酷我-北美枫

星子 · 酷我！I made it！ 注册时间: 2004-06-05 帖子: 13192 来自: Toronto

http://www.paulagordon.com/shows/jin/

http://www.sidewalkpress.net/carnelian/Past/onthesepremisesapr2002.html

I like these poems by Ha Jin.

Seized

Look at that sandy ribbon on the horizon,
like a piece of silk
flickering in the north wind.
That's the river, raised by our effort.
Caged in high dikes,
it flows easily above our city,
where factories bustle day and night,
where trains blow dark whistles.

Who can keep the river up
in the clouds forever?

Someday it will thunder down
like millions of crazed
elephants and whales.
So, many of us live as though
there were no tomorrow.

The Dead Soldier’s Talk
In September 1969, in a shipwreck accident on the Tuman River, a young Chinese soldier was drowned saving a plaster statue of Chairman Mao. He was awarded Merit Citation 2, and was buried at a mountain foot in Hunchun County, Jilin.

I’m tired of lying here.
The mountain and the river are not bad.
Sometimes a bear, a boar, or a deer
comes to this place
as if we were a group of outcast comrades.
I feel lonely and I miss home.
It is very cold when winter comes.
I saw you coming just now
like a little cloud wandering over grassland.
I knew it must have been you,
for no other had come for six years.
Why have you brought me wine and meat
and paper-money again?
I have told you year after year
that I am not superstitious.
Have you the red treasure book with you?
I have forgotten some quotations.
You know I don’t have a good memory.
Again, you left it home.
How about the statue I saved?
Is it still in the museum?
Is our Great Leader in good health?
I wish He live ten thousand years!
Last week I dreamed of our mother
showing my medal to a visitor.
She was still proud of her son
and kept her head up
while going to the fields.
She looked older than last year
and her grey hair troubled my eyes.
I did not see our little sister.
She must be a big girl now.
Has she got a boy friend?
Why are you crying?
Say something to me.
So you think I can’t hear you?
In the early years
you came and stood before my tomb
swearing to follow me as a model.
In recent years
you poured tears every time.
Damn you, why don’t you open your mouth?
Something must have happened.
What? Why don’t you tell me!
This poem originally appeared in The Paris Review, #101, Winter 1986
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星子 · 发表于: 星期一一月 28, 2008 2:17 pm 发表主题:

After I read Ha Jin's " A Free Life ". I want to know more of Ha Jin. Hopefully I will post his other works with his permission.
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星子 · 发表于: 星期一一月 28, 2008 4:37 pm 发表主题:

一些评论...(值得推荐)

http://www.zgyspp.com/Article/ShowArticle.asp?ArticleID=270
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ericcoliu

星子 · 发表于: 星期一一月 28, 2008 10:00 pm 发表主题:

Hi Eric,

Thanks a lot.

Yes. I changed it.

In fact, his poems are very thoughtful. I like them.
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星子 · 发表于: 星期一一月 28, 2008 10:04 pm 发表主题:

A Hero’s Mother Blames Her Daughter

Ha Jin

Every time you come home you make me angry.
You accuse me of being vain, and loving
the name of the Hero’s Mother. Today
I don’t want to quarrel with you.
I just want to speak up so that
you may understand I’m not such a bad woman.

After your elder brother died in the fight
with the Russians on Zhenbao Island,
I did send your younger brother to the army
and let him fight the enemy like his brother.
It was not because I lost my senses
and wanted to enhance my honor as the Hero’s Mother.
Is there any mother who would choose to
sacrifice her own son for such fame?

Listen! The country was in danger at that time
and your younger brother was already a big man.
With or without the example of your elder brother
he should go to the army. It is men’s duty
to defend the country. I was not wrong in this.

