These days I use too much time on writing Chinese. I do other things as well of course, but my thought are very much captured in the realm of Chinese literature. I dictionary read poems from all eras and am fascinated by how written characters can embody so much semantics and history. The Latin alphabet is efficient and neutral; it aligns with the spoken language. Chinese, however, is something entirely different. It can be written and read by people who speak completely different languages. Within China alone, the two major languages—Mandarin and Cantonese—are as distinct from one another as French and Italian. Yet, they use the same characters. Consequently, a book can be read by people who speak vastly different languages. On the wall above are some of my attempts to write the opening of Qu Yuan’s 2,300-year-old poem, "Crossing the River."
The image above shows four verses from a modern poem by Bei Dao.
From the first line of "Crossing the river"
And then there is the problem of all the paper that I originally just wanted to throw out.
But my wife found a solution to this senseless waste of resources. She finds it beautiful and is using it in her shop as gift wrap.
That is a whole art in itself. In that poem do the lines all start with 'crossing the river'? I don't know any of the characters.
The poem with repeating characters in each line is a modern poem by Bei Dao. He grew up in the wake of the cultural revolution and had to live abroad for many years. The lines says :
I do not believe that the sky is blue,
I do not believe in the echo of thunder,
I do not believe that dreams are false,
I do not believe that death has no revenge.
It is written in the modern simplified that the CCP introduced in the mid 1950s
Aha, I misread the captions! I ought to learn more about Chinese history. They have been through some terrible times, yet that culture seems to survive.
Yes, but they have been through terrible times for thousands of years and still the culture will not go away. Same thing for the rest of us by the way. The ballroom Trump is building is a very ugly version of architectural ideas that are over 2000 years old
A lot of people are stuck on those Greek/Roman designs. Trump has pretty terrible taste generally with all the gold crap. He needs someone to put him right.
Classicism is fine, just not his.
So resourceful! I think it's all very beautiful and would love to receive a gift packaged in it.
I wonder how the characters of different translations would differ, or even if they would. Are the meanings of each character very broad? Does the meaning change with position in the sentence? I know absolutely nothing about the language or calligraphy.
I think I will write a post about it. It is rather foreign to our understanding of how written language works.