现代艺术无论边界可以多么辽远，中心却仍是恒定在艺术家的方寸之间的。
上帝走了之后，神坛的位置言明不言明地事实上留给了司职创造的艺术家。当然，是否需要他/她承当，他/她是否承当得起是另一回事。
语言艺术家诗人从来相信天、地、人、神共栖的和谐梦境，在那里，他/她曾自信，外在的开阔便是他/她内在的深广。虽然现在，这一自信退位了，而借助于语言的矿道内掘能否达至一世界的开阔，大抵是未知之数，但是是值得期待的未知。
理想地说来，其实也是就“写”的现实层面来说，没有内在的深，外在无边的开阔对于诗人只是无限的空泛；没有内在深处情动的创作冲动，外在巨大的云信息只是生命背景中避之不及的嘈杂之音；没有内在深处石头般冷硬坚定的寂静，被万丈红尘搅扰的心早已不知自己被偕行到了何处……
无疑，我们如今的人包括诗人均处在天翻地覆的变化时代中。没有了田园沉静的宁谧、没有了脚踩大地的踏实、没有了万物归宗的指向、没有了价值标准的保护，甚至“看”这曾经思考的起点也被不停息的影像“浏览”时时刷屏……这对于一个内在的人，一个意欲安魂的现代人来说，可能更多是灾难，但无疑是与机遇并存的灾难，这样，它就不仅有可能缔造现实中的弄潮儿，也甚至会有益于诗歌，如果你驾驭得住自己，因为“灾难”正是诗歌的创造机制，不始于灾难起点的诗歌几乎无有达至崇高美学的可能，加诸于身的不幸，是内在诗歌之珠的产床。
成功得如同神话的现实事实上从来不需要诗人，其创造性已在那事件过程内部完美地撑起了自己华丽丽的裙摆，而失败的现实、真实的灾难才是诗歌神话的重新出发之地、起飞的断崖，那里有英雄主义的野蛮生命力孤单而疯狂地一意孤行，走出自己的道路。
于是，一首诗写了出来，一个边缘里的中心便产生了，这个中心从此进入了不断地滑向边缘、形成另一中心的永恒滑动游戏中。每一中心都处在散落的无数中心中。
诗人总是身处边缘的人，又以内心的方寸之所为天地的中心。他/她处身边缘的查看与审视里，以其为立心之基；他/她以进入他/她方寸之中的万物为一世界的质料，无能进入者、为他/她所不取者，拒之于心门之外，便不存在。一读者亦同，身在边缘，以查看为务，不能进入他/她之共鸣中的诗，便不存在。
每一首诗之中心在遇到交流阅读沟通之前，均身在生冷的边缘，直到有一天它遇到了一个读者的热心、一个译者的热心……冷遇便是边缘，真诚的迎迓即是中心。当边缘融解在了理解的场域、交流的场域、翻译的场域，一个流动的中心便又形成了。每个人都有十五分钟出名真人秀机会的时代氛围，便意味着每个人都有十五分钟成为中心的机会。在全球化的空间里，这样的一个中心甚至可以是一个传奇，比如我写这短文的今早，海岸兄发来一条微信，有波兰语译者来邮，他2004年的一首诗《海啸》，被选入网路的“一周一诗”，一周间被译成了十多种文字阅读……这一活动中甚至听说过一首诗有被译成了一百种语言。被翻译成更多的文字可能是一个诗人生涯经历中最美好的事情，不仅在于传播，甚至在于理解，哪怕诗人自己写时怀疑、晦涩、不甚解的某处也有可能被有趣地发明为了可解。然而，哪怕是一百种语言的一首诗，下一周它们就成为了边缘，被新的一首诗多语种翻译的铺天盖地覆盖了。中心的变动不居成为虚拟空间时代的特征，中心不断地处在边缘化中是时代文化最热衷循环播放的咒语。
所以，一个如今的诗人，其中最好的那个，他/她可能仍在一遍遍地写自己的出生记、变形记，也就是用自己的语言重述着从前的、现在的经典、隐喻，一遍遍地重新生出那些中心。因为这本能的品味、无形中的策略，意外地应对了如何逃离边缘，在被下一周的几十种语言翻译覆盖之前，这个本周的中心可能凭着自己的接续古往今来，进入到了一个热心读者的深心中，并且住了下来，只有这一次入住，才抵抗得了流动得太快的边缘化的魔咒。
如果这也只是一个神话，在流动不居的当代，那么，我愿意成为怀揣着这一神话的一个古人，并期待有朝一日，风水轮流转，这，也可以成为十五分钟的诗歌圈时尚。
我是个悲观主义者吗？有可能，与灾难唇齿相依的悲观往往是诗歌主要的能产源，当我怀揣巨大悲哀写下《小朵》一诗时，我的核心反抗是如何不靠言说，而是“创造”出一个真正的“小”，被挤压到星星点点的“小”灵魂在这个时代他/她能喊出什么样的凄厉之声。当这首以狂奔的速度为节奏、以身在边缘的“小灵魂”为主题的诗歌在一个成为中心的交流场域——2016布拉迪斯拉发“诗艺”国际诗歌节上朗诵时，它为我带来了意外的好运，获得了一个成为某种固定中心的机会：诗歌节主办方当即决定将出版我的斯洛伐克语诗集，据说，这是当代中国诗人在斯洛伐克语中的第一本诗集。就在我来沪与会前几天，10月31日的晚上，我已拿到了这本书。
