■ Editor's Note
Recently, the 2008 Nobel Prize in Literature winner, French writer Le Clézio and translator Dong Qiang co-authored the "Road to Tang Poetry" Chinese edition launched, from Le Clézio's reading and tasting of Tang poems in the book, we can see his love for Tang poetry, Le Clézio said of the creation of this book:
"Tang poetry, especially Li Bai's poetry, is full of the power of love, which is a cosmic kinetic force, which is the reason why Tang poetry is incomparably powerful, bringing a kind of eternity to Tang poetry."
From the first reading of Li Bai's poems to the visit to Du Fu Caotang in 2019, Le Clézio's road to Tang poetry is long and deep. In the process of discussing the content of this book with Le Clézio, Dong Qiang also strongly felt how to better let "Chinese culture go out" and how to more objectively understand and disseminate Chinese culture through external perspectives. The birth of "The Road of Tang Poetry" is such a new exchange, a soul empathy, and an excellent story telling.
Today, we share with you the origins of the book and le Clézio's preface.
The French name of the new book, Le flot de la poésie continuera de couler, literally translates to Chinese meaning: "The river of poetry will flow forever".
The river is the title of the book. However, Chinese name did not follow this translation, and the core image was replaced by another concept, named "The Road of Tang Poetry".
▲ Cover of the French edition and the Humanities Edition
The reason why Le Clézio used the word "stream" is because he saw the inscription written by Fan Chuanzheng for Li Baixin's tomb - "Xie Jia Shan Xi Li Cemetery, the same way of different generations of poetry".
The original meaning of the author refers to the later generations who moved Li Bai's tomb to the western foothills of The Qingshan Mountains, hoping to carry out the spiritual inheritance of a generation of poets, but Le Clézio misread this meaning and believed that it was the meaning of "poetry flowing".
Dong Qiang felt the coincidence and beauty in unintentional misreading, so he retained this topic, split the imagery of "flow" and "road" in the original sentence, and thus transformed into two languages under one end, each with its own dazzling title.
Whether it is the French "poetic flow" or the "poetic road", starting from different aesthetic conceptions, the final arrival is the same "process" - this process is related to time and space, concern for friendship, and care for life itself.
About five years ago, Dong Qiang translated Le Clézio's speech at the Peking University Liberal Arts Forum and personally inscribed a calligraphy work to send to him, which was Li Bai's "Overnight Stay at the Mountain Temple". Because Le Clézio had told Dong Qiang about this poem, he felt that the mood of "not daring to speak loudly, for fear of frightening the heavenly people" was very beautiful. When the ink was donated, the two came up with the idea of jointly completing a book on Tang poetry, which was both an appreciation of literature and a witness to friendship.
Before writing the book, Dong Qiang decided to invite Le Clézio to travel with him along the footsteps of the Tang Dynasty. The first stop the duo chose was Du Fu Caotang.
In November 2019, the trip was successful, and the field trip to Du Fu Caotang made Le Clézio very excited. He obsessively searched for the well around the fireflies that he had read in Du Fu's poem, but no one in his companions knew which poem it came from.
According to the details of "Fireworks", Dong Qiang searched for three poems, translated them into French and gave them to Le Clézio for confirmation, and finally found this slightly unpopular "See fireworks".
"See the Fireworks"
Tang Du Fu
Wushan autumn night fireworks fly, the curtain is sparse into the seating clothes.
Suddenly, the piano books in the house were cold, and the stars on the edge of the eaves were sparse.
But around the well to add one by one, occasionally through the flower buds to make the glow.
Cangjiang Bai looked at Ru with sorrow, and the next year is now no return.
A Tang poem that is not well known to Chinese readers is recognized and remembered by the French writer. Le Clézio's fate with Chinese Tang poetry became deeper and deeper, and finally ended in a book.
▲ In 2019, Le Clézio and Dong Qiang were in Du Fu Caotang
On the basis of Le Clézio's first draft, Dong Qiang worked for a full 3 months, translating French, selecting pictures, confirming in turn, and polishing repeatedly.
The two authors set the tone for the book: Reading and Delightful Reading. Be sure to have a relaxed and beautiful visual experience while reading out the beauty of the text. At first, Le Clézio wanted the entire book to be in Dong Qiang's calligraphy, but Dong Qiang himself refused. He invested a lot of time and energy, from more than 2,000 pictures widely searched, carefully selected more than 30 captions, from multiple dimensions such as characters, scenes, history, etc., to assist readers to better understand the content and expand the world of paper as much as possible.
The book contains 100 poems, peeling back the layers of history through many subdivided themes and tasting the civilization of the Tang Dynasty. Many great Chinese poets, together with the time and space in which they lived, their emotions and attitudes, faced the present world and reproduced the entire Tang Dynasty.
"We always want others to understand us, but only if we first understand each other. If you make this step first, it will be much easier for the other person to take that step forward. ”
Dong Qiang believes that dialogue must be based on understanding. Everything is a two-way street, and everyone is a complete, independent subject. Respecting each other's subjectivity and finding ways to enter each other's hearts is the most important thing.
Entering the world of Tang poetry, I was almost unprepared, but it was not entirely accidental. At that time, I read Li Bai's "Sitting Alone in the Pavilion Mountain", a 1962 English version. In the poem, there is a man sitting there quietly, communicating face-to-face with a mountain.
