Glimpses 驚豔

Lake Geneva 日內瓦湖

Professor Hui Cheuk Kuen, Desmond (許焯權教授)

Sailing on Lake Geneva 199 years after Byron was a memorable experience for me. Its beauty had attracted so many notable visitors and residents: apart from Byron and his companions Percy and Mary Shelley who wrote Frankenstein during their holidays here, there were other famous writers, actors and singers including Nabokov, Lenin, Charlie Chaplin, James Mason, Richard Burton, Audrey Hepburn, Phil Collins and Queen; David Bowie also came here and was inspired to take up painting, informing him later on his “Berlin Trilogy” album. While the Lake inspired Byron to write about Chillon, it inspired Shelley to formulate his “Spirit of Beauty” in his famous poem:
“The awful shadow of some unseen Power
Floats through unseen among us, – visiting
This various world with as inconstant wing
As summer winds that creep from flower to flower…”

Hymn to Intellectual Beauty, by Percy Shelley (1816)

First published in The Examiner, London, 1817.

重溫拜倫一百九十九年前乘船遊覽日內瓦湖是我難忘的經驗，這湖上的風光曾吸引無數騷人墨客到訪，包括和拜倫一起的雪萊夫婦，瑪麗雪萊就是在這裡撰寫著名的小說「科學怪人」，還有納博科夫、列寧、查理卓別林(或譯差利卓別靈)、影星詹姆士梅遜(或譯占士美臣)、李察波頓、柯德利夏萍、搖滾樂巨星菲爾柯林斯、皇后樂團等。大衛鮑伊到此後開始學習油畫，之後更受到啟發創作他的「柏林三部曲」唱片。日內瓦湖給了拜倫創作關於錫庸的靈感，也啟發了雪萊的詩作中「美麗的精神」:
「有那麼一個令人敬畏隱秘的幽靈，
如薄翼輕盈縹縹緲緲，來去無影，
倘佯在這大千世界寰宇人間
恍若夏日習習微風吹拂花陰… 」

雪萊 (1816)《知性美之禮讚》

中文翻譯 HKDCSH (2014)。http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_9dead0ec0101dtsh.html

June 22, 2015

Geneva, Lake (Clay County, Fla.) Switzerland

Multicolored

Watercolors