YU Kwang-chung

YU Kwang-Chung, Chinese famous poet, litterateur and prosaist died at age of 90 in Kaohsiung City on 14, December. Born on 21, October, 1928 in Nanjing, he moved to Hong Kong with his parents in 1949 and Taiwan the next year. YU Kwang-Chung has engaged in literary creation for more than half a century with renowned works home and abroad, including poetry, prose, criticism, translation, editing etc. His Poem Nostalgia has caused a strong resonance in the global Chinese circle. HUANG Zhixian, a news commentator, said that we grew up by reading the Nostalgia written by YU Kwang-Chung. We did not understand it at that time, but only imagine the endless thoughts of the mainland from our friends’ parents and could not fully acknowledge the pain of Mr. YU until we left home for studying abroad. --- Recalling YU Kwang-Chung via the Nostalgia.

The homesickness has been a lasting and exciting theme in Taiwan literature. It is because Taiwan has been clocked to Japan for half a century since the Sino-Japanese War in 1895. People in Taiwan returned to the motherland since the defeat of Japan in 1945. However, Taiwan has been forced to separate from the mainland as the Kuomintang retreated to the island in 1949. Since then, Taiwan people lost their homes and beloved ones in the family across the strait. In this context, there emerged a large number of representational homesickness in Taiwan literature, which was centrally reflected through the strong nostalgia and family bond consciousness to the continent and their homelands.

From the aesthetic psychology, nostalgia belongs to a type of defect beauty. This state of emotion, according to Gestalt psychology, presents an asymmetrical "shape" on the structural schema of the force, inducing a strong "perfection" aesthetic impulse in the mind of readers. Compared with the symmetrical and harmonious "shape", the asymmetrical "shape", generated by the very state of emotion, possesses a greater aesthetic tension. It is because of this that nostalgia became the eternal theme in the Chinese history of poetry, as so many writers and poets had created many pathetic poems of missing and complete with tears and blood.

The Nostalgia of YU Kwang-Chung adheres to the traditional homesickness-and-mother-theme in China, while the poet, on the other hand, stands at the height of contemporary humanity, giving the spiritual connotation to the traditional mother-theme age and individualism.

He also said once, the Chinese mainland is the mother of all mothers, father of all fathers and cradle of all ancestors. The poet's attachment to the mainland and the love of his hometown is so strong and unimaginably immense. However, concerning the creation of the Nostalgia, a pure and strong sentiment of homesickness is not enough to achieve a great poem, more importantly, one should turn the feeling into image, which is the true test of a poet’s creative ability. Undoubtedly a talented and original poet, YU Kwang-Chung handles such complicated themes with so much ease by choosing and extracting four central images as stamp, traveling ticket, graveyard and strait from his own life experience to constitute the skeleton of Nostalgia.

The stamp and traveling ticket were used in the first two stanzas as symbols of nostalgia. As a result of exile from his homeland, one can only communicate information with postage stamps. And due to the long distance, the chance of reunion with a purchased traveling ticket is rare. Both the stamp and traveling ticket imply the barrier of space.

The graveyard in the third stanza represents death, as it is the most profound moment of life, and what can stands the test of death is the most valuable thing in life. It is strong enough to demonstrate the strong feeling of homesickness by comparing nostalgia with as grave, a heart-wrenching image to everyone.

The last stanza is the very essence. The most fundamental reason for the homesickness is that the Strait divides the motherland into two worlds, the artificial barrier in politics is much more difficult to conquer than hills and streams. The subtlety lies in that facing such a great barrier, the poet uses such easy words as "shallow Strait", in a typical style of the ancient homesick poetry in China, unrevealed connotation while mourning without complaint, containing deep feelings in the depiction of ambiguous images and the poet’s beating heart behind the calm narration.

With the four images being independent and unrelated, how did the poet connect the stamp, traveling ticket, the graveyard and strait together?

By the order of time, the central image mostly embodying the poet's emotion in every time period is highlighted. It is the basic technique of the image combination of Nostalgia. Generally speaking, the trigger of the poet's emotion, to a large extent, is from the sense of time rising in a review of the course of life, especially as a traveling poet who is especially sensitive to time. In terms of the poem Nostalgia, the poet organized the image in accordance with the time sequence of nature. In particular, it is in the natural order of life to grow up according to the "childhood", "after grow-up", "later" and "now". The development of this time is consistent with the realistic time sequence of the poet's thoughts and feelings, with clear time clue, simple and real, the poem is much acceptable for readers.

The skillful use of refrains is another technique of image combination in this poem. It is a commonly-used structure and expressive means in ancient Chinese poetry, especially folk songs. Many poems in Book of Songs are similar in structure between parts. With changes in only two or three words, however, we can get the sense of meaning and the beauty of rhythm by chanting repeatedly. With only four stanzas by sequence of time in the poem of Nostalgia, a central image in each one, words denoting time and central images are indeed different, but each stanza uses "Nostalgia seemed…" and "Here am I, And there…" sentence structure, together with the repetition of the same quantifier and reduplication in the same position as A small, "A narrow…", "A short" and "A shallow"…, constituting the symmetry and uniformity between the sections. This refrain structure is conducive to rendering a strong atmosphere, concentrating a sense of meaning and strengthening the emotion that the poet was committed to revealing. In addition, it can also improve the beauty of rhythm and make the phonology more harmonious. Poetry has a natural connection with music and dance in terms of origin and the refrain is a form of rhythm echoing the music and dance. With the same structure and some invariant words, the refrain organizes the poem as a whole structure with echo of the voice caused by the same and similar tones giving readers a sense of beauty in a rounded voice. This is also the crucial reason that the poem of Nostalgia has been composed into music and passed on widely.

Nostalgia

by YU Kwang-Chung

When I was a child,

Nostalgia seemed a small stamp

Here am I

And there… my mother

Then I was a grown-up

Nostalgia became a narrow traveling ticket

Here am I

And there… my bride.

During the later years,

Nostalgia turned to be a short graveyard

Here am I

And inside… my mother

And now at present

Nostalgia looms large to be a shallow channel

Here am I

And there… my mainland