduced them rather wistfully into the forbidding context of his own poems, where they are thoroughly ill at ease.

　　The criticism does not complete itself till it has compared "The Waste Land" with the earlier work of its author. The volume of "Poems" which appeared a year previously hardly presaged the disordered work that was to follow. The discrepancy is astonishing. Sweeney and Prufrock, those heroes who bid so gaily for immortality in their own right, seem to come out of a fairly mature and at any rate an equal art. They are elegant and precious creations rather than substantial, with a very reduced emotional background, like the art of a man of the world rather than of a man of frankly poetic susceptibilities; but the putative author is at least responsible. He has "arrived"; he has by self-discipline and the unconscious lessons of experience integrated his mind. The poem which comes a year later takes a number of years out of this author's history, restores him intellectually to his minority. I presume that "The Waste Land," with its burden of unregenerate fury, was disheartening to such critics as Mr. Aldinton, who had found in the "Poems" the voice of a completely articulate soul; I presume that for these that for these critics the "Poems" are automatically" title="ad.自动地；无意识地">automatically voided and recalled by the later testament; they were merely precocious. They pretended to an intellectual synthesis of which the author was only intellectually aware, but which proved quite too fragile to contain the ferment of experience. One prefers "The Waste Land" after all, for of the two kinds it bears the better witness to its own sincerity.

　　"The Waste Land" is one of the most insubordinate poems in the language, and perhaps it is the most unequal. But I do not mean in saying this to indicate that it is permanently a part of the language; I do not entertain that as a probability. The genius of our language is notoriously given to feats of the hospitality; but it seems to me it will be hard pressed to find accommodations at the same time for two such incompatibles as Mr. Wordsworth and the present Mo. Eliot; and any realist must admit that what happens to be the prior tenure of the mansion in this case is likely to be stubbornly defended.

　　荒原

　　约?克?兰塞姆

　　　　《荒原》最显著的表象事实当然是它的极端的不连贯性。我不知道究竟别人认为这首应该分成多少部分，在我看来，它大约有互不相关的五十节。每一节都有相当明确的时间、地点、情节、人物、格调，以及所有文学作品差不多应该具备的特点。这种不连贯一直深入到每一节的内部。上缺乏联系，该有标点符号的地方没有就表明了这一点，好像艺术的作用就是破坏艺术形象的独特性，然后又击碎每一个片断的完整性。我以为歌朝这个方向滑得并不太远。这是现代派小说家苦思冥想切断意识流，并且表现原本无法成为一个整体的情节时所犯的同类错误。他们显然同意休谟的看法，认为现实是事实加多元论，而非大千世界与不同体系的综合。艾略特先生比他们更具魅力。因为他费了同样的口舌来攻击我们赖以构成现实生活常见形象的哲学的或者宇宙论的原则，他简单明了的把变幻无常的称为荒原，几乎跟把宇宙称为"混沌世界"一样简单。他的意图显然是揭示一种令他和他的读者都迷惑不解的荒凉，一种永远只见树木不见森林的荒凉。

　　　　批评家应该毫不让步地反对这种哲学----或者说反对这种对哲学的否定。这种反对在别的事情上或许可以奏效，但是对于艺术毫无用处。艺术家的思想是一个整体，想象只是将这思想的种种要素融于一炉的一种单独的行为。将自己的思想要素分割开来的作者恐怕不是在用他的想象力，而是用某个公式进行创作的，就象一个急于证明某一"论点"的科学家。总而言之，对于艺术，这样的过程未免太紧张了一点。在想象中，事物凝聚到了一起。当我们放松了执著的念头，并且允许内心深处这种观点得以宣示，多元论就无法存在。就连生活中最难架奴的因素----诸如一场悲剧中十分强大的相对抗的意志力----如果允许想象力去表现它们的话，也会自动实现更高层次的"合成"。

　　　　除了哲学上的偏见，还有一个原因造成了歌创作中的不连贯。那些互不相关的片断，无论在什么原则基础之上都无法揉合到一起，同时保留其本来面貌。这是因为它们处于趋于成熟的各不相同的阶段，而非同一时刻生下的孩子。在这种极不一致之中，人们注意到许多不同语种的"只言片语"并列在一起。然而我们都非常清楚，当我们说不同语言的时候，宛若置身于智力发展的不同时期。我们不会在同一时刻，或者怀着同样的心情去引用希腊悲剧和现代伦敦的土话。走过那块《荒原》时，我们不可能从"噢噢噢噢这莎士比亚式的爵士音乐"，读到"平安，平安，平安"而没有心灵的震颤。而且，那些"片断"的格律不尽相同。从我们认为英语文学宝库中充满浪漫色彩的表现方法----比较规范的格律，到我们看作冷漠、颓废艺术的表现手法----非常自由的句，应有尽有。但是最为重要的是，有的"片断"是在平静中重新表现出来的激情，有的则是"血肉淋漓"的激情，就象被不断触碰的伤口。换言之，这些"片断"在每个阶段都各不相同，从纯粹的现实主义到浪漫的想象将要达到最终"成熟"的某个阶段。这是无法加以综合的题材。

