to the memory of my friend SI-YA-U, whose head was cut off in ShanghaiA
Renowned Leonardo'sworld-famous"La Gioconda"has disappeared.
And in the spacevacated by the fugitivea copy has been placed.
The poet inscribingthe present treatiseknows more than a littleabout the fateof the real Gioconda.
She fell in lovewith a seductivegraceful youth:a honey-tonguedalmond-eyed Chinesenamed SI-YA-U.
Gioconda ran offafter her lover;
Gioconda was burned in a Chinese city.
I,
Nazim Hikmet,authorityon this matter,thumbing my nose at friend and foefive times a day,undaunted,claimI can prove it;if I can't,
I'll be ruined and banishedforever from the realm of poesy.
Part
Excerpts from Gioconda's Diary15 March 1924:
Paris,
Louvre
At last I am bored with the Louvre Museum.
You can get fed up with boredom very fast.
I am fed up with my boredom.
And from the devastation inside me I drew this lesson; to visit a museum is fine, to be a museum piece is terrible!
In this palace that imprisons the pastI am placed under such a heavy sentencethat as the paint on my face cracks out of boredomI'm forced to keep grinning without letting up.
Because I am the Gioconda from Florencewhose smile is more famous than Florence.
I am bored with the Louvre Museum.
And since you get sick soon enough of conversing with the past,
I decided from now onto keep a diary.
Writing of today may be of some help in forgetting yesterday…However, the Louvre is a strange place.
Here you might
Alexander the Great's Longines watch complete with chronometer, but not a single sheet of clean notebook paperor a pencil worth a piaster.
Damn your Louvre, your Paris.
I'll write these entries on the back of my canvas.
And sowhen I picked a pen from the pocketof a nearsighted American sticking his red nose into my skirts—his hair stinking of wine— I started my memoirs. I'm writing on my back the sorrow of having a famous smile…18 March:
The Louvre has fallen asleep.
In the dark, the armless Venus looks like a veteran of the Great War.
The gold helmet of a knight gleamsas the light from the night watchman's lantern strikes a dark picture. Here in the Louvre my days are all the same like the six sides of a wood cube.
My head is full of sharp smells like the shelf of a medicine cabinet.20 MarchI admire those Flemish painters:is it easy to give the air of a naked goddess to the plump ladiesof milk and sausage merchants?
But even if you wear silk panties,cow + silk panties = cow.
Last night a window was left open.
The naked Flemish goddesses caught cold.
All daytoday, turning their baremountain-like pink behinds to the public, they coughed and sneezed…I caught cold, too.
So as not to look silly smiling with a cold,
I tried to hide my sniffles from the visitors.1
Today I saw a Chinese: he was nothing like those Chinese with their topknots.
How long he gazed at me!
I'm well aware the favor of Chinese who work ivory like silk is not to be taken lightly…11 AprilI caught the name of the Chinese who comes every day: SI-YA-U.16
Today we spokein the language of eyes.
He works as a weaver daysand studies nights.
Now it's a long time since the nightcame on like a pack of black-shirted Fascists.
The cry of a man out of workwho jumped into the Seinerose from the dark water.
And ah! you on whose fist-size head mountain-like winds descend,at this very minute you're probably busybuilding towers of thick, leather-bound booksto get answers to the questions you asked of the stars.
SI-YA-U
AD…And when your eyes find in the lines what they desire, when your eyes tire,rest your tired head like a black-and-yellow Japanese chrysanthemum on the books..
EP SI-YA-U
EP…18 AprilI've begun to forgetthe names of those Renaissance masters.
I want to see the black bird-and-flower watercolors that slant-eyed Chinese painters drip from their long thin bamboo brushes.
WS
OM
HE
IS
SS
LO
LO
LO
IS
IS
IS… Voices race through the air like the fiery greyhounds.
The wireless in the Eiffel Tower calls out:
LO
LO
LO
IS
IS
IS… "I,
OO, am Oriental — this voice is for me.
My ears are receivers, too.
I, too, must listen to Eiffel."News from China News from China News from China:
The dragon that came down from the Kaf mountains has spread his wingsacross the golden skies of the Chinese homeland.
Butin this business it's not only the British lord'sgullet shaved like the thick neck of a plucked henthat will be cutbut also the long thin beard of Confucius!
