TheSolitaryReaper赏析
The Solitary Reaper
By:William Wordsworth (1770-1850) Behold her, single in the field, Yon solitary Highland Lass!
Reaping and singing by herlf;
Stop here, or gently pass!
Alone she cuts and binds the grain,
And sings a melancholy strain;
O listen! for the Vale profound
Is overflowing with the sound.
No Nightingale did ever chaunt
More welcome notes to weary bands
Of travellers in some shady haunt,
Among Arabian sands:
A voice so shrilling ne'er was heard
In spring-time from the Cuckoo-bird,
Breaking the silence of the as
Among the farthest Hebrides.
Will no one tell me what she sings?--
Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow
For old, unhappy, far-off things,
And battles long ago:
Or is it some more humble lay,
Familiar matter of to-day?
Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain,
That has been, and may be again?
Whate'er the theme, the Maiden sang
As if her song could have no ending;
I saw her singing at her work,
And o'er the sickle bending;--
I listen'd, motionless and still;
And, as I mounted up the hill,
The music in my heart I bore,
Long after it was heard no more.
Notes
消息的意思1] Coleridge, Wordsworth, and his sister had visited the Scottish Highlands in 1803. Dorothy's Recollections for September 13 that year notes: "It was harvest time, and the fields were quietly -- might I be allowed to say pensively? -- enlivened by small companies of reapers. It is not uncommon in the more lonely parts of the Highlands to e a single person so employed." In a note to the 1807 edition, Wordsworth traced the poem's source: "This Poem was suggested by a beautiful ntence in a MS Tour in Scotland written by a Friend, the last line being taken from it verbatim." Thomas Wilkinson's manuscript, Tours to the British Mountains (London, 1824), states: "Pasd a Female who was reaping alone: she sung in Er as she bended over her sickle; the sweetest human voice I ever heard: her strains were tenderly melancholy, and felt delicious, long after they were heard no more" (12).
2] Highland: mountainous region in northern Scotland associated with the Celtic clans.
7] Vale profound: broad, deep valley between two high ranges; possibly the world itlf, as a place of suffering (OED "vale" 2b). Wordsworth takes this from conventional poetic diction; cf. Gilbert West's "Education. A Poem" (1751), lines 617-21: On to the Centre of the Grove they stray'd;
Which, in a spacious Circle opening round,
长白山旅游攻略Within it's shelt'ring Arms curely laid,怎么换马桶盖
Disclod to sudden View a Vale profound,
With Nature's artless Smiles and tranquil Beauties crown'd.
9] Nightingale: a small song-bird, well-known for the male's musical notes in the mating and nesting ason. In Classical myth, the female nightingale is that to which Philomela, tragically raped and mutilated by her sister Procne's husband, metamorphos on carrying out her revenge.
14] Cuckoo-bird: song-bird migrating to Britain in the spring and associated with renewal. Cf. John Logan's "Ode to the Cuckoo" (1782) and "Spring" by Thomas Brerewood (-1748):
When the wood-pigeons sit on the branches and coo;
And the cuckoo proclaims with his voice,
That Nature marks this for the ason to woo,
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And for all that can love to rejoice ...
16] Hebrides: islands northwest of Scotland in the Atlantic.
18] plaintive numbers: conventional poetic phra, as in George Dyer's "Ode XIX. To
a Young Painter and Poetess" (1801):
So may the foliage of thy spring
Be follow'd by the richest bloom;
Nor thou in plaintive numbers sing
To Genius, withering in the tomb.学习任务
21] humble lay: conventional poetic diction, as in Thomas Warton's "ODE V. To a Gentleman upon his Travels thro' Italy" (1747), lines 1-3:
While I with fond officious care,
For you my chorded shell prepare,
And not unmindful frame an humble lay ...
悬殊Commentary by Ian Lancashire
(2002/9/9)
Wordsworth's preface to the 1800 Lyrical Ballads argues that poetry "contains a natural delineation of human passions, human characters, and human incidents." It ought not be judged by the prence of artificial, poetic diction. Rather, "the
language of conversation in the middle and lower class of society" can be its medium. "The Solitary Reaper" exemplifies the beliefs.
