If I want to sum up which kind of beauty of Chinese poetry I most want to spread to the Western world, it is the spirit of Chinese in poetry.
China News Service: Zhang Daozheng
"Poetry and Poetry, Song Yongyan", Chinese poetry that has lasted for thousands of years, has a special significance in the relationship between Chinese national culture and culture. Chinese characters have the unique characteristics of monophonic monophonic and monophonic four-tone, which makes poetry have a unique sense of text and sound beauty, and its use of classic rhymes is complex and profound. Where is the beauty of Chinese poetry? How can its dissemination break through the cultural divide and promote mutual learning among civilizations? Ye Jiaying, a 98-year-old chinese classical poetry master and director of the Institute of Chinese Classical Culture of Nankai University, recently accepted an exclusive interview with China News Agency's "East and West Question" to interpret this.
Ye Jiaying, director of the Institute of Chinese Classical Culture at Nankai University. China News Service reporter Zhang Daozheng photographed
The interview transcript is summarized below:
China News Service: What are the characteristics of Chinese poetry? Where is its beauty reflected?
Ye Jiaying: As one of the oldest and most basic forms of literature in the world, poetry is a kind of beautiful literature, which includes several aspects such as form, sound and meaning, and its important characteristics are strict rhythmic rhymes, condensed language, dense rules, abundant emotions and rich imagery.
What is the beauty of Chinese poetry? The beauty of Chinese poetry is first embodied in the Chinese Chinese characters, and the characteristics of the single tone and the four voices of the single body make the poem have a unique sense of text and sound beauty. Of course, that's not all. The inner feelings and life realms of poets and lyricists embodied in the poems are the most unique beauty of Chinese poetry.
Classical Chinese poetry has been the most basic feature of its direct power to give people a direct feeling, and the poem must be "emotional in the middle and shaped in words", that is, seeing the external scenery and events to move the heart, and then expressing it in poetry. Zhong Rong once said in "Poetry": "Make it easy for the poor to be at ease, live in seclusion, and Mo Shang is still in poetry." "In times of poverty and hardship or loneliness and frustration, there is nothing more comforting and encouraging than poetry. It can be said that Classical Chinese poetry embodies the unique concepts, interests, temperament and charm of Chinese culture, is the blood of the Chinese nation, and is the spiritual home of all Chinese sons and daughters. As long as there are people who have feelings, feelings, and cultivation, they will certainly be able to read the sincere, full of excitement and emotion contained in the poems, and the endless life.
In April 2018, the 8th "Haitang Yaji" poetry club was held in the Jialing Academy of Nankai University, and famous scholars from the poetry, art and cultural circles at home and abroad went to the Jialing Academy. Ye Jiaying attended the event and enjoyed the flowers and poems with everyone. China News Service reporter Zhang Daozheng photographed
China News Service: In the "territory" of Chinese culture, what position and role does Chinese poetry play?
Ye Jiaying: Classical Chinese poetry has a very unique and lofty position in traditional Chinese culture, condensing the essence of Chinese culture and showing the spiritual outlook of thousands of years of Chinese. In the Chinese cultural tradition, the most precious value and significance of poetry lies in the continuous transmission of life from the author to the reader.
My love and study of classical poetry is not out of the pursuit of academic knowledge, but out of a feeling of life contained in classical poetry to touch and call me. Thanks to ancient poetry, (even though) I have experienced a lot of suffering and misfortune in my life, I have always been optimistic and calm.
At present, some young people do not have enough cultural accumulation, cannot understand the content of poetry, and cannot distinguish which poem is a good poem and where it is good, and cannot understand the function of poetry in improving people's hearts and qualities. It is naturally a great pity to guard the rich treasures of Chinese culture and not know anything about it.
Making up for these regrets was a major desire of mine over the years, and it was also a major reason why I chose to return to china to teach and pay special attention to the role of poetry when teaching poetry. Although I also know that my ability to learn is insufficient, I am afraid that I will inevitably have the excuse of hard work and little work in the end, but where the feelings are, I can't help myself. But I would like to say everything I know and tell it to the young people, otherwise I will be sorry to the ancients and sorry to the comers.