OM
DA'S
Y21
Today my Chinese looked my straight in the eyeand asked:"Those who crush our rice fields with the caterpillar treads of their tanksand who swagger through our cities like emperors of hell,are they of
UR race, the race of him who
ED you?"I almost raised my hand and cried "No!"27 April Tonight at the blare of an American trumpet—the horn of a 12-horsepower Ford— I awoke from a dream,and what I glimpsed for an instant instantly vanished.
What I'd seen was a still blue lake.
In this lake the slant-eyed light of my life had wrapped his fingers around the neck of a gilded fish.
I tried to reach him,my boat a Chinese teacupand my sail the embroidered silk of a Japanese bamboo
WS
OM
HE
IS
SS
LO
LO
LO
IS
IS
IS The radio station signs off.
Once more blue-shirted Parisians fill Paris with red voices and red
OM
DA'S
Y2
Today my Chinese failed to show up.5
Still no sign of him…8
My days are like the waiting room of a station:eyes glued to the tracks…10
Sculptors of Greece,painters of Seljuk china,weavers of fiery rugs in Persia,chanters of hymns to dromedaries in deserts,dancer whose body undulates like a breeze,craftsman who cuts thirty-six facets from a one-carat stone,and
OU who have five talents on your five fingers, master
LO!
Call out and announce to both friends and foe:because he made too much noise in Paris,because he smashed in the window of the Mandarin ambassador, Gioconda's lover has been thrown out of France… My lover from China has gone back to China…And now I'd like to knowwho's Romeo and Juliet!
If he isn't Juliet in pants and I'm not Romeo in skirts…Ah, if I could cry— if only I could cry…12 May Today when I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror of some mother's daughtertouching up the paint on her bloody mouth in front of me, the tin crown of my fame shattered on my head.
While the desire to cry writhes inside me I smile demurely;like a stuffed pig's head my ugly face grins on… Leonardo da Vinci, may your bones become the brush of a Cubist painterfor grabbing me by the throat — your hands dripping with paint —and sticking in my mouth like a gold-plated tooththis cursed smile…Part
The
OM
HE
OR'S
Ah, friends,
Gioconda is in a bad way…Take it from me, if she didn't have hopes of getting word from afar,she'd steal a guard's pistol, and aiming to give the color of deathto her lips' cursed smile, she'd empty it into her canvas
OM
DA'S
YO that Leonardo da Vinci's brushhad conceived me under the gilded sun of China!
That the painted mountain behind mehad been a sugar-loaf Chinese mountain,that the pink-white color of my long face could fade,that my eyes were almond-shaped!
And if only my smile could show what I feel in my heart!
Then in the arms of him who is far away I could have roamed through
OM
HE
OR'S
KI had a heart-to-heart talk with Gioconda today.
The hours flew by one after anotherlike the pages of a spell-binding book.
And the decision we reachedwill cut like a knife Gioconda's life in two.
Tomorrow night you'll see us carry it
OM
HE
OR'S
The clock of Notre Dame strikes midnight. Midnight midnight.
Who knows at this very moment which drunk is killing his wife?
Who know at this very moment which ghost is haunting the halls of a castle?
Who knows at this very moment which thief is surmounting the most unsurmountable wall? Midnight… Midnight…Who knows at this very moment…I know very well that in every novel this is the darkest hour. Midnight strikes fear into the heart of every reader…But what could I do?
When my monoplane landed on the roof of the Louvre,the clock of Notre Dame struck midnight.
And, strangely enough,
I wasn't afraidas I patted the aluminum rump of my plane and stepped down on the roof…Uncoiling the fifty-fathom-long rope wound around my waist,
I lowered it outside Gioconda's windowlike a vertical bridge between heaven and hell.
I blew my shrill whistle three times.
And I got an immediate responseto those three shrill whistles.
Gioconda threw open her window.
This poor farmer's daughter done up as the Virgin Marychucked her gilded frameand, grabbing hold of the rope, pulled herself up…SI-YA-U, my friend, you were truly lucky to fallto a lion-hearted woman like
OM
DA'S
This thing called an airplane is a winged iron horse.
Below us is Paris with its Eiffel Tower— a sharp-nosed, pock-marked, moon-like face.
We're climbing, climbing higher.
Like an arrow of fire we pierce the darkness.
The heavens rise overhead, looming closer;the sky is like a meadow full of flowers. We're climbing, climbing higher.…………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………………………………I must have dozed off — I opened my eyes.
Dawn's moment of glory.
