The Chinese Kafka Part 2 E-Book

Mark Obama Ndesandjo

• Herausgeber: BookRix
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

This book is the second of a series of essays inspired by the poems of the Tang Poet Li Shangyin (813-858 AD), and includes many insghtful observations on the author's personal multicultural journey through America, Asia and Africa. The bilingual book also includes the author's beautiful Chinese calligraphy and a groundbreaking analysis on the relevance of poetry to the existential dislocations of our modern era. it is an excellent resource for students of English and Chinese, as well as those interested in exploring other cultures.   Li Shangyin is one of the most fascinating of poets and this book includes historical background on the poet as well as introductory and explanatory notes by the translator. For over 1200 years, scholars have attempted to understand, let alone translate, Li Shangyin's poems. At least four different schools of thought have developed. Firstly, his poems are reflections on political patrons and a failed career. Secondly, they are thinly veiled political satires of the Court and political factions. Thirdly, they are stories of actual affairs with Court ladies and Taoist priestesses. Finally, they are admirable vehicles of mystery and beauty. My interpretations include elements of all the above, but are also a synthesis of sentiments - the poet's (as Mark sees him) and his own, of which music is a core part. This is particularly appropriate with Li Shangyin. His poetry is a labyrinth of passionate images, almost musical in sound and sequencing. They are at once ebullient, sad, loving, hateful, spiteful, sneering, and religious - a cornucopia of musical words that sing across the ages.

Leseprobe

Mark Obama Ndesandjo

The Chinese Kafka Part 2

Reflections and Interpretations of Li Shangyin's Poems

BookRix GmbH & Co. KG80331 Munich

Praise for the Chinese Kafka

Praise For The Chinese Kafka*

“Mark Obama Ndesandjo does for the Chinese poem what Cezanne did for the apple – gives it a body and a soul, and typically he adds an affectionate and witty vision.”

“At last – a book about Chinese history that is readable and witty”

‘For delicious noshing, The Chinese Kafka books are hard to beat.”

“Witty, intelligent, scholarly…an abundance of stories and anecdotes… a joy.”

“This is more than just a book, it is an

experience.”

“ At last, an Obama book that isn’t about Obama.”

*Testimonials of popular politicians

This edition published 2020

The Chinese Kafka Part 2

Author: Mark Okoth Obama Ndesandjo

©2020 Mark Okoth Ndesandjo

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or

reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or

other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying

and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without

permission in writing from the author.

Library of Congress Registration TXu 1-856-942

www.markobamandesandjo.com

Spring Festival – by Mark O. Ndesandjo

《春节》            chūn jié 月光春酒暖，      yuè guāng chūn jiǔ nuǎn灯炬深红色。      dēng jù shèn hóng sè今夜不得眠，      jīn yè bù dé mián  春曰皆快乐。      chūn yuē jiē kuài lè

Spring Festival

The moon is bright, the spring wine sweet, warmly flows. Lanterns and candles cast a deep red glow. Tonight it’s impossible to sleep, when holiday merriment is so deep!

Authors Note

The characters and events portrayed in the stories in this book are fictitious, and any actual persons and events are included solely for realism and are entirely unrelated to the fictional characters and events.

About Mark Obama Ndesandjo

About Mark Obama Ndesandjo

Mark Obama Ndesandjo is an American pianist, composer, writer, artist and businessman. He grew up in Nairobi and received his musical training from Bernard Smith of the University of Nairobi, Margaretta Davies (the first pupil of Wilhelm Kempff), Arlene Cole and Judith Stillman of Brown University, and George Barth of Stanford University. He was awarded the highest prizes for 3 years straight at the Kenya Music Festival. A long time Shenzhen resident, he has a BSc in physics from Brown University, an MSc in physics from Stanford University, and an EMBA from Emory University. He is an HSK L7 Mandarin speaker and an avid Chinese brush calligrapher. His 2009 novel, Nairobi to Shenzhen, was critically acclaimed and a global sensation. His 2015 memoir An Obama’s Journey (Lyons Press) has also been released in China (People’s Literature Publishing House). His published works also include translations into English of the complete poems of Tang Dynasty poet Li Shangyin, as well as four music CDs of his piano performances and compositions, including Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations and the Schubert Wanderer Fantasy. In 2016 he was appointed a professor at Beijing Normal University.

