On Love and Separation: Western vs. Eastern

While I am on the subject of love and poetry by western and eastern poets, here are two more poems that offer another kind of contrast. A week ago in a Fresh Air segment on NPR, I heard and was impressed by an unpublished poem Breakfast Song of Elizabeth Bishop. Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979), the 1949 Poet Laureate of U.S., published less than a hundred poems in her lifetime. She is famous for her perfectionism and is extremely economical and precise with words. According to a Meghan O’Rourke 2006 article Casual Perfection, Robert Lowell, another great poet and her contemporary, once wrote to her: "Do/ you still hang your words in air, ten years/ unfinished, glued to your notice board, with gaps/ or empties for the unimaginable phrase—/ unerring muse who makes the casual perfect?” That explains why some were upset when publishers put out her unpublished or draft collections. But this particular love poem, written in 1964, in my opinion, is too beautiful to be left buried. The setup is “the morning after”; it is so intimate and tense on one hand but calm and casual at the same time. By the way, she was very shy and known to be a lesbian.

早餐 Breakfast Song

親愛的, 我的至愛, My love, my saving grace,
你的眼睛如此的藍. your eyes are awfully blue.
我親吻你有趣的臉頰,
I kiss your funny face,
和那帶咖啡味的嘴脣. your coffee-flavored mouth.

昨夜我與你共枕
Last night I slept with you.
今日我愛你如故
Today I love you so
又怎能離你而去
how can I bear to go
(雖然我日子已近)
(as soon I must, I know)
到那死氣沉沉
to bed with ugly death
冰冷的地方,
in that cold, filthy place,
沒有你
to sleep there without you,
緩緩的氣息,
without the easy breath
和我習慣
and nightlong, limblong warmth
徹夜肢體的溫暖.
I've grown accustomed to?

沒有人願意死,
- Nobody wants to die;
告訴我你騙我!
tell me it is a lie!
但,那是真的;
But no, I know it's true.
必然的,
It's just the common case;
無法避免的.
there's nothing one can do.
親愛的,我的至愛,
My love, my saving grace,
你的眼睛如此的藍
your eyes are awfully blue
清晨,瞬間的藍.
early and instant blue.

Half a century earlier in 1926 across the ocean in China, young and famous poet Xu Zhimo 徐志摩(1897-1931) wrote the poem Encounter 偶然. Xu Zhimo, leader of New Poetry and the Crescent Moon Society in early 20th century China, invented new poetic forms in Chinese vernacular and had huge and lasting influence on modern Chinese literature. He was well-known for his unrelenting (often considered overly carefree in those days) pursuit of love, freedom and beauty. The romantic elegance of his work is incomparable and serves a stunning contrast with those full of raw emotion and energy. Here is the poem with my English translation.

偶然 Encounter

我是天空裡的一片雲， I am a cloud in the sky,
偶爾投影在你的波心， By chance cast a shadow on your wavy heart.
你不必訝異更無須歡喜，
Don't wonder or joy;
在轉瞬間消滅了蹤影。 In a moment it vanishes without a trace.

你我相逢在黑夜的海上，
We met on the sea in the dark of the night,
你有你的，我有我的，方向；
You were on your way, I was on mine;
你記得也好，
Remember me if you will, yet
最好你忘掉，
better though, to forget
在這交會時互放的光亮。
the flare of our beaming light.

Given the popularity of this poem in China, there have been multiple attempts by composers to write music for it. Below are three most popular ones in progression of time, each is about one generation apart. The earliest one that we sang when I was kid is by Li WeiNing 李惟寧. The second one is composed by Chelsia Chan 陳秋霞 in 1970's and a 2006 performance by her can be seen here.

The most recent one is by Yiu-kwong Chung 鍾耀光 in 1990's. Enjoy and talk to you soon!

