Manuel Moya inspired by Chinese poets

MADRID - Spanish poet Manuel Moya has found an inexhaustible source of inspiration in the works of some ancient Chinese poets who lived between 1,250 and 1,650 years ago.

"I believe I live a life similar to that of Tao Yuanming in China's Jin Dynasty (266-420)," he said.

The grey-bearded 57-year-old never tried to hide his love for the famous ancient Chinese recluse and other poets, such as Wang Wei, Li Bai and Du Fu, and openly emulates their styles, in both his works and life. Readers can easily recognize the Chinese philosophy of life and literary images in the more than 40 poems that make up Moya's collection Impedimenta. The poems are in deliberate imitation of the Chinese poets.

He said in one poem emulating Tao's that even living away from the company of others, the clatter of carriages still comes to his hut.

"A home set in vanity fair turns out/My shelter from carriage noises without/You ask me how it can happen this way/It proves remote when your mind is far away," Tao thus wrote in his famous poem.

In Recalling a Poem by Wang Wei, Moya transplanted his hometown's natural views verse by verse to where the Chinese poet put the sunset and birds over mountains in the fall.

Such 21st-century Spanish versions of ancient Chinese pastoral poems helped him win awards and he has published more than 20 poetry anthologies and 10 storybooks and novels.

Moya wrote Impedimenta, which was published in 2011, under the pen name Xi Shaoquan.

In his house in the mountainous Fuenteheridos near Seville known as the "town of poets" in Spain, Moya recited Tao's works from a collection of translated ancient Chinese poems.

"The book produced great changes in me, it let me know about the world's oldest poems. I like them (poems) very much, and am totally lost in them," he said

Moya started to imitate the ancient poems, thanks in large part to the efforts of Joaquin Chen, 79, who had translated the Chinese poems into Spanish.

"Mr Chen led me into a new poetry wonderland," he said.

Moya is one of the many Spanish literary greats whom Chen's work has converted to the beauty of ancient Chinese poetry. These greats include translator Valentin Garcia Yebra and critic Luis Maria Anson, both members of the Royal Spanish Academy, and each has written a preface for Chen's other translations.

The introduction of ancient Chinese poetry to Hispanic literary circles dates back to the early 20th century. The late Nicaraguan poet Ruben Dario is believed to have been the first in that regard.

In Mayo's opinion, Spanish and Chinese poetry share an inner depth, among many things: "Poets of both countries care much about the miseries of human life, and express their thoughts in languages and melodies as beautiful as possible."

Living and writing in the calmness of the countryside lit up each year by a sea of chestnut blossoms in one of Europe's biggest chestnut plantations, Moya has a vegetable garden to look after. The son of a local farmer has long had a dream of traveling to China to come close to the nature that still lives on in Tao's poems.

"I long to see the mountains and trees that had bred the spirit of Tao."

Xinhua