错误

Zhang-Daqian-Sceneries-of-Jiangnan-HK5-7mHK28.66m1

郑愁予

我打江南走过
那等在季节里的容颜如莲花的开落
东风不来,三月的柳絮不飞
你的心如小小的寂寞的城
恰若青石的街道向晚
跫音不响,三月的窗扉紧掩
我达达的马蹄是美丽的错误
我不是归人,是个过客

2_Zheng_Chou_yuZheng Chouyu Zheng Chouyu (1933-), a well-known Chinese poet, was born in Mainland China and moved to Taiwan in 1949. His work abounds with classical Chinese poetic images, exemplified by this poem “A Mistake.” “A Mistake” belongs to “Boudoir Lament” (guisi 闺思), a popular subgenre in the long Chinese poetic tradition. “Boudoir Lament” poems were often written by male poets in the voice of a woman yearning for her absent lover/husband. Boudoir Lament poetry is often set in difficult times such as war, when lovers tended to be separated. It is said that this piece is a poetic treatment of the poet’s own childhood experience in wartime China in the 1940s, and that the archetype of the woman is the poet’s mother. It is a beautifully written poem that captures the spirit of the long poetic imagination of South Land (Jiangnan 江南), the cultural construct corresponding to the geographical region of the lower Yangzi River delta. It conjures up an image of waterland and lotus flowers, and people of talent, beauty, affluence, and cultural refinement. The feminine “South” is often contrasted to the masculine “North,” which is also a constructed place, connoting a borderland of bitterly cold winters and hardships.


Published on January 12th of 2016 in Guest Languages.



[ + bar ]


The Ceremony

Inés Marcó translated by Alex Niemi

CAST

Pope Layman Guard of the Brotherhood Brothers of the Circle

The characters meet at the entrance of a large urinal. The Pope is... Read More »


Ariel Schettini

translated by John Oliver Simon

SHADE SAILS

Not poppy, nor mandragora, nor all the drowsy syrups of the world, Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep Which thou... Read More »


Revealing the local

translated by Addie Leak

The vicissitudes of literary endogamy can be highly enigmatic; in some cases, they can be equally wonderful. Javier Calvo, the... Read More »


Interview with Roberto Jacoby

by Reinaldo Laddaga translation by Jane Brodie

Ana Longoni put it so well that I will just copy a passage from her introduction to essays... Read More »



» subscribe!

Newsletter