Sylvia Plath: Contusion

Sylvia Plath Collected Poems
No. 222

　　Contusion
Color floods to the spot, dull purple.
The rest of the body is all washed out,
The color of pearl.

In a pit of rock
The sea sucks obsessively,
One hollow the whole sea's pivot.

The size of a fly,
The doom mark
Crawls down the wall.

The heart shuts,
The sea slides back,
The mirrors are sheeted.
　　　　　4 February 1963


第222首
　　瘀伤

颜色冲积于一点，闷紫色。
身体的剩余部分全都洗尽，
珍珠之色。

岩石的凹陷处，
大海上瘾似地吮吸，
一眼空穴成为整座海洋的轴心。

大小如蝇，
那只命定的记号
从墙上向下爬来。

心扉关闭，
大海回涌，
镜子已被蒙罩。
　　　　1963年2月4日
Notes:
　　Among all her poems, this hurts me deepest. Like many poeple, almost all those in China, I read first of some so-called representative poems most often anthologized, before I read her collected poems. For many poeple in China, they have never been exposed to more than a dozen of her poems. I still could remember clearly how I felt when I first read of this poem (in English). I was sharing a flat in a dorm apartment with a few engineering students who had their own labs to work, while I, as an art & humanities independent researcher, usually read at my preferred time and space. I took for my own space the big living room, usually during the night time when they were sleeping. I was groping along the path from The Mystic (before this poem in the Collected Poems), in which the poet seemed to suggest that the final form of life is but a kind of vanishment or oblivion: "Does the sea/ Remember the walker upon it?" Yet, I could see and feel a ray (stray) of sun warmth in "The sun blooms, it is a geranium./ The heart has not stopped." Then comes "Kindness," in which the only real thing is the cry of a child. Then, of course, is "Words," which I take not only as the poet's manifestation of poetics but also her philosophy of life.
　　When I read this poem for several times, empathized myself into the color scheme and imagery, I rose and walked unto the balcony which overlooked a night expressway on which lines of red rear lights and screams pierced the night silence. Tears welled up. It was around 4 in the morning on a Saturday. I was standing on 21 floor, and the building was erected on a hill.
　　Contusion, of course, is the automatic physical response toward the pressure and strike from the outside, and hence it should be understood as life in its final and extreme form. When the poet compares the paleness of body to the color of a pearl, the gestation process of a pearl has to be taken into the understanding of the poem. Central to the pearl formation is pain in the process of naturalisation of the thing from outside the body. .....

譯按：
　　普拉斯詩中最令我心痛的便是這首《瘀傷》。我當然像很多人一樣，也是先讀了詩選本中她常常入選的所謂代表作之後多年才讀她的詩全編。我還清楚記得第一次讀這首詩的感受。當時我住在學校的公寓里，同屋都是有實驗室的工科學生，所以我可以在深夜佔據整個空蕩蕩的起居室。在深夜，我從《神秘論者》那隱晦曲折的小俓上摸索走來，雖然詩人似乎暗示生命的最終形式不過是一種陻滅：Does the sea／Remember the walker upon it?（大海是否／記得那走过水面的行者？），然而我似乎還能看到一點陽光感到某種暖意：The sun blooms, it is a geranium.／The heart has not stopped（太陽綻放，它是一株天竺葵／心尚未停滯）。然後，在那首沉痛而令人不安的《善行》中，一面她堅持What is so real as the cry of a child?（有什麽會像孩子的哭聲這樣真實？），因而在詩最後也許出於自我安慰她又說：You hand me two children, two roses（你交給我兩個孩子、兩朵玫瑰）；而另一方面她更不能止住的是流血的詩歌：The blood jet is poetry,／There is no stopping it.（血噴射成詩／無法令它停止）。緊接著便是大家非常熟悉的《詞兒》，其中的命定色彩很巧妙地融入一種詩學／美學，令人覺得詩篇具有某種形而上的意義。然而，當我的目光將這首詩中的字句翻譯成意象，當我的眼睛與呈現這些意象的眼睛重合，移情作用油然升起，我擡頭看到五房兩廳的諾大空間，僅剩下白色的牆壁和關閉的臥室，我無法控制淚水。走到陽臺，高速公路上不時有摩托車尖利地呼嘯而過，那是一個星期六的淩晨，四點左右。我站在二十一樓，樓建在一座小山上。

　　詩人為我們呈現了生命中最傷痛的經驗。瘀傷可以説是血和生命對於外界壓力的回應，於是也成爲生命力的終極顯示。這個瘀傷不僅僅將受傷部位周圍的全部顔色壓榨並集中於一點，而且清洗掉全身的顔色。當詩人將毫無血色的身軀比作珍珠之時，我們不得不想到珍珠作爲苦痛之結晶這一象徵。這一沉悶的紫色似乎逐漸硬化成了岩石上的缺口／凹陷，而生命在此猶如大海，不停地舔著自己的傷痕，如此自憐而貫注，以至於這個缺口竟然成爲生命的核心。我們無法知道這隻蒼蠅是詩人偶然擡頭在對面牆上看到的黑點或者只是她的幻覺，也許正如詩人最喜愛的一位作家弗吉尼亞·伍爾夫筆下那只蒼蠅，但是現在它正緩緩地向下爬行，猶如入夜了，一切可見的生命都在回到起點；於是，心扉閉起，大海回湧。最後一行“鏡子被蒙起來”，表示屋子里有死者。據信，當屋里有死人或靈柩的時候，鏡子一定得用黑布蒙罩住，這樣此人的靈魂才不會被鏡子吸進去，不至於靈魂久久遊蕩於人間而不得升天。