2016凤凰·鼓浪屿国际诗歌论坛举行,中西诗人谈新诗

作者:宫池   2016年10月22日 12:17  中国诗歌网    1668    收藏

今日,“2016凤凰·鼓浪屿国际诗歌论坛”在鼓浪屿顺利举行。本届国际诗歌论坛由凤凰网、厦门鼓浪屿管委会、厦门市文学艺术界联合会主办,凤凰文化、凤凰厦门承办。论坛由北塔、汪剑钊主持,陈仲义对本届国际诗歌论坛做总结讲话

2016凤凰·鼓浪屿国际诗歌论坛,中西诗人围绕“个人写作与外来文化的影响”做了精彩讲述,如外来文学对新诗的触发,中国古典自然观及西方现代生态主义对新诗的哺育及养分,诗的“个人”、“个性”的区分,诗歌如何作为世界的自觉意识,诗人的乌托邦属性等话题。

鼓浪屿国际诗会


(附:本届国际诗会论坛演讲稿)


诗歌作为世界的自觉意识

胡安·卡洛斯·梅斯特雷


诗歌大概是一种自觉意识,关乎我们无论如何也觉察不到的某种事物;或者也可以说,诗歌是一种存在于这个世界上的方式,应对变化无常的气候,抵御各个时期的匮乏,把记忆的延续变成词语的一份伦理性的遗嘱,道德上的平衡,介乎所有被噤声者的理据和未出生者的未来之间。

继续回忆和想象未来的乌托邦是可能的,聆听和继续发出诗歌的声音也是可能的。我听到的一切,从孩童时我注意去听的东西,都联结着诗歌——被视为人类之精致/脆弱的语言,面对暴力而不懈行走世间的另一条路径,通过左耳捕捉到彼岸干扰并调谐的另一样做法——什么干扰?一份神奇的志业,属于手无寸铁和天真无辜的人们,我们,仍然相信夏加尔那倒拉小提琴的蓝色母牛之革命性,要远大于任何对乌托邦理想的强制收编。

这就是诗歌的第一个乌托邦,自身存在和变成他者的可能性——直接对抗某种独专的思想,无论其来自秩序性的话语或是常规化的语言(被当权的语法和作为补偿形成的令人羞愤的“文化遗产”规训了),都是对正义、善良和梦想理念的背叛。

尊严这个词经常惹人发笑,尤其是在没有尊严的人中间。奥斯卡·王尔德说过,社会经常原谅罪犯,但从不原谅做梦的人,诗歌的声音也有类似的遭遇——让人作呕的英雄史诗直白得尴尬,没关系,太长时间沉浸在花开花谢的感怀,没关系,就连神圣的讲坛也被抢占、让“十四个爪子的猫”这些乌七八糟的修辞学端坐其上,但是,人们很少原谅诗歌涉足众生的疾患,或直抵日常的鄙俗(往往演化为激战);紫罗兰上的露水大有可为,在人类痛苦史上条件恶劣的采石场所抛洒的热血却一无是处。

我想说的是,对于生活在风中那些被消声的人,他们的声音还有另一条道路隐藏在诗歌里。有些词语就像出租车司机,把人们带去想去的地方,帮病弱者拿行李,给走错的人指点方向。有声自默境来,凭一种无法解释的信念抵达诗歌,信者之信,认定诗歌可以重建幸福的权利。

也许现在也是时候承认,乌托邦作为智慧的文本已然失效,它对“乌有之乡”顺从的挥别,须以对未来感伤的预期所取代,也就是说,“尚且乌有之乡”。“尚且”,兴许是对这一计划的再想象,基于批判性思维的抵抗,修复一个新的伦理谜题中某预设的失察。称“谜题”,是因为一种隐匿意义的不可知性而非确定性,或者说不一定笃信能找到意义。神秘之中一个“尚且”,有待被文学艺术的批判直觉梦到。我们生活在反乌托邦,一个本可以成为 “好地方”的反面,这正是目前我们不幸的现实,否定的社会学,要烙好不对我们承诺理性的伤口。被托马斯·莫尔理想化的那个梦想的广泛遗产,今天是一个陈尸的采石场,一场无法效仿的以脸孔计的人口普查。不可思议的事已经在可以有的最好世界里发生,在这里发生,围绕着词语发生,尽管这些词语努力命名幸福、却只留下一段突出犯罪忠诚度的历史。

我再说说岸上,文字魔法终结的地方。乌托邦及其梦想、其与幸福神话联盟的权威,将其历史进程的影响消减到一种对人类境况的反复鄙视,而那种境况的性质本来是被试图保留的。由于已经用一种宗教式观念来看待世界,就像加缪构想的用形而上的隐喻取代上帝,乌托邦计划推迟、不断延后救赎(实在之人组成的)他人的愿望,反对它试图改造的外部世界,反对被赋予了内在思想(我们小声称作精神)的个体。梦的携带者,用古老的异想之水给希望施洗的自由教母,在怀疑论中枯竭;她为日常行事扫除危险区域的好意,最终蜕变成意识形态上的屈膝,一种存在之脆弱性,其唯一在乎的限度是对恶劣生存条件的预知。

我在该说“诗歌”的地方用了“乌托邦”,使之成为可能的语言,其行为的道德之声,不断在人类自觉意识的和谐中被后置的语言举止。诗歌只是一种非功能性的话语,不断重述仅只一个目的,那就是建立一种与宇宙类比的身份:如此多散乱的谜题,帮助我们澄清与世界的关系。诗歌,一段没有嘴的声音的吐露,一场对永恒的“逻各斯”无所得的寻找——这一“道说”会毫无缘由地把希望的迹象尽数变得可毁灭,而迹象,是用语言记述“他者”的艺术猜想那烟一样的余缕,是深深猜疑的症状,是巴别塔的遥远航标、指向没有不幸的偶然所寓。一个词语的乌托邦,其追求不那么专注于改变当地的现实,而更看重超前,把对死亡的咒语、未来的意义戏剧化。冲突和矛盾之诗,多元的语言,根据对善的所有想象形式的渴望,让我们听到寂静,起源之前的绝对寂静,持续之后的最终寂静。

打造未来人类的精致/敏感性,同样取决于一首诗的精神,取决于一个我没有任何更好的词语来给前述赋予半点意义的乌托邦:我们从前不认为是善良、结果被证明为美的东西;当我们忘了对另一个人能有多同情,当魔法时间结束,悲悯的语言将再度降临,诗歌自觉意识的第一个举措。


LA POESIA COMO CONCIENCIA DEL MUNDO

Juan Carlos Mestre


La poesía tal vez sea la conciencia de algo de lo que no podemos tener conciencia de ninguna otra manera; acaso un modo de estar en el mundo, ante los desafíos de la intemperie, en resistencia contra las penurias de cada época, haciendo de la duración de la memoria un testamento ético de la palabra, un equilibrio moral entre la razón de todos los silenciados y el porvenir de aquellos que todavía no han nacido.

Aún es posible la utopía de seguir recordando e imaginar el futuro, aún es posible escuchar y seguir pronunciado las voces de la poesía. Todo lo que oí, a todo lo que presté atención desde que era muchacho, tuvo algo que ver con la poesía entendida como lenguaje de la delicadeza humana. Otra manera de estar en el mundo frente a los actos de fuerza, otra manera de sintonizar a través de la oreja izquierda las interferencias del más allá en la vocación mágica de los desarmados y los inocentes, quienes aún seguimos creyendo que la utilidad revolucionaria de una vaca azul tocando el violín en los cielos de Chagall es infinitamente mayor que todos los decretos de expropiación forzosa del sueño de las utopías.

Y esa es la primera utopía del poema, la posibilidad de ser y devenir en otro frente al pensamiento único de los discursos de orden, de los lenguajes normalizados por la gramática del poder y la vergonzante herencia intelectual de su recompensa: la traición a la idea de la justicia, la piedad y los sueños.

La palabra dignidad suele provocar risa sobre todo en aquellos que no la tienen. Decía Oscar Wilde que la sociedad perdona con frecuencia al criminal, pero no perdona nunca al soñador. Algo semejante ocurre con las voces de la poesía, suele perdonársele su desagradable obviedad con la épica repugnante de los héroes, pueden disculpárseles sus prologadas residencias en la contemplación del crepúsculo de las flores, ocupa cátedra la solemnidad retórica de su ruinosa creencia entre los gatos de catorce patas, pero rara vez se le perdona que se implique en los padecimientos de lo humano, en la sordidez de las coloquiales ocurrencias que desembocan en los paroxismos de la guerra, tiene sitio para el rocío sobre las violetas pero no tiene lugar para la sangre de los arrojados a la inclementes canteras de la historia del dolor.

Quiero decir que hay también otra calle en la poesía para las voces de los silenciados que han vivido en el aire. Hay palabras como los taxistas que llevan a la gente donde la gente quiere ir, ayudan con las maletas a los desvalidos, enseñan el camino a los errantes. Voces que llegan al poema desde de un país silencioso, desde una fe inexplicable, la fe de quienes conciben la poesía como restauración del derecho a la felicidad.

Acaso sea también ahora el momento de reconocer el fracaso de la utopía como texto de inteligencia, sustituyendo las resignadas visiones de su “ningún lugar” por la anticipación de su futura nostalgia, es decir, la de “ningún lugar todavía”. Todavía, esa sería entonces la imaginación del proyecto, restaurar desde la resistencia del pensamiento crítico el lugar del fracaso en la hipótesis de un nuevo enigma ético. Digo enigma, es decir la incógnita de un sentido encubierto, y no certeza, o sea el convencimiento ante su hallazgo. Un todavía en lo misterioso pendiente de ser soñado por la intuición crítica del arte y la literatura. Vivimos en la distopía, en el antónimo de lo que pudiera haber sido la existencia en el buen lugar. Ésta y no otra es en nuestro presente la realidad de lo aciago, la sociología de lo negativo cauterizando las heridas que no nos prometió la razón. El patrimonio común de aquel sueño idealizado por Tomás Moro es hoy una cantera de cadáveres, un inasimilable censo de ciudadanos en busca de rostro. Lo impensable ha sucedido en el mejor de los mundos posibles, aquí, alrededor de las palabras que intentando nombrar la felicidad sólo han podido dar cuenta de una historia subyugada por su lealtad a los crímenes.

Hablo de las orillas donde todo el encantamiento de nuestras palabras ha terminado. El prestigio de la utopía, de su sueño, de su alianza con los mitos de la felicidad, ha obviado las consecuencias de su devenir histórico a un reiterado menosprecio de la condición humana cuya naturaleza pretendía preservar. Ya vinculada a una concepción religiosa del mundo, bien como una metáfora metafísica de la sustitución de Dios, como pensaba Camus, el proyecto utópico ha postergado, aplazándolo sucesivamente, su deseo de redención del prójimo constituido en persona y, por oposición al mundo exterior que pretende transformar, al sujeto individual dotado del pensamiento íntimo que en voz baja llamamos espíritu. La portadora de sueños, la comadre de las liberaciones que bautiza la esperanza con las aguas servidas de su vieja ilusión, agoniza en el escepticismo; su intención por abolir las zonas de peligro del ser cotidiano ha desembocado en la sumisión ideológica, en la precariedad de una existencia cuyos únicos límite son los presentimiento de la intemperie.

He dicho utopía donde debiera haber dicho poesía, el lenguaje que la posibilita, la voz ética de su comportamiento, la conducta del lenguaje sucesivamente aplazado de su armonía en la conciencia humana. La poesía como un habla no funcional que rearticule sin otro fin que la identidad analógica con el universo los dispersos enigmas que constituyen el conocimiento de nuestra relación con el mundo. La poesía, el habla de una voz sin boca, la búsqueda sin hallazgo de un permanente logos que haga irracionalmente indestructibles los indicios de la esperanza. Los indicios, las estelas de su conjetura en el arte de dar cuenta de lo otro con palabras, esos síntomas de la gran sospecha, aquellas remotas balizas de Babel hacia el domicilio de un azar sin desgracia. Una utopía de las palabras cuya aspiración no pretenda tanto cambiar la realidad de sitio, como adelantarse, teatralizando su conjuro contra la muerte, los significados del porvenir. Poesía de los conflictos y las contradicciones, el múltiple lenguaje que conforme al deseo de todas las formas imaginadas del bien, nos permita oír el silencio, el absoluto silencio anterior al origen y el definitivo silencio después de la duración.

La construcción de la futura delicadeza humana también depende del espíritu de un poema, de una utopía para la que no tengo mejores palabras que pudieran prestarle una pizca de sentido a cuanto he dicho: lo que no creímos piedad y fue la belleza, cuanto hemos olvidado de la compasión ante un otro y habrá de ser, terminado el tiempo de los encantamientos, de nuevo el lenguaje de la misericordia, primer acto de conciencia de la poesía.



