When I was young, my mother used to read the Tang poems to me. The other day I was browsing quite desultorily when I came across one of them.
白日依山尽， 黄河入海流。
欲穷千里目， 更上一层楼。
(bai ri yi shan jin, huang he ru hai liu
yu qiong qian li mu, geng shang yi ceng lou)
This is a poem that has become a bit of a cliche, even here in Singapore. Part of the reason is that the words are very simple, and anyone with even only a year of Chinese study would be able to understand each character, except perhaps 欲, for which 要 stands in today (it means “to desire to do something”). However, the Chinese is decidedly literary, and you do need to understand a bit more about Literary Chinese to see what 依, 尽, and 穷 are doing.
The sun sets behind the mountains,
The Yellow River rushes into the sea.
If you want to enjoy even more scenery,
You have to go up one more floor.
The last two lines in Chinese are untranslatable, because they are so compact and full of terse meaning. Unravelling those lines, they say that for someone who wants to see for a thousand li (a distance measure) and to exhaust it (this is exhaust in the sense of to fully realise that potential; that explains the meaning of 穷 which simply means “poor” in the modern vernacular), you have to raise (that is to say, improve!) yourself.
So my mother tells me that I used to be able to memorise these poems quite well, but I have absolutely no recollection of ever having been able to do that. Which is why I disagree with what people say about kids being able to learn language well around the age of 7. Most of the time people cite this to justify their own inability or unwillingness to challenge themselves with learning a new language, both of which are mostly attributable to mere laziness. The one thing about kids around the age of 7 is that they will willingly listen to you and happily repeat mindlessly after you. But if you do not have a proper grounding in the language afterwards, it will be for nothing.
In any case, my Chinese education did dwindle to nothing afterwards. I jumped through the hoops and all, but absolutely no love of the language was inculcated in me. My friend once told me of a summer he spent teaching English in China. He said it struck him one day why the standard of English in China is poor just as the standard of Chinese is in Singapore: the textbooks! They have the same inane passages, vocabulary exercises and that sort of nonsense. In our English classes in Singapore, we were made to read Shakespeare, and real literature. Although to today, I don’t like any of the books I was made to read in class, I do admit that having literature classes made you stop, think and reconsider, a habit that has paid off tremendously.
But fortunately for me, my friends introduced me to karaoke, and in particular Teresa Teng. The thing about Teresa Teng was that even though she had lots of cheesy songs (which are great anyway!), she did an album which was all Classical Chinese poems set to modern tunes. The most famous one of the lot was called 但愿人长久 (dan yuan ren chang jiu), because it was subsequently covered by Faye Wong. When I first heard it sung by my friend at karaoke, I asked her what the song meant. She turned to me and replied in a very serious manner, “This is deep!” It is a poem by Su Shi (苏轼) better known as Su Dongpo (苏东坡). When I learnt to understand the poem, I could never forget the lines:
人有悲欢离合，月有阴晴圆缺
(ren you bei huan li he, yue you yin qing yuan que)
Man’s fate is sorrow just as joy, parting just as reunion. But more than that, he recognises that this inexorable fate is just as natural and inevitable as the moon waxes and wanes.
One of the things that Singaporean Chinese make fun of Malaysian Chinese is how they say 几多 (ji duo) instead of 多少 (duo shao) when asking for the quantity. Which is why it was amusing for me to learn that another of the Classical Chinese poems that Teresa Teng did was called 几多愁 (ji duo chou: How much sorrow). It turns out that saying 几多 is literary! This poem was by 李后主 (Emperor Li Houzhu), but traditionally known by his personal name 李煜 (Li Yu).
问君能有几多愁，恰是一江春水向东流
(wen jun neng you ji duo chou, qia shi yi jiang chun shui xiang dong liu)
Ask a gentleman how much sorrow can he bear; it’s just as the river in spring rushes towards the east.
