Love’s joy sings around our life like birds in a flowering bush, and love’s pain sings like an unmeasured black sea. If you are easygoing or satisfied with whatever lot you have, you may have a life like the birds in the flowering bush. Yet, if you like to analyze serious issues or are against social customs, you may lead a miserable life.

     Actually, all lives are full of inherent contradictions, such as everything recurring as we once experienced it, and the traditional golden rules recurring ad infinitum. What do these so-called superior myths signify? It is said of our lineage, or our ancestors, that they saw the world divided into pairs of opposites: right/wrong, white/black, being/non-being, grace/disgrace, etc. We now might find this bipolar division too simple to suit the complicated human being.

Most people use entertainment, economic activity or authority to avoid this feeling of conflicting anxiety in order to lead a comfortable living. As Erich Fromm has said, “Face reality”. Otherwise, you must face sorrowful living.

Moreover, a total focus on serious topics shows the lack of a sense of humor. The result of this behavior is that no one is happy. After I read his poetry and prose, I gained a strong impression that Chang Te-Pen was an unhappy person.

Indeed, Chang’s work (and his life) howls like a gale over the sea, because his in-depth analysis concerns issues that only a few people think about. No wonder he exclaims in this poem:

 This kind of character, who seeks the truth and behaves like the wild cock, might have few close friends.

What is the nature of the wild cock? His character is opposite that of the skylark. The wild cock often cries out noisily at midnight while people are having sweet dreams. The timing is so unsuitable that people detest his style, whereas the skylark is good at human customs. She sings beautiful songs in the morning when people are rousing. Comparing the wild cock and the skylark, we will see the difference. Te-Pen said that the timing is chosen differently on the surface but actually people who know beforehand or know afterward are different. Therefore, he feels deeply touched by the seer who is always being accused as a heretic. In the dark night of history, how many injustices have been committed against these so-called “heretics”?

For example, Giordano Bruno (1548-1600), a renowned Italian philosopher and thinker, argued that the universe was infinite. This view of a seer was considered a heresy at that time. He promoted his worldview, opposed the religious orthodoxy, and refused to recant. Finally, he so infuriated the Roman Catholic Church that he was declared a heretic and burned at the stake. As Te-Pen asserts, this was the fate of heretics.

Te-Pen has a series of questions about full authority, the golden rule and firm structure. His dialectic of introspection and critique results in conflicts that are as if he is stepping into constantly changing water because he tends to move to the difficult Left wing, not to the easy Right shore of the government. This so-called heretical poet says that there is one writing rule: “Write what no one has said and no one dares to say.” Therefore, the fate of his works is to be either destroyed or returned to him in the repressed market of Taiwan which at present is not fully open.

“Take it easy!” I tried to give him my opinion. “You are so serious, that people without patience cannot read your works in this hustle and bustle of living.”

  “This is me. Chang Te-Pen’s word is this,” he answers confidently.

The goal of Te-Pen is to strive toward self-affirmation and denial of authority. This kind of personality resulted in me agreeing with two western philosophers, Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) and Spinoza (1632-1677). For example, Nietzsche challenged the foundations of traditional morality. He even had the courage to declare that God is dead. He believed in life, creativity and the realities of the world we live in, rather than those situated in a world beyond. His central idea was life-affirmation.

Now that I understand Chang Te-Pen, I find that he inevitably leads to the western philosophical system. In fact, he also acknowledges that the thinking of western humanities truly affects him, such as D. H. Lawrence’s (1885-1930) doctrines of sexual freedom, Byron’s (1788-1824) revolution of an old system, Nietzsche’s pursuit of a surmountable life, and so on. While Chinese literature was his major, he looks like a western thinker. He says that although his name is very Chinese, he hopes that people don’t just see others’ names or outside forms before judging their life or work. He says that understanding some kind of life or art is to enter its interior to excavate it and know the truth.

Both art and love are his centre point of living. Undoubtedly, Te-Pen’s internal world desires to construct a life of beauty and happiness. Contentment is a beauty that comes from abundance of love. However, a marriage of love often confines each partner with the result that they both lose their freedom. This power of the marital system is like a government or a nation that depends on collectivization and institutions to consolidate its position. Does the way of happiness deny individual liberty?

