A FEW YEARS AGO, Harvard’s Houghton Library rediscovered a 1954 recording of Wallace Stevens reading from “Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction” and other poems. Similarly, every so often a lost recording of a reading by Robert Frost will surface, as occurred a few years ago in a church in Grand Rapids, Michigan. After the excitement of such moments has died down, a more considered interest is warranted in how two such contemporaries as Stevens and Frost, at times amicable rivals and both extraordinary public speakers, might be compared. We have a quieter opportunity to reflect upon the reasons each poet had for reading his work in public settings, as well as the ways in which audiences responded to such readings.1 Stevens delivered lectures and read his poems in public appearances from 1936 until the year before his death in 1955. Many of Stevens’ audiences were patently, though not universally, underwhelmed, a reaction seldom seen among Frost’s audiences. Stevens’ famous lines “The poem must resist the intelligence / Almost successfully” may have applied (CPP 306).2 Kia Penso offers a definition of what Stevens means by these lines as “that difficulty and strangeness which convinces you, or even only makes you suspect, that all your previous expertise and knowledge are no preparation for this new experience.” It may be that some sense of being shaken into this state was part of what those attending Stevens’ lectures and readings were experiencing. If, as Penso goes on to note, “Stevens wanted his poems to put up obstacles to the self-complacency of knowledge with which the best of us (as Stevens did himself) have to contend” (25), might Stevens not have felt the same subversive hope in reading before live audiences? Similarly, Frost enjoyed playing out a certain type of mischievous, teasing subversion in his own literary work. In a well-known 1927 letter, he wrote,

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“Falling Forward”：弗罗斯特和史蒂文斯的公开读物

几年前，哈佛大学的霍顿图书馆重新发现了 1954 年华莱士·史蒂文斯 (Wallace Stevens) 朗读《迈向最高小说的笔记》和其他诗歌的录音。同样，罗伯特·弗罗斯特 (Robert Frost) 的朗读录音丢失的记录时常会浮出水面，就像几年前在密歇根州大急流城的一座教堂中发生的那样。在这些时刻的兴奋平息之后，我们需要更加深思熟虑地对如何比较像史蒂文斯和弗罗斯特这样的两个同时代的人，有时是友好的竞争对手和两位杰出的公众演讲者，进行比较。我们有一个更安静的机会来反思每位诗人在公共场合阅读他的作品的原因，以及观众对此类阅读的反应。1 史蒂文斯从 1936 年到当年在公开场合发表演讲和朗读他的诗歌1955年去世前。史蒂文斯的许多观众显然（尽管并非普遍）不知所措，弗罗斯特的观众很少看到这种反应。史蒂文斯的著名诗句“这首诗必须抵抗智慧/几乎成功”可能已经应用 (CPP 306)。2 起亚 Penso 将史蒂文斯的这些诗句的含义定义为“那种让你信服的困难和陌生感，甚至只会让你信服”。您怀疑，您以前的所有专业知识和知识都没有为这种新体验做好准备。” 有可能那种被震撼到这种状态的感觉是参加史蒂文斯讲座和阅读的人所经历的一部分。如果，正如彭索继续指出的那样，“史蒂文斯希望他的诗为我们中最好的人（就像史蒂文斯自己所做的那样）必须对抗的知识自满设置障碍”（25），在现场观众面前阅读，史蒂文斯可能不会感受到同样的颠覆性希望吗？同样，弗罗斯特喜欢在自己的文学作品中表现出某种调皮、戏弄颠覆的风格。在 1927 年的一封著名的信中，他写道：