文化专访丨艾利安·尼·朱利安奈：诗歌是语言的最高形式

艾利安·尼·朱利安奈（Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin），爱尔兰诗人、翻译家。1942年生于爱尔兰科克郡，先后就读于科克大学、牛津大学，现为都柏林圣三一大学英语系荣誉退休教授。曾出版诗集《行传与功业》《伏击地点》《第二次航行》《玫瑰天竺葵》《铜蛇》《嫁给驯鹿的女孩》等，并翻译过爱尔兰、意大利、罗马尼亚等国诗人的作品。获1973年帕特里克·卡瓦纳奖、1992年爱尔兰—美国文化学院颁发的奥肖内西诗歌奖、2020年度1573国际诗歌奖获奖者。

泸州是中国最早开始酿酒的城市之一，自古以来，这里“城以酒兴，酒以城名”，如今，泸州是中国唯一一座得到官方认证的“酒城”，“诗酒文化”更是这座城市独有的城市名片。2023年10月14日-10月22日，由泸州市人民政府和《诗刊》社联合主办，中国诗歌学会战略合作，中国诗歌网、中国歌剧舞剧院、泸州老窖·国窖1573研究院、中视华凯传媒集团承办的国际诗酒文化大会第七届中国酒城·泸州老窖文化艺术周活动在泸州、北京两地举行。上千位诗人、作家、翻译家、学者、文化名人、外籍艺术嘉宾与音乐、绘画、朗诵、书法等领域嘉宾汇聚一堂，共襄盛举。

艺术周期间，记者对艾利安·尼·朱利安奈教授进行了专访，朱利安奈教授就诗歌创作与诗酒文化发表了精彩的看法。

记  者：从您的首部诗集获得1973年“帕特里克·卡瓦纳诗歌奖”开始，您从事诗歌写作已经刚好五十年的时间了。请问您是如何走上诗歌创作这条道路的？

艾利安·尼·朱利安奈：我的母亲是一位作家（创作小说和儿童故事），她让我知道写作可以作为女性真正的职业，同时我也知道这项工作充满艰辛，作家应尽力做到最好。她和我父亲都是翻译家，他们在遣词造句和处理不同语言时深思熟虑，让我耳濡目染。我看到她如何与代理人和出版商交流，所以我很自然地想到了出版。

虽然我的父母不写诗，但他们经常读诗；我父亲教授爱尔兰语诗歌，母亲给我和妹妹朗读诗歌。这种家庭背景使我认为诗歌是语言的最高形式，15岁时，我正式决心写诗，在此之前我一直试着创作。

记  者：您用盖尔语和英文进行创作，并通晓意大利语和罗马尼亚语，使用多种语言体系，您在创作的时候这些不同的语言会不会相互影响？

艾利安·尼·朱利安奈：是的，我有时会用爱尔兰语创作，因为这是我童年的语言，有时我的诗需要用爱尔兰语来表达。用英语写作时，我会像许多爱尔兰诗人一样使用爱尔兰格律。我还会借鉴法国的亚历山大诗和意大利的endecasillaba诗体，年轻时，我研究过这两种诗歌。我在学校读拉丁语诗，并在学术生涯中继续读拉丁语作品，这也影响了我的创作。我接触罗马尼亚语的时间较晚——那时已经快六十岁了——这种语言对我的影响较小。掌握不同语言让我意识到我的读者能领会到各种语言的韵律和含义。除了英语和爱尔兰语，我所学习的所有语言都以拉丁语为基础，这些语言的文学有着千丝万缕的联系。

记  者：您的作品题材涉猎非常广泛，充满了奇幻和想象，您的灵感从哪儿来？

艾利安·尼·朱利安奈：我此生最感兴趣的就是民间故事，不仅仅是故事，还有不同民族和群体的习俗和信仰，包括修道院里的修女。这些故事往往天马行空、出人意料——我的中国和日本学生讲了一些我闻所未闻的人和动物的故事。我发现民间故事总为女性留有余地，而她们在官方文化中受到压制。因此，这是我的一大创作源泉。另一个是历史，尤其是爱尔兰的历史，它让我感到愤怒，就好像它发生在今天。我也写其他地方的历史，比如关于意大利鞋匠的诗，他有两本书，当它们被宗教裁判所没收时，他说“我再也不读书了“。我一直想写一首关于政治的诗，但这很难。