我的自然观

李少君


在诗歌界,我经常被人称为“自然诗人”,可能是我比较喜欢写自然,生活方式和思维方式也接近自然的观念。我的自然观,主要受到两个方面影响

一是中国古典的自然观。自然,在中国古代是一个含义非常丰富复杂的概念,除了指大自然之外,也可形容一种状态,比如自然而然,任其自然;还可以是一种生活方式和精神理念……这些意思又相互关联相互缠绕,既有时间的维度,也有空间的维度,显示出自然一词具有的张力。老子曰:“人法地,地法天,天法道,道法自然”,作为中国文化最重要的一个价值观“道法自然”,就同时蕴含了这多种意义。

《文心雕龙》很早就将自然与人文的对应关系阐述得很详尽:“日月叠璧,以垂丽天之象;山川焕绮,以铺理地之形:此盖道之文也。”自然山水是诗歌永恒的源泉,是诗人灵感的来源。道法自然,山水启蒙诗歌及艺术。“外师造化,中得心源”,几乎是中国诗歌和艺术的一个定律。

人们还认为山水本身是一种伟大的艺术形式和永恒的精神品格,对此,作家韩少功分析:“在全人类各民族所共有的心理逻辑之下,除了不老的青山、不废的江河、不灭的太阳,还有什么东西更能构建一种与不朽精神相对应的物质形式?还有什么美学形象更能承担一种信念的永恒品格?”所以,人们也以山水比拟人格,“仁者爱山,智者爱水”,成为人物品评的一个标准。

自然山水具有强大的精神净化作用,灵魂过滤功能。诗人谢灵运很早就说:“山水含清晖,清晖能娱人”;汤传楹《与展成》文中称:“胸中块垒,急须以西山爽气消之”;南朝吴均《与朱元思书》里更进一步说:“鸢飞戾天者,望峰息心;经纶事务者,窥谷忘返”……看见山水,人们可以忘记一切世俗烦恼,可以化解所有焦虑紧张,所以古人称“山可镇俗,水可涤妄”,山水是精神的净化器。西方也有类似说法,美国作家华莱士斯泰格纳认为现代人应该到自然之中去“施行精神洗礼”。

自然山水这种巨大的精神净化功能和灵魂疗治作用,导致中国古代山水诗和山水画盛行,山水诗歌成为诗歌的主流。谢灵运、陶渊明、李白、杜甫、白居易、苏东坡等等都是伟大的山水诗人,写下过大量的经典杰作。山水诗可以安慰心灵,缓解世俗的压抑。

二是来自西方的现代生态主义思潮。尤其是美国的自然思想和理论。

西方早期把人与自然对立,视自然为征服对象和工具。上帝死了,人僭越上帝之位,自认为是世界的主人,自然的征服者,不再尊重自然和其他物种,将它们视为可任意驱使随意采用的资源和材料。自然问题从此变成一个经济问题或科技问题,而非人类所赖以依存的家园,与人类休戚相关的安居之所。自然从此陷入万劫不复之地。

后来,西方的智者也意识此一危机的严重性,比如海德格尔就呼吁回复天地人神的循环,人只是其中的一环,反对把人单独抽取出来,作为世界的中心和主角,凌驾于万物之上。可以说与中国古人智慧相呼应。

在工业化浪潮中,也许因为相对后发,美国对现代文明的负面作用反省较早。有“美国文明之父”之称的爱默生曾经强调:人类应该遵守两句格言,一是认识你自己,二是研习自然。爱默生号召美国文学回归自然,他甚至说:欧洲大陆文化太腐朽了,需要自然之风来吹拂一下。在很多学者看来,正是自然文学的发展,使美国文学区别于重人文的欧洲文学,使新大陆区别于旧大陆。确实,美国自然文学经典比比皆是,惠特曼的《草叶集》、梭罗的《瓦尔登湖》、奥尔多·利奥波德《沙乡年鉴》等等。

自然文学可以说是美国的主流文学,美国自然思想和理论的影响力也很大。奥尔多·利奥波德是“土地伦理”的提出者,他说:“人们往往想当然地认为野生生物就像和风和日出日落一样,自生自灭,直到它们在我们面前慢慢地消失。现在我们面临的问题是高质量的生活是否要在自然的、野生的和自由的生物身上花费钱财。我们人类对于整个生物界来说还只是很少的一部分,那么能够真真正正看到自然界中的鹅群的机会比在电视上看更重要,有机会发现一只白头翁就像我们有权利说话一样神圣不可侵犯。”

美国诗人施耐德在现代语境下,提出过“地域生态性”概念,强调保持地域生态完整性,保护地域的整体生态,强调人与自然、地方的和谐相处,施耐德被认为是最具现代生态意识的诗人。

我的写作,就在中西方两种自然思想和观念之中,根据个人的体会,寻找自己的路径。比如我提出过蕴含现代自然观念的诗歌情境论。

按《新华字典》解释:情境是指情景,境地。在这里,我将情与境作分别的理解,这一点,王国维先生早就说过:“文学中有二元质焉:曰景,曰情。”景和境意思接近,但“境”除了场景、现场、场域的含义,还有境界的意味。因此,情境主要包含两个部分:情和境。情即情感。境,可分为客观之境和主观之境。客观之境是具体场景场域,自然之境;主观之境,则类似境界。

从诗学的角度来认识,情境,其本质就是将情注入境中,自成一个世界;或者说,用境来保存情,使之永存,使之永远。情因有境得以保存长久,境因有情而被记忆,具有了生命,有了回味。

境界是古典文学的核心概念。中国诗歌强调境界其实与尊崇自然密切相关。在诗歌中,境界唯高。何谓境界?我的理解就是指个人对自然的领悟并最终与自然相融和谐共处。唐僧园晖所撰《俱舍论颂稀疏》称:“心之所游履攀援者,故称为境。”哲学家冯友兰认为:“中国哲学中最有价值的部分是关于人生境界的学说”,学者张世英说:“中国美学是一种超越美学,对境界的追求是其重要特点。”

境界,就是人的精神层次,但这一精神层次的基础就是自然与世界,反映人的认识水平、心灵品位。王国维在《人间词话》里称:“有境界则自成高格”。境界里有景、有情,当然,更有人——自我。最高的境界,是“采菊东篱下,悠然见南山”,“纵浪大化中,不喜亦不惧”,是“游于艺”,是“天人合一”,是安心于自然之中。追求境界,就是寻找存在的意义,其本质是一种内在超越。学者胡晓明称:“境界的要义,就是创造一个与自我生命相关的世界,在其中安心、超越、生活”。好的诗歌,就应该追求境界。

境界的相关条件是自然,或者说,没有自然作为前提,就没有什么境界。古人早就说过:“山水映道”,瑞士哲学家阿米尔也称:“一片自然风景是一个心灵的境界”。学者朱良志说王维的诗歌短短几句,看似内容单调,但他实则是以情造出了一个“境”,比如“人闲桂花落,夜静春山空。月出惊山鸟,时鸣春涧中”,还有:“飒飒秋雨中,浅浅石溜泻。跳波自相溅,白鹭惊复下”……都独自构成了一个个清静自足但内里蕴涵生意的世界,是一个个完整又鲜活的“境”。

中国人认为自然万物都是有情的,世界是一个有情世界,天地是一个有情天地。王夫之在《诗广传》中称:“君子之心,有与天地同情者,有与禽鱼鸟木同情者,有与女子小人同情者……悉得其情,而皆有以裁用之,大以体天地之化,微以备禽鱼草木之几。”

古人推己及人,由己及物,把山水、自然、万物当成朋友兄弟,王维诗云:“流水如有意,暮禽相与还”;李白感叹:“相看两不厌,唯有敬亭山”;李清照称:“水光山色与人亲”;

辛弃疾则说:“我见青山多妩媚,料青山,见我应如是”;《世说新语》里记载:“简文帝入华林园,顾谓左右曰:‘会心处不必在远,翳然林木,便自有濠、濮间想也,觉鸟兽禽鱼,自来亲人。”古人移情于物,更有甚者,忘情融物,物我合一,庄周化蝶就是例证。

如此,人才能与自然和谐共处,在一个大的境界中,心与天地合一,生命与宇宙融为一体,人得以心安。最终,按海德格尔的哲学,人生活于天地人神的循环之中,“倾听”、“领会”与“守护”的那些个神秘的部分,“诗意地栖居在世界中”。


My View of Nature

Li Shaojun


In the poetry circle, I am often called “poet of nature”. Maybe it's because I like writing about nature and my lifestyle and mindset are akin to the nature. My view of nature is mainly influenced by the following two aspects.

The first is China's classic view of nature. In ancient China, the word "nature"(自然) is a concept with various and complex meanings. Of course, it is used to refer to the Mother Nature; it is used for describing a certain status, such as “happen naturally", or "leave things to their nature and intervene no more”; and it also represents a specific lifestyle and mindset…All these meanings correlate and twine with each other, covering both temporal and spatial dimensions and showing a stunning flexibility. As Lao-Tzu said: "Man takes Earth as his model; Earth takes Heaven as its model; Heaven takes Tao as its model; Tao takes what is natural as its model" (translated by Gu Zhengkun). The saying "Tao follows what is natural" is one of the most important values in Chinese culture, implying all the meanings mentioned above.

Back to ancient China, the Chinese classic The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons has elaborated the correspondent relations between nature and humanities: "The sun and moon like two pieces of jade manifest the pattern of heaven; mountains and rivers in their beauty display the pattern of earth.(translated by Vincent Shih). This is the pattern of Tao". Natural landscape serves as an eternal source that constantly outpours poems and brings inspirations to poets. "Tao follows what is natural", so poetry and art are compositions inspired by natural landscape. "Studying nature as a source of arts, and seeking the soul of creation from within", this could almost be regarded as a principle of Chinese poetry and arts.

People also believe that landscape itself is a great form of art embodying eternal spiritual quality, as analyzed by the famous writer Han Shaogong as follows: “Given the common mentality of the whole human being, what else other than the everlasting Mountains, Rivers and Sun that is more suitable to construct a physical incarnation of eternal spirits, and bear a permanent quality of belief? ” Therefore, people have been comparing personality with mountain and water. The saying "The wise enjoy the waters, the benevolent enjoy the mountains" has been a criteria for evaluating people in China.

Mountains and water can effectively purify your spirit and soul. The ancient Chinese poet Xie Linyun said: "Bathing mountain and lake alike in radiant sunlight. This radiant sunlight filled me with such joy". Another poet Tang Chuanying wrote in To Zhan Chen: "I urgently demand a cool breeze from the West Hill to relieve the blockage in my chest"; Wu Jun, a writer living in the Southern Dynasties, discussed further in his A Letter to Zhu Yuansi: the heart of an ambitious achiever settles in peace when he sees the mountain; the shrewd merchant forgets to go home when he glances at the valley…When we appreciate mountains and rivers, we may temporarily forget all the worries and concerns of the secular world and relieve ourselves from anxieties and tensions. Therefore, ancient Chinese believed that "Mountains can help calm down vulgar desires, and rivers can flush away improper thoughts", regarding mountains and rivers as spirit purifier. There are similar statements in Western world, too. American writer Wallace Stegne believed that modern men should walk into nature to "conduct a spiritual baptism".

The huge effect of spiritual purification and soul healing of mountains and rivers resulted in the prevalence of landscape poetry painting in ancient China. Landscape poetry held a dominant position in China's ancient poetry. Famous ancient Chinese poets such as Xie Lingyun, Tao Yuanming, Li Bai, Du Fu, Bai Juyi, and Su Dongpo were all great landscape poetry writers that created many classic masterpieces. Landscape poetry can comfort our mind and relieve depression from the secular world.

The second source of influences that shapes my view is the thoughts of modern ecologism from western world, especially the thoughts and theories about nature from the US.

In earlier stages of history, the Western community put the natural world on the opposite side of the human being, and regarded nature as a target to be conquered and utilized. The God is dead and his throne is usurped by Human, the master and conqueror of Nature with no respect for Nature and other species, which are sneered upon as materials and resources waiting to be exploited beyond any limits. After that, nature became an economical or technological issue, instead of a home of vital significance for our survival. At the same time, our Mother Nature was suffering with tears.

Later, some far-sighted Westerners realized how serious this risk had become. For example, Martin Heidegger called for the return to the cycle of heaven, earth, God and human being, among which we are only a component. He objected that humanity should not isolate itself from the world, considering itself as the center and master of the planet, a group that can override all other creatures. His thoughts was akin to the ancient Chinese wisdom.

While the wave of industrialization was still roaring, the US pioneered in the reflections of negative effects of modern civilization, possibly due to the benefits of hindsight. Ralph Waldo Emerson, who was called the "father of American civilization", highlighted that humans should follow two principles: know yourself, and investigate nature. He called on American literature to return nature, and even commented that the culture of mainland Europe was so stale that it needed a breeze from nature. Many scholars believe that it was the development of naturalistic literature that set American literature apart from Europeans who were trapped in their humanistic bias. American literature has indeed presented numerous naturalistic classics, such as Leaves of Grass by Whitman, Walden by Thoreau, A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold and so on.

As naturalistic literature was once prevalent in America, the thoughts and theories of naturalism also commanded huge influences. Aldo Leopold, who proposed "The Land Ethic", wrote that: "Like winds and sunsets, wild things were taken for granted until progress began to do away with them. Now we face the question whether a still higher 'standard of living' is worth its cost in things natural, wild, and free. For us of the minority, the opportunity to see geese is more important than television, and the chance to find a pasque-flower is a right as inalienable as free speech."

American poet Gary Snyder once proposed the concept of “Regional Ecology”, which emphasizes on keeping and preserving the overall integrity of the ecological environment of a region, and on the harmonious coexistence among man, nature and local community, hence he was regarded as an eco-poet with the strongest modern ecological consciousness.

In term of my creation, I tend to find my expressions based on personal experience and the distinct thinking of Western and Eastern worlds, and contextualism embodying the modern concept of nature was a good example of my exploration. According to Xinhua Dictionary,context (情境) refers to the scene and situation. Here, I would like to break down the term and interpret it as a combination of emotion (情) and situation (境). This idea was proposed by Wang Guowei before who said: “There exist two basic elements in literature, namely scene and emotion.” Scene is close to situation, but also embodies a sense of “realm”. Therefore, context consists of two major parts: emotion and situation, of which the latter includes both objective and subjective dimensions. The objective situation means the specific natural scene and field; while the subjective one is similar to the realm.

From the perspective of poetics, context is in its nature immersion of emotion in a situation, forming a unique poetic world, or a reflection and immortalization of emotion through situation. The emotion derives its permanence from situation, while the situation gets memorized and vitalized with emotions.  

Realm is a concept often used in Chinese classical literature, which is the most advanced level of a poem. The emphasis on realm by Chinese poetry is linked closely to its respect and worship for nature. Then, what is the realm? As I see it, the realm refers to the harmonious co-existence of man and nature based on full understanding of nature. Monk Yuan Hui of Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD) said in his book Research Works on Abhidharmakosa-sastra that: “the place where the mind goes is called the realm.” A noted Chinese philosopher Fung Yulan believed that: “The most valuable part of Chinese philosophy is the theory about the realm of life.” A Chinese scholar Zhang Shiying once said that: “Chinese aesthetics surpasses the aspect of esthetics and is characterized by the pursuit for realm.”

The realm is actually the spiritual accomplishment of a person, which is on the basis of nature and physical worlds and reflects a person’s taste and mind. Wang Guowei said in his Comment on Ci Poetry that “a poetry of realm is naturally a superlative one.” The realm consists of scene and emotion as well as man——yourself. The highest level of realm is like what Tao Yuanming wrote in his poems, “I pick fence-side chrysanthemums at will, and leisurely I see the southern hill” (translated by Xu Yuanchong), or “Having lived through the hardships, now I am free from disturbance of emotions”. It is about “letting relaxation and enjoy be found in the polite arts”, “The harmony between man and nature” and the settling leisurely down in the nature. The pursuit of realm is to find the meaning of existence, which in its nature means the internal improvement of a person. Scholar Hu Xiaoming said that: “The core of realm lies in creating a mind world tied with one’s life, in which he or she can feel at ease, live freely and achieve self-improvement.” The realm should be the pursuit of a poem.

Nature is the fundamental condition for achieving the realm, or it can be said that “realm cannot exist without nature”. Our ancestor said before that “nature reflects the Tao.” Swiss philosopher Henri Frédéric Amiel also mentioned tha: “A landscape is the condition of spirit.” When commenting on poems of Wang Wei (a famous poet in Tang Dynasty), Scholar Zhu Liangzhi said that his poems are short in verse and seem to be dull in content, but they actually create a realm with his emotions, such as what Wang Wei described in two of his poems, namely

The Warble Ravine:

In quiet hear how bay-flowers fall to the ground—

The vernal hills at night are void around!

At times the birds are startled by the moon,

Whose climb is heard in the dale with a warbling tune.( translated by Wang Baotong) ,

and The Luanjialai Rapids:

Amid the rustling of the autumn rain

The water gurgles swiftly over the stones,

As bounding drops go splashing with might and main

An egret starts, and then flies down again. (translated by Wang Baotong)

These poems all form some satisfactory and vibrant spiritual worlds which are all integrated and vivid realms.

