China and the West

Zheng, Zhenduo. Ji nian Yiao Bona dan shen yi bai zhou nian. In : Guang ming ri bao (27 July 1956). [In commemoration of Shaw's one hundredth anniversary of birth].
"His first play Widowers' houses takes as its subject matter the sharp class struggle during the 1880s in England. Though no working class people appear in the play, their miserable living conditions as well as the capitalist's ruthless exploitation of the workers' few pennies of hard-earned money are presented in the figure of the rent collector. In 1894 he wrote Mrs. Warren's profession, a social problem play, which exposes the basest and dirtiest deed of the capitalist class. It tears off the decent mask of 'civilization' and exposes the rotten, stinking inner reality of the capitalist society".

Gu, Shouchang. Wei da de xi ju jia Xiao Bona : ji nian Xiao Bona dan shen yi bai zhou nian. In : Zuo pin ; vol. 18 (Sept. 1956). [Great dramatist Bernard Shaw].
Wendi Chen : Gu analysis of Mrs. Warren's profession pointed out that Shaw made a serious mistake in depicting Mrs. Warren as both a working-class woman and a capitalist, thus confusing the antagonistic relationship between workers and capitalists, and denying the legitimacy of class struggle. Vivie's relationship with her mother was also viewed by Gu in terms of class. Her ambivalent attitude toward her mother was understood in terms of Mrs. Warren's dual class identity – the exploited and the exploiter. According to Gu, Vivie sympathizes with the mother, who comes from a poor family background but hates the mother who is an exploiter of other women. Unable to resolve the conflict, she withdraws helplessly into her own world, pitting herself against society. Like other Maoist critics, Gu found the ending of the play unsatisfactory because it did not offer a solution.

Aufführung von Arms and the man von George Bernard Shaw unter der Regie von Wang Zuoling mit Wang Denni als Raina und Shi Hui als Bluntschli in Shanghai. Aufführung in westlichen Kleidern und Verhalten.

Chen, Heqin. Pi pan Duwei fan dong jiao yu xue de zhe xue ji chu [ID D28575].
"The child-centered curriculum in living education has destroyed scientific knowledge's nature of system, design, and organization, debased the leading role of the teacher, obstructed the child's potentiality in world reconstruction through the mastery of scientific knowledge and consequently discouraged the will of the wild and the youth to reconstruct the fatherland and defend world peace. This is the consequence of my being hit by Dewey's second gunshot, namely, his pragmatic, reactionary theory of the child-centered curriculum – school is society, education is life. Doing in learning and teaching was not the same as 'practice' in Marxism-Leninism. 'practice' in Marxism-Leninism is social and purposeful, while 'doing' in the Deweyan method of teaching is trivial, fragmentary, and splitting scientific knowledge in an attempt to subject the youth to slavery at the service of American monopolizing capitalists."

One month before Gary Snyder left for Japan, he was impressed by a talk on 'East Asian landscape painting as a meditative exercise' given by Saburo Hasegawa, a Japanese artist.

Gary Snyder lives in Japan. He went to Japan on scholarship from the First Zen Institute of America. He went to Japan to accept the strictly disciplined Zen practice under the supervision of a Japanese Rinzai Zen roshi, first Isshu Miura-roshi at Shokokuji, and later (1959-1965) under Sesso Oda-roshi at Daitokuji.

Moore, Marianne. Selected criticism. In : Poetry London-New York ; no 1 (March-April 1956). [Review of Selected criticism – prose, poetry, by Louise Bogan (Noonday Press)].
The book rises above literariness, moreover, and fortifies courage, in practicing a principle which is surely Confucian ; implying that one need not demand fair treatment, but rather, see that one's others is fair.