I still remember the excitement of reading this poem. At that time, in the Western world, the public was not as concerned about environmental issues as it is now. Mountains belong to the landscape and are called "sublime", attracting many brave people to climb. However, Li Bai mentions an obvious truth in the poem: the mountain is a quiet, solemn, and respectable place (in the name of Jingting Mountain, there is the word "jing"). In the presence of the mountain, all man—the fragile, ephemeral—can do is sit down and look at the mountain in silence.
▲ Le Clézio in his hometown of Nice in 2020
The poetic practice in European literature (writers of ancient Greek, roman, and later modern Romance or Saxon languages) made us accustomed to a sense of movement, to desires and passions, and emotions were often fleeting. In contrast, Li Bai, who sat facing Jingting Mountain, brought me a completely different thing. The education I had received, the language I had learned, was not yet accustomed to it: it was a kind of flushing, a kind of inner peace. It is not difficult to achieve this peace. Just sit back and watch the mountains in silence. There is not even a need for a mountain dedicated to reverence.
So, after reading Li Bai's verse, I got up and headed for the Val Valley, not far from Nice. I left the main road and walked up a mountain path until a cliff appeared in front of me. It was a steep, chalked, huge rock covered with no vegetation. In my little notebook, I write about this mountain wall in words, as if I were using words to draw a sketch. Later, in front of the Molna Rock in the south of Mauritius, I experienced the same experience. Instead of reminiscing about a tragic story (a group of fugitive slaves jumped off a cliff here to escape the militia sent by Governor Darling), I just felt the rock in front of me, felt it completely, and became one with it.
▲ Tang Wang Wei's "Jianggan Xueji Picture Scroll"
In the poetry creation of the Tang Dynasty, mountains, nature, occupied an important position. Poets and painters often express themselves by expressing landscapes. For example, Wang Wei, who wrote down the beauty of the landscape, is like painting a portrait of a person. On the whole, poets and painters are inspired by elements of nature: leaves, forests, streams, lakes, or rocks. Their eyes see something, and our education has blinded us to it. Our urban landscapes are too structured, thus breaking an ancient secret that we can no longer read a language of nature that is different from the language of mankind. What ancient beliefs bring to us — every thing, every living being, has a "spirituality" — has always existed strongly in Chinese culture. This is the connection between Chinese philosophy and ancient shamanism and Taoist beliefs. This is not a mysticism, an alchemy-like obscurity that allows us to return to the golden age and retrieve our "roots." In our over-urbanized and over-rationalized world, who would believe in these things?
Tang poetry—so to speak, all true poetry—is perhaps the best means of maintaining contact with the real world. It is a kind of blended poem that guides us to swim outside, let us feel the order of nature, feel the continuation of time, feel the dream. When I first read Li Bai, the message he conveyed was so obvious that I was amazed and at the same time felt an urgent call. I didn't exclaim, "It's beautifully written," and I didn't even rush to read on. Instead, I rushed out of the house in search of the mountain, to find my Jingting Mountain, a mountain in front of which I could sit. Silently look at the mountain and become one with it.
After that, of course, I began to try to learn more about Tang poetry. In the library, I borrowed all the books related to this distant era. I read Confucius's Analects and Zhuangzi. Later, Mencius, especially Mozi's ideas, which were so unique, were discovered. I gradually discovered the fertile soil of Chinese literature. People call it classical Chinese literature, but from many angles, it is a very modern literature. I read a 19th-century anthology of Tang poems translated by Marquis Delivan and Judit Gautier.
Later, I also read the Tang poems translated by the modern poet Ezra Pound in a very free way — he wrote Li Bai's name in the Japanese pronunciation!
Recently, I read the works of Mu Xin, a great Chinese writer and artist. In his translation into English of The Empty Chamber (translated by Liu Jun), I was able to understand a detail he mentioned in a short story. In "That Day I'm No Longer a Child," a young boy receives a gift, a small celadon bowl. The little boy, who had no chance of writing poetry, immediately heard the wonderful poems he had learned in a porcelain-burning tool book:
Where the rain breaks through the clouds,
Such colors do in the future.
From this we can see the power of ancient Chinese poetry: it can be read in any era, on any occasion. With just a gentle chant, you can enter another world.
This book is the result of friendship. It is largely due to my acquaintance with Professor Dong Qiang. Professor Dong is an outstanding person, both a scholar, a poet and a calligrapher. Over the years, in our conversations, the idea of writing a book of Tang poems came to mind. We decided to select some Tang poems, publish them in a collection, and provide a new French translation, accompanied by Professor Dong's calligraphy works. Together, we have selected the poems in this book, highlighting some of the most emblematic moments of this illustrious era. In the process of re-reading Tang poems, we find that Tang poems contain profound humanity. It arose out of the unknown and uncertainty of the future, through war and famine. Despite the great time gap between us, however, in the process of reading, we feel so close to the poets and artists of that era. We can understand them, that era is so similar to ours.
What we want to share with our readers is precisely such a deep touch.
This article is transferred from the public account Literature Newspaper, and the content is synthesized from the public account of Peking University and the selected excerpts of this book
New Media Editor/Zheng Zhouming
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