The sky a calm ocean,our plane a ship.
I call this smooth sailing, smooth as butter.
Behind us a wake of smoke floats.
Our eyes survey blue vacancies full of glittering discs…Below us the earth looks like a Jaffa orange turning gold in the sun…By what magic have I climbed off the ground hundreds of minarets high,and yet to gaze down at the earth my mouth still
OM
HE
OR'S
Now our plane swims within the hot winds swarming over Africa.
Seen from above, Africa looks like a huge violin.
I swearthey're playing Tchaikovsky on a cello on the angry dark island of Africa.
And waiving his long hairy arms, a gorilla is
OM
HE
OR'S
We're crossing the Indian Ocean.
We're drinking in the air like a heavy, faint-smelling syrup.
An keeping our eyes on the yellow beacon of Singapore— leaving Australia on the right, Madagascar on the left —and putting our faith in the fuel in the tank, we're heading for the China Sea… From the journal of a deckhand named John aboard a British vessel in the China
One night a typhoon blows up out of the blue.
Man, what a hurricane!
Mounted on the back of yellow devil, the Mother of God whirls around and around, churning up the air.
And as luck would have it, I've got the watch on the foretop.
The huge ship under me looks about this big!
The wind is roaring blast after blast, blast after blast…The mast quivers like a strung bow.() [What business do you have being way up there? Christ, man, what do you think you are-a stork? N.
H.]Oops, now we're shooting sky-high — my head splits the clouds.
Oops, now we're sinking to the bottom — my fingers comb the ocean floor.
We're learning to the left, we're leaning to the right —that is, we're leaning larboard and starboard.
My God, we just sank! Oh no!
This time we're sure to go under!
The wavesleap over my head like Bengal tigers.
Fear leads me on like a coffee-colored Javanese whore.
This is no joke — this is the China Sea… () [The deckhand has every right to be afraid. The rage of the China Sea is not to be taken lightly. N.
H.]Okay, let's keep it short.
OP…What's that?
A rectangular piece of canvas dropped from the air into the crows nest.
The canvas was some kind of woman!
It struck me this madame who came from the sky would never understand our seamen's talk and ways.
I got right down and kissed her hand, and making like a poet,
I cried:"O you canvas woman who fell from the sky!
Tell me, which goddess should I compare you to?
Why did you descend here?
What is your large purpose?"She replied:"I fell from a 550-horsepower plane.
My name is Gioconda, I come from Florence.
I must get to Shanghai as soon as
OM
DA'S
RY The wind died down, the sea calmed down.
The ship makes strides toward Shanghai.
The sailors dream, rocking in their sailcloth hammocks.
A song of the Indian Ocean plays on their thick fleshy lips:"The fire of the Indochina sunwarms the blood like Malacca wine.
They lure sailors to gilded stars, those Indochina nights, those Indochina nights.
Slant-eyed yellow Bornese cabin boysknifed in Sigapore barspaint the iron-belted barrels blood-red.
Those Indochina nights, those Indochina nights.
A ship plunges onto Canton,55,000 tons.
Those Indochina nights…As the moon swims in the heavens like the corpse of a blue-eyed sailor tossed overboard,
Bombay watches, leaning on its elbow… Bombay moon, Arabian Sea.
The fire of the Indochina sunwarms the blood lie Malacca wine.
They lure sailors to gilded stars, those Indochina nights, those Indochina nights…"Part
Gioconda's
HE
TY OF
Shanghai is a big port,an excellent port,
It's ships are taller thanhorned mandarin mansions.
My, my!
What a strange place, this Shanghai…In the blue river boatswith straw sails float.
In the straw-sailed boatsnaked coolies sort rice, raving of rice…My, my!
What a strange place, this Shanghai…Shanghai is a big port,
The whites' ships are tall,the yellows' boats are small.
Shanghai is pregnant with a red-headed child.
My, my!
OM
HE
OR'S
Last nightwhen the ship entered the
Gioconda's foot kissed the land.
Shanghai the soup, she the ladle,she searched high and low for her SI-YA-U.
OM
HE
OR'S
OK"Chinese work!
Japanese work!
Only two people make this —a man and a woman.
Chinese work!
Japanese work!
Just look at the artin this latest work of LI-LI-FU."Screaming at the tip of his voice,the Chinese magician LI.
His shriveled yellow spider of a handtossed long thin knives into the air:one one more one one more five one more.
