《歷史系男生》是一部以喜劇方式展現(xiàn)英國北部男子中學學生備考牛津和劍橋大學招生考試的故事的電影。故事圍繞一群高智商男生展開，每個人都有著不同的個性特點。其中有萬人迷的Dakin，還有四肢發(fā)達頭腦聰明的Rudge等等。他們對課本和知識都有著自己獨特的解讀。教授他們文學的是一個肥胖、教學方式獨特的怪老頭Hector，他認為學生應該通過課本來獲得情感上的共鳴和享受，而不僅僅是為了升學而讀書。與他的教學方式相反的是學校新聘請的老師Tom，他的目標是幫助這些孩子盡可能地考上牛津或劍橋大學。兩種老師的不同教學模式引發(fā)了思考，到底哪一種更好，可能并沒有一個標準答案。影片以幽默輕松的方式展現(xiàn)了這群男生在備考過程中的種種趣事和挑戰(zhàn)。同時，影片也展現(xiàn)了友誼和團隊合作的重要性，以及每個人都有自己獨特的才華和價值。這部電影不僅僅是一部喜劇，更是一部讓人思考的作品。

考據(jù)癖如我找了找片中提到的詩歌。
原詩在前，網(wǎng)上能找到的中文譯本放在后面。這幾首里我最喜歡是《鼓手霍奇》。

[No.1] 眠歌- []Lullaby

By W.H.Auden

Lay your sleeping head, my love,
Human on my faithless arm;
Time and fevers burn away
Individual beauty from
Thoughtful children, and the grave
Proves the child ephemeral:
But in my arms till break of day
Let the living creature lie,
Mortal, guilty, but to me
The entirely beautiful.

Soul and body have no bounds:
To lovers as they lie upon
Her tolerant enchanted slope
In their ordinary swoon,
Grave the vision Venus sends
Of supernatural sympathy,
Universal love and hope;
While an abstract insight wakes
Among the glaciers and the rocks
The hermit's carnal ecstasy.

Certainty, fidelity
On the stroke of midnight pass
Like vibrations of a bell
And fashionable madmen raise
Their pedantic boring cry:
Every farthing cost,
All the dreaded cards foretell,
Shall be paid, but from this night
Not a whisper, not a thought,
Not a kiss nor look be lost.

Beauty, midnight, vision dies:
Let the winds of dawn that blow
Softly round your dreaming head
Such a day of welcome show
Eye and knocking heart may bless,
Find our mortal world enough;
Noons of dryness find you fed
By the involuntary powers,
Nights of insult let you pass
Watched by every human love.

　搖籃曲

　　薛舟 譯

放下你沉睡的頭，我的愛，
在我背叛的臂彎里：
時間和熱病燒掉了
個體的美麗，從
沉思的孩子身上，墳墓
證明那孩子的短命：
但在破曉之前，先讓僅存的生者
躺在我的臂彎，
平凡、有罪，對我來說
卻是徹底的美麗。

愛人們的靈魂和肉體沒有界限：
當他們躺在
慣常的陶醉中那
被施以魔法的寬容的斜坡，
銘記下維納斯送來
超自然的同情心、
以及普遍的愛和希望的幻象；
當一個抽象的頓悟
從冰河與巖石中
喚醒隱士世俗的狂熱。

確定性，和忠誠
在午夜鐘聲的敲打中走開
像一個鈴鐺在顫動
時髦的瘋子提高了
他們書生氣的煩人的喊叫：
損失掉的每一法尋都要被償還。
所有恐怖的紙牌的預言都要得到兌現(xiàn)。
但不是從這個夜晚
也不是一聲耳語，一個想法
不是一個吻，更不是錯過的一瞥。

美、午夜、幻象都將死去：
就讓黎明的風吹著
輕柔地環(huán)繞你做夢的頭
這樣受歡迎的一天顯示出
眼睛和搏動的心臟或許在祝福，
發(fā)現(xiàn)我們平凡的世界已經(jīng)足夠；
干燥的正午你已經(jīng)被喂飽
被一種不經(jīng)意的力量，
凌辱之夜允許你通過
在每一對世間愛人的注視下。
 

　