Chinese people believe that everything in the nature owns emotions, including the world, the universe. Wang Fuzhi said in his Shi Guang Zhuan that: “Some people understand the emotion of the universe, and some feel the emotions of women and children… when fully grasped, these emotions can all be used to observe the macro changes of the universe and explore micro objects like bird, fish, grass and woods.”

Our ancestors associated themselves to other humans and thing, so they treated everything, such as mountain, water and nature, friends or relatives, of which examples are seen in Wang Wei’s poem, “The gurgling waters seems to know where goes my mind, flying in dusk over me are birds on their way home” ; Li Bai’s(701-762 AD) verse “Never tired of looking at each other—Only the Jingting Mountain and me “; and also Li Qingzhao’s work(~1084-1155 AD) “Clean water, green mountains and my relatives”;

Xin Qiji (1140-1207 AD) wrote that: “Charming are mountains green. I would expect the feeling to be Mutual, for we are somewhat alike, in mood and mien.” (translated by Xu Yuanchong); The Essays and Criticism (Shi Shuo Xin Yu) recorded that when Emperor Jianwen of Liang of the Southern Dynasties was touring the Hualin Garden, he turned to his followers and said, “A place which prompts heart-to-heart communication needs not be far. This garden is shadowed by trees and has a stream meandering through. Such a place makes one think of Zhuangzi (~369-286 BC) strolling on the bridge of the Haoshui River and angling in the Pushui River, where birds and fish seemed eager to get close to him.” Some of our ancestors transferred their emotions to objects and some even immerged into matters, of which a typical example is Zhuang Zi’s Butterfly Dream, in which he turned into a butterfly that was so real that he could not even tell whether he was a butterfly in the dream of a man or a man in the dream of a butterfly.

That is the way how man and nature harmoniously coexist in a vast realm where people’s minds are unified with heaven and earth and lives are integrated with the universe, and all men are quite at ease. According to the philosopher Martin Heidegger, in the ultimate sense, humans live in the cycle of universe, human and God, “hearing”, “comprehending” and “protecting” the mystics, as his famous sentence goes, “poetically, man dwells on the earth”.



在岛屿写作

黄冈



黄冈是祖父给我的名字,意在纪念1949年以前的故乡。我出生的故乡台湾,则是祖父硬在喉中的一口脓痰,既黏稠,又像吐不出来的满口乡愁。我带著这个充满符旨的名字满山游走,迎接著我的年代、命运和宝岛台湾血浓于水。

我的山海在当代经济建设裡的失衡,在颱风土石流裡嗫嚅著痛楚;看到了瑰丽原乡文化在公部门的抢救和疲软中喘成一条乾涸的砂婆礑溪。我也遇到了一些流浪的人:猎人、吟游诗人、艺术家、流亡作家、甚至我自己的家人,他们的故事动人可以写成好几本小说。

猎人阿鹏是我的好朋友。阿鹏时常无私地与我分享他的山林经验。25岁的他立志当猎人,住在祖先的山中猎寮。可是阿鹏告诉我,他要去台北开公车。「赚比较多啦!」还有一个孩子要养的他,不可以自私地留在猎寮。我不禁想像多年以后,我再度遇到他会是在台北的公车上,眼神不再焕发著光亮,我可能只认得他眼角的疤。于是我发现,在当代社会立志成为一位猎人,跟成为一个诗人同样都是件难以启齿的事,彷彿是个心中的小秘密,因为一说出口便要面对「猎人/诗人能当饭吃吗」这样的问题。

谢默斯.希尼(Seamus Heaney)说,诗是「雅緻、忧伤和微不足道的」。每一个半夜踅来的诗的跫音都让我如是觉得。但诗人、作家的文字份量,是足以以撼动世界的。长大后才发现,每一个诗人的焦虑都是他自己的,但是本质上,「诗人要对世界作出回答、对世界作出反应,这会使他成为一个负责任的诗人」。希尼为我作了最好的注释:我们不用想像著改变世界,但是却可以做一个对自己、对社会负责任的诗人。

写作的这段时间,街头运动、青年、中产阶级的鬱闷都在岛屿中闷烧,与水柱激射成更袄热的亚热带。我持续关注,并继续书写,越写越烧,并逐渐感受这世界上没有所谓「文学」这件事。文字成其为学问,是因为生活,是因为飢饿,是因为渴。肚子裡的渴,灵魂的渴。就如同阿尔代什峡谷中的壁画,是上古人类歌颂飢饿的杰作,于是一隻手涂驯鹿便成为了艺术;而关注乡野间的死亡,把祭辞谱成九歌就成为了经典。关于诗的价值,希尼举罗伯特.弗斯特(Robert Frost)对于诗的诠释为例:「有那麽一刻,诗止住了混乱」。希尼说,「止住」意谓著某种障碍物,它只是片刻的,但绝不逊于留下一个位置,且为那一刻提供了某种秩序。

我不能止住某种偏见歧视,或一桩开发案。但要成为一位走在稜线上的猎人,和成为一位优秀的诗人是同等困难。写作和狩猎像把双面刃,对内耗神、费事、旷日费时;对外缺乏经济效益、市场与商机。不过,两者的共通点,就是能止住人类世界某个时刻的混乱。猎人的囊中物无法喂饱整个部落,但却挽救了千百万年人类的飢饿。我无法藉由写作止住新自由主义的蔓延,却能留住一个民族的精蕴。

游走部落,从来不忘我所从何来。不论哪个民族,都在台湾行舟,都行舟到台湾。写作喂养了我的精神。盼望以文字的重量抚慰一些灵魂,对于生者,是祝福和祈愿;对于逝者,约莫就是哀悼与祭辞。

——自《是谁把部落切成两半?》后序


Writing on the Island——Lecture on Forum of the Kulangsu Poetry Festival 2016

Huang Gang


I was named by my grandfather after my hometown before my family went to Taiwan in 1949. I was born in Taiwan, a place like a bit of phlegm in the throat of my nostalgic grandfather, viscous and sticky. The name loaded with implications follows me everywhere, embraces my era, destiny, and merge with my new hometown, Taiwan.

My hometown has become imbalanced in today’s economic development and suffered from the disasters of typhoon and mudslide. At the same time, I witnessed that the magnificent culture of my hometown was turned into an inanimate misery under the so-called rescue of the public sector. I have also come across some rovers such as hunters, bards, artists, exiled writers as well as my relatives whose experiences can support several novels.

Peng is my friend who used to be a hunter. He generously shared his hunting experience in mountains with me. Peng determined to be a hunter at 25 and lived in his ancestors’ hut in mountains. However, he told me that he was going to be a bus-driver in Taipei (to make more money). The reason was that he needed to raise his child and could not be so selfish to stay in the hut. I can’t help imagining that the place where I met him many years later would be in the bus in Taipei, and his eyes were no longer sparkling. And the scar in the corner of his eyes was the only feature that I could recognize him. Then, I found that being a hunter is something embarrassing to tell others, just like being a poet. It is a secret in mind because once you utter it, you are bluntly faced with the question whether it is possible to earn a living as a hunter, or poet.

As Seamus Heaney has put, poetry is elegant, dolorous and insignificant. And I believe that every poem written in the night will be just like that. However, the power of poets’ and writers’ writing is great enough to vibrate the world. Only in my later life did I find that the anxiety of every poet is caused by himself. However, in their essence, a poet must answer and react to the world, so as to be a conscientious being. Heaney has given me the most appropriate explanation: we don’t need to imagine to change the world and what we can do is to be a poet who is responsible for himself and the society.

When I am engaged in writing, the depression of the street youths, the middle class is boiling on the island. This depression, together with spout contributes to the hot semi-tropical land. I continuously pay attention to this emotion and carry on with my writing. However, the more I write, the more terrible the situation is, and I increasingly feel that there isn’t the so called literature in the world. Writing is regarded as literature because of life, hunger and thirst. Just as the frescos in the Gorges de l’Ardeche, they are the masterpieces to extol hunger by ancient people. As a result, a reindeer painted by human hands is art and the Chu-ci poem Nine Songs derived from the author’s concern of death and sacrifice ceremonies is a literal classic. In light of the value of poems, Heaney once quoted the Robert Frost’s explanation: there is a moment when poems rein up the chaos. Heaney said that reining up is just like a barrier that only stays for a moment and offers a certain order but does not leave a mark behind.

I can’t prevent prejudice and discrimination, or a new development, but to be a hunter standing on the ridge is as hard as to be an excellent poet. Writing and hunting are just like double-edged swords which will not only consume you spirit and time, but bring little economic benefits, or marketable, commercial opportunities. Nevertheless, the common thing between poet and hunter is that it can keep back the chaos in humans at some time. Although the game cannot keep all the tribe away from hunger, it fed human beings for millions of years. I cannot block the spread of neoliberalism by writing, but I can preserve the ethos of a nationality.

I always remember where I came from roving around tribes. Every nation sails in and sails to Taiwan. Writing breads up my spirit and I hope that writing can solace some souls. For the living, it is blessing and invocation; for the dead, it is mourning and oration.

——Extracted from the epilogue of Who Cut the Tribe into Haves



我接受的外来文学影响

廖伟棠


我接受的外来文学影响至少要包括如下名字:卡夫卡丶曼德尔斯塔姆、里尔克、庞德、惠特曼、宫泽贤治,他们教导我诗人和世界的关系,演示在虚无中建立秩序的伟力,最终他们告诉我的不止是诗歌问题,更是人之为人的意义问题。

曼德尔斯塔姆的魅力最难以言表,他孩子气地诉说生死攸关的事情丶教我庄重与幽默并行的技巧;他在现实中对自由的执着进入文字,采取的是魔术师一般试探语言极致可能性的方法;他不但向身边的灵魂说话,还向俄罗斯及人类文明上过去的丶未来的灵魂说话,他教我始终把自己置身在整个世界文明的共同体中间,履行自己作为信使与证人的职责。

庞德告知我怎样果断地处理现代世界的混乱,同时还保持着古人的优雅气度;具体的诗歌理念上,庞德对我影响最大的是:他告诉我写诗应该百无禁忌,一如杜甫,庞德最终是一个悲观主义者——或起码说是一个不可知论者,这也和晚年杜甫有相似之处。

里尔克让我知道爱与诗都是困难的事情,因为困难便更需要去做;要说一本影响我一生的书,那绝对是里尔克的《给一个青年诗人的十封信》。在未知自己的选择是否正确的青年时代,一个成熟深沉的兄长的告诫是非常重要的。他的信和诗中完美、磅礴的神秘主义世界观,在我面向广阔世界迈出第一步的时候,引领乃至庇佑了我。

卡夫卡则比里尔克加深一层给予我这样的要求:一,坚决看清社会的假象和世界应有的真实;二,坚决写出这些假象和真实;三,与孤独保持亲密。卡夫卡是个羞涩的魔术师,我永远也猜不到我将要从他那里得到什么礼物,他曾教给我离题丶移情丶朴素和绝望的技巧,但我知道还有十倍以上的秘密等着我。

惠特曼教我如何作为世界的一份子去赞美世界。和一般读者相反,我最注意的不是惠特曼的“自我”(也不是他的种种化身),我关注的是惠特曼诗歌中那个世界,他自身以外的世界丶属于他所歌唱的他人的世界。他对自己的歌唱实际上也是对世界的歌唱的一部分,而且给我带来同样的营养:那就是如何健康地看待自己和外在的因素。

我高兴地发现,我的心理状态和惠特曼一样的健康,我能够公正地对待那些涌向我的诗歌的事物:无论那是美食还是毒素。惠特曼和庞德一样,给我培养了一个好胃口,庞德有句诗写给惠特曼,也是我想说的:“是你砍开了新的木头,如今已是雕刻的时候。”其后的艾伦.金斯堡、盖瑞.斯奈德、鲍勃.迪伦、乃至我辈,都是接手雕刻的人。

早在三十年前接触,但到这两年才对我影响极大的,是日本诗人宫泽贤治,宫泽贤治自比阿修罗,兼有荷尔德林与尼采晚年的神性/魔性。他的诗中包含着生机勃勃的宇宙和来自人性的灵魂试炼,我相信这也是我未来想要深入的,且容后再说了。


The Influence of Foreign Literature on Me

Liao Weitang


When it comes to the influence of foreign literature on me, such names should be included: Franz Kafka, Osip Mandelshtam, R. M. Rilke, Ezra Pound, Walt Whitman as well as Miyazawa Kenji. They tell me the relationship between poets and the world, as well as demonstrate the power of establishing order in nihility. What they ultimately tell me goes beyond poems themselves, but the meaning of human existence.

Words are beyond expression when it comes to the charm of Osip Mandelshtam who childishly recounted the life-and-death matter by a mixture of solemnness and humor, transferred his commitment to freedom in reality into the words through a way to explore the perfection of language like a magician, and conversed with the souls around him and those of Russia and human civilization in the past or in the future. He taught me to posit myself among the global civilization, shouldering my responsibility as a messenger and witness.

Ezra Pound instructed me how I should decisively address the chaos of the modern world with classical elegance. In terms of philosophy of poetry, the most influential thing he taught me is that there is no place for taboos in writing a poem. Similar to Du Fu, a Chinese poet, Pound is a pessimist ultimately or at least an agnostic, which resembles Du Fu in his later years.

R. M. Rilke imparted me that both love and poem are difficult, and that’s exactly why they are worthwhile. What’s more, if I have to name a book that has a lifelong influence on me, it must be Letters to a Young Poet by Rilke where we know it is critically important for us to accept an admonition from a mature brother when we are not sure about whether we have a correct choice in youth. The perfect, majestic mystical world view of his letters and poems guides and even blesses me when I set my first step to confront the vast world.

Such requirements Franz Kafka gave me which were in a higher level than R. M. Rilke did are as follows: First, unhesitatingly look through the illusion of society and see the real world as it should be; second, firmly write down such illusion and truth; third, establish a close relationship with loneliness. I'll never guess what I am going to get from Kafka, for he is a shy magician. By the way, he imparted me with the knowledge of rhetorical devices such as digress, empathy, briefness and despair, but I know there is more than ten times the secret awaiting me.

Walt Whitman taught me how to admire the world as one member of it. Contrary to the general reader, what I care about most is not Whitman as a person (nor his incarnations), but the world in the poetry of Whitman, the world beyond himself, the world of others that he praised. The idea in the matter of fact that he praises himself is also a part of his appreciation of the world, nurturing me all the same, and telling me how to treat myself and externals in a sound way.

I am happy to know that I am in the same healthy state of mind with Whitman where I can fairly treat those which rush into my poetry whether they are benevolent or poisonous. Both Whitman and Pound give me a bon appetite. What Pound wrote to Whitman is also what I want to express. That is to say that you have cut off new woods, and it is time to carve now. People like Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, Dylan and us all have taken over this mission.

Miyazawa Kenji, a Japanese poet, has a great influence on me in recent years though I knew him thirty years ago. He compared himself to Asura, who have the characteristics of divinity / devil of Holderlin and Nietzsche in his twilight years. Kenji’s poems contains the vigorous universe and the trial from the human soul, which I believe I will make a deep study in the future and we can take about it later.



