Poem: "Fallen Flowers"

James Liu, The Poetry of Li Shang-yin 李商隐: Ninth-Century Baroque Chinese Poet (University of Chicago, 1969)

Fallen Flowers

From the tall pavilion the guests have all departed,
In the little garden flowers helter-skelter fly.
They fall at random on the winding path,
And travel far, sending off the setting sun.
Heartbroken, I cannot bear to sweep them away;
Gazing hard, I watch them till few are left.
Their fragrant heart, following spring, dies;
What they have earned are tears that wet one's clothes.

《落花》

高阁客竟去，小园花乱飞。
参差连曲陌，迢递送斜晖。
肠断未忍扫，眼穿仍欲归。
芳心向春尽，所得是沾衣

...As the poet watches the fallen flowers, he identifies himself completely with them, so that the heart that dies and the tears that wet his clothes belong as much to the flowers as to the poet. The poem is thus a remarkable example of empathy. (136-7)

Also see a Chinese reader wrestle with the poem. This Chinese recitation has nice slow pacing

Not dead yet

Syllabus idea: Chinese Modern: Lu Xun and His Times
Professor Fang Zhesheng
Fall 2011: Tuesday evenings after beer, unless I don't feel like it, location TBA
Office Hours: Wednesday noon, just come to my hammock out back. Yell if I'm asleep.

Course description: Students will gain a greater appreciation of the innovations in prose and poetry of late 19th and early 20th century China with a focus on the works of Lu Xun (1881-1936). In addition to Lu Xun's classic short fiction, we will also explore his essays, classical Chinese poetry, History of Chinese Fiction, and Old Stories Retold. Our aim is to see both the revolutionary and the conventional in modern Chinese literature. (The allegory of the iron house, for example, is arguably a variation on the parable of the burning house from the Lotus Sutra.)

Diary, October 18: Evolutionary Beacons

As we talked, Adam reminded me that he has crack memorization skills. He can recite this entire song:

Running with the wolves.
It's time for us to go.
Left all our clothes.
With the car left by the road.
And we were running.
For a reason.
For the burning, in our veins.
And we were running.
For a reason.
We just need to get away.

Running with the wolves.
We're screaming at the stars.
Left all we own.
In a hole in our backyard.
And we were running.
For a reason.
Left our cubicles in little flaming piles.
And we were running.
For a reason.
I need to feel something different for just a little while.
I'm not coming home.
I'm staying with the wolves.
They can burn all my mail.
And disconnect my phone.
Tell my mom I'm sorry, sorry for leaving.
But I'm staying.

Now we're running to find meaning.
We're gone, and we're never coming back.

 The lines seemed so much more significant since I had heard the line by Joseph Brodsky about poetry: “Poetry is not a form of entertainment, and in a certain sense not even a form of art, but our anthropological, genetic goal, our linguistic, evolutionary beacon.” In Cloud Cult speak: "We're screaming at the stars." Like everything these days, the idea makes me cry!

Lists: Sci Fi, Fantasy and Horror

From Kerri Miller's NPR show:

• "The Wasp Factory" by Iain Banks
• "Reamde" by Neil Stevenson
• "The Road" and "Blood Meridian" by Cormac McCarthy
• "1Q84" by Haruki Murakami
• "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Class: What works

I had a good class, and my recent prep, and conversations with KT on next semester's classes, have re-affirmed one basic wisdom:

Imitate my betters. 

KT lent me a cool powerpoint on Persepolis, which I used yesterday and today to produce a decent lecture taking us from Feng Menglong to Lu Xun. I decided to make some cuts to the reading list, ditch this weekend's homework, and have students focus on Lu Xun stories. More planning on that tomorrow.

I made great use of China in Revolution, segment 1:

Since A is coming into Duluth tomorrow instead of me going back to Minneapolis, I find myself with a tiny amount of relatively....wait for it...free time. All I plan to do with this evening is:

• Work on my conference paper
• Revise cover letters and CV
• Start on postdoc bibliography
• get some grading done

Why that's practically nothing! One day at a time....

Recipe: Pumpkin Curry

Pumpkin Curry, trial 1

2 lbs butternut squash, peel and chop
salt, sugar, neutral oil.
12 oz package of tofu, drain and cube
Thai Kitchen red curry paste, coconut milk
brown sugar, fish sauce,
cilantro and/or basil

Toss pumpkin in salt, sugar and oil and roast in a 400 deg F oven for 30+ minutes, turning once (best to place on foil, darn it's hard to scrub off otherwise.) Cool and leave to one side.
Whisk curry paste into coconut milk in a crock pot according to package directions. Add sugar, fish sauce (veggie Worcestershire to keep it vegetarian), and tofu, and cook for an hour.
Add roast pumpkin and cook another hour.

Not bad!

Diary: Wednesday, October 12

I spent the entire morning, 8:30-12 noon, in meetings on how to write the cover letter and the CV. I've received much more advice from the mentors here than from my dissertation committee -- thank heavens, and I swear that in the future, if I have PhD students, I will instruct them in the importance of drafting these documents again, again, and again, and starting much earlier in the process.

 In my second work block, I attacked revisions to my statements, a reading of a chapter draft by my classmate JN, class prep for Thursday, and preparing dinner for my fellow dissertation writers. I hoped to get to my Qian Zhongshu poetry conference paper, and to get some grading done, but there was no time for that.

 My pumpkin curry was a success. We discussed JN's dissertation chapter, on the tensions between British India and the smaller territory of Pondicherry controlled by France. Pondicherry became known as a place that tolerated dissidents, as JN showed with portraits of Aurobindo Ghose, Mira "la mere" Alfassa, and Varadarajulu Subbiah -- these last accounts were particularly fascinating, even through the painful "dissertationese" we all must endure together in this period.

I got Wiki'd and Instapapered, yo

GH also gave a practice talk on the work of Paul Beatty, which impressed itself on me slowly, and seems more important the next day. Afterwards I felt much reassured, and cleaned up the kitchen and dining room with great lightness of heart. Even after 11pm, I found the wherewithal to craft a thesis sentence for my conference paper:

There is something thrilling about finding a distinctively modern consciousness that can express itself in classical form — the classical Chinese poems of Qian Zhongshu (1910-1998) are a particularly thorny example which I believe deserve our attention, and call for new thoughts on the staging and presentation of Chinese poetry in translation.

It's always best, I think, to read a little before bed, even if it's only a very little. I've been reading "Dog Run Moon" by Callan Wink for three nights, and still didn't finish the story. (NB: Googling for the title brought up an entry on the story by writer Clifford Garstang)