A Primer of the Swan as an Isolated Case - Zang Di / 臧 棣

Zang Di / 臧 棣




A Primer of the Swan as an Isolated Case

There in the dance of life is a question mark, snow white,
That fleshes out into a visible statue
With its own body; it’s stainlessly immaculate
And much more, and even its reflection
Become so beautiful that makes you a little embarrassed.
Silvergrasses, withered and yellow now, delay not
A minute and buy up all the blues of time.
The wilderness comes late but still
It poses itself as a perfect convergence.
The river is icy blue, just like the once when
You rarely thought of the slow-flowing waves
As also the most ideal pedestal
For the statue. No need to worry
About the effect after it’s installed;
Over the clarity, a moving pedestal goes
Perfectly well with the snow-white breathing statue.
Before the swan were seen there,
Grebes and wild ducks had also appeared,
But obviously that place is reserved for it.
Still requires an explanation? Noble memory stays
Above your shoulders and trusts nothing but its instinct.
The closer you get to it, the more you want to hold it back,
As if you have suddenly found
You have something you should give back to it,
But the pretense is no longer grounded.

(Translated by Fan Jinhua)




以天鹅为孤例入门

生命之舞中有一个雪白的问号
被它用自己的躯体
充实成可见的雕像；岂止是
真的一尘也不染，连倒影
都美得让你有点不好意思。
枯黄的荻草也没耽误一分钟，
时间的忧郁已被全部买断。
尽管已迟到，但旷野
依然是一次完美的收敛。
河水冰蓝，正如你以前
很少想过缓缓流动的波浪
其实也是极为理想的
雕像基座。安装的效果
完全不需要操心；
澄澈之上，移动的基座
正好配上会呼吸的雪白的雕像。
在天鹅出现在那里之前，
野鸭和䴙䴘也出现过，
但是很显然，那个位置是留给它的。
还需要解释吗？高贵的记忆
越过你的肩头，只信任它的本能。
离它越近，就越想叫住它，
就好像你突然发现
你有一件东西，应该还给它，
而借口已不成立。



*



A Study of Golden Cicadas

The fact is, no one has ever seen a golden cicada,
let alone a magical shell
Like a widget overflowing with gold dust
That follows the general orientation of bones
And breaks slowly away. In reality,
It is more likely that the shadow originates from
The fact that every statue likes to sway with the wind.
The lesson from green willow’s hospitality
Will be sufficient to support such a conclusion:
A real cicada needs none of
The flippant gold dust; no matter how splendid
The paint looks, it doesn't need it.
A great cicada will need even less than
The superficial adornment. Actually, it is the desire
To slough off the shell that make your kind:
Undefined in bondages and frivolous in shortcuts.
Just too difficult to trace the source to the transparent wings.
Naturally, once you realize you can reduce
Some weights, you can indeed pose
A timely question: do you really
Have ever had a kind like that?

(Translated by Fan Jinhua)




金蝉学

其实，没有人见过金蝉；
更遑论一个神奇的壳
就像流溢着金粉的小品一样
被它顺着骨骼的走势
缓缓脱离。现实中，
更多的是，影子源于
每个雕像都喜欢随风晃动。
领教过柳绿的盛情，
足以得出这样的结论：
一只真正的蝉其实
不需要那些轻浮的金粉；
漆得再好看，也不需要。
一只伟大的蝉，就更不需要
那些外在的矫饰。渴望脱壳的，
其实是你的同类：既暧昧于
束缚，也轻浮于捷径。
想要溯源到透明的翅膀，太难了。
当然，一旦意识到可以减轻
某些重量时，你的确可以
及时反问：你真的
有过那样的同类吗？





***



Zang Di, born in Beijing in April 1964, was admitted to Chinese Department of Peking University in September 1983 and received a PhD in Literature from Peking University in July 1997, where he has been teaching since 1996 and is currently a professor in Chinese Department and editor of the journal New Poetry Criticism. He briefly worked as a journalist for China News Agency from 1990 to 1993. He has ever won numerous poetic prizes and awards including Pearl River International Poetry Festival Award in 2007, Perfect Chinese Literature Award from Changjiang River Literature & Art in 2008, the Poet of the Year 2008 Award from Chinese Literature Media Awards, etc. His many honors include one of Contemporary China’s Top Ten Prominent Young Poets (2005), 1979-2005 China’s Top Ten Avant-Courier Poets (2006), China’s Top Ten Rising Poetry Critics (2007), Contemporary China’s Top Ten Rising Poets (2007), Chinese Poetry Biennial Top Ten Poets (2008), etc. He is the author of several collections of poetry, in-cluding Memory of Yan Yuan (1998), The Rustle of Leaves in the Wind (2000), Fresh Thorns (2002), The Universe is Flat (2008), and Emp¬ty-City Strategy (2009)。


臧棣， 1964 年4 月生在北京。现任教于北京大学中文系，北京大学中国诗歌研究院研究员。代表性诗集有《燕园纪事》（1998 年）,《宇宙是扁的》（2008 年），《骑手和豆浆》（2015 年），《最简单的人类动作入门》（2017 年），《情感教育入门》（2019 年），《沸腾协会》（2019 年），《尖锐的信任丛书》（2019 年），《诗歌植物学》（2021 年），《非常动物》（2021 年），《世界太古老 眼泪太年轻》（2021 年）， 《精灵学简史》（2022 年）等。曾获《南方文坛》杂志“2005 年度批评家奖”，“中国当代十大杰出青年诗人”（2005 年），“1979-2005 中国十大先锋诗人”（2006 年），“中国十大新锐诗歌批评家”（2007 年），《星星》2015 年度诗歌奖，扬子江诗学奖（2017 年），人民文学诗歌奖（2018 年），第四届《钟山》文学奖（2019 年），昌耀诗歌奖（2022 年），屈原诗歌奖（2022 年），鲁迅文学奖诗歌奖（2022 年）。