Dancing with Taiwanese poetry
Dream or Dawn: Lyricism or Intellectualism?
VISITING (造訪) Qin Zihao (覃子豪) Night, dream-like vastness, dream-like gentleness Dream, night-like delicacy, night-like haziness I don’t know whether it’s in a dream, or in the night That I walk to an unknown place, eagerly trying to orientate The rainy street is the splendor of the night The trees in the mist are the shadows of the night Through colorful designs of futurism They dissolve into an old, monotonous inkwash painting Numerous shining windows stare at me, far far away,Like the glistening eyes of the wild cat hidden in the woods. The varnished paved road is the back of an alligator, All of a sudden I come walking over the back of an alligator. The enclosed garden is a fathomless picture gallery At a loss I explore it, go deeper and deeper And halt in front of an unfamiliar small gate It’s like I’ve been here before, because I’m sure you once waited here for me. 《造訪》 覃子豪 (1912-1963,大陸-台灣) 夜 夢一樣的遼闊 夢一樣的輕柔 夢 夜一樣的甘美 夜一樣的迷茫 我不知道 是在夢中 還是在夜裏 走向一個陌生的地方 殷殷地尋訪 雨底街 是夜的色彩 霧裏的樹 是夜的印象 穿過未來派彩色的圖案 溶入一幅古老而單調的水墨畫裏 無數發光的窗瞪著我 老遠的 像藏匿在林中野貓的眼睛在閃爍 發著油光的石子路是鱷魚的脊樑 我是驀然地從鱷魚的脊樑上走來 圍牆內的花園是一個深邃的畫苑 我茫然探索 深入又深入 在一個陌生的小門前停了足步 像是來過 因為我確知你曾在這裏等我 | AN ACACIA LEAF (一片槐樹葉) Ji Xian (纪弦) This is the most beautiful leaf in the world, the most precious,the most valuable, still also the most distressing, the most heartbreaking: a grayish yellow acacia leaf, delicate and dry. Was it from south or north of the Yangtze, from which city, which garden was it taken? It was pressed into an old book of poetry and does not show the slightest damage after all those years. The acacia leaf floating down like the wings of a cicada turns out to hold some soil of my homeland. O homeland, what year, what month, what day can you let me return to your bosom again to enjoy the world’s happiest season permeated with a faint fragrance of blooming acacias?
《一片槐树叶》 纪弦 (1913 - …) 这是全世界最美的一生， 最珍奇，最可贵的一片， 而又是最使人伤心，最使人流泪的一片， 薄薄的，干的，浅灰黄色的槐树叶。 忘了是在江南，江北， 是在哪一个城市，哪一个园子里捡来的了。 被夹在一册古老的诗集里， 多年来，竟没有些微的损坏。 蝉翼般轻轻滑落的槐树叶， 细看时，还沾着那些故国的泥土哪。 故国呦，啊啊，要到何年何月何日 才能让我再回到你的怀抱里 去享受一个世界上最愉快的 飘着淡淡的槐花香的季节？…… |
Ji Xian - Qin Zihao debate on lyricism and intellectualism…
In February 1956 the foundation of the Modernist School (Xiandai pai) was officially announced in the thirteenth issue of Modernist Poetry, and an appeal was made to join the school. For that purpose initiator Ji Xian provided six tenets that were to constitute the school’s poetics. The essentials:
1. We are a Modernists group who further develop the spirit and elements from all poetry schools that have newly risen since Baudelaire and discard what is not useful. [...]
2. We believe that New Poetry is a horizontal transplantation (橫的移植), not a vertical inheritance (縱的繼承). This is our general opinion, our basic point of departure in both theory and practice. [...]
3. We explore the new continent of poetry, develop the virgin land of poetry. We express new content, create new forms, discover new means, and invent new techniques. [...]
4. We emphasize intellect (知性). [...] A main feature of modernism is to resist romanticism. To emphasize intellect and to exclude the expression of feelings (情緒之告白). What use is it to rely solely on unrestrained emotions? [...] Composedness (冷靜), objectivity (客觀), profundity (深入) make use of a high degree of reasoning (理智) to engage in abstruse expression. A New Poem must have a solid and beautifulconstruction, the writer of a New Poem must be an outstanding engineer. [...]
5. We pursue purity of poetry. [...]
6. We love the country, are anti-communist and advocate freedom and democracy. Only in August 1957 did Qin Zihao publish a long piece ‘Where is New Poetry Going?’ (新詩向何處去?) in which he reacted partly to Ji Xian’s proclamation. In it he provided six ‘correct principles of the current direction of new poetry’. In short they state:
1. Poetry is rooted in human life. It should not comply with an ‘art for art’ approach, nor should poetry serve human life. Its meaning is more philosophical and lies in the observation of life itself in all its forms, and in the expression of the whole realm of human life. It nourishes and illuminates mankind;
2. Poets should not only write for their personal pleasure and write in obscure and chaotic imagery. They have to be considerate of the reader and make the reader enter the spiritual world of the poet. One should strive for a balance between the wishes of reader and poet;
3. Poetry is in essence about purity, richness, authenticity, and carries the main existence of the author (有作者之主旨存在). It is a living thing: from a realization or awareness towards life, which is the embryonic motive for the author, it grows to be a living product of blood and flesh through the thoughts and feelings of the author;
4. One has to search for the ideological root in poetry. Poetry has to have a philosophical background and in an indirect, unconscious way pursue universal truth;
5. New expressions can be found in precision. Only when poetry is precise can it reach the highest attainments of profoundness (精微), compactness (嚴密), deepness (深沉), implicitness (含蓄) and vividness (鮮活);
6. Style is not an imitation of something, of Western literature, but is a personal, unique creation. Qin Zihao’s reaction that ‘the poets doubt whether the complete glorification of Western poetic schools can be merged with the unique Chinese society’ seems a bit blown out of proportion. Ji Xian’s call for intellect should rather be interpreted as a plea for channeling and controlling the spontaneous flow of emotions through the mind, for a poetry that blends emotion and intellectual ingenuity and that is less concerned with plainly expressing feelings than with analyzing them. Xian is very overt and shows a directness of language; he expresses his emotion in the first stanza and then turns to reflect on the past and the future. The difference that we see here in the degree of lyricism and intellect accounts for the difference in intimacy that was mentioned earlier. ‘An Acacia Leaf’ remains more distant for the reader, because of Ji’s directness and overt emotion, while the dreamy indirectnessin ‘Visiting’ gives rise to a certain intimacy.
On the picture “The Deeds of the Zen Masters: Hanshan and Shide (因陀羅「寒山拾得圖」)” illustrating the written character of shi: the form in which it tended to appear in its introduction into western literature, as opposed to oral recitation.