Why does it matter that there is poetry? Because suffering that has neither name nor voice is suffering that cannot be eased. Even if that voice is someone else’s, there is immeasurable comfort and solace in having a handle upon our sorrow. In fact, Anna Akhmatova, the great Russian poetess once wrote a preamble “Instead of a Preface” for her collection of poems titled Requiem. Her son had been arrested during the purges just before the Second World War, and she, along with many other mothers, wives, sisters and daughters, queued up endless hours in the vain hopes of seeing their loved ones.
In the terrible years of Yezhov terror I spent seventeen months waiting in line outside the prison in Leningrad. One day somebody in the crowd identified me. Standing behind me was a woman with lips blue from the cold, who had, of course, never heard me called by name before. Now she started out of the torpor common to us all and asked me in a whisper (everyone whispered there):
“Can you describe this?”
And I said: “I can.”
Then something like a smile passed fleetingly over what had once been her face.
The worst part about suffering is not being able to express it. There was an interesting selection by Teresa Teng that is titled 欲说还休 (yu shuo huan xiu). For those of you who can read Chinese and are observant, you would realise that first word is the very same 欲 in the very first poem about going up one floor. In fact, the Su Shi poem uses the same word too (我欲乘风归去 wo yu cheng feng gui qu; I long to go home riding on the wind). This poem also, interestingly enough, mentions going up a tower.
少年不识愁滋味，爱上层楼，爱上层楼，为赋新词强说愁。
而今识尽愁滋味，欲说还休，欲说还休，却道“天凉好个秋！”
In prosaic English, I offer:
When I was young and ignorant of woe and sorrow, I loved to go up the tower, to seek inspiration to write poetry about sorrow.
Now that I know sorrow to the depths of my core, I want to express it but remain silent; instead I speak about how nice the weather is this autumn!
Amazingly enough, the same sentiment is repeated, some 800 years later in an entirely different time and civilisation, by Sara Teasdale in her The Song Maker.
I made a hundred little songs
That told the joy and pain of love,
And sang them blithely, tho’ I knew
No whit thereof.I was a weaver deaf and blind;
A miracle was wrought for me,
But I have lost my skill to weave
Since I can see.For while I sang — ah swift and strange!
Love passed and touched me on the brow,
And I who made so many songs
Am silent now.
I got reminded of all this because, recently, I stumbled across yet another song of Teresa Teng that was previously unknown to me. It is titled 在水一方 (zai shui yi fang: Somewhere about the river). The first four lines of the song are adapted from a poem found in the 诗经 (shi jing) (Poem 129 in this collection). The 诗经 is a collection of poems collected from the various states during the Warring States period of history. Confucius was supposed to have been the editor of the collection as we have it today, but this claim is most likely merely legend. The rest of the lyrics of this 在水一方 are a modern vernacular expansion of the original poem. The lines might seem like some cheesy pop song lyric of today, but the fact is no one knows for sure how old the collection of poems are. When you read the words, and ponder upon the travail that is life and love, you are voicing a sentiment from thousands of years ago. From the depths of time and death, you bring to life the words that once arose from sorrow in the heart, forced into poetic form before passing through the lips of one who strove and struggled in his own life.
Studying the classics, whether Latin, Greek, Chinese, Sanskrit, makes one realise how alike we all are, across time, space, culture, history and even death. It makes us realise the truth, that there is no truth but kindness, compassion and sympathy before the death that awaits as all. This was perhaps best expressed by another great Russian poetess Marina Tsvetaeva.
I know the truth – forget all other truths!
No need for anyone on earth to struggle.
Look – it is evening, look, it is nearly night:
what will you say, poets, lovers, generals?The wind is level now, the earth is wet with dew,
the storm of stars in the sky will turn to quiet.
And soon all of us will sleep beneath the earth, we
who never let each other sleep above it.
To finally understand that we are just one more soul in this journey of life, that we join the paths so well trodden by many others is immensely comforting even as we confront fresh terrors and travails. And that is the eternal value of literature and the classics.