　　　　这种题材不平衡的结果，是艾特略先生的作品具有某种新奇。而这新奇从根本上讲又不曾逃脱"揶揄式模仿"。所谓"揶揄式模仿"是把寓意于高层次的句塞到层次较低的上下文里，以其达到将两个相差悬殊的意向混淆起来的目的。艾特略先生将很美的句"塞到"粗陋的上下文里。比如：

　　美丽的女人堕落的时候，又

　　在她的房里来回走，独自

　　她机械地用手抚平了头发，又随手

　　在留声机上放上一张片子

　　　　这是对审美情趣公然的对抗。他为自己特定的目的借用了这些美妙的句。艾特略先生每一次"借用"都贬损了它们。我相信，他的上下文没有一次象他"塞"进去的句那样"成熟"。他并不是为他自己创作这样的句，而且他之所见显然并不欣赏这些句，因为他还不曾具备这种句所要求的生活体验的积累。他发现自己陷入的困境是一种典型的美国式的困境。我们本国的人追求新奇。他们相信----正如艾特略先生在他写的一篇中所述----每一个时代都必须有自己的形式。传统歌的形式是另外一代人的玩意儿，因此不能一直走下去。而新的形式究竟是个什么样子，他们自己也心中无数。看来，每一个新涌现出来的人都一定要试验几种形式，常常是相当天真地想象出一些形式，好像这是一件不需要经过全部孕育的痛苦与拖延便可很快奏效的工作。艾特略先生在这里"精炼"出这样一种形式，并且因而回到他从出生之地带来的弱点。英国人----如果可以把他们这样归类的话----仍然满足于用旧有的形式进行创作。说句公道话，不管这些形式在进一步运用时是否合适，这纯粹是一个主义的问题。人们对它们无需作原则性的指责。但是我们可以相信，总的看来，艾特略先生是一个比绝大多数新人都更具才气的人。事实上，他当然并非蓄意反对过去时代的歌。他只是不同意将它们奉为新人的"楷模"。他对旧体的美好之处颇为敏感，至少牢记着某些脍炙人口的篇章，并且将它们十分自如地运用于自己歌那令人"望而生畏"的上下文里。夹杂在这些文字之中，那些句显得实在不伦不类。

　　　　这场评论直到将《荒原》和作者早期的作品加以比较才算全面。在《荒原》发表前一年问世的《选》绝对不会预示继之而来的是这样一不"杂乱无章"的作品。二者之间的差异令人吃惊。斯维尼和普鲁弗洛克----两阁完全有权力快快活活地追求不朽的主人公----看起来出自相当成熟，至少名副其实的艺术品。他们是格调高雅、精雕细刻的文学典型，而非某一个实实在在的具体的人。歌背景极少感情色彩，好像是一个饱经沧桑的人创作的作品，而非出自一个率直的、充满人气质的人的手笔。这一切当然应该归功于那位"假定的"作者。他已经"到来"，他已经以自我约束的品质和无意识之中接受的教训完善了自己的思想。一年之后问世的这首花费了作者生命史中许多年的积累，又使他的心智回归到未成年的时代。我以为，《荒原》以其顽固不化的愤怒的重复句，使得象奥尔丁顿先生这样的批评家感到沮丧。他曾在《选》中听到一个能言善辩的人的声音，我以为，对于这些批评家，《选》被后来出现的作品自动地排除掉了。那些歌实在是十分的表里不一，金玉其外。作者真诚的心将以非常不同的方式显露出来。不过我宁愿把那些歌看作是"早熟"罢了。它们所表现的治理高度，这位作者只不过在理性上略有所知罢了。但是，事实证明，这个高度要想容纳骚动着的激情未免太脆弱了。不管怎么说，人们还是更欣赏《荒原》。因为两者之中，他更多的包容了真挚的感情。

　　　　《荒原》是用英语写成的最不同寻常的作之一。也许很难有别的什么作品能与之匹敌。不过我这样说并不是指它将永远成为英语的一部分，我甚至连是否有这种可能都不曾考虑过。众所周知，我们这种预言的天才最擅长于迎来送往的事业。但是，在我看来，要想同时为诸如华滋华斯先生和现在的艾特略先生这样两个风格迥异的人提供膳宿是非常困难的事情。任何一位现实主义者都必须承认，在这种情况之下，碰巧拥有这座殿堂优先使用权的歌很可能被顽强地保护起来。