Wallace Stevens and T. S. Eliot had little affinity as poets; all this the world well knows. In 1950, Stevens corrected William Van O’Connor’s supposition that he knew Eliot slightly, insisting that they’d never met nor corresponded and protesting, ‘After all, Eliot and I are dead opposites and I have been doing about everything that he would not be likely to do’ (L 677). O’Connor had misread an Eliot-themed issue of the Harvard Advocate (December 1938), attributing to him Allen Tate’s contribution; Stevens actually wrote a rather more qualified ‘Homage to T. S. Eliot’, noting that ‘His prodigious reputation is a great difficulty’, and consequently asserting the need to read Eliot ‘out of the pew, so to speak’ (CPP 801). In 1940, ruminating on the possibility of establishing a ‘Chair of Poetry’ with his new acquaintance Henry Church (its potential funder) and envisaging the level of eminence necessary to its holder, Stevens thought of Eliot again, but was dismissive: ‘It is possible that a man like T.S. Eliot illustrates the character, except that I regard him as a negative rather than a positive force’ (CPP 806-7). His covering letter to Church had argued that the post required ‘a scholar, or, perhaps better, a man with an extremely aggressive mind’ (L 376): possibly Eliot might have been aggressive enough, but evidently not in the right way. For his part, Eliot noticed Stevens a good deal less than Stevens noticed Eliot, and when in 1955 Faber and Faber published the Collected Poems, Eliot had heralded the event by a statement in the Trinity Review (1954) that was hardly fulsome in its praise – despite his claim to be an ‘admirer’ – and, in its assessment of Stevens’ current standing, perhaps even had an air of speaking de haut en bas. ‘His reputation is beginning to spread’, noted the Nobel laureate whose own reputation had been judged ‘prodigious’ sixteen years previously, whilst also revealing that the idea of his firm’s publishing Stevens had actually originated with ‘one of my fellow directors’. Stevens, then, had a certain investment in asserting his difference from Eliot, and Eliot seems not greatly to have bothered about Stevens. If the latter was not personally acquainted with Eliot, he did have friendly relations (of his kind) with Robert Frost, William Carlos Williams and Marianne Moore. In fact, the nature of Stevens’ objection to Eliot’s unquestioned reputation, and his perception of its negative consequences, was later replicated in something he wrote about Frost in a letter to Church’s widow, Barbara. In this, he noted having declined an invitation to attend a celebration to mark Frost’s eightieth birthday; he recalled having been confronted by Frost’s bust in the rare book library at Harvard, ‘some years ago’, and went on to comment: ‘His work is full (or said

中文翻译：

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“死对头”还是“群星之间和解”：史蒂文斯和艾略特

华莱士史蒂文斯和 TS 艾略特作为诗人几乎没有亲和力。这一切世人皆知。1950 年，史蒂文斯纠正了威廉·范·奥康纳关于他对艾略特略有了解的假设，坚称他们从未见过面或通信，并抗议说，“毕竟，艾略特和我是截然相反的，我一直在做他不会做的每一件事可能会做'（L 677）。奥康纳误读了哈佛倡导者的艾略特主题问题（1938 年 12 月），将艾伦·泰特的贡献归咎于他；史蒂文斯实际上写了一个相当合格的“向 TS 艾略特致敬”，指出“他的巨大声誉是一个很大的困难”，因此断言有必要“可以这么说”（CPP 801）阅读艾略特。1940 年，在考虑与他的新熟人亨利·丘奇（其潜在资助者）建立“诗歌主席”的可能性并设想其持有人所需的杰出水平时，史蒂文斯再次想到了艾略特，但不屑一顾：“像 TS Eliot 这样的人说明了这个角色，只是我认为他是一种消极而不是积极的力量”（CPP 806-7）。他给丘奇的附信辩称，该职位需要“一个学者，或者更好的是，一个具有极端激进思想的人”（L 376）：艾略特可能已经足够激进，但显然不是正确的方式。就他而言，艾略特注意到史蒂文斯的程度比史蒂文斯对艾略特的重视程度要低得多，当 1955 年费伯和费伯出版《诗集》时，艾略特在《三位一体评论》（1954 年）中发表的声明预告了这一事件——尽管他声称自己是“崇拜者”——但在评价史蒂文斯目前的地位时，甚至可能有一种说 de haut en bas。“他的名声正在开始传播”，这位诺贝尔奖得主在 16 年前曾被评为“惊人”，同时也透露，他的公司出版史蒂文斯的想法实际上起源于“我的一位同事”。那么，史蒂文斯在断言他与艾略特的不同方面做了一定的投入，艾略特似乎对史蒂文斯没有太大的困扰。如果后者本人不认识艾略特，他确实与罗伯特·弗罗斯特、威廉·卡洛斯·威廉姆斯和玛丽安·摩尔有着（同类）友好关系。实际上，史蒂文斯反对艾略特无可置疑的声誉的性质，以及他对其负面后果的看法，后来在他写给丘奇遗孀芭芭拉的一封关于弗罗斯特的信中得到了复制。在这方面，他指出他拒绝了参加弗罗斯特八十岁生日庆祝活动的邀请；他回忆起“几年前”在哈佛珍本图书馆遇到弗罗斯特的半身像，并继续评论道：“他的作品已满（或说