美国文学期末复习资料

美国文学期末复习资料

Imagism （意向主义）

(1)Imagism cameinto being in Britain and US around 1910 as a reaction to the traditionalEnglish poetry to express the sense of fragmentation and dislocation.

（2）TheImagists, with Ezra Pound leading the way, hold that the most effective meansto express these momentary impressions is through the use of one dominantimage.

(3)Imagism is characterized by the following three poetic principles: i) directtreatment of subject matter; ii) economy of expression; iii) as regards rhythm,to compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in the sequence ofmetronome; iv) Ezra Pound’s In a Station of the Metro isa well-known imagist poem.

Ezra Pound (爱兹拉·庞德）

Cathay (1915)《中国》avolume of Chinese translation.

He blue-penciled The Waste Land《荒原》the most significant American poem of the twentieth century.Cantos 《诗章》，a modern epic Pound’smajor work of poetry。HughSelwyn Mauberley 《休·塞尔温·莫伯利》

In a Station of the Metro《在地铁站》

The apparition of thesefaces in the crowd; 这几张脸在人群中幻景般闪现；

Petals on a wet, blackbough. 湿漉漉的黑树枝上花瓣数点。

Appreciation and comment:

In “In a Station of theMetro” Pound attempts to produce the emotion he felt when he walked down into aParis subway station and suddenly saw a number of faces in the dim light. Tocapture the emotion, Pound uses the image of petals on a wet, black bough. Theimage of “petals” is juxtaposed with another image of “wet, black bough.” The image is not decoration: It is central tothe poem’s meaning. In fact, it is the poem’s meaning.

EzraPound’s main contribution to American literature

Ezra pound is regarded,and rightly, as the father of modern American poetry. Impatient with thefetters of English traditional poetics, he led the experiment inrevolutionizing poetry. It was he who first discovered T.S. Eliot andblue-penciled the latter’s famous poem, The Waste Land. It was he who helpedWilliam Butler Yeats, James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence, and William carols Williamsin their literary careers. And he survived them all, writing continually rightup to his death. Pound’s contribution to the development of modern poetry isvery great.

T.S. Eliot （T.S.艾略特）

The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock《杰·阿尔弗雷德·普鲁弗洛克的情歌》—started 1915—is seen as a masterpiece of the Modernistmovement,

Literary terms: soliloquy (独白）interior monologue (内心独白）dramatic

monologue （戏剧独白） motif （主旨，主题）epigraph （题词）

Soliloquy or interior monologue（独白或内心独白）: in drama, an extended speech delivered by acharacter alone on stage. The character reveals his or her innermost thoughtsand feelings directly to the audience, as if thinking aloud.

Dramatic monologue（戏剧独白）: A kind of narrative poem in which onecharacter speaks to one or more listeners whose replies are not given in thepoem.

Epigraph（主旨）: a quotation or motto at the beginning of a chapter, book,short story, or poem that makes some point about the work.

Motif（题词）: A recurringfeature (such as a name, an image, or a phrase) in a work of literature. Amotif generally contributes in some way to the theme of a short story, novel,poem, or play.

2）The Waste Land 《荒原》

In 1922, Eliot published TheWaste Land 《荒原》in The Criterion《标准》. Which was thought as the most significant American poemof the 20th century and helped to establish a modern tradition of literaturerich with learning and allusive

thought. The poem is subdivided into five sections: I. The Brurialof the Dead II.

A Game of ChessIII. The Fire Sermon IV. Death by waterV. Whatthe Thunder Said

3) The Hollow Men《空心人》(1925)

4) Ash Wednesda y《圣灰星期三》 (1927)

5)Four Quartets 《四个四重奏》（1943）: Eliot regarded Four Quartets as

hismasterpiece, and it is the work that led to his being awarded the Nobel Prize inLiterature (1948).

Eliot also madesignificant contributions to the field of literary criticism, stronglyinfluencing the school of New Criticism

In 1920 T.S. Eliotpublished his The Sacred Wood,《圣林》 containing his famous critical essay

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening《雪夜林边小驻》The Road Not Taken 《未选择的路》

（诗歌及赏析见第9页）

Wallace Stevens（华莱士 史蒂文斯） (1879–1955) was an American Modernist poet He won the Pulitzer Prize forPoetry for his Collected Poems in 1955.

