DAY 91 Eavan Boland died on April 27th
依婉·伯兰 伊万·博兰
Eavan （even） “美丽的光泽、光彩”（1944年9月24日至2020年4月27日）是爱尔兰诗人，作家和教授。
自1996年开始在斯坦福大学担任professor 她的工作涉及爱尔兰民族身份的认同以及妇女在爱尔兰历史中的作用。
The Irish poet who recovered and championed women’s voices was 75
Irish [ˈaɪrɪʃ] adj.爱尔兰的，爱尔（人[语，文化…）的;
recover =regain 重新找回
1> to win back a position, level, status, etc. that has been lost
(重获，赢回)
2> to get back the use of your senses, control of your emotions, etc.champion /ˈtʃæmpiən/ 支持；拥护；捍卫
to fight for or speak in support of a group of people or a beliefwomen /ˈwɪmɪn/
voices /vɔɪs/
poet [ˈpəʊɪt]Ireland ['aɪələnd]
爱尔兰共和国（爱尔兰语：Poblacht na hÉireann；英语：Republic of Ireland），简称“爱尔兰”（Ireland），是一个西欧的议会共和制国家，西临大西洋，东靠爱尔兰海，与英国隔海相望，是北美通向欧洲的通道，爱尔兰自然环境保持得相当好，素有“翡翠岛国”之称，全国绿树成荫，河流纵横。草地遍布，所以又有“绿岛”和“绿宝石”之称。它的大学教育非常成熟，首都都柏林自中世纪起就被誉为大学城。国内气候温和，各地的气温相对均衡。5~6月份是一年中阳光最充足的时期，比较适宜旅行。爱尔兰人属于凯尔特人，是欧洲大陆第一代居民的子嗣，1169年开始遭到英格兰入侵，1541年起英王成为爱尔兰国王，1916年都柏林爆发了反抗大英帝国殖民统治的复活节起义，1921年12月6日，双方签订《英爱条约》，英被迫允许爱南部26郡成立爱尔兰自由邦，但北部6郡仍属英国，成为现在的北爱尔兰，1937年爱尔兰宣布成立共和国并独立，但仍留在英联邦内，1948年12月21日脱离英联邦，并通过宪法成为永久中立国，1949年4月18日，英国承认爱尔兰独立。
1 When summer nights were warm, Eavan Boland liked to stand in the front doorway of her small suburban house in Dundrum, outside Dublin. She would look at the buddleia, and at the lamplight glossing the leaves of the hedge. Yet these things were not simply visible to her. She saw them with her body. It was as if she was part of some great continuum, or stood in a place of myth, like the women singers she imagined in the hard west of Ireland whose mouths were filled with “Atlantic storms and clouded-over stars/and exhausted birds”.
Dublin [ˈdʌblɪn] n.都柏林（爱尔兰首都）;
Dundrum 邓德拉姆 [地名] [爱尔兰、英国] 邓德拉姆;
suburban [səˈbɜːbən] 郊区的;城外的
doorway [ˈdɔːweɪ] 门口 门廊
an opening into a building or a room, where the door isbuddleia /ˈbʌdliə/ n.醉鱼草;
a bush with purple or white flowers that grow in groups
醉鱼草全株有小毒，捣碎投入河中能使活鱼麻醉，便于捕捉，故有“醉鱼草”之称。lamplight /ˈlæmplaɪt/ light from a lamp
glossing 照射 （gloss 光泽）
hedge [hedʒ] 树篱
A hedge is a row of bushes or small trees, usually along the edge of a garden, field, or road. 绿篱是一排排灌木或小树，通常是沿着花园、田野或道路的边缘，在花园、田野或道路的边缘。continuum /kənˈtɪnjuəm/ 连续统一体 [正式] [usu sing] 连续发生的事情
a series of similar items in which each is almost the same as the ones next to it but the last is very different from the first =cline
myth [mɪθ]
hard west of Ireland 爱尔兰西部艰苦地区
hard——艰难，凛冽，严苛
hard west of Ireland
clouded-over 乌云密布THE SINGERS (for M. R.) by Eavan Boland The women who were singers in the West lived on an unforgiving coast. I want to ask was there ever one moment when all of it relented, when rain and ocean and their own sense of home were revealed to them as one and the same? After which every day was still shaped by weather, but every night their mouths filled with Atlantic storms and clouded-over stars and exhausted birds. And only when the danger was plain in the music could you know their true measure of rejoicing in finding a voice where they found a vision.
