2010年12月31日 星期五

Rudyard Kipling《如果》(If—,1895年)

約瑟夫·魯德亞德·吉卜林Joseph Rudyard Kipling1865年12月30日1936年1月18日,又譯吉普林盧亞德·吉卜齡),生於印度孟買英國作家詩人。主要著作有兒童故事《叢林奇譚》(The Jungle Book1894年)、印度偵探小說基姆》(Kim1901年)、 詩集《營房謠》(Gunga Din1892年)、短詩《如果》(If—1895年以及許多膾炙人口的短篇小說。


這首名詩 Wikipedia 有條目


Edition of If by Doubleday Page and Company, Garden City, New York, 1910.
"If—" is a poem written in 1895[1] by British Nobel laureate Rudyard Kipling. It was first published in the "Brother Square Toes" chapter of Rewards and Fairies, Kipling's 1910 collection of short stories and poems. Like William Ernest Henley's "Invictus", it is a memorable evocation of Victorian stoicism and the "stiff upper lip" that popular culture has made into a traditional British virtue. Its status is confirmed both by the number of parodies it has inspired, and by the widespread popularity it still enjoys amongst Britons. It is often voted Britain's favourite poem.[2][3] The poem's line, "If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster and treat those two imposters just the same" is written on the wall of the Centre Court players' entrance at the British tennis tournament, Wimbledon, and the entire poem was read in a promotional video for the Wimbledon 2008 gentleman's final by Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal.[4][5][6]
According to Kipling in his autobiography Something of Myself, posthumously published in 1937, the poem was inspired by Dr. Leander Starr Jameson, who in 1895 led a raid by British forces against the Boers in South Africa, subsequently called the Jameson Raid.[7] This defeat increased the tensions that ultimately led to the Second Boer War. The British press, however, portrayed Jameson as a hero in the middle of the disaster, and the actual defeat as a British victory.
The well-known Indian historian and writer Khushwant Singh claims that Kipling's If is "the essence of the message of The Gita in English.".[8] The text Singh refers to is the Bhagavad Gita, the ancient Indian scripture.
Contents [hide]

Poem

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;
If you can dream – and not make dreams your master;
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings – nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run –
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And – which is more – you'll be a Man my son!

Reaction

Kipling himself noted in Something of Myself that the poem had been "printed as cards to hang up in offices and bedrooms; illuminated text-wise and anthologized to weariness".[9]
T. S. Eliot in his essays on Kipling's work describes Kipling's verse as "great verse" that sometimes unintentionally changes into poetry. George Orwell—an ambivalent admirer of Kipling's work who hated the poet's politics—compared people who only knew "If—" "and some of his more sententious poems", to Colonel Blimp.[10]

Translations

"If—" has been translated into many languages. One worthy of note is a translation into Burmese language, the mother tongue of the country where the city of another of Kipling's masterpieces, "Mandalay", is located. It was translated by Nobel Peace Prize winner, Aung San Suu Kyi. Another Nobel laureate to translate "If—" was Yugoslav writer Ivo Andrić.
Some translations are:

References

External links


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吉卜林《如果》- 一首哲理的詩

2007年11月10日 ... 延伸閱讀:關於吉卜林(Rudyard Kipling,1865-1936)英國小說家、詩人。出生於印度孟買,父親曾是孟買藝術學校教師,後任拉合爾藝術學校校長和博物館 ...

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