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The Complete Poems of Philip Larkin. Edited by Archie Burnett.
《拉金诗歌全集》阿奇·伯内特编辑。

Philip Larkin's fame could rest on a dozen poems alone. Even while he was still alive, the poet and lifelong librarian at Hull University in the north of England was considered by many to be one of the finest writers of his generation. With his love of jazz, beautiful women and the grey palettes of post-war Britain, his witty, acerbic verse was a fine counterpoint to the more sentimental stuff produced by the London-born poet laureate, Sir John Betjeman. Eminently quotable, Larkin's poetry caught a spirit of middle-class disaffection and quiet rebellion. He became known for the short, aphoristic sayings contained within the four slim volumes of poetry he published in his lifetime, such as the assertion that “Sexual intercourse began/In nineteen sixty-three”. His poems were pithy and to the point; short, but often demanding to be reread.
菲利普•拉金仅凭借几首诗就早已名声在望。当他还在世的时候，这位诗人在英格兰北部的赫尔大学做了一辈子的图书馆管理员。早在那时，他就被人们所认可，是同时代最优秀的作家之一。拉金喜爱爵士乐，钟情于美女，着迷于战后英国的消沉生活，他的诗句诙谐机智又尖酸讽刺，与伦敦出生的桂冠诗人约翰•贝杰曼爵士的感伤诗句形成鲜明对比。拉金的诗歌道出了中产阶级内心的不满和反抗，他的诗歌常常被人引用。拉金以短小精悍的警句而出名，一生共出版四本薄薄的诗集，例如他曾写道“开始云雨吧/在一九六三年”。拉金的诗歌简洁、精炼、短小，但能令人回味无穷。

This is one reason why the voluminous size of “The Complete Poems” is startling. Its editor, Archie Burnett, has carefully collected all of the poems Larkin ever wrote. Included in the volume are the four published collections and Larkin's previously published juvenilia, but also all that remained unpublished or unfinished, from sketches found in Larkin's archive to poems included in letters to friends.
这也是为什么鸿篇巨著的《诗歌全集》令人吃惊的原因之一。本书的编辑阿奇•伯内特仔细收集拉金写过的所有诗歌。其中包括四本已经出版的诗集，拉金青年时期发表的诗歌，还有拉金的手稿和写给友人的信件中包含的所有未发表或未完成的作品。

Mr Burnett presents a very different picture of Larkin from the one by which he came to be known; one that is far more literary, and occasionally far more amusing. A reader can now trace Larkin's development from his allusive Oxford University Labour Club Bulletin efforts “about trees and the sky and the seasons” to his more mature, better-known works. It may be common knowledge that his greatest poem, “The Whitsun Weddings”, took three painstaking years to complete, but it is less well known that during those years Larkin was writing constantly, and continually discarding his efforts.
伯内特别具新意，展现了拉金少为人知的一面；那个充满著书卷气，时常还很幽默风趣的拉金。读者能够从书中追溯拉金的发展，从他在《牛津大学工党俱乐部简报》上引经据典，描写“关于树木、天空和季节”的诗歌到他更为成熟，有名气的作品。众所周知，拉金最伟大的诗歌《降灵节婚礼》是他在三年时间内呕心沥血才完成，但少有人知道在这三年里，拉金一直在写诗，并不断否定放弃自己所做的努力。

The advantage of such a comprehensive volume is the possibility of tracing the development of a writer's voice. It is possible to hear in his poem, “On Being Twenty-six” the tone of world-weariness an older Larkin would make into an art form, looking back on “the slag/Of burnt-out childhood” with his familiar tone of regret laced with misanthropy: “Life, you aren't a god, you're a bloody old sod.” He disliked modern poetry, or the vogue for experimentation; even aged 18 he despaired of the lack of wit in contemporary literature: “Nothing like comedy/Can ever be admitted as poetry.” Women continued to remain a mystery to him, even after he left university, and mostly lost the stammer he had had since childhood. Now, instead of dreaming of “The idea of a kiss”, he merely knew his limits: “A bosomy English rose/And her friend in specs I could talk to.”
这部庞然巨著可以使读者看到作家个人思想的发展脉络。在《二十六岁》中，可能听出老拉金对世界感到厌倦的语气，他将这些感受融入到艺术形式之中。回顾《才思枯竭的童年》一诗，拉金用一如往常的语调表达了后悔和厌世之感：“生活，你不是上帝，你是个残忍的老家伙。”拉金不喜欢现代诗歌，亦反感实验主义的风潮；18岁的时候，他就已经对当代文学中缺乏风趣而深感绝望：“什么都比不上喜剧/怎能称之为诗句” 即使在拉金大学毕业之后，他基本上纠正了从孩童时期就有的口吃，但对拉金来说，女人依然是个谜。现在，不再幻想着“吻的遐想”，他知道了自己本领有限：“一位丰满的英国美女/但我只能与她戴眼镜的朋友搭讪。”

However, despite Mr Burnett's efforts, the contrast between Larkin's published poetry and his unfinished efforts remains. Frequently scatological, often crudely misogynistic, some of Larkin's unpublished work makes for uneasy reading. Sketches of poems which rhyme Jung with dung or James Joyce's “Ulysses” with faeces seem intended as private jokes, and they add little to the volume. Larkin himself was aware of this, entitling one series “Dances in Doggerel”. There is a reason why Larkin, normally so particular in his use of words, deemed them unworthy for publication.
尽管伯内特努力弥补，拉金已出版的诗歌和未完成的作品间差距仍然存在。他的作品里时有关于粪便的描写，对女人痛深恶绝，这些未出版的作品让读者读来感到很不舒服。在一些诗歌的草稿上，拉金将金（Jung）韵和粪便（dung）或将詹姆士•乔伊斯的《尤利西斯》（Ulysses）和粪便（faeces）一起押韵，有意写成私下里的笑话,这些对提升拉金诗的水平没有任何帮助。拉金自己对这一点有清醒认识，他将一系列诗命名为“在打油诗中跳舞”。这也是为什么拉金非常注意字词的选择，却认为这些诗不值得出版的原因。

Instead, his finest poems remain his best-loved: ones about his mother overhearing him playing blues records on the gramophone, or of feeling, once a guest has left, “the instantaneous grief of being alone”. They take place on trains or in an empty church, where the atheist Larkin takes off “My cycle-clips in awkward reverence”, and capture life as Larkin saw it, expressing “A hunger in himself to be more serious”. But it speaks of their greatness that these short poems, despite being swamped by so many of his other efforts, still manage to stand out.
然而，拉金依旧最爱他最好的诗歌：一些关于他母亲无意中偷听他在留声机上放布鲁士音乐，或是一位访客走后自己的感受，“独处时瞬间的悲伤”。这些故事发生在火车上，或一间空教堂里，无神论者拉金取下“我的回形针在静默中崇敬”，还是把眼之所及当成生活本身。“他的饥饿更重要”。这些诗歌都自有伟大之处，尽管它们被拉金其他诗歌所淹没，但仍能脱颖而出。