Mark is proud of his philanthropic work. In 2013 he established a foundation (www.markobamandesandjo.com) to bring art to children. Notable past activities include raising 300,000 USD with the Sheen Hok charitable group to treat amblyopia in kids, raising over 30,000 USD for UNICEF to help  children in disaster areas, with Sheraton Hotels, raising over 130,000 USD for orphans in Shenzhen and medical care for kids with terminal heart disease (with the American Chamber of Commerce). Most recently Mark helped raise funds with Chinese friends to purchase and donate 30,000 surgical masks to hospitals in Nairobi and the USA.

In 2019, Mark began a partnership with the Mozarteum Foundation, based in Salzburg. In collaboration with Mozarteum University, violins were donated to needy schools in Kibera, Kenya, including one violin from the Music School of Liechtenstein. Mark’s many honors include an Honorary Image Ambassadorship by China for his work bringing art to orphans. He is an Image Ambassador for the Special Olympics and Image Ambassador for the United Nations Committee on Combating Desertification.

Mark Obama Ndesandjo - An American in Li Shangyin's Kingdom of Poetry

Preface

Mark Obama Ndesandjo - An American in Li Shangyin's Kingdom of Poetry

By Mr Qin Bingeng

We often call Mark Obama Ndesandjo just ‘Mark’. As his book The Poems Of Li Shangyin is about to be released to the world, he has asked me to write a preface, and I have gladly accepted. We have been friends for more than ten years, whether in casual day to day interactions, or in enjoying discussions of Chinese culture. I had no reason to refuse. Strictly speaking, Mark is not a professional researcher of Chinese classical literature, and his translation level is left for the professionals to comment on. However, from his passionate and emotional point of view, he possesses a unique and indisputable understanding of Yishan’s poetry. The English translation of Chinese classical poetry (as well as other classic styles) has always been a difficult task for both foreigners and Chinese. Li Shangyin's poems are particularly so.

Many years ago, some Chinese theorists said that Li Shangyin was a 1000-year early incarnation of the 19th century French symbolist poet Stéphane Mallarme. It is not easy to translate Chinese classical poetry into English, and Li Shangyin's poems pile layer upon layer of difficulties! But Mark has completed them all! I speak from the bottom of my heart when I say it is very hard to express my feelings!

Mark's paternal grandparents were Kenyans, and his father, Barack Obama Senior, went to college in the United States. Barack Obama Senior, intelligent and charming, married a white woman, Stanley Ann Dunham, while studying at the University of Hawaii, who gave birth to Barack Obama - the 44th president of the United States. Two years later, Harvard student Obama divorced Dunham and fell in love with a white woman, Ruth Baker. He returned home in 1964, married Ruth, who gave birth to Mark the following year, and later to Mark’s brother, David. In 1972, Ruth divorced Barack Obama Senior, and remarried. Simeon Ndesandjo, who was a presenter for the Voice of Kenya, created a loving family for Ruth's mother and sons, bought Mark a piano, and encouraged him to learn under the guidance of his mother. Later, with the further guidance of his grandmother, he would become an accomplished pianist. After graduating from high school, Mark went to Brown University to study, where he received a bachelor's degree in Physics and Mathematics. He then graduated from Stanford University with a Master's degree in Physics, and later received a Master's degree in Business Administration from Emory University. Mark inherited his father's high IQ and graduated with distinction at all three universities.

After graduating from college, Mark worked at well-known American companies such as AT&T and Lucent. After 911, Mark lost his job as the economy crashed. Yet, it was also an important turning point in his life - to look east. He came to China in 2001. Attracted by the exuberance of a once closed socialist country, Mark’s new life began to take root. He taught English at a school, and later started his own business consulting firm.

Later that year, he met a beautiful, kind, pure and lovely girl from Henan Province, Xuehua. After 7 years of courtship, they married in 2008. They are attached to each other and manage their own business together. They live a sweet, quiet and happy life in Shenzhen.

Mark has a great gift for languages. After several years of hard study, he was able to communicate with people in fluent Mandarin and quickly passed the HSK 7 exam. He is fascinated by Chinese culture, and intensively studies and understands such works as Chu Yuan’s 100 Heavenly Questions, Sun Wu’s The Art of War, The 36 Strategies etc – works which even most Chinese do not themselves understand.