2 This sense of communality, which led her to be one of Ireland’s finest poets, was essentially a woman’s feeling. And it was missing almost entirely from Irish poetry. There the voice was male, bardic, authoritative, grown sweet and self-confident on the flattery of princes. It was “I”, not “we”. The poet was a hero, a seer, a towering figure (Yeats above all), whose themes were history, epic and elegy. This was not a world for women. When they featured in the work they were mostly objectified, passive and silent. No page recorded “the low music/of our outrage”. Their own poems were not encouraged, as if they were women’s-magazine things that would defile the pure, visionary flow. If she were to write in the men’s style, with their assurance, she would fit right in, as she fitted into the clever literary conversations in the pubs round St Stephen’s Green when she was at Trinity College. But once she was married and the mother of two small daughters, happy if she could jot down just one line or one image, that was not her life.
This sense of communality 通感
communality [kɒmjʊ'nælɪtɪ] n.公社性，集体性，团结;
finest 最杰出的代表
essentially [ɪˈsenʃəli] adv. 本质上；本来bardic, authoritative, grown sweet
bard 吟游诗人 bardic ['bɑ:dɪk] adj. 吟游诗人的
authoritative [ɔːˈθɒrətətɪv] adj. 有权威的；命令式的；当局的
1> showing that you expect people to obey and respect you
2> that you can trust and respect as true and correct
grown sweetseer /sɪə(r)/ 预言家
(especially in the past) a person who claims that they can see what is going to happen in the future = propheta towering figure 伟人， 顶尖人物
elegy /ˈelədʒi/ n 挽歌 悼文
a poem or song that expresses sad feelings, especially for somebody who has diedobjectify /əbˈdʒektɪfaɪ/ vt. 使客体化，使客观化，使具体化;
to treat somebody/something as an object, without rights or feelings of their ownoutrage [ˈaʊtreɪdʒ]
[u] a strong feeling of shock and angervisionary flow 有眼光，有想象力的，
flow 流畅度（文章的flow很好）assurance [əˈʃʊərəns]
n. 保证，担保；（人寿）保险；确信；断言；厚脸皮，无耻
1>[c] a statement that something will certainly be true or will certainly happen, particularly when there has been doubt about it
= guarantee, promise
2>[u] belief in your own abilities or strengths = confidence
3> [u] (British English) a type of insurance in which money is paid out when somebody dies or after an agreed period of timeTrinity College 圣三一学院
jot down /dʒɒt/
to write something quicklyimage 意向
3 Her days now revolved round cooking, washing up, nappies, feeds; lifting the kettle to the gas stove, setting her skirt over a chair to have it without creases for the morning. They were full of small untidinesses and oversights which assumed huge importance, like the loaf forgotten by the cash register, or washing left wet. They were full, too, of hidden satisfactions: a row of cups winking on their saucers, a copper pan well polished, fresh green celery feathers. Much of this was so ordinary that it might have seemed unremarkable. Certainly it was not named in Irish poetry. But ordinariness, “dailiness”, was precisely what she wanted to capture. The surfaces of things could barely hold what was under them; just as the small, routine gestures of many couples contained the unspoken steadfastness of love.
revolved round 围绕...转动以...为中心围绕
wash up 洗餐具；洗手洗脸
nappy [ˈnæpi] 尿布；含酒精饮料（尤指啤酒）；（装菜用的）平底浅盆crease /kriːs/
v
to make lines on cloth or paper by folding or pressing it; to develop lines in this way
n
an untidy line that is made in cloth or paper when it is pressed or folded without careloaf /ləʊf/ n面包
an amount of bread that has been shaped and baked in one pieceoversights 疏忽
celery feather 芹菜叶
unremarkable. 普通的
remarkable. 值得注意的
it was not named 不值得记录The surfaces of things could barely hold what was under them
事物的表象难以承载它的内在unspoken steadfastness of love. 坚定而无声的爱
4 Other “women’s subjects” needed tackling more forcefully. She had no qualms about that. The whole poetic tradition had to be scrubbed and abraded with the wash stones of resistance. So an anorexic torched her witch-body, its “curves and paps” until, “thin as a rib”, she could slip back into Adam again, “as if I had never been away”. A menstruating woman confronted the moon, “dulled by it/thick with it…a water cauled by her light…barren with her blood.” Shockingly, a wife who believed “I was not myself, myself” in her everyday dutifulness felt herself remade when her husband, coming home tight, split her lip and knuckled her neck “to its proper angle”; and was grateful for his remodelling.
Other “women’s subjects” needed tackling more forcefully.
