A poet of non-poetic things, Sun Wenbo drops himself into the mine of his subject and then starts tapping on the walls around him to find a way to tunnel out. This is the tension that undergirds his work, whether the poet’s intellect will manage to make its way back to the surface. His lines are sinewy but vernacular, sometimes verging on chatty, with moments of startling grace. He has read and absorbed the greats of Chinese literary history, and he writes as much to Du Fu as to his contemporaneous readers. His oeuvre as a whole presents a poet passionately concerned with words above all, but also with history and politics, the metaphysical and social realms, philosophy, love and its failures. When judging their peers, Chinese writers tend to be concerned not only with a poet’s output, but with his or her attitude toward the work of poetry. Sun Wenbo ranks among the most focused and intent. He has a scholar’s force of concentration and a soldier’s determination.
Translating Sun Wenbo’s poetry can seem deceptively straightforward. Because his language can be casual, and his topics ordinary (even base), a translator can produce a reasonable likeness of the original by skimming the surface, never plumbing the material beneath. It’s sometimes easy to misinterpret or miss entirely the sudden shifts in tone, like at the end of “Elegy for a Poisoned Era,” where we are taken from the battlefield of the body to “clouds as white as blossoms.” The translator must keep both ears keenly attuned to these maneuvers and be able to change register with the agility of the original. She must also not flinch from constipation, nausea, blood, and flies, and perhaps even find something lovely in the humorously bucolic image of “bacterial farm fields and bacterial grazing lands and bacterial cities.” These three poems are but a small taste of a very large literary talent.
– Eleanor Goodman
—
The Butterfly Effect
With twists and turns, I talk butterflies into women, talk women into nymphs, talk nymphs into tigers, talk tigers into bureaucrats, talk bureaucrats into wrathful gods. Going a step further, what else can I say? I’d have to ask you. It wouldn’t do not to ask. I can also do the reverse, talk wrathful gods into bureaucrats, bureaucrats into tigers, tigers into nymphs, nymphs into women, women into butterflies. The natural order moves in cycles, we’re not only spinning inside language. One word trails another. Or you might say, no word stands on its own. Expanding on this, if the word war didn’t exist, there’d be no word for peace, no word for despotism, and no need for the word democracy. If you say the word man, the word woman has to follow. If you say the word good, the emergence of the word evil has more meaning. If you say virtuous, there has to be lascivious to counter it. I sometimes bring up lizards, which means we’re talking about flies, and if we’re talking about flies, we’re not just talking about nausea, rather, talking about nausea means we’re talking about the world we live in. For example, this poem here, although it started with the word butterflies, I know its final destination is the word politics. But when I take apart the word politics, thousands of other words might replace it: for example, haze, snow and ice, landslide— or, what can substitute in is a panda drinking tea, a crow singing opera.
Our Reality
Words aren’t enough. Beneath this secluded body, you never know what is hidden. Soul, that outmoded word, can’t be explained. And what will happen this winter—is it a sedan? Will it will slip in an instant on a snowy road, you can’t predict—but can you guess what will happen? You can’t turn these imaginings into a cavernous courtyard, or it will be a kind of distant religion; round pillars, stained glass windows, carved wooden beds; an ancient organ begins to ring out with the singing— is this too absurd? A secluded body is a solid fortress, a private nation with complex instincts and desires—to you, it’s a hell, to others it’s a heaven; these are the two extremes of fate— if you really want to go in, what you’ll likely see is a prison of thoughts, hiding the gallows and the torture rack— and what happens if you get lost in there? Such questions can be asked a thousand times. They can extend in other directions—like people endlessly discussing horoscopes, as though it has some connection to their souls—can you really understand the faint assemblages of light hung in the night? The matter moving there corresponds to movement through the channels of the body—to enter, is this not just wishful thinking, not just the empty aspirations of words? We should stop for a moment—ah, this secluded body, place words can’t reach... burial ground for words.
Elegy for a Poisoned Era
Straining isn’t a simple word. Straining
is a tremendous force, created inside your body.
But how can you face what other people say?
Straining, from the lungs down to the anus, the pain appears and disappears.
This is the dirtiest part of the body, the body’s waste.
It’s too disturbing. Too hopeless. It makes standing impossible,
sitting impossible. It’s impossible not to think about it, that a man’s body
really doesn’t belong to him, it belongs to the nation of bacteria.
Bacterial farm fields and bacterial grazing lands and bacterial cities.
Now what will they do? Raise their own sheep,
grow their own poppies? Or convene
a plenary meeting of their own government. Anyway, anyway! It hurts you.
It makes you think of hell. Secluded forests, cold gloomy rivers,
scorching cities. Walking through them are your dead acquaintances.
They become your body’s internal scenery. Is there really nothing else:
a landscape of plastic, steel, glass? They are tempering you.
Whether you’re awake or asleep, you see your body
as a battlefield after battle, a scene of carnage. But you also see
it’s getting worse, your soul is heading toward another landscape,
a green meadow, a forest filled with the scent of flowers.
