Richard W. Bodman “How To Eat a Chinese Poem” 2005
Associate Professor of Chinese, Asian Studies, St. Olaf’s College, and Tao Qian by Chen
Hongshou (1599-1652)
1) A Chinese poem, like an artichoke, has an outside and an inside, and the inside is the
best.
a) There is the language of abstractions (sorrow, truth, joy, longing) and the
language of sensory images (touch of the wind…). The former is easiest for
someone non-Chinese to understand, but not very tasty.
b) The latter, tasty but hard to understand, involves a range of traditional
associations, and one needs to learn how to read them when placed in
conjunction.
2) A Chinese poem does not have a message: it has a taste, a truth that cannot be put
into words:
a) Lao Tzu [famous founder of Taoism] said “True words are not beautiful and
beautiful words are not true.” Chuang Tzu [the second greatest Taoist of ancient
times] said “Words exist to catch meaning: once the meaning is caught, words
can be abandoned.” The I Ching [ancient Chinese religious/philosophical text]
says “words to not exhaust meaning.”
3) Poetry often deals with this paradox by presenting the reader with its own paradoxes,
often by placing abstract and imagistic language side by side.
4) T’ao Ch’ien (365-427 A.D.) [the Roman Empire still dominated the West then] was a
Confucian gentlemen who retired to write bucolic poetry. [Confucius was the other
great Chinese philosopher. Chinese officials would usually follow the philosophy of
Cofucius which stressed piety, loyalty, and following the sages of the past. Most
Chinese thinkers were influenced both by Taoism and Confucianism.] His bestknown series of poems was titled “On Drinking Wine.”
5) No. 5 in this series begins “I built my hut in the midst of men…”
a) This poem contains many verbal paradoxes: for example, there is no wine in the
poem.
b) Bodman gives us two versions: a word-for-word one and a more polished
translation. [I will also give you another translation.]
6) For grammatical reasons, the word “I” is absent in the more literal translation. This,
for the Chinese, makes the poet’s personality less obtrusive, and allows the reader to
place himself as the subject.
a) It also allows deliberate ambiguities (is it nature or the poet acting?).
b) In translating Chinese poems one should try to go between the two extremes: the
staccato quality of the first translation and a version that solves all ambiguities.
c) The Chinese critic Wang Kuo-wei comments on the poem that some lines present
a “world without a self” for example, “Distantly, I see South Mountain.”
[Bodman basically agrees with this, but thinks it needs explanation.]
7) Bodman will go through the poem slowly for Western readers.
a) In the first two lines the first paradox is presented: how one can live amidst men
and not hear the clamor.
b) The poem indirectly states that the narrator is no longer interested in official
service.
c) The next two lines imply one does not need to live among the mountains to have
the mind of a hermit.
d) In the next two lines the chrysanthemums and South mountain represent
resistance to time and decay. Chrysanthemum wine is a stimulant to perception.
e) For the Chinese, mountains form a bridge between earth and heaven.
f) The Southern Mountain symbolizes vital power and longevity, and to the poet, a
source of life greater than himself.
g) The next two lines bring the theme of return. The sunset and returning birds refer
to the poet’s approaching the end of life.
h) Here, the poet dialogues with nature, the mountain replying with a refreshing
breeze.
i) In the last two lines the poet presents a second paradox: there is true meaning but
he can’t find the words.
j) We have to reread.
8) See the poem as a picture surrounded by a frame that focuses our attention.
a) We see a picture of a scholar in his garden, and then something strange happens
as the breeze plays on our face.
b) In this poem the first four lines and the last two are the frame.
c) The central four are the window, the first four introducing us, and the last two
sending the reader back to the center.
d) The process of reading is cyclical, not linear.
e) The upper and lower borders of the frame are paradoxes that cause the reader to
concentrate on the images.
f) Chung Jung (a 6th century critic) said “Although a text is finished, there is no end
to the meaning…Let all those who taste of it never reach satiety, and those who
hear it be moved in their hearts.”
g) In the frame, the words are in general, abstract language that cannot express truth.
h) Within the window, we no longer hear the poet’s voice: we see and feel.
i) Suddenly we see with the poet’s eyes, and we have lost our own self.
j) The highest level of the poem is when there is no human subject, no self at all,
only direct experience of the breeze and appreciation of the birds.
9) The window shows us a cycle of movement.
a) We see the poet close up, then the distant mountains, finally feel the breeze on the
poet’s face.
b) The theme of return is implicit in the poem, the poet’s return from city to country,
the sun’s return, the poet’s return to nature in death.
c) The only immortality man can have is of the moment through concentration on
objects of sense.
d) Within the window, the language is concrete, easily pictured. Even the actions are
concrete.
10) Native Chinese readers often look for the poem’s best line, and the most striking
word within that line.
a) The most striking word within that line [see Lu Chi on this] is the “eye” of the
poem.
b) The eye gives the body life: it is the word on which the poem’s interpretation
hangs.
c) Westerners usually point to the last two lines of the poem as the best.
d) The Chinese reader would choose the “Picking chrysanthemums ….” couplet.
i) The second line, “Distantly, I see South Mountain” would be singled out.
ii) This line admits many complementary interpretations, as “distantly” describes
both the poet’s mind and the mountains.
iii) The poet shares detachment with the mountain.
iv) Seeing the South Mountain is an act of insight.
e) By putting “distantly” and “see,” “separation” and “closeness,” together, the
South Mountain seems to jump suddenly to before our eyes.
f) The choice of chien “to see,” rather than the more usual “wang” “to gaze at,” is to
save the world without a self: it implies seeing without consciously trying to see.
g) “chien” is the eye of the poem.
11) A Chinese poem is like an artichoke: the reader must peel the layers.
a) The poem also operates on us dismantling our protective shell of intellect,
slowing our constant flow of thought’
b) We are drawn into a world in which the moment is eternal and the self is
forgotten. The poem has eaten us.
Is there anything similar to the “eye” in Western poetry or art?
Based on Bodman’s reading of this poem, do you think there is a distinctive Chinese
aesthetics?
How is the philosophy behind this poem different from that found in Plato?
How is it different from that found in Collingwood?