Name: 艾蜜莉·狄金森是如何寫詩的？✍️ (How Emily Dickinson Writes A Poem)
Uploaded: 2026-02-10T17:24:05.000Z
Duration: 7 min 40 s

講出所有真相，但要迂迴地講。

程度副詞

Success in circuit lies too bright for hour infirm delight the truth superb surprise as lightning to the children eased with explanation kind.

成功在於巧妙的佈局，太過耀眼，讓一時的愉悅無法理解那精湛的真相，如同閃電讓孩子們因親切的解釋而感到安心。

情態助動詞 B1

The truth must dazzle gradually or every man be blind.

真相必須逐漸地讓人驚豔，否則人人皆盲。

Of all the poems of Emily Dickinson, it's a little funny that this one feels so direct.

在 Emily Dickinson 的所有詩作中，這首詩讀起來卻如此直接，感覺有點好笑。

Dickinson is known for work that's full of ambiguity, odd manipulations in meter and rhyme, images that seem mysterious and sometimes out of place.

Dickinson 以作品充滿模糊性、對韻律和押韻的奇特運用、以及看似神祕且有時格格不入的意象而聞名。

這是一首充斥著傾斜真相的詩。

In other words, poetry that puts into practice the very philosophy that's seemingly laid out here in perfect meter and matching rhymes.

換句話說，這首詩實踐了在完美韻律和押韻中看似闡述的哲學。

It strikes me as odd that the poem which best describes this philosophy is one in which she abandons it on first read.

我覺得奇怪的是，最能描述這種哲學的詩，卻是初讀時她似乎拋棄了這種哲學的詩。

It appears that Dickinson is so intent on getting her point across that she repeats it four times.

看起來 Dickinson 非常在意把她的觀點傳達清楚，所以重複了四次。

First in line one, the most naked assertion.

首先在第一行，最赤裸的論斷。

She implores, tell the whole truth, but tell it indirectly.

她懇求，要說出全部的真相，但要間接地說。

Then in line two, she says this another way.

接著在第二行，她用另一種方式表達。

Success in telling the truth lies in a circuitous journey, not a direct one.

說出真相的成功在於迂迴的旅程，而非直接的方法。

In lines three and four, she describes the failure of that direct approach.

在第三和第四行，她描述了那種直接方法的失敗。

The surprise of direct truth is too bright for our weak and unstable capacity for delight.

直接真相的驚喜，對我們不穩定的愉悅能力來說太過耀眼。

It will, in other words, short circuit us.

And finally, in lines five through eight, she hammers home the point, again using lightning as a metaphor.

最後，在第五到第八行，她再次用閃電作為比喻，強調了重點。

The apprehension of truth must be gradual, she says, like a parent's explanation of lightning to children, rather than the lightning itself, which, if looked at directly, would blind the viewer.

她說，對真相的理解必須是漸進的，就像父母向孩子解釋閃電一樣，而不是閃電本身，因為如果直接看閃電，會讓觀看者失明。

After these four phrasings, the meaning could not be more clear.

經過這四種表達方式，意思再清楚不過了。

The truth is something worth telling the world, but it can't be presented head on.

真相是值得告訴世界的，但不能直接呈現。

It must come at an oblique angle if the writer hopes to have any chance at success.

作者若想成功，就必須從一個傾斜的角度切入。

Emily Dickinson always has something hiding up her sleeve.

Emily Dickinson 總是有點子藏在袖子裡。

說出所有真相，但要間接地說。

In the first line, the one that seems the most overt, Dickinson plants a seedling of ambiguity.

在第一行，看似最明顯的那句，狄金森種下了一顆模糊性的種子。

Does it refer to all the truth, as in the whole truth, as we said before, or all the people, as in tell everyone the truth?

它指的是我們之前說的，所有的真相，還是指告訴大家真相，告訴所有人？

it opens up a crack in the poem that foreshadows things to come success.

它在詩裡打開了一道縫隙，預示著接下來的成功。

在 circuit lies，事情變得更不穩定。

In a poem about truth, the word lie sticks out like a sore thumb.

在一首關於真相的詩裡，lie 這個字顯得格外突兀。

The sentence invites us to read it as reside or be found.

這句話邀請我們將它讀成 reside 或 be found。

But as Professor Ashby Crowder points out, the speaker doesn't seem to realize that she actually says circuit lies too, the line, in effect, containing its own contradiction.

但正如 Ashby Crowder 教授所指出的，說話者似乎沒有意識到她其實也說了 circuit lies，這句詩實際上包含了自身的矛盾。

Circuit is an important image in Dickinson's work, often contrasted with circumference, where circuit means life as we know it and circumference is the outer limit of experience, the tenuous, often frightening boundary between what humanity, human beings, can understand, and

circuit 在 Dickinson 的作品中是一個重要的意象，經常與 circumference 形成對比，其中 circuit 意味著我們所知的生命，而 circumference 則是經驗的外圍界限，是人類、人類能夠理解的事物與

無限，或大寫的真相之間的脆弱、常常令人恐懼的邊界。

Dickinson has a deeply ambivalent relationship with circumference, at times expressing that it's safer to remain within one circuit, at other times proclaiming my business is circumference, as she once did in a letter here.

Dickinson 對 circumference 抱持著一種深刻的矛盾關係，有時表達待在一個 circuit 裡更安全，有時則如她曾在信中說過的，宣稱我的事業就是 circumference。

Amazingly, she manages to condense that ambivalence into just four words without losing any of its complexity.

令人驚訝的是，她僅用四個字就濃縮了這種矛盾，而沒有失去任何複雜性。

對我們不穩定的愉悅來說太過耀眼。

The immediate thing you notice is that the sentence is flipped around so that the final word can be surprise.

