I have finished the editing and consulting for the translation into Chinese of the diaries of Susan Sontag, published by her son, David Reiff, an editor and a writers in his own right. Now, we begin the second volume. Yao Jun Wei and I have been collaborating on her translations for nearly a decade. He recently gave to me our last product, in VOLCANO LOVER the story of Lord Nelson and his penchant as a great collector and connoissuer. We have now started "Continuities". I have finished the inquiries for "Continuities". It's amazing how translation reveals all the cultural assumptions and cultural knowledge that one has that allows one to read encoding and embedded meaning. Fortunately, I also knew both Susan Sontag and her son, and her ex- husband, Phillip Reiff, and his new wife, a lawyer, and good friend in my Oxford Society in Philadelphia. It all works together, -- what a web we spin!
Friday, March 30, 2012
Miro in Shanghai
This Miro Exhibition, on the fourth floor of the Shanghai Art Museum, was an absolute pleasure, and a return in memory, for me to Barcelona, and a whole day spent at the fabulous Miro museum there...there was a Joan Miro Exhibition
"Parade of Obsessions" in the Zhejiang Museum in 2009, which includes many of the drawings in this exhibition, but also incorporated sculptures. The charm of the prints and paintngs was enhanced by the children copying the "child like" quality of the prints. A wonderful experience....
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Thursday, March 22, 2012
Janet Roberts, Lindsay Shen and husband at Amy Tan luncheon M on the Bund Lit Festival
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| Amy Tan is seated at table behind me to reader's left, to my right. |
Monday, March 19, 2012
Jeff Fuchs on the Silk Road
Jeff Fuchs reminds one of Mick Jagger! (whom I once saw at Asia Society benefit in Manhattan) Fuchs was a mountain climber since his childhood in Switzerland and Canada. He is American. He is not keen on UNESCO developing Silk Road as site of heritage; it will be a "Disneyland"... He is most excited about finding DNA in the people he meets: he shows one woman and later a man, both of whom have Persian DNA. His two tour guides, Tibetans, were at nife point the whole trip, about who was dominant. He shows peak where "they couldn't come back but they did" of which he is proud. He interviewed elders who died after their interviews..in the coming months. He thinks it is important to preserve this oral history. Penguin Viking gave him an advance which set him out on his path. Did part of trip without GPS, which got them lost... He interviewed very old woman who waited 60 years for a man who did not return. Woman's fate.
Fuchs is originally Hungarian; he read the maygar's history...when on the trail. I asked him if he knew Tea Road by Martha, and yes, he does.
Amy Tan's Luncheon at M on the Bund About Writing and Shanghai Lit Festival
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| Amy Tan Shanghai, Life and writing. at M on the Bund Literary Festival The last time she was here, she talked about making "the Bone Setter's daughter" into an opera in San Francisco. I finished reading her book on her trip into Mynamar, starting in Lijiang, and as I had just returned from there, it was resonant. I thought of the "canterbuy tales' as she has 12 trippers who tell their various stories, or live them out...testing moral limits. As a Chinese American, which she firmly holds onto, she thinks of herself first as American, and then as Chinese. Amy's mother told her, "you are not Chinese" and she cannot speak Chinese very well...lacking vocabulary. She has three sisiters; one lives in Pewaukee, outside Milwaukee, whom she visits. She focusses on her grandmother who might have been a courtesan, as she has the same outfit as the "10 beauties" of Shanghai...and her grandmother was raped and then married off to a man who liked to associate himself with Du the gangster. She was raped at 8 years old...she was taken into a rich house as a concubine and bore the man his first son, for which she was honored. But she killed herself... Amy, herself, was abused by a church official and then by a gynecologist. She thinks women have to stand up for their rights. Her mother told her never let a man make you do something you don't want to do. I am most impressed by her talk after the luncheon when queried about why she writes: She says, "writing is proof I am alive". It helps me know what I am thinking. It is about myself and my relationship to life. When asked, what else would she have considered doing? She says, "being an artist". She made a drawing and then her uncle changed it: it was not about improving the drawing. He seemed to be changing my identity. She says it is important to have "attitude". Then, you can do it. For example, her band is about connecting...They are the :remains" of the Remainders.. Her mother asked her when she died 'What will you remember?" When she wrote the Joy Luck Club, her mother "understood"...she said Amy didn't get enough "credit"; she did not take dictation from the wome...her mother wants her to make the next book about her, which she does, "The Kitchen god's wife". Her uncle asked, "Why bring up the past?" Her friends claimed they were characters in the books. One can change history by telling the history so well, that everyone knows that we suffered... When asked what her novels "mean", she says it is difficult to deconstruct your own work. I do not reread my own novels once pubished; I will find too many things that need change. What does a writer need? VOICE. She found she was in "Cliff Notes". usually reserved for dead writers. Playing Chinese chess. "Don't make a big stink over nothing". Leisure is the power of women for example, playing mahjong. One cannot live someone elses' s life ; one needs cultural context. Tensions must be valid, imaginable. to be continued... I would like to have been a composer. Composing is like writing. I am reminded that she worked closely with the composer, when she wrote the libretto for the opera. She says she revises 100x per page. She explains that there is considerable "revisionist" history in their family. She says she has thown out 7 novels, after 200 pages which is painful..because as her editors says, "They were not felt'...one needs to know the emotional context. All of the Chinese in her books, like herself, are very Westernized. She says sometimes the story thread is lost in the contrivance of the story... In 1987 when she returned to Shanghai, she knew how American she was...I was here, then. She felt so much a minority, and they did not notice her husband, Lou, but herself. Her mother always fought with everyone in SF, but here she fought even more because she knew the language. Sister lived here in two small rooms, but that chcanged into a five bedroom and a villa on the Bund. The house on Julu Lu was theirs; we had a tour there.Her grandmother lived in Chong Ming Island and after giving birth to a son, killedherelf. Her grandmother, like my mother died on New Years Day eve. It is a story of "privilege and tragedy". Amy feels writing begins with "images". Highlights events and thinks about it; need a srong sense of place. Deterimine voice immediately. She imagines voice of mother and grandmother...both of which are too hoest. her mother wanted her to be neuro surgeonad a transaloror on the side... |
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| Moderator and Amy Tan at luncheon |
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| Lou , Amy Tan's husband of 30 years. |
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| Amy at luncheon at M on the Bund |
...Polished by tears...Maria Tsvetaeva
from “Poems for Moscow”
From my hands—take this city
not made by hands,
my strange, my beautiful
brother.
Take it, church by church—all
forty times forty churches,
and flying up the roofs, the
small pigeons;
And Spassky Gates—and gates, and gates—
where the Orthodox take off
their hats;
And the Chapel of Stars—refuge chapel—
where the floor is—polished by
tears;
Take the circle of the five cathedrals,
my coal, my soul; the domes
wash us in their darkgold,
And on your shoulders, from the red clouds,
the Mother of God will drop
her own thin coat,
And you will rise, happened of wonderpowers
—never ashamed you loved
me.
March 31, 1916
This poem leaped up on the Poetry Foundation page, when I was searching for poems for my writing course. Since I have just sent a packet to my "Russian daughter", it seemed to return to me, the Russian spirit and my love of the Russian friends, who remain there...and in my heart.
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