Adrienne Rich: Paula Becker to Clara Westhoff

　　　Paula Becker to Clara Westhoff
　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Adrienne Rich (1929-)

　Paula Becker 1876-1907
　Clara Westhoff 1878-1954
became friends at Worpswede, an artists' colony near Bremen, Germany, summer 1899. In January 1900, spent a half-year together in Paris, where Paula painted and Clara studied sculpture with Rodin. In August they returned to Worpswede, and spent the next winter together in Berlin. In 1901, Clara married the poet Rainer Maira Rilke; soon after, Paula married the painter Otto Modersohn. She died in a hemorrhage after childbirth, murmuring, What a pity!

The autumn feels slowed down,
summer still hold on here, even the light
seems to last longer than it should
or maybe I'm using it to the thin edge.
The moon rolls in the air. I didn't want this child.
You're the only one I've told.
I want a child maybe, someday, but not now.
Otto has a calm, complacent way
of following me with his eyes, as if to say
Soon you’ll have your hands full!
And yes, I will; this child will be mine
not his, the failures, if I fail
will be all mine. We're not good, Clara,
at learning to prevent these things,
and once we have a child, it is ours.
But lately, I feel beyond Otto or anyone.
I know now the kind of work I have to do.
It takes such energy! I have the feeling I'm
moving somewhere, patiently, impatiently,
in my loneliness. I’m looking everywhere in nature
for new forms, old forms in new places,
the planes of an antique mouth, let's say, among the leaves.
I know and do not know
what I am searching for.
Remember those months in the studio together,
you up to your strong forearms in wet clay,
I trying to make something of the strange impressions
assailing me – the Japanese
flowers and birds on silk, the drunks
sheltering in the Louvre, that river-light,
those faces….Did we know exactly
why we were there? Paris unnerved you,
you found it too much, yet you went on
with your work….and later we met there again,
both married then, and I thought you and Rilke
both seemed unnerved. I felt a kind of joylessness
between you. Of course he and I
have had our difficulties. Maybe I was jealous
of him, to begin with, taking you from me,
maybe I married Otto to fill up
my loneliness for you.
Rainer, of course, knows more than Otto knows,
he believes in women. Which of us could say that?
Which of us, Clara, hasn’t had to take that leap
out beyond our being women
to save our work? or is it to save ourselves?
Marriage is lonelier than solitude.
Do you know: I was dreaming I had died
giving birth to the child.
I couldn't paint or speak or even move.
My child – I think – survived me. But what was funny
in the dream was, Rainer had written my requiem—
a long, beautiful poem, and calling me his friend.
I was your friend
But in the dream you didn't say a word.
In the dream his poem was like a letter
to someone who has no right
to be there but must be treated gently, like a guest
who comes on the wrong day. Clara, why don't I dream of you?
That photo of the two of us – I have it still,
you and I looking hard into each other
and my painting behind us. How we used to work
side by side! And how I've worked since then
trying to create according to our plan
that we’d bring, against all odds, our full power
to every subject. Hold back nothing
because we were women. Clara, our strength still lies
in the things we used to talk about:
how life and death take one another's hands,
the struggle for truth, our old pledge against guilt.
And now I feel dawn and the coming day.
I love waking in my studio, seeing my pictures
come alive in the light. Sometimes I feel
it is myself that kicks inside me,
myself I must give suck to, love….
I wish we could have done this for each other
all our lives, but we can't….
They say a pregnant woman
dreams of her own death. But life and death
take one another's hands. Clara, I feel so full
of work, the life I see ahead, and love
for you, who of all people
however badly I say this
will hear all I say and cannot say.
　　　　　　　　　　1975-1976
　　　　　from The Dream of a Common Language

Personally, I take this poem to be one of Rich's best poems, although the Norton book of her poetry and criticism does not anthologize it. About the picture, Rilke wrote in his diary: "How much I am learning from the gaze of these two young women, especially the painter's [Paula] with her brown, seeing eyes! And how much closer I feel once more to all that is unconscious and marvelous...!" It was Paula that Rilke first fell into, and it turned out that Paula would soon be engaged, so Rilke turned to her best friend Clara!


