Ling Yue, poet, critic, translator. A native of Tongling, Anhui, he now lives in Guangzhou. He is the author of the poetry collection "Songs of the World", "Floating Addresses", the review collection "Observations of the Lonely", "The Book of Witnesses", "Sweat Walking Through These Words", and collaborated with Liang Jiaying to translate the American poet Masters's "Spoon River Collection", "Langston Hughes Selected Poems", "Khlebnikov Selected Poems: The Late Traveler", "Wilderness Roar: Emily Brontë's Selected Poems" and so on. Editor-in-chief of the "Orpheus Poetry Translation Series". On the occasion of World Poetry Day on March 21, we conducted an interview with the poet Ling Yue. Interviewer Ya Lijuan is the director of the Editing and Research Office of the Shanghai Municipal Research Museum of Culture and History and the deputy editor-in-chief of Century Magazine. He is a member of the Chinese Poetry Society and the Shanghai Writers Association. Poet, also engaged in poetry criticism. Published poetry collections "Unfinished Journey", "Endless River", "Thinking Fish", and won poetry awards. He currently lives in Shanghai.
Poet Ling Yue
Ya Lijuan: You are known as one of the poets in contemporary China who attaches great importance to the drama of poetry. The writer's choice of language is for the needs of style and narrative, you pursue the "trembling" effect of words in writing, is the responsibility of the poet language? How did poets build their own language systems? Is language part of the skill?
Ling Yue: Every poet has his own usual writing path, writing strategy, dramatic mask is one of the common means I have used to write poetry for many years, and it may be for this reason that some people will think that I am a poet who pays attention to poetry drama in contemporary China. From the perspective of the Chinese poetry tradition, dramatic poetry has always been relatively scarce, which is of course related to the weakness of the Chinese theater tradition, as a writer who takes some kind of "innovation" as his responsibility, consciously adds a dramatic factor to lyric poetry, and its purpose is also to add a new perspective or new nourishment to Chinese poetry in a large way, and in the specific writing process, I found that the use of dramatic masks can effectively liberate my imagination and make my poems easily touch a wider range of subjects. Thus gaining a broader view, which, needless to say, is something I would love to see.
On the other hand, all the paths, strategies, and methods in writing must ultimately be implemented at the linguistic level of poetry, that is, whether they stimulate the vitality of language, if they cannot do this, they are ineffective paths and strategies. Therefore, I think I can answer your first question - the responsibility of the poet is first and foremost whether he can bring vitality to his own national language, in other words, the poet's enemy is always a cliché, and the poet's imagination and sense of morality can only be realized on the basis of linguistic innovation. As for the language system, each poet, consciously or unconsciously, always has his own list of common vocabulary, which will nakedly reveal the connection of each poet's heart.
Language is not part of the skill, and to be precise, the vitality of language is what all so-called skills want to acquire, although in the process it often feels powerless.
Ya Lijuan: On July 24, 2021, as a guest of "Poetry Comes to the Art Museum", you came to Shanghai to meet with readers, and at the sharing meeting, you talked about "the most essential and legitimate work of poets is to praise". Does the poet have a mission? If so, what is the poet's mission?
Ling Yue: I mentioned at the sharing meeting that "the most essential and legitimate work of a poet is to praise", which is related to the hymn tradition of poetry itself, on the other hand, no matter what style of poetry, the joyful nature of language presented when it is in a good state also supports this view.
If the poet has a mission, it is almost a solemn duty to write every line of poetry at the lowest level, and in the highest sense, as has just been said, to add to the vitality of the national language, to save it from the fate of decay due to the accumulation of clichés.
Ya Lijuan: Some people have made this generalization about the development stage of contemporary poetry: from the emotional expression in the 1980s, to the increased narrative in the 1990s, and then to the current emphasis on rationality. You also think that your earlier writing "The Hidden Place" was a traditional lyric poetry writing, and it was only when the group poem "False Biography" began to deal directly with urban themes, adding modern elements, and adding satire and irony techniques to the technique. What is the basis for this change? Which lyrical style do you prefer?
Ling Yue: First of all, I think that the theory of literary evolution does not exist, and that each style of poetry is a journey on different paths for the same dot, so the comparison of the advantages and disadvantages of each style of poetry may not be able to be discussed, because there are always good poems and bad poems in each style of poetry (under the huge label).
