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Day: 18 January 2011

Quotes: Su Tung-Po on Vision

Vision surges in front of you. You must seize this vision with the brush, because it can disappear suddenly, as the hare when the hunter approaches. 

Su Dongpo (Su Shi), a Chinese poet.

The popularity of this fine Chinese poet has not only survived the centuries, but spread well outside the art of writing, onto the art of cooking. The famous Dongpo’s Pork dish owes its name to Su Shi’s exile when, according to a legend, he took to play a game of chess with his friend, while cooking this red-braised pork in Chinese fermented wine.

Clearly, it is not just in France or Italy that cooking is l’art de vivre… 

Alexander Blok in Leiden’s Poems and Walls

A well-known poem by Alexander Blok was chosen to represent Russian poetry in the Leiden-centred project, Poems and Walls.

This poem by Alexander Blok, one of the seminal poets of the Russian fin-de-siecle, is greatly loved all over the world: so much so that in 1990s it was chosen, along with the poems by Tsvetaeva, Akhmatova, Mandelshtam, and Khlebnikov, to represent Russian poetry in the Leiden-centred project, Poems and Walls (1992-2005). I decided to translate it, as well.

More posts on Alexander Blok
Night, a streetlight, a street, a chemist's,
All in a dim and useless light.
In the next twenty-five years
They'll still prevail, against one's plight.
And you may die but then, returning,
You'll see again the same old night,
The icy canal waters running,
The street, the chemist's, the streetlight.

Original Russian text

Ночь, улица, фонарь, аптека,
Бессмысленный и тусклый свет.
Живи еще хоть четверть века -
Все будет так. Исхода нет.
Умрешь - начнешь опять сначала,
И повторится все, как встарь:
Ночь, ледяная рябь канала,
Аптека, улица, фонарь.
1912
error: Sorry, no copying !!