Alone with Lyrics Under an Autumn Lamp
On writing
I have been reading Wang Guowei’s Remarks on Lyrics. I agree strongly with his theory of jingjie — artistic world, or “realm” — and it fits how I think about making prose, so I copied a few lines and added notes of my own.
In lyrics, realm is the highest thing. Where there is realm, a high style follows of itself, and famous lines as well. Realm is not scenery only. Joy, anger, grief, and pleasure are also a realm in the human heart. Whoever can write true scenery and true feeling has realm; otherwise, none.
In the work of a master, feeling must soak the heart, and scenery must open the eyes and ears. The wording comes as if spoken, with no look of being dressed and forced. Because what they have seen is true, and what they know is deep.
I have come to see this. When I was young I sometimes wrote to flash my talent. I was still small; I had not lived much, and by nature I was cool. Where would deep feeling have come from? It was only “forcing sorrow to make a new poem.” Now I see writing like my old writing: gorgeous at first glance, and it does not hold. However ornate, it is language without a soul, only pretending to be deep. Over-ornament is a vase: surface, not literature.
Beauty is in the bone, not the skin. A true beauty, even in coarse clothes and loose hair, does not hide her color. Prose is the same.
The lyric poet is one who has not lost the heart of a child.
True literature is not carving phrases. It is writing one’s real feeling with a child’s heart. In Alaska I once said: only a soul like a glacier can write prose that leaves no trace of effort. The same thought from another side.
Toward the universe and human life, a poet must enter, and also step out. Enter, and he can write it; step out, and he can see it. Enter, and there is life; step out, and there is high manner.
This is interesting. I think most people can enter and cannot leave. They are stuck in the dust, cannot jump free — they do not know the mountain’s true face, being on the mountain — so the pattern is small, and there is no high manner. I was the opposite extreme: I could leave and could not enter. From childhood I did not fit the ordinary world. I watched joy and grief from a cold distance, and kept out of anything I could not control. My family often said I did not eat the smoke of human life. The pieces I wrote as a boy still have a kind of spirit, but too much pride, not enough blood.
I see now that blood has to be looked for among people. Not walking through a crowd — that only gives the feeling I wrote as a child, “crossing a flourishing desert alone.” You have to deal with people, make a real tie. Do not run. Do not fear being pulled in. Put down the arrogance of talent, put down the bias against the ordinary, come down from the high platform of thought, and walk up to that person.
On ideals
Wang Guowei’s three realms of life I knew as a child and did not understand. Now I have a little of my own sense of them.
Last night the west wind withered the green trees. I climbed the high tower alone, and looked to the end of the sky’s road.
The first realm is horizon. Every clear evening, when I go to the roof for the sunset, I think of this. The west wind withering the trees fits a hard world, a season of trouble, people worn down, the same everywhere. Climbing the high tower alone means a larger platform; “alone” has a lonely pride. Looking to the end of the sky’s road is large-minded: stand high, see far. The mushroom does not know a month; the cicada does not know a year. A wide view from the tower is the condition for seeing the road to the end. For me, coming to America opened my eyes in a way life at home did not. Reading and thinking without stopping, I do see more choices. Even so, if you have seen every road to its end — which to take? What life do I want? What is the truth of the world? How does one become free? With those questions I often stall in the airy house of thought.
The belt grows slack, and I do not regret. For her I will let myself grow worn.
The second realm is clinging. I know this. I am extremely stubborn. Once I decide a thing I go alone, and would not turn if I hit the wall. If the whole world stood against me I would still hold to what I had set my heart on. That clinging has served me; I have rarely failed to get what I wanted. But I have spent it on small tasks — using an ox-knife to kill a chicken. In the large direction I still waver. If I once chose a road I would walk it without turning, and in time I would do something. Some say the large direction is not thought out but made by one concrete thing after another. That may be true. The road is long; I will seek high and low.
I looked for her a thousand times in the crowd. Suddenly I turned, and that person was there, where the lamps were few.
The third realm is hope. You search so long and fail, turn your head, and see. Without those thousand searches, there would probably be no sudden turning. Luck seems conserved, somehow. After much in America, in the hardest time I believed heaven does not wall a person in. That kept me going until the worst turned, luck came, and things went as I wished. Mountains and rivers, no road; willows dark, flowers bright, another village. What looked unclimbable is now a light story. As for the meaning of a life and the source of the world, I have not had that kind of awakening. I keep hoping, and looking. Perhaps one day I will see.
On feeling
I find the three realms can also read feeling. When young the poet knows many people, and some of it is play; proud of his gift, he climbs the tower alone and looks to the end of the sky. Alive in the world, he still wants a companion of the heart, so he clings to one person: the belt slacks, he does not regret, for her he grows worn. Knowing it cannot be, he does it anyway. That person is on the other side of the water. He knew, and still, facing it, he is lost. Why? Why this? After a thousand thoughts he turns, and sees the one where the lamps are few — and that person looks up, and is himself.
Feeling seems to be toward another, and comes from the self. For “I,” another person is an object seen through my eyes, not the person as they are. The same thing is different in different eyes — not because the object changed, but because the one who looks did. “I” is the subject. All feeling for others still lands on “I.” Attend too hard to the self and it is like looking at the sun; the eyes hurt. Seeing others in the light is easier, and you see yourself more clearly.
A cool nature treats all outer things as equally none of his business. He is not disturbed, but a layer sits between him and the world, as if he had not quite lived, and did not know joy or pain — like a stone. Feeling makes him more like a person. Because he attends to one particular person, he attends to all that is around that person, from a point to a surface, to the whole world. The fog between him and the world thins. The world becomes alive in his eyes. Much he could not feel, he feels; poems he could not read, he can.
What the feeling is aimed at matters less. In “the belt grows slack… for her I grow worn” — who is “her”? No one cares. Scenery or person, both are outer things. “Human life is a fool for feeling; this grief has nothing to do with wind and moon.” Feeling belongs to the poet, and is only thrown onto things, which then take on color as if in sunlight. Hundreds of years later people will not remember the object in the poem; the object can be whatever the reader brings. The slack-belt lines were written of a beauty; later many take them as unregretting pursuit of an ideal, and the object becomes the ideal. So the feeling in the poem is what matters — it crosses time and station and becomes something human beings share.
Once you see this, the poet has a free mind, and can go in and out of the world: not cut off from it, not trapped by things, with a kind of ease. A small boat gone from here; the rest of life given to river and sea. Some of this I have understood, and have not the strength of the brush to write. There is a true meaning in it; I want to tell it, and have forgotten the words.