Library loans: Poems of the Late T’ang and Cherry-Blossoms: Japanese Haiku Series III
Although today’s
selections – Poems of the Late T’ang, edited and translated by A.C. Graham
(Penguin Books, 1965) and Cherry-Blossoms: Japanese Haiku Series III (Peter Pauper
Press, 1960) – indeed come from my collection, they haven’t yet made it to my
bookshelf. That’s how new they are to me. I picked up these titles during my first visit to Store, the tragically named but otherwise cool shoppe on James Street North. (I really wanted to include a link to Store but even after fine-tuning my search, only found links to similarly named shoppes The Hamilton Store and James Street North General Store.)
My interest in Asian
poetry doesn’t stray far from what draws me about Buddhism and
Taoism: there is a certain concreteness that feels at once compassionate and
emotionally neutral. Through a gaze that disregards the binaries of Western thought,
our triumphs and sufferings in the natural world get the same nod of
acknowledgment as drops of rain on a windshield. All things happen, all things
change.
Poems of the Late
T’ang is valuable on a few fronts: I’m as unfamiliar with the seven poets
covered in this anthology – Tu Fu, Meng Chiao, Han Yu, Lu T’ung, Li Ho, Tu Mu
and Li Shang-yin – as I am with A.C. Graham, whose essay on the challenges of
translating ancient Chinese to modern-day English is alone worth seeking out. With every revision a doorway to ambiguity and
disagreement, the art of translation forms an interesting subtext to these poems of
nature, love, politics, age, class and minutia. There are many odes to Autumn, which I welcome though also wonder: is the autumnal association with death responsible for the book's mournful tone or were these poets aware that the T'ang dynasty, generally regarded as China's golden age, was nearing its end?
The works of Han Yu
and Tu Mu so far intrigue me most. On the surface their styles have little in
common – the former dealing in solemn imagery that communicates an epic and
changing nature, the latter issuing brief, four-line stanzas that bustle with
vitality. But I’m learning that both edged away from traditional Chinese form;
Han Yu for exploring texture over concision and Tu Mu for essentially being a
hobo. As Graham mentions, these new paths were often denigrated for having too
much in common with Western poetry. Poets like Tu Fu and Li Shang-yin may enforce the
best-known characteristics of the late T’ang period but we can learn almost as much
from those willing to breach the stylistic norm.
A Withered Tree by Han
Yu
Not a twig
or a leaf on the old tree,
Wind and
frost harm it no more.
A man could
pass through the hole in its belly,
Ants crawl
searching under its peeling bark.
Its only
lodger, the toadstool which dies in a morning,
The birds no
longer visit in the twilight.
But its wood
can still spark tinder.
It does not
care yet to be only the void at its heart.
An astute
footnote includes the following: “The ‘void
at its heart’ is both the hollow inside of the tree and the Buddhist ideal of
the mind freed from the illusion of a material body.”
Recalling
former Travels No. 3 by Tu Mu
Li Po put it
in a poem, this West-of-the-Waters Abbey,
Old trees
and crooked cliffs, wind in the upper rooms.
Between
drunk and sober I drifted three days
While
blossoms white and crimson opened in the misty rain.
Poems of the Late
T’ang gains our trust because Graham understands various schools of thought on
translation (going so far as to compare the results of fellow Chinese-to-English
translators Arthur Waley, Amy Lowell, H. A. Giles and others) but he’s also
keen to showcase a select group of poets that are virtually unknown outside of
China. When a comparison involving the much-translated Po Chui-i is immediately
closed as such, it isn’t because Po Chui-i didn’t influence this period but
because, as Graham states, "he is already the Chinese poet best known and best
loved in the West”.
Let’s move further
East in our glance and open Cherry-Blossoms: Japanese Haiku Series III.
Titled as such because cherry-blossoms live only three days, therefore
symbolizing the desire of haiku to provide our transient time on earth with
sharp insights, the small hard-cover collection groups the work of Basho, Shiki
and others thematically by seasons. Since the winter portion closes the book, I’m
incidentally reading Cherry-Blossoms in the Japanese tradition, from
right page to left. Compounding that flip-to-any-page-and-read freedom is the
layout, which sets four haiku per page against striking black and red ink
illustrations by Jeff Hill. Though the images are recycled every so often and
not meant to correlate with nearby texts, they anchor a form that tends to
float indifferently in less caring haiku compilations.
Something I’d like to
touch on regarding both titles is the impressive condition I found them in.
First editions from the early/mid 1960s rarely appear in used bookstores with
only the slightest signs of wear, though I suspect Poems of the Late T’ang and
Cherry-Blossoms came from the same bookshelf. Only the amber discoloration
inside Poems of the Late T’ang gives away its age (so uniformly that it almost looks
intentionally textured) while even Cherry-Blossoms' dust jacket is impeccably
preserved. Great finds!
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