Moore, Marianne. Of miracles and kings. In : The New York Times book review ; 11 November, 1956. [Review of The Borzoi Book of French Folk Tales, selected and edited by Paul Delarue, translated from the French by Austin E. Fife, illustrated by Warren Chappell (Alfred A. Knopf)].
M. Delarue finds tales of all countries, European, Asiatic, to be part of a common fabric : "There are very pretty versions in all European, Asiatic and North African countries, and an American Chinese scholar, Jameson, has recently made known to us a Chinese Cinderella of the ninth century who gets her golden slippers not from a fairy but from a marvelous fish and who loses one of them not in escaping from a ball but on coming back from a festival in a neighboring region…"

Rexroth, Kenneth. One hundred poems from the Chinese [ID D29176].
Kenneth Rexroth : "I have had the words of Tu Fu by me since adolescence and over the years have come to know these poems better than most of my own ".
"Tu Fu is, in my opinion, and in the opinion of a majority of those qualified to speak, the greatest non epic, non-dramatic poet who has survived in any language ".
"I have chosen only those poems whose appeal is simple and direct, with a minimum of allusion to past literature or contemporary politics, in other words, poems that speak to me of situations in life like my own. I have thought of my translations as, finally, expressions of myself ".

Tu, Fu = Du, Fu (Gongxian, Henan 712-770)
Banquet at the Tso Family Manor
"The windy forest is checkered
By the light of the setting,
Waning moon. I tune the lute,
Its strings are moist with dew.
The brook flows in the darkness
Below the flower path. The thatched
Roof is crowned with constellations.
As we write the candles burn short.
Our wits grow sharp as swords while
The wine goes round. When the poem
Contest is ended, someone
Sings a song of the South. And
I think of my little boat,
And long to be on my way."
Written on the Wall at Chang’s Hermitage
"It is Spring in the mountains.
I come alone seeking you.
The sound of chopping wood echoes
Between the silent peaks.
The streams are still icy.
There is snow on the trail.
At sunset I reach your grove
In the stony mountain pass.
You want nothing, although at night
You can see the aura of gold
And silver ore all around you.
You have learned to be gentle
As the mountain deer you have tamed.
The way back forgotten, hidden
Away, I become like you,
An empty boat, floating, adrift."
Winter Dawn
"The men and beasts of the zodiac
Have marched over us once more.
Green wine bottles and red lobster shells,
Both emptied, litter the table.
"Should auld acquaintance be forgot?" Each
Sits listening to his own thoughts,
And the sound of cars starting outside.
The birds in the eaves are restless,
Because of the noise and light. Soon now
In the winter dawn I will face
My fortieth year. Borne headlong
Towards the long shadows of sunset
By the headstrong, stubborn moments,
Life whirls past like drunken wildfire."
Snow Storm
Visiting Ts'an, Abbot of Ta-Yun
Moon Festival
Jade Flower Palace
"The stream swirls. The wind moans in
The pines. Grey rats scurry over
Broken tiles. What prince, long ago,
Built this palace, standing in
Ruins beside the cliffs? There are
Green ghost fires in the black rooms.
The shattered pavements are all
Washed away. Ten thousand organ
Pipes whistle and roar. The storm
Scatters the red autumn leaves.
His dancing girls are yellow dust.
Their painted cheeks have crumbled
Away. His gold chariots
And courtiers are gone. Only
A stone horse is left of his
Glory. I sit on the grass and
Start a poem, but the pathos of
It overcomes me. The future
Slips imperceptibly away.
Who can say what the years will bring?"
Travelling Northward
Waiting for Audience on a Spring Night
To Wei Pa, a Retired Scholar
"The lives of many men are
Shorter than the years since we have
Seen each other. Aldebaran
And Antares move as we have.
And now, what night is this? We sit
Here together in the candle
Light. How much longer will our prime
Last? Our temples are already
Grey. I visit my old friends.
Half of them have become ghosts.
Fear and sorrow choke me and burn
My bowels. I never dreamed I would
Come this way, after twenty years,
A wayfarer to your parlor.
When we parted years ago,
You were unmarried. Now you have
A row of boys and girls, who smile
And ask me about my travels.
How have I reached this time and place?
Before I can come to the end
Of an endless tale, the children
Have brought out the wine. We go
Out in the night and cut young
Onions in the rainy darkness.
We eat them with hot, steaming,
Yellow millet. You say, "It is
Sad, meeting each other again."
We drink ten toasts rapidly from
The rhinoceros horn cups.
Ten cups, and still we are not drunk.
We still love each other as
We did when we were schoolboys.
Tomorrow morning mountain peaks
Will come between us, and with them
The endless, oblivious
Business of the world."
By the Winding River I
By the Winding River II
To Pi Ssu Yao
Loneliness
Clear After Rain
New Moon
Overlooking the Desert
Visitors
Country Cottage
The Willow
Sunset
Farewell to my Friend Yen
A Restless Night in Camp
South Wind
Another Spring
http://www.chinese-poems.com/rex.html.
"White birds over the grey river.
Scarlet flowers on the green hills.
I watch the Spring go by and wonder
If I shall ever return home."
I Pass the Night at General Headquarters
Far up the River
Clear Evening after Rain
Full Moon
"Isolate and full, the moon
Floats over the house by the river.
Into the night the cold water rushes away below the gate.
The bright gold spilled on the river is never still.
The brilliance of my quilt is greater than precious silk.
The circle without blemish.
The empty mountains without sound.
The moon hangs in the vacant, wide constellations.
Pine cones drop in the old garden.
The senna trees bloom.
The same clear glory extends for ten thousand miles."
Night in the House by the River
Dawn Over the Mountains
Homecoming — Late at Night
Stars and Moon on the River
Night Thoughts While Travelling
Brimming Water