其他女性的话题需要用更有利的表达方式
qualm /kwɑːm/ = misgiving
qualm (about something)
a feeling of doubt or worry about whether what you are doing is rightscrubbed 摩擦
abraded with 磨损
wash stonesThe whole poetic tradition 需要更多的打磨
anorexic /ˌænəˈreksɪk/ 厌食症
a person who is suffering from anorexia
anorexia /ˌænəˈreksiə/
an emotional disorder, especially affecting young women, in which there is an abnormal fear of being fat, causing the person to stop eating, leading to dangerous weight loss
torch /tɔːtʃ/ v
to set fire to a building or vehicle deliberately in order to destroy it
paps 半流制的食物
thin as a rib 仿佛骨瘦如柴像……需要打磨一样，她被厌食症打磨
slip back 滑回去
menstruating 月经初潮
dull /dʌl/ 使迟钝
1> to make a person slower or less lively
2> to make a pain or an emotion weaker or less severe; to become weaker or less severe
caul noun
1> a part of the amnion sometimes covering the head of a child at birth.
2> greater omentum.
3> a net lining in the back of a woman's cap or hat.
4>a cap or hat of net formerly worn by women.
1> 羊膜的一部分，有时在孩子出生时覆盖着孩子的头部。
2> 大网膜。
3> 女性的帽子或帽子后面的网状内衬。
4> 以前妇女所戴的一种网状的帽子或帽子。knuckled 用关节hit
coming home tight 严厉的神色
split her lip 打破一半的嘴唇 （家暴）
5 Yet the all-too-ordinary often slipped into something else. She was too deeply read in the myths and epics of Ireland for it to be otherwise. The life that was lived in a brick house could still have a visionary quality. In “Night Feed”, she noticed not only the rosy zipped sleeper, the hard suckling, the silt of milk left in the bottle, but the movements of earth and stars, and the “long fall from grace” as the feed ended. The stopping of the tumble-dryer, like death, began “to bury/The room in white spaces.” An old florin, brushed on a shelf, turned into a silver salmon.
all-too-ordinary 平常人
read /red/ a
(of a person) having knowledge that has been gained from reading books, etc.visionary quality. 梦幻的气质
zipped sleeper 拉链睡衣
the hard suckling 吮吸
the silt of milk 奶自tumble-dryer ['tʌmbldr'aɪər] n.衣服烘干机;
tumble /ˈtʌmbl/ v
1> tumble (somebody/something) + adv./prep.
to fall downwards, often hitting the ground several times, but usually without serious injury; to make somebody/something fall in this way
2> tumble (down)
to fall suddenly and in a dramatic waylong fall from grace 失宠 过气
florin /ˈflɒrɪn/
an old British coin worth two shillings (= now 10p)
salmon 鲑鱼She was too deeply read in the myths and epics of Ireland for it to be otherwise.
她不想做一个普通人
6 That everyday life was also not remote from history. But she preferred to call it The Past: a place of shadows, fragments, defeats, rather than heroics. The Troubles appeared, through an ancient television set, as “grey and greyer tears” and “moonlight-coloured funerals”. Emigration to America was a woman in a gansy-coat on the deck of the Mary Belle, holding her half-dead baby to her. In “Quarantine” the worst year of the famine, 1847, was encapsulated in a couple found frozen, he still carrying her, holding her feet against his breastbone to try to warm them. Just two people’s deaths, how they had lived, what they had suffered,
And what there is between a man and woman.
And in which darkness it can best be proved.
1847年爱尔兰大饥荒 黑历史
7 Such themes were inevitable, for her discovery of her woman’s voice in poetry was meshed to her discovery of Ireland. She had left that home at the age of six, when her diplomat father was posted to London and then New York. When at 14 she returned, she did not know the secret language of the country, especially of Dublin, which she grew to love. As a woman she saluted “Anna Liffey” as the river rose in the hills above her house, flowing through black peat and bracken, then claiming and “retelling” the city for her, putting the pieces together, as she went on trying to.
8 Ireland, though, could still disappoint her. In 1991, when the monumental Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing came out, she was one of only three contemporary women poets included. Furious, she fired up her campaign for women to be noticed and, through poetry workshops, for poetry to be extended to all who had no voices. After 1996 a professorship at Stanford, alternating with trips home, allowed her to check on progress from abroad. By the 21st century, to her delight, women poets were flourishing in Ireland, and two new Field Day volumes were devoted to women’s writing. Though she never liked to take credit, she had been a voice and a constant encouragement; she had changed the conversation.
Make of a nation what you will
Make of the past
What you can—
There is now
A woman in a doorway.
It has taken me
All my strength to do this.
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