19 february 2024
John Bjarne Grover
A poem by Zha Shenxing = 查慎行
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Simplified: 月黑见渔灯 孤光一点萤 微微风簇浪 散作满河星 |
Traditional: 月黑見漁燈 孤光一點螢 微微風簇浪 散作滿河星 |
The poem looks like a graphically concentrated version of Hans Henrik Holm's poem 'Still blossoms childhood wild and wonderful' (= 'Stilt barnehugen blømer yr og underfull') - which is from his 'Bygdir i solrøyk' volume 5 (out of 6 volumes) chapter 9 poem 8. This poem I have translated in this file under the title 'Still childhood blossoms wild and wonderful' - but I here make some emendments to the first translation since I was too governed by formal constraints - which would nearly succeed but not completely and therefore it would have been better to lend the sense more prominence:
Hans-Henrik Holm:
Still blossoms childhood wild and wonderful
The struggle and the treasures
can tear the rich apart.
You can live well in frugal measures
or be burdened with a glorious class.
For a child they are white - the pleasures
in juicy lily grass.
Between moonsnow and sun-glistening
fine spirits tread among us.
Only those to whom angels are listening
can know salvation:
A child sees birds as sisters,
and animals as bewitched brothers.
'Angels listen' = 'englane lystrar' is ambiguous: Partly it means 'the angels obey', partly it means angels fishing with a lantern at a hole in the ice - and fish (= the human beings) come up to the pleasant and inspiring light and are penetrated by a cruel spear in the middle of their confidence - here associated with 'salvation' - like being lifted up to heaven or something like that. In the chinese poem's fourth line - 'when the river becomes a heavenly body'.
See the third sign on the second line of traditional notation - it could show the idea when a 'spear of light' comes from above.
Holm's poem has two stanzas (probably for these ambiguities) while the chinese probably could embody the ambiguities graphically. I have not discovered these - but it could be hidden in the glittering starlight of the rippling water.
I have speculated if Adolf Hitler has planned to become the new god by calling for the complete confidence in humans and penetrating them with terror (say, in a Black Sea Loop) for obtaining maximal power. In the article on Holm and the nazis, I have speculated if Hitler abused Holm's poetry for harvesting folk confidence for his government - and the present example would have been from the chapter which (as I have speculated) could have served to construct his interior minister Heinrich Himmler's role. It may be of much importance to try and understand Holm right - not the least for getting Hitler driven out of his poetry and to prevent that the nazis continue to surf on the confidence which people can have to poetic thought and its integrity. The title to the present poem - 'Still blossoms childhood wild and wonderful' - could tell that we are at least so far not penetrated by that cruel spear - which perhaps could be in line also with the ideas in the chinese poem.
Could be Zha Shenxing's poem could be interpreted something like this:
Black moon sees in the fisherman's lantern
a single ray of finest glowing sprite -
then closes its eye for the unrestricted flooding (or 'tearflow')
released to see the river as starlight.
Sources:
100 ancient chinese poems. Sinolingua, Beijing 2010.
Holm, H.-H.: Bygdir i solrøyk I-VI. Gyldendal, Oslo 1949-51. (Bound in 3 volumes).
© John Bjarne Grover
On the web 19 february 2024
