#female pioneers
[Chinese poetry tag] 你是人间四月天 You are the April of this world - 林徽因 Lin Huiyin
Today we will be exploring a poem by one of my favourite historical figures and role models, 林徽因 Lin Huiyin. Born in 1904, Lin Huiyin was a renowned architect, historian, poet and intellectual who played a huge part in the restoration of Chinese cultural heritage sites and the design of the national emblem of the P.R.C.
I know many poems by her off by heart - she’s one of the few people who has successfully managed to fuse together the structures and tempo of English poetry and prose, with the ambiguous and emotive vocabulary of the Chinese language.
This is exactly what her close friends loved about her – Wilma and John K Fairbanks admired her for living on a “kind of double cultural frontier,” and facing the problem of “the necessity to winnow the past and discriminate among things foreign, what to preserve and what to borrow.”
She is probably best known for this poem below, called “You are the April of this world”, written in 1934. It is widely interpreted that the poem was written to either commemorate the death of 徐志摩 Xu Zhimo, another Chinese poet whom she had a whirlwind romance with in the UK, or the birth of her son (latter more likely from my perspective).
你是人间四月天
我说 你是人间的四月天；
笑响点亮了四面风；
轻灵在春的光艳中交舞着变。
你是四月早天里的云烟，
黄昏吹着风的软，星子在
无意中闪，细雨点洒在花前。
那轻，那娉婷，你是，
鲜妍百花的冠冕你戴着，
你是天真，庄严，
你是夜夜的月圆。
雪化后那片鹅黄，你像；
新鲜初放芽的绿，你是；
柔嫩喜悦，水光浮动着你梦期待中白莲。
你是一树一树的花开，
是燕在梁间呢喃，
——你是爱，是暖，
是希望，
你是人间的四月天！
Translations (by me)
You are the April of this world
I say, you are the April of this world;
Your laughter ignites the winds hither and thither;
Tinkling and dancing to the brilliant lights of spring.
You are the soft haze of April mornings,
Dusk blows the mellowness of the breeze,
The stars glittering subconsciously, fine rain drops sprinkle like wine amid the flowers.
That gentleness, gracefulness, is you,
It is you wearing a radiant crown of a hundred flowers,
You are innocence, dignity,
You are the full moon night after night.
Ivory swathes after melted snow, is like you;
New shoots of verdant green, is you;
Tender joy, the sparkling ripples carry long awaited white lotuses of your dreams.
You are the trees that bloom,
The swallows that chitter between the roof beams,
—— you are love, warmth,
Hope,
You are the April of this world!