William Carlos Williams wasan American poet closely associated

with modernism and imagism. He was also a pediatrician

and generalpractitioner ofmedicine with a medical degreefrom the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine

Robert Lee Frost （罗伯特 弗罗斯特） His work frequentlyemployed settings from rural life in New England in the early twentiethcentury

Frost was honoredfrequently during his lifetime, receiving four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry

Francis Scott Fitzgerald （F.S`·菲茨杰拉德） The spokesman of the “roaring 20s” “the Jazz Age” 美国梦的实践者“爵士乐时代的桂冠诗人”和“喧嚣的二十年代的代言人”

In 1920 Fitzgerald’sfirst novel This Side of Paradise 《人间天堂》 （1920） second novel entitled The Beautiful and Damned 《美丽的和可诅咒的》（1922） his best novel The Great Gatsby 《了不起的盖茨比》（1925）

the novel Tender is the Night《夜色温柔》 (1934).

The Last Tycoon《最后的大亨》, a novel about Hollywood and the film industry.

Fitzgerald’s books ofshort stories include Flappers andPhilosophers《时髦女和哲学家》 (1921), Tales of the Jazz Age《爵士时代的故事》 (1922), All the Sad Young Man 《一代悲哀的年轻人》(1926)

Ernest Hemingway（厄内斯特 海明威） His economicaland understated style had a strong influenceon 20th-century fiction, won the NobelPrize in Literature in 1954. He was generallyregarded as spokesman for the Lost Generation.

The Lost Generation （迷惘的一代）

1.The Lost Generation is a term first used by GertrudeStein to describe the

post-World War I generation of American writers: men andwomen haunted by a sense of betrayal and emptiness brought about by thedestructiveness of the war.

2. Full of youthful idealism, these individuals sought themeaning of life, drank excessively, had love affairs and created some of thefinest American literature to date.

3.The three best-known representatives of Lost Generationare F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and John Dos Passos.

his first novel, TheTorrents of Spring《春湖》,but The Sun Also Rises 《太阳照常升起》(1926) about the disillusionment of the lost generation wasan immediate success. With the success of A Farewell to Arms (1929)《永别了武器》, he firmly established his reputation as agreat American writer.

The Sun Also Rises《太阳照常升起》

Hemingway employed an epigraph（题词）in the novel which had been said by Gertrude Stein to describe the expatriatesin Paris “You are a lost generation.” The novel paints the image of the lostgeneration.

A Farewell to Arms《永别了武器》

It is an anti-war novel, describing thelove between an American soldier Frederic Henry （弗瑞德里克 亨利）andan English nurseCatherine.（凯瑟琳）

For Whom the Bell Tolls《丧钟为谁而鸣》

It tells of a volunteerAmerican guerrilla in the Spanish Civil War.

The Old Man and the Sea. 《老人与海》It tells of a Cuban fisherman, Santiago（桑提亚哥）,who catches a big fish, only to see it devoured by sharks. The novelhighlights the theme that man can be destroyed but not defeated. （你尽可以把他消灭，但就是打不败他）It is a representation of life as a struggle

against unconquerable forces in which only a partialvictory is possible. This book led to Hemingway's receipt of the Novel Prizein 1954.

1) Hemingway was famous for his novels and shortstories written his spare, laconic,

terse, clear, telegraph-like, yet intenseprose with short sentences and very specific details. This style is his famous“Iceberg Theory”:（冰山理论）

Iceberg Theory（冰山理论）:

Think of aniceberg: one eighth of an iceberg is above the water. All of the rest isunderneath the water. The same is true with Hemingway’s writing. His

sentencesonly give one small bit of the meaning. The rest is implied. One must go verydeep beneath the surface to understand the full meaning of his

writing.Hemingway’s vocabulary is easy and his sentence patterns are easy, but they areextremely difficult to be fully understood.

Hemingway terms courageas “grace under pressure” these heroes are

called Hemingway heroes or the code hero:（硬汉）

Hemingway heroes refer to some protagonists in Hemingway's works. Such a hero usually anaverage man of decidedly masculine tastes, sensitive and intelligent. Andusually he is a man of action and of few words. His such an individualist,alone even when with other people, somewhat an outsider, keeping emotions undercontrol, stoic and self-disciplined in a dreadful place where one can not gethappiness. For

William Faulkner（威廉·福克纳）

Faulkner’s firstnovel Soldier’s Pay《士兵的报酬》 was accepted by the publishers in 1926.

