Eighth Post!

[hoisinsauce]

It's one thing if mankind is hunted to extinction by ChatGPT, but I really do object to being executed by Bing.

(https://secretfanspace.dreamwidth.org/2511.html?thread=3169743#cmt3169743 )

Welcome back! Fandom chat, misc creativity, internet weirdness, books, films, anything! Tell meme about it so we can get to the next post title!

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Comments

Re: Poetry - 面朝大海, 春暖花开 by Hai Zi (海子)

[(Anonymous)]

从明天起, 做一个幸福的人
starting tomorrow, i will be happy:
喂马, 劈柴, 周游世界
feed horses, split lumber, travel the world.
从明天起, 关心粮食和蔬菜
starting tomorrow, i will care for crops and vegetables.
我有一所房子, 面朝大海, 春暖花开
i have a house, facing the sea, as flowers bloom in the spring warmth.
从明天起, 和每一个亲人通信
starting tomorrow, i will send a message to all my loved ones:
告诉他们我的幸福
i will tell them of my happiness.
那幸福的闪电告诉我的
all that lightning flash of joy told me
我将告诉每一个人
i will tell it to everyone else.
给每一条河每一座山取一个温暖的名字
i will give every river, every mountain a gentle name.
陌生人, 我也为你祝福
stranger, i too wish you the best.
愿你有一个灿烂的前程
may you have a brilliant future.
愿你有情人终成眷属
may your lovers become family.
愿你在尘世获得幸福
may you find happiness on this mortal earth.
我只愿面朝大海, 春暖花开
i only wish to face the sea, as flowers bloom in the spring warmth.

Damn, all the poems I have are depressing as fuck. This one's particularly striking because it uses such positive language to convey despair - and it sure worked, because it apparently trips up high school students all the time and gets misquoted in real estate ads, of all things. But think carefully: if you are to be happy tomorrow, then what about today? If you face the sea, then how will you watch the flowers bloom?

It's hard for me not to read this as a suicide note. Hai Zi killed himself two months after writing this poem, at the very start of spring. He is quite possibly the most celebrated contemporary Chinese poet, but he was entirely unknown during his life and most of his poems were not even published until after his death.

Re: Poetry - 面朝大海, 春暖花开 by Hai Zi (海子)

[(Anonymous)]

春暖花开 is a stupidly hard phrase to translate, by the way. In Chinese, you can just slam four characters together and call them an idiom; in English, you have to add all these joining words that kill the elegance of the original phrase. Plus, you have to make a bunch of assumptions about parts of speech. If the original text says spring-warm-flower-bloom, is 'spring' a noun or an adjective? Does it modify 'warm' or 'flower' or 'bloom'?

When you read the original, you just feel the line. You read the phrase as a single atomic unit, so you don't have to worry about breaking it down into constituent parts. My interpretations are what feels right to me, but I'm not a poet and my wording is blunt and direct. Luckily, Hai Zi's poetry also uses simple language and clean imagery, but my flaws will probably show hard if I attempt anything more complicated.

Re: Poetry - 面朝大海, 春暖花开 by Hai Zi (海子)

[(Anonymous)]

DD

Ah, interesting. Yeah, I wouldn't have read despair into your translation without that context (maybe my fault for reading too fast); I read it as more of someone resolving to get their life together in the future and trying to count their blessings. I took the house with flowers facing the sea as literal because I was picturing one of those welsh ones with hydrangeas in the front garden. So I read it as unhappy (nobody tries to count their blessings when they're happy, and I did notice "starting tomorrow") but not THAT unhappy. Glad I don't work in real estate!