Rivers, lakes, fish and fowl, maybe a sky like a bright mirror,
clouds as white as blossoms. And the night comes on, the myriad stars glitter.
So that’s why you have the feeling of rising rather than straining down.
To scramble and clamber, is that the meaning of life? Such questions
belong to time.
Perhaps only when death arrives will an answer appear.
But, when that happens, after it all, could there be another meaning?
—
蝴蝶效应
弯来绕去，我把蝴蝶说成女人，
把女人说成妖精，把妖精说成老虎，
把老虎说成官吏，把官吏说成阎王。
再进一步，我还能说什么呢？
这需要问你。不问也行。我也可以
反过来把阎王说成官吏，把官吏说成老虎，
把老虎说成妖精，把妖精说成女人，把女人
说成蝴蝶。天道周而复始，我们不过
是在语言里打转。一个词追踪另一个词。
或者说，没有一个词是它自己。
由此，扩展开去，如果没有战争这个词，
就没有和平这个词，没有独裁这个词，
民主这样的词也就没有必要存在。
如同你说男人这个词，必然有女人一词跟随。
你说好这个词，坏这个词的出现便有了意义。
你说贞洁这个词，必有淫荡与之对应。
这使我有时候说到蜥蜴，其实是在说到苍蝇，
说到苍蝇，其实不过是在说到恶心，
说到恶心，真正的意思是说生活环境。
譬如现在这首诗，虽然是从说蝴蝶一词开始，
但我知道它最终到达的是政治一词。
而当我对政治一词分解，无数另外的词
可能代替它；譬如雾霾、冰雪、山崩，
或者代替它的是熊猫喝茶，乌鸦唱戏。
我们的现实
词不够了。幽晦的身体下面，
你永远不知道还隐藏着什么。
灵魂，一个很陈旧的词，说明不了
这个冬天发生的事——它是一辆轿车吗？
雪凝结的路上，下一秒会不会打滑，
你无法预料——猜测，你能猜测到什么？
你也不能将之想象成深广的庭院，
或是一种遥远的宗教；圆形廊柱、彩绘玻璃，
以及雕花床榻；古老的风琴正在唱颂中响起
——这太荒唐？一个幽晦的身体
实际上是坚固的堡垒，秘密的王国
有复杂的本能、欲望——对于你它是地狱，
对于别人它是天堂；这是命运的两极
——如果你真要走进去，也许
看到的是思想的牢狱，隐藏着绞刑架、老虎凳
——而迷失会发生吗？这样的疑问，
就是问一万次也不能算多。还可以向更多方向
延展——就像人们总是谈论着星相，
将之说成灵魂的对应体——你能真正了解
高悬在夜空的飘渺光团？其中物质的运动，
能够对应身体经络的运动——进入，
难道不是妄想，不是词的虚假的愿望吗
——应该停止了——啊！幽晦的身体，
词到达不了的地方……，是词的墓地。
投毒时代的挽歌
下坠，不是一个单纯的词。下坠，
是一股巨大的力，在你的身体里产生。
但你能怎么面对着别人述说？
下坠，从肺到肛门，疼痛的感觉时隐时现。
这是身体里最肮脏的部分，是身体的垃圾。
太苦恼了。太无奈了。让你站不是，
坐也不是。让你不得不想，一个人的身体
其实并不属于自己，它是细菌的国家。
有细菌的田园、细菌的牧场，甚至细菌的城市。
现在，它们要干什么呢？是在放牧自己的
羊群，还是种植自己的罂栗？或者是召开
自己的政府大会。总之，总之啊！它带来你的痛苦。
让你不得不想象地狱；幽晦树林，阴冷河流，
还有灼热火焰的城市。走在其中的全是认识的死者。
它们构成你身体内的景。难道没有另外的景；
塑料、钢铁、玻璃的风景？它们锻炼着你。
使你不管是醒着，还是睡去，都看到身体
已经犹如劫后战场，腥风血雨。但是你也看到了
越是这样，你的灵魂越是向往着另外的景色，
绿茵如盖的草地，花香四溢的森林。
河流、湖泊，鸟鱼，或者明镜一样的天空，
雪白如花的云朵。就是夜晚来临，亦繁星闪烁。
这是因为，你需要的是上升而非下坠的感觉。
攀援，命之奥义？只是这样的问题属于时间。
也许只有死神降临的一刻，才会出现答案。
但是，到了那一刻，一切，还有什么意义？
—
Eleanor Goodman is a writer and a translator from Chinese. Her work appears in journals such as PN Review, Chutzpah, Pleiades, World Literature Today, Cha, and The Best American Poetry website. She is a Research Associate at the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University, and this year she will be at Beijing University on a Fulbright Fellowship. She has held writing residencies at the Vermont Studio Center and the American Academy in Rome. Her book of translations, Something Crosses My Mind: Selected Poems of Wang Xiaoni, was the recipient of a 2013 PEN/Heim Translation Grant and is forthcoming from Zephyr Press.
Photograph by Zack Newick.