记  者：本次大会的主题是“让诗酒温暖每个人”，您有没有心目中最喜欢的关于温暖的诗句，是否可以和大家分享一两句？

艾利安·尼·朱利安奈：我知道的许多诗歌，以及我自己的作品，都是关于寒冷的。酒歌的一大主题是死亡。在一首最著名的爱尔兰酒诗中，诗人把自己比作一只鸟，因为湖面结冰无法取水而死。因此，他决心继续饮酒。帕特里克·卡瓦纳是一位写温暖的诗人，但他的温暖总是在户外，当他坐在都柏林的大运河边时，感受到“极大的寂静/七月中旬的寂静”。 在《乡村生活》中，他回忆道：

那是一个温暖的夏天，那个地方

在孩子心中，那是一个无边无际的日子

阳光和烧焦的草

铁道斜坡上的绿色蚱蜢

野蜂的嗡嗡声......

附录：

Interviewer：You have been writing poetry for exactly 50 years, since your first collection won the Patrick Kavanagh Prize for Poetry in 1973. How did you get into poetry?

Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin：My mother was a writer (of novels and children’s stories) and I learned from her that writing could be a true vocation for a woman, also that it could be hard work and one should try to achieve one’s very best.  She was also a translator as was my father, so I had their example for thinking seriously about language and languages. I saw how she corresponded with agents and publishers so it came naturally to me to think of publication.

While my parents did not write poetry they read it a lot; my father lectured on poetry in Irish and my mother read poems aloud to myself and my sister. This family background led me naturally to think of poetry as the highest form of language, and to a resolve to write poems myself, seriously from the age of fifteen, although I had been making attempts earlier.

Interviewer： You write in Gaelic and English, and you know Italian and Romanian so that you work in multiple languages. Do these languages interact with each other when you work?

Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin：Yes, I write a little in Irish as it is the language of my childhood and sometimes poems come to me that demand to be written in Irish. I make use of Irish metrical patterns when I write in English, as many Irish poets have done. I have also learned something from the French Alexandrine and from the Italian endecasillaba, both of which I studied when I was young. I read Latin poetry at school and continued to read Latin in my academic career, and that also had an effect on my writing. I came late to Romanian – I was almost sixty when I began to study it – and I don’t find that I have been influenced in the same way by that language. A feature of knowing different languages is that I’m aware that people in my audience will pick up some of the rhythms and references. Apart from English and Irish all the languages I know are Latin-based, and their literatures are closely connected.

Interviewer：Your works cover a wide range of subjects, full of fantasy and imagination. Where do you get your inspiration from?

Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin：I’ve been interested in folklore all my life, not just the stories, but the customs and beliefs of different peoples and groups, including nuns in convents. Folktales are often wild and surprising – I’ve had students from China and Japan who introduced me to stories about human beings and animals which I had no idea existed. I find that folklore always makes room for women, even when official culture suppresses them.  So that is one of my sources. Another is history, especially Irish history, and I find that it makes me angry as if it was happening today.  But also history from other places, I’ve written a poem about an Italian cobbler who owned two books and when they were confiscated by the Inquisition he said ‘I’ll never read again’. I‘ve always wanted to write a political poem but I find that is very difficult.

Interviewer：The theme of this conference is "Let poetry warm everyone", do you have a favorite poem about warmth, would you like to share a sentence or two with us?

Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin：Many of the poems I know, and the ones I’ve written myself, are about the cold. Drinking songs incline to mention death. In one of the best-known poems (in Irish) about liquor, the poet compares himself to a bird who died because the lake had frozen and he couldn’t get a drink. So he resolves he will keep on drinking. A poet who writes about warmth is Patrick Kavanagh, but it’s always out of doors, ‘The tremendous silence/ Of mid-July’ as he sits by the Grand Canal in Dublin.  In ‘Living in the Country’, he recalls:

It was the Warm Summer, that landmark

In a child’s mind, an infinite day

Sunlight and burnt grass

Green grasshoppers on the railway slopes

The humming of wild bees …