当代诗歌写作与外来文化影响

赵野


我这代诗人,也许也包括上一代和下一代,开始写作时外来文化有着根本性的影响。那是上个世纪八十年代初,中国当代历史上的一个特殊时期,我们从思想和文化的专制与禁锢中走出来,全身心敞开,面向外面的世界,实际上就是西方文明世界。通过翻译,我们读了那时出版的所有西方诗歌,熟悉从荷马、萨福、维吉尔、但丁,一直到当代几乎所有重要诗人和他们的作品。就我们中很多人来说,对西方诗歌地图的记忆,远远大于对中国诗歌地图的记忆。

三十多年后的今天,我们可以反思这种外来影响究竟带给我们什么。诗歌是语言的艺术,我想我们中没有一个诗人,在经验、意识、审美和技艺方面,没有受惠于象征主义、意象派、超现实主义、意识流以及现代和后现代的诸多观念与方法。正是在这种影响下,我们明了了现代审美观念中词与物之间的关系,建立了中国的现代主义诗歌,加入了现代主义的世界大合唱。

但这只是硬币的一面,另一面是我们中的少数人,很早就有纯正的母语意识。我们感悟汉语的历史积淀,深入汉语的文化内核,努力发现这种唯一还在使用的象形文字的特殊质地,从而找到汉语诗歌自身的节奏、气息和音乐性,激活语词在我们的文明里丰富而微妙的象征与隐喻意义,让语言“给那些说不出的事物勾连起来”。经过三十年的劳作,我们中最杰出的一些写作者,为汉语贡献出了成熟的诗歌文本。考虑到现代汉语仅有百年历史,这已经是一个了不起的成就。

当史蒂文斯(Wallace Stevens)豪迈声称,“天堂与地狱的伟大诗篇都已写下”,这也标示着在西方文明里,历史已经终结。汉语却有完全不同的命运。我们身处一个前现代、现代和后现代同时混杂的社会,当下中国问题和经验的复杂性,已经对诗歌提出了强大的挑战。能否处理这些问题和经验,既是汉语诗歌的一个深渊,也是一种巨大的可能性。在《责任的重负》(The Burden of Responsibility)这本书里,托尼·朱特(Tony Judt)陈述过,生活在一个不负责任的时代,我们该如何经历,并反对这个时代。当代中国诗人更应该深思同样的命题,这也是我们继续需要的外来文化影响。


Contemporary Poetry Writing and the Influence of Foreign Cultures

Zhao Ye


When poets in our generation, perhaps also including the previous generation and the next generation, began to write poems, foreign culture are a fundamental impact on them. The early eighties of last century was a special period of China's contemporary history. At that time, we walked out from the despotism and lockage of ideology and culture, embracing the outside world, or the western civilization more specifically, with an open mind. Through translations, we read all the Western poems that were published at that time and became familiar with almost all the important poets and their works from Homer, Sappho, Virgil, Dante, to the present. For many of us, the memory of Western poetry map is far greater than the Chinese counterpart.

Today, after thirty years, we can reflect on what exactly this external influence have brought to us. Poetry is an art of language, I think among us there is no one who did not benefit from the concepts and methods of Symbolism, Imagism, Surrealism, Stream of Consciousness, and other modern or post-modern trends in terms of experience, consciousness, taste and technique. Thanks to this influence, we can understand the relationship between words and objects in modern aesthetic concepts, establish the Chinese modernist poetry and join the chorus of modernist world.

But this is only one side of the coin, the other side is a minority of us had a sense of pure mother tongue in very early time. We touch the history, penetrate into the culture of the Chinese language, trying to explore the unique logic of the only hieroglyph in use today, and find the rhythm, breath and musicality of Chinese poerty . The rich and subtle symbols and metaphors of activated words in our civilization allow the language to "hook up things that cannot be said". After thirty years of work, some of our most outstanding writers contributed a mature poetry to the Chinese language. Considering the fact that modern Chinese only has one hundred years old, this is a remarkable achievement.

When Wallace Stevens claimed that "the great psalms of heaven and hell have been written down," it also marks the end of history in Western civilization. Chinese has a completely different destiny. We are in a society which pre-modernity, modernity and postmodernity are mixed. The complexity of China's current problems and experience has been a great challenge to poetry. Whether we can deal with these problems and experiences or not is not only an abyss of Chinese poetry, but also a significant possibility. In the book The Burden of Responsibility, Tony Judt stated how we should live in an irresponsible world, and how we should experience and oppose it. Contemporary Chinese poets should think deeply about the same proposition, which is also the reason why influences from foreign cultures are still necessary.



外来文化对中国新诗写作的影响

韩庆成


从第三代开始,诗歌写作一度成为极端个人的事情,只注重抒发内心感受,而不关注外在世界。虽然这种现象的形成有着特定的历史因素,但我认为,在这样的一个曲折反复的变革时代,诗歌不应该也不可能完全回归内心,它仍然要受到外部社会的影响,包括外来文化的影响。全球一体化的大趋势,是经济的,也是文化的。

明年是新诗百年,上个月我在胡适家乡安徽绩溪发起了一个百年新诗纪念活动。从新诗的诞生来看,第一首新诗《朋友》,胡适是在美国留学时写的。早期的白话诗人,像刘半农、沈尹默、郭沫若、徐志摩、闻一多、戴望舒、李金发、周作人,等等,都有留学的经历,所以有人说新诗是外来文化影响的产物,也不是没有道理。70年代后期现代诗的诞生,也有相似的情况,这个时期的诗人如食指、北岛、舒婷、顾城、多多、王小妮等,虽因几十年的闭关锁国而无缘到国外留学,但在国内他们想方设法阅读的,基本上都是外国现代文学作品,因为这个时期国内除了样板戏那样的文学作品外,已看不到真正意义上的文学作品。所以,无论是新诗早期的白话诗,还是新诗成熟期的现代诗,都受到了外来文化的巨大影响。上世纪80年代改革开放,第三代及以后的诗人受到外来文化的影响应该更多。

这些都应该是常识。我在这里想说的是,当今新诗理论界谈到这种外来文化影响的时候,往往侧重于语言方面,而有意无意忽略了精神方面的影响。今天看来,在诗歌的语言方面,中国新诗经过100年的发展,已经走在世界的前面,持这种观点的,国外的有顾彬,德国著名的汉学家,国内的有徐敬亚,三个崛起之一。前几天和徐敬亚在深圳和德阳参加“86大展”30周年纪念活动,他多次提到这个观点。因此,借这个发言的机会,我想提醒新诗理论界多研究外来文化对诗人精神层面的影响,这个研究应该不仅仅局限于文学、美学范畴,还应该研究社会学、哲学方面。因为我觉得中国诗人,当然也包括文化人,当务之急不是再玩语言和技巧,而是在精神上如何从中国传统儒家的忠君、道家的出世这一类思想中彻底解放出来,在全球化的时代,接受人类先进文明的洗礼。这也是信息社会成为一个真正诗人的必要前提。


Influence of Foreign Cultures for New Poetry Writing

Han Qincheng


Since the third generation of Chinese poets, poetry writing has once turned into an extremely individualized practice, which only focuses on the expression of internal feelings instead of concerns for the external world. Several historical factors contributed to this situation, but I believe that poetry writing should not and will never ever focus only on internal feelings, for in such a tortuous time of constant changes, it is inevitable for poetry writing to be affected by the society, including foreign cultures. Global integration is not only about economy, but also about culture.

Next year will be the centennial anniversary of the birth of Chinese New Poetry, so last month I initiated a centennial celebration in Jixi County, Anhui Province which is the hometown of Hu Shih. Mr. Hu wrote the first New poem, Friends, when he was studying in America. As the majority of early modern vernacular poets such as Liu Bannong, Shen Yinmo, Guo Moruo, Xu Zhimo, Wen Yiduo, Dai Wangshu, Li Jinfa, Zhou Zuoren, etc. had overseas education experience, some people hold that New poetry was produced under the influence of foreign cultures, which I find quite reasonable. Also, there was a similar pattern for the emergence of Modern poetry in the late 1970s. Famous poets of that period, such as Shizhi, Bei Dao, Shu Ting, Gu Cheng, Duoduo, Wang Xiaoni and etc., stood no chance to study abroad. Despite this, they tried every possible means to read foreign modern literary works, since there had been few authentic literature in China but for the model operas due to decades of blockage from the outside world. It is obvious that both modern vernacular (baihua) style of poetry in the early period and the Modern poetry in its maturity stage were greatly influenced by foreign cultures. And I believe that since China’s reform and opening-up in the 1980s, foreign cultures must have exerted more influences on the third and even later generations of Chinese poets.

These are no more than common knowledge. What I'm going to say here is: when it comes to the influence of foreign cultures, the theoretical research community of New poetry tends to focus on the linguistic aspects but somehow ignores the spiritual influences. Some believe that, after over one hundred years of development, Chinese New poetry is now taking the global lead in terms of poetic language. This opinion has been supported by the renowned German sinologist, Wolfgang Kubin, and Xu Jingya, who is one of the famous three "Rising" stars of the third generation of Chinese poets. Xu mentioned this opinion for quite a few times when he attended the 30th anniversary commemoration of the Exhibition of Modern Chinese Poetry 1986 in Shenzhen and Deyang. Hereby, I'd like to take this opportunity to encourage the New poetry theoretical research community to study more about the influences of foreign cultures on the spiritual side of Chinese poets. This study, I believe, should not be limited in literature and aesthetics, but be expanded to sociology and philosophy, because I believe that the top priority of China’s contemporary , or more broadly Chinese intellectuals, should be shifted from refining their styles and skills to fully liberating themselves from the confinement of traditional Chinese ideas, e.g., Confucian royalism and Taoist escapism. In this age of globalization, we should embrace the most advanced civilization in the world, and this is a prerequisite for becoming a genuine poet in the information era.



鼓浪屿诗歌节《个人写作与外来影响》论坛的发言

默默


说出来不怕大家笑话,今天,我能以一个诗人的身份,煞有介事地站在这讲台上,我必须感谢上一世纪的“十年浩劫”。

记得,童年时,第一次接触到的一本诗集,是《普希金抒情诗集》,译者是查良铮先生。完整地读完后,竟然大吃一惊,继而大喜过望,认为写这么蹩脚的抒情诗人,居然也能成为“俄罗斯诗歌之父”,那小的提笔写几首,日后说不定也能混个什么之父无疑。

就这样,我在懵懵懂懂的少年时代,开始昏天黑地地胡乱写起新诗。后来,国家拨乱反正,开始了新纪元,重新出版了曾被认为是“封资修”的唐诗宋词。


孟浩然:鱼行潭树下,猿挂岛藤间

刘希夷:洛阳城东桃李花, 飞来飞去落谁家?

鱼玄机:枫叶千枝复万枝, 江桥掩映暮帆迟

张若虚:江畔何人初见月?江月何年初照人?

李白:古来圣贤皆寂寞,惟有饮者留其名。

李贺:半卷红旗临易水,霜重鼓寒声不起

苏东坡:莫听穿林打叶声何妨吟啸且徐行

李后主:花自飘零水自流,一种相思,两处闲愁


那一看,害得我有好一阵不敢再提笔写诗。可是,一旦写诗了,就像吸毒,文字的海洛因,总是引诱你想把文字分成一行一行,过过瘾。如今,到处都是海洛因的戒毒所,我真希望缪斯不再是诗神,而是去担任“诗歌戒毒所”所长。

待我接触到陶渊明、谢灵运,庾信,鲍照,卢照龄、张若虚、陈子昂、王维、孟浩然、李白、杜甫、苏东坡、辛弃疾时——太多了,太璀璨了,不一一陈列了——,我已经病入膏肓,一发不可收拾了。

所以,如果没有“十年浩劫”的禁书运动,我一定会在童年时代就接触到诗经楚辞,唐诗宋词,乃至元曲,我敢发誓,我肯定是不敢提笔写诗,妄想去做一个什么之父的。

既然,不敢在班门前弄斧,那就在班门前挥挥锄头吧。自此,我就一直在班门前挥舞“新诗”这把锄头,挥得不亦乐乎,挥得把“50岁的肩周炎”也挥没了。

后来,我才知道,语言的天籁是无法转译的,“信达雅”的说法几乎是一句废话。普希金依旧是俄罗斯伟大的语言之父,诗歌之父!只是俄语的精妙之处,一个母语是汉语的中国诗人是难以企及,也无法企及。如今,普希金和李白杜甫一样,是一个高山仰止的名字。

上世纪70年代末,80年代初,全世界的翻译诗铺天盖地地席卷而来,我读到了惠特曼的《草叶集》,雪莱的《西风歌》,海涅的《西西里的纺织工人》,庞德的《地铁》、《高利贷》,艾略特的《荒原》,西门尼斯的《山岗》,洛尔迦的《四只鸽子》,里尔克的《豹子》,埃利蒂斯的《俊杰》,桑德堡的,维尔哈伦的,很多很多,一样是璀璨怡丽。

如果非要说外来诗歌对我近四十年的诗歌创作有什么影响的话,那我就得狠狠地翘起大拇指,为伟大的法语诗歌点赞了。首先是兰波,一个伟大的诗人必须是一个伟大的预言家。

兰波在19岁封笔前,就为我们留下了不朽的预言诗章:


我曾被彩虹罚下地狱

幸福曾是我的灾难

我的忏悔和我的蛆虫

我的生命如此辽阔

以致于不能仅仅献给力与美


自加农炮发明和巴黎市民攻占巴士底狱后,19世纪中叶,法国开始了资本主义欣欣向荣的新时代。一个接一个科技成果带来物质文明奇迹的彩虹,日夜高悬在法兰西上空,让所有高卢人狂喜不已。150年后世界却被150年前的兰波不幸言中,对地球的疯狂地攫取,大气污染,全球温室效应带来的灾难层出不穷,当年以人道主义名义的对“幸福”的渴望,如今已经变成了现代子孙们的“灾难”,今天,我们终于重新体悟先知的忠告:生命如此辽阔,不能仅仅献给力与美!

还有一个诗人,让我明白一个真相:伟大的诗人必须是伟大的先知!他就是波德莱尔。也是在19世纪中叶,当全世界率先步入民主宪政的西方世界的民众,纷纷陶醉在个人主义的漩涡里的时候,波德莱尔冷冷地冒出了一行诗句:民主,就是一个暴君变成一千万个暴君!

这行冒天下之大不韪的诗句,让目瞪口呆的法国愚民整整屏蔽了波德莱尔七十几年。多年后,一个留着一撮可笑胡子的希特勒,被一千万个暴君选出来当首相后,开始以“合法”的名义,疯狂地迫害犹太人。一个被驱逐到德国边境的犹太人智者,他叫本雅明,含泪写了一本《资本主义时代的抒情诗人》,终于向伟大的先知波德莱尔投去充满悔恨、神圣的一瞥!

