Anecdote of the Jar
Wallace Stevens
I placed a jar in Tennessee,
And round it was, upon a hill,
It made the slovenly wilderness
Surround that hill.
The wilderness rose up to it,
And sprawled around, no longer wild,
The jar was round upon the ground
And tall and of a port in air.
It took dominion everywhere,
The jar was gray and bare,
It did not give of bird or bush,
Like nothing else in Tennessee.
坛子的轶事
沃莱斯·斯蒂文斯
（赵毅衡译）
我把一只坛放在田纳西，
它是圆的, 置在山巅。
它使凌乱的荒野，
围着山峰排列。
于是荒野向坛子涌起，
甸旬在四周,再不荒莽。
坛子圆圆地置在地上，
高高屹立,巍峨庄严。
它君临着四面八方，
坛是灰色的,未施彩妆。
它无法产生鸟或树丛，
不像田纳西别的东西。
坛子轶事
华莱士·史蒂文斯
（宗志蒙译）
我放一坛于田纳西，
圆圆地置于山顶。
它使散乱的荒野，
绕山排列。
四野八荒涌向坛子，
向它延伸，不再蛮荒。
坛子圆圆，立于地上，
高高耸起，如空中海港。
坛子主宰四野，
灰色示人，未经修饰。
不予鸟儿和灌木，
别于田纳西的旁物。
An Introduction to the Poet:
Wallace Stevens (October 2, 1879 – August 2, 1955) was an American Modernist poet. He was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, educated at Harvard and then New York Law School. He spent most of his life working as an executive for an insurance company in Hartford, Connecticut. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his Collected Poems in 1955. Some of his best-known poems include “Anecdote of the Jar”, “Disillusionment of Ten O’Clock”, “The Emperor of Ice-Cream”, “Sunday Morning”, and “The Snow Man”. “Anecdote of the Jar” is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium.
Note:
The version of 赵毅衡（Zhao Yiheng）was translated in 1980s and embodied in Whole Chinese -- Fisherman’s Wharf（《大语文——渔人码头》）by Cao Wenxuan （曹文轩）in May 2016; 宗志蒙（Zong Zhimeng）is a Grade-2013 English major of the Department of Foreign Languages at China Women’s University.
Contributor: Zong Zhimeng
Adviser: Ding Zhangang
Editor: Lei Yidan