Richard Berengarten, Changing, with a preface by Edward L. Shaughnessy and Calligraphy by Yu Mingquan. Bristol, United Kingdom: Shearsman Books Ltd., 2016. 最近又把李道(Richard Berengarten)的诗集(或组诗)《变易》(Changing)读了一遍。上一次读这本书还是在2019年的时候,疫情还没有开始,再读时疫情基本上已经过去了。 Richard Berengarten给自己取的中文姓名是李道。据他自述,他是1962年第一次接触到《易经》的,那时候他还是一位19岁的剑桥大学本科生,专业是英语语言文学,而他出版这部以《易经》为基础而写的诗集则是54年之后了。(p. 521-523)现在的他,是剑桥大学教授、住校诗人、国际著名诗人。 他也自述,他的这部诗集,从结构上讲,是完全模仿《易经》(或确切说是《周易》)六十四卦的结构,每一首诗都有序部,相当于卦辞,也有六首小诗,相当于爻辞;由于乾坤两卦还有用九用六,所以这两首包括七首小诗。(p. 525) 另外,李道还将自己读别的中国文献,又与《周易》关联度很高的,也写入了这部诗集中,例如他曾将张载写入三首小诗,也许他对横渠四句也很认可,或者他也读了张载的易学著作。而且,他也把与《易经》息息相关的“Change”和“I Ching”也写入了诗歌之中,让人有互文之感。 将所有的诗读完,感觉李道先生是将汉语尤其是《周易》语言和英语的优势充分地结合了起来,创作出了非常高超的诗歌,读起来既让人不断思辨,又得到美的感受。读完之后,有一些诗节觉得能够给人特别多的启发,所以就摘录了部分,跟大家分享,希望大家喜欢。 第1诗节“Initiating”(乾) 2. What Zhang Zai thought Out walking alone as an autumn sun was going down and a yellow ball of a hunter's moon coming up, Zhang Zai sat on a tree stump and quietly forgot about time and mortality and himself awhile as he soaked himself into and through things. Not much of a life, he thought, if you can't or don't get a chance to see patterns and images of heaven and earth as merely sediment of marvellous transformations. And not much of a view if you've forgotten it. Better be poor and remember his than have power and wealth and forget heaven is text and context for all wisdom. (p. 6) 第2诗节“Responding, Corresponding”(坤) 3. Change How shall changes let alone Change itself be understood and measured? The one immeasurable law that governs all things, at least in this universe, is that everything every- where is constantly on the move through- out spacetime, jsut as reciprocally spacetime itself is always on the move through things. The one common inhering condition that never changes is Change. (p. 17) 7. Being simple This is where we start every time -- in purposeless potential, in a before so far 'back' 'behind' all other befores, it can't really be counted as being in time of any kind, let alone pertaining to or belonging to time. Its isness -- meshed so tight and sheer into its notness that neither is extricable from the other -- yields a pointless point neither passive nor active, neither this nor that but both -- point of departuer and eternal return -- and if an image at all, then one that is not-an-image, a not-image. (p. 21) 第6诗节“Clashing”(讼) 6. A white horse Master Ni Yue enjoyed arguing a white horse isn't a horse. Effortlessly he aruged strips off all-comers. By alternately confuting and separating subcategory and kind he ran rings around even most sophisticated intellecutal adversaries never failing to walk away laughing. But when Ni Yue rode through West City Gate on his own white horse, imperial frontier guards, following standard procedures, taxed him. For owning a horse. (p. 54) 第8诗节“According, Binding”(比) 2. Something and nothing 'Before any something, was there a nothng? Or was there a something else? if nothing came first, wasn't that nothing a something in its own notness, its very elseness?' asked Duke Ai. Zhuangzi said, 'Whether thinghood came out of notness, of nothing else or something else, how can I, who know nothing abouth something and nothing about nothing, possibly tell the difference between the first of all somethings and the very first nothing? Skies pass and are still and always sky. We, who ask and watch, dream and wake beneath them. Each one of us, a something. A nothing.' 