下面就请允许我来朗诵一下这首我的好运之诗。
《小朵》
奔跑在跟毁灭赛跑，无处可躲，小朵奔跑
毁灭花开朵朵，灰尘的鹅毛大雪黑云压下
小朵奔跑，抵死奔跑，要穿过乱云飞渡，
穿过陷落的家园，穿过邪恶创造力的腰身
天使在回望，无遮无蔽，谁在拆拆飞速地拆
无家无告，我跑跑莫名究竟地跑，不接地气
针尖上的小朵，刀俎上跑，一小朵
微小如被施法的尘埃，我们仅剩的灵魂
一小朵，被一大坨求生抛出的小朵，谢天
谢地，我乘乘乘花朵的降落伞，三朵花伞
浪花依旧，险象环生增生超生，一定要有
动作，小朵20号脚下射出油门
让子弹飞奔，小朵13号旁逸斜出如出枪膛
骑上蜜蜂，巨无霸嗡鸣，宛如九个小朵
在恐惧九重深的巍峨里，穿梭九毫米
如豆灯火，小朵星星点点，垂落
又飙起的希望，火光一闪
争斗，争斗，举起两根缝衣针
我织织织进三重诅咒，与混乱战斗
自救的口袋，一截布道的手指
盖上我，在天空下睡去，向着熄火的朝阳。
Hold Fast in the Heart, Win Slowly of the World
--Inside and Outside of the Poet, Centres and Margins of Poems
Zhao Si
(Trans. from Chinese by Xuan Yuan & the author)
No matter how far the modern art can go, the center remains its attribution in the square inch, the artist’s heart.
Ever since the leaving of the God, his place, explicitly or implicitly, has been left to the artists with the job of creation. However, it would surely be another story whether he/she were needed to take it on, or were able to.
Language artist, the poet has had the eternal faith in the harmonious coexistence of the Heavens, the Earth, Human Being and Gods. He/she had been confident in that the outside vastness is his/her inside deepness. But now, despite the abdication of this confidence, it remains unknown yet hopeful that the arrival of the vastness of the world can be done by the instead inside mining of the language.
Ideally, also on the actual writing reality, without the inside deepness, the immeasurable width of the outside is no more than boundless emptiness for the poet; without the emotional impulse of writing from the deep inside, the enormous information cloud in the outside is nothing but the inevitable jamming in your life setting; without the immovable ballast of a sober inside, you will get lost in nowhere in this restless mortal world.
