Catching Sight of South Mountain: Tao Yuanming, Mount Lu, and the Iconographies of Escape

 

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Cat and Plum Blossoms, by Hishida Shunso, 1906

 

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Li Bai visit to Tao Yuanming's cottage

About eight miles north of Mount Lu was a hamlet called Shang-jing. The poet Tao Yuanming (376–427) had once lived there. It was remarkable that Li Bai journeyed to the small village to look at Tao’s homestead and pay his respects at his grave, which had fallen into disrepair, the words on the stone hardly legible. Like his deserted homestead, Tao had remained obscure for more than three centuries after his death. Only two decades prior to Li Bai’s visit had Tao’s poetry begun to be recognized by Tang poets, particularly for his presentation of immediate experiences in nature and the daily life of the countryside. Evidently Li Bai was one of his new admirers. Viewed from Tao’s homestead, Mount Lu loomed in the distance, often half-hidden in clouds, against which birds sailed in the misty sky. The sublime scene depicted in Tao’s poem “Drinking Wine” must refer to this view: “Picking chrysanthemums under my eastern hedge, / I raise my eyes and see the mountain in the south.”

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Olbers' paradox

Olbers’ paradox, in cosmology, paradox relating to the problem of why the sky is dark at night. If the universe is endless and uniformly populated with luminous stars, then every line of sight must eventually terminate at the surface of a star. Hence, contrary to observation, this argument implies that the night sky should everywhere be bright, with no dark spaces between the stars. This paradox was discussed in 1823 by the German astronomer Heinrich Wilhelm Olbers, and its discovery is widely attributed to him. The problem was considered by earlier investigators and can be traced back to Johannes Kepler, who, in 1610, advanced it as an argument against the notion of a limitless universe containing an infinite number of stars. Various resolutions have been proposed at different times. If the assumptions are accepted, then the simplest resolution is that the average luminous lifetime of stars is far too short for light to have yet reached the Earth from very distant stars. In the context of an expanding universe, it can be argued similarly: the universe is too young for light to have reached the Earth from very distant regions.

Edgar Allan Poe's essay Eureka (1848) curiously anticipated some qualitative aspects of Kelvin's argument:


Were the succession of stars endless, then the background of the sky would present us a uniform luminosity, like that displayed by the Galaxy – since there could be absolutely no point, in all that background, at which would not exist a star. The only mode, therefore, in which, under such a state of affairs, we could comprehend the voids which our telescopes find in innumerable directions, would be by supposing the distance of the invisible background so immense that no ray from it has yet been able to reach us at all

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Esse est percipi (Jorge Luis Borges & Adolfo Bioy Casares)

“Esse Est Percipi” is a short story on football and the perception of reality by Jorge Luis Borges and Adolfo Bioy Casares (from the anthology Perfect Pitch: Dirt. edited by Marcela Mora Y Araujo & Simon Kuper)

A football fan is amazed to find that the games he listens to on the radio are a figment of someone’s imagination.

—-

As an old roamer of the neighbourhood of Nunez and thereabouts, I could not help noticing that the monumental River Plate Stadium no longer stood in its customary place.

In consternation, I spoke about this to my friend Dr Gervasio Montenegro, the full-fledged member of the Argentine Academy of Letters, and in him I found the motor that put me on the track. At the time, his pen was compiling a sort of Historical Survey of Argentine Journalism, a truly noteworthy work at which his secretary was quite busy, and the routine research had accidentally led Montenegro to sniff out the crux of the matter. Shortly before nodding off, he sent me to a mutual friend, Tulio Savastano, president of the Abasto Juniors Soccer Club, to whose headquarters, situated in the Adamant Building on Corrientes Avenue near Pasteur Street, I hied.

This high-ranking executive still managed to keep fit and active despite the regimen of double dieting prescribed by his physician and neighbour, Dr Narbondo. A bit inflated by the latest victory of his team over the Canary Island All-Stars, Savastano expatiated at length between one mate and another, and he confided to me substantial details with reference to the question on the carpet. In spite of the fact that I kept reminding Savastano that we had, in yesteryear, been boyhood chums from around Aguero and the corner of Humahuaco, the grandeur of his office awed me and, trying to break the ice, I congratulated him on the negotiation of the game’s final goal, which, notwithstanding Zarlenga and Parodi’s pressing attack, centre-half Renovales booted in thanks to the historic pass of Musante’s.

In acknowledgement of my support of the Abasto eleven, the great man gave his mate a posthumous slurp and said philosophically, like someone dreaming aloud, ‘And to think it was me who invented those names.’

‘Aliases?’ I asked, mournful. ‘Musante’s name isn’t Musante? Renovales isn’t Renovales? Limardo isn’t the real name of the idol aclaimed by the fans?’

Savastano’s answer made my limbs go limp. ‘What? You still believe in fans and idols?’ he said. ‘Where have you been living, don Domecq?’

At that moment, a uniformed office boy came in, looking like a fireman, and he whispered to Savastano that Ron Ferrabas wished a word with him.

‘Ron Ferrabas, the mellow-voiced sportscaster?’ I exclaimed. ‘The sparkplug of Profumo Soap’s after-dinner hour? Will these eyes of mine see him in person? Is it true that his name is Ferrabas?’

‘Let him wait,’ ordered Mr Sevastano.

‘Let him wait? Wouldn’t it be better if I sacrificed myself and left?’ I pleaded with heartfelt abnegation.

‘Don’t you dare,’ answered Sevastano. ‘Arturo, tell Ferrabas to come in.’

What an entrance Ferrabas made- so natural! I was going to offer him my armchair, but Arturo, the fireman, dissuaded me with one of those little glances that are like a mass of polar air.


The voice of the president began deliberating. ‘Ferrabas, I’ve spoken to De Filippo and Camargo. In the next match Abasto is beaten by two to one. It’s a tough game but bear in mind- don’t fall back on that pass from musante to Renovales. The fans know it by heart. I want imagination- imagination, understand? You may leave now.’

I screwed up my courage to venture a question. ‘Am I to deduce that the score has been prearranged?’

Savastano literally tumbled me to the dust. ‘There’s no score, no teams, no matches,’ he said. ‘The stadiums have long since been condemned and are falling to pieces. Nowadays everything is staged on the television and radio. The bogus excitement of the sportscaster- hasn’t it ever made you suspect that everything is humbug? The last time a soccer match was played in Buenos Aires was on 24 June 1937. From that exact moment, soccer, along with the whole gamut of sports, belongs to the genre of the drama, performed by a single man in a booth or by actors in jerseys before the TV cameras.’

‘Sir, who invented the thing?’ I made bold to ask.

‘Nobody knows. You may as well ask who first thought of the inauguration of schools or the showy visits of crowned heads. These things don’t exist outside the recording studios and newspaper offices. Rest assured, Domecq, mass publicity is the trademark of modern times.’

‘And what about the conquest of space?’ I groaned.

‘It’s not a local programme, it’s a Yankee-Soviet co-production. A praiseworthy advance, let’s not deny it, of the spectacle of science.’

‘Mr President, you’re scaring me,’ I mumbled, without regard to hierarchy. ‘Do you mean to tell me that out there in the world nothing is happening?’

‘Very little,’ he answered with his English phlegm. ‘What I don’t understand is your fear. Mankind is at home, sitting back with ease, attentive to the screen or the sportscaster, if not the yellow press. What more do you want, Domecq? It’s the great march of time, the rising tide of progress.’

‘And if the bubble bursts?’ I barely managed to utter.

‘It won’t,’ he said, reassuringly.

‘Just in case, I’ll be silent as the tomb,’ I promised. ‘I swear it by my personal loyalty- to the team, to you, to Limardo, to Renovales.’

‘Say whatever you like, nobody would believe you.’