I met Mark in 2009. At that time, I helped organize a young people’s charity piano concert with Chen Sa, a young pianist. His wonderful performance brought the house down. He was already a pianist who had published several CDs.

He told me that he was studying Chinese calligraphy, and as an early member of the Chinese Calligraphers Association, I said I could give him guidance if needed. One day, Mark held a dinner party and invited my wife and I to his home. He took out all his calligraphy exercises and asked me for advice. I immediately saw he had a good foundation. I gave him some direction on the positioning of the characters, his manner of rendered strokes and dots, and the overall presentation. I urged him to continue his studies.

In return, a few months later, my wife and I invited him to our home. He brought his calligraphy of the 36 Strategies of War. What a surprise! The level had improved considerably. I said that with his talent, if he adhered to three to five years of hard training, he would be successful.

In May 2011, Mark's semi-autobiographical Chinese novel From Nairobi to Shenzhen was published by People's Literature Publishing House. He and Xuehua sent the new book to my house. The title page of the book said It is so hard to be with you, so hard to leave you. I felt that he was a very sensitive and righteous person, and I thought that he probably liked Li Shangyin's poetry, so we discussed a lot about Li Shangyin's poems. To illustrate cursive calligraphy, I showed him my version of Li Shangyin's An Epistle From The North On a Wet Night. He examined it over and over again, and as we discussed it together, I asked him to write the poem, which he did, off the top of his head. I posted it on the wall. His work was beautiful and elegant, full of rhythm, and the strokes were easy and fluid. I took a photo and posted it to my WeChat circle of friends, and got a lot of likes. I couldn’t believe it was from a foreigner. The next day, Mark took part in a public service event. He again created the work on the spot. He was praised by the audience and the event was broadcasted by Shenzhen TV News that evening.

Mark’s cursive calligraphy recalls Wang Xizhi, and his free script evokes Huang Tingjian. These days, his calligraphy style has already matured. He invited me twice to accompany him to Xinhua English video interviews where he grasped the inkbrush with deep and sophisticated strokes, full of self-confidence, and spread the message of the beauty of Chinese calligraphy to the world.

After 2013, Mark was completely fascinated with Li Shangyin's poetry. I selected and sent him Zheng Zaiying's Complete Collection of Li Shangyin's Poems. Later, Xuehua told me that Mark loved the book. He always carried it with him. He carried it everywhere, and whenever he had a moment he would flip it open, examine, annotate and, later, translate the poems - until he rubbed the 544 pages of the book to pieces. By then, the famous poems were already deep in his heart, and well known quotes would come in handy. Mark had become an American living in Li Shangyin's poetry kingdom.

Figure 1: Mr Qin Bingeng displaying the author's improvisation on a Shangyin poem. in Shenzhen 2011.

Li Shangyin was an outstanding poet in the late Tang Dynasty. At the age of ten, he lost his father, and his family’s fortunes declined. His life was difficult, and he was helped by his teacher Ling Huchu to enter and pass the Imperial examinations. Later, he married Wang Maoyuan's daughter. However, his teacher and his father-in-law belonged to two opposing political parties, which threw him into the turbulent strife of a party struggle, in which his talent was ignored by both. His life was poor, sorrowful and sad. Often displaced and without means, he died at the age of 47. Due to the dangerous circumstances of his life, many of his poems are obscure, metaphorical and mystical.

The great sage Liang Qichao used to say: “Whatever one says about Yishan's poems such as The Ornamented Zither, Jade City, The Shrine to the Goddess etc, one can take them apart sentence by sentence and still try to explain. I don’t even understand the meaning of the text. But I think it's beautiful, and it gives my soul fresh happiness. It is important to realize that beauty is multifaceted, and beauty is mysterious.” That's very discerning. On the basis of his poetic achievements in the prosperous Tang Dynasty, Li Shangyin formed a unique artistic style rich in symbolism and metaphor. His artistic achievements in poetry reached the apex of Tang poetry, and many of his works have become classics.