Mai, Yao Ch'en = Mei, Yaochen (1002-1060)
An Excuse for Not Returning a Visit
Next Door
Melon Girl
Fish Peddler
The Crescent Moon
On the Death of a New Born Child
Sorrow
A Dream at Night
I Remember the Blue River
On the Death of His Wife
In Broad Daylight I Dream of My Dead Wife
I Remember the Paver at Wu Sung
A Friend Advises Me to Stop Drinking

Ou Yang Hsiu = Ouyang, Xiu (Luling, Jiangxi 1007-1072 Yingzhou, Anhui)
In the Evening I walk by the River
Fisherman
Spring Walk
East Wind
Green Jade Plum Trees in Spring
When the Moon is in the River of Heaven
Song of Liang Chou
Reading the Poems of an Absent Friend
An Answer to Ting Yuan Ch'en
Spring Day on West Lake
Old Age

Su, Tung P'o = Su, Dongpo = Su, Shi (Meishan, Sichuan 1037-1101 Changzhou, Jiangsu)
The Red Cliff
At Gold Hill Monastery
On the Death of His Baby Son
The Terrace in the Snow
The Weaker the Wine
The Last Day of the Year
Harvest Sacrifice
A Walk in the Country
To a Traveler
The Purple Peach Tree
The Shadow of Flowers
The End of the Year
On the Siu Cheng Road
Thoughts in Exile
Looking from the Pavilion
The Southern Room Over the River 83
Epigram
At the Washing of My Son
Moon, Flowers, Man
Begonias
Rain in the Aspens
The Turning Year
Autumn
Spring Night
Spring

Li, Ch'ing Chao = Li, Qingzhao (Licheng, Shandong 1084-1151)
Autumn Evening Beside the Lake
Two Springs
Quail Sky
Alone in the Night
Peach Blossoms Fall and Scatter
The Day of Cold Food
Mist

Lu, Yu (Boat on Wei River 1125-1209)
The Wild Flower Man
Phoenix Hairpins
Leaving the Monastery
Rain on the River
Evening in the Village
I Walk Out in the Country at Night
Idleness
Night Thoughts

