Beyond the Books- A Literary Community

The department of Literary and Translation Studies holds a weekly Poetry Reading Group Session and organized a theatre trip to watch Hamlet performed by TNT Theatre. Year 4 student Yuzhi Chen from English Studies kindly contributed the following reflective piece, sharing her impressions and thoughts on these experiences. Her writing captures the spirit of discovery, community, and dialogue fostered through these initiatives.

We are pleased to present her reflections below¡ª¡ª

Beyond the Books- A Literary Community

Yuzhi. Chen 21

English Studies

HSS Poetry Group led by Dr. Jon Ford

Poetry meeting is sparked by the wish for Possibility, to intuitively travel in poetry and rediscovery its boundary, to awake it from the page and invite it to dance in talks, and life. ¡°I dwell in Possibility, a fairer house than Prose¡± is Emily Dickinson¡¯s metaphor of poetry. It is not necessarily a fairer house than prose for every one of us, but certainly an adventurous land. Every week we build our own Wonderland, where Spring is awaked after Death is contemplated, where Epiphanies emerge in roaming, a forest with Thrush singing and Windhover the morning¡¯s king, an orchard with bittersweet Fruits awaiting. (Six weekly meeting topics are hinted here). The roaming takes place in words, the poets¡¯ and ours. We are sheltered in words yet exposed in real world in some ways, since both pleasure and pain are invited in this poetic utopia (at least for me).

Poetry is perceived in each¡¯s unique eyes, and its prismatic reflections stun us. We found that Spring nurtures an infant¡¯s smile in Lin Huiyin¡¯s ¡°You Are the World¡¯s April Day¡± (ÄãÊÇÈ˼äËÄÔÂÌìtranslated into English by Ruoyu Zhang). Spring enkindles an ecstatic, fiery ritual yet provokes solitude for D.H. Lawrence. Spring evokes dread of the overwhelming splendour for Emily Dickinson yet we agree on that the dread could be consoled when the heart is soothed. In the springtime of life, how shall we soothe our dread and sense of alienation facing a seemingly splendid but unknown future? We learned that epiphany comes for Xu Zhimo thus he seeks to become an invisible grain of ashes after the wheel of creation (¶àлÌ죡ÎÒµÄÐÄÓÖÒ»¶ÈµØÌøµ´ translated into English by Yuzhi). It comes in Mathew Arnold¡¯s nostalgia for the bygone world and Ulysses¡¯s heroic quest to sailing beyond the sunset at old age on Tennyson¡¯s page. How to welcome a miraculous moment of sudden revelation and plant this momentous seed wisely into our ever-growing life? None of them are fully answered but it is such a reassurance that they are uttered in each¡¯s company. ¡°It echoes with the past and connects with the present. Soaking in this poetic fantasy is so surreal yet a happening itself, and thus making a heart full of delight and gratitude¡±, said Jiamin Lu, a student from China Studies. We knew that the wonderland is ¡°ever drifitng down the stream¡± of time though ¡°lingering in the golden gleam¡± of thoughts (Lewis Caroll), like our own poetic sphere. But so long as our distinctive and invocative responses can be debated and nourished in this community-like space, so long they sparkle here, and remain with us longer.

¡°Works of art are infinitely solitary¡­only love can grasp them and hold them¡± (Rilke, Ten Letters to a Young Poet). If pure love can be acknowledged beyond objective criticism and solitude could be acknowledged and eased in company, HSS Poetry Group Meeting is the place for this possibility.

Filmed by Yuzhi Chen

Drama Trip: Hamlet in TNT Productions

Like Poetry Group foster a community-like sphere, theatre enlivens the clash and dialogue of instantaneous responses within the community. Our imaginations are challenged yet furthered kindled beyond words, by music, body interpretation stage setting and costumes. Performance in an invitation for audiences to read actors in their cageyness, in what they conceal or reveal.

More than one of us feel disappointed about the absence of the philosophical Hamlet, yet educated about how he can be comically played. ¡°The contingency and absurdity of fate was not manifested. There was no resistance to fate, no contradiction and confusion of thought and will, language and action. One should have introspected and resonated with the complexity and reality of one own fate and life from Hamlet, but from the actor's performance, I only saw more emotional catharsis of actor himself, than invoking the catharsis of the audience¡± (from Chenfei Wu¡¯s reflection). Also, more than one of us appreciated how melodies pervades in TNT¡¯s production. When one speaker is delivering their lines, the others would be the singer, humming and chanting, fusing the telling and the happening, as if each one is the harper to pluck others¡¯ strings of fates. Even though the uttering of lines might not be truly soaring on the ¡®wings as swift as meditation¡¯ (I, v) as audiences might expect, melodies travel the wreckage of lots from acoustics to the innermost contemplation (from Yuzhi Chen¡¯s reflection ¡°When Melodies Kiss the Lot¡±).

On the other hand, the visual elements are relished, even reflected in an eye-arresting way, such as this stunningly artistic illustration by Xiaoxiao Jiang.

Jiang Xiaoxiao's Illustration of Hamlet

¡°I try to use simple geometric silhouette to reflect my favourite feature - minimalism style in the general stage and costume designs of the drama. Among them, the arched abutment - almost the only setting on the stage - serves a variety of purposes; it is not only used to represent the spatial division of the scene, but also used to reflect the symbolic meaning of the distance of hearts of different characters¡± (from Xiaoxiao Jiang¡¯s reflection).

The impressions about a philosophical, poetic, cathartic Hamlet scripted in the module of Elizabethan and Jacobean Tragedies resurrect in the theatre, but transformed. Still, sitting side by side in the darkness we could almost feel the laughter, the tear, the applauses and signs silently uttered in each other¡¯s heart. When Claudius hilariously tapped Hamlet, when Ophelia walked her metrical steps towards death, bosomed by a turquoise garment absorbing the watery blue, her ¡®melodious lay¡¯ is performed as ¡®melodious stray¡¯. When the play ends leaving some catharsis though they may not be those we expected. Still our solitary responses that are sharp as steel are sharpened, root deeper and shine brighter, when they are scattered in conversations, ruminated among us together.

Contributor: Yuzhi Chen

Editor: Yiyi Gu

Photographer: Yuzhi Chen, Zhihang Mao