Every April, many people quote the beginning of Eliot's classic long poem "The Wasteland" on social platforms: "April is the most cruel month" - 2022 is the centenary of the "Wasteland".
The Wasteland is a masterpiece by the English poet Eliot, whose publication has been hailed as "a milestone in Western modernist poetry". In October 1922, Wasteland was first published in the inaugural issue of the quarterly Standard, edited by Elliot himself, and at the end of the same year, a single edition was published in the United States, and Elliott added more than fifty notes to the monograph.
In April, The Paper interviewed several Chinese poets, many of whom were critics, writers, scholars, translators, and editors of literary journals, on the history of the reception of Wasteland in China, its influence on Chinese poets, and its relevance to the present.
This article is an exclusive interview with the surging news reporter by the poet and young critic Muye on "Wasteland".
Wood leaf, summer 2019 at Joysta's Top in Dublin
【Dialogue】
The Paper: When did you first read "Wasteland" and how did you feel at that time?
Kiba: I should not have read it too early, after going to college. However, before, through friends and media, I had a little understanding of the "Wasteland", so after reading "Wasteland" in its entirety, I was both shocked and had some ideas. I even thought Eliot was more important as a critic, especially for myself at the time. This includes what Terry Eagleton says is a meaningful inconsistency between Eliot's poetry and prose style: "Poetry is mysterious, allegorical and semantic, while prose is clear and understandable, solemn, and has lofty self-confidence." Perhaps also, Eliot's literary theory has a revealing penetrating power.
The Paper: Can you talk more about those ideas that are different from shock? When it comes to "The Wasteland", it seems that many people can't avoid Eliot's other works and literary theories. Before you read Wasteland, did you read Eliot's essay?
Muye: Reading the whole book with imagination and expectation, the dissatisfaction after the surprise, I can't remember it exactly, but now it may include: Can a long poem maintain the sharpness and potential of the opening paragraph? Annotation is also a poem, a style, but is it somewhat suspicious that the author's self-annotated poems, which rely heavily on explanatory nature? The overall structure is novel, with the help of myths and everydayness, but can it be more compact and powerful? However, frankly, it is not clear whether the poem was understood or misunderstood more, and whether the "conclusions" of some experts may also tie the reader's imagination...
"Wasteland" and literary theory, I read it almost at the same time. In college, some people around me were crazy reading, and I was crazy, and the process of reading was also the process of discovering my own interests and directions. In retrospect, Eliot's direct and concrete influence on me as a poet is not obvious. And his literary and poetic revelations, I have always liked, different periods of reading will have some different feelings. Such as "modern mind", "past extantity", "auditory imagination", such as musical sense, drama sense, abyss sense, such as wasteland, hollow man and other naming, such as the 25-year-old hypothesis and mysterious platinum wire... It is precisely because of the existence of humanism such as Brodsky that I am even paranoid that a poet who cannot write literature or prose to the extreme may not be able to become a brilliant poet.
The impact is a mystery, though. Sometimes you feel unaffected by someone, but you may have quietly changed it. On the contrary, sometimes someone is in love with, but they may not really be able to distill it into their own creations.
The Paper: Has your feelings about Wasteland changed in recent years?
Kiba: I criticized Wasteland in a 1997 article. There was a kind of brute force of a newborn calf, and before he could write much poetry, he wanted to express more ideas. Today, some of my views have changed, but one thing has not changed, that is, because of my temperament and interests, I have long considered whether there is "healthy poetics" and "poetics of construction", and I vaguely hope to go out of a "wasteland". Later, I gradually felt that the farther I went, the closer I seemed to be to the "wasteland". In recent years, however, new discoveries have been made, which are related to the view of poets such as Auden: "May I, like them / made of love and dust, / troubled by the same denial and despair / present / A flame of affirmation." Of course, how to present the "flame of affirmation" is quite difficult to think about.
Elliot's Collected Writings
The Paper: Why is it said that "healthy poetics" and "poetics of construction" are outside the "wasteland"? What later experiences made you feel like the farther you went, the closer you seemed to be to the "wasteland"?