3. The third other 'And you and I together, by our union itself, generate a third -- not that passing shadow who walks at times beside one or other of us, whom both have glimpsed through curtained windows, in half-light, hovering behind a chair, or behind half-closed eyes, between sleep and waking -- but another other, belonging to neither, to neither one nor the other, formed out of our eachness, our isness, our othernesses, our bothnesses -- our selves -- an entirely separate being. Once this third other arrives, history begins. How many more shall time and space allow?' (p. 67) 第20诗节“Watching”(观) 6. Lines unbroken and broken So we copied, counted and measured, from what we saw and heard -- eggs, shards, shells, seeds, casings, stones, cones, bones, entrails, tails, scales, wings, leaves, flowers, stems, feathers, nails, bark, thunder, waves, winds, roots, shoots, shadows -- and so learned forms and figures. So too we carved necessity and made patterns of our own and from their cracks and fissures drew lines unbroken and broken. (p. 166) 第38诗节“Separating”(睽) 1. Chameleon Regard chameleon -- if you can find him. He was on branch behind rock before light below sur- face inside rain between morning and evening (through glistening and glistening) on star-dot and through and in blinding blaze of sun. Catch his position and you will not track his movement and vice-versa. How beauti- ful chaemeleon ungraspable as moment leaping and in less than whisper less than breath -- gone. And you? Who might you be? (p. 305) 第48诗节“Welling, Replenishing”(井) 4. I Ching Fifty years my friend, companion and spirit-guide always trustworthy, never diffident never irrelevant solid yet flowing firm yet yielding radiating images self-replenishing inexaustibel fathomless ever-fresh well -- in pluming you I soar feet still grounded rooted in his here now. (p. 388) 第50诗节“Cooking, Sacrificing”(鼎) 4. What the Delphic Oracle said I spy by butterfly. I dowse by bee and I have filtered water's memory to count for every droplet in the sea. I sail disasters and ride distant storms to track the links and paradoxal forms reclusive among averages and norms. My inner eyes read souls. My spirit-hands finger sea-beds and uncroll distant lands to calculate their particles of sands. I coil hatched hurricanes in wax-sealed jars and count on Chronos and his avatars to read the rings and number of the stars. I excavate gone dialects of bone and know the thoughts forgotten men have thrown -- thining themselves unheard -- at rock and stone. Your death's an empty window I've seen through. I've walked out and surveyed the long dark view as if it were an evening avenue. (p. 404) 第55诗节“Abounding, Brimming”(丰) 4. What Zhang Zai said Zhang Zai said, Earth is a thing. Heaven is a marvel. One look up at the stars at night far from any city, and what he meant is clear. Yet since this world floats on, in, across and through heaven, doesn't being in and on the world mean being in and on heaven too? And if so, don't seas, rocks, soil, air contain as much heaven as stars and interstellar spaces up there? Therefore, isn't heaven as much in my fleshed mortal hands and yours as it might lurk in any god's? (p. 444) 6. What Zhang Zai knew Heaven is more than discernible sky. Your could never see all of heaven or even imagine it. Zhang Zai knew heaven is actually where we are already -- fully empty and emptily full, unfathomable and insubstantial, both by substance and by our irreducible material sources and ends in the way of ways. Buoyed in void we rise, fall, rise, fall. (p. 446) 第62诗节“Overstepping”(小过) 3. Looking for [the] Revolution Brave Iulian Shchutskii, sinologist, historian, translator, knew Manchu, Mandarin, Cantonese, Mongolian, Viet- namese, Japanese, German and English. Researched the I Ching. His favourite joke: a Russian, up a pole, scans [the] horizon for [the] Revolution. When asked to come down, the Russian refuses, this being his 'permanent full-time job'. For this, for being who and what he was, Shchutskii incurred Stalin's wrath, got arrested by NKVD (1937) and perished (1938) aged 41, skull crushed by a chain. (p. 499) |
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