3/10 - Ye - Cosmopolitan East Asia

My knowledge about art in general is very much limited, but what I know about Asian art is almost zero. I was very please with Dr. Ye's presentation because it allowed me to learn to appreciate and to a certain point to understand the differences between them. I always wanted to know why some of the paintings have writing on them--It did not make any sense to me; now I have a better understanding about it. Proffesor Ye's Presentation was very entertaining, informative and clea. The chanting in English and Chinese was rather a beautiful component for me.

Professor Ye's lecture was very informative. His comments and suggestions about his
favorite books and movies about specific parts of Chinese history were helpful.

I know someone else already mentioned this, but I was really amazed by the Literati Paiting portion of Prof. Ye's lecture. I really knew nothing about it and was caught by the influence of animals, especially the horse. I never realized how important of a role horses played in ancient China. Then again, if you were a warrior, your life and your reputation surely depended on this animal. I must say that after the lecture i was curious and found myself looking up more examples of Literati Art. The art from Guan Daosheng is really impressive. It is highly detailed and realistic. I shall depart with this quote: "the hoofs of your horse smell sweet!" 😐

Two points stood out to me from this session. One piece I found very interesting was the idea that Buddhism spread after the Han Dynasty because people were searching for a new way -- they saw that the Han dynasty's stress on Confucianism still wasn't perfect, and they were looking for a new option. I liked this because it connects very well to the warring states period-- so many new philosophies were created because people wanted to see what works. I like having this other connection I can share with my students.
I also liked how Professor Ye brought up that during the Tang dynasty many new ideas were introduced-- because there was so much confidence in the dynasty and the culture, people were ok with allowing new ideas to come in. I think this is an excellent point, but this makes the xenophobic currents that run throughout our country even more worrisome!

I agree that poetry in its original language is really engaging. I do appreciate the translations, but listening to the original words provides a sort of emotional access to a part of the meaning that the translation lacks.

I felt the same way about Dr. Schaberg's presentation when he read several of the poems in the original. I also appreciated his commentary on the translations that we had. His comment that instead of having translations that are generally accepted, there are translations that are generally contested. It made the literature/poetry student in me cheer as I often wondered why we had one interpretation of a text when I was in school, and it was a good lesson for me as I teach literature and poetry to my students.

I had always taught before the Sui Dynasty, Buddhism spread because people looking for ways to deal with the suffering and chaos China was in. The textbooks discuss the Sui Dynasty had reunified the empire...I'm not sure if this was indeed a major factor of the spread of Buddhism in China...

I agree with the post made by Rodolpho on 3/11/09. For me it calls to mind the works of William Blake who made illuminations to go with many of his works. He is a fascinating exception to the trend for western paintings to consist of images only. I love Blake, and you can see some examples of his poems and artwork if you follow this link:

http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/cgi-bin/18th.cgi?query=blake

You will have to scroll down a bit and some of the links only have pictures and some only words, but "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell" for instance, has both. I agree however, that this type of combination of artistic forms is far less common in the western world. [Edit by="jdavidman on Jun 28, 9:38:04 PM"][/Edit]

Hearing the poetry read in its original language adds to the beauty of the work. There is a lot missing in translations, no matter how good they are. They are unable to communicate the music of the words the poet intended in the native language. Poetry is all about how words sound together. Even though I was unable to understand the meaning, the beauty of the poetry became real in a way I hadn't expected.