After your younger brother got killed in an accident
while digging a tunnel with his comrades,
I sent you to the army. I tell you I was not
a heartless mother. You’re a part of my flesh too;
besides, you were the only child I could keep.
Let Heaven witness, I did not mean to send you
to fight like a man, although I did say:
"Let her take over the gun left by her brothers."
This time I knew you would not get killed
because they would try every way to protect you.
But if I did not send you to the army,
how could you leave our poor remote village?
how could you become a doctor as you are now?
how could you marry a good handsome man?
how could you live in Beijing with your son
going to the best primary school?
I didn’t hesitate when I sent your younger brother away.
But in your case it took me many days to decide.
One night I made up my mind and prayed
to your dead father and your elder brother:
"This is Rongrong’s only chance.
I must not let her miss it.
Whatever happens to me I can endure.
Please protect her on her way."

Now your horns are strong and you turn around
to gore your mother. If I did anything wrong,
I did it for you. You are the person who benefits.
What did I get from it? Two martyr cards?
Do you think I can live on them?
Do you think I enjoy looking at them!

Anybody may have the right to blame me
except you. You don’t have the right to do it!

These poems appear in Between Silences: A Voice from China
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星子 · 发表于: 星期二一月 29, 2008 9:21 am 发表主题:

PART FIVE from the interview.... very interesting and important message...

? We are back with The Paula Gordon Show. Bill Russell and I are delighted that Ha Jin is our guest. Bill was asking you about the phenomenon of writing in English, which is your second language.

= I feel that there is more difficult here and the pain involved than the advantage.

?More pain than advantage?

= Yes, yes. Because there's so much uncertainty, whether I can write in English. Still I'm uncertain.

? Well, be certain. You can! (laughs)

= But as I was writing, I realized, it certainly, it is not only because of language, but also, every good book, there is some kind of a riskiness, that you have to face. I realize that belongs to the process as well.

? As a writer, not just the bilingual

= As a writer, not just the language. But...English, for me, for years, I always felt I was crippled. (Crippled?) Yes, crippled. Because I couldn't be as eloquent as in Chinese. But, the advantage in writing English, is that it gave me a kind of private space. I just work in the language, without reference to my peers in Chinese, in the Chinese language.

? So they weren't looking over your shoulder.

= No! And also, I can be detached from some American trends as well. That's the good part, the good part. But there's a lot of loneliness, solitude in this. And there's a sense of failure. In the beginning, I could not understand why Nabokov said, for him, English was a personal tragedy. But gradually, I could feel that.

? Nabokov said that, I'd never heard that. Why, did he explain that?

= HE said, because, if he could be writing in Russian, continuing to publish and write in Russian, his work would be very different. Better. I don't know whether it's true or not, but there might -- must be some suffering in him. So... I could feel that, I think.

? Isn't suffering part of the process of making art...?

= Yes! Yes.

B Easy for you to say!

? Isn't that the price YOU pay?

= Yes. That's part of it.

? We forget that. Art shouldn't be easy, should it?

= No! It's not just fun. The reader may read it as fun. But for artist, it's intense labor.

B Had you written these kinds of stories in Chinese?

= No.

B So, you were dealing in a new story telling manner. (Um-hm!) In an alien language.

= Yes!

? You started your storytelling in English?

= Yes. Yes.

? Oh, my. You had to start everything at once.

= Yes.

B That explains the pain part.

? That's like birthing, isn't it?

= Yes. Yes. In a way, yes. Like you have to transform yourself, in many ways, transform yourself. The way I think.

B Did you find yourself, do you find yourself, have you found yourself working through these stories in Chinese or do you work...

?How do you think?

= In English. Always. I think in English. But the problem is, especially with fiction, when the characters begin speaking to each other, they speak Chinese.

? Oh, man.

B So they, you have to translate the Chinese.

= Yes, I have to interfere.

? So, in your head, the characters are speaking ...

= Chinese.

B The stories are in English. (Yes) And when the characters open their mouths, Chinese comes out and then you have to translate the Chinese.

= The dialogue. That's the difficult part. To give the levels of diction. It's very hard.