The telephone rang. The president picked up the receiver and, finding his other hand free, he waved it, indicating the door.
Buenos Aires, Argentina

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Codex Sinaiticus

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La Mer

 

Cheese

 

Very nice

 

Qingming

 

100 days

 

RYUICHI SAKAMOTO

A Night in Firenze

https://www.forbes5.pitt.edu/article/night-firenze




Love is never easy to translate. My sense of writing about love starts from reading the poems of Xu Zhimo, who is regarded as a crucial gure in reshaping the form of modern Chinese poetry.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Xu began his studies in the U.S. and then left for Cambridge University, intending to become Bertrand Russell’s student. He changed his pen name to “Zhimo” after arriving in England, and there he composed his most famous poem “On Leaving Cambridge Again”. According to the Chinese scholar Hu Shi, Xu Zhimo’s life could be fully described with three words: love, freedom and aesthetic. And Xu’s love poems, in his own words, are “like syrup that is too dense to dissolve” (Xu, 1928). I think “A Night in Firenze” reflects this feature strongly, and I really appreciate how he demonstrates it in the poem. Narrating from the perspective of a young woman whose lover will leave her before the next daybreak, Xu divides the monologue poem into a progressive structure of three parts: the speaker’s anxiety about tomorrow, her argument on dying together with her lover, and her compromise of this miserable separation. Through the gurative lines, we can sympathetically feel the speaker’s hesitation and ambiguous affection.

The translating process was a huge challenge for me. Literary translation is an extreme within the art of translation, and poetry is an extreme within literature. A translator must evoke the emotion of the original poem in the target language, trying at once to balance its charm and conciseness. Moreover, the cultural gap between two languages is considerable. Quite often, an idiom in Chinese cannot nd its English counterpart. And when this happens, the translator needs to create a brand-new expression to complete the translation. I put much effort into these issues just for the translation to make sense. For example, the expression “the iron tree in blossom” in this poem comes from the idiom “铁树开花” (pinyin: tiě shù kāi huā) of the original text, which rhetorically stands for something that cannot come true.

I learned in my poetry writing course that a signifcant poem should have its own profound effect on its readers, no matter the language in which it was written. So, I hope there are parts of the piece, being either intense or smooth, that can touch something vulnerable in your heart.
A Night in Firenze

You are really going? Tomorrow? Then what about me, what about me...
No need to mind me, I knew this day would come sooner or later;
remember me, if you are willing to,
otherwise please forget me living
in this world as early as possible, rather than thinking of me
and suffering in vain;
let it be a dream, a fantasy;
let it be just like the fading rose we saw yesterday,
shivering cravenly in the wind, its petals falling to the ground,
one after another, being trampled on, and turning into mud...
Alas, being trampled on, and turning into mud—but mud is cleaner
than this living death, a true agony, where I am sneered at
as shabby and cumbrous—

God! Why did you come, why did you come...?
Yet I can never forget you: The day you came
was like the advent of glory from darkness;
you were my teacher, my love, my benefactor,
and from you I learned what life is and what love is.
You woke up my slumber and returned my innocence.
How would I know that sky is high and grass is green without you?
Touch my heart to see how fast it is beating now,
and touch my cheek, how badly it is scorching,
which is luckily covered by the black night, thank God;
my love, you are taking my breath away;
stop kissing me; I cannot stand living as a raging ame.
At present, my soul is like a forging iron on the firebrick
under the hammer of love, being tamped, tamped, the sparks
scattering around... I faint; hold me.

My love, please allow me in this quiet garden,
with my eyes closing, to die in your arms—how beautiful!
The sound of wind rustling in the white poplar overhead
will be my funeral dirge, and the refreshing breeze
from the olive grove, bringing the fragrance
of the pomegranate flowers,
then will take my soul away, with those fireflies,
the amorous complaisant fireflies, who will lighten the path.
I will stop my pace on that three-arches bridge
and listen to you there holding my cooling body,
yelling my name in despair, kissing me, shaking me, nibbling me...
I will yet smile and follow the breeze,
to wherever it leads me, to wherever in heaven or hell.
Anyway, I will have lost this weary life, and made death come true
in love—isn’t this death in love better
than ve hundred reincarnations? ... Selfsh I am,
but I don’t care anymore... Are you going to die with me?
What, dying for love is not complete unless we do it together?
It requires two pairs of wings to ascend as companions.
Should we get to heaven, we couldn’t help taking care of each other,
because I need you and you too need me;
should it be to hell, you would be more anxious about my going alone,
for you said that hell might be less hospitable
than this world (although I doubt it);
being like a delicate rose, I am not protected
from exposure to the rain storms,
and should I scream to you, you would hear nothing.
—Isn’t this seeking for release but dropping into a wallow instead,
which invites the cold-eyed ghosts and the cold-hearted humans
to laugh at my miserable fate, to laugh at your timid negligence?
What you say makes sense, so what shall I do?
It’s too hard to stay alive, but even death fails to free us,
and I don’t want you to sacirfice your future for me...