Faulkner’s second novelMosquitoes (1927)《蚊群》 is a satirical story about a group of southern artists andintellectuals.

The years from 1929 to1942 were a period of amazing literary output for Faulkner, such as The Sound and the Fury(1929) 《喧嚣与骚动》and AsI Lay Dying (1930). 《我弥留之际》

He was awarded theNobel Prize for literature in 1950

Major works 1.The Sound and the Fury 《喧嚣与骚动》The book is divided into 4 sections, largelyreliant on Stream of Consciousness and Multiple Point of View.

Stream of Consciousness: （意识流）

Stream of Consciousness or interiormonologue, is one of the modern literary

techniques. It was first used in 1922by the Irish novelist James Joyce. The modern American writer William Faulknersuccessfully advanced this technique. In the stories, action and plots are lessimportant than the reactions and inner musings of the narrators. Time sequencesare often dislocated. The reader feels himself to be a participant in thestories, rather than an observer.

Multiple Point of View(多重视角)

Faulkner was a master at presentingmultiple points of view, showing within the same story how the charactersreacted differently to the same person or the same situation. The use of thistechnique gave the story a circular form wherein one event was the center, withvarious points of view radiating from it. The multiple point of view techniquemakes the reader recognize the difficulty of arriving at a true judgment.

2. Light in August《八月之光》3. Go Down, Moses. 《去吧，摩西》4. As I Lay Dying 《在我弥留之际》5. Absalom, Absalom! 《押沙龙，押沙龙！》

Two famous shortstories:“A Rose for Emily” 《纪念埃米莉的一朵玫瑰花》“The Bear”《熊》

Comment：Faulkneras the foremost southern writer of the 20th century with 19 novels, 4collections of about 70 short stories, and two volumes of poetry. His

importantsubjects are childhood, families, sex, obsessions the past and the modernsouthern memory, myth and reality, race, and alienation. His theme

isessentially an analysis of the underlying cause for the failure and decay ofthe South before the Civil War. His fiction carries a strong sense offragmentation in social community and within the individual himself due to theloss of love and lack emotional response.

He is noted for the Yoknapatawpha stories/sagain which the fictional

Yoknapatawpha （约克纳帕塔法县）County is thesetting. The country stands for the Old South. It also serves as allegory or aparable of the Old South. He writes about the disintegration of the old socialsystem in the American Southern States and its effect on the lives of modernpeople, both black and white. It shows a panorama of the experience andconsciousness of the whole Southern society.

Sinclair Lewis （辛克莱`刘易斯）

he became the first writer from the United Statesto be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature

But it was not until1920 when Main Street《大街》 appeared that he established his position as a veryeffective novelist.

Lewis published Babbitt《巴比特》which is generallyregarded as his best book

His other novels ：Arrowsmith (1925)《阿罗史密斯》, and Dodsworth(1929).《杜德史沃斯》

John Dos Passos （多斯·帕索斯）

major works:U.S.A 《美国》或《美利坚》

The trilogy comprises The 42nd Parallel (1930)《北纬42度》, 1919 (1932), and The Big Money (1936) 《赚大钱》Dos Passos used experimental techniques in these novels: the “Newsreels”（新闻短片）, the “Biographies”（人物小传） and the“Camera Eye”（摄相机镜头）(P263-264) to paint a vast landscape of Americanculture during the first decades of the 20th century.

John Steinbeck （约翰·斯坦贝克）

Steinbeck’s literaryreputation was further built up by his next three novels: In Dubious Battle 《胜负未决》(1936), OfMice and Men(1937)《人鼠之间》 about the tragic friendship of two migrantworkers, and The Grapes of Wrath (1939)《愤怒的葡萄》. His masterpiece The Grapes of Wrath wona Pulitzer Prize in 1940. In 1947, he published The Pearl. 《珍珠》 In 1962, he was awarded the Nobel Prize forliterature.

American Drama ：EugeneO’Neill （尤金·奥尼尔） EugeneO'Neill was a great American playwright and the founder of modern

Americandrama. He won Nobel Prize for literature and Pulizter Prize four times inhis life.