其实,伟大诗人都是同一个地球文明哺育的,无所谓外来文明和内在文明的影响。早在兰波和波德莱尔之前的1000年前,杜甫就写下了这样的千古感慨:王杨卢骆当时体,轻薄为文哂未休。尔曹身与名俱灭,不废江河万古流!

谢谢大家!


Speech on “Personal Writing and the Influence of Foreign Culture” Forum at Kulangsu Poetry Festival

Momo


It may sound odd to you, but I have to admit that, thanks to the “Ten-year Catastrophe” (Cultural Revolution), I can stand here today as a poet with an air of importance to give a speech.

I still remember the first poetry collection I encountered in my childhood is Pushkin Lyrical Poems, of which the translator is Mr. Zha Liangzheng. After I finished reading it, I was at first surprised, and then overjoyed, thinking that maybe I could be the Father of something if I wrote something down since even a poet with such crappy works was praised as the Father of Russian Poetry..

So I started writing new poems day and night in my ignorant boyhood. Afterwards, the nation started putting things back in order, a new age began, and the “Tang Poem and Song Iambic Verse” once regarded as “Feudalism, Capitalism, Revisionism” were republished.

Meng Haoran: Fish swim beneath the pool’s trees, Apes hang among the island’s vines.

Li Xiyi: East of the walls of Lo-yang the flowers of peach and plum, Flying here, flying away, into whose yard falling now?

Yu Xuanji: Myriads of maple trees upon myriads of maple leaves silhouetted against the bridge, a few sails return late in the dust.

Zhang Ruoxu: Who by the riverside saw the moon arise? When did the moon first see a man by riverside?

Li Bai: The Saints and Sages of old times are all stock and still, Only the might drinkers have left a name behind.

Li He: Battle banners half-furled over the Yishui River, Drums go mute from heavy frost and cold.

Su Dongpo: Listen not to the rain beating against the trees, Why don’t you slowly walk and chant at ease?

Li Qingzhao: The faded petals are scattered away, The water is flowing smoothly, Must we share the same longing in two places?

After reading those verses, I dare not write another poem for quite a while. However, writing is like drugging. Cocaine of words always lures you to put the text line after line, just to satisfy a craving. Nowadays, rehabilitation centers for Cocaine are everywhere. I really hope Muse could be the director of “Rehabilitation Centers for Poetry”, rather than the God of Poetry.

Then, when I came to know Tao Yuanming, Xie Lingyun, Yu Xin, Bao Zhao, Lu Zhaoling, Zhang Ruoxu, Chen Zi’ang, Wang Wei, Meng Haoran, Li Bai, Du Fu, Su Dongpo, Xin Qiji and so many other great names that I can’t list them all, my affection to poetry was deeply rooted in my system, completely out of control.

So, if it hadn’t been for the “book-ban movement” during the “Ten-Year Catastrophe”, I would have encountered with The Book of Songs, Lyrics of Chu, Tang Poems, Song Iambic Verses and even Yuan Operas. That way, I swear I wouldn’t dare mention anything about writing poems, or fantasize about being some “Father”.

As I dare not show off my proficiency with axe before Lu Ban, the God of Carpenter, I guessed I could play with hoe. From then on, I’ve been playing with “new poetry” in front of the master, and rather happily, which thawed my “fifty-year-old frozen shoulder” away.

Afterwards, I realized that the beauty of language cannot be translated, and the notions of “faithfulness, expressiveness and elegance” are simply nonsense. Pushkin is still the great Father of Russian language and poetry! It’s hard, and even impossible for a Chinese poet to get the exquisiteness and beauty of Russian vocabulary. Now, Pushkin, just like Li Bai and Du Fu, is a name one should admire with awe.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, when translated poems from all over the world overspread, I read Leaves of Grass by Whitman, Ode to the West Wind by Shelley, The Fisherman Sicily by Heine, In the Station of the Metro and by Pound, The Waste Land by Eliot, Four Pigeons by Lorca, and DerPanther by Rilke, as well as Sandburg and Verhaeren, so many shining names.

If foreign poems had any influences on my poetry creation over the last forty years, I have to name the great French poems. The first one is Rimbaud. A great poet must be a great prophet.

Before he quit creating at 19, Rimbaud already left a treasure of immortal prophetic poetry for us.

I had been damned by the rainbow.

Felicity is my doom, my gnawing remorse,

my worm: my life would forever be too large

to devote to strength and to beauty


After the canon was invented and Paris citizens captured the Bastille in the middle 19th century, France entered a new era of flourishing capitalism. The rainbow of material civilization miracle brought by numerous achievements of science and technology, hanging high up the French sky day and night, left the Gauls in ecstasy. Unfortunately, Rimbaud’s prophecy about the world came true 150 years later. Inconsistent rake of the Earth, air pollution and global warming, all kinds of disasters emerged one after another. The previous aspire towards “happiness” in the name of humanism today turned to the “catastrophe” for our offspring. Today, we finally understand the admonish from the Prophet:

There is another poet who makes me understand the truth that a great poet must be a great prophet. His name is Baudelaire. Also in the middle 19th century when the people of the West World stepped into democratic constitutionalism, and everyone got intoxicated in the swirl of individualism, Baudelaire pulled out a line of verse sharp and clear: Democracy is one tyrant into a million tyrants!

The line of verse that risked everyone’s condemnation had the dumbstruck French people alienate Baudelaire for over seventy years. Many years later, a man with a funny mustache named Hitler, elected as the Prime Minister by thousands of tyrants, started his mad persecution against the Jews in the name of “rightfulness”. A Jewish wiser expelled to the Germany border, whose name was Benjamin, wrote Lyrical Poet in the Age of Capitalism with tears, casting a glance full of regret and respect at Baudelaire the great prophet!

As a matter of fact, great poets are all cultivated by the same Earth civilization, and it is pointless to distinguish between the so-called alien or local civilizations. As early as 1000 years before Rimbaud and Baudelaire, Du Fu has wrote down the eternal masterpiece:

Our four great poets write in a creative way. You shallow critics may make your remarks unfair. But your bodies and souls will fall into decay. While their fame will last as the river flows forever.


Thank you for your attention!



真正的写作立基于对“影响”的克服

赵四


很长一段时间,谈“影响”,大家都比较习惯于理解为单一向度的“接受”,也就是认定不同作品之间应当有事实关系,才够得上相互间发生了“影响”。但是,对于任何一个真正具原创力的创作者来说,他/她所追求的,必定是事实“影响”的隐而不见,见得着的话,有时几乎不啻为是一种失败了。

因为原创力是一种能够驱使一切材料为其服务的本初力量,是一种大的、结构性的力量,倘若它不能够裹挟、包容、整合各种材料,而让材料的部分过分地显现出自己的来源,那大概就得叫原创力不够强大。

因为我是一个对原创力有信仰的诗人,所以我比较警惕“影响”,或者说我对自己是有要求的,面对各种“影响”,我要求自己,如果做不到用自己本源的创造力去居先地占据它们、有效地使用它们,让它们为我服务,即便我好奇心再强,我也只能拿它们去写散文,去写感想,而写作最需要仰仗原创力的诗歌,我不会允许自己这样去使用材料。

尤其在今天,我们写作的人,都在事实上生活于一个“世界博物馆”的环境中,如果你不是一个不惧无知的、敢于一味去写的蒙昧主义者,如果你有能力睁眼行走于其中,而不是自甘被各种各样的干扰——意识形态的、商业主义的、媚俗避害的……所障目、迷失,又天资不错的话,也就是是一个真正的写作者,不仅仅是一个追求写作成功的人的话,你会本能地吸收好东西,人类文化精华,先进代表文明……但这一切仍更多是作用于缔造一个敞开的心灵,不断成长、壮大的、有知的心灵。而其中有效触发“诗”的影响,仍在于你本源的“诗心”构造是怎样的。

事实上,最有效的诗的“影响”只能是来自于和你的 “诗心”天然契合、坦然呼应的事物,某种能够对你形成触发按钮作用的“忽临”,当它来到你眼前,进入你身心,你内在的某个诗人或其某个面向便被打开了,然后这个诗人或这个诗人的这一局部会走它自己的成长之路,你压根儿不知道他/她会长成什么样,他/她也必要最终长得谁都不像,只是像一切好作品,才能够真正长成了。遇到这种“影响”,可称是获得赐福的。“影响”必经此内在化的道途,或曰内在有能力消化影响,它才是真正属于你的影响,或者说是被你“克服”了的影响。它将只作用于帮助你完成那个艺术家意志的建构,而不是跳出来唱它自己的歌。

其余的很多影响,对诗人来说,最多只能算是一种学习,但一个真正的诗人,不会是个永远的学徒。一旦他/她的艺术家意志完成了自己的构造,无论他/她多么敞开,多么善于学习,他/她得到的一切都将只是供其原创力获得形式显现的资料库。


The Real Writing is based on Overcoming “Influence”

Zhao Si


For a very long time, when it comes to “influence”, we have been accustomed to conceiving it as single-way “acceptance”, that is, only if there is the factual relationship between different works can we affirm the existence of mutual “influence”. However, for any creator with genuine originality, what he or she pursues must be the invisibility of real “influence”. If the influence can be seen, sometimes it almost can be regarded as a failure.

The reason is that originality is an original power which is able to drive all materials to serve itself and also a strong and structural power. If it fails to include and integrate various materials and allows part of those materials to betray their sources too obviously, probably the originality is less strong than we have expected.

I am a poet worshipping originality, so I am relatively on the alert for “influence”. Faced with different “influences”, I require myself that I should only use them to write essays or impressions if I can’t control them and make them serve me with my own creativity. For poetry which mostly depends on originality, I will not allow myself to use materials in that way.

Especially today, we writers, in fact, live in a “world museum”. If you are not an obscurantist who is brave enough to accept ignorance and blindly writing and if you have an ability to keep your mind clear, not indulge and lose yourself in all kinds of interferences (e.g. ideological, commercial and kitsch) and have a good talent, then you are a real writer. You are not just a person who only aims at a success but can intuitively absorb good things like human culture essence and advanced civilization……but all above mentioned are more inclined to create an open mind which continuously grows, develops and perceive. It is still how your own “heart of poetry” is structured that triggers effectively the influence of “poetry”.

In fact, the most effective “influence” of poetry can only derive from the things which naturally correspond to your “poetic heart” and Eureka. When it comes to you and goes into your heart, an inner poet or some dimension is released, which will grow out of its own path. You have no idea of what he or she will look like. Only when he or she finally resembles nobody but every piece of good works have he or she truly matured. This kind of “influence” is a blessing. “Influence” must go through the way of internalization which means that you have an ability to digest the influence so that it can truly belong to you or is overcome by you. It will only help you construct the artist’s volition instead of singing for itself.

Many other influences, for poets, are a kind of learning at most, but a genuine poet cannot be an apprentice forever. Once the construction of his or her artist’s volition has been finished, however open-minded he or she is and however good he or she is at learning, what he or she has obtained is just a database which provides the representation forms of his or her originality.



谈谈“个人写作与外来文化影响”

树才


1. 写作从来都是个人的,就是说,诗歌写作,从来都具有某种个人性。

个人性,就是有名有姓。写作者总是有名有姓的“那一个”,而不是模棱两可、无从确认的“某一个”。诗歌写作的这种个人性,贯穿古今,而且中外皆然。

中国第一个有名有姓的诗人是谁?是屈原。屈原,名平,字原。瞧,古人名字里,“名”和“字”是互相补充、彼此呼应的。我们把平坦的辽阔地域叫做平原。屈是姓,但这个字冥冥之中也决定了屈原的命运:他满心冤屈,悲愤苦吟,竟至绝望,然后投汨罗江,怀石自沉(如果在今天,报纸又会说他是死于抑郁症)。愤怒出诗人,实际上,冤屈也出诗人。屈原的《离骚》中,那股因遭受压抑而愈发激昂的心气,最终给了汉语诗歌一种气质:冤而嗟叹,不折其志。发展到后来的词,“幽怨”这种情致,就更有“个人性”,比如李清照的“凄凄惨惨切切”。

汉语诗歌,以唐为盛。现在还有诗人,以“回到唐朝”作为人生指归。当然,唐朝是回不去的;真要回去,也只能“梦回唐朝”。诗歌只能往前走,没有回头路。唐朝只属于唐朝,属于唐朝的李白、王维、杜甫、白居易……他们一个个都有名有姓。透过五言、七律这些诗体,中国诗歌攀上了顶峰。但是,李白、王维、杜甫、白居易……他们是从不同的地点出发,以不同的走路步伐、不同的行进速度、不同的喘息节奏……分头登上顶峰的。所以说,这个顶峰,也是他们各自的顶峰。诗歌之山,其实不是一座山,而是一派山脉,有点像大理的苍山,没有共同的顶峰,而是苍山十九峰,夹着十八溪。读李白、王维、杜甫、白居易的诗,我们就能明白,诗歌写作的个人性,就是诗人的个体生命贯注在诗篇中的个性气质,就是诗人感知世界和表达内心的独特视角和嗓音。

个人性,说到底,就是个人嗓音的独特性。一个诗人凭此,同其他诗人相区分,并被读者识别出来。甭说诗歌写作是个人的,连真理都是个人的。写诗,就是诗人追求真理的个人方式。

2. 文化能分“内来”和“外来”吗?我觉得最好不要分。

我观察到,近百年来的新诗演变,一直存在着两个焦虑:一个是古今之争,另一个是中外之争。

古今之争,通过“断裂式”(从文言文跳到白话文)的剧变,似乎已经解决了。其实没有解决。我们发现,习古诗者,仍然为数甚众,当然新诗已然占了上风,在习古诗者和写新诗的人之间,好像没有共同语言,双方彼此贬抑。实际上,写作的个人性,就是它们之间的共通之处。五言、七律,是定型诗(诗体有外在的强制性的形式要求),发端于白话的现代诗,则是非定型诗(主动放弃押韵,可以长短不一,追求每一首诗的语言生成、情感密度和节奏力量)。我相信,古诗仍然活在现代诗人身上,因为传统本身是血液和气脉,那种传承有隐秘性,但DNA一测就测出来了。传统从来不是僵死的东西。传统的力量,正是指传统必须在新的探索中延展活力,长出新枝。

中外之争,体现在比如“写作原创和翻译影响”这样的人为对立上。其实,每一个中国现代诗人都站在“古今中外”这个十字路口;绿灯亮起,我们走过了一个十字路口,但别急,下一个路口,还叫古今中外。文化是什么?文化是我们日常生存所能体现的一切习惯和行为,所以已经包含了“中今中外”的内容。从来没有一脉相、单线直传的所谓文化。要说“影响”,不如说“吸收”或“转化”。诗人的胃,见什么新鲜就吃什么,只要有营养就行,不会去管它是古来的还是外来的。吃进去了,胃就一定能吸收一部分,哪怕吃坏了肚子,没准也是一次清肠。公元以来,佛教传入,我们现在有多少词汇,都是出自佛教典籍;洋务运动,激发翻译,我们现在有多少概念,都是翻译而生的外来语。甚至新诗本身,它的诞生,一方面固然是由于定型诗自身内部压力的推动,但不可否认,最直接的动力,却是对外国诗歌的翻译。伟大的中国现代作家鲁迅,首先是一个翻译家。扩而言之,当今的中国,甚至我们赖以思维的思想概念,从“人性”“民主”到“形而上”“存在”……都是得自翻译。

得自翻译,但又化出,生成新的智慧,这就是禅宗。禅宗可以是中国人自己的智慧生发,汉语诗歌的现代性,也完全可以通过“汉语的吸收力和创造力”建构起来。

我的想法是,要从“古今之争”和“中外之争”这种双重焦虑中跳出来,来思考全球化语境下“创作的互文性”和“翻译的可能性”。

通过对翻译的实践和思考,我越来越意识到,我们正处在一个翻译的世纪。诗歌翻译,说到底,是另一种诗歌写作。不是通过别的妙法,正是经由翻译诗歌的刺激和滋养,当代汉语诗歌打开了一种新的可能性,或者说找到了一个新的生长点。

我们说“外来文化影响”,其实就是在说“翻译诗歌影响”。它发生在我们每一个诗人身上。有一类诗歌,它的积累正变得越来越有规模,它的诗学具有混血和杂交的性质,它把“影响的焦虑”吸收并内化为一种“再生的努力”,它就叫“翻译诗歌”。

                     

On “Individual Writing and Foreign Culture’s Influence”

Shu Cai


Writing is all about individual. More specifically, poem writing always features certain individuality.