[No.2] 美術館- []Musée des Beaux Arts

By W. H. Auden

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

美術館

查良錚 譯

關于苦難他們總是很清楚的，
這些古典畫家：他們多么深知它在
人心中的地位，深知痛苦會產(chǎn)生，
當別人在吃，在開窗，或正作著無聊的散步的時候；
深知當老年人熱烈地、虔敬地等候
神異的降生時，總會有些孩子
并不特別想要他出現(xiàn)，而卻在
樹林邊沿的池塘上溜著冰。
他們從不忘記：
即使悲慘的殉道也終歸會完結
在一個角落，亂糟糟的地方，
在那里狗繼續(xù)過著狗的生涯，而迫害者的馬
把無知的臀部在樹上摩擦。

在勃魯蓋爾的《伊卡魯斯》里，比如說；
一切是多么安閑地從那樁災難轉過臉：
農(nóng)夫或許聽到了墮水的聲音和那絕望的呼喊，
但對于他，那不是了不得的失敗；
太陽依舊照著白腿落進綠波里；
那華貴而精巧的船必曾看見
一件怪事，從天上掉下一個男孩，
但它有某地要去，仍靜靜地航行。

美術館

余光中 譯

說到苦難，他們從未看錯，
古代那些大師：他們深切體認
苦難在人世的地位；當苦難降臨，
別人總是在進食或開窗或僅僅默然走過；
當長者正虔誠地、熱烈地等，
等奇跡降臨，總有孩子們
不特別期待它發(fā)生，正巧
在林邊的池塘上溜冰：
大師們從不忘記
即使可怖的殉道也必須在一隅
獨自進行，在雜亂的一隅
一任狗照常過狗的日子，酷吏的馬匹
向一顆樹干摩擦無辜的后臀。

例如布魯果的《伊卡瑞斯》，眾人
都悠然不顧那劫難，那農(nóng)夫可能
聽見了水波濺灑，呼救無望，
但是不當它是慘重的犧牲；陽光燦照，
不會不照見白凈的雙腿沒入碧湛
的海波；那豪華優(yōu)雅的海舟必然看見
一幕奇景，一童子自天而降，
卻有路要趕，仍安詳?shù)叵蚯昂叫小?br> 

ABOUT THE POEM:

meaning:
The basic premise of the poem is response to tragedy, or as the song goes "Obla Di, Obla Da, Life Goes On." The title refers to the Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels. Auden visited the museum in 1938 and viewed the painting by Brueghel, which the poem is basically about. Generalizing at first, and then going into specifics the poem theme is the apathy with which humans view individual suffering.
    Auden wrote that "In so far as poetry, or any of the arts, can be said to have an ulterior purpose, it is, by telling the truth, to disenchant and disintoxicate."
The poem juxtaposes ordinary events and exraordinary ones, although extraordinary events seem to deflate to everyday ones with his descriptions. Life goes on while a "miraculous birth occurs", but also while "the disaster" of Icarus's death happens.

background info:
For those cultural barbarians who don't know the story of Icarus, here it is, in condensed form. Icarus was a Greek mythological figure, also known as the son of Daedalus (famous for the Labyrinth of Crete). Now Icarus and his dad were stuck in Crete, because the King of Crete wouldn't let them leave. Daedalus made some wings for the both of them and gave his son instruction on how to fly (not too close to the sea, the water will soak the wings, and not too close to the sky, the sun will melt them). Icarus, however, appeared to be obstinate and did fly to close to the sun. This caused the wax that held his wings to his body to melt. Icarus crashed into the sea and died.

hints:
Some have even claimed to find hints of Auden's eventual reconversion to Christiantiy in the poem. Richard Johnson, author of "Man's Place: An Essay on Auden", believes there is a touch of Christian awareness in the poem, especially the timeline. The reader of the poem is placed in front of the Breughel painting in a museum, and at the same time is expected to project those images and truths to the world outside. There is also a sort of continuity through the poem as you read it and are allowed to see what the poet means. This allows a reader to become aware of his human position.
    The poem first discusses a "miraculous birth", and at the end "the tragedy" of a death. The theme in the poem is human suffering. If you add these things together, and stir really well you might even get some hints at religion, mainly at Christianity
    Also, the poem suggest a religious acceptance of suffering (example: eating your morning breakfast while watching coverage of a serious trainwreck on CNN). Religious acceptance basically means coming to terms with the ways of the world.




