题目：The Sound of Silence: Zen and Blues in Richard Wright's Haiku （沉默之声：论赖特俳句中的禅意与蓝调）
演讲人：Professor Sachi Nakachi（日本都留文科大学英语系教授、校外事处主任）
讲座时间：2012.3.16 （周五）下午 3 : 30
地点: 紫金港校区东五201（东）
报告语言：英语
讲座摘要（英文）：
Simon and Garfunkel’s famous hit song, “The Sound of Silence,” was created in 1963 when Zen Buddhism became popular in the United States. Through the teaching of Zen, Americans came to give more attention to silence. In the fourth stanza of “The Sound of Silence,” it says: “But my words, like silent raindrops fell and echoed in the wells of silence.” The meaning of silence in these lines is negative. It means isolation of a poet in the community he lives in. However, it succeeds in giving aesthetic effects on the song.
Richard Wright came to be familiar with Japanese haiku poetry in 1959. After reading R. H. Blyth’s four volumes on haiku and its relation to Zen, he was obsessed with composing haiku and he wrote more than 4,000 haiku poems by March 1960. It is not clear why Wright was so attracted to haiku in his late years, but it is possible that he grew interested in the function of silence by reading Blyth’s Haiku, which interprets Japanese haiku in terms of Zen philosophy. Like the song by Simon and Garfunkel, silence plays an important part in Wright’s haiku.
Wright’s haiku, however, cannot be explained by his interest in Zen only. It is important to note that the period when Wright became fascinated by haiku coincides with the period when his interest in blues was rekindled. Surprisingly, Wright also found silence in the essence of blues. In her speech, Dr. Nakachi would like to discuss how Wright tried to achieve a new African American modernist form of art by paying attention to the sound of silence in his haiku.
外语学院英语文学研究所
2012. 3. 5
