译者注
① “我的”，原文mine，也有“矿藏”的意思，此处双关。
② 罗马皇帝尤里安(Julian the Apostate, 331-363)，转引黄灿然为卡瓦菲斯《尤里安看到不敬》加的注：罗马皇帝尤里安绰号“叛教者”，因为他尽管本来是一个基督教徒，却徒劳地试图根据新柏拉图学派把异教徒当作一个严厉的宗教恢复过来，其组织原则比早期嫉妒教弥漫的禁欲尤甚。诗中引言乃来自尤里安写于公元363年月的一封任命狄奥多罗为亚细亚大祭师的信。从1896年至1933年，卡瓦菲斯写了七首有关罗马皇帝尤里安的诗：《尤里安疑神疑鬼》、《尤里安看到不敬》、《尤里安在尼科美底亚》、《由牧师和俗人组成的大行列》、《你不理解》和《在安条克郊外》。
③ “感谢G”，原文Thanks G，应该是ThanksGod（感谢上帝）的简写。明迪用了C，扎加耶夫斯基在这里幽默了一下，用G对应C，两个字母长得也很像。
附原文： AnInterview with Polish PoetAdam Zagajewski
Interviewed by Ming Di
Ming Di: There is a new Chinese term, Sea Turtle,which refers to people who have returned to the homeland after living overseasfor a number of years, as “turtle” echoes “return” in Chinese. In this context,you are a “Sea Turtle” because you’ve returned to Poland after twenty years ofdrifting abroad. How do you feel like living in Krakow? How different is it nowcompared to the old one in the 70s? And how different is the presentPoland besides being a democratic country? And howdifferent is the current Polish poetry scene?
Adam Zagajewski: So many smaller questions in the biggerone… Yes, the present Poland is a democratic country which means ithas fewer secrets. Countries under totalitarian domination don’t reveal theirmysteries. Yet there’s nothing sensational in the new openness.It’s perhaps too early to say how much this “new” Poland differs from the olderone. One thing is certain: life in Poland now is much better than before. Thegift of freedom is not a myth, it’s reality. People are learning, and it takesages to learn how to profit from this uneasy gift. Living in Krakow? I like it.It’s a medium-size city, not (yet) totally strangled by highways and cars. Andthe old city center is absolutely charming, even if you have to share it withmany tourists these days. It was my college town so there are layers ofremembrances, the city is cushioned by memory, so to speak.
MD: In the “Two Cities”, you divide people into“the settled, the emigrants and the homeless” and you define yourself as “thehomeless”. Do you still feel “homeless” after having returned to your homecountry? As we all know that one can feel homeless at home and vise versa. Whatwas the primary force that drew you back to Krakow? Chinese has an old sayingthat “falling leaves return to their roots”, but is “return” the only destinyfor “the homeless”?
AZ: I still am a little homeless. Once homeless,always homeless. I wanted to return to Krakow to taste the new life in my oldcountry, to be nearer my old friends; my father was still alive when we leftParis for good.
For the homelessthere are several options, all of them demanding a bit of philosophicalresolve. You can stay abroad, philosophically, being an observer rather than aparticipant, or you can return and look at your native realm—philosophically aswell. Because when you return after a long break you’ll never beunconditionally there; each day you’ll wake up and have a moment of hesitation:where am I. But there’s nothing terrible in it.
MD: Besides the two cities where you were born and whereyou moved to with your parents at the age of four months, Lvov and Gilwitz,you’ve lived in Berlin, Paris, Houston, Chicago, and Krakow. Of all the places,where do you feel most at home in your heart and why? How does the experienceof living in different countries impact your writing? How do you associateeach geographical location with theliterary tradition behind it?
