Tradition and Modernism
- On The Shadowy People by Chuan Sha
Zhou Zheng-bao
Spring, Beijing, 2001
Whether it was calling to the sun or mumbling to the moon, Chuan Sha in his poetry strikes his readers with a passion, a piety of a burning life, and a live purity that he by no means intends to disguise. In a noisy and cynical world as is today, it has become a challenge to find such a heartbeat of poetry, which displays itself in reality. This heartbeat may be better defined as “a process of becoming human”. After all, poetry is an experience unique to the poet himself, in which he writes about how he sees the world. Chuan Sha impressively tells of his peculiar overseas shifting, during which he has been thinking hard, praying hard, and singing loudly in a hope that he would have found a different but more meaningful life.
Doubtless to say, poets vary in many ways, such as their social status, their cultural backgrounds, the spiritual impact they have from previous generations, and above all, the way they feel the world to be, and the way they have chosen to voice their feelings. All this decides the difference in terms of voices and characters. On the other hand, in their growth and search, poets have much to share. One such aspect is their voices enriched from daily life, which carries faith and hope. It is not surprising that they look through the present into the future, and even beyond the reality, yet most of their energy is spent in looking for a more idealistically human world for the residents of this so-called Earth. I believe that no matter how far the civilization has advanced, the human spirit and feelings are still the most vital support. Poetry will never be extinct, and will on contrary enter many other fields of literatures and arts as a further enlightenment. This is especially so in China, where poetry has had such a long history, and where the existence of poetry has had a deeper ground in nature. We have seen, in Chuan Sha’s poetry, not only the beautiful morning clouds of gold, and elegant silver moonbeams in the night, but also heavy smears of dark clouds. Part of natural humanity is happiness. The greater part, though, is a variety of worries and misery, which have haunted those who are conscientiously thinking and praying.
Though centered in tradition, Chuan Sha represents modernism. This is understandable, as no one is able to cut oneself away from traditions. That is to say, no poet exists who is tradition-free. In Chuan Sha’s The Shadowy People, many poems explicitly express the poet’s feelings by the use of a scene, or an object. This is to some extent a stereotype of “poetic thinking”. What is also obvious is the poet’s “anti-tradition” passion in terms of wording, texts and structures of the language, and his focus on “senses and feelings”. I would like to emphasize that besides the extraordinary expressions, Chuan Sha strikes me more in his unique image discoveries, and his extreme ways to picture these images. As a poetry reader, I may consequently ask why I read poetry, and what I expect from my readings. This inquiry implies that the reader wants to find a pass, by which they can reach the poet. I am now in such a pass. Ms. Zhang Ling, a Canadian novelist from Toronto, Ontario, says that reading Chuan Sha would let her feel “wrongly placed in emotion”. However, she continues, this status will throw a reader into an “unconscious searching” experience, which will pay off as far as an expectation is concerned.
For a long time Chuan Sha has been a traveler. He looks at this world, full of wonder and curiosity. Consistently, he tries to find a way to satisfy his wonders by thinking upon his adventures. There is no hint that he would change this hobby, which has thus far offered him so much pleasure mixed with hardship. This search, along with his ideals, keeps motivating him for his soul journey to fit his poetry writings. He wanders, and learns, from the Eastern Hemisphere to the Western, and it won’t be hard to imagine the extension of his vision resulted from his travel. More peculiarly, he connects his thoughts, like a hovering kite with a long and unbroken string, to the “root”, his motherland. He writes about his fellow countrymen’s unshakable spirit, impervious to the struggle, the hardship, the humiliation they have gone through, and even their ignorant experiences. In addition, he writes about the bright perspectives they held during the odd and absurd times of the past bloody years. The poet laughs, and cries, and marvels with sighs at the western civilization. The striking contrast shakes the string to “the kite” until a trembling voice has passed through from his poetry to his readers. Chuan Sha does not intend to forget his past. His laughter and cries all focus on one word: Love. It is this love that created the string to the kite, and it is this love that made the poet utter so meaningful a whisper, and so deep a roar.
There are quite a few love poems. Deep, wild, sad, they offer more than just a simple drive in the human life. Real poets would hardly touch the subject for the sake of “love”. Love is a human process, thus, is an everlasting theme of poetry, a most touching part related to our life. Of course, love is described in many other ways too, in light of history, cultures and social developments. Love, doubtlessly, reflects what a human spirit encounters and experiences. The soil is rich for “love poems”, the evidence proved by Chuan Sha. Most of his love poems were written in the last 20 years, the time that China began to open its doors again to the outside world, and the Chinese people began to consider the nation’s future. His poems were unavoidably affected by the upheavals of this time, particularly in the field of culture. They looked back into the past, and re-evaluated the impact from the human elements. Above all, these poems served as part of a record of the human history, from a poet’s eyes.
This is my impression after reading The Shadowy People. Chuan Sha’s poetry does not stand out as so-called “pure poetry art”, but rather as a spirit in a pure poet, and a poet’s true attitude to life as well as to the world. This is what I am for. A person must be a complete human being before he is a poet.
2001年春 北京
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