　　　褒拉·贝克致克拉拉·韦斯特霍夫
　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　[美]艾德琳•瑞奇
　　褒拉٠ 贝克（1876-1907）
　　克拉拉٠ 韦斯特霍夫 （1878-1954）
于1899年夏天在德国不莱梅附近的艺术家聚居地沃普绥德（Worpswede）相识为友。1900年1月又在巴黎共同度过半年时光，其时褒拉习画，克拉拉师从罗丹学习雕塑。8月份她们回到沃普绥德，在柏林共度一个冬天。1901年，克拉拉嫁给了诗人莱纳٠玛丽٠里尔克；不久之后，褒拉与画家奥托٠莫德松（Otto Modersohn）结了婚。她在产后大出血中死去，死前喃喃地说，真可惜！

感觉秋天慢了下来，
夏季还迟迟不愿离开，甚至昼光
似乎也不该留连得这么久
或许我有点太得寸进尺。
月亮在空中转动。我并不想要这个孩子。
你是惟一听到我说这话的人。
也许有一天，我会要一个孩子的，但不是现在。
奥托用一种平静而自得的眼神
尾随着我，似乎在说
很快你就会手脚不停！
是，我定会那样；这孩子将是我的，
不是他的，所有闪失（如果我有闪失）
也都是我的。我们不够精明，克拉拉，
学不会如何预防这些事情，
一旦我们有了孩子，都是我们自己的事。
但是最近，无论对奥托还是谁我都心不在焉。
我现在才知道我必须做哪种工作。
那要消耗多少精力啊！我有一种感觉，我正
向某处进发，耐心也罢，急躁也罢，
总是孑然一人。我在自然中的每一处寻找
新的形式，在新地方寻找旧的形式，
一张远古嘴型的各个立面，例如，都可在树叶中寻找。
我有数，但我又说不清楚
到底在寻求什么。
记得在工作室共处的那几个月，
你，软湿的粘土一直沾到你强健的前臂，
我，力图从那些不停涌现的诡异印象中
创作出什么——绢丝上的
日本花鸟，栖身于
卢浮宫的醉汉，河上的灯火，
纷繁的脸孔……你当时是否确知
我们为何会在那儿？巴黎，令你身心交瘁，
你难以承受，但还是坚持
不懈地工作……而后，我们在那儿再次相遇，
都已结婚嫁人，而我感到你和里尔克
似乎都身心交瘁。我感觉有一种无欢
隔开了你们。当然，他与我
也有我们的难处。也许我对他有点
嫉妒，起码可以说，他从我身边将你夺走，
也许我嫁给奥托是为了弥补
失去你的孤独。
当然，莱纳比奥托更加洞达一些，
他崇信女人。我们俩有谁能这么说？
克拉拉，我们谁能不必跳开一步，
超越身为女人的界线，
就能保全自己的劳作？或许，这是为了保全自身？
婚姻，比独处更加孤独。
你知道吗：我总是梦见我已经死了，
死于生这个孩子。
我不能画画、不能说话，甚至不能走动。
我想，我这孩子没有随我死去。但怪就怪在：
在梦中，莱纳已经为我写好了安魂曲——
一首优美的长诗，还称我是他的朋友。
我是你的朋友啊，
但在梦中你却一声不吭。
梦中，他的诗篇就像一封信，
一封寄给某个没有权利在场
但又必须以礼相待的人，犹如一个客人
在不该来的日子登门。克拉拉，为什么我梦见的不是你？
我们俩的那张相片——我还保存着，
你我目不转睛凝神对视，
身后是我的画作。我们当时工作起来
总是形影相随！而自那之后我多么拼命，
力图依照我们的计划创造出
我们排除万难也要尽心竭力的
每一个主题。绝不因为是女人
而有任何保留。克拉拉，我们的强势仍在于
我们常常讨论的那些事情：
生死之手如何紧紧相扣，
求真的争斗，我们反抗愧疚的古老誓约。
此刻我感到黎明与一日的来临。
我喜欢醒在画室里，看着我的画
在晨光中活起来。有时我觉得
在腹内踢我的就是我自己，
是我必须哺乳的自我，爱……
我祈望我们能这样彼此哺育
一生一世，但我们不能……
人们说孕妇
会梦到自己的死。但是生死之手
紧紧相扣。克拉拉，我觉得自己因工作
而充实，看到了以后的生活，也感到
对你的爱，不管我对所有别人
所说的一切多么不智，你
将听到我所说出与不能说出的一切。
　　　　　　　　　　　　　　1975-1976
　　　　　　　　　选自艾德琳•瑞奇诗集《共同语言之梦》
译按：
我个人认为这是一首非常成功的诗篇，然而奇怪的是竟然没有诗歌选本收选这首诗，甚至连她的Norton诗歌选都没有收。有关诗歌中所提到的那张照片见上，而里尔克在自己的日记中这样写道：“我从这两位年轻女性的凝视中，体悟到多少深意啊！尤其是从那位画家棕色的极具穿透力的眼神中。我又一次感到自己与那无法知觉的神奇是那么接近……！”。事实上，里尔克首先爱上的是葆拉，但是葆拉很快就要订婚了，因此里尔克转向她最好的朋友克拉拉。