It seems as if the resistance, so to speak, offered to the plastic despotism of the artist by characteristics accepted, not made, called forth a subtler and a stronger skill than if he had worked with the limitlessness of free invention. (1) I'll find it for you on a whitewashed wall Where the slow shadows only change so much As shows the street has different darknesses At noontime and at twilight. (2) --Augusta Webster Nothing seems more to have gratified the modernism of Vita Sackville-West, in the course of a briskly condescending 1920s retrospect of Victorian women's poetry, than to drop Augusta Webster's dramatic poetry into the dustbin of intellectual history: "these blank-verse pieces ... she probably regarded as vehicles for expressing her sociological opinions rather than as poetry." (3) The remark of course is not really about Webster's intentions but about Sackville-West's opinion that the verse lies beneath notice. In this paper all that I have to say arises from the opposite opinion: that Webster's dramatic verse rewards the most careful attention we can muster. But first let me engage Sackville-West's imputation that the poet's chief allegiance was "sociological." I do so because most of the literary criticism Webster's long-neglected work has attracted within the last academic generation in effect endorses the sociological premise. It reads her writing for the ideas that are expressed there about socially embedded ideologies--principally of gender--as these were institutionally enforced and personally enacted in a British Victorian context. In pursuit of this quarry, our scholarship on Webster is seldom detained much longer than Sackville-West was by the artistic medium of expression. We now have much better accounts than we did of the poet's life and career, discerning investigations of her feminism, and thoughtful calibration, at a generic level, of the prose and verse kinds she practiced. What remains regrettably scarce is analysis, even appreciation, of her poetry as such. (4) Victorian reviewers knew better. Whether they commended or chastised Webster's versecraft, they made a point of discussing it; and the contradictory reactions they posted suggest that it may have proved particularly resistant to description within received Victorian categories. Whereas for one 1860s reviewer "Mrs. Webster's blank verse has none of the sustained music, the organic rhythm, which is necessary to make blank verse endurable," another found it if anything sustained to a fault, complaining about "the too great monotony of the verse, ... the sameness, the lack of spring and impulse." (5) This defect struck a successor as still unaddressed in the 1870 collection Portraits: "Mrs. Webster's verse, though always smooth and mellifluous, seems to us sometimes wanting in spontaneity." (6) But that same year, another critic suspected instead that she "composes too rapidly; many of the lines appear to run too easily" and want "concentration." (7) The concentrated spontaneity these reviews jointly demand seems a tall order; yet it describes pretty well the result this poet obtained, with remarkable freshness of invention, in the books to which her critics were responding and to whose formal qualities their criticisms bore authentic if splintered witness. As a more acute contemporary reader of Portraits put the case, no doubt with an eye to the blinkered journalistic competition, "Her simplicity is likely to repel the multitude, whose taste has been vitiated by false imagery and sham sentiment. And this simplicity is combined with a subtlety of thought, feeling, and observation which demand that attention which only real lovers of poetry are apt to bestow." (8) Subtle simplicity, concentrated spontaneity: getting at the characteristics that these oxymora name, and appreciating the artistic originality and cultivation that produced them, will require more attention to form than Webster's latter-day admirers have been accustomed to pay. …

