Neruda's Love Poems in Chinese

Name: Neruda's Love Poems in Chinese
Rating: 5.0 (1 reviews)

Learn Chinese language and world poetry series season 1

Created byHong Zeng

Last updated 5/2017

English

What you'll learn

Understand Neruda’s poems
Learn a wide range of poetic vocabularies in Chinese
Learn how to appreciate and analyze poetry
Learn to write poetry

Course content

6 sections • 31 lectures • 4h 59m total length

Introduction3:29
Introduces the course goal, course design, lesson plan.

Light Wraps You text practice 1 and poetry analysis18:35
This lecture is text practice and poetry analysis of the first part of Neruda's poem, "Light Wraps You" from his poetry collection, "Twenty Love Songs and the Song of Despair". Chinese character text, pinyin text and English translation, as well as vocabulary list are provided on each slide, which usually includes 1-2 paragraphs of the poem. I will first lead you to read through the vocabularies twice, imitate as closely as possible my pronunciation and the tone. Then I will explain to you the Chinese text in English sentence by sentence, both its literal meaning and poetic interpretation. Then I will lead you to read the poetic lines line by line twice, leaving space between lines for you to read after me, try to imitate as closely as possible the tone and pronunciation as well as the rhythm.
Light Wraps You text practice 2 and poetry analysis7:03
This lecture is text practice and poetry analysis of the second part of Neruda's poem, "Light Wraps You" from his poetry collection, "Twenty Love Songs and the Song of Despair". Chinese character text, pinyin text and English translation, as well as vocabulary list are provided on each slide, which usually includes 1-2 paragraphs of the poem. I will first lead you to read through the vocabularies twice, imitate as closely as possible my pronunciation and the tone. Then I will explain to you the Chinese text in English sentence by sentence, both its literal meaning and poetic interpretation. Then I will lead you to read the poetic lines line by line twice, leaving space between lines for you to read after me, try to imitate as closely as possible the tone and pronunciation as well as the rhythm. At the end of the slide, the last slide is the poetry comments. It is a summarizing poetic interpretation and analysis of this poem.
1. Light Wraps You musical recitation2:43
This is a musical video of the poem, "Light Wraps You". Against beautiful musical background fitting the mood of the poem, I will lead you to read it line by line, leaving space for you to read after me each line. You will imitate closely my pronunciation, rhythm as well as application of emotion in reading. Try to memorize the poem as much as possible. In the first few times of playing the video, you can look at the text and vocabularies there to remind you of what you read through, but after a few times, you should follow the reading without looking at the text, having memorized it and comprehended the meaning of what you read through so that you can follow my reading solely by listening and memory.
I Remember You as You Were text practice 1 and poetry analysis18:36
Follow the same lecture description of the corresponding part of the first poem.
I Remember You as You Were text practice 2 and poetry analysis5:20
Explore how memory, light, and smoke intertwine as the woman's body becomes landscape, turning memory into a tangible yet intangible presence marked by autumn leaves, absence, and longing.
2. I Remember As You Were musical recitation2:41
Explore young and teaching through the 'I Remember As You Were' musical recitation, as a team confronts what went wrong and who is what.

We Have Lost Even text practice and poetry analysis18:27
Explore Neruda's twilight as a symbol of dying day, memory, and life, where love emerges from loss. Examine imagery of fire, coins, and sculpture revealing spiritual treasure and renewed life.
3. We Have Lost Even musical video3:14
Explore Neruda's love poems in Chinese, delving into themes of love and soul through a culturally resonant lens. The lecture highlights personal expressions of affection and emotional nuance across languages.
4. So You Will Hear text practice part 1 and poetry analysis19:43
Explore Neruda's love poems through text practice and analysis, focusing on the muse as creator, sea and ivy imagery, longing, absence, and poetry as humanity's voice.
4. So You Will Hear text practice part 2 and poetry analysis6:47
4. So You Will Hear Me musical recitation3:53
Explore how a musical recitation activates body and mind, and how readers hear and interpret Neruda's love poems in Chinese through comments and perception.

5. Almost Out Of the Sky text practice 1 and poetry analysis16:48
Analyze a Neruda excerpt through imagery of night, moon, and water reflections, highlighting the woman's transcendent hope that rises above male conflict, war, and thunder.
5. Almost Out Of The Sky text practice 2 and poetry analysis17:24
Explore the poem's storm imagery and the cloudless female figure, analyzing contrasts between ruined nature and transcendent spirituality. Focus on wind, fire, white lotus, and the anti-self.
5. Almost Out of Sky musical recitation3:56
6. I Like For You To Be Still text practice 1 and poetry analysis18:42
Explore Neruda's 'I like for you to be still' through text practice and poetry analysis, examining how distance, voice, and stillness reveal the beloved as muse, soul, and divine imagery.
6. I Like For You to Be Still text practice 2 and poetry analysis7:05
6. I Like For You to Be Still music recitation3:43
Explore a music recitation titled I like for you to be still, weaving images of home, wife, and flights as it invites viewers to see and reflect.

