Pan Cheng Lui 潘正镭 (b. 1955)
CRITICAL INTRODUCTION
个人经历与国家历史的结合 [Personal Journeys and A Nation’s History: Intertwined Experiences]
Written by Ang Jin Yong and Ang Lai Sheng
Translated by Tay Jun Hao and Jonathan Chan
Dated 9 Nov 2023
导论
潘正镭是新加坡著名的诗人，并在不同的年代出版了七本不同的诗集。虽然诗的主题都以新加坡为主，但是早期的诗集采用了较为宏观的叙事角度（汪民安主编2013：186），多以华文文化／先辈历史的课题为主；而后期的作品开始走向个人化，并从诗人自身的角度去探讨他与这个岛国的关系。近期的出版《太阳正走过半个下午》（潘正镭2020）更是巧妙地通过个文字与创作去回顾他的一生，同时也回顾了国家的历史。
书写先辈的移民历史
《赤道走索》（潘正镭1990） 是诗人1990年出版的诗集。诗集中处处描写先辈移民的种种事情与他们复杂的认同。这一代的先辈大多从中国大陆移民到南阳来谋生。例如〈白大米〉书写了前辈漂泊到南洋来谋生：“左手掌／托大碗／五指江湖／天涯漂泊”（潘正镭2020：94）。一开始，他们的归属和家乡或许比较偏向于中国，但是在本地生活了一段时间，甚至有了家庭，他们的认同和归属就会变得更加复杂。例如〈还乡〉“一支苦难点燃的香火／柱头在这里，袅袅的烟熏黄／那南方啊那南方的小岛／另一页另一页的牵念／另一页另一页的历史／归人，我是吗？”（潘正镭1990：V）在这里，诗人描写了先辈的“两地不着岸”的情况。一方面，他们已经在新加坡有了“柱头”，另一方却又无法忘记对家乡的“牵念”和“历史”，以至于他们怀疑自己到底是不是“归人”。
叙事的个人化
然而，在诗人往后的诗集里，他开始转换转换叙事的角度，转用“我”作为出发点去描写和探讨诗人和这座岛屿和城市的关系。例如〈牙膏〉“而他们发现我／总爱喃喃自语／他们总以道德的柔道／把我绊倒／在帝王广场”（潘正镭1998：16）。诗人用了诙谐与讽刺的语言（刘慧娟1998：105）刻画了一副看似与现实毫无关联的场景。不过若把“帝王广场”想象成“职场”，那“他们”就可以是职场上的老板或经理级人物，而“道德的柔道”也可被理解为“职场的规则”。在这里，作者将“我”加入到诗中，虽然依然写了都市人的经历，但是较多是从个人的经历和角度出发。
作者甚至在〈蚂蚁人〉中通过描写蚂蚁和人的特征去反映现代都市人们所面临的种种窘境。例如〈蚂蚁人〉描写的第二节“一辆又一辆的车子／长出了触角／又长出了毛足／又长出了触角／像小时候蹲在大树下／看了一整天的蚂蚁”（潘正镭2006：104）。诗人在儿时看到的蚂蚁，如今却幻化成了车阵里人群车辆和自己，而诗作的第七节“蚂蚁总是相逢相遇／顿一顿 停一停／停一停 顿一顿／忙忙又忙上路”（潘正镭2006：106）。
诗人改变了人和昆虫原有的形态和属性，但这些细节的比喻和形容却又是合理的，也表现出作者对社会现实的态度和关注，荒诞却不荒谬。另外，作者也揭示喧嚣都市里中产阶级上下班的真实面貌。拼贴两个表面上毫不相干的现实，但在并置对立的意象中，引起的冲突，让诗歌的意义产生了张力。
回溯一生、回顾历史
2020年，诗人出版了文集《太阳正走过半个下午》（潘正镭2020） 。这本文集以倒带的方式，以每一年为一个单元的方式结合诗、散文和图片回溯了诗人六十余年的经历。虽然是以个人的经历和回忆出发，但是描述的是属于新加坡与新加坡人的回忆和历史。例如〈@1972〉 “母亲坚韧的日常／深藏儿的伤忧／父亲，借您／咳嗽一声尽一生”（潘正镭2020：217）。这首诗需配合之前的〈父亲〉（潘正镭2020：215-216）一文，才可理解父亲如何受到日军的折磨，以致长年被肺疾所困。在这里，诗人父母的经历，其实也是新加坡的故事，除了“早年华人的离散记忆之外，其父母的遭遇更直接指涉英国与日本两大帝国殖民新加坡的历史”（潘正镭2020：17）。在这里，诗人已巧妙地通过他个人的经历和回溯去反映和描写历史。通过他的经历，我们可以理解新加坡的历史，而新加坡的历史也影响了诗人一生的经历，这两者可说是相辅相成。
小结
综上所述，阅读潘正镭的诗作，能够洞察诗人在不同时间段，对于不同事物和事件的观察和记录。无论是早期通过较为
宏大的角度去书写的历史，还是往后通过个人的观点去描写和探讨自己和岛国的关系，我们都可以通过诗人的不同诗作看到诗人在不同时代的经历，也让读者能够从一个独特的角度去观看我们所在的这个岛国。
参考资料（按作家姓名拼音排列）
宏大叙事常被看作一种以历史事件、社会实践为主要叙述对象。汪民安主编。2013。《文化研究关键词》，台北：麦田出版，页186。
潘正镭。2020。《太阳正走过半个下午》，新加坡：大家出版社。
潘正镭。1990。《赤道走索》，新加坡：阿裕尼文艺创作与翻译学会。
周维介。1990。〈徘徊岛国文化绳索上的事情——读《赤道走索》〉，潘正镭《赤道走索》，新加坡：阿裕尼文艺创作与翻译学会，页V。
潘正镭。1998。《再生树》，新加坡：大家出版社，页16。
潘正镭。2006。《天微明时我是诗人》，新加坡：大家出版社。