中文翻译：

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烦恼线：奥古斯塔·韦伯斯特戏剧独白中的多元化

可以这么说，通过接受而非制造的特征对艺术家的塑料专制进行抵抗，似乎比他在自由发明的无限性下工作更敏锐、更强大。(1) 我会在粉刷成白色的墙壁上为你找到它 那里缓慢的阴影变化如此之大 正午和黄昏时分，街道有不同的黑暗。(2)——奥古斯塔·韦伯斯特（Augusta Webster） 在对 1920 年代维多利亚时代女性诗歌轻快居高不下的回顾过程中，维塔·萨克维尔-韦斯特的现代主义似乎比将奥古斯塔·韦伯斯特（Augusta Webster）的戏剧性诗歌扔进思想史的垃圾箱更能满足：“这些空白诗歌……她可能认为是表达她的社会学观点的工具，而不是诗歌。” (3) 这句话当然不是关于韦伯斯特的意图，而是关于萨克维尔-韦斯特的意见，即这节经文没有引起注意。在这篇论文中，我要说的所有内容都来自相反的观点：韦伯斯特的戏剧性诗句奖励了我们所能集中的最仔细的注意力。但首先让我承认萨克维尔-韦斯特认为诗人的主要效忠对象是“社会学的”。我这样做是因为韦伯斯特长期被忽视的大部分文学批评作品在上一代学术界中已经吸引了实际上认可社会学前提。它读她的作品是为了表达在那里表达的关于社会嵌入意识形态的思想——主要是性别——因为这些思想是在英国维多利亚时代的背景下被制度强制执行和个人制定的。为了追捕这个采石场，我们对韦伯斯特的学术研究很少比萨克维尔-韦斯特在艺术表达媒介上停留的时间更长。我们现在对这位诗人的生平和事业有了更好的描述，对她的女权主义进行了敏锐的调查，并在一般层面上对她所练习的散文和诗歌类型进行了深思熟虑的校准。令人遗憾的是，对她诗歌本身的分析，甚至欣赏是稀缺的。(4) 维多利亚时代的评论家知道得更好。无论他们是赞扬还是谴责韦伯斯特的手艺，他们都非常重视讨论；他们发布的相互矛盾的反应表明，它可能被证明特别难以接受维多利亚时代类别中的描述。而对于一位 1860 年代的评论家来说，“韦伯斯特夫人的空白诗歌没有持续的音乐，有机的节奏，这是使空白诗句经久不衰所必需的，”另一位发现它，如果有任何错误，抱怨“诗句过于单调，......千篇一律，缺乏弹性和冲动。”（5）这个缺陷在 1870 年的肖像系列中仍然没有解决的继任者：“夫人。韦伯斯特的诗句虽然总是流畅优美，但在我们看来有时缺乏自发性。”（6）但同年，另一位评论家怀疑她“作曲太快；许多诗句似乎太容易跑了”，需要“集中注意力”。(7) 这些评论共同要求的集中自发性似乎是一项艰巨的任务；但它很好地描述了这位诗人获得的结果，具有非凡的创新性，在她的批评者所回应的书中，他们的批评即使是支离破碎的见证，也能证明其形式上的真实性。正如一位更敏锐的当代肖像读者所说的那样，无疑是着眼于眼花缭乱的新闻竞争，“她的简单很可能会排斥大众，他们的品味已经被虚假的意象和虚假的情绪玷污了。而这种简单是结合在一起的具有微妙的思想、感觉和观察力，需要真正的诗歌爱好者才能给予的关注。” (8) 微妙的简单，集中的自发性：了解这些矛盾词所命名的特征，并欣赏产生它们的艺术独创性和修养，需要比韦伯斯特的后期崇拜者习惯于关注的形式更多地关注形式。… 正如一位更敏锐的当代肖像读者所说的那样，无疑是着眼于眼花缭乱的新闻竞争，“她的简单很可能会排斥大众，他们的品味已经被虚假的意象和虚假的情绪玷污了。而这种简单是结合在一起的具有微妙的思想、感觉和观察力，需要真正的诗歌爱好者才能给予的关注。” (8) 微妙的简单，集中的自发性：了解这些矛盾词所命名的特征，并欣赏产生它们的艺术独创性和修养，需要比韦伯斯特的后期崇拜者习惯于关注的形式更多地关注形式。… 正如一位更敏锐的当代肖像读者所说的那样，无疑是着眼于眼花缭乱的新闻竞争，“她的简单很可能会排斥大众，他们的品味已经被虚假的意象和虚假的情绪玷污了。而这种简单是结合在一起的具有微妙的思想、感觉和观察力，需要真正的诗歌爱好者才能给予的关注。” (8) 微妙的简单，集中的自发性：了解这些矛盾词所命名的特征，并欣赏产生它们的艺术独创性和修养，将需要比韦伯斯特的后期崇拜者习惯于关注的形式更多地关注形式。… 她的简单很可能会排斥大众，他们的品味已经被虚假的形象和虚假的情绪玷污了。这种简单与微妙的思想、感觉和观察相结合，需要那种只有真正的诗歌爱好者才能给予的关注。”（8）微妙的简单，集中的自发性：了解这些矛盾法所命名的特征，以及欣赏产生它们的艺术独创性和修养，需要比韦伯斯特的后期崇拜者习惯于支付的形式更多的关注。...... 她的简单很可能会排斥大众，他们的品味已经被虚假的形象和虚假的情绪玷污了。这种简单与微妙的思想、感觉和观察相结合，需要那种只有真正的诗歌爱好者才能给予的关注。”（8）微妙的简单，集中的自发性：了解这些矛盾法所命名的特征，以及欣赏产生它们的艺术独创性和修养，需要比韦伯斯特的后期崇拜者习惯于支付的形式更多的关注。...... 集中的自发性：了解这些矛盾词所命名的特征，并欣赏产生它们的艺术独创性和修养，需要比韦伯斯特的后期崇拜者习惯于付出的更多关注形式。… 集中的自发性：了解这些矛盾词所命名的特征，并欣赏产生它们的艺术独创性和修养，需要比韦伯斯特的后期崇拜者习惯于付出的更多关注形式。…