Lin’s tragic early death in January 1996 silenced one of the most creative and dynamic literary voices in Taiwan of the 1980s and 1990s. Born in Taipei, Lin Yaode (Lin Yao-te) graduated from the Department of Law of Fu Jen Catholic University in 1985 and married the illustrator Chen Luxi in 1995.
Lin’s writings, first published in 1978, encompass a wide range of literary genres—essay, short story, novel, literary criticism, drama, and, of course, poetry. He also received almost every major literary prize offered in Taiwan, was active in many poetry societies and journals, and was an important editor of literary journals and poetry series. His brief but extraordinary career has had a lasting impact on the development and study of contemporary poetry in Taiwan.
Poetry anchors Lin’s works in the other genres, which tend to take lyricism as their mode of discourse, and certainly it is for his poetry that he is best remembered. Lin’s poetic style ranges widely, yet there is at the core of all his writings an experimental, often difficult language that envelops a deeply conceptual, sometimes erotic-romantic, world. This is no better seen than in “The Red Chamber,” included here.
…………………….. I am
Lost in a sea of numbers
On the monitor
Row upon row of figures
Come into focus and then drop off
Like a curtain falling on the world
In front of the terminal
My mind fragments into blips on the screen
Inside it
The circuitry is as obscure as a chamber of sacred texts
After working late, I make my way home along night-shrouded streets
With those programs harshly etched into my subconscious
There is now no erasing them
And I begin to wonder whether I am flesh and blood
Or a tangle of integrated circuits
After work, I
Become a terminal unplugged
A memory board without a power source
Data and figures
Collide and explode
Endlessly
Like a collapsing galaxy
(1985)
(translated by Joseph R. Allen)
(FROM A SILVER BOWL FULL OF SNOW)
I
Within the confines of the soul, all my elapsing gestures
Transmigrate into a solid silver bowl
Language brimming over like snow
Bathing the cosmos in light, the cosmos of light-years untold
That snow in the bowl, then,
Is language, is love
Is my fearless choosing. Absolute glory
Compressed
Into the eternity of that moment
Gushing guile and disputation
II
The snowy gleam of silver
And snow’s silver light
Gone in an instant
Faded from sight
When the snowy gleam of silver oxidizes into sulfur’s raven stain
And when snow’s silver light melts into the transparency of water
The raven stain folds into the jet-black focal length of the cosmos
And transparency cleanses the feverish arch of the Milky Way
(1986)
(translated by Joseph R. Allen)
THE LIE OF A SPRING I TIGHTLY WIND
So I tell her
The lie of the spring I tightly wind
Every night
The same old line
Changing only in pitch
According to the season and the weather
Feelings are a cassette she crushes underfoot
And every night I listen to that scratchy song
To that broken tape
Snagged on the cusp of a crescent moon
And dragged slowly along
A darkened railway
Traveling toward the other unknown half of the earth
So I tell her
The lie of the spring I tightly wind
Every night
Always wondering
When the spring will
break
(1986)
(translated by Joseph R. Allen)
A teacup, whole on the desk
A bamboo flute bored on the wall
And against the bureau a rimless tire
Startled awake in the early morning light
Faster than a flash, a swath of empty white, vast and wide
Smothers my thoughts with their wordy ant lines
A swath of empty white, vast and wide
From hub and aperture, from the cup’s very void gushes forth
Something not found in records or in history books
The concept of “non”
More desolate than the cosmos itself
Nostalgia for time and space
A critique of the human race trapped in its own language
Quietly raises its eyes between the lines within the words
The concept of “ ”, hushed and hidden, so very cautious
Untouchable, beyond hearing, and out of sight
Soundless music, that neither matter nor desire
Can ever conquer
From hub and aperture, from the cup’s very void slowly oozes.
…
(1986)
(translated by Joseph R. Allen)
Treading along the melancholia of those elegantly bound volumes
Their flyleaves frozen in a thin coat of snow
Splitting when touched, crumbling when raised up
Leaf after leaf of mist and clouds, yesterday was
The urn of a dream. Lifted from the earth
The clay seal breaks away bit by bit, and there falls
The memory of an eclipse.
The urn of a dream, a pottery void
The music of drumming tragedy
Cascading concentric patterns like spirals of a corridor
Night after night, obsession weaves its spider’s web
Glistening with watery hues, forever
Denying dawn’s rising light.
Lutelike necklines finely woven wraps
Emerald bracelets and pale pink chemises
Along the walkways squeezed between one red chamber and another
Passing shoulder by shoulder.
It is you
Whom I encounter on the narrow path, asking about the brush of your hair
Against my cheek
In our shared palm we hold
Flower seeds of a different color
The rainbow’s seven hues stream through the interlacings of our fingers
Scattering them, splashing their golden rays as they go
And I take you in my arms. Dark beads of dew
Surround our entwining limbs.
Swirling in the narrow, unending alleyways
Ancient tiles in a twirling
Vision make their escape.
And I take you in my arms; a fresh wind stirs.
A fresh wind stirs, forever slipping through
Our unfastened collars
Turning, turning, a back is glimpsed, and after that, one entrance hall
And then another
Passing on toward the vanishing courtyard.
A shared thought seeps over sculpted sashes
The chrysanthemum image stealing its way
Next door a lamp burns on the oil of orchids
Its vegetal essence scattering the charred fragrance aloft
Ultimately the classics are but
Voices in exile,
Always emerging from behind. Those
Oils of orchid melting within their orange blaze
And saying one more time: I love you.
The sediments of history quietly settle out
Embers with their anxious flickering light
Princes and kings, and their loyal men
Are reduced to a bevy of abandoned wives
Denied their faithful vows on gilded leaf.
The cast of the moon lifts the veils of darkness
And stars fall like rain, glittering with agitated rays
On distant tides, the ocean’s horizon
Blossoms with its short-lived spring
Desire in that deserted Daguan Garden
Freezes their gestures in the depth of night
Ancient fossils buried in earthen layers.
The small path leads through flowerbeds
With their forever changing places
But the elegantly bound women never grow old
The twelve chosen beauties
Stand as tragic tombs cast in silver light
Under the skies of scuttling clouds.
A garden of peonies, fossils of petal upon petal
If you really love me
Then reach out with
Your slender fingers
And awaken, petal upon petal,
The spring of petal upon petal.
(1990)
(translated by Joseph R. Allen)