7. Leaning Into the Afternoons text practice part 1 and poetry analysis19:17
Explore Neruda's love poems in Chinese through afternoon imagery, twilight, and ocean metaphors, analyzing sorrow, longing, and the cosmic interplay of life and death.
7. Leaning into the Afternoons text practice part 2 and poetry analysis2:35
Engage in afternoons text practice part 2 to analyze Neruda's love poems in chinese. Explore how the woman's eyes turn into the ocean, linking solitude and spirituality through maritime imagery.
7. Leaning Into the Afternoons music recitation2:36
Explore the afternoons music recitation inspired by Neruda's love poems in Chinese, highlighting sung lines, emotional scenes, and intimate expression through performance.
8. In My Sky at Twilight text practice part 1 and poetry analysis19:07
8. In My Sky at Twilight text practice part 2 and poetry analysis2:37
8. In My Sky at Twilight music recitation2:55
Explore the musical recitation of Neruda's love poems in Chinese, featuring twilight sky imagery and expressive vocal performance.

9. Thinking, Tangling Shadows text practice 1 and poetry analysis15:13
Analyze how Neruda's love poems externalize inner thinking and solitude through shadow imagery and dialogue with a divine presence, revealing the creative process in poetry.
9. Thinking, Tangling Shadows text practice 2 and poetry analysis18:37
Examine how the distant woman symbolizes a divine presence that externalizes the poet's creative process, turning longing into fire, shadows, nostalgia, and echoes.
9. Thinking, Tangling Shadows music recitation5:13
Analyze thinking and tangling shadows in a music recitation of Neruda's love poems in Chinese.
10. Here I Love You text practice 1 and poetry analysis17:57
Explore Neruda's love poems in Chinese by analyzing sea and horizon imagery and symbols like the black cross, revealing longing, absence, and liberation through life and death.
10. Here I Love You text practice 2 and poetry analysis10:27
Analyze Neruda's 'Here I love you' through text practice two, revealing longing and absence as the lover's presence lingers in moonlight, twilight, stars, and pine trees.
10. Here I Love You music recitation4:32
Bonus Lecture My website of Chinese language/culture of free contents and others0:03

Requirements

It's for students of all Chinese levels. Preferably they have taken my "College Mandarin Chinese on Your Own Beginning Level" to have already known about Chinese pinyin sound system and writing system as well as basic Chinese vocabularies.
students interested in world poetry

Description

"Neruda's Love Poems in Chinese" is the first sequel of my " Learning Chinese Language and World Poetry Series", which teaches Chinese language through learning the expertly translated poems of the most acclaimed poets in the world, as poetry is the most beautiful use of language in any world language, and translation often highlights the distinguished feature of each language. The Nobel Prize winner, Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, is venerated as "the greatest poet of 20th century in any language" by Gacia Marquez, another highly influential Nobel Prize Winner in Literature from Columbia. As the Nobel Prize Award Committee claims, "under Neruda's pen, a whole continent was brought to life." In his Whitman-like at the same time, strangely, Rilke-like, Pantheist love poem collection, "Twenty Love Songs and the Song of Despair", from which the poems of this course draw on, one can feel strongly that there is a fecundity so deep that it approaches sadness, a propinquity so large that is similar to distance, a life so rich that only death can accommodate. Ultimately, death and loss is not the opposite side of life, but the hidden side of a global being. In most poems in this course, the ambiance of the poem is stormy night with thunder and lightening, externalizing the poet’s inner turmoil: his passion, combat and trial of belief—his cross. But the woman image in these poems seems to merge with a higher existence above his mortal strife. Among scenes of destruction and ruins, among the cyclone and uprooted trees, she is an image of fertile nature unaffected by the ruin---she is the corn tassel, the cloudless sky, sparkling leaves, at the same time one of higher spirituality—the broken stars imaged in the water, the lightning, the fiery white lotus and the “question of smoke”. She crosses the scene of ruin without stop, she grows out of the roots of death and destruction and rise above it. She fills everything, far and beyond, near and inside, so that she almost becomes divinity itself, the sacred muse of the poet’s creation.

Each poem is taught in 2-3 lectures, depending on the length of the poem: the first one or two lectures are the text practice (with Chinese character, pinyin and English translation text and a page of poetry comment at the end of the lecture) and line-by-line poetry analysis of the poem, in which I will teach you the language as much as explain to you the poetic interpretation of the symbolic meaning of the poems; the third lecture is the musical recitation of the poem, in which You can follow my reading of the poem against intoxicating musical background. Through learning this course, you will find your Chinese language skill greatly enhanced with beautiful Chinese vocabularies and expressions amassed in all realms of human emotional experience and in the great Nature, at the same time getting to appreciate and understand the immortal beauty of the love poetry of the world's greatest poet.

Who this course is for:

Chinese students of all levels, preferable having taken my "College Mandarin Chinese on Your Own Beginning Level"
students interested in world poetry

Neruda's Love Poems in Chinese

What you'll learn

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Course content

Introduction1 lecture • 3min

Part 1: first two poems6 lectures • 55min

Part 2: second group of two poems5 lectures • 52min

part 3: the third group of 2 poems6 lectures • 1hr 8min

part 4: the fourth group of two poems6 lectures • 49min

part 5: the fifth group of 2 poems7 lectures • 1hr 12min

Requirements

Description

Who this course is for: