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2013年7月25日 星期四

Xi Murong's "Listener" (席慕蓉的《旁聽生》)

Attended a very touching talk in one of the lecture halls of the Convention Centre last Sunday. In fact, more than one by one of my favourite poetesses, Xi Murong. First, there was a public recitation of three of her poems. That was followed by a talk on what made her write what she did. Although she was not supposed to be doing a recitation at the second talk, she couldn't help herself: towards the close of her talks, she recited again two of the three which she did at the earlier session.

Although I saw a picture of Xi Murong once on the internet. It was a completely different experience to see her in person. One sees her as she narrows her eyes, as she adjusts her hair, as she gestures with her fat fingers, as she unconsciously touches her scarf, as she laughs or smiles her embarrassment when she recounts how she was taunted by his brother and husband about her complete ignorance of the principles of physics, as she lifts her head in reverie of the pastures, the hills, the rivers, the grassland, the trees, the skies of Mongolia, as she recalls her stares of utter amazement at the inscription on the back of what she originally thought was a 9th century Han stele in Mongolia, carved in her native language, when she saw it for the first time. As she recites the last few lines of the poem I recently translated "The Border Farewell Song", one could hear the trembling in her voice,  choked with irrepressible emotions. At that moment, I could no longer withhold my own tears. It was so moving. What drew those reluctant tears from my tear glands, which seemed suddenly to have taken on a life of their own, completely evading my control, was her honest unabashed and undisguised love of her motherland, which before her first visit, remained, as she said, only her father's "homeland". In one of her earlier poems, the "listener" or "auditor", she recounted how she felt about her native country.


She told us how she was born in Sichuan and how her father as a Kumintang official moved to Taiwan when she was a child where she learned about her native country, Mongolia only second hand, through geography books and the mouths of her father and yet somehow, whenever she saw any photograph or heard about it, a certain feeling would well up inside her and how she instantly felt she was "connected" to the grassland, the hills, the lakes, the horses, the cattle, the sheep of Mongolia the very first moment she set foot upon it. She has since become a passionate defender of the preservation of "open" not fenced up, grassland of Mongolia. The "listener" is one of the three poems she recited. In this poem, she recounts her feelings of alienation  as a "listener" sitting in on talks about her native country.


旁聽生

您是怎麼說的呢 
沒有山河的記憶等於沒有記憶
沒有記憶的山河等於沒有山河
還是說
山河間的記憶才是記憶
記憶裡的山河才是山河
              
我可真是兩者皆無了
是的     父親
在「故鄉」這座課堂裡
我沒有學籍也沒有課本
只能是個遲來的旁聽生                
只能在最邊遠的位置上靜靜張望
 觀看一叢飛燕草如何茁生於曠野
 一群奔馳而過的野馬  如何
在我突然湧出熱淚裡
影影綽綽地融入夕暮間的霞光

席慕蓉

Listener

How would you say it                                                          A memory without a country is not a memory                     A country without a memory is not a country
Or should one say                                                          Only a memory within a country is a memory                    Only a country inside a memory is a country
If so, I really have neither                                             Yes    Father                                                                    In the classroom of “native country”                                 I have neither student status nor textbooks                       I could only be a late listener
I could only look around in silence from the farthest seat And watch how a clump of swallow grass grow in the fields How the images of a passing pack of galloping mustangs     Merge effortlessly into the shadowy red aura of dusk        In  those hot tears welling up suddenly within me

Xi Murong    tr. El Zorro

10 則留言:

  1. A moving poem and an equally moving rendition.
    Wish I was there too to share that wonderful moment.
    [版主回覆07/26/2013 10:07:41]Yes, it was an unforgettable experience to see her "live", to hear those subtle inflection of her voice and to feel a little of what she felt. It's a good poem made better by being recited in person. Like all other poetry, sinicized Mongolian poetry came down to us from an ancient oral tradition in which poets sang or recounted how they felt around a camp fire when the day's work was done, face to face with its listeners. There was that physical closeness which somehow added to the emotional power of what was recited or composed as the words poured out so naturally from the heart of the poet with that special kind of intimacy created by physical proximity. .

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  2. It's better having no momery of one's country than being tortured by the government.
    [版主回覆07/26/2013 10:09:38]You may well be right. Both are painful. It's most difficult to say which is more so.

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  3. 多謝到訪網誌
    [版主回覆07/26/2013 10:10:59]You got an interesting blog. You're welcome here too.

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  4. 雖然詩人說,已經回不到30年前,
    《一棵會開花的樹》便成為經典了!
    [版主回覆07/26/2013 10:14:10]That must be a poem very close to her heart, written whilst she was still so young. It's the first one she did at the poetry recitation. She surely knows why its' good and became an evergreen..

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  5. 好!
    [版主回覆07/29/2013 11:46:56]Thanks are due to Xi Murong for creating them in the first place. I'm just a sort of documentary "Dracula".!
    [無明十郎回覆07/26/2013 12:22:47]雪山飛狐哥哥介紹得好
    [版主回覆07/26/2013 11:40:09]

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  6. 人們對故鄉總有著一份無名的嚮往~~
    [版主回覆07/27/2013 07:55:41]Especially or only those who are far away from it? Don't human beings have a tendency to long for and beautify everything which they don't have?

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  7. 星期六又到 啦 又有 FUN
    [版主回覆07/27/2013 07:55:58]Yes, it's already there!

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  8. 命運的旁聽生,會有畢業之期嗎?
    [版主回覆07/28/2013 12:23:39]I wouldn't know. Perhaps the day he/she graduates may be the day he/she leaves this world forever and perhaps not, if you believe that spirit will survive one and even if not, at least if one's poetry/writing does so.

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  9. 在山河歲月裡, 大家都是旁聽生! 參與的只那麼一點點! 算得上參與遇嗎?!
    [版主回覆07/28/2013 12:48:12]Yes, perhaps. Maybe we're listening in to a part of our "self", which to us may be "terra incognita" and which is our true "home". Maybe, it's a realm where time and space will have lost all its ordinary meaning, where all boundaries have melted and where we're finally one with others, with nature, with time, with everything which is not 'self". If so, it matters little if "we" "participate" in it or "encounter" it because there'll no longer be any "me" separate or separable from the "non-me" by those "vanished" boundaries.

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  10. I would have attended this talk if I were in Hong Kong. Thank you very much for your rendition and sharing!
    [超哥回覆07/31/2013 20:40:29]Thank you El Zorro!
    [版主回覆07/31/2013 17:43:58]Yes, not to be missed. Welcome back!

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