Sekundärliteratur
1958
Achilles Fang : Although the names of these nine poets are given in Chinese, the book is primarily intended for readers who know no Chinese ; it does not reprint the original text, nor does it give any reference to the text Rexroth used. The notes contain biographies of the poets from which sinologists will profit little. On the whole, Rexroth is successful and even (with some modifications) accurate when a piece is short and direct. But he often takes what appear to be unwarranted liberties with the text. Rexroth apparently has an adequate knowledge of Chinese ; to be sure, he is an amateur (perhaps even an autodidact), but his omissions and commissions are not much more than one expects from a professional. Still, some of the many flaws may stem from the fact that he sought help from his Chinese friends, none of them specialists. And heightening the dangers of such recourse, occasionally failure in communication must be assumed to account for some of the errors.
1958
John L. Bishop : Mr. Rexroth is a poet who shows in his own work an unusual sympathy to the Chinese poet's technique of using the precise images of daily experience for their extended universal significance, of concentrating fixedly on the opaque fabric of life's ordinary happenings until behind it the landscape of the human spirit which it has curtained begins to be discerned. For the effectiveness of his translations and their readability as self-sufficient English poems, one can have only the highest admiration. Mr. Rexroth has made no attempt to reproduce the formal prosody of Chinese verse ; he has dispensed with rhyme, regular meter, and fixed line length and has employed parallelism between lines sparingly enough to avoid the rigid monotony which this device gives to English verse. The general effect of these English versions is one of clarity and simplicity, with even some of the conciseness of the original. The surface of factual statement is never overweighted with too great a burden of implication. Although he disarms criticism by denying any value for his work as Oriental scholarship and by frankly admitting that he considers his translations as expressions of himself. Fidelity to the spirit of the original poems requires first of all constant attention to the original text and secondly a highly critical use of existing translations. A cause of mistranslation in Mr. Rexroth's volume is a disregard for the formal structure of a Chinese poem. Granted that the Chinese poet frequently takes liberties with the rules of prosody, they are so ingrained in his versification that they can usually be assumed by the translator as a guide, in the absence of better, through the variants, ambiguities, and ellipses of a Chinese poem. The most serious kind of error found in these translations is that of disregarding the function of literary allusion in Chinese poetry. Fidelity to the spirit of the originals is well-nigh impossible in translation without an adequate knowledge of the corpus of literature known and constantly employed by the individual poet, without the services of a commentator whose annotations will supply our deficiencies. A number of Mr. Rexroth's deviations from the central intent of a poem seems to stem from attributing to the Chinese poet attitudes and ideals consistent with a Western lyric poet of the 19th or 20th century and ignoring the framework of ideas and conditioned thinking in which the Chinese poet worked.
1984
Ling Chung : Rexroth's Du Fu translations do not follow closely the source texts ; instead, the source texts by and large only serve as a departure point from which his imagination could soar freely. Literal exactness has never been Rexroth's goal ; he states his ambition thus : his translation should be 'true to the spirit of the originals, and valid English poems. Furthermore, many source texts which he consulted were not the original Chinese, but translations of Du Fu, in English, French, or German. The power and the beauty of his translation often lies in the passages which he rendered most freely and which bear little resemblance to the Chinese texts. Whenever Rexroth encountered anything which might have been unfamiliar to his readers, such as allusions to classical literature, history, and politics as well as traditional Chinese customs, manners and daily necessities, he would almost without exception find a more comprehensive substitute. In spite of the fact that Rexroth so often gives inaccurate, partial, or distorted presentation of Du Fu's poems, he is still far in advance of many other translators of Chinese verse in his comprehension of the Chinese poetic mind at work. Rexroth believes that the great artistry of Du Fu's poetry lies in his power to present 'himself immediately as a person in total communication' in a pure, simple, and direct way. He professed that among Du Fu's poems he chose those in which he could find experience identical to his own, those that would speak to him of similar situation in his own life, and eventually he came to regard his Du Fu translations as expressions of himself.
1988
Paul Kahn : The book has remained enormously popular for over three decades and many of its translations have been anthologized elsewhere. A major part of the book is devoted to translations of Du Fu. The thirty-five poems share several themes : observation of the movement of the seasons and the stars as a backdrop for and measure of human actions ; a recording of the simple pleasures of male friendship ; the tracing of a singular spirit's struggle to endure against the pressures of war, neglect, and aging. In poem after poem, the movement of constellations and figures of the zodiac are noted, the autumn leaves scatter and the spring wind begins in the mountains. The movements of the gull, the cormorants, the orioles, and the sparrows are observed along with the sounds of war. The poet places himself walking in a manured field, sitting in the grass, alone in a boat, pulling onions in a garden, strolling towards a hut by the river. Rexroth shows no interest in informing the reader about the characteristics of the Chinese language, nor about the formal qualities of Du Fu's poetry. The structure of the original poems is entirely subordinate to the structure of the verse Rexroth uses to convey their 'spirit' and sense in translation. He systematically deforms the basic unit on which Du Fu's poetry is built, the couplet. In place of the structure of the gu-shi and lü-shi he substitutes a prosody informed by a century of Anglo-American experimentation in free verse. Rexroth gets a sound and sprung rhythm from the sentences which wrap from line to line. [The article contains descriptions of the poems To Wei Pa, a retired scholar, Snow storm, Night thoughts while travelling].

