NOTES FROM THE TOWER OF SONGS¹

Chinese Poetry with a Taoist Twist

Issue 1

by Prof. Dr. Dan KJ Vercammen

My fascination with Chinese culture doesn’t end with Taoist alchemy. There is very little that does not interest me when it comes to Chinese traditional culture. Some subjects feel closer to my heart than others, though. Chinese poetry is such a thing.

It probably started with a mind-blowing realization that happened in 1969, which ignited my search for something that much later disclosed itself as internal alchemy. That year I wrote my first poem. No, it wasn’t a Chinese poem, but it was a beginning and it led to a voyage of poetic discoveries.

Belgian, English, Dutch, and French poetry passed through my hands, and I especially fell in love with the English Romantic poets, William Wordsworth being my favorite.

My secondary school French teacher, Pol Smits, introduced me to French poetry and “chansons,” and the playing with sounds and words of the French poets made quite an impression.

“Les sanglots longs des violons de l’automne blessent mon cœur d’une langueur monotone.”²

Just read this (preferably with a French accent); even if you don’t understand the words, the sounds should make you feel melancholic.

When I read my first Chinese poem, it all came together: several layers of meaning in the words, playing with sounds to express feelings and emotions, figures of speech, romantic atmosphere, etc. Impressionism, long before it was “invented” in the West.

In these posts, I would like to make you fall in love with Chinese poetry. For this purpose, I’ll present some poems I like in their Chinese version, in transliteration (pinyin, the Chinese way to represent the sound of characters by using the Latin alphabet), and in translation.

Unfortunately, a translation isn’t enough to give you a taste of what lies hidden beneath the surface of the words. So, I’ll offer some clues to comprehend the background and deeper meaning of the poems.

Many beautiful poems were written in the Tang dynasty (618–907). The poems written during this period are seen as the classical poetry examples. A few giants rose above the others. Li Bo (or Bai) is certainly one of the great ones.

He was born in 702 and died sixty years later. Like every literate person in China, he received a Confucian education, but from an early age was attracted to Taoism. Part of his life he spent living as a Taoist hermit.

We also remember him as a sword fighter and … as a drunk. From his poems we know that he didn’t dislike strong drinks (and that’s a euphemism), but he was also fond of tea. Some would call him a “bon vivant” (French for someone who likes the “good things” in life).

We’re going to let our thoughts wander with Li’s ponderings at night.

夜思

床前明月光

疑是地上霜

舉頭望明月

低頭思故鄉

Ye si

Chuang qian ming yue guang

Yi shi di shang shuang

Ju tou wang ming yue

Di tou si gu xiang.

Night Thoughts

In front of my bed, the bright moon’s light,

Making me doubt whether it could be frost on the floor;

I lift my head and look up at the bright moon;

Then, lowering my head, I think of my old birthplace.

This is one of the most famous poems of China and one of the first I ever read.

The way it is pronounced in modern Chinese is not the way it was pronounced in the Tang dynasty. Therefore, the contemporary sound doesn’t perfectly reflect the effects of someone reading or singing it in Tang days.

Singing? Indeed, Chinese poems were often sung and accompanied by music played on a qin or zheng, two string instruments.

Although I can’t reproduce the exact sound for you, I can draw your attention to the rhyme of this poem. The first, second, and fourth line end on the “-ang” sound, linking them together as sad lines. These three lines are melancholic, wondering, doubtful, whereas the third line is somewhat hopeful.

The poem is actually a very melancholic one. Li is away from his birthplace (he was exiled near the end of his life) and longs to return there.

It’s night, a clear sky, with a bright moon. When the moon appears in Chinese poetry, it is often a metaphor for longing and melancholic feelings.

The poet is looking down in the first, second, and fourth sentence: a strong image for him feeling depressed. His mind is not clear, he is doubtful. The opposite of the bright moon, which can symbolize enlightenment.

For a moment, he looks up at the moon, its light offering a glimpse of a better future. An instant of hope, maybe, with the illusion of frost disappearing from his mind.

But also the absence of frost does not warm up his cool heart. It projects an image of someone living in harsh circumstances, because even inside his lodging it’s freezing. No wonder he lowers his head again. Homesick, he sees no solution to his dire straits.

Chinese have a solid, eternal connection with their birthplace. A person living away from home (let’s call it X) is referred to as someone from X. (S)he will want to return to her/his place of birth to die and be buried there, to unite again with the soil that generated her/him.

When Li Bo was exiled, he was not young anymore (in his late fifties). How much time did he have left?

Combine these images with the sound of the poem and you, as the reader, start feeling melancholic yourself.

So, there’s your introduction to Chinese classical poetry.

Are all Chinese poems melancholic?

No, certainly not, but that’s for another blog post.

Poetry from the Nine Palaces: book by Dan Vercammen (Chinese artistic name: Fei Lingbi) Design by Wu An: An Woestenborghs

¹ I hope the great Canadian poet/singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen won’t mind me borrowing his Tower of Song (from his album “I’m Your Man”, 1988) to give a similar name to my poetry place.

² The first line of a poem by French poet Paul Verlaine (1844-1896), from Poèmes saturniens. Here’s the complete poem:

Les sanglots longs

Des violons

De l’automne

Blessent mon cœur

D’une langueur

Monotone.

Tout suffocant

Et blême, quand

Sonne l’heure,

Je me souviens

Des jours anciens

Et je pleure

Et je m’en vais

Au vent mauvais

Qui m’emporte

Deçà, delà,

Pareil à la

Feuille morte.

Here’s my attempt at translating this impressionist poem:

The long sobbing

of autumn’s violins

hurt my heart

with a monotonous longing,

suffocating all,

pale as dead,

and when the hour strikes,

I remember the old days,

making me cry

and then I leave

on the ill wind

that takes me

here, then there,

like a dead leaf.

Like Li Bo’s poem, this is also a very melancholic poem and the sounds strongly reinforce the emotions.