The obscure poetry that emerged in the 1970s and 1980s seemed to me to be a kind of lyric poetry at the junction of Romantic poetry and modernist poetry, and of course produced very good works, but too many inferior works of empty lyricism also made later writers more and more tired, resulting in two writing paradigms based on "rebellion" (father-killing). A poetic school represented by the "they" school of poetry, with the secular against the sublime (which, in their view, is naturally a false sublime), replaces the high-pitched lyrical tone with a bland tone of speech. Another group of poets tried to increase the objectivity of poetry in response to the tendency of obscure poetry to be too subjective, and since the 1990s, poetry that emphasizes narrative is its representative, they have tried to add plot factors to poetry, expand the basic vocabulary of poetry, and correct the empty and narrow faults that bad lyric poetry writing is prone to. It should be said that both of these writing paradigms have their own rationality, but good poetry is always a difficult illusion to capture, and when you are confident that you can get it at your fingertips, you have mostly been abandoned by it. The above two starting points are not without reason for the writing paradigm, due to overconfidence, quickly fall to the other extreme, slide into another abyss. Too long vocabulary, too specific plots, too crowded content, all make the poetry itself bloated and lazy, and the anti-sublime secular tone is also easy to slip.
My own poetry writing, as you said, has also had a change from pure lyrical writing to increasing narrative, emphasizing irony, and deliberately replacing poetic scenes with urban landscapes, but in this change, I have always noticed the traps everywhere, and I have never felt that changing the writing path (strategy) will solve many of the problems of poetry writing once and for all. Switching the runway naturally is an attempt to gain new vitality, but the runway is limited, and each poem has a vast universe of its own, and the key is to discover it and engrave it in the language — many times, the two are the same thing. It seems to me that the difficulty and pleasure of writing poetry is also lurking in the almost unspeakable process of this secret.
Ya Lijuan: In 1999, UNESCO declared 21 March to be World Poetry Day at its 30th Congress, with the aim of promoting the creation, reading and publication of poetry as a beautiful cultural form. As a translator, you and Liang Jiaying have collaborated on the translation of the American poet Masters's "Spoon River Collection", "Langston Hughes Selected Poems", "Khrebnikov's Selected Poems: The Late Traveler", "The Roar of the Wilderness: Selected Poems of Emily Brontë", etc. What are the criteria for choosing to translate Western poetry? What is the specific feeling of the translation process?
Ling Yue: The criteria for selecting translators are very simple, that is, important and rarely translated into Chinese, so far, our translations of the "Spoon River Collection" and Khlebnikov's Selected Poems are the only Chinese translations of these two important poets. The Selected Poems of Lanstown Hughes was also the first Chinese translation of the African-American poet, but only a few months after our translation was published, the Shanghai translation launched a second Chinese translation of Langston Hughes. The exception is Whistling in the Wilderness– Selected Poems of Emily Brontë, but during the translation process we did not know of the existence of another Chinese translation, and it was only after the translation was completed that we learned that there was a complete collection of Emily Brontë poems in a collection of Brontë sisters many years ago. As a translator, I have always felt that the first translation is much more important than the icing on the cake, and that the first translation can avoid accusations and quarrels between multiple translators, which is too boring. Of course, the ambiguity of poetry itself also justifies the existence of multiple translations of the same poet, so I think our emily Brontë poems have their own value, but if we had known that a Chinese translation already existed, we might not have translated it. There are still too many excellent foreign poets who have not yet translated a collection of poems in Chinese, and there is no need to get together to translate a certain poet, like Akhmatova, Tsvetaeva, Dickinson or Pessoa, is it necessary to have seven or eight or even a dozen Chinese translations? Moreover, many later translations have no obvious progress at all (and some are even inferior to the previous translations), which will only lead to a waste of resources. Perhaps some translators are for commercial reasons, and the market for poets known to Chinese readers is usually much better, but our idea is simple, that is, whether the poet is important and whether it has not yet attracted the attention of Chinese readers and Chinese poets. Another reason may be that I myself am a poet who is not good or disdainful of "running" myself, so I have a sense of affinity for poets in other languages who are proud to stay in the corner, and I am willing to translate such poets, rather than translating a certain "star poet" like a star chaser. I think good poets in a state of obscuration are the most attractive.
Several of the poets we have translated are classic poets in the literary history of their respective countries, and although they are very different in style, they are undoubtedly great poets, so we are very pleasant in the translation process, often being moved by those wonderful verses, marveling at their strange imagination, marveling at their ability to integrate experience into language.