Alas! You say to stay alive and wait, wait for the day you come back!
Is that day real? — your presence is my confidence,
but you have to go at daybreak. Are you so hardhearted
to leave me alone? Still, I cannot keep you here, this is my fate,
but the ower, without sunshine or dew, will perish,
or at best its petal tips will wither, how poor!
You must not forget me; my love, I have no life
unless in your heart; well, I’ll take your word; I’ll wait,
and keep waiting for the iron tree in blossom;
my love, you are a bright star over me forever:
Should I die of misfortune, I would turn into a firefly,
staying in this garden, close to the grass roots, flying mopishly,
flying from twilight till midnight, flying from midnight till dawn,
and I would wish it cloudless, so that the sky could be visible to me,
where the eternal star is you,
shining on me, through the night,
through the sky, my heart vibrating as long as yours twinkles...

Written in the mountains of Firenze, June 11, 1925.

April is the cruellest month

The waste land: a facsimile and transcript of the original drafts, including the annotations of Ezra Pound / T. S. Eliot ; edited by Valerie Eliot


https://www.bl.uk/20th-century-literature/articles/ezra-pound-and-the-drafts-of-the-waste-land




After straining one of his hands rowing while at graduate school, Eliot preferred to write by typewriter where possible. One example of where it was probably not possible would be in the shelter at Margate. Editors assume that most of the actual manuscript Eliot produced in Margate was destroyed. On this copy, on page 52, we can see him redrafting the closing parts of Part III: ‘The Fire Sermon’, with its lines


On Margate Sands.
I can connect
Nothing with nothing.




[ll. 300–302]

At the top of this manuscript, corrections, suggestions and comments have been added to the text by hand. In some instances, these are by Eliot’s wife Vivien. The majority, however, are by the poet Ezra Pound, to whom Eliot showed the whole poem in Paris in January 1922. Critics have speculated that by this stage Eliot may already have decided to delete the first section of part I, which describes a night out. But here in the draft, we can see them working together on the rest of this section. The two men worked particularly hard on part III, ‘The Fire Sermon’. Pound suggested the deletion of the first page-and-a-half. As can be seen on p. 24, Eliot then redrafted it by hand, upside-down on the back of the paper. Because he was re-incorporating some lines he had already written, he could refer to these in shorthand. One example is ‘Sweet Thames etc.’
The real thing

As can be seen from this typescript, Pound’s annotations use the terminology of professional editing. On page 26, for example, ‘STET’ means ‘let it stand’ in Latin. Others are in the highly idiosyncratic blend of languages in which Pound communicated, both in person and writing. For example, at various points he annotates the text with the German word ‘echt’, by which he means a compliment: ‘this is the real thing’. Pound continued to help Eliot with the poem after the period in Paris, sending suggestions by letter. On January 24, after Eliot had returned to London, Pound wrote to him with a lightly comic poem praising Eliot’s achievement. He also wrote, ‘complimenti, you bitch’, and suggested, among other things, that the quotation from Josef Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1899) which stands at the front of this manuscript should be removed.

The version printed later that year does indeed remove the Conrad quotation, a decision which Eliot apparently later regretted. Eliot replaced it with one in Latin and Greek from the Satyricon, an ancient Roman novel attributed to Petronius. In recognition of his editorial work, he also included a dedication to Ezra Pound: ‘il miglior fabbro’. This is a slightly altered quotation from the Purgatorio, the second part of The Divine Comedy (c. 1309–20). In three parts, this epic poem by the medieval Italian poet Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) describes a progression from hell through purgatory to heaven. In the quotation, Dante is pointing at the poet Arnaut Daniel, and calling him ‘the better craftsman’. For some critics this is an allusion to the fact that Pound’s ‘craft’ is perhaps more obscure than Eliot’s. For other critics, it is straightforward praise and thanks.