[No.3] 西羅普郡少年- []A SHROPSHIRE LAD

XXXI. "On Wenlock Edge the wood's in trouble..."

by A. E. Housman (1859-1936)
On Wenlock Edge the wood's in trouble;
His forest fleece the Wrekin heaves;
The gale, it plies the saplings double,
And thick on Severn snow the leaves.

'Twould blow like this through holt and hanger
When Uricon the city stood:
'Tis the old wind in the old anger,
But then it threshed another wood.

Then, 'twas before my time, the Roman
At yonder heaving hill would stare:
The blood that warms as English yeoman,
The thoughts that hurt him, they were there.

There, like the wind through woods in riot,
Through him the gale of life blew high;
The tree of man was never quiet:
Then 'twas the Roman, now 'tis I.

The gale, it plies the saplings double,
It blows so hard, 'twill soon be gone:
To-day the Roman and his trouble
Are ashes under Uricon.

               

A.E.Housman簡介：

Alfred Edward Housman was born in a village in rural Shropshire, England in 1859. As a student at Oxford, he distinguished himself as a promising scholar of classics, though crises of a personal nature caused him to fail his final exams. Housman was determined to overcome this failing. When not working at the British Patent office Housman wrote scholarly articles, and published many of them to very high regard from those in academic circles. He was invited to teach at the University of London as a professor of Latin, and soon stepped up to Cambridge University, to retire to the life of a shy academic. He published only two volumes of poetry --A Shropshire Lad in 1898 and Last Poems in 1922 -- yet these were instantly and enormously popular. However successful he was, the tone of his poems remained that of the Latin poets he admired: that life is short and often, inexplicably, comes to a bad end.
         

另外，八十多年前郁達夫也曾提到過A Shropshire Lad：

   啊呵，去年六月在燈火繁華的上海市外，在車馬喧嚷的黃浦江邊，我一邊念著Housman的A Shropshire Lad里的
    Come you home a hero
    Or come not home at all，
    The lads you leave will mind You
    Till Ludlow tower shall fall

  幾句清詩， 一邊呆呆的看著江中黝黑混濁的流水，曾經(jīng)發(fā)了幾多的嘆聲，滴了幾多的眼淚。你若知道我那時候的絕望的情懷，我想你去年的那幾封微有怨意的信也不至于發(fā)給我了。——啊，我想起了，你是不懂英文的，這幾句詩我順便替你譯出吧。

    “汝當衣錦歸，
    否則永莫回，
    令汝別后之兒童
    望到拉德羅塔毀?！?br>

摘自：《蔦蘿行》（原載一九二三年五月一日《創(chuàng)造季刊》第二卷第一號，據(jù)《達夫短篇小說集》上冊）



[No.4] 鼓手霍奇- []Drummer Hodge

by Thomas Hardy

They throw in Drummer Hodge, to rest
  Uncoffined – just as found:
His landmark is a kopje-crest
  That breaks the veldt around;
And foreign constellations west
  Each night above his mound.

Young Hodge the Drummer never knew –
  Fresh from his Wessex home –
The meaning of the broad Karoo,
  The Bush, the dusty loam,
And why uprose to nightly view
  Strange stars amid the gloam.

Yet portion of that unknown plain
  Will Hodge forever be;
His homely Northern breast and brain
  Grow to some Southern tree,
And strange-eyed constellation reign
  His stars eternally.


 鼓手霍奇

 托瑪斯·哈代

                         呂志魯譯

 鼓手霍奇被扔進坑里掩埋，
 正如找到時那樣，沒有棺材：
 他的墳地是南非的一座小山，
 把周圍的平原稍稍撕開；
 這墳墓上空的每個夜晚，
 異國的星座在西邊擺開。

 剛從威塞克斯老家來到這里，
 年輕的鼓手霍奇弄不明白，
 灌木叢叢，沃土揚塵，
 廣闊干旱的高原意義何在？
 昏暗的黑夜茫茫一片，
 閃爍的星座好生奇怪。

 正是這無名平原的一角，
 霍奇將要長眠，永不離開；
 他將長成一棵南方的大樹，
 帶著北方質樸的頭腦、胸懷，
 任憑星星閃爍陌生的眼睛，
 把他的命運永遠主宰。



[No.5] 不言的渴望- [] Leaves of Grass

289. The Untold Want

By Walt Whitman (1819–1892)

THE untold want, by life and land ne’er granted,
Now, Voyager, sail thou forth, to seek and find.

這篇影評有劇透