Undoubtedly, nowadays everyone including poet lives in an unsettled changing era. Lost are bucolic tranquility, walking-on-the-earth steadiness, “Ellâm Onru” (means “All is One”) direction, and the protection of valuable criteria. Even “look”, once the beginning of thinking has given way to the spamming of endless dispensational visuals. These, for an inner being, the contemporary one with the requiem will, are disasters but definitely coexisted with opportunities. Such reality is not only doomed to produce its epochal shock troopers, but also even beneficial to the poetry if the poet can hold fast himself/herself, because “disaster shock” is exactly the creation mechanism of poetry which could hardly reach the sublime unless fixing its initial point within. As long as those misfortunes imposed on are not too strong to destroy, poem-pearls are given the clam to breed.
The reality obtaining its gigantic success never needs a poet and its own creation canopies its triumphal procession while the failure, the real disaster is the precipice for the myth of poetry to open its eagle wings and renew its flying into another world where wild vitality of heroism pioneers its way lonely but rampantly.
Then, a poem comes out, also a center in margins comes out and from this moment forward, the center enters into an eternal chain of sliding game, slipping into margins unstopped, meanwhile appearing as another center always. Every center is strewn in the countless centers.
Poet is usually someone staying in margins, with his/her square inch, the heart as the center of the world. Set on the look and scrutiny at margins, he/she is destined to build up the heart of the world. All things entering into his/her square inch are applied as materials for the world building, while others failing to, not taken or rejected are non-existent. So is the reader being in the margin to look and scrutinize, poems are not existent either when failing to get his/her responsiveness.
Before meeting with readings, communications, each poem, each center stays in the cold margins till someday it is embraced by the passion of a reader or a translator… Indifferent treatments are margins, warm welcomes are centers. When margins melted in the sites of understanding, of communicating, of translating, flowing centers emerge. Everyone could seize the chance to be at a center in this era producing 15-minute fame for all. In the globalizing space, this center could become a legend, like this morning when I wrote this short essay, I got a wechat message from Hai An that he got a Polish translator’s email and informed his poem “Tsunami” (2004) had been chosen by “One Poem One Week” project on web and had been translated into more than 10 languages in one week. I even heard another poem in this project has been translated into 100 languages. It could be the best thing for a poet during his career when his works are translated into other languages as much as possible, not just in circulation, also, even in understanding. Sometimes even those doubts, obscurities, incoherence in the original poems are luckily invented to be the intelligible. However, even the poem that got 100 languages translations slides into the margins next week, and is replaced by another poem with its multi-languages translations. The changeability of the centers is the typical feature of a cyberspace time in which centers constantly float into margins that is the most popular curses played on loop by the time culture.
So, a poet nowadays, particularly the best one among others all, maybe he/she still writes his/her own birth stories, metamorphoses, that is, uses his/her own language to rewrite classics, metaphors, those of erstwhile or present-day, regenerating those centers again and again. Thanks to this instinctive literary taste, unintentional tactics, the poet cope accidentally with the curse and find a crack to flee out of its black hole. Before covered by the next poem with its multi-languages translations, the center of this week resorts to the powerful tradition, enters into a deep place in one passionate reader’s heart and settles down there. Only this single stationing in could the poem resist the time curse of a too-quick marginalization.
If this resistance is only a myth in contemporary changeableness, then, I’d like to be an ancient one who cherishes the myth and awaits someday, every dog has its day, it also could become a 15-minute fashion in poetry circle.
Am I a pessimist? Maybe, pessimism closely related to and mutually dependent on disasters is usually the productive resource of poems. When I wrote the poem “A Dot” with huge sorrowfulness, the core resistance is to “create” instead of “say about” a real “smallness”, namely, the dots of small souls being squeezed and crushed in our time. And see what the dot screams. When “A Dot” with speedy rhythm, theme of small souls struggling in the margins was read in a communication center – 2016 The 13th “Ars Poetica” International Festival in Bratislava, it brought me unexpected good luck and got a special chance to become a relatively fixed center. The organizers of the festival decided to publish my Slovak poems book and it is said to be the first Slovak one from a contemporary Chinese poet. Finally, I got the book one week ago when the translator, sinologist Daniela Cziráková came to Beijing to visit CASS.