Bellow, Saul. Seize the day ; with three short stories and a one-act play. (New York, N.Y. : Viking Press, 1956).
Hong Wu : The acceptance of existentialism is present in Saul Bellow's characterization of his protagonists in The Adventures of Augie March (1953), Dangling Man (1944), The Victims (1964) and Seize the Day (1956), nevertheless it will elicit objection from other commentators and even Bellow himself to simply label him as an existentialist writer by ignoring the profundity and plurality of Saul Bellow. His speculative ideas conveyed in all the novels inevitably take on the print of currently popular existentialism. Seize the Day possibly best represents his understanding of life, human nature, and individuality from the perspective of existentialism.
For a Jew, [Wilhelm] the faith in God and the belief in Judaism are of tremendous significance for his orientation in life and the sense of belonging in a society. Judaism was welded together homeless Jews all over the world, has provided courage and comfort for Jews to undergo numerous traumatic afflictions in thousands of years.
Bellow reveals a self complying with Sartre's definition and uses Sartre's idea of existence to secure a place for Wilhelm's self. He also wants to depict a man of bitterness in this story. The text itself is sodden with misery, which permeates between lines. Wilhelm's anguish goes along with his forlornness, stems from his past, and claims it self in his free choice, comforts a lost self and culminates in the futility of seeking a father.
In Seize the Day, Saul Bellow sketches an alienated person, Wilhelm, and exposes to us how a tortured soul grapples with his humiliating past itching in a youth belief in individual freedom, how a crippled son oscillates between two fathers, a real one and a substitute one, how an illusioned American Jew wrestles with money, yet at the brim of destruction simply survives when all his sobs, regrets, despair, and anguish melt in tears. Problems remain there, no matter whether soluble or insoluble, because life is like that—being bristling with problems at any time and any place. There is no easy and permanent resolution to life's problems which are intrinsically complicated and illogical, and further compounded by the absurdity and chaos of the modern world. Seize the Day fully illustrates the recurrent practice of Saul Bellow in his literary creation—he does not avoid conditions of alienation and despair; but he insists that through them the power of the imagination should reveal the greatness of man and that we are not gods, not beasts, but savages of somewhat damaged but not extinguished nobility. It is a belief of optimism in pessimism. After that doom day, Wilhelm will continue making free choices and defining himself by his series of acts. It is hinted that he will move out of New York to live in Roxbury, like Herzog's choice to live in the countryside, and will make up with Olive in the future. This kind of optimism in pessimism is true with Sartre. Being and Nothingness is devoted to explicating this point—man is not an entity, but an awareness, so he is destined to go outward, destined to make free choices of their action, thus existence is meaningful. Seize the Day metaphorically and rhetorically paraphrases what Sartre presents in esoteric philosophy about such propositions as anguish, despair, freedom, individual choice, self, and existence. Sartre says that existentialism has an optimistic toughness and it isn't trying to plunge man into despair at all, whereas it is a philosophy that makes life possible. Sartre and Saul Bellow both have defended man's dignity and found a way for people to endure and prevail in a special historical period. Their contribution for human beings' understanding of life and self has gained the recognition and the world by the Nobel Prize.

