In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

• On Rip Van Winkle
• David Capps (bio)

preface

This work is the outcome of a series of transformations that began one night when I happened to be reflecting on a theological topic: what it really means to imagine a God who inhabits the hypothetical eternal heavens and has little relation to the world of becoming, our world. It struck me that Irving's Rip Van Winkle stood in a similar relation to his world, so initially I set out to think through some of the comparisons between them. But as I reread the story and was led down a rabbit hole of other adaptations (including a fabulous Claymation retelling from 1978), I found that what I was really drawn toward about the tale was its strangeness, the sense of complete unfamiliarity the character experiences when for largely magical reasons he reenters a world that no longer answers to his social or political identity.

The form of this piece draws inspiration from Irving, who in his time managed to synthesize essay and folktale to create his own brand of short story. Here I attempt to fuse short story and lyric essay. At one extreme I found that the discreteness of the paragraphs in a lyric essay allowed each reflection to "breathe," so much so that in one draft I had imagined each one as part of an installation in an aurally distributed space with a projected backdrop of black-and-white cinematic images of the elderly Rip. I worked from this extreme to the present form as it exists on the page, which required it to have a more narrative backbone.

On a personal note, I was thinking a lot while writing this about America's seemingly endless campaign of wars and the place Irving must have been in after his family's trading company lost everything in the Revolutionary War. He had declared bankruptcy and was living with his sister and her husband in England in 1818 when it is said that he composed the story in a single night (Jones 168–69). An American transplanted to England, drawing inspiration from German folktales, writing about the Catskills he [End Page 583] had never really experienced: perhaps it is unsurprising his story should turn out so wonderfully weird.

________

Note: In what follows, all italicized expressions occur in Irving's "Rip Van Winkle," first published in The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., in 1819.

on rip van winkle

1

Shadows of English writers might have seemed to see a crown, power unquestioned, overextended on the far continent you call home. Spirits native to the Catskills might have wandered this way as the dawn's first rays, to find you locked in a room, plagued by writer's block, with a handful of blank pages (the farmhand's up already, cleaning stables, the expat lord's still rich in dreams). To be homesick is to be lost, and to be lost is to be eternally forgotten, these thoughts may have dripped down as candlewax before you heard some voice calling a name, like the voice of childhood as it crawls out of darkness, before everything becomes strange.

2

Begin this way: as a simple good-natured fellow who from an opening between the trees overlooks all the lower country of his future, who prefers to whistle life away. Learn to bear burdens with the simplest gestures. When challenged emerge as the living image of a pietà, shrugging your shoulders, declining your head, casting up your eyes, saying nothing. With consummate indeterminacy express either resignation or joy, or some mean between them when the name of intolerance or violence or impatience is mentioned, or the name of the one who henpecks, Dame Winkle. All the same, you can barely manage your own farm.

3

The original face of Rip lacks the aspect of seriousness at play, the melancholy party of pleasure observed in the ghosts of the crew of the Half Moon, whose sounds of ninepin bowling ring out from the mountain like distant peals of thunder. Serious faces, blue from death and drowning and mercantile deeds, faces carved from habit, were uncanny, as far from the [End Page 584] face of a...

中文翻译：

---

瑞普·范·温克尔

以下是内容的简短摘录，以代替摘要：

• 瑞普·范·温克尔
• 大卫·卡普斯（个人简介）

前言

这部作品是一系列转变的结果，这些转变开始于一天晚上，当时我碰巧正在思考一个神学主题：想象一位居住在假设的永恒天堂中的上帝，与我们的生成世界几乎没有关系，这意味着什么？世界。让我惊讶的是，欧文饰演的瑞普·范·温克尔与他的世界有着相似的关系，所以最初我开始思考他们之间的一些比较。但当我重读这个故事并被带入了其他改编版本的兔子洞（包括 1978 年精彩的粘土动画重述）时，我发现这个故事真正吸引我的是它的陌生感，角色所经历的完全陌生的感觉当他出于神奇的原因重新进入一个不再符合他的社会或政治身份的世界时。

这篇文章的形式从欧文那里汲取了灵感，欧文在他那个时代成功地综合了散文和民间故事，创造了自己的短篇小说品牌。在这里我尝试将短篇小说和抒情散文融合起来。在一个极端的情况下，我发现抒情文章中段落的离散性让每一个反思都能够“呼吸”，以至于在一份草稿中，我把每一个都想象成一个装置的一部分，位于一个听觉分布的空间中，投影的背景是瑞普老人的黑白电影图像。我从这种极端的形式发展到页面上现有的形式，这要求它有更多的叙事主干。

就个人而言，我在写这篇文章时思考了很多关于美国看似无休无止的战争以及欧文在他的家族贸易公司在独立战争中失去一切后所处的位置。1818 年，他宣布破产，与他的妹妹和她的丈夫住在英国，据说当时他在一夜之间写下了这个故事（琼斯 168-69）。一个移居英国的美国人，从德国民间故事中汲取灵感，写下他从未真正经历过的卡茨基尔山[第 583 页]：也许他的故事变得如此奇妙也就不足为奇了。

________

注：下文中所有斜体字均出自 Irving 的《Rip Van Winkle》，该书首次发表于1819 年Gent 的 The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon。

瑞普·范·温克尔

1

英国作家的影子似乎看到了一顶王冠，权力不容置疑，在你称之为家乡的遥远大陆上过度扩张。卡茨基尔土生土长的灵魂可能会在黎明的第一缕阳光出现时沿着这条路徘徊，发现你被锁在一个房间里，受到写作障碍的困扰，只有几页空白页（农场工人已经起床，清理马厩，外籍领主仍然富有梦想）。想家就是迷失，迷失就是永远被遗忘，在你听到某个声音呼唤一个名字之前，这些思念可能已经像烛蜡一样滴落下来，就像童年从黑暗中爬出来的声音，在一切都变成现实之前。奇怪的。

2

就这样开始吧：作为一个心地善良的小伙子，他从树林间的空隙俯瞰着他未来的整个低地国家，他更喜欢用口哨吹走生命。学会用最简单的手势来承担重担。当受到挑战时，就会变成活生生的圣母怜子图，耸耸肩膀，低下头，抬起眼睛，一言不发。当提到不宽容、暴力或不耐烦的名字，或者是怕老婆的人温克尔夫人的名字时，以完全不确定的方式表达辞职或喜悦，或者两者之间的某种意思。尽管如此，你还是勉强能管理自己的农场。

3

瑞普原本的面容缺乏严肃的一面，在半月号船员的鬼魂中观察到的忧郁的快乐聚会，他们的九瓶保龄球声从山上响起，就像遥远的雷声。严肃的面孔，因死亡、溺水和商业行为而变蓝的面孔，因习惯而雕刻的面孔，是不可思议的，与[完页 584]的面孔相去甚远……