The Ark

T'ang dynasty poet Wang Wei (699-759), like other Chinese poets and civil servants, loved his solitude.

Transcript

Retired neurosurgeon and Buddhist, Ian Johnston, is no different. After a demanding career in medicine, Johnston moved to Bruny Island off the coast of Tasmania, where he devotes himself to translating from the Chinese the poems of Wang Wei and others. Like his subject, Johnston is a Buddhist and he speaks with Rachael Kohn about poetry and solitude.

THEME

Rachael Kohn: Aspiring to a high office in the civil service is an old tradition in Confucian China. But so too is finding refuge and solitude in nature.

Hello, this is The Ark, and I'm Rachael Kohn.

One of many civil servants and poets of 8th century China during the T'ang Dynasty was the famous Wang Wei. Although Wang Wei is known in the West, he has special meaning for retired neurosurgeon Ian Johnston, who has translated much of his poetry. Johnston, who is a poet himself, has just published Singing of Scented Grass, containing his translations of three Chinese poets, but his favourite is Wang Wei.

Ian Johnston: He was an extraordinary talent. He had great ability not only in writing, which was apparent very early, but in painting and in music and in calligraphy. So he was a person of immense abilities. And his initial career was a sort of reflection of those abilities, of their recognition.

But then he ran into problems due to changes of fortune within the government and the Emperor's situation. And I think due to chance really, he fell foul of the ruling group and he was somewhat reviled, and that reputation in part, carried on. And then he retired to his, what I might call country estate, in the latter part of his life, really just to think. And he was a practising Buddhist and I suppose he pursued his Buddhist activities.

Rachael Kohn: Well it's interesting that all three poets were civil servants. One gets a sense that their poetry is to some extent at odds with the life they were living. There seems to be a certain tension between the demands of office and their sensibility to more sublime things.

Ian Johnston: Yes, I think that is a very common feature amongst the literati, or intellectuals of the T'ang period, but of other periods too.

Almost anybody of ability sought a public position in the civil service, through this very complicated and very testing examination system. And those that succeeded and got into reasonable positions were always in danger of change of fortune due to changing circumstances, political circumstances, as I mentioned, with Wang Wei. But their background, their education, had been in the Classics, and in Confucian Classics in the classic of poetry, and so they were highly educated in areas of literature and the arts. So it formed a contrast in their lives, and I think that's a common thing.

Rachael Kohn: Ian what was it about the T'ang period in Chinese history that produced so many poets of great importance?

Ian Johnston: In part, there had been a long tradition of composition of some poetry over the centuries, in part though it was due to the Emperor at the time of Wang Wei's life, the Emperor Xuanzong had a very long reign and a strong interest in all the arts. So the whole artistic endeavour was fostered. That was the start really of the T'ang, not of the start, but early on in the T'ang period. And then it continued on.

I guess the tradition was strong and there emerged several really outstanding poets. But a lot of officials wrote poetry, it was a very common activity, perhaps coming to terms with the difficulties of a civil service existence is to express your feelings in poetry. But also it was a social activity.

Rachael Kohn: And as you said, Wang Wei was also a painter, so that he could combine these talents. One gets the feeling reading Wang Wei's poetry that he really is painting with words.

Ian Johnston: Yes. Well there is this very I think appropriate statement by Su Shi, who was a Song Dynasty poet and intellectual of great note, and he said that with Wang Wei the poem is in the painting, and the painting is in the poetry, which absolutely summarises the point that you make.

Rachael Kohn: Well is it possible to characterise the Chinese poetry that you've translated as of a type, in the way that people have classed Wordsworth and Byron, as Romantics?

Ian Johnston: No, not even within that book. It's not possible to bring it all under a single umbrella.

Wang Wei's been called a nature poet, but it's not a term that I particularly like, and others object to it as well. There's more to it than that. He's a Buddhist poet, but there's more to it than that. Bai Juyi covered all sorts of things and in the book, one or two of his you could call social protest poems are included, and they're quite forceful poems in their context. And Li Shangyin is a different poet altogether in a way, in that he is a very complicated poet, with a lot of allusions and a lot of symbolism, and is regarded as very difficult by Chinese commentators as well as by other language readers. So he's not much translated.

Rachael Kohn: Well I was wondering in fact when I was reading Wang Wei's poetry, whether there are allusions there to a repertoire of symbology or lore, the references to peach tree valleys, to white clouds, and also the meeting of a woodcutter in which time stops, and those are common themes in Chinese thought.

Ian Johnston: Yes, in translating, there are, you're completely right, there are a number of things, quite a number of things, that have a universal applicability and are readily recognised by all people, literary people, in the culture. White clouds is a Buddhist connection.

Rachael Kohn: What does that mean?

Ian Johnston: Well I'm not sure what it means really, I suppose it means what you want it to, but it has a Buddhist connotation undoubtedly.

Rachael Kohn: Is it the heaven beyond the white clouds?

Ian Johnston: Yes, it's it has an other-worldly sort of significance I suppose. And The Peach Tree Spring is a famous earlier poem by one of the greatest of the Chinese poets, pre-T'ang, Tao Qian. An interesting problem in translation, is that those things that mean so much to a Chinese reader, don't have the same significance, or are not part of the cultural heritage say of a Western reader, regardless of what country or what language they're from.