Kiba: Actually, it's not accurate to say "outside", I want to emphasize a certain difference. I was hoping to build something on grammar (form), language, and thought, such as being strong, clear, and direct to the heart. It's only vague, tentative, and choppy, though. I'm ashamed that the number of poems I've written so far is limited, and the exploration is not deep enough, and I feel different forces tearing myself apart. In the face of the chain woman, it is difficult to write superb and comforting works; in the face of the epidemic, it is also difficult; in the face of trivial daily life, it is also necessary to create a real and beautiful creation...
Life has been teaching us. Actively and passively seeing darkness, gray, decadence, including one's own heart. We live in a new wasteland, and when we look back, we will find that Eliot and others have gathered a huge amount of traditional energy, rebelling and building, creating art that belongs to his time and even the future. The search for the Holy Grail itself has pointed to salvation and rebirth, and here's another concrete example. The first sentence of "The Wasteland" "April is the most cruel month" is known to many people, but the second sentence is rarely said immediately: "From the dead land / cultivate the cloves" (also translated as "from the dead / the land breeds cloves"), the opposite of the lilac and the dead, life and death in the whole poem has been intertwined and rising, revealing a very complex meaning, there are realistic and ironic, making "cruelty" full of tension and reverse force. The Sanskrit word quoted at the end of this long poem means "give, sympathize, restrain," and this restraint is not without consolation. In his early years, Eliot revealed in "A Lyric Poem" that he confronted the vibration of fate: "The butterfly that only lived for one day, the same / also experienced eternity", and later in the "Four Quartets", he said bluntly that "the destroyer of time is also the saver of time".
In other words, only by entering the deepest darkness, the harshest truth, the greatest division, can one person lift up more light and wind. Because of its own limitations, as well as the limitations of the times, beauty and love have always been difficult, even merciless, and sharp.
The Paper: Modern poetry, including "The Wasteland," once felt divided, broken, dark, and negative, but Auden presented a "flame of affirmation" at the end of September 1, 1939. What new thinking has this "flame of affirmation" made you think?
Muye: I talked about the scholar and poet Zhang Xinxin's article, the title is "The Flame of Affirmation", the main spiritual resource comes from Auden, and several philosophers, writers and other "affirmation dialectics". Breaking and standing are never simply opposites, and the same is true of the dialectics of negation and affirmation, both of which stir and demand human wisdom, boldness, and patience. Just as one criticizes society, this in itself is also a construction, because it points out the problem, "exposing the suffering of the disease and attracting the attention of healing" (Lu Xun). The reason why the epidemic in Shanghai at this moment is so tragic is because only when death and disaster occur, from the grassroots level to the top level of society, they passively improve a little, and the system itself lacks prejudgment, warning and self-correction mechanisms. Some works are surging at this moment, and some will look back and meditate from some moment in the future.
In the end, there is also negation and criticism in the affirmation, thus reaching a new, stronger and clearer affirmation. This process of affirmation, far from cheap praise and praise, but face up to it, or even resist, rises from the predicament, the abyss, the dark night, which may require higher aesthetic power and creativity, love and offense.
Elliott People's Visual Infographic
The Paper: How do you think Wasteland has had an impact on you and on your generation of Chinese poets?
Muye: For me, "The Wasteland" is a temptation to focus on Eliot's other works; at the same time, I feel that I have to read different styles of modern poetry, as well as new ideas and Chinese classics, and the re-reading of what I have read before will give birth to new ideas, such as Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Valery, Rilke, Celan, Stevens, Borges, Dickinson, Sodgran, etc. At this time, looking back at "Wasteland", there will be another shock, as well as thinking. By the way, it is great for a poet to be able to write The Wasteland, and it is even greater to be able to write the Quartet at the same time, although perhaps the latter is less impactful than the former.
The influence of The Wasteland can be said to be overlying, but there are not many poets who specialize in Fa Elliot and have achieved extraordinary achievements. I make an analogous judgment, in terms of revolution, pioneering and influence, "The Wasteland" is a bit like the "Theory of Relativity" in the poetry world, and since then, beauty has changed, language has changed, self has changed, the universe has changed. After The Flower of Evil, and especially The Wasteland, the poet had to rethink what is "the gravitational pull of poetry," what is the "bending of light," what is modernity, and what is world poetry. At the same time, it is destined to become the object of opposition or verification by some poets, inspiring new creations.