Mark was deeply attracted by the beauty of Li Shangyin's poetry, and he spent a lot of energy translating the poems into English. He hopes that more people in the English-speaking world will enjoy Li Shangyin's poems. In the book, Mark also distributes 28 calligraphy works inspired by them, showing his achievements on the one hand, and increasing readers' interest in reading on the other. For example, in World’s End, the layout of his calligraphy looks like a painting, but look close to see how the sizes of the words and the stroke thickness change in vivid and interesting ways. Even as the brush strokes are difficult to resolve, the first and last strokes look at each other, the line, pulse, breath, and momentum integrate smoothly, and blood and flesh are gently mingled. Look again at the Untitled poem: The light above the rafters sparkles like jade, the water flower emerges. Cai Yong's daughter said of her father's calligraphy, "There are two ways of writing. One is the sharp peck, one is the hesitant gallop. To combine both, that’s the beauty of it.” Mark's work has a good grasp of the relationship between this sharp peck and hesitant gallop. I agree with Mr. Dong Jinhan, a famous musician, who said, "Music is a flowing art, and calligraphy is solidified music." As a musician, Mark holds the brush with his harpist's hands and creates frozen music with a toneless rhythm. Mark is a Western scholar, writer, pianist and calligrapher. He immersed himself in Chinese calligraphy with the thought of blending Chinese and Western. He studied the ancients of China, but did not rigidly adhere to the ancients. In his charming brushwork one sees the shadows of Wang Xizhi and Huang Tingjian. But each work has its distinct and unique personality, reflecting a fusion of Chinese and Western learning, seamlessly displaying a modest and content artistic style.

Mark straddles different countries, different races, different religions, different cultural backgrounds, and through thousands of years of history, loves Chinese classical literature. He has lingered over Li Shangyin's poetry – revealing the infinite charm of Chinese culture. Mark has said he "has a great dream - I can't find a better place to reflect than here." At a time when the United Nations has just declared Chinese a common language in the world, the official publication of this book will play a very important role in promoting Chinese culture. I would like to thank Mark for his hard work.

Qin Bingeng at his home in Shenzhen, China, July 16, 2020 (the author is a Chinese calligrapher and former dean of Shenzhen Youth College)

Qin Binggeng, celebrated philosopher and calligrapher, was born in Guangxi, China, and is of the Zhuang nationality. In early 1981, he participated in the establishment of the third National Calligraphy Association of Colleges and Universities, joined the Guangxi Branch of the Chinese Calligraphy Association in 1982 and joined the Chinese Calligraphy Association in 1994. In 2014, Tianjin people's Art Publishing House, published his collection of works of Chinese calligraphy and painting. His works have been accepted by collectors at home and abroad, and have been disseminated widely. Some commentators said: "Through Qin Binggeng’s calligraphy, there is not only ancient poetry, but also Wechat excerpts. It lets people not only feel the passion of the ancient ways, but also peeks into today's fashions. Looking at the long sky, strokes seem to flow in time, from ancient times to the present.” His slogans were used for the 26th World University Games (Starting Here, Different And Wonderful), the plaque of the Universiade Center, the main venue of the Universiade, and the Shenzhen volunteer logo Shenzhen Volunteer. He added beautiful scenery to the World University Games held in Shenzhen, in which Chinese and foreign college athletes participated. His ancient Zhuang essay, Peace, was on display at United Nations headquarters and was appreciated by friends from all over the world. He visited the United States with the Colorful China exhibition group and successively performed live calligraphy performances in Washington, D.C., Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and so on, so that the American people could directly feel the magic and charm of Chinese calligraphy. Qin Binggeng has served as secretary of the League Committee of Guangxi University for Nationalities, president of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous region League School, dean of Shenzhen Youth College, and deputy inspector of the Shenzhen Municipal Committee of the Communist Youth League. He was elected eighth member of the all-China Youth Federation, chairman of the supervisory board of the International Yan Huang Culture Research Association, third and fourth members of the Shenzhen Municipal Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, and president of the Shenzhen Municipal Association for the Promotion of National Unity and Development. He won the honorary title of National Unity and Progress Model individual awarded by the State Council, and his biography was included in the Special Administrative Region Character Records published by Guangdong people's Publishing House in 2012.

(Abridged translation: Mark Obama Ndesandjo)

Author’s Foreword

Author’s Foreword

Many times when I write the risk is not that whatever I express will be inconsequential, but that it will lack any sort of integrity. The integrity of a lasting piece of literature does not lie in the subject of the work. More often it is validated by the passion behind the words. If this can be expressed well, all the other elements follow. An object, such as the sole photograph of the composer Frederic Chopin, is not per se a great subject. But when I relate it to the core of my life, or yours, it can become an experience that teaches and entertains.