And you know, there are simple things, examples like a willow tree or a willow twig is a symbol of parting and separation, which unless you put a note in, is quite lost on a Western reader.

Rachael Kohn: Well you've obviously been attracted to this poetry for many years, and even if one is not aware of all those allusions, the poetry is very, very beautiful. And I wonder how much the Buddhist underpinning of say Wang Wei's poetry is important for his poetry and also for the reader.

Ian Johnston: Well I think the simple answer is that it's very important. But interestingly, just at a personal level, my interest in Chinese poetry and in translation certainly, and in people like Wang Wei, and Bai Juyi, began before I was ever really interested in or involved in Buddhism. That clearly couldn't have, except perhaps at a deeper and unrecognised level, couldn't have been what attracted me. I wasn't seeing Buddhism there, not knowingly anyway, at the time.

But now for many years I've, well I'll use the word 'practised' very loosely, but I have practised Buddhism and if I would categorise myself as anything it would be as that. And so now it has an extra meaning. But in a way that's right. These are poems that I've looked at for many, many years and it's appropriate in a way that they get a deeper and deeper meaning, as you become more and more involved with them.

Rachael Kohn: Ian, would you read a poem by Wang Wei?

Ian Johnston: Yes, I shall read 'Written in Lighthearted Vein on the Great Rock'.

Do I pity the great rock beside spring waters
Where hanging willows brush against the wine cups?
If you say the spring wind does not understand,
Why then does it blow the fallen flowers towards us?

Rachael Kohn: What is Wang Wei saying there? Is he talking about there being a consciousness in nature?

Ian Johnston: Yes, I take that to be the case, that there is a connection between the person who is in the natural situation, sitting beside the Great Rock, watching the stream. You know, there's not a person and a nature separate. That's how I take it, anyway. And the great beauty of many of Wang Wei's poems and other Chinese poets as well, is that they are able to get a very compressed but significant meaning into a very short and very structured verse form.

Rachael Kohn: What's another poem by Wang Wei that you've chosen?

Ian Johnston: Well I like particularly 'On an Autumn Night, Sitting Alone'.

Sitting alone I lament my greying temples.
The hall empty as the second watch approaches.
In the rain, mountain fruits are falling.
Under the lamplight, noisy insects chirp.

In the end, white hair is hard to change
And yellow gold certainly cannot be made.
Do you know how to shed the cares of age?
There is only one way:
Learn of non-rebirth.

Rachael Kohn: Is that a reference there to the Taoist notion of immortality that the alchemical notions that they could make gold?

Ian Johnston: Yes, it is. The yellow gold, that's right.

Rachael Kohn: So Wang Wei is resigned to his old age.

Ian Johnston: Yes, he's resigned to his old age. But the way to approach it perhaps is to embrace the Buddhist belief, to learn of non-rebirth. That to me is a wonderful poem, and I sometimes sit alone, and lament my greying temples and do all these various things, and I would like to learn of non-rebirth as well.

Rachael Kohn: Well it's interesting that many of these poems, or quite a few of them anyway, do reflect on old age and death, and there's a melancholy, a bittersweetness that runs through the poetry. Does that reflect your own choice, or is that actually a dominant theme?

Ian Johnston: No, it's a notable theme, but the selection reflects my own choice. I do find that I've a liking for poetry that is to some extent sad perhaps, about the brevity of life, the imminence of death, however old you are, the sorrows of parting and things like that. I'm sounding like a very gloomy person.

Rachael Kohn: Well you have made a choice to live on Bruny Island off Tasmania. What compelled you to do that from a busy life as a neurosurgeon?

Ian Johnston: Well I have always liked seclusion, relative seclusion, or more complete seclusion. I've always sought that. It's incompatible with the job that I'd chosen to do, although while in Sydney I lived mostly in Lovett Bay up in the National Park, so I sort of made some attempt to achieve that. That was something that I wanted to do, I wanted to go somewhere that had an austere natural beauty, that was cold, that was part of the austerity of place, if you like, and that was fairly lonely. And Bruny Island fulfilled those criteria perfectly.

I listen now in silence, standing alone,
To trees moving with the wind
And the music of the sea striking the land's edge.
I have waited in silence, lying in sleep
To see in dreams the Duke of Zhou
And still I wait like Master Kung
Expecting less.

I wait now in silence by the sea's edge,
These dreams and cherished hopes scattered it seems,
Like fragments caught in the tide.
I am ready at last to lie with bent arm only for my pillow,
To strip away the softness, the sly, insinuating advance of surfaces
That deflects the mind from the granite hardness of reality.
The unrelenting press felt only at the last
When artificial coverings are discarded.
And known in this way, even welcomed,
Embraced by the bare cold arm that cradles the dying brain.

Rachael Kohn: That's from a poem by Ian Johnston, echoing his life on Bruny Island.

His book is Singing of Scented Grass, including poems of Wang Wei, Bai Juyi and Li Shangyin. Book details are on our website.

THEME

Guests

Ian Johnston
is a retired neuro-surgeon who lives on Bruny Island, off Tasmania, where he translates verses from ancient China.

Further Information

Ian Johnston - Singing of Scented Grass
A brief profile of the author. You can also download a pdf file of Study Notes for his book, Singing of Scented Grass.

Wang Wei, Poet

Wang Wei

Publications

Title: Singing of Scented Grass: Verses from the Chinese
Publisher: Pardalote, 2003
URL: Ian Johnston