Ya Lijuan: As both a poet and a poetry critic, this dual identity inspires each other, what do you think is the relationship between poetry creation and poetry criticism? How can poetry criticism be objective and comprehensive? What are the possible factors when you evaluate a good poet or a good poem?
Ling Yue: I have quoted Baudelaire's famous quote a few times, and I use it again here, to the effect that "modern poets are poets born with critical organs." Poets after Romanticism, driven only by passion and inspiration, could not write good poetry. The slow extension of the history of poetry makes the poet have to have a sense of history, he needs to understand the various writing paths and writing strategies of poets in the history of poetry, and use this as a basis for determining the path he needs to take in his own time. Thus the modern poet usually has a divisive tendency, on the one hand he is the poet driven by the passion, and on the other hand another calm other looks at all this and helps the passionate poet to maintain a certain degree of restraint to ensure that the verse itself achieves its best effect. This process of self-examination is actually a process of criticism, that is, criticism is involved in the creation of poetry, so we may as well conclude a little arbitrarily that a good modern poet must have excellent critical ability, even if he has not written a critical article.
The poetry criticism I like is often written by good poets, in general, it is about the gains and losses in the process of poetry creation, they have a lot of creative experience, so their articles can always be pertinent, but they are always accustomed to starting from their own creative experience, even when commenting on other people's poetry. Their poetic criticism articles are always very subjective in their bones, although the calm tone of their tone gives them a cloak of objectivity. Then again, why poetry criticism should be "objective and comprehensive", this is not an effective criterion for measuring the merits of poetry criticism, there are too many negative examples in this regard, and a large number of mediocre poetry criticisms are under the perspective of "objective and comprehensive", accommodating too many clumsy poems, and surprisingly finding many "advantages".
All styles and paths can produce good poetry, and good poetry must be varied, and it is difficult for you to summarize some kind of rigid commonality from it, or that good poetry always has a tendency to escape from existing effective routines. However, I can also answer this question subjectively. For me, the pleasure of a good poem precedes the rational analysis of it. This pleasure is the product of the combined action of the poem's phonology, rhythm, meaning, imagery, and emotion, and the poems I like usually move me immediately when I first read them, and it is only on this premise that I am interested in exploring what moves me. However, I want to emphasize that this kind of instantaneous touch on the physiology of poetry is not an objective criterion, because it is clear that every reader is limited by his own knowledge reserves and understanding, and they may have completely different feelings about the same verses, which makes Zhang San feel zero poetry, Li Si may be completely indifferent, and the verses that make Li Si move, Zhang San may scoff at it.
Dickinson once mentioned this in a letter to a friend: "If I read a book that makes me cold, and no fire can warm me, I know it is poetry." If I have a personal feeling as if the celestial cap has been removed, I know it is poetry. That's the only way I know poetry, is there any other way? Although it is a bit exaggerated, in the identification of the good and bad of poetry, the direct physiological feeling is indeed more reliable than the rational analysis of the mind, because it is entirely possible that you will be unconsciously persuaded by your own rational analysis and turn to "appreciating" an obviously clumsy work.
Ya Lijuan: How to understand the poetic concepts (concepts) often involved in modern poetry, such as "avant-garde", "experimental", "surreal" and "contemporary"?
Lingyue: "avant-garde", "experimental", "contemporary", "surreal" terms are mostly labels that professional critics like to use, which is typical of the way poetry is talked about from the "outside", and they naturally have the right to do so, since they do not have the ability to talk about poetry from the "inside". I think that good poetry creators generally don't care too much about these labels, the core problem they care about is how to achieve and maintain the vitality of language, of course, in the process of this effort, they inevitably have to use some new (or long-forgotten and at this moment seems new) creative methods - such as enhancing drama, narrative, using metaphors, etc., at this time the creator will touch on the terms you mentioned, but the order cannot be reversed, can not be "pioneer" for "pioneer", can not be "experimental" for "experimentation", Otherwise, the organic mechanism inherent in poetry must be damaged.
"Surreal" is an important poetic concept in modernist poetry and a widely used poetic technique. Experienced writers know that describing "reality" in a "hyperrealist" way does not necessarily capture the essence of reality, but through the perspective of "spiritual vision" (surreal), you may instead see "reality"—a subjective projection of everyday life.
