Poet Gallery (II): Petőfi / Byron

2008/1/12 9:04:24

This ID's gallery never claimed to be some narrow-minded nationalist affair — across all ages, East and West, anyone with the qualifications will be invited. Today, two blue-eyed blonds are brought in, their portraits painted in China's most metrically rigorous seven-character regulated verse. And going forward, Goethe and Shakespeare will be strung onto this ever-growing chain like candied hawthorn on a stick.

Meter merely shackles the incompetent. Meter itself is freedom.

One more thing — whoever designed the pinyin input system made "Petőfi" a recognized word but not "Byron." Their brain must be waterlogged.

Petőfi

Chán Zhōng Shuō Chán

Blue sorrow upon the Danube's flow,
Pest and Buda, dragged by ancient bridges below.
Mist-veiled, smoke-locked Fisherman's Bastion stands,
Fitful winds carry a warrior's song across the lands.
Cruel fate, wounded love poured into unbridled verse,
A broken body pledged to nation, raising the lance.
In life and death, all for freedom's sake —
One poet's heart upon ten thousand waves.

Byron

Chán Zhōng Shuō Chán

A poet's heart like the sea, like the storm's blast,
Rolling thunder shaking the highest heaven vast.
Europe ablaze with the light of equality,
Through prison bars, a dazzling tide of liberty.
In the Bronze Age, alone he wielded the sword,
A pure soul's life — never bowed before any lord.
Song breaks mid-verse — Don Juan, the Grecian dream —
Wind and rain fill the sky, summoning the jade-green gleam.