潘正镭。2020。《太阳正走过半个下午》，新加坡：大家出版社。
李有成。2020。〈六十年来家国〉，潘正镭《太阳正走过半个下午》，新加坡：大家出版社，页17。
Introduction
Well-known and well-regarded, Pan Cheng Lui is a Singaporean poet who has published seven poetry collections across Singapore’s different periods. Although Singapore is the primary subject matter of his poems, his earlier works often took the perspective of a macro-narrative, focusing on historical events and social phenomena as objects of narration (Wang, Keywords in Cultural Studies, 2013). Pan was concerned largely with topics relating to Chinese culture or the history of Singapore’s forefathers. His later works became more personal, exploring the poet’s relationship with his island home through his perspectives and experiences. In his most recent 2020 collection, 《太阳正走过半个下午》[The Sun Is Making Its Way Through Mid-Afternoon], the poet creatively uses his poems to look back on his life and, at the same time, reflect on Singapore's history.
Penning the immigration history of Singapore’s ancestors
Pan’s collection《赤道走索》[Exploring the Equator], published in 1990, narrates in detail the everyday lives of immigrants and sheds light on their complex sense of identity. Many forefathers of present-day Singaporean Chinese came to the Nanyang (a term used to describe Southeast Asia by Chinese migrants) to make a living. The poem <白大米> [“White Rice”] recounts how these predecessors of Singapore’s Chinese community drifted to the Nanyang to eke out a livelihood for themselves:
左手掌
托大碗
五指江湖
天涯漂泊[Left palm
Holding a big bowl
Five fingers akin to rivers and lakes
Wandering to the world’s ends]
Initially, many immigrants continued to view China as their homeland and feel a strong sense of affiliation with it. However, over time, living in and starting families in the Nanyang began to render this sense of identity and affiliation more complex, as evidenced in the poem <还乡> [“Returning to One’s Hometown”]:
一支苦难点燃的香火
柱头在这里，袅袅的烟熏黄
那南方啊那南方的小岛
另一页另一页的牵念
另一页另一页的历史
归人，我是吗？[An incense stick lit by misery
The joss stick’s head is here, stained yellow by the curling smoke
O the South! A small island in the South
Yet another page of yearning
Yet another page of history
Me, am I a returnee?]
