希尼詩文集Seamus Heaney

我認為值得花時間抄錄（有字讀不清楚），與朋友共享。我認為也許可以改善翻譯。

I would say to Chinese readers that I'm exhilarated to think that we can connect across the great distances – linguistic, geographic, cultural. That tells us something about poetry. The ongoing life of poetry is crucial for our continuing life as creatures of civilization and sensibility and as creatures of intimacy. Poetry is one of the basrious (???), one of the guardians of intimacy. But poetry is also wide-open, it's a public art form. And that is the paradox. A poem has to be available for inspection and at the same time, you know, it must be intimate to the poet. Think of writing a love letter and then think of writing a love poem, and of leaving them both on a table. If someone comes along later and reads the letters, it's an invasion, an intrusion, and the readers would probably be slightly embarrassed. But if love poem, however bad the love poem is, it is not an invasion. The poem is actually an address to you as a reader. It calls you towards it. It is there to be open with you. It is a made thing , but a thing made of inwardness. So the fact that there are Chinese readers means that our belief in the openness of the poem is justified, and secondly, that our sense of its necessity as a help to our continuing to be sensitively human is justified too.

Seamus Heaney


中文版序言

我想向中國讀者說，每當念及我們可以跨越語言、地理、文化的巨大距離，我就感到興奮。這表明了詩的某種意義。不斷發展中的詩歌是我們繼續做文明和敏感的人，做有親暱行為的人的決定因素。詩歌是堡壘，是人類隱私的監護者之一；但它又是敞開的，是一種公眾的藝術形式。這使之自相矛盾。一首詩必須準備受審查，但同時，你們知道， 它又必須和詩人的內心親密無間。想想寫一封情書，再想想寫一首情詩，把它們都留在桌上。如果有人過來讀那封情書，那是一種侵犯，窺伺個人隱私，他會有點兒害羞，或應該有點兒害羞。可如果有人過來讀一首情詩，不論那首詩寫得多壞，都說不上是侵犯隱私。那詩實際上是為作為讀者的你所寫的，它召喚你向它靠攏。它放在那兒讓你打開。它是一種造物，然而是內心的造物。所以擁有中國讀者這一事實表明，我們相信詩歌的公開性是有道理的，而我們感到作為幫助我們繼續做敏感的人的詩的必要性，也是有道理的。

西默斯 希尼
200年7月

愛爾蘭詩人Seamus Heaney《希尼詩文集》（北京：作家出版社，2001），