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Editor’s note: “Fortunately, I was accompanied by religious faith, brilliant sunshine and lush grass on Bascom Hill in my last days in Madison. Will I miss this Midwest small town? I have no idea…But I am sure I will miss my friends here, animals on my daily walks, and the white wintry landscape…” This is part of my diary before leaving Madison, the capital of Wisconsin, USA, in May 2012. From September 2011 to the following June, I left home for 10 months and studied (as a visiting student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison) in North America for the first time. Mr. Louis Paolin Wu—a senior in English Department who gave me much support and encouragement during my stay—was invited to write for this issue. Majoring in American Literature, Nature Writing, Environmental justice and related issues, Mr. Wu, through several English poems and photographs, will share his portrait of life in this northern small town with all readers.

編按 : 「慶幸的是，在 Madison 最後一段日子裡，有信仰的陪伴，有燦爛的陽光和蔥綠色的 Bascom Hill... 我會想念這個中西部小城嗎？我不知道 ... 但想念的也許會是朋友們，每天散步時看到的小動物們，還有冬天裡的那一片白茫茫的雪地吧 ...」 這是我在 2012 年 5 月離開美國威斯康辛州首府麥迪遜前夕所寫的日記。我在 2011年 9 月到隔年 6 月，第一次離家長達 10 個月和在北美求學（威斯康辛大學麥迪遜分校的訪問學生 )。本期特邀作者－吳保霖先生－正是在那年給予我在學習和生活上極大協助和鼓勵的英文系學長。主修美國文學、自然寫作、環境正義與相關議題的他，這次要透過英文詩和照片、與讀者分享在這個北國小鎮的生活素描。

William Blake, an English Romantic poet, once wrote a poem:

英國詩人威廉布萊克 ( William Blake ) 曾經寫下詩句：

To see a world in a grain of sand 一沙一世界And a heaven in a wild flower 一花一天堂Hold infinity in the palm of your hand 掌中握無限 And eternity in an hour. 剎那現永恆

I.

I still remember my first journey to Madison, Wisconsin—a small college town in the north. It was an exhausting trip which lasted for more than 24 hours with 2 stopovers. I arrived in Madison almost at midnight, when some seniors--without considering how late it was--still patiently waited for picking us up at the airport. I was too tired to remember what time it was and where I was!

記得初來乍到北方小鎮威斯康辛州麥迪遜市時，已是經歷了超過二十四小時的長途飛行和兩次轉機等待的疲倦，而最後抵達時已是將近半夜。來機接的學長姊仍不辭辛苦地在機場等待，而我已經不知今夕是何夕，更不知身在何方了。

On our way leaving this local airport, it was completely dark in the surroundings. Houses appeared in our horizons after we drove for a while, and then we slowly moved into the downtown area. The senior pointed to an empty small street outside the window, saying that it was the most bustling street in the daytime. I took a look at it, responding jokingly that “it is like our Sec. 4, Zhongxiao E. Rd.” However, I was murmuring to myself that the square in front of the train station in my hometown, Douliu, might be more bustling than this street.

立足曉明 放眼國際 :國際教育專刊

Read Bi-lingually, Think Globally:

Essays on Internationalizing Education

2015 年 06 月 12 日第 7期

Issue 7 : June 12, 2015

文學人之眼

In the Eyes of a Literary Person

編譯：賴翊瑄 (Chief Editor: Carol Lai)

北國小鎮麥迪遜Madison, a Small Town in the North

Written by Louis Paolin Wu, (PhD Candidate in American Literautre,

Dept. of English, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA)

Photo Credits: Louis Paolin Wu & Dr. Ming-Fong Jan(Assistant Professor, National Central University, Taiwan)

Co-translators: Louis Paolin Wu & Carol Lai

吳保霖 (文字 &攝影 )美國威斯康辛大學麥迪遜校區英文系美國文學博士候選人

詹明峰 (攝影 )國立中央大學助理教授

吳保霖 & 賴翊瑄 (共同翻譯 )

攝影 :詹明峰

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依稀還記得，負責接待我的學長開車載我緩緩地離開小鎮機場，四週一片漆黑，過了一會兒之後，開始出現了房子，然後進入了市區。只見學長指著窗外一條空蕩蕩的小街，說是此鎮白天最熱鬧的街道，我看了一下，開玩笑地回應學長：「忠孝東路四段。」然而事實上，我心裡嘀咕著，恐怕連我老家斗六火車站前都比這熱鬧。

This was the small town in the north where I would start my doctoral studies.

而這是我即將就讀博士生涯的北方小鎮。

For many years, I had heard people talking about “A Hard Journey”—an essay written by Professor Yu-Fen Ko. Madison was the very small town she depicted in this essay. I was impressed by her descriptions of the stress caused by studying for PhD alone in an unfamiliar country, by being frequently haunted by loneliness, by feeling uncertain toward the future, and by enduring the half-year-long freezing winter in this northern small town. I also have heard that some students who graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and went back to Taiwan usually found it unbearable to recall this “ghostly place” (a terrible place).

多年來，總是聽人提起柯裕棻老師的〈行路難〉，文中描寫的正是同一個小鎮，孤身一人出國讀博士所面對的課業壓力，時常壟罩在心裡深處巨大而孤獨的影子之下，對於未來的茫然和不確定感，還有那北國動輒長達半年的冰冷寒冬。也曾聽聞有人畢業離開之後，只要提起那北國小鎮，總流露出一副對於那個「鬼地方」不堪回首的唏噓。

II

Marcel Proust, the famous French writer, once said: "The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes."

