Ya Yin's "Andante Cantabile" 瘂弦的『如歌的行板』

I had an extremely taxing day yesterday, having to finish a 15 page witness statement, 4 letters and numerous trivial office duties, looking for new office premises, revising and then taking the Spanish final examination and organizing a class list and a dinner. So I shall be lazy today, just as the conclusion of the first stanza of the poem by Ya Yin I am about to translate.  I shall just choose a short poem for translation.

如歌的行板                                               Andante Cantabile

 

溫柔之必要                                                              The necessity for tenderness                                                        

肯定之必要                                                              The necessity for assurance 

一點點酒和木樨花之必要                                   The necessity for a little wine and plum flower

正正經經看一名女子走過之必要                     The necessity for formally looking at a passing lady

君非海明威此一起碼認識之必要                      The basic necessity for acknowledging that you are not Hemingway

歐戰，雨，加農砲，天氣與紅十字會之必要 The necessity for European wars, rains, canons, weather and Red Cross

散步之必要                                                             The necessity for a stroll

溜狗之必要                                                             The necessity for walking a dog

薄荷茶之必要                                                         The necessity for mint tea

每晚七點鍾自證券交易所彼端                           The necessity for rumours rising like grass at the other end of the Stock Exchange

草一般飄起來的謠言之必要。旋轉玻璃門    at 7 oc'clock each evening. The necessity for

之必要。盤尼西林之必要。暗殺之必要。晚報之必要 for revolving doors. The necessity for penicillin. The necessity for assassination. The necessity for the evening post

穿法蘭絨長褲之必要。馬票之必要              The necessity for wearing long flannel pants. The necessity for horse racing tickets

姑母遺產繼承之必要                                        The necessity for inheriting paternal aunt's estate 

陽臺、海、微笑之必要                                   The necessity for veramdahs , seas, smiles 

懶洋洋之必要                                                    The necessity to feel lazy.

 

而既被目為一條河總得繼續流下去的        Having been treated as a river, it must continue to flow

世界老這樣總這樣：──                             The world is always so and ultimately so

觀音在遠遠的山上                                          The Koon Yin on the distant hill

罌粟在罌粟的田裡                                          The poppies in the poppy field

This is a most unusual poem. It seems to merely list various things which the poet regards as necessary. They are put in the form of a list to show first that they are required for his life and secondly that they are of equal importance. However, a more careful scrutiny will reveal that some of those "needs" are objective whilst others are purely personal to the poet and thus subjective. They range from minor personal habits and taste to the need of man to fight and to kill each other and the subsequent need to repair the damage to life and the institutional need to redress man's problem of survival. Twice he mentions the need to look after his material welfare: the stock exchange and the need to inherit money to enable him to survive.

The first stanza starts with certain emotional and psychological needs. Then he goes on to list the material conditions for the achievement of those needs. Then towards the end of the first stanza, the poet skilfully begins to talk for the first time about the need to relax: the verandah, the seas, the smiles and the need to do nothing.

In the second stanza, there is a sudden switch of pattern. The litany of the repetitious "necessity" is dropped. But that change is more apparent than real. It is no more than a change of form, not of contents. He continues to emphasize the "inevitability" or he "necessity" of the ways of the world. From the concrete details, he goes into the general principle and perhaps universal principle of the ways of the world: the need of the world to go on drearily the way it has been doing so and he emphasizes this ineluctable "necessity" by the use of the words "老" or always, in the old and familiar way and "總" or always or in the end, finally or ultimately etc.

Then at the end of the poem he introduces two ways of resolving this monotony of having to do all the things which are needful: the spirituality of a Buddha which advocates that in the end, everything is "empty", that the world is little more than the temporary coming together of all kinds of causes which are mutually co-dependent and which cause each other as transient, provisional, temporary phenomona or in Buddhist jargon "illusions". The other alternative is a journey not into spirituality but into drugs: the poppy, the ingredient for the production of opium. These are the only two solutions: religion and drugs. To Marx, religion is the opium of the people! Is this what the poet is trying to suggest? The title of the poem is "andante cantabile" ("andante" being Italian for a normal ambling or walking speed  and "cantabile" being Italian for song-like) which again emphasizes that it is not something rapid, quick, rousing, soft or strident: something perfectly "normal" and "ordinary" and hence "general", hence perhaps inescapable!What is that song? The song of Life itself!