阅读勃朗宁夫人 Elizabeth Barret Browning在诗海的作品!!! | |||
勃朗宁夫人她本来是一个残废的病人，生命，只剩下一长串没有欢乐的日子；青春，在生与死的边缘上黯然消逝。如今，在迟暮的岁月里赶上了早年的爱情。然而，她只能流着泪，用无情的沉默来回答一声声爱情的呼唤。但是，爱情战胜了死亡，从死亡的阴影里救出了一个已经放弃了生命的人。就象神话中的英雄在悬崖边救出了被供奉给海怪的公主，替公主打开了裹在她周身的铁链；她那不知疲倦的情人也帮着她摆脱了她的惊慌、她的疑虑、她的哀怨，扶着她一步步来到了阳光底下。她动荡不安的感情逐渐变得稳定了；她对于人生开始有了信心，产生了眷恋。未来的幸福，不再是一团强烈的幻光，叫她不敢逼视，不敢伸出手去碰一下了。她敢于拿爱情来报答爱情了。
这份爱情使她奇迹班地重新站了起来。在病室中被禁锢了24年之后，她终于可以凭自己的双脚重新走到阳光下了。
白朗宁夫妇一起度过了１５年幸福的生活，在这１５年中，从不知道有一天的分离。1861年６月２９日，白朗宁夫人永别了她的Robert。临终之前，她并没多大病疼，也没有预感，只是觉得倦；那是一个晚上，她正和白朗宁商量消夏的计划。她和他谈心说笑，用最温存的话表示她的爱情；后来她感到倦，就偎依在白朗宁的胸前睡去了。她这样地睡了几分钟，头突然垂了下来；他以为她是一时昏晕，但是她去了，再不回来了。她在他的怀抱中瞑了目。她的容貌，象少女一般，微笑，快乐。
这部感人的诗集就是他们爱情生活的真实写照。它是英国文学史上的珍品之一。其美丽动人，甚至超过莎士比亚的十四行诗集。有多人译过这本诗集，如闻一多，查良铮（金庸）等。白朗宁夫人最初开始写这十四行组诗大概是在她答应了白朗宁的求婚以后那一段时期。直到他们婚后住到了比萨，白朗宁才读到这本诗集。他不敢把这文学上的无价之宝留给他一个人
享受。1850年白朗宁夫人出版了一卷诗集，把这组十四行诗也收进在内，共四十四首，还取了一个总名，叫做《葡萄牙人十四行诗集》，用以掩饰作者身份。
她主要的作品有《天使及其它诗歌》(The Serap hair and Other Poems, 1838), 《诗集》(Poems, 1844), 《葡萄牙十四行诗集》(Sonnets from Portugue, 1850), 《大会前的诗歌》(Poems Before Congress, 1860), 《奥罗拉•利》(Auror a Leigh, 1857)《逃跑的奴隶》(The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim’s Poiny, 1846)等。
她诗歌创作的主题可以分为两个主要方面。一是抒发生活之情;二是争取妇女解放,反对奴隶制,暴露社会的弊端,表现了进步的理想。她的诗具有炽热充沛的感情和扣人心弦之力量,语句精炼,才气横溢,大都是带有较浓的感伤性质。
主要作品有《葡萄牙人十四行诗集》和长诗《奥罗拉·莉》。
Elizabeth spent her youth at Hope End in Ledbury near Great Malvern, England. The Barrett family had amassed a considerable fortune from the Jamaican sugar plantations inherited by her father, Edward Moulton Barrett, who was born there. The Barretts had been associated with Jamaica for generations. As a boy he emigrated to England with his brother and sister (she is the subject of the painting "Pinkie" in the Huntington Museum). He and his wife, Mary Graham-Clarke, were parents of twelve children (Elizabeth was the eldest). Elizabeth was educated at home and attended lessons with her brother's tutor and was thus well-educated for a girl of that time. When in her early teens, Barrett contracted a lung complaint, possibly tuberculosis, although the exact nature of her illness has been the subject of speculation. She was subsequently regarded as an invalid by her family. The first poem we have a record of is from the age of six or eight (the manuscript is in the Berg Collection of the New York Public Library; the date is in question because the 2 in the date 1812 is written over something else that is scratched out). A long Homeric poem titled "The Battle of Marathon" was published when she was fourteen, her father underwriting its cost. In 1826 she published her first collection of poems, "An Essay on Mind and Other Poems." Its publication drew the attention of a blind scholar of the Greek language, Hugh Stuart Boyd, and another Greek scholar, Uvedale Price, with both of whom she maintained a scholarly correspondence. At Boyd's suggestion, she translated Aeschylus's "Prometheus Bound" (published in 1833; retranslated in 1850).
