葉慈《紅髮翰拉漢故事集》、《神秘玫瑰》與《玫瑰煉金術》之中的「靈性與自然法則之戰」

Abstract

威廉．巴特勒．葉慈於十九世紀末編撰了《紅髮翰拉漢故事集》、《神秘玫瑰》與《玫瑰煉金術》，書中呈現出葉慈對維多利亞時期物質主義的質疑，以及他對生命中精神層面以及神祕主義鍥而不捨的追求。此翻譯研究旨在透過了解葉慈採集民間傳說的文化和歷史背景，從而挖掘愛爾蘭傳統文學中的吟遊詩人傳統，並且為讀者帶來一系列充滿愛爾蘭神秘色彩的故事。 1890年代後半期，葉慈和一群藝術家發起了愛爾蘭文學復興運動，並開始在愛爾蘭文學尋找自己的定位。葉慈認為愛爾蘭民間傳說中的吟遊傳統保存了愛爾蘭文化中的獨特的神秘元素，在桂格瑞女士的協助下，葉慈蒐集並改寫民間傳說，並於書中傳達他對凱爾特神秘世界的獨特見解。 葉慈在書中深入地探討各式對立概念，特別是靈性與物質的對抗，以及異教徒與基督教間的緊張關係。為更能呈現出故事中的核心議題，本書翻譯採用三項翻譯策略，一為異國化翻譯，二為凸顯對立概念，三為藉翻譯「英文」二字來反映葉慈採集民間傳說的背景。中文版之《紅髮翰拉漢故事集》、《神秘玫瑰》與《玫瑰煉金術》盡力傳達並突顯故事中的核心議題，讓讀者得以一窺葉慈的內心世界，更深入了解葉慈如何在書中融合了愛爾蘭傳說、神祕主義、象徵美學、以及他在1890年代對民族主義的見解。

Stories of Red Hanrahan, The Secret Rose, and Rosa Alchemica is a small anthology of Irish folklore stories William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) compiled in the end of the nineteenth century. Stories not only exemplifies Yeats’s ambition to rebuild a literary tradition of Ireland, but embodies his antagonism to Victorian materialism, his pursuit of the spiritual aspect of life, and his interest in the occult. Through an investigation of the cultural and historical backgrounds of Yeats’s effort in folklore collection, this translation study not only unearths Ireland’s past heroic passion and the Celtic occultism embodied in this anthology, but also provides the Chinese reader with a series of simple and mystic Irish stories as well as an enjoyable experience of reading Yeats’s inner thoughts. In the second half of the 1890s, Yeats, along with a number of concerned artists, launched the Irish Literary Revival Movement and began to search for his own voice in Irish literature. Yeats argued that the bardic tradition of the Irish folklore should retain the distinctiveness of Irish culture involved with occult elements. With Lady Gregory’s advice on collecting and revising folklores, Yeats incorporated Irish legendary materials with his insight into the Celtic world and its occult mystique. In this folklore collection, Yeats explored and questioned the multiple contradictions of life. The dialectical pairs, the contradiction between the spiritual and the material as well as the tension between the pagan beliefs and Christianity, serve as the central theme in Stories. In order to retain the expected qualities in the collection, I adopted translation strategies of foreignization translation, emphasis on the tension between the dialectical pairs in Stories, and focusing on the translation of the propositional phrase, in English. A Chinese version of Stories with translation strategies aiming to preserve, convey, and even emphasize Yeats’s concerns, helps Chinese readers have a glimpse of the early Yeats, and his relentless effort in synthesizing Irish mythology, occultism, symbolist aesthetics and nationalist politics in the 1880s and 1890s.