WORLD ENOUGH AND TIME

MARK JONES ON A HISTORIC BRITISH CITY – AND ITS CHINESE APPEAL

THE BACKS IS A STRETCH of formal lawns running down to the River Cam in Cambridge, England. The river, really no more than a narrow canal at this point, is shaded by willow trees whose branches often entangle novice punters wobbling their boats along the river.

There aren’t many views in the world that speak more of solidity and permanence. In London or Edinburgh’s historic sites, modern buildings jostle with new architectural ideas. But King’s College Chapel and Trinity College’s Wren Library gaze untroubled over The Backs as they always have; and always will.

Looks, even looks as sublime as this, can be

deceptive. For the five million or so visitors who come

to Cambridge every year, the university’s buildings have competition.

On the Backs behind King’s there is a small stone. On the stone, there is a poem called On Leaving Cambridge – or perhaps it’s Saying Goodbye to Cambridge, Again or Taking Leave of Cambridge.

For this is not an English work, but a verse in Chinese written in 1928 by Xu Zhimo, when the poet was a student in the city. Here in the town of Wordsworth, Byron and Tennyson, it’s the words of a Chinese poet that draw thousands upon thousands of visitors.

In the grounds of another college, Corpus Christi, there is another new attraction. In 2008, a strange clock appeared on the college walls. It was designed by a Corpus graduate, John Taylor. A great golden grasshopper ‘eats’ the seconds away (it’s called a ‘chronophage’ or ‘time-eater’). It was followed a few years later by a second clock: this time it was a Chinese dragon doing the eating.

Taylor spent many years working with businesses in China. In his clocks, he has reimported ancient Eastern ideas of impermanence and change: time is eaten up before our eyes, never to be recaptured. For the visitors and students who pass through Cambridge, this seemingly solid and timeless place makes no more than

a fleeting impression in a life.

There’s a passage in the Virginia Woolf novel, Jacob’s Room. In it she describes the echoes of Jacob’s shoes

on the hard flagstones of Trinity College, the confident

sound of a young man returning to his rooms at night. As a new undergraduate, I fretted that my white trainers made no sound on the hard Trinity passageways.

Xu Zhimo knew that feeling; and, as he left King’s, accepted it. His poem begins:

Softly I am leaving / Just as softly as I came;

I softly wave goodbye / To the clouds in the western sky.