The first of my two Chinese Kafka books compiled snapshots of life inspired by Li Shangyin. The second extends into stories and meditations across time and space, and draws heavily on my Chinese calligraphy.

This is a book only for a chosen few: those who love even the most unpractical of ideas, and who are prepared to read as little as a page a day, knowing that the best books grow with age, will be rewarded. My books touch what many do not want to touch, see what many do not want to see, and thus demand uncompromising honesty from the reader and the author. They aspire to a rarefied place. They are for those who realize that the best moments are the shortest moments, that we dreamers are ultimately isolated and unknowable. This is a book profoundly rooted in my own life, a sequel of sorts to the memoir An Obama’s Journey: My Odyssey of Self-discovery Across Three Cultures. Therefore, like the contradiction I am, per my memoir, this book has conflicts and negations to confound the logically minded, and is most enjoyed by those whose dreams, imagination and passions transcend the knotty problems of the mind. Ecce homo!

Mark Obama Ndesandjo

Shenzhen, 2020

The Year of the Rat

A Little History

A Little Personal History

The end of the world has many flavors, beyond vanilla, chocolate and strawberry. Years ago, in 1988, after I escaped from Brown University, I crossed the jumbled terrain of California on my way to Stanford to begin a doctorate program in physics. Driving through Death Valley in my beloved jalopy of a Ford Escort, I discovered an Opera House. There, every weekend, according to legend, a classical ballet dancer, performed. As is usual with tourist attractions, only those who lived far away were interested in this remote place, but the performances struggled and endured. Who could guess that, drawn by stories of this mysterious woman, I would arrive there one dry, dusty and windy day?

The Amargosa Hotel and Opera House was a crusty, orphaned barnacle latched onto the edge of nothingness, 15 miles from the Nevada border, where even tumbleweeds lose their way, and the sea is an abstraction. Above a few bleached single story structures, a wind vane turned aimlessly in the wind, as though constantly resetting its memory. The evening arrived, and motes of ashen earth hovered in the sunset, or clung to one’s clothes like swarms of miniscule lovers. As the sun died that night, a rosy blanket draped the rocky, maroon landscape.

Inside, countless frozen phantoms lurched from each wall of the Opera House. Marta Becket, the ballet dancer, had painted frescoes of these dark, grim, happy faces: of nobles and gentry, Pagliacci, Carmen, Don Elvira, muses, cherubs,and the occasional tourist from Narragansett, Rhode Island. The wide open eyes and mouths of the colored adobe railed silently against the consequences of short lives and poor memories. It was an atmosphere designed to evoke a deep, insatiable hunger for art, the infinite, and the sadly immortal.

“She dances even when there are no visitors,” an admirer told me, lazily scratching his stubble chin. I imagined Marta dancing her dreamy solos, ignoring the camera-touting families with unruly children. Her shoes would scuff and cough over the faded wooden boards. Here, the world’s end was not a harsh vacuous cloud, but a habitude sustained in peaceful solitude.

This story reminds me of the poet Li Shangyin. His work evokes a very American rhythm, of solitude, harshness, and individualism. I find in him the white rocks of the desert, the strength and purpose of the artist, Death Valley’s haunted canyons and painted faces. His poems and stories are also about threadbare yet gloriously perennial dreams. They are stories that draw from and are yet at odds with the wilderness whose craggy edges and brusque indifference dare to sweep aside all vestiges of our immortality.

Poems by the Tang Dynasty poet Li Shangyin (李商隐1), lie at the core of this book. Taking inspiration from classical music and his poems, I have written these stories and meditative essays.

The past tends to unexpectedly intrude upon the present.

The Song Dynasty poet Chen Yuyi declared:

此身虽在堪惊 cǐ shēn suī zài kān jīng

What a wonder it is that my body remains and, though unsettled, endures.

So it was that on a recent trip back to Kenya, East Africa, to visit relatives, I came upon a serendipitous find. I discovered, hidden within rows of books in our home, a musty sheaf of printed pages about an inch thick. Ideas for a New Book was the title. Flipping through the pages revealed a series of essays from my American college years. These included meditations on a daguerreotype of Chopin, The Toreador of Eduard Manet, Caspar David Friedrich’s landscape Das Eismeer, Sviatoslav Richter’s performance of the Rachmaninoff Second Piano Concerto and various other subjects of western classical culture. Although I shrugged and flinched at some of the overly ornate and baroque sentence constructions, I felt a broad and passionate energy flow through these long forgotten words and phrases.  Several essays focused on well-known pictures and images. Little did I know that one day they too would be inextricably linked with China and the poet Li Shangyin.