The Paper: You just mentioned "The Flower of Evil"...
Wood Leaf: Yes. My 1997 article put "Flowers of Evil" and "Wasteland" and "Howl" in a sequence. That's a rough idea, but I still think so today, just because I think the textures and variations are more varied. Eliot himself said that he had "known for the first time that poetry could be written that way" from Baudelaire, and a quote from the prologue to The Flower of Evil is quoted in The Wasteland.
Let's add that analogy. Strictly speaking, there may not be such an absolute figure as Einstein in modern world poetry, but the "theory of relativity" may exist, laid down by Eliot and Pound, and even Yeats, Rilke, Baudelaire, etc. Interestingly, the rise of modern poetry may have something to do with modern science's new discoveries of time and motion. Eliot is the master of writing time, not to mention "April" at the beginning of "The Wasteland", followed by the repeated "Time Has Arrived", and "while the withered remnants of other times / presented on the four walls", and he continues to touch on this theme, the most dense and mysterious in the Quartet, such as "My end is my beginning day". He also has excellent writings about "movement", the inner structure of the search for the Holy Grail in The Wasteland is moving, and eventually "the wind brings the rain" is moving, and almost every part is either hidden or present around life, action, and movement. There is a sentence in the "Four Quartets" that embodies a kind of "science" and wonder: "Only with the help of form, with the help of mode, / speech or music can be achieved / still, like a static Chinese vase / permanently moving in its stillness." "It's good: words strive to reach stillness, and permanently, in stillness, move.
The Paper: Every April, someone forwards the opening sentence of "Wasteland" in the circle of friends. What do you think of the relationship between this poem and the present?
Wood Leaf: Eliot's legacy, very complex and subtle. People in different fields and levels may come to the sentence "April is the most cruel month". This is the fate of the classics, fortunate and unfortunate. Today, Wasteland is far away, but it is still very avant-garde, it has a reflexive side, constantly merging into the flow of time.
Frankly, we haven't written a new landmark text yet. Just like the creation of novels has many aspects and many levels of gains, but most of them are still shrouded in "Metamorphosis". A generation has a generation of reality, a generation has a generation of poetry. Like Eliot, Yeats, Rilke, and others, aspiring contemporary poets have to face their own life experiences, emotional abysses, and then forge psalms with the consciousness of the times.
The Paper: When we commemorate Eliot and commemorate Wasteland, what do we need to commemorate?
Wood Leaf: Remembrance is reflection. Reflect on the text, reflect on the status quo. I see some people, such as Nishikawa talking about the translation of "The Waste Land", which is quite interesting, the name "Wasteland" was widely accepted by the translator at the beginning, in fact, the literal translation seems to be more of the meaning of "waste + land". When commemorating this poem, it may be possible to reflect on it from here: what can the "wasteland" bring about prosperity and civilization? What can ruin and poverty bring about prosperity and what civilization cannot?
"Human/can't stand too much truth", Elliot has always been a creator who cares about reality. "Wasteland" is not backward, but pushes the poet into the reality and the unknown, time constantly rebels, constantly restarts, and the contemporary us are still on the extension line of the "wasteland", and the lack and exhaustion of this time are more embodied in endless sensory experience, life fission and technology. For contemporary poets, survival and writing are even more difficult: the Holy Grail is unattainable, AI is unknown, and the wholeness and fragmentation of the world test our insight and empowerment, as well as the forging of the body and language. That is to say, the wasteland has been masked, and the contemporary poets are becoming more naked, and the poetry is becoming more and more naked. A hundred years ago, "The Wasteland" was already a hyperlinked super text, omnipotent poetry, and today's poetry wants to have its own superiority, one possibility is to create a super text symmetrical to this era and its algorithms, a poetry that rises from reality, synthesizes the force and future aesthetics, and also integrates the self, the cultural community and even post-human considerations.