On Love and Marriage: Western vs. Eastern

Khalil Gibran (1883-1931), famous Lebanon American poet and writer, wrote about marriage in his 1923 book The Prophet:

You were born together, and together you shall be forevermore.
You shall be together when the white wings of death scatter your days.
Ay, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God.
But let there be spaces in your togetherness,
And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.

Love one another, but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup.
Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf
Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,
Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.

Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping.
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.
And stand together yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.

Six centuries earlier, a witty female Chinese poet and writer Guan DaoShen管道昇 (1262~1319) wrote the following famous poem when she was 40+ to her husband Zhao MengFu 趙孟頫,one of the greatest Chinese painters and calligraphers, about love and commitment. According to the legend, with this poem, she persuaded her husband not to acquire concubines which was a common practice of the time. Here it is with my English translation.

我儂詞 Sweetheart

你儂我儂， You and I,
忒煞情多， Deeply in loved so much so,
情多處熱如火。
Fired till we glow.

把一塊泥， Take a gob of mud,
捻一個你，
Make a doll of you,
塑一個我，
And a doll of me.

將咱兩個一起打破,
Take the dolls, break them to lumps,
用水調合，
Knead them with water to make,
再捻一個你，
Another doll of you,
再塑一個我，
Another doll of me.

我泥中有你，
You are in me,
你泥中有我。
And I am in you.
與你生同一個衾，
In life we share one blanket,
死同一個槨。
In death one casket.

The contrast of the two poems and insight can not be more striking, don’t you think?

By the way, a well-known Chinese composer Lee BaoZhen 李抱忱(1907-1979) wrote, based on this poem, a wonderful song called You and I (你儂我儂). Here is a recent performance of it in a college event in Taiwan. Enjoy and talk to you soon!

Chinese Intellectuals and Revolution

89 years ago today and less than 8 years after the collapse of Qing Dynasty, the first and most significant mass movement in modern China – the May Fourth Movement 五四運動 began at the Tiananmen Square of Beijing. Thousands of university students gathered and demonstrated against the foreign imperialism and China’s government dominated by warlords when they learned details of the Treaty of Versailles of WWI in which the Article 156 stipulated transfer of German concessions in Shandong province to Japan.

One can’t overstate the significance of this event; it unleashed of the intellectual energy and emotion throughout the nation that has been bouncing against the corrupted and ignorant Qing Dynasty and foreign imperialism since 19^th century; it unveiled debates of many competing western philosophies, ideas, and experiments in pursuit of ideals of freedom, democracy, science, and justice that form the paths of China of the ensuing century. Traces of it can be easily found as the country continued to try to find its own identity and define its future with sometimes critical self-examinations, doubts and complete rejections of certain traditions including the Confucianism.

Some of the most notable intellectuals on diverging paths (from the classical liberalism) include: Hu Shi 胡適, an America educated student of the famous philosopher John Dewey, who advocated pragmatic evolutionary change and made significant contributions to the language reform and Chinese Liberalism; mostly self-educated Chen Duxiu and Japan educated head librarian of Beijing University Li Dazhao (yes, Mao Zedong’s one time boss) who were initially attracted to anarchist communism and later turned to Marxism after they found the Chinese Communist Party in 1921. Indeed the movement reflected the public sentiments and urge of diagonal and seemingly paradoxical simultaneous responses of nationalism on one end, and admiration and adoption of the western experience and theory on the other hand. Unfortunately disappointments at the conflicts and perpetual gaps between ideals and self-interest in Darwinian world politics, such as what was illustrated in post WWI negotiations regarding President Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points, only pushed most of these intellectuals and China down the paths of polarizing authoritarian choices of communism and fascism.

In The Gate of Heavenly Peace – The Chinese and their Revolution, 1895-1980 (and its excellent Chinese translation 天安門：中國的知識份子與革命 ), Jonathan Spence, a Sterling Professor of History at Yale University and foremost historian of modern China, recreated the turbulent, traumatic and yet romantic history in a sense through lives and stories of Chinese intellectuals who devoted and risked themselves for dramatic changes of the country. Most of them have experience and studied abroad to learn from countries include England, France, Russia, Japan, and U.S. With the flourishing philosophical, social, political debates and revolutions in Europe from 18^th through early 20^th centuries, these young intellectuals and scholars absorbed the theory and experiences like sponge and created their own adaptations for China, in a hurry.