AZ: Krakow is the place which I cherish most; it’s alivable city for me. Then comes Lvov as a city which is more mystical than realbut which means a lot for me, for my poetry. It’s a kind of a reservoir ofmeaning, of many possible meanings. The other citiesoffer me, when I revisit them, a kind of conviviality. I find it pleasant torecognize right away places which, years before, were so obviously “mine”. WhenI’m back in Paris, after half an hour it feels as if I had never left it:everything seems so familiar, unchanged, the paths of my afternoon walks arethere, waiting for me…
MD: Polish literature has become very prominent sincethe beginning of the 20th century and you’ve had four Nobel laureates inliterature. It’s a great heritage but at the same time it brings greatchallenge to the ones who are writing in their shadows. While maintaininghighest respect for them on personalas well as literary levels, how have you managed to keep a personal voicedistinctively different from them?
AZ: Well, when you have your days (or rather hours) ofwriting, of thinking—and they only come from time to time--you don’t have onyour mind the “four Nobel laureates in literature”, you don’t target any“international recognition”, you’re alone in your room, with all your doubtsand dreams, with the imagination.
And, for the otherquestion, I can’t know myself, I can’t know whether indeed I’ve kept my ownvoice. I’ve written somewhere and I believe in it: we don’t hear our own voice,it’s not, after all, destined for us, We speak to other people.
MD: Czeslaw Milosz among otherswas a great influence to you as a young poet and it was a blessing that youwere close to him in Krakow in his final years. In celebrating the 100 years ofhis birth, what would you like to share with Chinese readers? With over twentyyears of acquaintance, I know it will be difficulty for you to say a few wordsbut I would still make the request as you know how much he has influencedcontemporary Chinese poets in exactly the same way how his poetry attracted youbecause of “everything that was different from… ‘people'srepublic’ language.”
AZ: The more I know about Milosz— andthis year has brought his first detailed biography plus many new essays, insights,etc.— the more impenetrable he seems to become. His greatness must lie in theincredible richness of his work. This richness is such that this year of hishundredth anniversary only complicated his image. After this year we’ll need atleast five years to put some order into the newobservations, new discoveries. His voice was so sovereign, so strong, and, in away, plural; he spoke with several sub-voices, so to say. The shortest lessonto draw from his work is that you can’t write poetry without thinking andresponding to important questions the time you live in is asking you. There’san ethical clock built into ecstatic poetry.
MD: For the same and other reasons your poetry hasinfluenced Chinese poets too. You know we share certain vocabulary from our childhoodand youth such as Party, class or classless, and the big word thatstarts with C. What interests me most is how you evolved from apolitical poet to a mature poet in terms of aesthetics. How did you manage tomake that transition? Going to Paris put you in a distance from Poland… Did the“distance” give you a better perspective?
AZ: No, I don’t think it was the geographical distancewhich gave me spiritual distance to C., to use your lovely cipher (it’s like Cavafyspeaking in his poems, with disgust, about Julian the Apostate). No, it ratherwas my conviction that C. was already completely dead in the realm of ideas,much before it died in the pragmatic world of politics, and that it would havebeen a terrible waste to spend all my life combating a dead monster. It alsowas my feeling that “political poetry” wasn’t able to embrace the totality ofmy experience. And, also, the feeling that this kind of writing produced sooneror later (rather sooner than later) conventional forms, more so than poetryaiming at more substantial realms.
MD: Home is home only when you’ve lost it or areaway from it. Now that you are back to Poland, does it make you morecritical of it again? I saw a huge portrait of Lenin in Warsaw in August 2010,and for a moment I thought I was back in China. The red portrait reminded me ofthe Mao badges that many taxi drivers in China nowadays hang on their rearviewmirrors as they miss the Mao regime when China was a classless society andeveryone was proletarian living poorly but “happily”. There has been anostalgia feeling among the working class in China when the economic boomingcreated separation of the rich and the poor. How is Poland doing?
AZ: A huge portrait of Lenin in Warsaw in 2010? It musthave been irony, a jest or an “installation” in the sense of what modernartists do these days. No one (except for a handful of jerks) would today takeseriously Lenin in Poland. Poland runs rather a danger of beingtoo much to the right. I mean, in the free interplay of politicalforces in Poland it’s the left which is weak, which tries, unsuccessfully sofar, to redefine itself. But, as far as I know, there’s not much nostalgia forC., thanks G.
