Over the mountain
It’s so quiet.
In all treetops you hardly
Feel a breeze.
The birds are silent in the wood.
Just wait, soon
You will be silent too.
I was impressed by the poet’s longing for a peaceful ending. Mr. Yang’s voice, full of pathos and choking with emotion, conveyed the inmost feelings of a tormented man. After he finished reciting it, the room seemed to be ringing, as if a voice were still descending from the ceiling. But the poetic mood was dispelled by his casual remark. “That’s beautiful, isn’t it?” He squinted at me, smirking.
“Y-yes,” I faltered, wondering what kind of poetry this was. It sounded foreign, definitely not a Tang poem.
“Do you know who the author is?” he asked me.
“No, I don’t.”
“Goethe, Johann Goethe, the great Tang poet. Do you know who translated it into Chinese?” Again he got mixed up — if it was a translation from the German, how could it be a Tang poem?
“I’ve no clue,” I said.
“Me, I did it myself. It took me a whole week.” His eyes brightened while his brows tilted mischievously. “Do you know who speaks in this poem?”
“Goethe, the poet, of course.”
“No, it’s not Goethe who speaks. The speaker can be anyone.” He lifted his face and began lecturing in his normal way. “Comrades, when we analyze a Western poem, we should bear in mind that the speaker and the poet are rarely identical. The fundamental difference between Chinese poetry and Western poetry lies in the use of the persona. In the Chinese poetic tradition the poet and the poetic speaker are not separate except in some minor genres, such as laments from the boudoir and folk ballads. Ancient Chinese poets mostly speak as themselves in their poems; the sincerity and the trustworthiness of the poetic voice are the essential virtues of their poetry. Chinese poets do not need a persona to alienate themselves from their poetic articulation. By contrast, in Western literature poets often adopt a persona to make their poetry less autobiographical. They believe in artifice more than in sincerity. Therefore, when we read a Western poem, we must not assume that the poet speaks. In general the speaker is fictional, not autobiographical.”
I liked his comments, which seemed to make sense. At least they brought him back to his former self, an eloquent professor. Yet I wasn’t sure if his observation was accurate. Before I could consider it further, he continued: “How did such opposite attitudes toward the use of the persona come into existence? In his paper published in Poetic Inquiry three years ago, Professor Beiming Liang argues that this difference should be attributed to the fact that the Western poetic tradition originally had a parallel dramatic tradition, whereas Chinese drama reached its maturity much later than Chinese poetry— in other words, the poetry doesn’t have such a parallel relationship with Chinese drama. Since the persona is essentially a dramatic device, the predilection for it in Western poetry must have originated from the primal connection between the poetic and the dramatic traditions. I agree with Professor Liang in principle. However, I believe we can go further than his theory. To my mind, the difference between the two poetic traditions’ relationships with their respective dramatic traditions may not be the fundamental cause of the opposite attitudes toward the use of the persona. The cause should be explored deeper in the different social orders and cultural structures of the two civilizations.
“The essence of Western culture is the self, whereas the essence of the Chinese culture is the community. But poetry in both cultures has a similar function, that is, to express and preserve the self, though it attains this goal through different ways. In Chinese culture, poetry liberates and sustains the self despite the fact that the self is constantly under the overwhelming pressure of the community. Thus Chinese poets tend to speak as themselves, too earnest to worry about having a characterized voice to conceal their own — they desperately need the genuine self-expression in poetic articulation. In other words, the self is liberated in poetic speech, which is essentially cathartic to the Chinese poet. On the contrary, in Western culture poetry tends to shield and enrich the self, which on the one hand is threatened by other human beings and on the other hand has to communicate with others. Therefore, the persona becomes indispensable if Western poets intend to communicate and commiserate with others without exposing themselves vulnerably. In this sense, the persona as a poetic device functions to multiply the self.”
He fell into silence, as if purposely leaving some time for his words to sink in and for his students to take notes. I was impressed by his thesis, which I felt might be original. But his view was too sweeping and still crude: it would have to be substantiated and thoroughly examined before it could be shared with others. Besides, there were holes in his argument. He ought to have taken into account the Romantics in the West, such as Byron and Keats, who seldom use a persona in their lyric poems. Even Dante often speaks as himself in The Divine Comedy. Furthermore, the notion that the concern for the self differentiated Western culture from Chinese culture sounded arbitrary and rather simplistic. For instance, Christianity — the core of Western civilization — cares about God more than about the individual. Perhaps Mr. Yang should focus on the poetry written in one Western language instead of the whole body of Western poetry, which was too colossal for him to tackle.
“Do you know I write poetry too? I have always been a poet at the bottom of my soul.” He didn’t mention my name, but his intimate tone of voice indicated he was talking to me.
“No. You never told me that,” I said.
“You want to listen to one of my poems?”
Before I could answer, he closed the book and began chanting solemnly:
In late August the autumn wind howls
Peeling my roof of three-layered straw.
The straw flies across the brook,
Hanging on the top of the woods
And tumbling into gullies and ponds.
The children from South Village
Bully me for my old age,
Daring to be thieves before my eyes:
They take away my straw and vanish
Into the bamboo grove.
Lips cracked and tongue dried
I can no longer cry. And coming back,
I keep sighing over my cane.
He paused and raised his head, his eyes flashing. “What do you think of that?” he asked me proudly. “A powerful beginning, isn’t it?”
“Yes.” I forced myself to agree. Anyone could tell that those lines were the beginning of Tu Fu’s “Song of My Straw Hut Shattered by the Autumn Wind.” How could Mr. Yang believe he had written the poem himself? Yet the earnest look on his face showed that he didn’t doubt his authorship at all. I remained quiet. Whoever he fancied himself to be was fine with me, as long as he didn’t throw a fit.
“See how simple these lines are. It’s the simplicity that stirs the soul. Comrades, bear in mind that the traditional poetic theory believes there’s an inverse relationship between ideas and emotions. If an idea in a poem is too complicated and too arcane, the poem begins to lose its emotional power. Conversely, if the poem is too emotional, its intelligence will diminish. A good poet intuitively knows how to strike a balance between thoughts and emotions. When I read this poem for the first time, I wondered to myself, ‘My goodness, how could he write these lines? They are as sturdy and supple as green branches.’ ”