法國作家普魯斯特 (Marcel Proust) 說過：「真正的探索之旅不在於發現新的風景，而是用新的眼界看待風景。」

Growing older and more experienced, I gradually found that “ghost” exists not in places we live or visit but in our hearts—because what confine us are not those “ghostly places” but our hearts and the boundary (or even boundaries) we draw for ourselves. Therefore, it is up to ourselves whether we step over the self-inflicted limitation(s) and see everything around us with new eyes.

隨著生命的成長和歷練，我發現往往有「鬼」的不是地方，卻是人的心。因為會困住自己的其實並不是所謂外在的「鬼地方」，而是自己的心，還有那自己給自己畫的那一條線，甚至很多條線。因此，一切都要看你願不願意走出去，跨過那條線，用新的眼睛去看週遭的人事物。

Throughout the years, I have learned to let go all “boundaries” and “limitations” in my heart, and to see this small town without much preconception. Surprisingly, I then found more and more beauty and richness in this place. Moreover, whenever I have free time, I will drive out of town and enjoy the serene landscape in the countryside. The breeze and the azure sky remind me of the beauty in another English Romantic poet, William Wordsworth’s poem:

所以這些年來，我學習放下心中所有的「線」和「限」，用放空的心去看這個小鎮，卻發現越來越多的精采和美麗。甚至一有閒暇時光，就開車出城在田園之間閒晃，欣賞寧靜的鄉村風光。和風徐徐，藍天白雲，彷彿就像是英國詩人華茲華斯 (William Wordsworth) 詩中的畫面 (*1)：

I wandered lonely as a cloud 孤獨流浪我似雲That floats on high o'er vales and hills, 飄過溪谷和高山When all at once I saw a crowd, 驟然看見一大群A host, of golden daffodils; 簇簇金色的水仙Beside the lake, beneath the trees, 在湖畔在樹林下Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. 迎著風抖擻起舞

Sometimes, there is no destination, and there is no hurry. Feel free to get lost somewhere. We will never know what beauty awaits us on the path.

有時候，既沒有目的，也不趕路，甚至就迷路，卻遇見了驚喜和美麗。

攝影 :詹明峰

攝影 : 吳保霖

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III

Whenever it snows in Madison, I think of the metaphor for marriage in Qian Zhongshu’s Fortress Besieged: “Marriage is like a fortress besieged: those who are outside want to get in, and those who are inside want to get out” (*2). As a result, snow makes some Taiwanese students want to escape from Madison, but at the same time, for those who have left and missed the snow, they desire to return to Madison.

每當麥城下起了雪，常常就像錢鍾書的《圍城》裡對婚姻的比喻，「婚姻是被圍困的城堡，城外的人想衝進去，城裡的人想逃出來」。所以下雪了，在威斯康辛的台灣朋友想逃出去，而有些離開威斯康辛的人卻因為思念而想回來。

Perhaps, the key is not the snow itself but the moods of snow beholders.

或許，關鍵根本就不在於雪，而在於看雪人的心情。

Here is a poem entitled “The Snow Man” by Wallace Stevens, an American poet:

美國詩人 Wallace Stevens 的一首詩 "The Snow Man” ( 雪人 ) (*3) :

One must have a mind of winter To regard the frost and the boughs Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

要有冬天的心境才會在看見霜雪和那些結了一層雪的松樹枝條

And have been cold a long time To behold the junipers shagged with ice, The spruces rough in the distant glitter

而且要感受了好一陣子的寒冷才會在看見刺柏結了長絨般的一層冰

以及那粗曠的雲杉，遠遠的閃亮

Of the January sun; and not to think Of any misery in the sound of the wind, In the sound of a few leaves,

在一月的陽光時；才不會感受到任何悲愴之意──在風聲裏

在幾片樹葉的聲音裏

Which is the sound of the land Full of the same wind That is blowing in the same bare place

而這是大地的聲音充滿相同的風

在同一個荒蕪的地方刮着

For the listener, who listens in the snow, And, nothing himself, beholds Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

對於那位聆聽者而言不過這樣他在雪裏傾聽着，內心空無一物，看不到

那些不在這裏的東西，看到這裏沒有任何東西

The hardship humans experience in their life journeys are incomprehensible to the wind, the snow, and the coldness in the wintertime, since these elements belong to nature. Different from humans, who would have various emotional responses to the changes of seasons, the snowman in Stevens’ poem does not. Thus, for our human hearts, a changing autumn landscape would stir ripples of sorrow and sadness; a desolate wintry landscape would even provoke storms of sigh and despair. However, for the snowman in the snow, it has no heart; nothing as it is in itself, it sees snow as nothing. Quietly as it snows, the whole white landscape is merely a part of nature.

對於冬天的風雪和寒冷而言，它並不瞭解人的行路難，因為它本是屬於大地的一部分。對於自然四季的變化，人會起心動念，詩中的雪人卻不會。是故秋心曰愁，冬心則愁上加愁，百感交集。然而雪人並無心，本身是空，見雪也是空。一切安安靜靜地，回歸於自然。

編按 :

*1 中文翻譯摘自 莊坤良 筆記*2 English Translation from Wikipedia*3 中文翻譯摘自 : http://goo.gl/QguWLt

攝影 :詹明峰