John Donne’s Lyric Skepticism: In Strange Way
John Donne’s Lyric Skepticism: In Strange Way
复制标题
约翰·多恩的抒情怀疑论：以奇怪的方式
DOI：
10.1086/423455
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发表时间：
2004
期刊：
影响因子：
0.4
通讯作者：
Kenneth I. Gross
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Kenneth I. Gross
ç 2004年由芝加哥大学发布。版权所有。1601年，约翰·多恩（John Donne）创作了一部讽刺寓言，名为《灵魂的历程》（The progress of The soul, or metmetsis）。《仙后》以诗节形式写成，明显地模仿了斯宾塞的《仙后》——九行五步诗和最后的六步诗，比斯宾塞的《aabccbbdda》更少穿插，押韵更突兀——这篇密密的、显然未完成的520行诗，叙述了一个无名但不死的灵魂通过各种各样的人类和动物形式的连续轮回。《轮回记》中的灵魂是一种特殊的实体，是一种创新、异端、篡夺和变态欲望的精神；它既有人性又有非人性，既有自然的又有历史的。灵魂是卑贱的、令人厌恶的、不成熟的、孤立的，它具有一种难以抗拒的魅力。它的家园无数。它们依次包括伊甸园中的知识之树（后来，多恩根据中世纪的传说补充说，这棵树为十字架提供了木材）；曼德拉草一种拟人化的曼德拉草根，其提取物可作为毒药和壮阳药，也可作为堕胎药；贪欲的、自暴自弃的麻雀；几条倒霉的鱼；这是一条笨重而暴虐的大鲸，它自己也被另外两条鱼的阴谋杀死了；一只不择手段的老鼠，它爬进大象的大脑杀死它，同时也被摧毁了；一只狼和一只狼狗（后者是狼的亲生孩子，既看守绵羊又吃掉绵羊）；掠食猿；一个堕落的女人，该隐的妻子；最后是穆罕默德和马丁·路德等异教徒的肉体。多恩告诉我们，这个灵魂生活在“每一次巨大变化都发生过的地方”（第69行），它是“都撕裂过的东西，/并且修补了‘帝国’的废墟”（第67-68行），这是一种秩序和无序的原则，或者是无序中出现的秩序因为它有着无情的力量
ç 2004 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0026-8232/2004/10103-0002$10.00 In 1601, John Donne composed a satirical allegory titled The Progresse of the Soule, or Metempsychosis. Written in stanzas pointedly mirroring those of Spenser’s Faerie Queene—nine pentameter lines and final hexameter, with a less interwoven, more abrupt rhyme-scheme than Spenser’s, aabccbbddd—this dense, apparently unfinished text of 520 lines recounts the successive transmigrations of a nameless but deathless soul through a variety of human and animal forms. The soul in Metempsychosis is a peculiar entity, a spirit of innovation, heresy, usurpation, and perverse appetite; it has a life at once human and inhuman, natural and historical. Abject, repugnant, inchoate, isolated, the soul holds a hard sort of charm. And its homes are myriad. They include, by turns, the tree of knowledge in the Garden of Eden (which later, Donne adds in line with medieval legend, provided the wood for the Cross); an anthropomorphic mandrake root, whose extract can serve as both a poison and an aphrodisiac, and also as something to induce abortions; a lustful, self-wasting sparrow; several hapless fishes; a ponderous and tyrannical whale, himself slain by a conspiracy of two other fish; a Machiavellian mouse, who crawls into the brain of an elephant to kill him, and is destroyed at the same time; a wolf and a wolf-dog (the latter the wolf ’s own child, a creature that at once guards and devours sheep); a rapine ape; a vice-ridden woman, the wife of Cain; and finally the flesh of heretics like Mohammed and Martin Luther. Donne tells us that this soul lived “where every great change did come” (line 69), that it is something which both “did teare, / And mend the wracks of th’Empire” (lines 67–68), a principle of order and disorder both, or of order emerging out of disorder.1 For all its relentless powers