by Shenzhan/申展
Time goes by in a strange way after the beginning of 2020. These years, I find myself looking for something to get lost into, desperately. And I rediscover the power of written languages through poetry.
锦瑟 The Sad Zither
李商隐 Li Shangyin (812－852)
锦瑟无端五十弦，Why should the sad zither have fifty strings?
一弦一柱思华年。Each string, each strain evokes but vanished springs:
庄生晓梦迷蝴蝶，Dim morning dream to be a butterfly;
望帝春心托杜鹃。Amorous heart poured out in cuckoo[1]’s cry.
沧海月明珠有泪，In moonlit pearls see tears in mermaid’s eyes;
蓝田日暖玉生烟。From sunburnt jade in Blue Field let smoke rise.
此情可待成追忆，Such feeling cannot be recalled again;
只是当时已惘然。It seemed long-lost even when it was felt then.
Translation by Yuanchong Xu (许渊冲， 1921 – 2021)
The Phoenix and Turtle
by William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616)
Let the bird of loudest lay
On the sole Arabian tree
Herald sad and trumpet be,
To whose sound chaste wings obey.
But thou shrieking harbinger,
Foul precurrer of the fiend,
Augur of the fever's end,
To this troop come thou not near.
From this session interdict
Every fowl of tyrant wing,
Save the eagle, feathered king;
Keep the obsequy so strict.
Let the priest in surplice white,
That defunctive music can,
Be the death-divining swan,
Lest the requiem lack his right.
And thou treble-dated crow,
That thy sable gender mak'st
With the breath thou giv'st and tak'st,
'Mongst our mourners shalt thou go.
Here the anthem doth commence:
Love and constancy is dead,
Phoenix and the turtle fled
In a mutual flame from hence.
So they loved, as love in twain
Had the essence but in one,
Two distincts, division none;
Number there in love was slain.
Hearts remote, yet not asunder,
Distance and no space was seen
'Twixt this turtle and his queen;
But in them it were a wonder.
So between them love did shine
That the Turtle saw his right
Flaming in the phoenix' sight;
Either was the other's mine.
Property was thus appalled
That the self was not the same;
Single nature's double name
Neither two nor one was called.
Reason, in itself confounded,
Saw division grow together,
To themselves yet either neither,
Simple were so well compounded.
That it cried, "How true a twain
Seemeth this concordant one!
Love hath reason, Reason none,
If what parts can so remain,"
Whereupon it made this threne
To the phoenix and the dove,
Co-supremes and stars of love,
As chorus to their tragic scene.
Threnos
Beauty, truth, and rarity,
Grace in all simplicity,
Here enclosed, in cinders lie.
Death is now the phoenix' nest,
And the turtle's loyal breast
To eternity doth rest,
Leaving no posterity;
'Twas not their infirmity,
It was married chastity.
Truth may seem, but cannot be;
Beauty brag, but 'tis not she;
Truth and beauty buried be.
To this urn let those repair
That are either true or fair;
For these dead birds sigh a prayer.
A Personal Note for September/October, 2022
Butterflies.
Transformative creatures easily capture our imaginations. For example, cicadas, made into jade in ancient China and buried with kings, was expected to help bringing back life; or butterflies, written into poems and stories for centuries, symbolize love and rebirth. Beautiful, not a single pair with the exact same pattern, they dance lightly in the air, with their thin, colorful wings, as if carrying weightless and fragile dreams, of being free, loved, and dazzling.
Just like love.
Does love transform us? Loved, life suddenly is transcended, meaningful. At the moment of loving or being loved, we don’t need GOD, Buddha, nor Daoism. We just need each other.
But just as beautiful as butterflies, love is as elusive.
Not only the beloved vanishes, because of death, change of heart, immature nature of human beings, time passing unforgivingly...... the loving one may end up questioning, like scholar Zhuang (庄子) pondering who is the real butterfly,
“What exactly was I like back then?”
I remember the time when I was sitting on the sunlit balcony with mom, drinking tea and chopping up white radish to prepare them to be dried and pickled, laughing and chatting in the warm winter day in my hometown, southwest of China; Or as a college student I waited for K in the evening on the side of one of the busiest streets in Beijing so I could surprise him on his way back to college campus (which I did); Or the morning when I was contemplating the meaning of “cauldron”, conceiving, holding, encompassing, and warm with a fire underneath, and smiling with the thought of J in my kitchen; Or, the evening when M dropped off his luggage after a long trip and immediately jumped on a crowded peak-hour A train in New York City to come to me……
Oh, I have loved and being loved, even when each love equals a departure, a heartbreak, one way or the other.
Unlike scholar Zhuang Zi, I would rather imagine myself as a cat.
I would walk silently in the darkness of the night, take a nap in the warmth of the mid-day sunlight, curling up on the lap of a human I adore, lick my coat as if no one is watching, or just sit as a loaf, closing my eyes from time to time, if I feels like it. Or better, I would be out in the wild, taking the harsh life that nature grants, fighting with hunger, cold weather, disease, or other cats to just barely stay alive. When time comes, I will go back to my den, and rest.
I wonder, had Shakespeare’s Phenix and Turtledove not died in the height of their burning love, would they have been moved by Li Shangyin’s lines one day?
此情可待成追忆，Such feeling cannot be recalled again;
只是当时已惘然。It seemed long-lost even when it was felt then.
October 24, 2022
Astoria, New York
[1] I would prefer “turtledove” over “cuckoo” in translating “杜鹃”, as the bird in the Chinese poem symbolizes passionate love. Shakespeare’s “The Phoenix and Turtle” provides reinforcing reference too.