Is "contemporaneity" a very strange concept that emphasizes that poetry should write about contemporary everyday life? The Italian scholar Croce famously said about history - all history is contemporary history, to paraphrase this sentence, even if a contemporary poet writes poetry on ancient themes, his poetry must be contemporary poetry.
Ya Lijuan: The Internet age has brought opportunities for the development of poetry, such as the changes in the way poetry is written and the composition of writing groups, how do you think about the phenomenon of "online poetry" and poetry in the social media era? How should poetry and the dignity of poets be embodied in the age of mass media?
Ling Yue: No matter what era, the dilemma a poet faces when writing is the same, in short, how to process experience with language, and in the process make language shine. The Internet age may have provided a more convenient way for poetry to spread, and on some platforms, poets have become more convenient to communicate about the technical problems of poetry, if their interest in conversation does not always fall into the trap of so-called "gossip".
This convenient exchange brings with it another problem that needs to be guarded against, that is, it reinforces the homogeneity of the poet's writing—writing poems of the same theme, writing the same indignation, embodying similar moral feelings with similar techniques, and so on, and homogeneity is not the shackles that the poet needs to break free from in the first place? I myself was interested in communicating with other poets in the first few years of writing poetry, and perhaps the self-confidence of writing poetry was still in the process of being established. Later, I no longer paid attention to this kind of communication, I always felt that writing is more important than saying, no matter how well I say it, I can't guarantee that I can write well, so it is better to spend more time on writing. In addition, the purpose of communication is often to achieve consensus, which I just said is not good for writing poetry.
I don't think the poet has to waste time thinking about the problem of dissemination, the poet just has to go all out to write a good poem, and once the poem is written, it has its own destiny, and it is either immediately widely known, or goes through a long period of obscuration, and then slowly becomes known. I like the latter feeling because it's naturally more natural and calmer. I feel like my poetry is like my child, I like to have more opportunities to be alone with him, and when he grows up, he will naturally slowly walk into the crowd, and I will watch him go away with mixed emotions. In the end, poetry is not a general so-called commodity, and good poetry does not need to be "peddled".
Poetry and the dignity of the poet are also very intrinsic issues, and I once said that as a poet, writing good poetry is the highest morality. The dignity of the poet exists only in wonderful verses and not anywhere else.
Ya Lijuan: Can you talk about your childhood and adolescence, and when you grew up, do you remember who people and things made you like poetry? Why do you write poetry? How has poetry affected your life?
Ling Yue: Once a few years ago, when I was sorting out a poem manuscript, I suddenly found that I had written a lot of poems about childhood and my hometown, and in my early poems, you couldn't find the word "childhood" at all. That said, my childhood and adolescence experiences have unknowingly entered my poetry. Overall, I had a peaceful, peaceful childhood and adolescence, and looking back now, it could be said that it was a "happy" childhood, as some kind of source force that continued to inject "goodness" into my life, something I didn't realize until recent years. I was brought up by my grandmother, and I have deep feelings for her, and even now I remember her look, her expression, the words she said, and I have written about her in several poems.
When I was in middle school, he was an influential young poet in Anhui, and some of his poems in the 1980s and 1990s were excellent from the current point of view, and he was humble, low-key, personable, and well-respected among relatives and friends. I have a big age difference between him and him, and my direct contact is actually very little, but as an "idol" of my youth, it obviously invisibly led me to the road of literature.
As for why I write poetry, to make a long story short, I once wrote an article specifically— "I Cherish the Irrational Foundations of Poetry"— to answer the question, and so far, my thinking hasn't changed much.
Writing poetry puts me on a lesser-lived path, and I enjoy the lonely beauty it brings. Writing, as a form of creative labor, is difficult but also brings a great deal of satisfaction.
Ya Lijuan: Some poets write in one go, and some poets keep revising after writing, what are your writing habits? Are there any masterpieces that cannot be found? Can you talk about inspiration, passion, experience, knowledge, imagination in combination with your own creations... Which factor is more important to your creation?
Ling Yue: I like the feeling of inspiration when I write poetry, I like the feeling of poetry after the floodgates of poetry are opened, but the opening of the floodgates of poetry is easy to talk about, not that as soon as I sit down, poetry is like a spring, otherwise, it is often sitting, waiting for inspiration to come, waiting for a wonderful sentence, just like waiting for the mantra of "sesame, open the door". Once I feel inspired, I cling to it, and I write it quickly, read it several times after the first draft is completed, and the changes are not too much. The poems written in this way, I myself am relatively satisfied.