Literaryachievements

Beyond the Horizon (1920) 《天边外》(naturalism)（自然主义）

The Emperor Jones (1920) 《琼斯王》(symbolism andexpressionism)（象征主义和表现主义）

The Hairy Ape (1922) 《毛猿》(naturalism)（自然主义） (p286)

Desire under theElms (1924) 《榆树下的欲望》 (Oedipus complex)（俄狄浦斯情结/恋母情结）

The Great God Brown (1926) 《伟大之神布朗》

The Iceman Cometh (1946)《送冰人来了》

Long Day’s Journeyinto Night (1956)《进入黑夜的漫漫旅

程》 (autobiographicalplay)(naturalism)（自传体戏剧 自然主义） ( p287) In what way was Eugene O’ Neill an experimentalist indramatic art?

O’Neill was a tireless experimentalist in dramatic art. Hetook drama away from the old traditions of the last century and rooted itdeeply in life. he introduced the realistic or even the naturalistic aspect oflife into the American theater. The stylistic aspect of O’Neill’s art merits notice for itsvariety and its display of consummate craftsmanship. He borrowed freely fromthe best traditions of European dramas be it Greek tragedies, or the realism ofIbsen, or the

expressionism of Strindberg, and fused them into the organic artof his own. He borrowed freely from modern literary techniques such as thestream-of-consciousness device with the help of which he managed to reveal theemotional and psychological complexities of modern man. O’Neill’s ceaselessexperimentation enriched American drama and influenced later playwrights suchas Tennessee Williams, and Edward Albee. It is possible that he will go down inthe history of American drama as the American Shakespeare. （P288）

Tennessee Williams （田纳西·威廉斯）

The Glass Menagerie (1944) 《玻璃动物园》A Streetcar Named Desire (1947)《欲望号街车》 , winning the first Pulitzer Prize

Other best plays are Summer and Smoke (1948)《夏日烟云》,

The Rose Tattoo (1950)《玫瑰纹身》

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1954)《热铁皮屋顶上的猫》. won himhis second Pulitzer Prize, dealing with sultry sex and violence in humorousterms.

Arthur Miller （亚瑟·米勒）

All My Sons (1947)《吾子吾弟》, Deathof a Salesman (1949)《推销员之死》（winningthe Pulitzer Prize）, The Crucible (1953) 《严峻考验》and A View from theBridge (1955)《桥头眺望》

A typical theme of Arthur Miller’s plays concerns thedilemma of modern man in relation to his family and work. What occurs often ina Miller play is that the hero finds himself under a pressure from his societyand its ethics, tries in vain to extricate himself from the physical andspiritual quandary into which he has fallen and finds release only in death,often in the form of actual or virtual suicide. The world is harsh. There islittle or no choice for the hero. Either he submits to the impossible demandsof society, or he rejects them. He dies in either case. Miller is, however, ,not completely pessimistic. Reading his plays, one feels a faith in man and inlife, however vague it may be, though very often gloom overweight hope.（P299）

Edward Albee （爱德华·阿尔比）

The Zoo Story (1958)《动物园的故事》, The Sandbox(1959)《沙箱》, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962).《谁害怕弗吉尼亚·伍尔夫》

His early works reflecta mastery and Americanization of the Theatreof the Absurd. （荒诞剧）

Postmodernism（后现代主义）（P312-313）

Postmodernismrepresents a new mode of perception and a way of writing. In poetry it strivesto go against the vogue of the New Critical poem and its parent style, the HighModernism of the previous decades. It its thematic concerns, Postmodernism viewsthe world as one that is not to be molded, but as formless and

unpredictable.Postmodernism does not endeavor to impose on life and reality, but

is willingto embrace it for what it is. And it tends to use topics and subjects of apersonal, even a forbidden, nature. In its formal aspects, Postmodernism seeksfor a freedom in literary expression.

Postmodernism asserts its own identify byvirtue of its negation, partial in some cases, of its inheritance.Postmodernist novel exhibits its own unique features such as metafiction, blackhumor, and forms of avantgardism.

