Introduce a Chinese moden poem

[stavrokin]

In a Decade

Bei Dao


On the forsaken land
Years, tangled with yoke bells,
Sounded all night through. Roads rocked,
Gasps, beneath burdens, set to music,
Were sung far and wide.
Amid curses a woman's necklace
Rose prophetically into the night sky.
The luminous clockface struck random hours.
Honest time, like an iron railing,
Let no one pass
But wind trimmed by dry twigs.
Flowers that had once bloomed only in book
Were immured forever, transformed into truth's mistress.
The lamps shattered just the previous day
Dazzled blind men
Until the moment of execution,
When their eyes, suddently opened,
Retained the murderer's final image.


who said that poem was impossible be translated,
that's ture

just make the sense without picture




:-?

[imthefoolonthehill]

Chinese Moden poem...

I get the Chinese and Poem part... but Moden? Was it a typo for Modern? Is it a word I have not learned?

[lacrimosa]

mm... Bei Dao is a famous poet in China. and what's more, he has been away from his motherland for more than fifteen years (because of some political reasons)...

Bei dao is regarded as one of the first poets who has showed their true feelings (anger, sadness, or maybe desperation) about the "Great Revolution to Culture"(1966-1976), and then, most of the subsequent writers(poets, novelists) in China choose the "great disaster in ten years" as their opus' topic.

in late 1980s, Bei dao had to leave China as his poinant(not violent) poems could not be accepted by the local goverment. (of course there's some private reasons, too.)

Bei Dao's later poems, which was written during his staying in a foreign land(France...), clearly showed that he was missing his motherland so much.. and maybe it's a joke to him that he was elected as a cadidate for the Nobel Price(still, there's some political factor...)

it's a :oops: wonderful story, isn't it?

[leonthepupil]

So glad to see Bei Dao's poems here!!
I was a fan of his and of course i read his poems in Chinese.I still think it's better to read the poem in its original version although the one posted here is quite good.i would like to recommend some more of his,such as "the Answer""the Echo""February" etc....

Some of his contemporary poets are also very great.

Gu Cheng wrote poems with child's innocence and imagination and his life was a tragedy.He killed his wife and himself in an isle of New Zealand where he tried to set his own simple and peacefulparadise as an autarkist in 1993 .His Poems are really great.However it seems his poems are not well accepted by the authorities here either.One of his poems is "This generation"

The dark nights gave me my dark eyes;
I, however, use them to look for light.


Shu Ting is an female poet and was famous for her high sensitivity and her female consciousness in her writing.

The three poets are considered to belong to 1980s which is a special period in China .There's kinda a Renaissance in the culture field after the Culture Revolution.Now there're tons of new generation poets ,but none of them can shock the society again with their originative poetry.

[leonthepupil]

Just find some introduction to Gu Cheng:

Gu Cheng (1956-1993) was a figurehead of Obscure or “Misty” Chinese poetry, which flourished in the 1980’s. He burst onto the Beijing literary scene in 1979 with poems that were affectingly simply and melancholy, willfully naïve, even sentimental, but lurid and strange, like Blake’s. He met and befriended Bei Dao, Shu Ting, Yang Lian and others at the underground Today magazine. Gu Cheng’s later poetry is starkly disillusioned and powerful. In 1998 a film based on his life entitled The Poet was released in Hong Kong.

and here's some of his poetry:
http://www.archipelago.org/vol7-1/gucheng.htm

[roadqian]

so glad to see so many friends discussing chinese modern poets like beidao ,gucheng,
i once made a study of Chinese modern poetry and would like to be a friend of you all
as a Chinese,