2013.01.30 莎士比亚必须是个黑人女孩

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What Maya Angelou Means When She Says 'Shakespeare Must Be a Black Girl'
By Karen Swallow Prior
JANUARY 30, 2013
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"The poetry you read has been written for you, each of you—black, white, Hispanic, man, woman, gay, straight."

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"Shakespeare must be a black girl."

Theories about the true identity of the author known as Shakespeare abound. Among those said by skeptics who might actually be the bard are contemporary playwright Christopher Marlowe; Sir Francis Bacon; the Earl of Oxford; a gay man; or perhaps rather than a single author, a collective including actors and various writers. Dozens more alternative theories have been proffered as alternatives to the traditional attribution of a copious body of work that includes some of the best loved sonnets and dramas in the English language to the man from Stratford-upon-Avon. But a black girl?


That was exactly the suggestion Maya Angelou made during an electrifying lecture held this week at Randolph College in Lynchburg, Virginia. Angelou, a great poet, novelist, and artist in her own right, was speaking metaphorically, of course.

Eighty-four years old and seated on the stage in a wheelchair for most of the address—looking more dignified than most able-bodied folks half her age--Angelou explained how as a young girl who once read (with no claim, necessarily, to understanding) every book in the tiny library in Stamps, Arkansas, she thought that the author of Sonnet 29 must have been a black girl because its solemn words expressed so fiercely what she—an outcast, the victim of racism, destitution, and childhood sexual abuse, crying out alone before a deaf heaven—felt inside:

When in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd,
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least.
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
And when Angelou recited them to us, these words sounded indeed like they had sprung forth from her soul.


Of course, what is best known about Angelou, besides her own words, is her silence. As a result of the abuse she experienced as a child, she was mute from the age of 7 to 13, an experience she writes about in her autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. But she has been anything but silent since then.

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In the women's literature class I'm teaching this semester—in which we are reading Angelou, along with Julian of Norwich, Margery Kempe, Anne Bradstreet, Phyllis Wheatley, Charlotte Bronte, Sylvia Plath, Margaret Atwood, and many more female authors—we are emphasizing the distinctive qualities of women's literature. We are marking what these authors bring to bear on the human condition, the tensions their writing reveals between public and private, personal and political, and the ways in which women's writing speaks to experiences at variance with those of the male writers in the traditional canon.

But Angelou's message was that there is more in poetry—and, by extension, all art—that unites than divides us. Not only can a long-dead, uber-white male writer like Shakespeare voice an experience so universal that it speaks truth to power for a poor black girl living in the Jim Crow American South, but that same girl can reflect years later on how the poetry of her beloved Edgar Allen Poe reads "like it was written by LL Cool J." (And that same girl can get kicked out of a theater for heckling a famous actor when he reads "The Raven" more like a Shakespearean actor than a rapper.)

Angelou's lecture, like the body of her work, was a testament to the power of art to unite us. It was also a testament to the power of art to save us. That was the theme of Angelou's talk: "Poetry has kept us alive," she declared again and again.

By "us," she sometimes meant her own people, those who were and descended from enslaved Americans who have survived in this country for 400 years. Because of poetry, "We are still here," she said.

But by "us" she mostly meant all of us. "The poetry you read has been written for you, each of you—black, white, Hispanic, man, woman, gay, straight." It has been written—and must be read, "so that you know you've already been paid for," she proclaimed like a preacher from the pulpit. She closed her lecture by reading the poem she was invited to write upon the occasion of the 50th anniversary for the United Nations. Then she said, "I wrote it for you."

Just like a dead white man once wrote a sonnet for her.

Karen Swallow Prior is a professor of English at Liberty University and a research fellow with the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. She is the author of Booked: Literature in the Soul of Me, Fierce Convictions: The Extraordinary Life of Hannah More, and On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life Through Great Literature.



