Chögyam Trungpa; Concrete Poetry; Tibetan Buddhism; Dom Sylvester Houédard; Buddhist Poetry
摘要
Chögyam Trungpa (c. 1940-1987), one of the earliest translators of Tibetan Buddhism outside of Tibet, was also a prolific poet. Recently rediscovered poems that he composed as an immigrant in the United Kingdom in the 1960s show that Trungpa experimented with concrete poetry, a modernist poetry movement with roots in concrete art. Concrete poetry places an emphasis on the visual features of the written word in order to achieve extra-linguistic communication. The architects of the poetic form were, in part, seeking a global language, one that would easily communicate meaning across cultures. The spirit of internationalism likely appealed to Trungpa. At the time that he began composing concrete poetry, Trungpa was at a personal crossroads. He didn’t know how to translate the Buddhadharma such that Westerners might understand it. This conundrum constituted a personal crisis for him. His overriding concern was with preserving Buddhism by spreading it in a new culture, and he felt that his life had little value otherwise. He was also haunted by the memories of his escape from Tibet to India. In the United Kingdom, Trungpa became friends with Dom Sylvester Houédard, one of the UK’s most acclaimed concrete poets and he began writing concrete poetry. Trungpa’s concrete poetry adheres to some of the genre’s main features, but it is not mere imitation. His poetry also reveals a longing for Tibet, a desire to share his refugee story, a sophisticated grasp of visual composition, and a technique of seamlessly blending Tibetan and Western literary elements.
目次
Biography Encountering Representations of the Tibetan Other in Europe Trungpa and Concrete Poetry Works Cited Notes
