Texts of both worlds
Us-based Lynn Xu is a rare writer who has worked well with both her mother tongue and her adopted language.
WHEN Lynn Xu was a child, she was diagnosed with a severe allergy to the sun. As a result, she spent long days indoors with her grandmother, poring over classical Chinese poems. Brimming with evocative images of lonely men on snow-ringed lakes and mountains, the poems made an indelible impression.
Through the playful rhythms of an art form known for its meditative images, Xu came to view language and the world in a distinctive manner that shapes her writing even today.
In Debts & Lessons, a collection of poems written in both China and the United States, Xu explores the resonance of connections between lovers, friends and cultures.
Inspired in part by Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, the work is as likely to reference the Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca as the Chinese writer Gu Cheng.
In honour of the latter, whose work with the “Misty Poets” movement is said to have influenced China’s first generation of rock musicians, Xu writes: “Autumn 1981/ I am not born/ But my clothes are blowing in the street/ And through the trees/ Flowing up along the road.”
In a poem dedicated to Emily Dickinson, she presents four Chinese characters, all pronounced ye, strung together to mean: “Night/ Also/ Pages/ Wild.”
Raised in Shanghai and the United States, Xu began writing creatively in Chinese during high school. Later she won a Fulbright scholarship to write poetry in China, the results of which are included in the collection.
She is currently studying for a PhD in comparative literature in the United States at the University of California, Berkeley, through the Jacob K. Javits fellowship.
Although she has worked to retain her Chinese language skills, Xu considers English to be her dominant language.
“When I go back to China, I feel a sense of aphasia as this other language replaces the one I now feel most comfortable with,” she says. “I wanted to test the two languages against each other, and the imagination of both the city and the subject.
“There are discrepancies between modes of experience when you transition from one language to another, and in presenting language to people who don’t speak or understand that language.”
In a section entitled Night Fall, Xu’s poems intersperse Chinese and English, with full English translations presented alongside the originals. The English words that appear in the originals often do not correspond to the English translation, a deliberate disorientation intended to make the reader question their assumptions about language comprehension, Xu says.
Her work is influenced by her brief employment as an archivist for the artist Xu Bing, who has experimented with nonsensical Chinese characters that appear real to nonnative readers.
“It was important for me to see how (Xu Bing) dealt with the problems between language and representation,” she says. “People who don’t read Chinese assume his work is legible, but there is a dissonance for readers who actually understand Chinese and can recognise the parts of real words that he uses to create his characters.
“They experience his work in a strange, abstract way as they struggle to reconcile that familiarity. That was very inspiring for me.”
Forrest Gander, a Pulitzer Prize finalist for his book Core Samples From The World, notes Xu’s use of duplicative language in her work as an example of Chinese influences. The Chinese language is full of such duplicates, like ma ma hu hu (meaning “so-so”), he notes.
“She is one of the most exciting young American poets today, and her work is going to influence the direction in which American poetry moves. There is an internationalism to her work, which is unique and exciting.”
Xu’s contemplations on friendship also reflect her non-Western influences, he says.
American and European poetry has tended to focus on the more dramatic narratives of love and loss, whereas Chinese poets have been more willing to explore the less glamorous arena of friendship.
In a section entitled Our Love Is Pure, she writes: “Friends to whom I belong/ Friends whom I will wrong.”
The book’s cover features a painting by Xu, a lush landscape inspired by the French painter Henri Rousseau.
Much like the iconic poem paintings of ancient China, Debts & Lessons presents the author’s words with a visual accompaniment befitting a book that pays respect to a language that, for her, has stimulated both alienation and awe. – China Daily/Asia News Network