Tracing lightning-like circles in the air,his knives flew up in a steady stream.
Gioconda looked, she kept looking, she'd still be lookingbut, like a large-colored Chinese lantern, the crowd swayed and became confused:"Stand back!
Gang way!
Chiang Kai-shek's executioner is hunting down a new head.
Stand back!
Make way!"One in front and one close behind,two Chinese shot around the corner.
The one in front ran toward Gioconda.
The one racing toward her, it was him, it was him — yes, him!
Her SI-YA-U, her dove, SI-YA-U…A dull hollow stadium sound surrounded them.
And in the cruel English language stained red with the blood of yellow Asia the crown yelled:"He's catching up,he's catching up, he caught- catch him!"Just three steps away from Gioconda's
Chiang Kai-shek's executioner caught up.
His sword flashed…Thud of cut flesh and bone.
Like a yellow sun drenched in
SI-YA-U's head rolled at her feet…And this on a death
Gioconda of Florence lost in Shanghaiher smile more famous than Florence.
OM
HE
OR'S
KA Chinese bamboo frame.
In the frame is a painting.
Under the painting, a name: "La Gioconda"…In the frame is a painting: the eyes of the painting are burning, burning.
In the frame is painting: the painting in the frame comes alive, alive.
And suddenly the painting jumped out of the frame as if from a window; her feet hit the ground.
And just as I shouted her nameshe stood up straight before me: the giant woman of a colossal struggle.
She walked ahead. I trailed behind.
From the blazing red Tibetan sunto the China Sea we went and came, we came and went.
I saw Gioconda sneak out under the cover of darknessthrough the gates of a city in enemy hands;
I saw herin a skirmish of drawn bayonets strangle a British officer;
I saw herat the head of a blue stream swimming with starswash the lice from her dirty shirt…Huffling and puffling, a wood-burning enginedragged behind itforty red cars seating forty people each.
The cars passed one by one.
In the last car I saw herstanding watch: a frayed lambskin hat on her head, boots on her feet, a leather jacket on her
OM
HE
OR'S
Ah, my patient reader!
Now we find ourselves in the Frenchmilitary court in Shanghai.
The bench:four generals, fourteen colonels,and an armed black Congolese regiment.
The accused:
Gioconda.
The attorney for the defense:an overly razed—that is, overly artistic— French painter.
The scene is set. We're starting.
The defense attorney presents his case:"Gentlemen,this masterpiece that stands in your presence as the accusedis the most accomplished daughter of a great artist.
Gentlemen, this masterpiece…Gentlemen…my mind is on fire…Gentlemen… Renaissance…Gentlemen, this masterpiece— twice this masterpiece…Gentlemen, uniformed gentlemen…""C-U-U-U-T! sputtering like a jammed machine gun!
Bailiff, read the verdict."The bailiff reads the verdict:"The laws of France have been violated in Chinaby the above-named Gioconda, daughter of one Leonardo.
Accordingly, we sentence the accused to death by burning.
And tomorrow night at moonrise,a Senegalese regiment will execute said decision of this military
HE
Shanghai is a big port.
The whites have tall ships,the yellows' boats are small.
A thick whistle. A thin Chinese scream.
A ship steaming into the harbor capsized a straw-sailed boat…Moonlight.
Night.
Handcuffed, Gioconda waits.
Blow, wind, blow…A voice:"All right, the lighter.
Burn,
Gioconda, burn…"A silhouette advances,a flash…They lit the lighterand set Gioconda on fire.
The flames painted Gioconda red.
She laughed with a smile that came from her heart.
Gioconda burned laughing…Art,
Shmart,
Masterpiece,
Shmasterpiece,
And So On, And So Forth, Immortality,
Eternity- H-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-Y…
RE
DS MY
LE'S
NG,
HE
ST IS
ES
NG…"
HE
ND Nazim Hikmet - 1929 Trans. by Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk
TE:
DA
ND SI-YA-U: Si-Ya-U,
Hsiao San (b. 1896),
Chinese revolutionary and man of letters.
Hikmet met him in Moscow in 1922and believed he had been executed in the bloody 1927 crackdown on Shanghai radicals after returning to China via Paris in 1924, when
Mona Lisa did in fact disappear from the Louvre.
The two friends werereunited in Vienna in 1951 and traveled to Peking together in 1952.
Translated into Chinese, this poem was later burned-along with Hsiao'sworks- in the Cultural Revolution.
