Chen's sad poem explained to children
I'm always particularly interested in how Yang Jiang and other modern Chinese writers use traditional Chinese themes and motifs in their writing. I've always thought that Yang Jiang was especially good at working common allusions and popular lines from classical Chinese poems into her creative nonfiction.
One example of this is from the first section of her essay "'Sent Down' for the First Time" (now updated). She's climbing a mountain with the rest of her team of urbanite volunteers, where they will spend three months working with peasants in a small mountain village. Exhausted and unable to carry her pack any further, Yang Jiang looks around at the fields and says she "greatly was possessed of the feeling that 'Facing ahead, I can see no ancients, And facing back, I see no newcomers.'" She's quoting the first half a quatrain that is the single biggest claim to fame by one of the Tang dynasty masters, Chen Zi'ang 陳子昂:
Song of Climbing up Youzhou Tower 登幽州台歌A few more comments:
Facing ahead, I can see no ancients,
And facing back, I see no newcomers.
To think -- how large, how absurd, is this world,
So alone and sorry am I, that tears fall.
前不見古人，後不見來者。
念天地之悠悠，獨愴然而涕下。
The video above gives us some indication of how well-known the poem is -- in China, poems continue to be recited in classrooms, books, and on the internet, and carry in them pre-packaged affective responses -- here sadness and sublimity at once. Random blog posts show that at least some readers understand and apply the poem with great sophistication. At least one musical number with flute and stringed zheng shows a similarly nuanced and imaginative appropriation of the poem.
Note on translation: I've tried to render the Chinese as literally as possible while at the same time giving some sense of the line length (2 x five characters, 2 x 6 characters, so my version is shorter, shorter, longer, longer) and preserving the syntax to a high degree. There is not "I" in the Chinese text, but in my current thinking there is an "I" expressed tacitly simply by the use of verse. Chinese verse is powerfully personal, and as the last line of this poem shows Chinese poets do not shy from deeply affective writing. Thus, just by writing a poem at all, and further by giving us a title that lets us know the poem is an attempt to state what the poet felt when he climbed the Youzhou Tower, shows us that there is very much a speaking "I" that is mean to be felt at all times in the poem. Thus, to my current thinking at least, I don't feel there is anything wrong with just putting those "I"s in at will.
For reference, I see another translation on PoemHunter.com, and I'll watch for more. A website devoted to Chinese poetry in particular has a translation that stays quite literal, as I have tried to do.
A blog entry on pureinsight.org seems to have a nice discussion of this poet, who I must admit I'm not that familiar with.
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