MCLC: Winter Sun review (1)

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: A. E. Clark <aec at raggedbanner.com>
Subject: Winter Sun review (1)
*****************************************************

Kudos to Birgit Linder for a thoughtful and judicious review, to Jonathan
Stalling for an artistic and conscientious translation, and to Shi Zhi for
bringing to creative expression life-experiences that would have destroyed
most people.

Dr. Linder observes that the poet's regulated, rhyming, somewhat
traditional style poses a challenge to the translator and notes how
Professor Stalling met this challenge by using alliteration and
parallelism in his free verse.  She suggests that he could have used other
techniques as well, and mentions blank verse among them.  I think this
idea has potential, and since the stanzas which Dr. Linder offered as an
example of alternative treatments are not in blank verse, here is a stab
at the three stanzas she quotes from "In the Asylum":

(为写诗我情愿搜尽枯肠 
可喧闹的病房怎苦思冥想 
开粗俗的玩笑，妙语如珠 
提起笔竟写不出一句诗行 

有时止不住想发泄愤怒 
可那后果却不堪设想…… 
天呵，为何一次又一次地 
让我在疯人院消磨时光！ 

当惊涛骇浪从心头退去 
心底只剩下空旷与凄凉… 
怕别人看见噙泪的双眼 
我低头踱步，无事一样)


I'd fain write verse, use my poor wits for that,
But who could think amid the bedlam here,
The vulgar jokes and oh-so-clever quips?
Pick up that pen: can't write a single line.

It's often tempting to give vent to rage,
But that would have a hideous aftermath.
Oh, God! I've seen my years laid waste
In the madhouse. It goes on and on. What for?

It ebbs at last, the storm-surge 'round my heart,
And leaves a hollow dreariness behind.
Lest others see my eyes are bright with tears,
I amble, head down, as if nothing's wrong.

Permit me to add two observations.  The reference (Linder's? Or was she
quoting Shi Zhi?) to Tennyson is even more apt than Dr. Linder indicates,
because Tennyson was expressing much more than frustration with the
limitations of language:

I sometimes hold it half a sin
    To put in words the grief I feel;
    For words, like Nature, half reveal
And half conceal the Soul within.

But, for the unquiet heart and brain,
    A use in measured language lies;
    The sad mechanic exercise,
Like dull narcotics, numbing pain.

            (In Memoriam, V.)

Doesn't this hint at a motive for Shi Zhi's choice of poetic forms?

Finally, I think Dr. Linder goes too far when she writes:

"Some have suggested that the lucidity and formal constraint of his poetry
proves that he is not suffering from a mental illness. Medical Humanities,
however, has shown that it is precisely this stringent ordering process
and the inflexibility that are cognitive markers of the schizophrenic
mind. Therefore, in addition to introducing an important poet to readers,
and contributing materials for fertile discussions about translation and
poetry, Shi Zhi's poetry also offers a resource for cross-cultural Medical
Humanities and cognitive poetics."

Please! "A stringent ordering process and inflexibility," even in extreme
forms, can be associated with psychological conditions that are very
different from schizophrenia, and (depending on the extent to which the
inflexibility proves dysfunctional) they may express a temperament that is
not in any way pathological. They may also be deliberately assumed as part
of the cultural discipline of writing verse. I understand that Shi Zhi's
work may be of interest to psychiatrists, but I would be very wary about
describing his poetic style as a "cognitive marker of the schizophrenic
mind."

A. E. Clark