Lin Gang's "Hazy" 林庚之《朦朧 》

朦朧 常聽見有小孩的腳步聲向我跑來 中止於一霎突然的寂寞裏 春天如水的幽明 遂有一切之倒影 薄暮朦朧處 兩排綠樹下的路上 是有個不可知的希望在飛嗎 是的，有一隻黑色的蜻蜓 飛入冥冥的草中了 文學研究

Hazy Often hear the sound of steps of children running to me Stopping all of a sudden in the silence of solitude The blurry brightness of watery spring Then holds reflections of everything In the haze of dusk On a path beneath two rows of green trees Is an unknowable hope soaring Yes, there’s a black dragonfly Flyng into the obscurity of the grass Literary studies

Lin Gang                                             tr. El Zorro

Is the poet the dragonfly? If so, is Chinese literature full of weed and grass and yet full of an uncertain hope for the better? Are the children the alter egos of the poet? Is the blurry brightness of a wet spring, the season of growth and renewal, a symbol of the poet's hopes?
Lin Gang (1910-2006) otherwise known as 靜希, is a Fukinese born in Beijing, a scholar of Chinese classics and a professor at the Beijing University, the son of professor of philosophy at Tsing Hua University, who studied first at Beijing Normal University where he graduated in 1928 and then entered the Physics Department of Tsing Hua University and then transferred to the Chinese Department two years later and helped edit the "Literary Monthly"《文學月刊》, became a teaching assistant of 朱自清 and then published his first collection of free verse "Night" (夜),(1933), taught at various schools and universities and started writing formal 9-character Chinese poetry in 1935, publishing "Serenades of Beiing") (《北平情歌》(1934)、"Lullabies and others" (《冬眠曲及其它》1936). When the Sino-Japanese War broke out, he went to Zamen as a professor of the university there, transferring to Yenching University in 1947 and then in 1952 to the University of Beijing as professor of Chinese, retiring in 1986 . He published "Selections of Lin Gang's Poetry" in 1985 including therein various poems from 《春夜与窗》、《问路集》、《空间的驰想》. He also wrote a History of Chinese Literature(《中国文学史》)、Studies on the Poet 屈原 and his works (《诗人屈原及其作品研究》、Critique of 天问《天问论笺》、"Li Bai, Poet" (《诗人李白》)、Anthology of Criticism of Tang Poetry《唐诗综论》、New Formal Poetry and the Poetization of Language(《新诗格律与语言的诗化》).