Over at the Transparent China Translator, my friend Bruce Humes has listed a few of the English-language events at the Taipei International Book Exhibition 2012. Click here for the daily schedule in Chinese. Looks like a lot of interesting events!
Jia Zhangke’s Platform Re-post
Here’s a re-post from the early days of the Notes on the Mosquito blog:
In addition to being a poet and essayist, Xi Chuan has also worked as a film actor. In Platform 站台 (2000), directed by Jia Zhangke 贾樟柯 about personal and artistic changes in Shanxi 山西 province from the ’70s to the ’90s, he plays a theater director from Beijing modeled in part off the poet Mang Ke 芒克 (co-founder of the journal Jintian 今天, and whose poetry I should be translating soon). Here’s the English-language trailer:
I’m still looking for an excerpt of one of Xi Chuan’s scenes with English subtitles, but the entire movie is available on youku.com. Xi Chuan appears at about 3:38, in disbelief that his troupe has never seen a train in person and berating them for unrealistic acting and individualism; at 32:31, interrogating a misbehaving actor about the goals of socialism under “reform and opening up” 改革开放; and again at 37:13, where his speech indicating the troupe’s future direction is, tellingly, interrupted by a solo flamenco performance.
Croation Radio Correction
In yesterday’s post I mistakenly wrote that Miroslav Kirin read his translations of Xi Chuan (via my English) on Croatian radio. In fact, his translations were read by the actors Zlatko Ožbolt (pictured above) and Tomislav Rališ. They always read the poems on Croatian Radio 3’s Poezija naglas (Poetry Aloud), hosted by poet Irena Matijašević (picture below).
Miroslav Kirin’s Xi Chuan translations on Croatian Radio 3
Last week Miroslav Kirin read his Croatian translations of Xi Chuan–done from my English versions–on Croatian Radio 3. Click here to listen to the show. (I don’t know Croatian, but I can make out a few names and terms–my name, Xi Chuan, New Directions, Du Fu 杜甫, Wang Wei 王維, and oxymoron!)
Jade Ladder: Contemporary Chinese Poetry
Last October I posted about Jade Ladder, a new anthology of contemporary Chinese poetry forthcoming in the UK, edited by Yang Lian 杨炼 and William Herbert (with Brian Holton and Qin Xiaoyu 秦晓宇 as associate editors). Recently I’ve been corresponding with Bloodaxe Press about permissions, and while I haven’t seen the final table of contents, I can say that my translations of Xi Chuan’s “Exercises in Thought” 思想练习 and “Commandments” 戒律 are slated to be included. Nice choices!
Encyclopedia of Contemporary Chinese Culture on Xi Chuan
A couple months ago I linked to the Xi Chuan Wikipedia page in German, and mentioned that no one had written a Wikipedia entry for him in English. I also linked to the Encyclopedia of Contemporary Chinese Culture entry on him, written by poet / translator / scholar Huang Yibing 黃亦兵 (a/k/a Mai Mang 麦芒), but I’ll take the opportunity now to quote it: mentioning the difference between Xi Chuan’s styles before and after 1989, Huang writes that since the ’90s he has
experiment[ed] with various hybrid forms of prose and poetry to convey what he now calls a ‘pseudo-philosophy’ (wei zhexue), inquiring into the absurdities and previously overlooked dark shadows of history, human consciousness and reason.
This is right, but the passage also stands as a testament to how quickly things change in the life of a living poet. Huang’s entry was only written a few years ago, but since I’ve known Xi Chuan (we first met in the spring of 2006), I can’t think of a single time he’s mentioned the phrase “pseudo-philosophy” 为哲学. At the public discussion at the MLA (see Rachel Blau DuPlessis‘s great write-up here) he mentioned that he was no longer interested in writing normatively “good” poems, and I’ve often heard him speak about the oxymoron and its potential and importance for Chinese poetry today (see versions of this discussion in English here and here), but “pseudo-philosophy” is a trope I think he’s left behind. Actually, looking at his most recent work, I get the sense that he’s more interested in producing texts with real, not pseudo-, philosophical value. I hope you see what I mean when Notes on the Mosquito is published in April.
Blurbs
Just heard from my editor at New Directions that some of the blurbs for the back of Notes on the Mosquito have been coming in. I haven’t seen them yet, or even know for sure whose blurbs they are, but it’s another exciting step toward the publication of the book.
Proofs
The second round of proofs for Notes on the Mosquito just came in from New Directions:
It’s getting close!
Forrest Gander Finalist for National Book Critics Circle Award
American poet, translator, and novelist Forrest Gander has been nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award for his book Core Samples from the World, a book of poems covering his travels around the globe. One of the poems, the fourth “Map of the World,” is dedicated to Xi Chuan, and another, the haibun “The Pamirs Poetry Journal,” makes mention of him:As Chinese poets, we don’t want to go backward, Xi Chuan observes, but ahead of us the way forks in innumerable directions. Forgetting which language he has just heard, but remembering the substance, the exhausted translator begins to translate the original language into the original language. I find I’m inept at reading the forms of discussion here, much less the subtleties. What I take as evident bounces away from me. I begin to notice tensions, faces shaking no, one translator interrupting another. The topic, Where is Chinese poetry going in the age of globalization, is enormous and of course the answer will be found in poems, not panels, so I try not just to listen, but to listen into.
What else is being
Asked, what’s
At stake for them?
The Year of the Dragon
In honor of Chinese New Year and the newly arrived Year of the Dragon, here’s an excerpt from Xi Chuan’s poem “Dragon” 龙:
没见过五爪龙。也没见过四爪龙、三爪龙。神龙当然见首不见尾。
“潜龙勿用”的说法有人牢记在心。第二天醒来他发现已是天翻地覆 。
Never seen a five-clawed dragon. Never seen a four-clawed dragon, or a three-clawed dragon. Of course, the dragon shows his face but not his tail.
Some know the expression “The dragon hides—act not” by heart. Waking the next day you find your whole world turned upside-down.
Happy new year!