Jin Yong 金庸 (Louis Cha): A Hero Born

It is humbling, especially to one who takes some satisfaction from knowledge, to realize that there is an author on the level of Tolkein or Lewis of whom I had not heard before this.  Jin Yong's following in the Chinese speaking community easily matches those writers, and approaches the popularity of J.K. Rowling within his niche.  I am told by multiple Chinese friends that it would be difficult to find someone who spoke Chinese (Mandarin or Cantonese) and  had not read his books. 

Having read the book, it's easy to see why.  The characters are clearly and engagingly drawn.  The plot and setting have all the requisite elements for popular appeal.  And the ending of this first book in the Condor Heroes series makes it impossible not tho immediately search for the  next volume.  I'm certifiably a fan.  And yet.

The combination of the limitations of translation, and the unfamiliarity of the narrative structure do present something of a barrier to fandom, at least for the first half of the book.  The stories covered in this first volume alone feel so rapidly dispatched, that it feels like a shame.  Any Western author would have lingered through these passages; Jin (Yong? Cha?) seems to have been chiefly concerned with getting them out of the way at times.  He can be forgiven, of course.  If he had treated the material with Goerge R.R. Martin's relish, he never would have finished--and there would be far more than 12 volumes for me to work through.

And it's equally possible that the text doesn't feel so offhanded in the original Mandarin.  My efforts to find the original language for a particularly pleasing passage helped me to realize just what obstacles the translator faced.  A word for word rendering would have been utterly unrecognizable, and when I enlisted a native speakers help, he was unable to find the passage I wanted at all.  Such is the chasm between the original text and the translation that I enjoyed.

The French Connection

Either I have a blind spot, or there is an appeal to this sort of movie that completely escapes me.  The "based on a true story" crime drama probably has few better examples than this one, but it still left me wondering why I should care.  Perhaps I've pigeonholed myself into a mindset where I watch movies, especially those on the AFI list, with an expectation that they will be great, rather than merely serviceable.  Perhaops my working definition of "great"--namely that there should be a compelling reason for the film to exist, and that the individual elements of the film should live up in quality to that necessity--is narrow and short-sighted.  Perhaps I'm just a fuddy-duddy who doesn't see the point of these movies (this last is unlikely).

At any rate, the only pont I can think of in this film's favor is its decidedly postmodernist ending.  The ultimately frustrating wrap-up could easily have been the result of a Coen brothers collaboration, and perhaps it is this refusal to satisfy, along with certain technical elements and its place as the first R-rated movie to win the Academy Award, that prompted the AFI to have added it to its list.  And perhaps it is the films overall averageness by modern standards that caused it to drop to 93rd place on the most recent edition of the list.

이상화: 빼앗긴 들에도 봄은 오는가 (전집) I Sanghwa: Does Spring Also Come to Stolen Fields? (collected poems)

Normally I would write about a Korean book in Korean, but it is such a travesty that this seminal poet (whose eponymous poem every Korean learned by heart in primary school) is inaccessible in English, I am taking it upon myself to provide an English translation of some of my favorites here.  As for commentary, English readers should know that I Sanghwa combines the spirit of the Romantics--especially Shelley--with the colloquial accessibility of Yeats or Frost, but suffuses them with the fire of a revolutionary poet in occupied lands for which I can think of no corrolary.

Primitive Sorrow

The vagabond-brooding emerald plank of the facedown sea lying silently

Squints, as though looking at a late summer forest on top of a mountain.

Even on irritatingly long summer days, be merry for the sky at noon.

Sometimes the breath of a suckling infant blows in from there.

On every fence between two houses crouched on the slanted hills

Clamshells hang in nets, rows of teeth laughing from afar.

There’s not a soul on this facedown sandy road from the village.

Listless from night fishing, they are enjoying the sweet liquor of late sleep.

Just a few young women, baskets hoisted on their red-skirted waists,

Cross from tidal stone to tidal stone, hanging seaweed, like a dream from the sea.

At the soft but mournful cry of the cuckoo, heard in sleep,

An old dog stretches out its neck, looks around, and closes its eyes again.

In my breast, my spirit and my entranced gaze fly beyond the horizon with a flock of seagulls

Neither seeing nor being seen, only the building ripples of water-like thoughts.

~~

Chosunitis

Yesterday, today, the breath of every visible person is throttled.

Without joy for so long

Forced laughter makes a home on faces, like melon flowers.

Without even feeling the rage of the winter blizzard

Sweat surges on bracken-like fists. Breath, trying to break through this sealed window to the sky, is throttled.

~~

Extreme

My throbbing spirit struggles—

Yesterday, today, how many times—and writhes.

Unresting time, behind my tears,

Flows, flows, to kill me it flows.



Through the sprinting starlight

When the wind beats the ends of the branches

Why do the crickets look at the silent heavens and cry?

Even thus, all creation remains in the dead of night.



Last year, yesterday, in the midst of that dream

I too came unknowingly thus.

The ground, the ground I trod, how many times forgiven

Oh, it’s thrown me into a tear-worn ravine.



I didn’t know the easy world lies in contentment;

I didn’t know the happy life lies in submission.

Even so, I find a new road and, upon travelling it,

Even on that road my deathbound spirit is lonely.



Rather than seek my way in submission and contentment,

Rather than tie my life to another’s breath,

No, death— death is my path.

A new life in another land, this death!



Even so, treading this path

Oh, that day, that moment, how vexatious.

Even now, the sorrow that remains,

The very thought of it burns and stings.



With this breath that cannot return once it leaves,

Ever I live in a mere empty laugh.

O my sword, make my spirit a stone,

A stone that wears away at the bottom of a stream.

~~

Flower of the Heart

For my anguished Cheongchun companion

From today on, do not conceal it!

Whether happiness or sorrow, anything at all,

Even the anxiety of looking at what is to come—


Oh silent-brooding one, open your throat.

We are somehow wandering horses.

Wet your lips on the springs of dark youth


Dance, if just in the breast of today

Ah, you! Wander not back and forth

Burn up!

Till only ash is left!

Today’s life is only for today



Oh, and night is darkening.

A human is but a ghost.

The moment passes.

Through the unknown space of far-travelled tears,



Hidden in the very core of our breasts

You fair blue flower of the heart, bloom away.

We are but wanderers on a far road, singing the praises of today.

~~

The Song of the Sea

A song that mixes my spirit with the waves, bringing the feeling of the East Sea

Come to me, oh messenger, come to me

Forget the declarations of kings, tattered with age,

The ramblings of a sick child,

embracing grief, come only to me.



Here is that nature which mocks god,

And youth that never fades.

Cast away the tear-drenched world, come to me as I laugh,

And know that life exists only in change.