? IT's very busy in your brain!

= Yeeees. It's a very hard part. Very hard. The whole thing is an artifice. Because no Chinese speak this kind of language at all. But I have to make every part convincing. Sound convincing...

? They don't speak this kind of language...?

= They don't speak English at all. (laughs) The whole thing is artifice. That's why I say, everything is created.

? Had you read stories written in English, were you steeped in the English tradition of story-telling?

= Yeah. I studied literature, I read a lot of books, yes.

? I have this feeling of you as Magellan, setting out into the Pacific Ocean, having never seen it, having to go into a new mode of story telling in a new language. That feels overwhelming.

= Yeah, it was very overwhelming at the beginning. But the beauty of the English language is that there has been a grand tradition, in which some writers whose mother tongues are not English, later became major writers. Masters, even. So that's the encouragement. For me, there was nothing original. It all depends, whether I had the luck, the ability and courage, perhaps, really to follow the way. So there was nothing original in this. That's the beauty of it. In another language, perhaps, we don't have that kind of reference even. There is no sense of direction at all.

B You spoke earlier about, as you were making the decision to not go back to China, to stay here, about the questions around purposiveness. What's the purpose, what's the meaning. What's this all about. Has that clarified as you have written? Do you now have a sense that your reason, a reason, a major reason is writing literature, great literature, in the English language.

= You know, that is not a purpose. Writing for me is just something I can do, really. So the meaning, the usefulness of one's life, very often related to how useful we can be -- for me, for many years, I didn't know what to do. My wife encouraged me a lot. She always say, "You were born a writer, you must continue to write." But she would say, "You don't write in Chinese. Nobody would accept your way of writing. You can only do it in English."

? So you had a good teacher at your side.

= My wife, she is VERY smart in that aspect. And that's why I could continue. So, gradually, I found that on the page, I can be...I have a kind of freedom. I can manage. So that's, for me, maybe that's the purpose. That's a way to spend my life -- useful, meaningful, I think.

? And you are in such a unique position to tell us the stories of a people we just...we don't know these stories. We don't know these life experiences. Even those of us who are interested in China and would... for instance. I hadn't understood -- I've not been to China -- I'd not understood how agrarian it still is. The sense of how poor it is. The stunning pollution at every turn. These things...you don't get that (It's true!) unless somebody tells us the stories.

= Yeah, sure.

? And China is so big. And so important in the world. And to have a sense of the personal in this -- who else would tell this story but you?

= There are writers who write about China, but different approaches, I guess. For me, my ambition, from the start, was to translate history into literature. Because I had noticed that there were many books, history books, about China. But in literature, there have not been many pieces of literature. So that was my very primitive, very simple, even simple-minded idea.

? The sun is simple. The sun get s up in the morning and gives us light. (laughs) You have to have something that's a guiding principle.

= Yeah, in that sense, that idea, took me on the way -- that was good and useful for me. Made me set out on the way to do the work. See, that's helped me. But as I continue, really I don't think I can continue to write a lot about China. Because I haven't returned to China in many years. 15 years.

? So what will you write next?

= Maybe, immigrant experience. Maybe some books set in China, then gradually move out of China, in a third country, maybe -- you mention, it has to be in the United States. There is a sense, the departure has already been accomplished. Now is a matter of arrival.

? That is beautifully put.

B It sounds as if this is now your home.

= Yes.

B And I mean that in a (yes) metaphysical, psychological, (yes) spiritual...

= Physical, too.

? Does it feel that way? (Yes.) All that pain in your head, has it gotten you to a different place?

= But still, I feel this is home. I went to Canada three years ago. For years, I dreamed of going to Canada, because they have universal medical insurance. I thought...I could write full time. But I went there, I realized what a great country the United States is. Really, I missed the States.

? That's a sense of "home." As in "I want to go home"!

= Yes, IT is a place.
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Champagne · 发表于: 星期二一月 29, 2008 9:13 pm 发表主题: