of the poet’s artistic journey, life experience, and philosophy. On the
poem, Luo Fu says, “It sums up my experience of exile, my artistic
explorations, and my metaphysics. I consider it a personal epic, the
greatest achievement of my old age, and a landmark of my career”
(Luo 2001). I had lunch with Luo Fu one day in late spring in Taipei
in 1992. He mentioned that he had been contemplating a long poem,
an epic about the Chinese people and what they had experienced in
the twentieth century. He did not actually sit down and write a long
poem until years later after moving to Vancouver. Two interrelated
factors seemed to have inspired his decision: he wanted to realize an
“aesthetics of distance” (Luo 2002: 284) he had been pondering the
last few years and his experience of loneliness during his “second
exile” (the first being to Taiwan). In the lonely days after moving
abroad, Luo Fu began to take stock of his past. He had lived through
a good deal of war and chaos: the war with Japan, the civil war, the
bombardment of Quemoy, and the Vietnam War. He began to feel
that this life experience for all its tragedy was as transient and fleeting
as a dream.
The sense of loneliness and tragedy developed into what Luo Fu
terms an aesthetics of distance consisting of two qualities: (1) a tragic
consciousness—a combined sense of personal and national tragedy,
(2) universalism, transcendent of time and space. Initially, Luo Fu had
planned to write about the loneliness and deracination to which many
overseas Chinese are subject; however, as he wrote, the focus gradually
shifted to a more general exploration of the meaning of life. The theme
of the poem capsulates the sense of helplessness and transience of life.
The poem is divided into four parts. The first part, titled
“Driftwood,” establishes the opening theme. Through the agency of a
piece of driftwood, the poet examines and critiques contemporary
Chinese culture and society in both Taiwan and mainland China.
The second part, titled “The Salmon’s Encounter with Death”
,垂p的視, deals with the migratory and unsettled life of the
sockeye salmon. The fish comes to represent a drifting, unsettled
spirit, symbolic of not only the poet’s own rootless existence, but also
the larger contemporary milieu. The themes of love, life, and death
stand in high relief in this part. The third part, titled “Letters in
Bottles” ð¢的, is divided into four subsections. The first sec-
tion “To My Mother” _deals with a mother’s love; in the second
section “To the Poets” l, Luo Fu examines his own views on
poetry; and in the third section “To Time” 時間, he delves into the
mystery of time; the fourth and final section “To the Gods”
investigates religion. The Fourth and final part of the poem is titled
The Poetic Odyssey of Luo Fu 81