If every second of our lives is subordinated to others, it is a terrifying bondage. He said that if there in no true feeling, we cannot spark a flame of love. In spite of everyone having a desire for love, it is not easy to attain an ideal love. The point of love literally is joyful, but the result is often both painful and sorrowful. 

Perhaps, only necessity is heavy, and only what is heavy has value. As Milan Kundera has said, the heaviest of burdens is therefore simultaneously an image of life’s most intense fulfillment.  

The universe of discourse is common, yet each one has an individual point in life. These varied areas have not stopped attacking this restless and profound poet’s heart. His rigorous thinking is so heavy, he is like an old man already and his thinking is so fast, he cannot get it all down quickly enough. He should be a philosopher, not a wordsmith.

Persisting in art and love, Te-pen has opposite opinion on the traditional golden rules. He rushes on, without stop with his ideal struggling. Thus he deserves to be called a convict of life.

Since I deeply started studying the English language, I have had a wish to translate poetry from Chinese to English. I select Chang’s poems because I like his way of poetry. I found out his style of poetry was like that of Wislawa Szymborska, a 1996 Nobel prize-winning Polish poetess. Absurdity and rationality are found in the poetry of both. For example, Szymborska has written these words:

In the same way, Te-Pen has written:

Except for the original attraction to Te-Pen’s poetry, Timothy, my son’s friend has given me great support in initiating and finishing the translation project. Timothy Ross Wilson, who is an officer of the Supreme Court of Canada in Ottawa, is not only good at language, but also is a splendid legal counsel. When he read my first work “The Scenery of the City when you Left”, he was so impressed that he promised me to edit my translation if I kept going. Therefore, I took a trip east to visit Timothy after I finished the project.

The movie “Eternity and A Day” is a story of the time when a Greek poet is born in Italy. He decides to use his mother tongue to write. Therefore, he returns to his motherland to spend money to buy back the sentences. He has been kidnapped by space and time, so that the mother tongue went far away from him.

Chang Te-pen used the words of the writing simplistically, as if he need to spend money to buy the sentences. In fact, he is sensitive to the words and the time as well.

Here is Chang Te-Pen writing about time sensitivity. I translate it like this:

Te-Pen’s works, not only being dialectical, also have the beauty of symmetry. Yet Timothy alters his words like this,

The significance is invariable no matter which words are chosen, yet the beauty of the Chinese is reduced a lot. Certainly, Timothy and I discuss how to achieve really perfect translation. Sometimes, Timothy persists in the western terminology, but I am partial to the retention of the special articulation of the Chinese language.

“Ways of expressing logic totally differ between English and Chinese. But, even though the poetry is difficult to translate into another language, you can still eventually overcome the difficulty. To touch the main idea is good enough,” my son says.

Much of the work’s humor has been lost in translation. Seamus Heaney, who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1995 and is the most important Irish poet and translator, said that he reads his poems translated into English with great difficulty, because he knows some things have disappeared – perhaps its musical rhythm or a significant meaning. Surely, sometimes losing the original work’s secret strength in the original tongue stems from the work being translated into another language.

For example, in one of Te-Pen’s poems “White Clouds and Black Hair”, black hair symbolizes young women in Taiwan. Yet young women can be blonde in the West, so western people cannot recognize the special meaning of black hair. Though I am shocked by this so-called cultural difference, it does not stop me from writing.

 Although the translation was completed within only half a year, I approached it with great attention. I carefully revised everything, down to the last comma, until it was nearly perfect. And so this translation was born. I would like to appreciate not only Timothy’s encouragement, but also my personal tutor Barbara, who is so patient to check my writing. In addition to them, I am so happy that several of the poems have been chosen by American magazines.

It is a difficult job for a person, who is used to both thinking and writing in Chinese or Taiwanese for over half a century to now think and write in English. Therefore, I am like a tree longing for the earth and standing on tiptoe to explore the heavens.