In particular, three leading intellectuals and scholars of different beliefs and choices across generations were selected to highlight the threads of that 100 years and how they shaped and were shaped by the history. They are: Kang YouWei 康有為 (1858-1927), the leader and strong believer of the constitutional monarchy who convinced the 17 year old Qing Emperor GuangXu 光緒 of the ill-fated Hundred Day's Reform 戊戌變法 in summer 1898, against the will of the de facto ruler Empress Dowager Cixi 慈禧太后; Lu Xun 魯迅 (1881-1936), the founder of the modern Vernachular Chinese 白話文 and a staunch socialist, who was the harshest critic of the social problems of China and Chinese National Character as illustrated by his legendary book The True Story of Ah Q 阿Q正傳; Ding Ling丁玲 (1904-1986) on the other hand, an independent and spirited feminist writer, who have served high positions in Communist Party and survived purges and persecutions through her life but never wavered in her deepest belief and commitment to her reform cause.

The book ends with a brief story of Wei Jingsheng 魏京生, son of a Communist Party cadre, a former Red Guard during the violent Culture Revolution, and an electrician of Beijing Zoo. Shortages of paper, ink and strict control of news media and publication did not deter him. Lack of dissemination mechanisms and channels did not stop him (and many others) to engage in substantive debates and discussions (note that PCs, Internet, BBS, and WWW only became available and popular in US more than a decade later). On Dec 5, 1978, responding to Communist China’s supreme leader Deng XiaoPing’s call for reform with The Four Modernizations (Agriculture, Industry, Science and Technology, and National Defense), Wei put up a signed (handwritten) poster of his manifesto Democracy: The Fifth Modernization (第五个现代化：民主及其他) on the famous Democracy Wall, a 100-yd. stretch of brick wall on Changan Avenue at Xidan Street near Tiananmen Square. He challenged directly the authoritarian Communist regime and inaugurated the public demands for freedom and democracy in China. 10 years later, on June 4, 1989, Communist China Army entered Tiananmen Square and massacred hundreds to thousands of protesting students and citizens. Wei spent the next 18 years of his life mostly in jail from 1979 till Chinese government exiled him to U.S. in 1997.

Of course, the story does not end there and there are many similar ones among the Chinese Intellectuals. Cross the strait, a highly respected intellectual and writer Bo Yang 柏楊 (1920-2008) just passed away 5 days ago in Taiwan. He was one time sentenced to death for treason and jailed for over 9 years for his sarcastic “translation” of popular American cartoon Popeye the Sailor Man dis-respecting president Chiang Kai-Shek and his son. His 1984 speech and essay The Ugly Chinese was extremely popular and generated a lot of discussions among Chinese throughout the world; the work was motivated by the well-known 1958 political novel The Ugly American and may be viewed as an echo to Lu Xun’s criticisms half a century earlier. Ironically, while Lu Xun’s work was banned in Taiwan until 1980’s, Bo Yang’s work was banned in Communist China until early 2000’s. These stories and recent political attacks on Barack Obama (and John Kerry in 2004 presidential election for the matter) do share at least one thing in common – an authoritarianism and populism tactic that attacks the intellectuals by equating criticalness to being unpatriotic.

On this day, as I read these and many other stories, I began to truly appreciate the old saying "The pen is mightier than the sword". I am deeply touched by the awesome power and selfless contempt to dictatorship and obscurantism demonstrated by so many courageous intellectuals and writers; they showed us the ultimate patriotism with humanity. Aided with technology like Internet, new generations of Intellectuals will continue to rise and flourish, to accelerate the social changes, and to lead forceful pushes for freedom and justice for us all.

Talk to you soon!