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Charles Reznikoff (1894~1976) worked relentlessly, never leaving New York but for a brief stay in Hollywood, of all places. He was admired by Pound and Kenneth Burke, and often published his own works; in the Depression era, he managed a treadle printing press in his basement. He wrote three sorts of poems: exceptionally short imagistic lyrics; longer pieces crafted and cobbled from other sources, often from the Judaic tradition; and book-length poems wrought from the testimony both of Holocaust trials and from the courtrooms of turn-of-the-century America. Two of these full-length volumes were indeed titled “Testimony,” as was an earlier prose work; it was a word that kept him close company. When asked late in life to define his poetry, it was not the word he chose.
“Objectivist,” he wrote, naming his longstanding group, and mimicking poetic style with a single prose sentence: “images clear but the meaning not stated but suggested by the objective details and the music of the verse; words pithy and plain; without the artifice of regular meters; themes, chiefly Jewish, American, urban.” If the sentence sounds hard-won, this is perhaps because it was. Four decades earlier, he wrote in a letter to friends, “There is a learned article about my verse in Poetry this month, from which I learn that I am an objectivist.” The learned fellow was Louis Zukofsky, brilliant eminence of the Objectivists, “with whom I disagree as to both form and content of verse, but to whom I am obliged for placing some of my things here and there.” So read Reznikoff’s conclusion in 1931, with its fillip of polite resentment.
Movements and schools are arbitrary and immaterial things by which poetic history is told. This must have rankled Reznikoff, who spent his writing life tracing the material and the necessary.
Born a child of immigrants in Brooklyn in 1894, he was in journalism school at 16, took a law degree at 21. Though he was little interested in legal practice, the ideas would be near the heart of his writing. Ideal poetic language, he wrote, “is restricted almost to the testimony of a witness in a court of law.” If this suggests a congenital optimism about the law, it made for astonishingly care-filled poetry. Reznikoff is unsurpassed in conveying the sense that the world is worth getting right. Not the glorious or the damaged world, but the world that is everything that is the case. Reznikoff’s faith in the facts of the case takes on an intensity no less social than spiritual, no greater when surveying the Old Testament than New York. This collection gathers all his poems (but for those already book-length) by the technique of compressing onto single pages as many as five or six at a time. This can lessen the force; each is a sort of American haiku, though no more impressionistic than a hand-operated printing press. One such, numbered 69 in the volume “Jerusalem the Golden,” runs in its length: “Among the heaps of brick and plaster lies a girder, still itself among the rubbish.” This exemplary couplet is sometimes taken to represent Reznikoff’s poetry itself, immutable and certain amid the transitory.
6. By saying “it was a word that kept him close company”(Line 7, Paragraph 1), the author implies ______.
A) Charles Reznikoff always wrote works about testimony
B) Charles Reznikoff was always involved in the testimony affairs
C) Charles Reznikoff liked to write testimony
D) Charles Reznikoff is a busy lawyer
7. Reznikoff’s attitude to the fact that he was grouped as objectivist is ______.
A) approval
B) indifference
C) opposition
D) suspicion
8. The word “rankled” (Line 2, Paragraph 3) probably means ______.
A) interested
B) angered
C) pleased
D) consoled
9. We can learn from the fourth paragraph that ______.
A) Reznikoff liked to learn law
B) Reznikoff was more interested in spiritual world than in social world
C) it is astonishing that Reznikoff wrote care-filled poetry
D) Reznikoff was greatly influenced by his legal experience in his poetry writing
10. By citing the poem in the last paragraph, the author intends to ______.
A) show that the force is lessoned in this way
B) show that the poem is not impressionistic
C) show that the poem is immutable
D) show that the poem is compressed
題目分析
6. A 語義題。原句是“Two of these full-length volumes were indeed titled ‘Testimony,’ as was an earlier prose work; it was a word that kept him close company.”(長篇中的兩篇題目就是‘證詞’,早些的散文作品也是,這個詞一直伴隨他左右。)從這句話前面對他作品的介紹也可以看出,這些長篇詩歌是來源于一些證詞的,這就是為什么他一直和證詞有關(guān)的原因,也就是為什么這個詞一直和他有關(guān)。答案A“查爾斯經(jīng)常寫一些和證詞有關(guān)的作品”;B“查爾斯經(jīng)常被卷入證詞事件中”;C“查爾斯喜歡寫證詞”;D“查爾斯是個忙碌的律師”。四個答案中最符合題意的是A。
7. C 情感態(tài)度題。Reznikoff對待他被歸為客觀主義流派的態(tài)度可以追溯文章中談到客觀主義部分,文章第二段提到他被看作是客觀主義流派,對此他的態(tài)度可以從他的話語中看出,“The learned fellow was Louis Zukofsky, brilliant eminence of the Objectivists, ‘with whom I disagree as to both form and content of verse, but to whom I am obliged for placing some of my things here and there.’”從disagree一詞中就可以看出他對這種評價持反對態(tài)度,后面提到“So read Reznikoff’s conclusion in 1931, with its fillip of polite resentment. ”從resentment也可以得出這個結(jié)論,因此答案該選C。
8. B 語義題。該詞所在原句是“This must have rankled Reznikoff, who spent his writing life tracing the material and the necessary.”(這一定______Reznikoff,他的寫作生涯主要就是描述物質(zhì)的和必然的東西。)這句話還需要結(jié)合上下文來看,上文提到運動和流派是講述詩歌歷史的隨意、非物質(zhì)的東西,而上一段提到Reznikoff對于被歸為客觀主義流派表示不滿,可以得出他對此持否定態(tài)度,因此A(使感興趣)、B(激怒)、C(使高興)、D(安慰)中,B最符合邏輯。
9. D 推理題。第四段主要講述了Reznikoff青年學(xué)習法律,以及他詩歌創(chuàng)作中法律的作用。下面逐一分析答案:A“Reznikoff喜歡學(xué)習法律”,從第四段“he was little interested in legal practice”可以看出他對此并不熱衷,該選項不符合原文;B“Reznikoff更加喜歡精神世界”,從第四段“Reznikoff’s faith in the facts of the case takes on an intensity no less social than spiritual...”可以看出,他對社會方面的熱衷不比精神世界差,因此該選項不符合原文;C“Reznikoff能寫出充滿關(guān)切的詩歌使人驚訝”,文章提到“If this suggests a congenital optimism about the law, it made for astonishingly care-filled poetry.”(如果這暗示著對法律天生的樂觀的話,這種天賦正是由于寫出了令人驚訝的充滿關(guān)切詩歌而有的。)雖然提到“令人驚訝”,但不是說他可以寫出詩歌令人驚訝,因此也不符合原文;D“Reznikoff的詩歌寫作很大程度上受其法律經(jīng)驗的影響”,其實整個段落講述了他雖然年青時代不熱衷法律,但是在其寫作中處處有法律的影響,因此D是符合原文的答案。
10. D 細節(jié)題。文章最后一段剛開始講的是:詩集將五六首詩壓縮在一頁上,這樣會削弱詩歌的力度。盡管不是每首詩都會給人留下深刻印象,但每首詩都是一種美國式俳句。這之后又提到“One such, numbered 69 in the volume ‘Jerusalem the Golden,’ runs in its length”,因此可以看出,列出這首詩還是為了說明壓縮詩很短,因此答案為D。