The Six Books of the Han Dynasty (207BC-280AD) structured Chinese characters according to 6 different categories of comprehension; associative (会意), self explanatory (指事), phonetic loan (假借), mutually explanatory (转注), pictographic (象形), and pictophonetic (形声). On translating the poems of Li Shangyin I became acutely aware of his poems’ pictographic and pictophonetic elements - how meaning is inextricably linked with sounds and shapes.

In addition, Chinese poetry has a strong meditative element. As E.H. Gombrich explains

…religious art in China came to be employed less for the teaching of a particular doctrine – as Christian art was to be employed in the Middle Ages – than as an aid to the practice of meditation.2

As this divinely inspired art historian further points out, monks would sit still for days, turning the meanings of single words over and over in their minds.

Images and meditation -these characteristics lie at the core of many great Chinese poems.

I first discovered Li Shangyin’s work in a small, thick book familiar to almost every Chinese high school student, the Tang Shi San Bai Shou (300 Tang Dynasty Poems唐诗三百首). The following lines gripped me:

Night brings forth songs as cold as the moonlight. Peng Mountain is now not so far, Magic bird please find my love! Call softly where I can see you!

The brief, bittersweet taste of unrequited love and humility in the face of one’s mortality were all rolled up into simple characters in exquisitely personal terms.

Rothko has his Untitled canvases, Schubert has his Winterreise song cycle, T.S. Eliot has the Wasteland, and so forth. Just as these artists all had a subset of works that helped define their artistic identity, so did Li Shangyin: The Wu Ti (Untitled Poems), to which this poem belonged.

These twenty or so poems communicate through pictures, and are typically without verbs or adverbs, bereft of apparent motion. Their dramatic context is often indeterminate yet deeply personal, sometimes concerning the frustrations of his job, other times about love and its attendant desires, hopes, joys, frustrations, jealousy, tenderness and despair. They cover the puritanism and desire for public service of Confucianism, the hedonism, individualism and mysticism of Taoism and the ascetism and other worldliness of Buddhism.

The poems are all allusive and ambiguous. This allusiveness may have been developed, in part, as a protective mechanism for politically turbulent times, and in part, because it is at the core of Li Shangyin's sensibility. As for their ambiguity, the scholar W. Empson said that ambiguity is a verbal nuance, however slight, which gives room for alternative versions to the same piece of language. The ambiguity of Shangyin’s poems, particularly the Untitled Poems, is a core element of their beauty, and applying strict interpretations to them is as useless as trying to trap a shimmer of light or a trembling moonbeam in a steel cage. In Shangyin’s best poems there is always, whether on the boundary of one’s consciousness, or just beyond the periphery of one’s vision, a presence of something tangible and beautiful, passionate and enduring.

To the modern day reader, these poems can also be a guide to meditation, and, as they did for me, an inspiration. The Wu Ti (Untitled Poems), in the vast oeuvre of Chinese poems, possess a certain unique intensity, sensuality and humanity, combined with an almost photographic quality, that not only define Li Shangyin’s artistic identity, but in a universal way, touch the deepest parts of one’s soul.

About the Language: The Art of Translation and Chinese Calligraphy

About the Language: The Art of Translation and Chinese Calligraphy

In Fuzhou, the capital of Fujian province, there is an ancient, brick-paved street bounded by tall, white walls. Except for the scuffling sound of leather shoes on the sun bleached sidewalk, and the distant muffled cries of children, it is a quiet street. Hidden behind the non-descript facade is a house, now a museum, that once belonged to Yan Fu (严复), a respected Qing dynasty scholar known for his efforts to bring Western culture and the English language to China. On a wall inside hangs a work of calligraphy that admonishes writers to reflect the spirit and the mood of the translated work, to write above and beyond the literal meanings of words. It references three cardinal principles: Truthfulness (信), Expressiveness (达),and Grace (雅).

With that in mind, I started to express Li Shangyin’s poems in English, the results of which are included in this book. Not being a professional translator, I hesitate to use the word translations, and instead describe them as interpretations. I also use this word for another reason.

