悼念波蘭女詩人維斯瓦娃·辛波絲卡
Obituary：辛波絲卡，生於波蘭的小鎮布寧的一個知識分子家庭裏。當時，她的國家剛剛擺脫第一次世界大戰的陰影。一九三一年全家遷往波蘭南部的克拉科夫。在辛波絲卡的每一本詩集中，幾乎都可以看到她追求新風格、嘗試新技法的用心。 她擅長自日常生活汲取喜悅，以小隱喻開發深刻的思想，寓嚴肅於幽默、機智，是以 小搏大，舉重若輕的語言大師。於1996年獲得諾貝爾文學獎。2001年成爲美國文學藝術學院名譽會員，這是美國授予傑出藝術家的最重要榮譽。2012年2月1日，在克拉科夫逝世，享年88歲。
Wislawa Szymborska
維斯瓦娃·辛波絲卡
Wislawa Szymborska, poet, died on February 1st, aged 88.
詩人維斯瓦娃•辛波絲卡於2月1日辭世，終年88歲。
WHEN Wislawa Szymborska won the world's top literary prize in 1996, her friends called it the "Nobel disaster". This was not just because she had spent an uncomfortable night before the award ceremony in the bath: the bathroom was the only part of her quarters in a grand Stockholm hotel in which she could manage to turn on the light. Nor was it the "torture" she felt in having to make a speech—one of only three she had given in her life. The real disaster was the trauma of fame and fortune. It was years before she could publish another poem. Her fans' delight in her Nobel prize was mixed with disappointment that it had rendered her mute.
1966年,維斯瓦娃•辛波絲卡榮膺文學最高榮譽，朋友卻打諢爲“諾貝爾災難”。在頒獎的前一天，她還在浴室裏捱過了一個難受的夜晚，因爲在豪華的斯德哥爾摩酒店，浴室是其房間裏唯一一處能找到燈光的地方。辛波絲卡一生中只做過三次演講，每一次都身心“折磨”，這次也不例外。當然，真正的災難要數名譽與財富帶來的創傷，折桂諾貝爾獎後，粉絲高興之餘夾雜着些許失望，因爲獎項也使這位桂冠詩人啞言，許多幾年後才發表了一首詩。
Like many Poles who survived the war, Ms Szymborska readily accepted communism in early life, seeing it as a salvation for a ruined world. Early poems praised Lenin and young communists building a steel works. Later she blamed her own "foolishness, naivety and perhaps intellectual laziness", but some found it hard to forgive her for signing a petition in 1953 backing a show trial of four priests.
和許多戰後餘生的波蘭人一樣，辛波絲卡早年欣然接受共產主義洗禮，視之爲對世界千瘡百孔下的救贖。讚揚列寧，歌頌年輕的共產黨建鋼廠等題材常見於早期的詩中。隨後，她自我嘲諷道“愚蠢，天真，還有一點思維惰性”。1953年，爲支持4位神父的“審判秀”辛波絲卡在請願書籤字，許多人都無法接受她這一做法。
Her ironic and individualistic spirit was ill fitted to the grey conformity of "people's Poland": the Nobel citation said she wrote with the ease of Mozart and the fury of Beethoven. Playful, subtle and haunting, her poetry could never be in harmony with the socialist realist style dictated by the country's cultural commissars. She mocked their intolerance of dissent in a poem on pornography:
辛波絲卡性情自諷而獨特，難以融入波蘭人民共和國那乏味的一致：諾貝爾獎褒獎她文如莫扎特一樣舒緩，貝多芬一樣憤怒。她的詩詼諧而精緻，讓人回味無窮，卻與國家文化政委規定下的社會主義現實風格格不入。她以色情爲題，借一首小詩嘲諷了這個狹隘的國度。
There's nothing more debauched than thinking.
This sort of wantonness runs wild like a wind-borne weed on a plot laid out for daisies.
思想竟是如此墮落。
放縱滋蔓，猶如風媒後的野草，靜候雛菊臨幸。
Communism she likened to the abominable snowman—horrid and unreal—though she stayed in the party until 1966, hoping "to try to fix it all from the inside". That, she said later, had been another delusion.
辛波絲卡將共產主義比作可憎的雪人，恐怖而虛幻。1966年還是黨員的她希望從黨內部“一一收拾掉”。隨後她自嘲道這不過幻想一場罷。
Ms Szymborska was 16 when Hitler and Stalin carved up Poland between them. "Old age was the privilege of rocks and trees," she wrote. Although not a mainstream dissident, her poems distilled the essence of individual stubbornness in the face of what the party bosses said was historical inevitability.
16歲那年小辛波絲卡經歷希特勒與斯大林瓜分祖國。“年邁是岩石與樹木的特權”她於是寫道。儘管異議稱不上主流，面對黨派大佬鼓吹歷史必然時，詩中卻將那份骨子中的倔強娓娓道來。
I believe in the refusal to take part.
I believe in the ruined career.
I believe in the wasted years of work.
I believe in the secret taken to the grave.
These words soar for me beyond all rules without seeking support from actual examples.
My faith is strong, blind, and without foundation.
不去參與，
因已江郎才盡。
虛度光陰，
真理卻永存於地下。
文字激盪，
跨越一切樊籬，不爲現實所縛
我無依靠的靈魂啊，
竟是如此堅強，如此迷茫。
