Assholes Make the Best Poets

This post is at least partially dedicated to our resident 中国野蛮人, Liansu, who recently badgered me into updating my blog. I'd also like to note that Colleen has a new "thinking blog," which, though still in it's infancy, promises great things. The link to the right has been updated to direct you there.

So, like many of my filthy generation, I was first introduced to the intracies of Chinese history via that now classic strategy game for the NES, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which was notorious amongst gamers of the era for being absofuckinglutely hard and damn near impossible to beat without about a gabillion hours of gameplay. The series--yes, series--is now in it's tenth incarnation. The graphics are better, but it's till basically the same. All that the PS2 has done for the title is to make micromanagement even more intricate.

Your only real hope of beating the game was to choose Cao Cao (for those of you about to make moo jokes, it's pronounced tsao-tsao) as your starting character. Only much later did I realize that it's because he is the one who historically was in the position of greatest strength. The novel of the same name mostly maligns the man as cruel and ruthless (which he probably was) and fails to mention that he was mostly responsible for bringing about reunification after the fall of the Eastern Han dynasty. However, he did not live to see this happen.

Our chinoise savage did her best to convince me this morning that Cao Cao was, in fact, a gifted poet. I was inclined to disagree partially out of my generally contradictory nature and also partially because the only poem of his I've read is about a tortoise. This multi-lingual pugilism is the basic format of our conversations (much like mine and Mike's, though with different languages), a kind of playful jibbing that has upset more than one liberal minded professor of a prestigious Midwestern university.

Two universal truths came out of our conversation this morning: one directly and one indirectly. First, all assholes live long, healthy lives. Furthermore, this does not necessarily mean all people who live long lives are assholes. Second, for some inexplicable reason, the truly talented lyric poets tend to be righteous pricks. Cases in point: Ezra Pound, Yosano Akiko, Catullus, Goethe, Walt Whitman, etc. I'm sure the list could go on ad infinitum. It remains to be seen, though, whether all assholes have the potential to be good poets.

神龟虽寿， 猷有竟时。
the blessed tortoise lives long but has only his allotted time.
腾蛇乘雾，终为土灰。
the winged serpent rides the mists but finds his end in ashes and earth.
老骥伏枥，志在千里；
the old warhorse submits to the stable but longs to run a thousand miles.
烈士暮年，壮心不已。
the noble warrior getting on in years never gives up the fight.
盈缩之期，不但在天；
his life, full or cut short, does not depend on Heaven;
养怡之福，可得永年。
he who is fit and carefree can live countless years.
幸甚至哉！歌以咏志。
with a joyous heart, I long to sing this song.

No doubt Liansu will be itching to fix all the egregious mistakes I made in translating that, but consider it my penance for insulting her tastes earlier.

I leave you with an obligatory picture of cherry blossoms, if only because it's spring.