Mending Wall 修墙罗伯特·弗罗斯特精编版

1、Robert Frost ?罗伯特弗罗斯特, 20世纪最受欢迎的美国诗人。因其当过新英格兰的鞋匠、教师和农场主，所以作品多从农村生活中取题材；与19世纪的诗人有很多共同之处，但相比之下，却又较少具有现代派气息。 ?他曾赢得4次普利策奖和许多其他的奖励及荣誉，被称之为美国文学中的桂冠诗人。 ?然而在他的下半生，才赢得大众对其诗歌作品的承认，并最终树立起了一位伟大的文学家的形象。 ?Mending Wall is a metaphorical(隐喻的) poem written in blank verse, published in 1914. ?This poem is set in the

2、countryside and is about one man questioning why he and his neighbor must rebuild the stone wall dividing their farms each spring. ?The stone wall at Frosts farm in Derry, which he described in Mending wall. ?While living in England with his family, Frost was exceptionally homesick for the farm in N

3、ew Hampshire where he had lived with his wife from 1900 to 1909. ?Despite the eventual failure of the farm, Frost associated his time in New Hampshire with a peaceful, rural sensibility that he instilled in the majority of his subsequent poems. “Mending Wall” is autobiographical on an even more spec

4、ific level: a French-Canadian named Napoleon Guay had been Frosts neighbor in New Hampshire, and the two had often walked along their property line and repaired the wall that separated their land. Summary ?Every year, two neighbors meet to repair the stone wall that divides their property. The narra

5、tor is skeptical of this tradition, unable to understand the need for a wall when there is no livestock to be contained on the property, only apples and pine trees. He does not believe that a wall should exist simply for the sake of existing. Moreover, he cannot help but notice that the natural worl

6、d seems to dislike the wall as much as he does: mysterious gaps appear, boulders fall for no reason. ?The neighbor, on the other hand, asserts that the wall is crucial to maintaining their relationship, asserting, “Good fences make good neighbors.” Over the course of the mending, the narrator attemp

7、ts to convince his neighbor otherwise and accuses him of being old-fashioned for maintaining the tradition so strictly. No matter what the narrator says, though, the neighbor stands his ground, repeating only: “Good fences make good neighbors.”. ?Something there is that ?有一样东西，它大概是doesnt love a wall

8、, ?That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it, ?And spills the upper boulders in the sun; ?And makes gaps even two can pass abreast. 不喜欢墙， ?它使得墙脚下的冻地涨得隆起， ?大白天的把墙头石块弄得纷纷落： ?使得墙裂了缝，二人并肩都走得过。 ?The work of hunters is ?another thing: I have come after them and made repair Where they have left not one s

9、tone on a stone, But they would have the rabbit out of hiding, To please the yelping dogs. ?士绅们行猎时又是另一番?糟蹋： 他们要掀开每块石头上的石头， 我总是跟在他们后面去修补， 但是他们要把兔子从隐处赶出来， 讨好那群汪汪叫的狗。 ?The gaps I mean, ?我说的墙缝 ?是怎么生的，谁也没看?No one has seen them 见，谁也没听见 made or heard them made, ?但是到了春季补墙时，?But at spring mending-就看见在那里。 tim

10、e we find them there. ?我通知了住在山那边的?I let my neighbor know 邻居； beyond the hill; ?And on a day we meet to ?有一天我们约会好，巡视地界一番， walk the line ?And set the wall between ?在我们两家之间再把墙重新砌起。 us once again. ?我们走的时候，中间隔?We keep the wall 着一垛墙。 between us as we go. ?To each the boulders that ?落在各边的石头，由各have fallen t

11、o each. ?And some are loaves and some so nearly balls ?We have to use a spell to make them balance: ?Stay where you are until our backs are turned! 自去料理。 ?有些是长块的，有些几乎圆得像球 ?需要一点魔术才能把它们放稳当： ?“老实呆在那里，等我们转过身再落下！” ?We wear our fingers rough ?我们搬弄石头把手指都磨粗了。 with handling them. ?Oh, just another kind of ?啊

12、！这不过又是一种户外游戏， out-door game, ?One on a side. It comes to ?一个人站在一边。此外没有多少用处： little more: ?There where it is we do not need the ?在墙那地方，我们根本不需要墙： ?wall: ?He is all pine and I am apple orchard. My apple trees will never get across ? And eat the cones under his pines, ? I tell him. He only says, ? Good

13、fences make good neighbors. ? 他那边全是松树，我这边是苹果园。 我的苹果树永远也不会踱过去 吃掉他松树下的松球， 我对他说。他只是说： “好篱笆造出好邻家。” ?Spring is the mischief in ?春天在我心里作祟，我在悬想 me, ?能不能把一个念头注入?and I wonder If I could 他的脑里： put a notion in his head: ?Why do they make good ?“为什么好篱笆造出好邻家？是否指着 neighbors? Isnt it ?Where there are cows? But ?有牛