For over 1200 years scholars have attempted to understand, let alone translate Li Shangyin’s poems, and at least four different schools of thought have developed: Firstly, his poems are reflections on political patrons and a failed career; Secondly, they are thinly veiled political satires of the Court and political factions. Thirdly, they are stories of actual affairs with Court ladies and Taoist priestesses; and Finally, that they are admirable vehicles of mystery and beauty. My interpretations include elements of all the above, but are also a synthesis of sentiments, the poet’s (as I see him) and mine, of which music is a core part. This is particularly appropriate with Li Shangyin. His poetry is a labyrinth of passionate images, almost musical in sound and sequencing. They are at once ebullient, sad, loving, hateful, spiteful, sneering, and religious - a cornucopia of musical words that sing across the ages.

Above all, his poetry shares the amorphousness of music - nothing is clear or concrete. Instead, Li Shangyin expresses broad sentiments - timorousness in the face of his lover, the bittersweet regret of having failed to meet his old, dying Taoist teacher, the frustrations of ambitious, smart and beautiful women trapped in a feudal society, the sadness of a lost, promising youth. My interpretations are often musical variations on emotional themes, which, taken literally, are largely untranslatable. In translation, the moment a mood is captured, the words slip from one’s grasp. How wonderful it is that it is so! Just as great music is always beyond the ability of any performer to fully express it, so is great poetry always broader in meaning than the work of any interpreter or translator. 

Therefore, wanting to make my writing more global in interest, I asked myself how my interpretations of his poems could incorporate a Western, musical element. After writing each interpretation, I felt something could be added to the book, such as an overt link to the West, or to Western culture, particularly music.

Firstly (Ecco epistolam!3), my musty sheaf of adolescent writing rescued me! For example, the theme of unrequited love, dominant in his poems, also ran through a short story I had written about the composer Frederic Chopin and his lover George Sand many years ago. To take another example, the solitude of David Caspar Friedrich’s oil painting Das Eismeer, paralleled some of the landscape images evoked by the Wu Ti. Several, but not all, of the interpretations relate to these earlier writings.

Secondly, I decided to write stories that included Shenzhen, the newest of modern China’s cities. This city of over 10 million immigrants has been my home for many years, and is China’s youngest, and perhaps most economically progressive, city.

Blending my imagistic thoughts of yesteryear with the interpretations of the present, passionately and with the benefit of a personal window into this amazing culture, I developed this book. My interpretations and stories are intended to give people around the world, whether a farmer in Italy, or a cab driver in the Bronx, or a student in a Nairobi high school, a sense of the beauty of Chinese poetry and modern China. I hope it will also appeal to young people in China and the world who are unaware of Chinese classical poetry, and want to improve their English language skills.

Chinese calligraphy or shufa (书法) is a unique and rich art form more than three thousand years old, and has evolved and influenced Asian art in innumerable ways. The tools are simple: rice paper, a soft lamb hair brush and black ink. Although Chinese has more than 40,000 characters, it only uses seven basic strokes. Because of the malleability of the hair brush and the innumerable permutations of each character, it is quite difficult to master. If the stroke is too fast, the result is an ugly white gap. If too slow, the ink bleeds over the paper. Ideal calligraphy, therefore, is almost like dancing in its blending of speed, direction and pressure. I have included in this book Chinese ink calligraphy I wrote to celebrate Shangyin’s poems, mostly of the Untitled Poems. My hope is that some readers will be interested enough to explore shufa which, I believe, like all great art, belongs to the world.

In parts of this book Chinese words are written using the pinyin system of pronunciation. Mandarin Chinese pronunciation uses 4 tones in pronouncing syllables. Depending upon the tones the same syllable will have different meanings.

First tone (e.g. ā). This is a flat, level high-pitched tone Second tone (e.g. á) This is an ascending pitch Third tone (e.g. ǎ) This is a deep, centered pitch Fourth tone (e.g. à) This is a sharp pitch, like a quick accent

For example, the original Chinese from a poem by the great Tang Dynasty poet Li Bai may be written (using simplified characters):

床前明月光, 疑是地上霜

(Before the well4 moonlight so bright/ I imagine it is frost on the ground.

In the Pin Yin system these lines are written using English characters for ease of pronunciation, as follows:

chuáng qián míng yuè guāng, yí shì dì shàng shuāng