The abolition of slavery, a cause which she supported (see her work The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point (1849)), considerably reduced Mr. Barrett's means. He moved with his family first to Sidmouth and afterwards to London. After the move to London, she continued to write, contributing to various periodicals "The Romaunt of Margaret", "The Romaunt of the Page", "The Poet's Vow", and other pieces, and corresponded with literary figures of the time, including Mary Russell Mitford. In 1838 appeared The Seraphim and Other Poems.
The death of her brother, Edward, who drowned in a sailing accident at Torquay in 1840, had a serious effect on her already fragile health; and for a few years she rarely left her bedroom. Eventually, however, she regained strength, and meanwhile her fame was growing. The publication in 1843 of "The Cry of the Children" gave it a great impulse, and about the same time she contributed some critical papers in prose to Richard Henry Horne's A New Spirit of the Age. In 1844 she published two volumes of Poems, which included "A Drama of Exile", "A Vision of Poets", and "Lady Geraldine's Courtship".
In 1845 she met her future husband, Robert Browning, who had written to her after the publication of her Poems. Their courtship and marriage, owing to her delicate health and the extraordinary objections made by Mr. Barrett to the marriage of any of his children, were carried out secretly. After a private marriage at St Marylebone Parish Church, she accompanied her husband to the Italian Peninsula, which became her home almost continuously until her death.
The union proved a happy one. In her new circumstances Elizabeth's strength greatly increased. At the age of 43 she gave birth to a son, Robert Wiedemann Barrett Browning, called "Pen". The Brownings settled in Florence, and there she wrote Casa Guidi Windows (1851) under the inspiration of the Tuscan struggle for liberty, with which she and her husband were in sympathy. In Florence she became close friend of British-born poets Isabella Blagden and Theodosia Garrow Trollope.
The verse-novel Aurora Leigh, her most ambitious, and perhaps the most popular of her longer poems, appeared in 1856. It is the story of a woman writer making her way in life, balancing work and love.
Among Barrett Browning's best known lyrics is Sonnets from the Portuguese (1850) - the 'Portuguese' being her husband's petname for her. The title also refers to the series of sonnets of the 16th-century Portuguese poet Luis de Camões; in all these poems she used rhyme schemes typical of the Portuguese sonnets. In 1860 she issued a small volume of political poems titled Poems before Congress. Her health underwent a change for the worse; she gradually lost strength, and died on June 29, 1861. She is buried in the English Cemetery, Florence.
Mrs. Browning was a woman of singular nobility and charm. Mary Russell Mitford described her as a young woman: "A slight, delicate figure, with a shower of dark curls falling on each side of a most expressive face; large, tender eyes, richly fringed by dark eyelashes, and a smile like a sunbeam." Anne Thackeray Ritchie described her as: "Very small and brown" with big, exotic eyes and an overgenerous mouth.
[edit] Literary significance
Barrett Browning is generally considered one of the great English poets. Her works address a wide range of issues and ideas, including slavery in America, Greek and Italian nationalism, women's rights, and the role of art in society. She was learned and thoughtful, influencing many of her contemporaries, including Robert Browning. Her life's experiences, combined with her moral and intellectual strength, made her the champion of the suffering and oppressed. Her gift was both narrative and lyrical, ranging from sonnets to a verse-novel intentionally 2000 lines longer than Milton's Paradise Lost. Her weak points include a lack of compression; some would add that her work tends to be overly sentimental, and others have criticized her experimentation with meter and rhyme.
