Letters from Cathay, No. 62

Have you ever been curious as to the content of Chinese-language newspaper and magazine articles and to the sentiments and views they express, whether towards their own societies and cultures, or towards those of the West? This ongoing series aims to provide such insights by removing the language barrier, allowing Chinese writers to speak directly to an English-speaking readership. Find content here covering politics and foreign relations, economics, history, culture, and more from the Sinosphere — and follow the hashtag?#LettersFromCathay?to be alerted to the latest pieces.

When East Asian Aesthetics Meet the English Poetic Tradition: Thatched Cottage Night Talks — Arthur Sze and His?Glass Constellation

Translated?from Chinese by Matthew S. McKay. Original article published by Sichuan Online on 5 July 2023.

By Cheng Bo

“It’s great for us to be hosting an exchange on the works of Chinese American poet Arthur Sze, in a place that’s hallowed ground for Chinese and even world poetry.” On the evening of 4 July, the Du Fu Thatched Cottage museum in the Sichuan capital of Chengdu held its “Thatched Cottage night talk — Arthur Sze and his?Glass Constellation”.* Here, Arthur Sze was joined by a dozen other poets and critics, among them?Jidi Majia, Wang Jiaxin, and Huang Shaozheng, to discuss?The Glass Constellation?and topics such as the contemporary presentation of the Eastern and Western poetic traditions. The sharing session was presided over by Liang Ping, deputy director of the?Chinese Writers Association’s Poetry Committee and vice president of the?Poetry Institute of China.

Arthur Sze is a renowned American poet of Chinese descent. Born in New York City in 1950, he graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, and is a visiting professor at the University of Washington and professor emeritus at the Institute of American Indian Arts. His collections Compass Rose?and?Sight Lines?were nominated for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and won the 2019 National Book Award for Poetry, respectively.?The Glass Constellation?is the first?Chinese translation of his poetry collections to be published, and it presents a complete and continuous picture of the poet’s writing style, drawing on representative works from various periods throughout his creative career to date. The collection was recently published by Guangxi Normal University Press.

Jidi Majia: Marrying the Anglo-American poetic tradition and the Chinese poetic spirit

According to Jidi Majia, a well-known poet and director of the Chinese Writers Association’s Poetry Committee, it was no chance event that they should be holding an exchange over Arthur Sze’s works at Du Fu’s Thatched Cottage, because “this place is a mecca for Chinese poetry,” he explained. “From a quantum mechanics point of view, I believe that what’s shared today will cut across the millennia and unite with the spirit of Du Fu’s poetry. Heidegger said that?returning to one’s homeland is a poet’s natural instinct, and I believe that, for the American-born Chinese poet Arthur Sze, coming to Sichuan — to the Thatched Cottage — is an all the more spiritual homecoming.”

In a writing career spanning half a century, said Jidi Majia, Arthur Sze’s poems have always been rhetorically quite crisp, maintaining a certain form, and worded with unusual precision and meticulousness. “All of this gives people a sense of the influence the Anglo-American poetic tradition has had on him, but at the same time, there is a very subtle East Asian spirit and understanding of classical Chinese poetry implicit within his work, particularly of the Chinese philosophical spirit.”

Wang Jiaxin: Perceiving the ‘meridians’ in Arthur Sze’s work

The poet Wang Jiaxin is editor-in-chief of the Meridian Poetry Translation Series, of which?The Glass Constellation?is a part. In his view, “meridian” signifies departure and return, and Arthur Sze’s work is as influenced by the English poetic tradition of the West as it is imbued with the classical Chinese philosophies of the East, creating a strong artistic tension. “We can perceive such meridians running through his work. The preface to?The Glass Constellation?states that ‘[he] is not only the heir to Tao Yuanming, Li He, and Li Shangyin, but also to Walt Whitman and to William Carlos Williams,’ which I think is a very fitting assessment.”

“Arthur Sze’s poetry is rooted in the American literary tradition,” Wang Jiaxin noted, “but at the same time, it’s deeply influenced by classical Chinese aesthetics. In particular, he has profound Chinese sensibilities: His love for China is his lifeblood, and he has travelled here on many occasions, incorporating into his poetry the impressions and experiences he has gained in China. Both Sichuan and giant pandas feature in his poems, to name but two examples.”

At the sharing session, the poet Shang Zhongmin observed that on reading through the Chinese translation of?The Glass Constellation, what leapt out at him the most was that he couldn’t detect any trace of translation. “We find the works of many great poets insipid when read in translation, but the Chinese versions of Arthur Sze’s poems are highly readable,” he said, adding that his work bore a strong resemblance to that of his favourite poet, Robert Frost. “They both wield a pen that is often fresh and transparent of intention, as if floating in the air.”

“Many people’s poems are thin on geographical content, geographical concepts, and geographical awareness,” said poet Tu’ao. “They constantly move from word to word, flit from thought to thought, and soar from space to space — and this affects a poem’s spatiality, its stability, its accuracy. But Arthur Sze’s geography can be found in the vast majority, if not all, of his half-century’s worth of poems.” To Tu’ao, the concreteness of the lofty peaks and flowing waters, of the flora and fauna, of the landscapes and starscapes, and even of the universe itself both dovetails with and provides the perfect counterpoint to the abstractness of Master Sze’s poetic thought.

????

Translator’s note:

*) Du Fu was a Chinese poet and politician who lived during the latter part of the Tang dynasty (705–907 CE), and is considered to be one of the greatest of China’s poets.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author or authors, and do not necessarily reflect those of the translator. All reasonable efforts are made to ensure accuracy with respect to tone, register, and lexical choice, but for the avoidance of doubt, only the original version shall be considered definitive.

Image free for use, from Free PNG ClipArt.

Calligraphy courtesy of Chine-Culture’s free online calligraphy generator.