In the last five or six years I've been writing a lot slower, with repeated revisions. I think this change is related to my recent work in poetry translation, translating the works of poets in other languages, you must try to consider and figure out the original author's original intention, and a large number of words are polysemantic words, you have to pick out the most accurate and appropriate meaning in a certain context. This kind of repeated deliberation and speculation is very different from my own previous experience of writing poetry, and I have found that a poem that has been carefully "polished" may indeed improve its quality. This repetitive way of working has obviously inadvertently affected my own writing. Sometimes, the revision becomes exaggerated, and I have a few poems that have been repeatedly revised, leaving only one or two sentences of the original manuscript, which have become another poem completely. I also realize now that the slowdown in writing has made me pay more attention to the details of poetry, but it is also problematic, that is, the sense of power that I used to like in the mud and sand will be weakened. The slower you write, the more you realize that the pitfalls of writing are everywhere, so much so that you won't even be able to walk. At this point, you have to increase the speed of writing and boldly cross the possible mudflats and traps. These two ways of writing are like two gears in a car for me, and I often switch back and forth between high gear and low gear.
As for the "masterpiece that can be found and cannot be sought", let's leave it to others to say.
Inspiration, passion, experience, knowledge, imagination — most of these words arise from the analysis of the poem, and when I write a poem, I will not think of any of these words, otherwise I am afraid I will not be able to write a single sentence. When I write poetry, most of what strikes me is a character that touches me—a man, a woman, an old man, a child, or a scene that I remember—a scene that is purely natural or in which characters move. I think it must be some human emotion that inspires my initial desire to express, and then find a way to make them appear in words.
Ya Lijuan: What are your reading interests? What impact has it had on your creations? What is the relationship between reading and writing? Growing up in Tongling, Anhui Province, studying at a university in Shanghai, and working in Guangzhou, what impact did your experience of moving from one place have on expanding your creative perspective?
Ling Yue: Because of my curiosity and because of the years of writing book reviews, I read a lot of books. The main reading interests, naturally, began with literature (poetry, fiction, literary criticism) and then slowly spilled over into history, philosophy, sociology, and political science. Reading social science books does not seem to have a clear direct relationship with poetry writing, but they clearly broaden my horizons and correct many of the previously possible narrow views. They allow me to better observe society and enhance my own social understanding. A good poet can never be a poet in an ivory tower, as a member of society, he is a keen tentacle of society. He certainly doesn't insist on the ideas of social science masterpieces in his poems (which must be clumsy), but the knowledge of social sciences may have made him more acute—in a broader sense. Naturally, there are examples of more and more stubbornness the more you read, but the mistake is not in the books themselves.
I write poetry and draw a lot of nourishment from many outstanding poets in ancient and modern China and abroad, and I will not list them here - that would be a long list. Under the premise of a long literary history, it is impossible to write poetry entirely on the basis of life experience, and when you use language, it will definitely be contaminated with the atmosphere of literary history that is either distant or recent. When you write the word "moon" in a poem, it may be the golden disk in the night sky that you look up, it may refer to the moon of Li Bai, Su Shi or Zhang Ruoxuan, or even to the moon of Novalis or Dickinson. Poetry, as the most exquisite composition of linguistic symbols, is first and foremost a cultural product, and any poem you write that is excellent will be absorbed into that vast galaxy of language, which, in popular parlance, is a parallel universe and has an eternal attraction to fleeting physical experience.
Becoming a poet is a desire for inner expression, and the external environment plays a small role in it, of course, these environmental factors will enter the poet's poetry, after all, that is what he sees and hears, but the external environment only provides the poet with a bunch of chaotic materials, from these materials to the poem, there is exactly a poet's distance in the middle.
From the perspective of literary history, immigrant literature has been full of vitality since the 19th century, and too many literary people belong to the ranks of immigrants. I think it may have something to do with immigrants being more sensitive to new environments. I was an old parent in Anhui until I was 17 years old, then four years of university life in Shanghai, and came to Guangzhou at the age of 21. In my poems in the first few years of my visit to Guangzhou, I recorded the various observations of an outsider on the city and the citizens who lived in it. "Literature is the news of everyday life." I think immigrant writers will understand this sentence more thoroughly.