Please allow me to read this lucky poem.
A DOT
Running in a race with destruction, nowhere to hide, a dot runs;
destruction blossoms dottedly, large dust-flakes pressing down;
a dot runs, desperately, heart-full of passing-through scudded clouds
across the sky, across fallen homeland, piercing the waist of evil creativity.
An angel looks back, everywhere no shelter, who is demolishing, demolishing
with full speed ahead? Homeless, helpless, I run and run and run at a loss, no touchdown,
a dot running on tips of needles, on blades of knives and chopping boards,
a dot, tiny as a conjured mote, all that remains of our soul,
a dot, casted by a big ball of desire to survive. Thank god!
I ride and ride and ride a flower parachute, three flower umbrellas,
against waves of spraying dangers, and incessant crises swell, swell, swell...
There must be actions! No. 20 dot kicks a shot, making the bullets fly;
No. 13 dot dashes out like a slant shot out of a barrel.
Riding on bees, jumbo mount buzzing about, at least nine dots
break through 9 millimeter bean-shaped lights in the hell-deep towering
of terror. Twinkle dots falling,
hopes splashing, flashing sparkles!
Struggle! Struggle! Lifting two sewing needles,
threefold be the curse I weave and weave and weave 'round disorder's head,
a bag of saving oneself, a preaching finger
covers me, I lie down under the sky, towards the flameout morning sun.
(Trans. by Xuan Yuan, Tim Lilburn & the author)
【诗人简介】
赵四（b.1972），诗人、译者、诗学学者、编辑。文学博士（社科院）、博士后。在海内外出版有十余种著作，包括诗集《白乌鸦》《消失，记忆：2009-2014新诗选》，小品文集《拣沙者》，译诗集萨拉蒙大型诗选两种《蓝光枕之塔》《太阳沸腾的众口》，《埃德蒙·雅贝斯：诗全集》（合译）等。另发表有诸多学术论文、原创诗、文、译诗、译文。有部分诗作被译为英、西、法、德、俄、波、荷等15种语言并发表。应邀参加在欧洲多地举办的国际诗歌节、文学节。获波兰玛利亚·科诺普尼茨卡奖，美国“手推车诗歌奖”（第42届）提名等，是加拿大维多利亚大学2017-2018年度访问艺术家。目前在《诗刊》供职，同时任《当代国际诗坛》副主编、编委，2017年始，加入欧洲荷马诗歌&文艺奖章评委会，任副主席。
Chinese poet, essayist, translator, poetics scholar, editor, Ph.D. Zhao Si (b. 1972) is the author, translator of 12 books, including poems book Disappearing, Recalling (2016, won the "2014 Major Support Project" by CWA), Matchstick Man (in USA, 2017, nominated for 42 Pushcart Poetry Prize), two poetry books of Tomaž Šalamun (both 400+ pages each): Light-Blue-Pillow Tower (2014) and The Enormous Boiling Mouths of the Sun (2016), Edmond Jabès: Complete Poems (one of two translators, 2018), and selected work by others: Hart Crane (US), Ted Hughes (UK), Vladimir Holan (Czech), Yannis Ritsos (Greece), et al. Some of her poems have been translated into 16 languages and published overseas. She is a frequent guest at different poetry festivals held worldwide. She works for the Poetry Periodical and is the executive editor-in-chief of the prestigious Contemporary International Poetry. She was awarded Polish Marii Konopnickiej Poetry Prize in 2012, Orion Visiting Artist in University of Victoria, Canada in 2017-2018. Since 2017, she became the vice-president of European Medal of Poetry and Art-HOMER. She lives in Beijing.
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