Individuality means a concrete writer, “the one” with an exact and specific name, instead of “one" that is ambiguous and uncertain. The individuality of poetic writing exists at all times and in all countries.

Then who is the first recorded Chinese poet? It is Quyuan, whose given name is Ping and who styled himself as Yuan. We can see from the ancient names that given name and style name are mutually complementary and consistent with each other. People call a flat and vast expanse of land as Pingyuan (plain). Qu is his family name, and his life seemed to be destined by it: treated with injustice, full of grief and indignation, he became desperate and finally drowned himself in the Miluo River with stones fastened (if it happened today, it would be reported that depressive disorder caused his death). Indignation makes poets, so does injustice. The sufferance from repression aroused his long- restrained passion and ambition, which contributed a kind of shared characteristic to Chinese poets and their poems: wronged and desperate, while still highly motivated with ambition. Poems afterwards featuring “melancholy” became more individualized. So dull, so damp, so dank, so dead from a poem by Li Qingzhao, for example.

Poetry prevailed in Tang Dynasty. Even now, there is still some modern poets who regard “let poetry back to Tang Dynasty” as their life goal. Apparently, there is no going back to Tang Dynasty, if so, just in dreams. Poetry advances towards the future and never dwells in the past. Tang Dynasty belongs to itself and to poets like Libai, Wangwei, Dufu, and Bai juyi…. Each of them has a concrete name. Composed of five-character or seven-character lines, Chinese poetry has made it to its summit. However, the poets like Libai, Wangwei, Dufu and Baijuyi, reached the summit separately from different places, at diverging paces and speeds, with various rhythms of breath. It is fair to say, they reached their own-belonged summit of poetry. The mountain of poetry is not separated or isolated but integral and united, just like the Cang Mountain in Dali with no conjunct crest. The poems by Li, Wang, Du, and Bai…… make us realize the individuality of poetry writing means the embedment of poets’ individual life in the poems with personality and unique view and voice with which poets perceive the outside and express the inside.

After all, individuality is the uniqueness of personal expression by which a poet distinguishes himself from others and makes him recognizable by readers. Even the truth is all about individuality, needless to say poetry. Writing poems is a personal way in which poets seek the truth.


2. Can culture be labelled as “local” and “foreign”? Better not!

As I have noticed, over hundreds of years of evolution, there have been two concerns over poetry: the ancient/modern argument and Chinese/Western argument.

It seems that the dramatic transition from classical Chinese to vernacular Chinese has been the solution of the argument on ancient and modern. Well, it has not. Discovery has been made that there are still numerous ancient poetry learners even though modern poetry dominates nowadays. Seemingly, people of two sides share nothing in common and thinks little of one another. In practice, the individuality of writing makes their common ground. Those featuring five or seven character are defined as poems with fixed formality (traditional poems, which has compulsory requirements of form). Deriving from vernacular Chinese, modern poetry is classified as non-traditional poems (which has abandon the employment of rhyme and has different length, focusing on word organization, emotion expressing and rhythm). I am convinced that ancient poetry is still alive in modern poets because the imperceptibility hidden in poetry can be passed down as blood and gene, but a DNA test tells all. Tradition like poetry never fails to renovate. The power of tradition enables itself to extend its vitality and create something new.

The argument on Chinese and foreign is reflected in opposite views on original writing and the influence of translation. In fact, each of modern Chinese poet is standing at the crossroads of antiqueness/nativeness and modernity/foreignness. When green light is on, they cross over and keep pacing until the next crossroad confronts them. What is culture? It includes all the behavior and habits echoed in our daily life. To some extent, it contains the contents whether they are modern or ancient, Chinese or foreign. Isolated and monolith culture never exists. It is more suitable to regard it as assimilation or transition than influence. Figuratively, it is like eating food. Poets eat whatever is fresh and nutritive, whether it is from the ancient or the foreign. Digestion happens inevitably even if there is a risk of diarrhea. Optimistically, diarrhea is good for intestinal sweeping. Since the Buddhism was introduced in China around the 1st century AD, a large amount of words have been brought along, most of which are Buddhist sutras. Westernization Movement stimulating the development of translation has contributed the formation of new ideas and concepts composed of borrowed words from translated works. The birth of new poetry is on one hand due to the internal promotion of traditional poetry, but on the other hand, undeniably, is most attributed to the direct motivation aroused by the translation of foreign poetry. The great modern Chinese writer Luxun was in the first place a translator. Widely, all the modern Chinese ideas and concepts that we count on owe to translation, from humanity, democracy to metaphysics and existence…..

Dhyanna is a Buddhist sect which had its roots in translated sutras and later developed into a new treasure of Chinese wisdom. It is also true of the modernity of Chinese poetry which can be achieved through the absorptivity and creativity inhered in Chinese language.

What I am thinking is that we should not be restricted and confined by the dual anxiety caused by the two arguments, and think about “the intertextuality of creation” and “the possibility of translation” with a global perspective.

The practice and thinking over translation make me increasingly realize that we are experiencing a new era of translation. The translation of one poem is all about the recreation of the other. Modern Chinese poetry are facing new possibility and growing point through the stimulation and nourishment incurred by translated poetry and by no means of nostrum.

The influence brought by foreign culture is equivalent to that brought by translated poetry. It happens to each of poet. There is an emerging type of poetry, with the quality of hybridism, which is accumulating in scales and which is assimilating "the concerns over influence” and internalizing it as “the attempt to renew”. It is called translated poetry.



文化交汇中的写作与当代东方经验

李元胜


诗歌写作,在漫长的中国历史上,虽偶有国器之重,教化之寄托,甚至长歌当哭也是有的,但多数时候,它仍然属于雕虫小技。不过,我看重雕虫,甚于时代重器,东方人的心灵,有一些是玲珑可雕的,这是一件伟大的事情,想起来就美得不行。

《诗经》里,赋比兴,是常用的雕虫术,其中的兴,最有意思,把不相干的事情联系在一起,它们会组合出一种特别新鲜的语感。兴是中国古典诗歌技巧中,最具有现代性的,它给了诗歌一种特别的自由。这种自由让我想起庄子的《逍遥游》,中国先哲中,最有想象力和自由精神的思想。在他的表述中,我们发现物我的界限并不封闭、结实,物我经常处在互涉或互相转化的过程中。

但是庄子的自由,并没有成为中国传统文化的主流,它只是给了一些知识分子隐居和旷达的理由。中国传统文化都有严谨和冷峻的一面,所以同样源自东方的佛教,很容易就在中国大地上扎下根来,它和儒教一样,偏向于克制人性,隐忍负重。

幸好,我们有诗歌。诗歌是制度和理性难以管束的艺术形式,在人类的心智活动中,它最接近闪电,那不期而至的光亮瞬间照亮了人类尚未探索明了的黑暗地带。不管一个写作者,有着多么厚重的教化和逻辑,但是诗歌在写作时,时常突破这一切,那些神奇的闲笔,毫无预计的天外之音,是诗歌最有价值的灵性部分。

我读大学时,学的是工科,每天都在谨慎地学习和探索人类理性的大厦,这样的大厦是建立在坚实的逻辑——反映到具体的学科中它们常常是一系列完美而复杂的方程式。一切必须计划周全,不允许错误的发生,工程学给我的训练就是这样。但是我自己迷上了诗歌,从中国古典诗歌,到外国现代派的作品,带给我的是人在精神大地的自由行走,没有边界,没有错误,一切都可能是新的道路,新的未来。

我经常会忘掉诗歌作者的国藉,诗歌能够被翻译过来的部分,带给我的往往是语言的闪电,那些迷途中,突发的联想与发现,带来新的柳暗花明。我读里尔克的秋日,想起的是《诗经》的兴,我读博尔赫斯的时候,时常想起庄子的逍遥。

或许,我们经历的正是一个全社会的高速现代化过程,古今中外的各种思想碎片,通过不同的渠道,汇聚到我们的心灵。我们甚至来不及仔细分辨哪些来源是欧洲,哪些来源于美洲,我们心灵成为紧张工作的熔炉,把这些碎片融化吸收,成为自己的心智的一部分,或者说,它们有的启发着我们,有的则直接成为我们发掘自我的工具。

所以,在我和自己的写作逐渐成长的过程中,我们受到的影响是世界性的,外来文化能够被吸收的都不知不觉中吸收了,不能消化的则是身外之物,或者等待新的机缘。

我相信这正是这个时代写作的常态,深植由幽深而狭窄的单一文化的写作或许有,应该非常稀少,多数的写作则深受各种外来文化的启发和影响。但不管如何,这些启发和影响,只是让我们有更多的角度和方法,来探测我们单个心灵所承受的时代倾轧。我们要处理的,是来自高速城市化进程中的今日中国的个人经验,任何阅读和影响,都无法代替这个经验。它们始终是我们写作最重要的资源,决定着我们写作的面貌和基调。


Writing and Contemporary Oriental Experience in the Communication of Culture

Li Yuansheng


In the long history of China, poetry writing sometimes was as heavy as the national treasure, and was the sustenance of the education and enlightenment, and people even used it to reveal his or her own sorrows. Yet most of the time poetry writing still remained unknown to fame. But I always pay more attention to the infamous things than the national treasure. It is fascinating to think that the Orientals’ soul could be reformed so exquisitely.

In The Books of Songs, Fu, Bi and Xing are three of the common techniques. Xing is the most interesting one for its ability to connect many irrelevant things and their new combination will show out fresh sense of feelings. Xing is the most modern one among the traditional Chinese poetry skills, because it provided the poetry with a special sense of freedom. And this kind of freedom reminded me of the Zhuang-zi’s A Happy Excursion, the most imaginative and free mental wisdom among all the Chinese ancient philosophical works. In Zhuang-zi’s description of the nature and human being, we found there were no clear-cut and closed distinctions, but were always connected and transformed.

Yet Zhuang-zi’s free spirits didn’t become the main stream of the Chinese traditional culture, since it only provided some intellectuals with a reason to lead a secluded and broad-minded life. Because of the solemnness and coldness of the Chinese traditional culture, Buddhism, who also originated from the Orient, settled down in the Chinese mainland easily for its inclination to restrain the humanity, endure humiliation and bear a heavy burden as the Confucianism did.

We are fortunate to have poetry. Poetry is an art form which can’t be controlled by regime and rationality, and poetry is like the lightning, whose unexpected shining suddenly lightens the dark area where human beings have yet not explored. No matter how much education and logic are loaded into a writer, when he is writing poetry he will always break through himself, and the most valuable intelligent parts in the poetry usually existed in the peculiar lines and the unexpected thoughts.

Dated back to my college, I was majored in engineering, studying and exploring the mansion of human rationality meticulously every day. This mansion was built with sturdy logic, which are incarnated as a set of refined yet complicated equations for each field. I had learned that everything needed to be planned perfectly without any potential mistakes by my engineering education. But I got addicted to poetry, from traditional Chinese poetry to the foreign modern poetry. They made me free to walk around the mental spirit of earth, beyond borders and errors, and everything could turn into a new path or a new future.

I often forget the nationality of the poetry writer, and the parts of the poetry which can be translated into my mother-tongue always bring me with the language lightning. The sudden thoughts and discoveries happenning in the wrong path can always help me find a way out. While I was reading Rainer Maria Rilke’s Autumn, it always reminded me of the Xing in The Book of Songs. While I was reading Jorge Luis Borges, I would always think about Zhuang-zi’s freedom and unfetteredness.

The whole society is experiencing a hasty modernization, and every fragment of thoughts at all times and in all countries gather in our minds through different kinds of way. Even we don’t have the time to differentiate which thoughts originated from Europe or America, our mind works as the melting pot to recruit these fragments to make them part of our mind, or we can say these fragments inspire us and some of them directly help us find ourselves.

So we are influenced by the worldwide culture during the improvement of my writing and myself. Foreign cultures that can be absorbed by us will be absorbed without people’s noticing. That cannot be absorbed by us just doesn’t belong to us, or might be waiting for its day.

Maybe there is a single culture that centers in deep yet narrow writing, but rarely does it exist, because most writing are deeply influenced and inspired by various foreign cultures, and I believe it is the status quo of contemporary writing. But these inspiration and influence just provide us with more angles and methods to identify the burden of time on each sole mind. What we need to deal with is the individual experiences of Chinese in the fast urbanization process, and these experiences cannot be replaced by any reading and influences. They decide our writing’s features and background, and will always be the most important resources of our writing.