MD: That huge portrait of Lenin reminded me ofyour poem “Old Marx”. You were protesting communism in your youth and you weredisappointed with the Bush administration too, yet stillyou have not acquired any faith in Marxism as some other people have. The worldiscomplicated with no clear dividing line of East and West anymore,what is there that we can hold on to as poets? Of course the inner self is whatwe observe and write about, but what about social responsibility? What advisewould you give to poets of younger generation?
AZ: That’s a very interesting question. It’strue, there’s no general philosophy, no set of ideas that we could easilydiscern and cling to—as poets, as thinkers, as citizens. When we look back atour history, probably both the Western and the Chinese history, a situationlike this is unusual. Usually there were doctrines and religions than furnishedintellectual frames for the individuals. So, what can we do? We probably haveto do more homework than our predecessors had to. We need to read philosophers,theologians, but even before we can form a comprehensive map for ourselves weshould have, I think, a provisional “frame”, we need to heed morality, to bemore cautious than some of our predecessors in preaching any strongsystem. We can live without systems.
ActuallyI don’t have any ready answer to this question. I myself believe in anindividual quest, done with a huge respect for spiritual values. I’m aChristian, an imperfect one…
And an advice foryounger poets? Try to know as much as possible but don’t sell your soul to anydoctrine.
MD: You speak Polish, Russian, German, Frenchand English, you have done teaching in Houston and Chicago for so many yearsand you read your poems in English sometimes but you write poetry only inPolish. Besides the fact that poetic subtlety can only be achieved in thenative language, is there any other reason you write poetry in Polish? Somepoets maintain a national or ethnical identity or even patriotism throughwriting in the mother tongue, or denounce the nationality by adopting a new language.But I know it’s not the case with you— yours is more of a literary choice. Yet,how do you separate the use of mother tongue and nationalism? This is animportant question for me as I don’t feel belonging to any country even thoughI write in Chinese while living in America. I don’t believe in nationalism orpatriotism to any country. And I always wonder how poets can maintain alanguage without yielding to the idea of “love” of a country.Are these two notions also sort of “eternal enemies” in a sense?
AZ: I don’t think there’s a link between writing in yourmother tongue and nationalism. The former is a formal thing, a pot which can befilled with very different content. Look at Milosz who never deserted hisnative language and at the same time was a ferocious enemy of nationalism.
I write in Polish because I know it so well; Ican write my poems or essays without consulting a dictionary andhearing echoes from different poems in Polish, dear to me. Plus Ibelieve we’re formed by the history of our countries; successes and/orhumiliations from previous centuries exist subliminally in our minds. We canliberate themselves from them by writing but not by leaping to anotherlanguage. I hate nationalism as much as Milosz did but can find in the historyof my country references which help me to understand the world. You don’t needto “love” your country, you’re naturally interested in it, you can (should) becritical of it and it gives you strength. In your case it’s seems to me soobvious: the Chinese civilization is so old, so rich, how could one renounce onsuch a powerful resource?
MD: “En Route” from the “EternalEnemies” is such a lovely set of short poems. Did you write themwhile en route? Well, I like the idea of being en route. It is the very fact oflosing home that gives us a goal in life— every poem is a step on the roadtowards home as you wrote that “go to Lvov, after all/it exists, quiet and pureas/a peach. It is everywhere.” Even Krakow, your physical homeat the present, is a temporary place, isn’t it? At the same time itis Lvov that makes you appreciate every city you live and have lived in, isn’tit?
AZ: You’re such a good reader. Yes, Lvov is the idealcity for me, lost for ever and yet very potent in a different dimension oflife. I’m writing this in Chicago, in Hyde Park, which is the universityneighborhood, soon I’ll be going back to Krakow, after a few days I’m supposedto fly to Berlin for yet another Milosz thing, so yes, I’m still en route, forthe time being.
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