NEWS - GEOFF’S RECOMMENDED READING (JULY)

The Story of China, with Michael Wood

Finding a book doesn’t always start at a book store, sometimes it starts with a documentary.

I have a fascination with China and love its culture and cuisine*, and so this documentary by Historian Michael Wood really fed my curiosity and got me a tad excited. So excited was I in fact, to hear of the T’ang Dynasty and a golden age of cultural development.

In episode 3 of The Story of China, he mentioned the great classical poet, Tu Fu which then led me on that book search. It was here that I found one by David Hinton, a translator of Tu’s classical work. (The Selected Poems of Tu Fu - Expanded and translated by David Hinton).

Tu’s life was fraught with upheaval and yet he continued to write poetry. Each poem is to be viewed in the light of a Daoist/Ch’an state of mind, a meditation on the everyday, in which Tu’s heartfelt pain is there for all to read. He doesn’t use poetry to escape from reality, but to search the ‘inner-patterns’ of that reality.

We see in this book the times and tragedies that influenced and scarred his life. Hinton’s introduction of each section, based on time periods of his life are full of pathos. He write’s:

“Tu Fu, who has been honoured as a devoted father and husband, now began a desperate struggle to support his wife and children, a struggle that would continue most of his life. Tu’s lifelong health problems also began at this time (c752 CE), when he developed chronic asthma.” (p12)

As well as personal tragedies (the death of two of his children) and his poor health, there were also years of political turbulence and Civil War (755-759 CE). These left the Tu family as refugees. Hinton writes,

“The fall in census figures from FIFTY-THREE MILLION before the fighting to only SEVENTEEN MILLION afterward summarises the war’s catastrophic impact: THIRTY-SIX MILLION people were left either dead or displaced and homeless.” (p37)

And yet, the noble-hearted poet continues to write poetry. Here are the opening stanza’s of his ‘Spring Landscape’.

“The country in ruins, rivers and mountains

continue. The city grows lush with spring.

Blossoms scatter tears for us, and all these

separations in a bird’s cry startle the heart.” (p42)

His poetry is of human resistance to life’s political and social turmoil - resilience, perseverance, long-suffering - all are his and captured in these two verses. The ruination, the tears, the separation (and then later the reunion of his family). He just may be the greatest poet in the history of poetry, not just China’s greatest, but the world's most renowned writer.

I recommended this book to you, because no matter where and when you are in your travels and travails, this book, as Chris (Publisher - Upptäcka Press) said to me, “breathes life into (your) bones.”

Make July a Tu Fu poetry month.

Geoff Hall

* in 2016 my wife and I visited China for the first time. We stayed in Shanghai and just loved our time there.