祖父的醉马:个人写作与外来文化影响

洛尔娜·克罗奇


我父亲家和母亲家的人都喜欢喝酒骑马。我那慈祥的祖父也不例外。他叫福特,他的父亲是一位车夫,在英格兰和威尔士边境,距离什鲁斯伯里镇很近的一家庄园里工作。祖母说,那儿的教堂都是圆形的,这样魔鬼就不会来侵扰你。祖父在四年级的时候就退学了,因为老师误认为他考试作弊。自那时起,他就每天在他父亲的身边做工,负责照顾马匹以及驾车往返于田地和乡镇之间。农场工作做完后,如果他想独自离开农场的话便可以骑走其中的一匹驮马。他选择的是一匹名叫比尔的夏尔马。比利有17掌高(约172厘米),全身是罕见的灰色, 马蹄后上部的毛是白色的,蹄印是大浅盘形的。

祖父长大后,常常在傍晚和比利去乡村酒吧。他口袋里没多少钱,但幸运地有一副好嗓子。他坐在酒吧靠窗的一个座位上,第一次用一首歌换取了一杯啤酒。或许是他的歌声没有那么优美动听,他再也没用歌声换来更多啤酒。但是比利却为祖父得来了啤酒。事情是这样的,祖父绝不想让这第一杯啤酒变成最后一杯。他必须拥有坚定的信念,就像一个口渴的人不断将一桶桶水倒进抽水机里,相信这样的牺牲会带来清泉一样。在祖父举起酒杯时,拴在酒吧外面的比利头穿过窗户大口喝起啤酒来,祖父假装吃和愤怒。酒吧常客们却欣喜不已,不断地为祖父和比利叫来啤酒。直到酒吧关门时,祖父和比利才踉踉跄跄地回到家里,那会已经是半夜了。祖父说他都不知道自己和比利比起来,谁晃得更厉害。有些时候,他甚至觉得自己得把比利扛回家了。

我发表的第一首诗题目是《拄着拐杖的老人》,讲的就是我的祖父。光看名字你就能知道,这首诗并不怎么样,但它写的是一位我既熟悉又陌生的人。尽管那时我已经二十四岁,我在写作方面的造诣还不是很深,但我的天赋还是不错的。我一直在写我熟悉,但又不那么确定的事物。从孩童一直到成人,我一直都在努力去辨别哪个祖父才是真实的:是我心中的那一位,还是母亲所知的那一位。

我妈妈小时候住在萨斯喀彻温的农场里,那时祖父会经常发脾气,拿着柳鞭追着她或是其他兄弟姐妹打。他也会欺辱我的祖母,由于担心祖父发脾气,祖母一直都很焦虑警觉。这样一个人怎么会是那个教我怎么用锦鸡儿吹口哨,还给我讲他心爱小马的事情的人呢?我祖父身上有些说不出的东西,但这往往正是诗歌的起点。语言最有趣的便是断裂处,张力,失语,欲言又止。

那时我相信,我能够把一直纠结不已的事情说明白。现在我知道,寻找答案不是诗歌的意旨。从如里尔克的语言中,我学会了带着问题生活。同时,我还学会了去颂扬那个生我养我的地方:麦浪起伏的加拿大中西部大平原。我开始关注我自己的故事、我自己的声音,还有我自己独特的想象力。这是我写作中个人的一面。那主题里的第二部分,外来文化对我有什么影响呢?

过去,加拿大诗人一直笼罩在外国文化的影响下,尤其是美国文化和英国文化。这两个英语超级大国的文学文化侵入了我们的国家,我们很难置身事外。一方面,我们很难引起他们的注意力。在他们向外投射出目光时,只会关注其他一些国家。他们认为加拿大并不在他们搜索的范围之内。一天,一位美国友人和我说,直到我来到加拿大之前,我都觉得跟我们这些百威比,你们不过是百威淡啤而已。

然而我们的诗歌在孤独中蓬勃发展。尽管我所了解的每一位诗人都和我们一样精通当代美国诗歌,但直到二十世纪中叶,我们才摆脱了英国和美国的影响,开拓了属于我们自己的道路。向外看,我们的诗人也在吸收着譬如松尾芭蕉、但丁、李白、杜甫、哈菲兹等人的诗歌创作技巧,同时也吸收着阿赫玛托娃、特朗斯特罗姆、北岛、阿米亥、洛尔迦、舒婷、马查多、瓦列霍、斯沃尔等二十世纪著名诗人的灵感。然而,我们仍然逃脱不了我们强大的南方邻居对我们的影响。讽刺的是,在很大程度上,我们阅读的这些非英语诗作都仰赖于美国人的智慧与慷慨,因为我们用的是他们的译本,是经过他们的视角加工的产物。

对加拿大的作家来说,如今我们的挑战并不是对于他人的无知,而是对于我们自己的无知。随着自我意识的加深,我们不得不面对自身历史中最令人赧颜的一部分:自十八世纪被殖民以来,我们的祖先和政府无情地消灭了原住民。原住民所受的损失自然是无可估量的,但其他加拿大人也遭到了伤害。作为一位诗人,如果你不听一听那些曾经居住在这里的人们描述家乡的山河树木,你怎么能够理解描绘这里呢?如果你不去注意那些千百年沉淀下来的质朴精粹,你怎么能够用诗歌来将这里描绘得真切?

为了感受土著语言的丰富,看看他们的日历就能窥得一二。在原住民的语言中,月份的名称都是仪式与知识的来源。从他们生动的语言里,我们就能知道每个月有什么。我的邻居萨尼其人居住在温哥华岛,他们以太平洋的鲑鱼群为生。他们有三个月来自于不同的鱼类:他们是依据不同种类的鱼来命名他们的三种月份——狗鲑月、银鲑月、粉鲑月。每个月份都代表了一种鲑鱼的产卵时间。十一月被称作“把桨放到灌木丛里月”,多么有意蕴啊!

草原克里族远离大海,居住在加拿大最冷的地方之一,他们将十一月称之为霜冻月,将十二月称之为除霜月。而新年的那个月则被称为希望之月。

我认为,加拿大诗歌最值得称颂的一点是,它看到了其他文化及文学的惊奇之处。它了解过去的诗歌,同时又了解当今的写作。但它也承认那些默默无闻,却富有原创性的歌者。我们的语言必须有我们自己河流的味道,而不是泰晤士河、塞纳河、密西西比河,或是长江的味道。我们必须聆听五百年老雪松搭成的大教堂里的祝祷,也必须细闻草原中密草唱诗班的歌声。我们必须仔细聆听人类的心声,聆听内心的诉说。


MY GRANDFATHER’S DRUNKEN HORSE:

Personal Writing and the Influence of Foreign Cultures

Lorna Crozier


On both sides of my family there was a penchant for drink and horses. My maternal grandfather brought the two together. Grandpa Ford’s father was a wagoner, working on an estate just north of the Welsh-English border near the town of Shrewsbury, where my grandmother said, the church was round so the devil couldn’t corner you. From the time he walked straight-backed out of school in grade four because the teacher wrongly accused him of cheating, he worked every day beside his father, taking care of the horses and driving wagons back and forth from the fields to town. He was allowed to ride one of the draft horses if he wanted to go off on his own after the farm work was done. The gelding he chose was a Shire named Billy, 17 hands high and uncommon gray with white feathered fetlocks above hooves that spread wide as platters on the plowed fields.

When Grandpa reached drinking age, he and Billy made evening trips to the village pub. Luckily for him because he had no money, my grandfather was a singer, and inside, at a table near the window, he bartered a song for his first pint. Perhaps he wasn’t melodious enough to get a second or a third sent his way. Those were provided by Billy. It worked like this: my grandfather didn’t allow himself to down his first beer. He had to have faith like the thirsty man who primed the pump by pouring a ready bucket of water down the top, believing the sacrifice will pay off in a fresh stream gushing from the spout. When Grandpa raised his pint, Billy, tied up outside, poked his head through the open window and guzzled the beer, his master feigning surprise and outrage. The patrons were so delighted they kept the drinks coming for the man and the horse until closing time when the two would stumble home in the dark. Grandpa said he didn’t know who was the shakier on his legs. Some nights he thought he’d have to carry Billy on his back.

My first published poem, “Old Man With a Cane” was about my grandfather. It wasn’t very good, you can tell from the title, but it was about someone I both knew and didn’t know well. Although at twenty-four I was naïve about many aspects of writing, my instincts were reliable. I was drawn to write about what I was familiar with but remained unsure of. As a child and later as an adult, I struggled with the gap between how my grandfather appeared to me and how my mother perceived him.

When she was a kid on their Saskatchewan farm, he often lost his temper and went after her or one of her six siblings with a willow switch. He bullied my grandmother, too, her fear of his outbursts keeping her anxious and alert. How could that be the same man who showed me how to make a whistle from a caragana pod, who told me stories of his beloved horse? There was something about my grandfather that resisted words, and resistance is often the place where poetry starts. Language gets the most interesting at its points of fracture, these moments of tension and failure when all we mean to say can’t be said.

I believed then that I’d be able to articulate what I was wrestling with. Now, I know it’s not the task of poetry to find the answers. Instead, as Rainer Maria Rilke suggested, I’ve learned to live the questions. And I’ve learned to celebrate the specifics of the place where I was born and raised, the great rolling plains of the Canadian mid-west. I’ve come to value my own stories, the sound of my own voice, and the idiosyncrasies of my imagination. That’s the personal side of my writing. But what of foreign influence, the second half of this topic?

In the past, Canadian poets were overwhelmed by foreign influences, particularly American and British. The literary cultures of these two powerful practitioners of the English language invaded our country, and it was hard for us to be heard above their noise. For one thing, we were invisible to them. When they looked beyond their own borders, they cast their eyes on other nations. Canadians, they assumed, were simply a watered-down version of themselves. An American friend said to me the other day, “Until I travelled in Canada, I thought of you guys as Budweiser Light.”

Our poetry thrived, however, in isolation, and by the mid-twentieth century, it stepped out of the shadow of Great Britain and the States, and forged its own path, though every poet I know is as well-versed in contemporary American poetry as our own. Outward-looking, our poets absorbed the craft and poetic savvy of Basho and Dante and Li Po and Tu Fu and Hafiz, and twentieth-century luminaries like Akhmatova, Transtromer, Bei Dao, Amichai, Xi Chuan, Garcia Lorca, Shu Ting, Machado, Vallejo, and Swir. We still, however, haven’t escaped from the influence of our powerful southern neighbours. Ironically, our reading of poets who don’t write in English depends on the brilliance and generosity of Americans because foreign literature comes to us through their translators, through their particular lens.

For Canadian writers, our challenge until fairly recently has not been an ignorance of others but an ignorance of ourselves.  As part of our growing self-awareness, we’ve had to come to terms with the most shameful part of our history: since the time of settlement in the eighteenth century, our ancestors and governments have ruthlessly tried to erase those who were here before. The loss for aboriginal people has been immeasurable, but the rest of the population has been damaged too. As a poet, how can you understand and speak a place if you don’t listen to the first peoples who lived here, to the original words for the mountains, the rivers, the trees? How can you write authentically if you ignore thousands of years of common and sacred knowledge?

To give a sense of the richness of indigenous languages, we only have look at the calendar. In the mother tongues of first nations people, the names of the months are a source of ritual and information. Their verbal pictures tell us what to expect. My neighbours on Vancouver Island, the Saanich people, who depend on the salmon runs of the Pacific, name three of their moons after different varieties of the fish—The Dog Salmon Moon, The Coho Moon and The Humpback Moon, each of these indicating when that particular salmon is spawning. The time of year that corresponds with November is called the Moon of Putting Your Paddle Away in the Bush. So much is suggested in that naming!

The prairie Cree, who live far from the ocean in one of the coldest parts of the country, call November The Frost Moon and December The Frost Exploding Moon. The start of the new year, January, is The Great Moon of Returning Hope.

The best of Canadian poetry, I believe, looks outward toward other cultures and their literary wonders; it knows the poetry of the past as well as contemporary writing. But it also acknowledges the original singers who were silenced. Our words must taste of our own rivers, not the Thames or the Seine or the Mississippi or the Yangtze. We must listen to our cathedrals of five-hundred-year-old cedars and our great choirs of prairie grass. We must eavesdrop on the human heart and hear what the heart of the land is saying.



探寻普遍的诗歌体裁

印度新德里 尼赫鲁大学 普里亚达西·墨普德教授


全球各地的著名诗人总是不断受到外来文学影响的。泰戈尔也不例外,他不仅受到了西方诗人的影响,古印度知识宝库《奥义书》中的哲学也让他受益匪浅。他的一些诗歌灵感源自苏格兰和爱尔兰旋律;他的一些两行诗则受到了日本俳句的启发。泰戈尔的所有作品都蕴含着他的母语——孟加拉语的形式美感。另一位孟加拉诗人纳扎鲁尔的创作也受到了西亚文化和普世主义的重大影响,后者在泰戈尔的作品中也有表现。外来话语对一个人创作的影响不局限于其作品是否包含异国元素。在全球化的今天,外国人或外来影响对诗歌创作到底意味着什么呢?就算只看一个民族,我们也可以找到其他诗人或作家对一个人诗歌创作留下的痕迹。

就我个人而言,我十岁就开始作诗了。我的母语是孟加拉语,这门语言贡献了涵盖无数角度的丰富文学作品。我的诗歌最初受泰戈尔风格的影响,主要表现在对大自然的礼赞上。 在后来的学生时代,我简直成了小纳扎鲁尔。在我学习中国文化的过程中,我的诗歌受到了中国古代哲学的影响。对中国语言文化的了解丰富了我的诗歌创作,我甚至还用中文作了几首唐诗,因此我的很多诗歌都有中国文化象征。早年间我还用孟加拉语翻译了大量的唐诗。近年来,我的一些两行诗开始使用日本传统诗体俳句的5-7-5音节模式。我的早期诗歌也受到了俄罗斯诗人普希金的影响。俄罗斯广阔无垠的草原和孟加拉农村绵延数里的绿油油稻田同样对我有很大的吸引力,以至于我的许多诗歌都是在诉说着开阔的空间。但在全球化的物质狂飙下,这些开阔空间正在快速消散。我的诗有时在本质上是一种政治讽刺。这种讽刺往往直击要害,质疑日常政治话语中自鸣得意的爱国主义或伪世俗主义是否成立。在全球几乎所有有人文情怀的敏感诗人那里,这种诗意的话语都经常出现或者再现。


In the Quest for a Universal Poetic Genre

—Prof. Priyadarsi Mukherji

J.N.U., New Delhi, India


Poets across the world with extraordinary reputation have invariably been influenced by foreign literature. Our revered poet Tagore too was influenced not only by western poets but also by the philosophy of the Upanishads, a grand repository of ancient Indian knowledge. Some of Tagore’s songs have been influenced by Scottish and Irish melodies. Likewise, some of his couplets were influenced by the Japanese Haiku. The entire corpus of Tagore’s works attained its charm in its original form in Bengali. Another Bengali poet Kazi Nazrul Islam’s compositions at times were heavily influenced by the West Asian cultures as well as the universalism as reflected in the works of Tagore. The discourse of foreign influence on one’s personal composition is not restricted by whether the writings contain foreign components. In a globalized world, what do we, after all, mean by foreign, or foreign influence on one’s poetic composition? Within a single ethnic framework, one can find the traces of other poets or writers in one’s poetic creation.

In my case, I have been a poet since I was ten. My mother tongue is Bengali, the language in which some of the richest literature have been created in terms of all dimensions. My poetry was initially influenced by the genres of Tagore. The eulogy of Nature was one such aspect. Later during my student days, my poetry became a tiny carrier of Nazrul’s thoughts. My poems got influenced by the ancient Chinese philosophy at a time when I had been a student of Chinese culture. The knowledge of Chinese language and culture enriched my poetic creation to the extent that I also wrote poems in Chinese in a Tang rhythmic pattern. I translated a number of Tang poems into Bengali in my early years. Many of my poems were marked with Chinese cultural symbolisms. In recent years, some of my couplets began incorporating the 5-7-5 syllabic pattern of Haiku, typical of the Japanese tradition. In the early days, my poems were also influenced by the Russian poet Pushkin. The vast wilderness of the Russian steppes and the green paddy fields for miles in the countryside of Bengal—appealed me so much that many of my poems talk of the open space that is fast getting depleted by the wild drive for material development in this world in the name of globalization. My poems sometimes have been a political satire in their very essence—to a great extent with hard-hitting phrases, seeking to question the validity of self-assumed patriotism or pseudo-secularism existing in our daily political discourse. Such poetic phrases often intermingle with the genre that have been generated and regenerated in the thoughts of almost all sensitive humanist poets of the world.    


