404 chapter twelve
into Han culture and language that is carved into our bones, we lack
any and all confidence regarding this “tradition,” which is built on sand.
We are sufficiently vigilant vis-à-vis the “international poetry stage” but
at the same time yearn for recognition on that very stage, to use this as
a standard for greatness in poets. On the one hand we want to be Don
Quixote charging enemy lines; on the other, even if we have taken a
hundred steps forward, we are still but an irresolute, hesitant Hamlet.
Our education and our nature preclude all this being more than fruitless
exercises in the realm of art.Tellingly, Cheng concludes this passage by references to Don Quixote
and Hamlet, and not, say, Sun Wukong and Ah Q. In 2001 his views
on the matter were brief and simple: modern Chinese poetry comes
from the West.^5
Third, Portrait takes its title from an eponymous poem (1993) by
Zhang Shuguang, which opens the anthology (p1-2):
«A Portrait of Years Gone By»
Over and over again I see you, friends from childhood days
still lively, cheerful, with your jokes that border on the vulgar—
it seems the years have failed to play their tricks on you
or you’ve somewhere found a prescription for staying young
and the trees, the sky behind you still retain their original
shape, not a hint of change, as if bravely withstanding time
and all that time brings. Oh young knights, we
once saw days of glory, drank and womanized or stayed up all night
to talk about a poem or a novel. We played Hamlet,
now imagine crossing the waste land, looking for the long-lost holy grail
near the campus flower beds at dusk, chasing Eliot’s lonely silhouette.
At the time I didn’t like Yeats, didn’t understand Lowell or Ashbery
and of course didn’t know you, merely saw you every day hurrying along
that little road to the church or the canteen, your expression grave or melancholy.
I went mad for the illusion of an image, called out for
spring only to be cast deeper into valley snow until my soul was exhausted.
Of the squirrels back then some are now dead some toothless
left with no more than the occasional angry cry to prove that they’re here
and we’ve made peace with our fathers, or become fathers
or fallen into even deeper traps in life. And do they really exist
those beautiful hours that we yearn for, gone forever? Or(^5) Personal communication, July 2001.