14、的人家？可是我们此地又没有牛。 here there are no cows. ?我在造墙之前先要弄个?Before I built a wall Id ask 清楚， to know Protect dignity and property, hinder the ?圈进来的是什么，圈出去?What I was walling in or communication 的是什么， walling out, ?并且我可能开罪的是些什?And to whom I was like to 么人家， give offence. ?Something there is that ?有一点什么，它不喜欢墙

15、， ?doesnt love a wall, That wants it down.“ I could say Elves to him, But its not elves exactly, and Id rather He said it for himself. ? 它要推倒它。 ”我可以对他说这是“鬼”。 但严格说也不是鬼我想这事还是 由他自己决定吧。 ?I see him there ?我看见他在那里 ? Bringing a stone grasped firmly ?搬一块石头，两手紧抓着by the top 石头的上端， In each hand, like an old-st

16、one ?像一个旧石器时代的武装savage armed. 的野蛮人。 Backward, He moves in darkness as it ?我觉得他是在黑暗中摸索， uncivilized, seems to me, convention ?这黑暗不仅是来自深林与Not of woods only and the 树荫。 shade of trees. ?He will not go behind his ?他不肯探究他父亲传给fathers saying, ?And he likes having thought of it so well ?He says again, ? Goo

17、d fences make good ?neighbors. 他的格言 他想到这句格言，便如此的喜欢， 于是再说一遍， “好篱笆造出好邻家”。 Form ?Blank verse is the baseline meter of this poem, but few of the lines march along in blank verses characteristic lock-step iambs, five abreast. Frost maintains five stressed syllables per line, but he varies the feet extens

18、ively to sustain the natural speech-like quality of the verse. There are no stanza breaks, obvious end-rhymes, or rhyming patterns, but many of the end-words share an assonance (e.g., wall, hill, balls, wall, and well sun, thing, stone, mean, line, and again or game,them, and him twice). ?Internal r

19、hymes, too, are subtle, slanted, and conceivably coincidental. The vocabulary is all of a pieceno fancy words, all short (only one word, another, is of three syllables), all conversationaland this is perhaps why the words resonate so consummately with each other in sound and feel. ?The wall is a key

20、 in this poem, it unites the speaker and his neighbor every year and separates them as well. ?Actually, the wall symbolizes the regulations made upon human being in modern society. ?Living in the modern society, one is bound by many rules and laws to enforce the normal social order. Themes ?The imag

21、e at the heart of “Mending Wall” is arresting: two men meeting on terms of civility and neighborliness to build a barrier between them. They do so out of tradition, out of habit. Yet the very earth conspires against them and makes their task Sisyphean. Sisyphus is the figure in Greek mythology conde

22、mned perpetually to push a boulder up a hill, only to have the boulder roll down again. These men push boulders back on top of the wall; yet just as inevitably, whether at the hand of hunters or sprites, or the frost and thaw of natures invisible hand, the boulders tumble down again. Still, the neig

23、hbors persist. The poem, thus, seems to meditate conventionally on three grand themes: barrier-building (segregation, in the broadest sense of the word), the doomed nature of this enterprise and our persistence in this activity regardless. Analysis ?As the narrator points out, the very act of mendin

24、g the wall seems to be in opposition to nature. Every year, stones are dislodged and gaps suddenly appear, all without explanation. Every year, the two neighbors fill the gaps and replace the fallen boulders, only to have parts of the wall fall over again in the coming months. It seems as if nature

25、is attempting to destroy the barriers that man has created on the land, even as man continues to repair the barriers, simply out of habit and tradition. ?The speaker may scorn his neighbors obstinate（顽固的） wall-building, may observe the activity with humorous detachment, but he himself goes to the wa

26、ll at all times of the year to mend the damage done by hunters; it is the speaker who contacts the neighbor at wall-mending time to set the annual appointment. Which person, then, is the real wall-builder? The speaker says he sees no need for a wall here, but this implies that there may be a need fo

27、r a wall elsewhere “where there are cows,” for example. Yet the speaker must derive something, some use, some satisfaction, out of the exercise of wall-building, or why would he initiate it here? There is something in him that does love a wall, or at least the act of making a wall. ?Perhaps his skep

28、tical questions and quips can then be read as an attempt to justify his own behavior to himself. While he chooses to present himself as a modern man, far beyond old-fashioned traditions, the narrator is really no different from his neighbor: he too clings to the concept of property and division, of ownership and individuality. ?Ultimately, the presence of the wall between the properties does ensure a quality relationship between the two neighbors. By maintaining the division between the