你立刻注意到的是，這句話被翻轉了，所以最後一個字可以是 surprise。

The truth is a surprise, Dickinson says, one that is too bright for our delight, literally d light an emotion that is inherently weak and feeble.

狄金森說，真相令人驚喜，對我們的愉悅來說太過耀眼，字面上的「d light」是一種本質上軟弱無力的情感。

She contends it's about now when things start to fall off the rails a little bit.

她認為，現在就是事情開始有點失控的時候。

Because if truth is a surprise, a word that originally meant an attack without warning, a surprise too bright for us, how can anyone grab hold of it in the first place to repackage it in a slant or circuitous way?

因為如果真相是一種驚喜，一個原本意指毫無預警的攻擊的詞，一個對我們來說太過耀眼的驚喜，那麼一開始要如何抓住它，再用傾斜或迂迴的方式重新包裝呢？

The word surprise at the end of this phrase almost starts to feel ominous, like you've gone back into the poem only to find as lightning to the children eased with explanation, explanation kind.

這句話結尾的「surprise」這個詞，幾乎讓人感到不祥，彷彿你回到詩中，卻發現就像閃電對孩子們的解釋一樣，解釋很友善。

真相必須逐漸令人眼花繚亂，否則每個人都會失明。

Now that we're looking at this poem with some suspicion, it's easier to see the problems in the metaphor Dickinson picks to elucidate her earlier statements.

現在我們帶著些許懷疑來看這首詩，就更容易看出狄金森用來闡明她先前論斷的比喻中的問題了。

She equates telling slant truth to adults, easing children about lightning.

她將說傾斜的真相比喻成大人對孩子解釋閃電。

Except it's not the children who are eased here, according to this slightly confusing grief grammar.

除了根據這有點令人困惑的悲傷文法，被安撫的不是孩子。

Does an explanation, however kind, actually ease the force of lightning?

無論多麼友善的解釋，真的能減緩閃電的力量嗎？

It strikes me that children equipped with feeble emotions, facing a surprise attack from something that's so bright it will blind them, have good reason to be scared.

我覺得，那些情緒脆弱的孩子，面對突如其來的、會讓他們失明的強光襲擊，有理由感到害怕。

All a kind explanation can do, as Professor Gary Lee Stoneham notes, is offer a comforting but preposterous fiction, a realization that's brought home in the phrase dazzle gradually, which sounds great with its assonance but is ultimately oxymoronic.

正如 Gary Lee Stoneham 教授指出的，友善的解釋最多隻能提供一個令人寬慰但荒謬的虛構，這點在「逐漸令人眼花繚亂」這句話中得到了體現，這句話聽起來很不錯，因為有疊韻，但最終卻是矛盾的。

事物不可能「逐漸令人眼花繚亂」。

When something dazzles like lightning, it happens all at once.

當某樣東西像閃電一樣令人眼花繚亂時，那是一瞬間發生的。

那麼，我們現在處於什麼樣的境地呢？

Somewhere between the blindness of not ever being able to see the truth and the blindness of actually seeing it.

介於永遠無法看見真相的盲目，以及真正看見真相的盲目之間。

This, I think, is where Dickinson wanted to get us all along.

我想，這正是狄金森一直想帶我們去的地方。

She essentially wrote a poem that subverts itself.

她實際上寫了一首顛覆自身的詩。

This is not direct like it appears to be.

She knew all too well that a kind explanation of her philosophy just wouldn't work.

她深知，對她的哲學做一番友善的解釋是行不通的。

That feeling of the text being destabilized from within, oscillating from meaning to the negation of that meaning.

那種文本從內部被顛覆、從意義擺盪到意義的否定，那種感覺。

That's Dickinson showing you the lightning.

這就是狄金森在讓你看到那道閃電。

That's Dickinson stepping out onto the circumference, glimpsing some truth in the unstable place where language fails.

這就是狄金森踏上圓周，在那語言失效的不穩定之處瞥見真理。

而且這真是太令人目眩神迷了。

This episode was brought to you by Skillshare, an online learning community for creators with more than 18,000 classes in everything from graphic design and film editing to finance and IT security.

這集節目由 Skillshare 贊助播出，這是一個創作者的線上學習社群，有超過 18,000 堂課程，內容涵蓋平面設計、影片剪輯到金融和 IT 安全等各種領域。

You know, when I learned Photoshop, I learned it through a mishmash of disconnected YouTube videos.

說真的，我學 Photoshop 的時候，都是靠東拼西湊的 YouTube 影片學來的。

And the process would have gone a lot faster if there was a class dedicated to teaching me everything about that program in a systematic way.

如果當時有專門的課程，系統性地教我關於那個軟體的一切，學習過程肯定會快很多。

Learning new skills is really valuable to me because whenever I learn a new skill, it's like a bunch of new ideas are suddenly unlocked in my head.

學習新技能對我來說真的很寶貴，因為每次學到新東西，都像是腦袋裡突然解鎖了一堆新想法。

我就會想，我可以用這個做些什麼呢？

And that always helps me with writer's Block.

A premium membership begins around $10 a month for unlimited access to all courses.

高級會員方案每月約 $10 美元起，可無限暢學所有課程。

But the first 500 people to sign up using the link in the description get their first two months for free.

但前 500 名使用說明區連結註冊的人，可以享有前兩個月免費。

In those two months, you could easily learn the skills you need to start a new hobby or business.

這兩個月內，你就能輕鬆學到開始新嗜好或事業所需的技能。

More importantly, the skills you learn will help give you ideas for what that business or art project could be.

更重要的是，你學到的技能將有助於激發你關於事業或藝術專案的點子。