The Flea 《跳蚤》

– 住手，一只跳蚤，三条生命啊， – 它的身体不只是见证我们的婚约。 – 还是你和我，我们的婚床，婚姻的殿堂； – 父母怨恨，你不情愿，我们还是相遇， – 并躲藏在黝黑的有生命的墙院里。 – 尽管你会习惯地拍死跳蚤， – 千万别，这会杀了我，也增加你的自杀之罪， – 杀害三条生命会亵渎神灵。
• • • • • • • • •
Donne was appointed private secretary to Sir Thomas Egerton, Keeper of the Great Seal, in 1598. His secret marriage in 1601 to Egerton's niece, Anne More, resulted in his dismissal from this position and in a brief imprisonment. During the next few years Donne made a meager living as a lawyer.
跳蚤
约翰·邓恩
看呀，这只跳蚤，叮在这里， 你对我的拒绝多么微不足道； 它先叮我，现在又叮你， 我们的血液在它体内溶和； 你知道这是不能言说的 罪恶、羞耻、贞操的丢失， 它没有向我们请求就得到享受， 饱餐了我们的血滴后大腹便便， 这种享受我们无能企及。
• Oh stay, three lives in one flea spare [4], • Where we almost, nay more than married are. • This flea is you and I, and this • Our marriage bed and marriage temple is; • Though parents grudge [5], and you, we are met, • And cloistered in these living walls of jet. • Though use [6] make you apt to kill me • Let not to that, self-murder added be, • And sacrilege [7], three sins in killing three.
• • • • • • • • • •
多么残忍，你毫无犹豫 用无辜的鲜血染红自己的指甲？ 它不过吸了你一滴血 罪不至死啊？ 你却以胜利者的口吻说 你我并没有因失血而有些虚弱； 的确，担心不过是虚惊一场： 接受我的爱， 你的名誉不会有丝毫损失， 就象跳蚤之死不会让你的生命有所损失。
◆Metaphysical Poetry
• Part Two adopts another aspect of Tesauro’s “Theory of Conceit”. It explores how Donne uses images to express his contradictory feeling.
– Metaphysical Poetry is characterized by fantastically mysticism.
• Metaphysical poetry is a kind of realistic, often ironic and witty, verse combing intellectual ingenuity and psychological insight written partly in reaction to the conventions of Elizabethan love poetry by such seventeenthcentury poets as John Donne, George Herbert, Richard Crashaw , Thomas Traverse , and Andrew Marvell.
• The Metaphysical were out of critical favor for the 18th and 19th centuries (obviously, the Romantic poets found little in this heavily intellectualized poetry). • At the end of the 19th century and in the beginning of the 20th century, interest in this group picked up, and especially important was T.S. Eliot's famous essay "The Metaphysical Poets" (1921).
• Interest peaked this century with the New Critics school around mid-century, and now is tempering off a bit, though Donne, the original "Big Name" is being super ceded now by interest in George Herbert, who's religious seeking and questioning seems to be hitting a critical nerve.
delivering sermons that are regarded as the most brilliant and eloquent of his time.◆Sumary of The Flea
This poem is about the speaker used a flea as a bridge that made him and his mistress combine to become one. The listener "thou" was his lover. He loved her very much and even wants to make love with her, but she didn't.
• Part One explores the representative different viewpoints about conceit as a literary device and the specialties of each theory in the analysis of Donn e ’s conceits. In this part, conceit is more attached to Treasure’s “Theory of Conceit” connected with its origin, and its uniqueness as a literary device.
◆Donne's principal literary accomplishments during this period were Divine Poems (1607) and the prose work Biathanatos (c. 1608, posthumously published 1644), a half-serious extenuation of suicides, in which he argued that suicide is not intrinsically sinful.
4. 5.
Introduction to John Donne
● The leading figure of the
metaphysical school
Donne was born in London to a prominent Roman Catholic family.
At the age of 11 he entered the University of Oxford, where he studied for three years. According to some accounts, he spent the next three years at the University of Cambridge but took no degree at either university. He began the study of law at Lincoln's Inn, London, in 1592, and he seemed destined for a legal or diplomatic career.
◆Conceit
• John Donne, one of the most influential figures among Metaphysical poets, has been famous for his special use of conceit. This thesis endeavors to make a brief study on the characteristics of Donne’s conceits in The Flea.
◆Translation of The Flea
Mark but this flea, and mark in this, How little that which thou [1] deniest me is; Me it sucked first and now sucks thee [2], And in this flea our two bloods mingled be [3]; Thou know'st that this cannot be said A sin, or shame, or loss of maidenhead, Yet this enjoys before it woo, And pampered swells with one blood made of two, And this, alas, is more than we would do.