Julian Schuman und John William Powell werden wegen Aufruh vom Eisenhower Administration Department of Justice wegen Aufruhr angeklagt, die Anklage wird fallengelassen.

Film von Lu, Xun. New year's sacrifice = Zhu fu = 祝福. Director : Sang Hu, script ; Xia Yan. (Beijing : Beijing dian ying zhi pian chang, 1956).

Kerouac, Jack. Some of the dharma [ID D34296].
Sekundärliteratur :
Sarah Haynes : Kerouac was influenced both by Buddhist texts and by practicing North American Buddhists whom he encountered in his travels. With the publication of Scripture his fascination with Buddhism became known to the world. Dharma has allowed readers and scholars alike to delve into the realsm of his American Buddhism, a world constructed in a formless void of prose, poetry, drawings and one-liners.
The first of Kerouac's Buddhist texts, Some of the dharma, exemplified what came to be recognized as his unique style of writing. The spontaneous prose that became Kerouac's hallmark was simply one of the unconventional techniques he employed in the writing of Dharma. The presentation of this text was unconventional for its time, as well as an innovation for the author. The presentation was aesthetically different, the form, organization of materials and ideas from most of the works of the post-war era. A central preoccupation is the Buddhist notion of impermanence and how everything is formless. Technically and literally, this text has form and a definite structure ; however, in light of the teachings expounded by Kerouac's Buddha nature and written while engaged in daily dhyana, it indeed does not have a clear form, only existing as an arbitrary relative condition. His enthusiastic interest in Buddhism led to the writing, but in the content of the material one can also see that many other factors were influential in its completion. While the main focus of Dharma was the teachings of the Buddha, it was through this content that Kerouac revealed much about his own life. He begins Book one with basics, definitions of fundamental concepts such as nirvana, karma, dharma and kama, and a bibliography for beginning Buddhists. His main focus came to rest mostly on the notion of suffering and its causes. On the one hand he outlined a strenuous regime of 'modified ascetic life', while on the other he could not resist the temptations of friends, drugs, alcohol and women, all of which brought him tremendous suffering. Kerouac resolved to lead a monastic life ; however, this resolution, written relatively early in the text, was broken short eight days later.

[Twain, Mark]. Wang zi yu pin er. Make Tuwen zhu ; Zhang Yousong yi. [ID D29619].
Zhang writes : "Mark Twain revealed and criticized social cruelty without hesitation, but since he still had illusions about 'capitalistic democracy', he was not able to get rid of his reformist politics. At the end of the novel, the merciful and fair-minded new king is depicted as the savior for the people who are struggling. This is a weak point shared by all critical realistic authors."

Göran Malmqvist ist schwedischer Kulturattaché in Beijing.

Soren Egerod promoviert in Chinese Linguistics der Universität Kopenhagen.

Diplomatische Vereinbarung zwischen Dänemark und China. Botschaft von Dänemark in Beijing und Konsulate in Chongqing, Guangzhou, Shanghai und Hongkong.

Gründung des Institute of Asian and African Studies in Moskau.

Edoarda Masi studiert chinesische Sprache und Institutionen sowie russische Sprache am Istituto italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente in Rom.

Rudol'f Vsevolodovic Vjatkin ist Wissenschaftler am Institut für Sinologie und am Institut für Asienwissenschaften der Akademie der Wissenschaften, später Leiter des Institut für Asienkunde der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Moskau.