Written ven years after Lyrical Ballads, it describes a nameless listener's delight in a young woman's melancholy song in an unknown language as, working by herlf in a Scottish valley, she swings a sickle, reaping grain. Four eight-line stanzas, each closing with two couplets and all written in octosyllabic lines, have a musical lilt. Short lines deliver the rhymes at a quick pace. Sentences normally need two or more such short lines to complete, so that few lines are strongly end-stopped; most freely enjamb. Diction is conversational. Often lines consist mainly of monosyllabic words (4-5,
13, 17, 21, 24, 27, 30-32). Wordsworth prefers common verbs, "behold," "reap," "sing," "stop," "pass," "cut," "bind," "chant," "hear," and "break." Words imported into English from Latin or Greek, like "solitary" and "melancholy" or forms with "-ive" and "-ion" endings (e.g., "plaintive" and "motionless"), are infrequent. Wordsworth writes plain, almost undemanding ver. For example, he repeats the simplest idea in varying words. The girl is "single," "solitary," and "by herlf" (1-3). She is "reaping" (3), that is, "cuts and binds the grain" (5), "o'er the sickle bending"
(28). The onlooker is both "motionless and still" (29). The lass "sings" (3, 17, 25, 27) or does "chant" (9) a "strain" (6), a "lay"
(21), or "a song" (26). The speaker relies on everyday idioms, worn to vagueness by overu in ordinary talk. Her "theme" (25) is of "things" (19) or "matter" (22) "That has been, and may be again" (24). This
excludes only what never existed at all. Whenever the speaker might become elevated in speech, his language ems prosaic, even chatty: "Will no one tell me ..." (17), "Whate're the theme" (25), and "Long after it was heard no more" (32). Wordsworth notes, pointedly, that this last line comes verbatim from a pro travel book.
"The Solitary Reaper" does not implement, programmatically, his dogma of plain diction. For example, "Vale profound" (7), "plaintive numbers" (18), and "humble lay" (21) are mi-formulaic catch phras in the very eighteenth-century ver who artificiality he rejects. The exceptions may be deliberate, characterizing the speaker (not Wordsworth) as someone for whom poetry means much. He resorts to formulas as if to hint that the girl's song is out-of-place in the valley, however parated from the traditions of fine ver by her class, occupation, and location. Wordsworth may deliberately impoverish his speaker's language so as to contrast it with the reaper's song.
Unlike other poets, this lass sings alone, isolated from both her predecessors (her "poetic tradition") and any audience. Dryden, Pope, Gray, and so many others defined themlves by quoting from classical literature and each other. Wordsworth's "The Solitary Reaper" shatters this continuity. Her song, like a found poem, springs directly from nature, without literary context. Her "music" runs like water ("overflowing" the valley) and surpass the beauty of two celebrated English song-birds, the nightingale and the cuckoo. Here again the speaker raids conventional poetic language, as if incapable of finding truly suitable language. Ironically, both his analogies break down. Reaping takes place at harvest time, in the autumn, not in the spring or summer, asons traditionally associated wi
th the cuckoo and the nightingale. The reaper, a single "Maiden" (25), hardly fits the myth of married Philomela, rape victim and tragic revenger, even though the reaper sings in a melancholic, plaintive way about "Some natural sorrow" (23). The strange language in which the lass chants also removes her from any poetic tradition known to the speaker. He comprehends only her "sound," "voice," and "music," though it rings in his heart -- his memory -- "long after it was heard no more" (32).
This simple confession redeems the speaker from his own impoverished language. He bears witness to something that eighteenth-century poetry emed at times embarrasd of. What transfixes him in song is not its content, but its emotionally expressive music. The listener does not understand why she sings in melancholy, only what the emotion itlf is. This feeling "could have no ending" (26), as if she, like Keats' Ruth amid the alien corn, communicates wordlessly something universal about the human condition. Despite its sadness, the song helps the speaker to mount up the hill (30). In current psychology, the capacity to feel emotion and link it to goals makes life, indeed survival itlf, possible. The speaker's "heart" (31), by bearing her music, can go on. For that reason, "The Solitary Reaper" relates an ecstatic moment in which a pasr-by transcends the limitations of mortality. Both the song and he go on together.
Bibliography
Finch, Geoffrey J. "Wordsworth's Solitary Song: The Substance of 'true art' in 'The Solitary Reaper'." Ariel 6.3 (1975): 91-100. PR/1/A75
书法创作Howard, William. "'Obstinate questionings': The Reciprocity of Speaker and Auditor in Wordsworth's Poetry." Philological Quarterly 67.2 (Spring 1988): 219-39.
James, G. Ingli, and Pittock, Malcolm. "Wordsworth's 'The Solitary Reaper'."
Essays in Criticism 15 (1965: 65-76. PN/2/E77
Jones, Nancy A. "The Rape of the Rural Mu: Wordsworth's 'The Solitary Reaper' as a Version of Pastourelle." In Higgins, Lynn A., and Silver, Brenda
R., eds. Rape and Reprentation (New York: Columbia University Press,
1991): 263-77. PN 56 .R24R37 1991
McSweeney, Kerry. "Performing 'The Solitary Reaper' and 'Tears, Idle Tears.'" Criticism: A Quarterly for Literature and the Arts 38:2 (Spring 1996): 281-302.
Preston, John. "'The Moral Properties and Scope of Things': The Structure of The Solitary Reaper." Essays in Criticism 19 (1969): 60-66.