想象国家主义

从较长发言提炼

李道


1. 在英语表达的现代主义诗学里,国家主义者和国际主义者的倾向一直处于紧张的矛盾状态中,交织着联合与斗争:例如惠特曼、庞德、威廉·卡洛斯·威廉斯、叶芝、艾略特、麦克迪米德。但时至当下,从达达运动发端于瑞士的苏黎世迄今整整一百年里,现代主义早已是死亡。至于后现代主义(无论那个术语可能曾经意味着什么),它已经胎死腹中。那两个术语——或者口号——怎么说都相当愚蠢。而今我们站立在一个新诗学时代的黎明中,不过这个时代我们还没有名称。或许这样更好,因为我们已经变得厌倦并且怀疑口号。在近几个时期,艺术家和诗人没有创造多少这些东西,它们更多的是由学者型专家、新闻从业者和社会学家们发明,而这些人总是迟到,太迟进入这个领域,无论他们认为他们是多么迅捷。

2. 在这后五十年里,我自己的文学实践已经确定在国际主义上。我曾经生活在希腊、意大利、美国和前南斯拉夫。我的许多著作就受启发于那些国家的文学、文化、历史、地理、以及地理心理。最近,我的最新作品《易》(CHANGJING,曾译作《改变》和《变迁》)(2016年9月才刚刚出版)正是向中国文化、向中国诗学和哲学传统的致敬之作。这部作品植根于典籍《易经》(英文译作《易经》或者《易经,变化之书》)。《易经》架构起并且规范了我的作品,您可以把它当做一本包括450首短诗的诗歌集来读,也可以把它看作是一首包含了450个部分的长诗。《易》既是依据也是源于这部中国古代的伟大作品,尽管我是说英语的人、对汉语只知道那么一点点。这是如何可能?因为,经过被其它语言的众多翻译和评注之后,《易经》已经成为属于全人类的著作,而不仅仅是为中国人所拥有的珍藏。如果语言正统论者主张,“你如若不说汉语,你甚至都不能读,更不要说理解《易经》”,我的质朴回答就会是:“我能读能理解圣经,即便是我不懂古希伯来语、阿拉米语或者希腊语。国王詹姆斯的《钦定本[圣经]》(1611)本身就是经典。”显而易见,不能低估在诗歌世界里翻译的至关重要。

3. 今天,主要得益于信息技术,世界上所有的文化、文学和诗学传统,作为我们正当而有意义的遗产之一部分,对我们所有人而言都是开放的、可以获取并且可以利用的。所以当今写作的一位中国诗人可能会受到比如《吉尔伽美什史诗》、约翰·济慈、亚瑟·兰波、玛丽娜·茨维塔耶娃、保罗·策兰、托马斯·特朗斯特罗姆或者加里·施耐德的影响——而依然保持并信守他或她完全的中国身份——就像我,一个英国诗人一样,能够受到《易经》、《道德经》、荷马、李白、杜甫、奥克塔维奥·帕斯、乔治·塞菲里斯、伊曼努尔·列维纳斯和伊万·拉里奇的影响。因而,我们这个当代的形势不仅是微妙而有趣的复杂,也是充满活力、令人兴奋而又洋溢潜能的。

4. 从这个意义上说,我们所有人都既是本土的又是域外的。在世界上绝大多数主要城市里都可以找到说汉语的人。说希腊语、阿尔巴尼亚语、斯瓦西里语、孟加拉语以及数百种其他语言的人群,无论大小也都是如此。如今在伦敦的学校里,人们说着超过三百种的语言。因此每一种文化至少潜在地都有它的离散,每一种语言都是国际性的。如果真是那样,那么(它的)诗歌也是如此。这样,诗歌中什么是本土的、什么是外来的(异质、他者、外国、奇异、等等)这个问题的确需要重新诠释。一棵苹果树在四川的果园与在诺曼底或者伊利诺伊或者布宜诺斯艾利斯一样可以长得好,它的果实也一样独具个性、一样甜美。世界的历史充满文化的再传播和语言的迁移,就像是植物的移植。

5. 基于所有这些理由,对于一个要对语言和文学影响开放而不是囿于他或她自己祖先传统的诗人来说,从来不需要暗示个性和文化身份的丢失,相反,那是一种丰富和深化。所有的文学都是一个文学之一部分。所有的诗歌都是一个诗歌之一部分。所有的人类文化都属于共同和一致。我们全都是不断加深和拓宽的奔腾洪流之一部分,这个奔腾洪流英国浪漫主义诗人威廉·华兹华斯称之为“人类音乐”。

6. 所以,无论会是什么标签,当今诗歌的时代以及即将到来诗歌的时代不可分割也无可避免地会是跨文化、多文化和国际的。我把这称为想象国家的。


Imaginationalism

An extract from a longer statement

Richard Berengarten

(Li Dao)


1. In Anglophone poetic Modernism, nationalist and internationalist tendencies were in constant tension, alternately combining and struggling: Whitman, Pound, William Carlos Williams, Yeats, Eliot, MacDiarmid. But by now, exactly one hundred years since the Dada movement started in Zürich, Switzerland, Modernism is long dead. As for Postmodernism (whatever that term may have meant), it was stillborn. Both of those terms – or slogans – were pretty silly anyway. Now we stand at the dawn of a new poetic age, for which as yet we have no name. Perhaps it is better that way, because we have grown tired and suspicious of slogans, which in recent times have been invented not so much by artists and poets as by scholarly experts, journalists and sociologists, who come always late, too late, into the field, however quick they may think they are.

2. For the last fifty years, my own literary practice has been decidedly international. I have lived in Greece, Italy, the USA and former Yugoslavia. Many of my books have been inspired by the literatures, cultures, histories, geographies, and psycho-geographies of those countries. Most recently, my latest book, Changing (just published in September 2016) is a homage to the Chinese cultural, poetic and philosophical tradition. This book is grounded in the classic, the Yijing or I Ching, the Book of Changes. The Yijing structures and frames my book, which may be read either as a collection of 450 short poems, or as a single long poem consisting of 450 parts. Changing both depends on and derives from this ancient Chinese masterpiece, even though I am an English speaker and know only a little of the Chinese language. How is this possible? It is because, through its many translations and commentaries on it in other languages, the Yijing has become not only a treasured Chinese possession, but a book that belongs to all humanity. And if a linguistic purist were to argue, “If you don’t speak Chinese, you can’t even read, let alone understand the Yijing,” my simple reply would be: “I can read and understand the Bible, even though I don’t know ancient Hebrew, Aramaic or Greek. The King James Authorised Version of the Bible (1611) is a masterpiece in itself.” Clearly, the crucial importance of translation in the world of poetry cannot be underestimated.

3. Today, mainly thanks to information technology, all the cultural, literary and poetic traditions in the world are open, accessible and available to all of us, as part of our rightful and meaningful heritage. So a Chinese poet writing today can be influenced by, say, the Epic of Gilgamesh, John Keats, Arthur Rimbaud, Marina Tsvetayeva, Paul Celan, Tomas Tranströmer or Gary Snyder – and still maintain and honour his or her full Chinese identity – just as I, an English poet, can be influenced by the Yijing, the Dao de Jing, Homer, Li Bai, Du Fu, Octavio Paz, George Seferis, Emmanuel Levinas and Ivan Lalić. This contemporary situation of ours, then, is not only subtly and interestingly complex, but also vital, exciting, and brimming with potential.

4. In this sense we are all both territorial and extra-territorial. Chinese-speakers are to be found in most major cities in the world. And so are speakers of Greek, Albanian, Swahili, Bengali, and hundreds of other languages, large and small. In the schools of London today, over three hundred languages are spoken. So every culture, at least potentially, has its diaspora, and every language is international. And if that is the case, then so is (its) poetry. The issue, then, of what is native and what is foreign in poetry (alien, other, exotic, strange, etc.) surely needs to be rephrased. An apple tree can grow just as well in an orchard in Sichuan as in Normandy or Illinois or Buenos Aires, and the taste of its fruit be just as individual and sweet. The history of the world is as full of cultural reseedings and linguistic transferences as it is of successful botanical transplantations.

5. For all these reasons, for a poet to be open to linguistic and literary influences other than those within his or her own ancestral heritage never needs to imply loss of personal or cultural identity, but rather an enrichment and a deepening. All literatures are part of one literature. All poetries are part of one poetry. All human cultures belong together and cohere. We are all part of the increasingly deep and wide running current that the English Romantic poet William Wordsworth called the “music of humanity”.

6. So, whatever its label may be, the age both of present-day poetry and of poetry-to-come is irreducibly and inevitably transcultural, multilingual and international. I call this imaginational.



个人写作与外来文化影响

林于弘(方群)


我与写作的正式接触,应该是在1982年后开始的,由于在图书馆打工的缘故,我有了比一般同学更多也更好的先天条件——不论是在诗集的借阅,或是期刊的品读,所以能在十八岁那年侥倖成为「文青」,外在环境其实是相对重要的因素。

1986年4月,我们几位同学创立「诗社」并出版「诗刊」年轻时志同道合的聚合也是不可或缺的。至于文学奖的参赛与得奖,更是激励创作能持续蓬勃的重要原动力。

而在创作的同时,我也逐步获得学士、硕士及博士学位,更多的文化刺激(尤其是外来文化),也更加拓展了我的写作视野。从立足于小小的岛屿,到仰望著更辽阔的世界,在文艺的花园,有着更多可能的可能。

如今,在我已经出版的六册诗集中,不论是岛屿的书写,战争的刻划,人性的省思,抒情的感慨,后现代的突破,城市的素描,在主题建构与技巧表现的种种探索,都已经尝试了最大的可能。在漫长的中华传统与西方文化的反复衝激中,我的努力不曾终止,我仍追寻著创作的永恒极限。


Contemporary Poetry Writing and the Influence of Foreign Culture

Lin Yuhong


My writing journey has begun since 1982. Due to a part time job in the library, I have had more opportunities in reading and borrowing poetry magazines. In this case, I accidentally became a “hipster” because of the external environment.

In April, 1986, a couple of classmates and I established a poetry club and published a magazine.

Meanwhile, attending and receiving literary awards also motivated my writing. In addition to creative writing, I have received my master and doctoral degrees in Chinese literature, and been exposed to multiple cultures, especially those from overseas, which expand my vision of writing. Wandering between the island and the world brings about more possibilities in my poetry.

I have hitherto published six poetry collections, and explored a variety of themes and techniques, including island scenery, war, humanity, urban space, lyrics and post-modernism. With the influence of Chinese tradition and western culture, I have been continually working on more experiments on writing.



玛尔莲娜•加布利扬对“个人写作和外来文化影响”的发言

玛尔莲娜•加布利扬


由于我的专业活动与歌曲密切相关,我经常会觉得亚美尼亚歌词的翻译非常不准确。在翻译中经常会传达错误的信息和含义,但著名亚美尼亚诗人作品的俄语译本就不是这样。

出于这个原因,我把自己唱的几首亚美尼亚语歌曲翻译了过来(部分发表于《Babel》杂志2010年艺术科学副刊中的“翻译世界”版)。

一个民族的灵魂可以通过音乐和诗歌来表达,而且如果译文扭曲了原意,那么音乐承载的意义也就发生偏差。我对歌曲的爱当时(现在依然)如此强烈,这种感觉强大到我想表达出歌曲的灵魂,有时也会在正常语言的基础上做一些变化,表达出戏谑的涵义。

我翻译的不仅是我自己歌曲的歌词,偶尔也翻译过一些卡拉巴赫诗人的诗歌,我是在巴黎遇到这些诗的。事实上,我并没有翻译它,只是用感知和理解将它用俄语表现了出来——俄语也算得上我的母语了。然而不是每个亚美尼亚居民都懂卡拉巴赫方言,因为它与亚美尼亚语截然不同。在阅读它们时,我非常清楚地看到了卡拉巴赫人特有的语词变化。因此,我想告诉你们,亲爱的读者们,除了亚美尼亚的诗,我也翻译过卡拉巴赫诗人的诗。

每年夏天,我和我的兄弟姐妹们在斯蒂帕纳克特度假,那是我的出生地。我对本土诗人的诗作有独特的感觉。虽然,我选择了同义词来表达了作者的语气,但除此之外,我的翻译几乎与原文具有相同的节奏、换气和词语。因此,我对卡拉巴赫诗人的解读看起来就像逐字翻译一样,这些译文结集出版于《与母亲的对话》一书中。这对我来说并不是困难的事,因为这两种语言已经深入到我心中,包括卡拉巴赫方言。所以我在翻译时没有受到外来文化的影响,两者都是我的母语。


Marlena Mosh's article “Personal Writing and Influence of Foreign Cultures”

Marlena Mosh

   

As my professional activity is closely connected with singing, I often wonder how inaccurate translations of texts of Armenian songs are. There is often completely different message and different meaning in these translations and one cannot say the same about the translations of poems by famous Armenian poets into Russian.

For this reason, I myself translated the texts of Armenian songs that I sing (part of them is published in the journal "Babel" (2010 in., Scientific and artistic supplement to the journal PRL "Translation World")

You can express the Soul of Nation through music and poetry and if the translation is distorted, musically it will be also expressed with other meaning. My love for songs was (and still is) so strong and so big that I would like to express specifically spiritual, and sometimes joky meaning, the meaning of intonation filled with that authentic words.

I happened to translate not only the texts of the songs that I sing, but also poems of Karabagh poets, whose works I’ve been introduced in Paris. In fact, I didn’t translate but rather embodied it, feeling and capturing the poetry into Russian language, which became as native as Armenian. Nevertheless, not every resident of Armenia can understand karabagh dialect, it is significantly different from Armenian. While reading them, I see quite clearly the specific turns of the words inherent to Karabagh residents. Thus, I would like to convey to you, dear reader, that I translated it the Karabakh poets, not just Armenian poets.

Every summer, we (my brothers and sister and I) were having holidays in Stepanakert, where I was born. I had especially dear visual images that the poets of my native land created. Besides my translation was almost simultaneous with the same rhythm, breathing, and the same words. Although, I chose from synonyms the one that expresses the tone of the author. Therefore, my interpretation of the Karabakh poets looks like a word by word translation, but it is rather falls within the purpose and meaning of the translated poems.These translations have been published in the book "Conversation with the mother." It was not difficult for me to do as I think and feel in two native languages and native Karabakh dialect. In my translation there was no influence of foreign cultures, all are native to me.


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