The Beat Generation（垮掉的一代）（P362）

In the 1950s, there wasa widespread discontentment among the postwar generation, whose voice was oneof protest against all the mainstream culture that America had come torepresent. This has come to be known as the Beat Generation. The word “beat,”which Ginsberg and his friend Jack Kerouac picked up from a junkie friend oftheirs, represented a non-conformist, rebellious attitude toward

conventionalvalues concerning sex, religion, the arts, and the American way of life. It wasan attitude that resulted from the feeling of depression and exhaustion and theneed to escape into an unconventional sometimes communal, mode of living.“beat” literature offered something like a fresh breath of wind both in theprose and poetry of the 1950s and 1960s. The most enduring works arerepresented by Jack Kerouac’sOn the Road杰克·克鲁亚克的《在路上》 andWilliam Burroughs’s Naked Lunch威廉·巴勒斯的《裸体午餐》 in prose and Allen Ginsberg’s Howl 艾伦·金斯堡的《嚎叫》 and Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s Pictures from the Gone world劳伦斯·弗林盖特《小时的世界之画面》 in poetry.

Allen Ginsberg （艾伦·金斯堡）

The poet laureate of the Beat Generation.Thespokesman for the Beat Generation In 1955, at the Six Gallery, he read aloud hispoem “Howl” to his friends. This night has been called “the birth trauma of theBeat Generation.”

in 1956, with the help of his friend, hepublished Howl and Other poems which is a consummate work of carefullyworded invectives, a torrent of deliberate voluble curses, spearheaded againstan America that has destroyed “the best minds” of the postwar generation.

Howl《嚎叫》 is now regarded as the most significant long poem of thecontemporary period, ranking among others, with Whiteman’s “Song of Myself” (惠特曼的《自我之歌》)and T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land（艾略特的《荒原》）.(P370)Ginsberg’s other collections includeKaddishand Other Poems《卡迪西》, EmptyMirror《空镜》, Reality Sandwiches《现实的三明治》, White Shroud, Poems 1980-1985,《白色尸衣，诗集1980-1985》and etc

Saul Bellow （索尔·贝娄） Bellow was awardedthe Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize for Literature

His best-known worksinclude The Adventures of Augie March《奥吉·玛琪历险记》, Hendersonthe Rain King《雨王汉德逊》 , Herzog《赫索格》, Mr.Sammler's Planet

《赛姆勒先生的行星》 Seize the Day《只争朝夕》,Humboldt's Gift《洪堡的礼物》 and Ravelstein《拉维尔斯坦》

Saul Bellow’s basic themes of the novels

Saul Bellow’s basic themes are essentially three-fold:first, he views contemporary society as a threat to human life and humanintegrity. Modern civilization tends to dehumanize, making people lose their distinctionand turning them into what he calls “fat goods”. Material affluence distractsand produces a sense of alienation. Then living in such an environment, peopletend to become paranoid, high-strung, and impotent, and so lose their sanity.Bellovian characters suffer most from a kind of psychosis. They go through aphase before they regain their mental balance and serenity. Finally, there isthe quest motif, a quest for truth and values, difficult, excruciating, butsuccessful in a way.

Comment:Saul Bellow is the first important Jewish novelistto begin publishing in the mid-1940s. His novels present the problems of themodern urban man in search of his identity. This is a common theme that manywriters develop in the postwar era. But he does it with the Jewish characterand with particular Jewish flavor. His is often acclaimed as the best writerafter Hemingway and Faulkner. He received Nobel Prize in 1976 because “thehuman understanding and subtle analysis of contemporary culture are combined inhis work.”

J.D.Salinger(J.D·塞林格)

In 1951, he published his first and only novel, The Catcher in the Rye《麦田守望者》,and became famous overnight. The noveldeals with the 16-year-old boy Holden Caulfield, a modern Huck Finn.

Comment on the novel

Holden is out of step with the educational, commercial, andsexual customs of the adult society and able to see through and expose itsfalsities and “phoniness.” as he believes that all children are in danger oflosing their innocence and integrity in a corrupt and decadent world, he wishesto be a catcher in the rye. Rebellious against the dubious values of the adultworld, he represents the young people who are unable to talk to their parents or accept the“American way of life.” From the experience of this young boy, the novelreveals hypocrisy, venality, and squalor in society. This novel uses the firstperson point of view, and is written in a typical children’s language and froma child’s perspective of innocence. Evidently, it follows Mark Twain’stradition.

Joseph Heller（约瑟夫·海勒）

Joseph Heller is the most prominent American novelist ofthe absurd in the postwar period.

