An unfinished translation of Hàn Mặc Tử’s “Poetry”
Whoever speaks of the moon garden speaks of the dream garden.
Whoever speaks of the shore of reverie speaks of the shore of love.
The poetic human is a strange traveler walking in the spring of primeval clarity.
Above their head are nobility, boundlessness, and measurelessness, all around them are loving caresses swaddled in a hundred instants of ardent longing—
Made of softness, made of melody. From where does the wind carry the poetic human to this strange shore, a virginal shore full of song and gracefulness. The human pauses to pick the exquisite leaves. The human falls silent to listen to the echo of the moon ringing, which is not unlike the sound of jewels exploding. Ah, and so the naïve human hurriedly gathers the falling gold light and wraps it in the lapel of their coat.
The human’s mind has levitated and the human’s poetry has levitated even higher.
Turns out the enraptured human is walking in dreams, in miracles, in splendor, flying beyond the ghostly emptiness.
I make poetry?
—Meaning I pluck a melody, press on a silk thread, stir a veil of light.
You will see the instrument’s breath glide upon the breath of my soul and sink into the cascade of hot electric waves pouring from the five dancerly fingertips.
You will tremble to the hum of the fine bronze string, will leave the ravishing tune to moan and groan without end.
And you will feel strange, will look without blinking when a rustle of light bursts into a breaking star. Those are the tones and melodies of my poetry, the sacred tones and melodies born while the wild blood is howling under the pen tip.
I make poetry?
—Meaning I am so frail! I give in to temptation, I betray everything that my gut, my blood, my soul once kept utterly secret.
And meaning, also, that I have lost my mind, I have gone mad.
“Poet Statement” is a translation of a passage extracted from the Vietnamese poet Hàn Mặc Tử’s prose poem “Thơ” (“Poetry”), which appeared in his collection Chơi Giữa Mùa Trăng (Ngày Mới Press, 1944), or Midseason Moonplay in Quyên Nguyễn-Hoàng’s translation in progress. The title “Poet Statement” is the translator’s addition.
Hàn Mặc Tử (1912–1940) was a Vietnamese Catholic poet. He was born Nguyễn Trọng Trí at Lệ Mỹ Village, Đồng Hới District, Quảng Bình Province. In 1937, he contracted leprosy, and three years later, died at Quy Hòa Hospital in Quy Nhơn City. Hàn was the founder and celebrated master of the Chaos (“Loạn”) or Mad (“Điên”) school of poetry, which lasted between 1936 and 1946 in Vietnam.
