Serious engagement

Books & Arts
American poets
Serious engagement
Nov 20th 2008
From The Economist print edition

THE easy flow of letters between Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop, two of America’s greatest 20th-century poets, began in 1947, and continued for 30 years. It was a correspondence, from first to last, of an unusual intensity.

Although they were both New Englanders, their writerly temperaments were quite different. Bishop wrote and published her poetry slowly. She produced just three collections during her lifetime. She was sedulous, pernickety, quietly determined; she would work on poems for years. Her letters—models of gentle, hesitant statement—have something of those same qualities of tentativeness, restraint and minute attention. Her observations of the natural world are acute and fresh, but also objective, reaching beyond herself. The sound of the ego is turned well down.

Lowell was much more prolific and more raucously in and of the world. His private life was tumultuous, his manic episodes legion. His observations of the world reflect his inner moods: charged, noisy, dramatic. The long-awaited 2003 edition of his collected poems runs to almost 1,000 pages. Bishop’s collected poems is one-quarter of that length.

They were never lovers, and although the much-married Lowell once considered proposing to Bishop, he never did. And yet the two admired each other more than they admired any other living poets and corresponded with an unusual seriousness of engagement. When Lowell wrote to Bishop he was, for once, not involved in an act of performance. When Bishop wrote to Lowell she knew that she was reading his poems more deeply, and with more responsible attention, than any other friend would ever dare to do. They knew no better—and no more fearless—critics than each other.

Throughout his life, Lowell was a professional man of letters, who, as teacher and reviewer, stood at the centre of the literary world. Bishop, by contrast, often felt as if she were slightly lost, floating through a miasma of self-doubt. She moved around a lot. She spent 15 of her most productive years in Brazil and came to teaching late in her life. Socially tentative, she did not make waves in the world of poetry. Her reputation has grown, quietly, since her death in 1979. It was Lowell who was the roaring, self-lacerating, tragic king of the poetry jungle.

These letters are full of delightfully acute observations about literary personalities and tell us much about the art of poetry in America—how poets think, behave and suffer. But the literary talk is constantly being interrupted by the smaller things of life and these wonderfully human documents are an appealing mix of the bookish and the everyday. Their turns of phrase are so savoursome they almost precipitate into poetry itself.

From beginning to end, the two poets needed each other. “Please never stop writing me letters,” Bishop once wrote to Lowell. “They always manage to make me feel like my higher self.”

一生知己

2008年11月20日

《经济学人》印刷版

从1947年开始，罗伯特·洛威尔（Robert Lowell）与伊丽莎白·毕肖普（Elizabeth Bishop）之间自由自在的书信往来持续了30年。二人都跻身于20世纪美国最优秀的诗人之列，他们的通信自始至终频繁得不同寻常。

虽然都来自新英格兰，两人的文字性情却迥然不同。毕肖普写诗和发表的速度很慢，一生只出过三本诗集。她不倦求索、精雕细刻、恬淡执著，其诗作往往是数年的结晶。她的书信——风格温柔婉约，欲语还休——带有羞涩、克制和细致入微的气质。她对自然界的观察敏锐而新鲜，又兼有局外人的客观态度；把自我的声音压低到微乎其微。

洛威尔则高产得多。他狂飙般在世间行走，对世界也不轻易妥协；私人生活迭宕起伏，精神分裂症频频发作；对世界的观感反映了他的性情：满怀激情、狂野躁动、戏剧般变数连连。人们期盼已久的2003版洛威尔全集将近1,000页，毕肖普的全集只有其四分之一的厚度。

他们不是情侣，虽然有过多次婚史的洛威尔曾想向毕肖普求婚，但从未开过口。然而，两人对彼此的倾慕超出了对任何一位在世诗人的欣赏，那份友谊刻骨铭心、与众不同。只有在给毕肖普写信时，洛威尔才不加进表演成分；毕肖普给洛威尔写信时，心中明白自己对他的诗有着更深的感受、持有更负责任的态度，这是毕肖普的其他朋友望尘莫及的。他们是彼此最出色、最大胆的评论家。

他一生以文字为业，教书、写评论，置身文坛中心。毕肖普却相反，常常有点儿迷惘彷徨，游走在自我怀疑的迷雾中。她总是四处漂泊，在巴西度过了15年创作黄金时期，晚年回国教书。她不善社交，不曾在诗坛呼风唤雨；1979年去世之后，她的诗名静悄悄地逐渐确立。而洛威尔恰恰是诗歌丛林中怒吼着、把自己刺痛得血淋淋的悲剧之王。

他们的书信读来轻松愉快，处处是对文坛人物的犀利品评，谈了许多美国的诗歌艺术——诗人之思、之行、之痛。但是二人的文学笔谈常常被生活小细节打断，使这些闪动着人性光彩的文献成了书卷气与生活点滴的混合体，很有感染力；灵光一现冒出来的辞句，精彩得几乎本身就可以成诗。

两位诗人从始至终彼此需要。“请永远不要停止给我写信，” 毕肖普曾对洛威尔写道：“你的文字总能帮我感受到内心那个轻灵的自我。”