玛雅-安吉洛说 "莎士比亚必须是个黑人女孩 "是什么意思？
作者：凯伦-斯瓦罗-普莱尔
1月30日, 2013
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"你读到的诗歌是为你写的，你们每个人--黑人、白人、西班牙裔、男人、女人、同性恋、异性恋。"

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美联社图片
"莎士比亚一定是个黑人女孩。"

关于被称为莎士比亚的作者的真实身份的理论比比皆是。怀疑论者说，真正可能是吟游诗人的人有：当代剧作家克里斯托弗-马洛；弗朗西斯-培根爵士；牛津伯爵；一个同性恋者；或者也许不是一个作者，而是一个包括演员和各种作家的集体。还有几十种其他理论被提出来，以替代传统上将大量的作品（包括英语中一些最受欢迎的十四行诗和戏剧）归于这位来自埃文河畔斯特拉特福的人。但是一个黑人女孩？


这正是玛雅-安吉卢本周在弗吉尼亚州林奇堡的伦道夫学院举行的一次激动人心的演讲中提出的建议。安吉卢是一位伟大的诗人、小说家和艺术家，当然，她是在比喻性地说话。

安吉洛今年84岁，在演讲的大部分时间里，她坐在轮椅上，看起来比她一半年龄的大多数健全人更有尊严--安吉洛解释说，作为一个年轻女孩，她曾经读过斯坦普斯小图书馆里的每本书（不一定要求理解）。她认为《十四行诗》第29首的作者一定是个黑人女孩，因为这首庄严的诗词如此强烈地表达了她--一个被抛弃的人，种族主义、贫困和童年性虐待的受害者，在聋哑的天堂面前独自呼喊的内心感受。

当我在财富和人们的目光中感到羞耻时，我独自哭泣。
我独自埋怨我的被抛弃状态。
用我无助的哭声烦扰聋子的天堂。
看着自己，诅咒自己的命运。
希望我像一个更富有希望的人。
像他一样有特色，像他一样有朋友。
渴望这个人的艺术，那个人的范围。
我最喜欢的东西却最不满足。
然而，在这些想法中，我自己几乎是轻视的。
偶而想到你，然后想到我的处境。
就像破晓时分的云雀一样
忧郁的大地，在天堂的门前唱起赞歌。
因为你甜美的爱，带来了如此财富
于是我不屑于与国王改变我的状态。
当安吉卢向我们朗诵这些话时，这些话听起来确实像是从她的灵魂中涌现出来的。


当然，除了她自己的话语，关于安吉卢最有名的是她的沉默。由于她在童年时经历的虐待，她从7岁到13岁都是哑巴，她在自传《我知道笼中鸟为何歌唱》中写到这段经历。但从那时起，她就不再沉默了。

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在我本学期教授的女性文学课上，我们正在阅读安吉卢，以及诺里奇的朱利安、玛格丽-肯普、安妮-布拉德斯特里特、菲利斯-惠特利、夏洛特-勃朗特、西尔维娅-普拉斯、玛格丽特-阿特伍德和其他许多女性作家，我们正在强调女性文学的独特品质。我们正在标记这些作家对人类状况的影响，她们的写作揭示了公共和私人、个人和政治之间的紧张关系，以及妇女的写作与传统典籍中的男性作家的经验不同的方式。

但安吉洛的信息是，在诗歌中，以及推而广之的所有艺术中，有更多的东西使我们团结起来而不是分裂。不仅像莎士比亚这样一个早已去世的超级白人男性作家可以表达一种如此普遍的经验，以至于对一个生活在美国南方吉姆-克劳的贫穷黑人女孩来说，它说出了真理，而且同一个女孩可以在多年后反映出她心爱的埃德加-爱伦-坡的诗歌如何读起来 "像LL Cool J写的"。(同一个女孩可以因为嘲笑一个著名演员而被赶出剧院，因为他读《乌鸦》时更像一个莎士比亚的演员而不是一个说唱歌手）。

安吉洛的演讲，就像她的作品一样，证明了艺术使我们团结的力量。它也是艺术拯救我们的力量的证明。这就是安吉洛演讲的主题。她一再宣称："诗歌使我们活着"。

她所说的 "我们"，有时是指她自己的人民，那些在这个国家生存了400年的被奴役的美国人和他们的后代。因为诗歌，"我们还在这里，"她说。

但她所说的 "我们 "主要是指我们所有人。"你们读的诗歌是为你们写的，你们每个人--黑人、白人、西班牙裔、男人、女人、同性恋、异性恋。它已经写好了，而且必须阅读，"这样你就知道你已经得到了回报，"她像一个讲坛上的传教士一样宣称。她在演讲结束时读了她应邀在联合国成立50周年之际写的那首诗。然后她说，"我是为你写的"。

就像一个死去的白人曾经为她写了一首十四行诗。

凯伦-斯瓦洛-普莱尔是自由大学的英语教授，也是南浸信会伦理与宗教自由委员会的研究员。她是Booked的作者。我灵魂中的文学》、《激烈的信念》。汉娜-莫尔的非凡人生》和《好好读书》。通过伟大的文学作品寻找美好的生活。