若干年前朱徽教授來台灣講學，有一站是到我們學校。因為我在他演講後問了一個問題，他回國後還寄了一本著作來。真是一位熱心的學者。
那一天的講題是中西詩學，內容非常精采。他特別推崇 T. S. Eliot，認為艾略特詩、劇、批評文論都是絕唱。所以我的問題大抵也是環繞 Eliot.
其實我們唸大學的時候對現代文學接觸真的很少，漏過艾略特肯定是一個大遺憾。現在台灣炒得亂七八糟的音樂劇《貓》就是他的詩集譜的曲、編的舞，但是 Cats 的普遍大眾性儘管貼近讀者，《荒原》的艱澀又讓讀者退避三舍。
我每次有機會就會教 T. S. Eliot, 不過還沒能力教他的戲劇，《荒原》講過兩次，學生都興趣缺缺，後來也就只教 The Hollow Man 和 The Love Song of J.
Alfred Prufrock。自己覺得算是成功的。(也許只是我某部分的自戀心起，喜歡聽自己朗誦這首詩時的低沉聲音......)
”The Hollow Men”
T. S. Eliot
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I
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rat’s feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar.
Shape without form, shade without color,
Paralyzed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us - if at all - not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.
II
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death’s dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind’s singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.
Let me be no nearer
In death’s dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer.
Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom.
III
This is the dead land
This is the cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man’s hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.
Is it like this
In death’s other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.
IV
The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdom.
In the last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river
Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death’s twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.
V
Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o’clock in the morning.
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For thine is the Kingdom
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long
Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but with a whimper.
- T. S. Ellot (1925) -
http://junkerhq.net/MGS2/hollow.htmlhttp://tw.youtube.com/watch?v=z8dcM9s7U_s&feature=related