In October 2015, Ye Jiaying gave a lecture at Nankai University. China News Service reporter Zhang Daozheng photographed
China News Service: How to achieve the global dissemination of Chinese poetry?
Ye Jiaying: As mentioned earlier, the unique sense of vocal beauty of Chinese poetry and the unique emotions of the author embodied in it are the beauty of inexpressible rhyme. Therefore, when the language and words change, the feeling and emotion contained in the poem may completely change.
Of course, there are also excellent translations of Chinese poetry in English, and I have heard the Tang poem "Return you the pearls with tears, hate when they don't meet and don't marry" into "I return you the pearls with my tears/ that we didn't meet in earlier years". This kind of translation, which combines sound and emotion well, requires the translator to have the feelings and talents of a poet, and it is difficult to reach this level.
For a lecturer like me who doesn't have a good foundation in English, improvisation can't translate well. Therefore, in the English class, I only express my understanding of poetry to students, and tell the true and essential beauty of poets, just like I treat Chinese readers and Chinese students. Fortunately, I was probably born to eat teaching, although the English grammar is not completely correct, the pronunciation is not necessarily standard, and the daily lesson preparation needs to look up the dictionary such a stupid method, the students are still very interested in my teaching, and the class enthusiasm is very high. I think this still has a lot to do with the fact that I convey my personal sincere touch and understanding of poetry, or that I really use my life to interpret the emotions and will of poetry. Of course, my chanting in class also attracted students to revel in traditional Chinese culture.
Chinese poetry contains a long cultural tradition, and only the more and richer the understanding of Classical Chinese culture, can we better and more appreciate the meaning of poetry. Taking the use of the dictionary as an example, only by truly understanding the meaning of the allusions used can we better appreciate the good intentions of poets and lyricists. Foreign sinologists face many difficulties in this regard.
In fact, true sinologists are very diligent and serious in their study of Chinese poetry. My student at U.B.C, Jerry D. Schmidt, had a master's thesis on Han And a doctoral dissertation on Yang Wanli. After graduation, he stayed at U.B.C to teach. After I retired, he took my class and taught classical Chinese poetry. He attaches great importance to the accumulation of traditional Chinese cultural knowledge, and will check the classical Chinese books and materials very clearly and in detail, and the books are marked with annotations. It is thanks to his practical and rigorous attitude that he can better understand classical Chinese poetry.
In October 2015, the University of Alberta in Canada awarded Ye Jiaying an honorary doctorate in Tianjin in recognition of her outstanding contributions to the study, teaching, and exchange of Chinese and Western classical literature. China News Service reporter Zhang Daozheng photographed
I first met Professor Hightower (1915-2006, a professor at Harvard University and chair of the Department of East Asia) in the summer of 1966 and have worked together for decades. I personally feel the importance of transnational cooperation for the spread of Chinese culture to the outside world. Of course, transnational cooperation requires that both parties have a fairly high academic level. When I first met, Mr. Hai was studying Tao Yuanming's poems. He has an excellent vision and realizes that Western culture has many incomprehensions into Chinese traditions, and it is necessary to cooperate with people who are proficient in traditional Chinese culture to open up the path of cultural exchanges between China and the West. He therefore cordially invites me to cooperate with him. I told Mr. HaiTaowei about my understanding of classical poetry so that he could understand Chinese poetry more deeply and clearly, and he also helped translate many of my works. Such transnational cooperation is indeed beneficial to the better dissemination of Chinese poetry to the Western world.
In addition, when spreading Chinese culture, we must first ask ourselves whether we really love Chinese culture, whether we know the beautiful character of Chinese culture, and whether we can let them show them in ourselves. In a word, it is to spread Chinese culture with words and deeds and practice.
China News Service: How do you view the role of Chinese poetry in cultural exchanges and mutual learning among civilizations?