Her most famous work is Sonnets from the Portuguese, a collection of love sonnets. By far the best-known poem from this collection, with one of the most famous opening lines in the English language, is number 43:
Elizabeth Barrett BrowningHow do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints!---I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life!---and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
While her Petrarchan Sonnets from the Portuguese are exquisite, she was also a prophetic, indeed epic, poet, writing Casa Guidi Windows in support of Italy's Risorgimento, a reflection of Byron's advocacy of Greece's liberation from Turkey. Her verse-novel, Aurora Leigh, in nine books is set in Florence, England and Paris, using in it her knowledge from childhood of the Bible in Hebrew, Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Apuleius, Dante, Langland, Madame de Stael, and George Sand.
The government of Italy and the Commune of Florence celebrated her poetry with commemorative plaques on Casa Guidi, where the Brownings had lived during their 15 year marriage. Lord Leighton designed her tomb in the English Cemetery, its sculpting in Carrara marble being carried out, not faithfully, by Francesco Giovannozzo. In 2006 the Comune of Florence laid a laurel wreath on this tomb to mark 200 years since her birth.
[edit] In popular culture
On the April 17, 2008 episode of As the World Turns, Elizabeth Barrett Browning is mentioned by character Henry Coleman preceding a wedding.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning's father is mentioned in Sleeping Murder by Agatha Christie as "Mr. Barrett of Wimpole Street".
Elizabeth Barrett Browning was mentioned in an episode of Life with Derek when Casey and Kendra were working on a poetry project together.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning was also the name of Diane's cat who passed away in an episode of Cheers.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning was mentioned in an episode of Three's Company in which Janet is seduced by a jock who attended high school with her.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning was metioned in an episode of Gilmore Girls.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning was also mentioned several times in 10 Things I Hate About You.
In Jasper Fforde's novel The Eyre Affair, Elizabeth Barrett-Browning is one of the authors whose name is popular for legal name changes; Thursday befriends a Liz Barrett-Browning at the hotel in Swindon.
In the movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Roger Rabbit writes a letter to his wife that says, "How do I love thee, let me count the ways: 1,2,3,4..."
In the 1970 Arthur Hiller movie, "Love Story[1]," which starred Ryan O'Neal as Oliver Barrett and Ali McGraw as Jennifer Cavalleri, the character of Jennifer recites Elizabeth Barrett Browning's 43rd Portuguese Sonnet as her wedding vows when she marries Oliver.
In 1981, The Cambridge Footlights Revue did a scene with Stephen Fry as Robert Browning and Emma Thompson as Elizabeth Barrett.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning was mentioned in the Peanuts animated series by Linus Van Pelt.
[edit] Further reading
Avery, Simon, and Rebecca Stott. "Elizabeth Barrett Browning." (Longmans, 2005) (Critical study of the poet's life and works.)
Barrett, R.A. "The Barretts of Jamaica: The Family of Elizabeth Barrett Browning." (Wedgestone, 2000). (Account of the lives of the descendants of Hercie Barrett, from 1655; with extensive genealogy.)
Donaldson, Sandra. "Critical Essays on Elizabeth Barrett Browning." (G.K. Hall, 1999)
_____. "Elizabeth Barrett Browning: An Annotated Bibliography of the Commentary and Criticism from 1826 to 1990." (G.K. Hall, 1993).
Karlin, Daniel. The courtship of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett. (Oxford, 1985) (Critical biography focused on the courtship correspondence.)
Kelley, Philip et al. (Eds.) The Brownings' correspondence. 15 vols. to date. (Wedgestone, 1984-) (Complete letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning, so far to 1849.)
Garrett, Martin (Ed.) Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning: Interviews and Recollections (Basingstoke and London, 2000). (Accounts of both poets by themselves and others.)
Woolf, Virginia. Flush: A Biography (Biographical novella written from the perspective of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's dog, principally of curiosity value.)
Forster, Margaret. Elizabeth Barrett Browning. (1988)