His famous novel,Catch-22 (1961) 《第二十二条军规》

The novel is an anti-war novel about death. It is a typicalcase of black humor（黑色幽默）. The author creates a character, Yossarian, animage of anti-hero（反英雄）

Black humor(黑色幽默)：

Black humor refersto the use of the morbid and the absurd in literature for darkly comic purpose.It carries the tone of anger and bitterness in the grotesque situations of suffering,anxiety and death. It makes readers laugh at the blackness of modern life. Therepresentative novel of black humor in American literature is Joseph Heller’Catch-22. 《第二十二条军规》

Anti-hero（反英雄）:Ant-iherorefers to the chief person in a modern novel or play whose character is widelydiscrepant from that which we associate with the

traditional protagonist orhero of a serious literary work. Instead of manifesting largeness, dignity,power, or heroism, the antihero is petty, ignominious, passive, ineffectual, ordishonest. The use of non-heroic protagonists occurs as early as the picaresquenovel（流浪汉小说） of the 16th century, andthe heroine of Defoe’s Moll Flanders《摩尔·弗兰德斯》is a thief and a prostitute（妓女）. The term “antihero”, however, is usuallyapplied to writings in the period of disillusion after the Second World War.For example, Yossarian in Joseph Heller’s Catch-22.《第二十二条军规》

Stopping by Woods on a SnowyEvening

Whose woods these are I think I know.

His house is in the village though;

He will not see me stopping here

To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer

To stop without a farmhouse near

Between the woods and frozen lake

The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake

To ask if there is some mistake

The only other sound’s the sweep

Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

Andmiles to go before I sleep.

雪夜林畔小驻

想来我认识这座森林，

林主的庄宅就在邻村,

却不会见我在此驻马，

看他林中积雪的美景。

我的小马一定颇惊讶：

四望不见有什么农家，

偏是一年最暗的黄昏，

寒林和冰湖之间停下。

它摇一摇身上的串铃，

问我这地方该不该停。

此外只有轻风拂雪片，

再也听不见其他声音。

森林又暗又深真可羡，

但我还要守一些诺言，

还要赶多少路才安眠，

还要赶多少路才安眠。

Appreciationand comment:

The poem is oneof Robert Frost’s most anthologized lyric poems consisting of four stanzas. Thepoem is written in iambic tetrameter quatrains. This seemingly simple and freshtells that in the winter twilight the poet stops his horse to observe thebeauty of the forest scene. The poet is so fascinated by the lovely nature thathe almost forests his journey. His horse shakes its bells and the poet isreminded to continue his journey. In the poem “promises” may mean one’s lifemissions to fulfill. Symbolically, “sleep” refers to “die”. The poem seems tosay that life is a journey and that no matter what attracts you on the way youhave to continue your journey and fulfill your life promises before you takeyour “final rest”. The poem also reveals the speaker’s desire for a momentaryrelief from the obligations of the world.

The Road not Taken

Two roadsdiverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back

I shall be tellingthis with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

未选择的路 罗伯特·弗罗斯特

黄色的树林里分出两条路

可惜我不能同时去涉足

我在那路口久久伫立

我向着一条路极目望去

直到它消失在丛林深处

但我却选择了另外一条路

它荒草萋萋，十分幽寂

显得更诱人，更美丽

虽然在这条小路上

很少留下旅人的足迹

那天清晨落叶满地

两条路都未经脚印污染

呵，留下一条路等改日再见

但我知道路径延绵无尽头

恐怕我难以再回返

也许多少年后在某个地方，

我将轻声叹息将往事回顾：

一片树林里分出两条路——

而我选择了人迹更少的一条，

从此决定了我一生的道路。

Appreciationand comment:

The Road not Taken is Robert Frost’most widely anthologized poem. It tells how the course of his life wasdetermined when he came upon two roads that diverged in a wood on an autumnday. The poet, after much hesitation and reflection, challenged himself bychoosing the one less travelled and he said his life was different. Symbolically,the roads the poet mentioned in the poem are roads that man has to choose inlife. The poet chose to follow an unusual, solitary life. Perhaps, he wasspeaking of his choice to become a poet rather than some commoner profession. Thedilemma man faces in the course of life choice is universal and painful. Thepoet tells us that one has to give up something desirable so as to reap whatseems better. In fact, each choice runs risk of losing something beautiful. However,man has to choose and must be responsible for what he has chosen. Whatever theoutcome, one must accept the consequences of one’s choice for it is notpossible to go back and have another chance to choose differently. The poetseems to say that it is of great importance to make a wise choice in life. Thepoem is composed in five-line stanzas, rhyming abaab.