Ye Jiaying: About ten years ago, the Institute of Intercultural Communication of Nankai University published my "Treatise on Chinese-English Reference to Jialing Poetry" and asked me to write a preface. It talks about the process of writing the book and the concept of cooperating with Professor Hai Taowei of Harvard University to study and translate Chinese poetry. This experience of working closely with the first-class sinologists of the first-class universities in the United States has made me feel about cultural exchanges and mutual learning among civilizations.
In 2013, Ye Jiaying, a professor and famous scholar of Nankai University, wrote two new works, "Selected Lectures on Jialing Poetry" and "Chinese and English References to Jialing Poetry Manuscripts", which were jointly compiled into the Nankai Cross-cultural Exchange Research Series together with "Ye Jiaying's Talks" and "Appreciation of Famous Words of Tang and Song Dynasties". Photo by Ma Chao, China News Service
As early as 1953, Mr. Hai published an article entitled "The Significance of Chinese Literature in World Literature" in Comparative Literature, a journal published at Duke University in the United States. In particular, it is mentioned that the history of classical Chinese literature is longer than the history of Latin literature, and the ancient literary language, even after the emergence of the vernacular language, is still an important literary language, and the two coexist without contradicting each other, unlike Latin literature, which is absolutely different from ancient and modern. Chinese literature occupies an important position in world literature because of its long history and wide range of aspects. If you want to study Chinese literature, you need to thoroughly understand Chinese literature.
As for the usefulness of studying classical Chinese poetry, I personally think that it can evoke an immortal mind that is good at feeling, full of association, lively and open, and more far-sighted. This function has also been discussed in Western aesthetics of acceptance. According to the relationship between the author and the reader in the Western aesthetics of acceptance, the function of the author is to give the work a potential that the reader can explore, and the function of the reader is to make this potential realize. Moreover, when the reader explores the potential in the text, he can also have a kind of "creativity that deviates from the original meaning", so the reader's reading is actually a process of re-creation.
And this process is often a process of evolution and transformation of the reader himself. If we look at classical Chinese poetry in the context of world literature, we will find that the characteristics of classical Chinese poetry are really characterized by this kind of stimulating effect, so the Analects say that "poetry can flourish", which is a precious tradition of Chinese poetry.
Someone asked, "Will classical Chinese poetry perish?", and I thought it wouldn't. I believe that there is indeed a spiritual thing in the universe. Human life is, of course, short, but the life of poetry is endless.
If I want to sum up which kind of beauty of Chinese poetry I most want to spread to the Western world, it is the spirit of Chinese in poetry. The emotions, wills and qualities of Chinese flowing between the lines are what I most hope to convey to Western readers.
Respondent Profiles:
China News Service reporter Zhang Daozheng photographed
Ye Jiaying, female, jialing, is an expert in classical Chinese literature. Born in July 1924 in Beijing to a family of scholars, he graduated from the Department of Chinese Literature of Fu Jen University in 1945. He is currently the director of the Institute of Chinese Classical Culture of Nankai University, a doctoral supervisor, an academician of the Royal Society of Canada, a visiting professor of many universities in China, an honorary researcher of the Institute of Literature of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and a librarian of the Central Research Museum of Literature and History. He was a professor at National Taiwan University, a visiting professor at Harvard University, the University of Michigan and Columbia University, and a professor at the University of British Columbia in Canada. In March 2016, he won the Lifetime Achievement Award of the 2015-2016 "Impact World Chinese Award". In September 2019, he won the Lifetime Achievement Award for Education and Teaching of Nankai University. In February 2021, he was named "Moving China 2020 Person of the Year". With the study of her beloved Chinese classical poetry as her lifelong career, she is committed to inheriting the culture of Classical Chinese poetry, and students have traveled across the two sides of the Straits, the East and the West of the Ocean. He is the author of dozens of Chinese and English works, which have a wide influence on the Chinese classical literature circle and the vast number of poetry lovers.
Source: China News Service