La escritura poética china seguida de una antología de poemas de los Tang

by François Cheng

Signos grabados en conchas de carey y huesos de búfalo. Signos que ostentan las vasijas sagradas y los utensilios de bronce. Adivinatorios o utilitarios, se presentan ante todo como trazos, emblemas, actitudes fijas, ritmos visualizados. Porque es independiente del sonido e invariable, porque forma una unidad en sí, cada signo preserva la ventura de seguir siendo soberano y, con ello, la de perdurar. Así, desde los orígenes, la escritura se niega a ser un mero soporte del idioma hablado: su desarrollo constituye una larga lucha por asegurarse la autonomía y la libertad de combinación. Desde el origen, se hace patente la relación contradictoria, dialéctica, entre los sonidos representados y la presencia física tensa hacia el movimiento gestual, entre la exigencia de linealidad y el deseo de evasión espacial. ¿Cabe acaso tildar de “reto insensato” el empeño de los chinos por hacer valer esta “contradicción”, y mantenerla durante cerca de cuarenta siglos? Se trata, en todo caso, de una aventura bastante asombrosa. Vale decir que los chinos, con su escritura, aceptaron una apuesta ante la que no se echaron atrás, una apuesta singular con la cual, sobre todo los poetas, salieron favorecidos.

Genres: Poetry, China, France

328 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1977

About the author

François Cheng is a French academician, writer, poet and calligrapher. He is the author of essays, novels, collections of poetry and books on art written in the French language, and the translator of some of the great French poets into Chinese.

Born in China and taking French citizenship in 1973, he was elected to the Académie française in 2002, and was the first person of Asian origin to be a member of the Academy. He was the winner of the 1998 Prix Femina for Le Dit de Tianyi ("The saying of Tianyi")

When Cheng arrived in France in 1948, on a study grant, he did not speak a word of the language. He subsequently adapted quickly and profoundly. In his speech to the Académie française, he explained, "I became a Frenchman in law, mind and heart more than thirty years ago [...] especially from that moment when I resolutely went over to the French language, making it the weapon, or the soul, of my creative work. This language, how can I say everything that I owe to it? It is so intimately bound up with the way I live and my inner life that it has proved to be the emblem of my destiny." It took many years before he became a novelist. His first works were on Chinese poetry and painting. Later he began to write works of poetry himself, before finally turning to the writing of novels.

Reviews

[Kendrick]

Francois Cheng is a French-based academician and Sinologist. He was born in Jiangxi in 1929, and travelled to France in 1948 on a study grant at the age of nineteen. He has translated French poets into Chinese across his lifetime -- but one of his earliest publications was on the features of Chinese classical poetic writing.

Cheng was influenced by Barthes and the field of semiotics. His book looks closely at metaphor, metonymy, and syntax structures of Tang poetry and ancient poetry including the Shi Jing/Chu Ci texts. He proposes that Chinese poetry is influenced by philosophical structures of meaning -- the duality between empty (Void) and full language, the duality of Yin-Yang, and the trinity of Heaven, Earth and Man.

While I found the book interesting in its identification of certain poetic techniques and the leashing of images to speak on implied themes, the writing is deeply academic. Further to that, the translations provided in this book are overtly literal. While this allows for rigorous literary analysis, the translations are clunky. Reading the translation notes by Jerome Seaton, it appears the English version hews as close as possible to Cheng's French. Unless you are interested in semiotics or Chinese classical poetry and are willing to dig through the awkward language, it may be better to pass on this book.

[Aiko · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dans ce nouvel essai, François Cheng nous initie à la poésie chinoise ancienne. Au-delà de la simple musicalité, il analyse pour nous le jeu graphique des idéogrammes, toute la spiritualité qui se trouve dans cette poésie et qui la relie aux arts de la calligraphie, de la musique, de la peinture et qui continue à nous fasciner plus de mille ans plus tard !
Il entreprend de nous faire entrer dans ce monde de métaphores et de codes, reposant sur la cosmologie chinoise, au travers d’une analyse sémiotique riche en images, à l’instar de son sujet. Sa réflexion est illustrée de nombreux poèmes classiques, ou d’extraits de ceux-ci, qui sont ensuite rassemblés dans une anthologie, réunis par courant poétique, où l’on peut comparer les poèmes dans leurs versions originales avec les traductions des concepts puis, parfois, avec une traduction littéraire.