In this poem, the poet describes the predicament of many immigrant ancestors who were “unable to simultaneously be on both shores”, an idiomatic expression that notes the difficulties of immigrants experiencing a sense of divided loyalties between their hometown and newly settled locales. On one hand, many migrants had already established families in Singapore, but on the other, they continued to yearn for their hometowns while being unable to forget their roots.
The Personalisation of Narratives
In Pan’s subsequent collection,《再生树》[A Tree Reborn], however, he would begin to adopt different narrative angles in his poems, using the term “I” as a starting point to express and discuss the relationship between the poet and the island city of Singapore. An example is his poem <牙膏> [“Toothpaste”]:
而他们发现
总爱喃喃自语
他们总以道德的柔道
把我绊倒
在帝王广场[And when they find me,
always murmuring to myself,
with a moral judo throw, they love
to toss me onto the ground
of Emperor square]
The poet uses humorous and satirical language to carve out a seemingly unreal scene (Liu, “Postscript”, 1998). However, if “the Emperor square” is taken to be a workplace, “they” would refer to professional higher-ups, and “a moral judo throw” can be understood as the rules that govern the workplace. Here, although Pan reflects on the everyday experiences of urbanites through his speaker, he also seems to be writing from his personal experiences and point of view.
Aside from Pan’s vivid depictions of the modern workplace, the poet also employs descriptions that conflate the characteristics of ants and people in the poem <蚂蚁人> [“Ant People”], taken from his collection,《天微明时我是诗人》[At Twilight, I am a Poet] (2006). Pan does so to showcase the various dilemmas commonly faced by modern urbanites. For instance, in the second stanza of “Ant People”:
一辆又一辆的车子
长出了触角
又长出了毛足
又长出了触角
像小时候蹲在大树下
看了一整天的蚂蚁[One car after another
grows out feelers
then grows out hairy legs
then grows out feelers again
like when I was a child, squatting under a big tree
watching ants the entire day]
The ants the speaker saw in his childhood have transformed into people and vehicles, with the speaker himself in a crowded line of cars. In the poem’s seventh stanza, their behaviour is likened again to ants:
蚂蚁总是相逢相遇
顿一顿 停一停
停一停 顿一顿
忙忙又忙上路[Ants always meet (one another)
pausing, stopping
stopping, pausing
busy, rushing on the road again ]
The poet changes the original forms and attributes of insects and humans but utilises appropriate descriptions and metaphors to capture their details. The poem also shows the poet’s attitude and concern for real phenomena occurring in society, employing an absurdist style in his characterisation without sounding too inconceivably far-fetched. In addition, the poet accurately depicts how the middle class commute to and from work in a bustling city; Pan brings two realities that seem irrelevant to each other together in a collage. Yet, by juxtaposing these opposing images of ants and cars, the poet succeeds in bringing out tensions in the poem’s meaning through the conflicts present in these juxtapositions.
Tracing (One’s) Life; Recounting History
In 2020, Pan published a literary collection titled《太阳正走过半个下午》[The Sun Is Making Its Way Through Mid-Afternoon]. Structured with a reverse chronology, the collection traces the past 60 years of Pan’s life – assembling poems, essays and pictures presented in a year-on-year format, with each year categorised as a chapter. Although it is based on Pan’s personal experiences and memories, the collection also brings to light shared memories Singaporeans have had and the history of Singapore. For example, in the poem “@1972”, Pan writes,
母亲坚韧的日常
深藏儿的伤忧
父亲，借您
咳嗽一声尽一生[Each day, my mother’s tenacity
Buries her sorrows for a child
Father, I borrow from you
The sound of a cough
One enough
for a lifetime]
It is necessary to read “@1972” alongside another poem, “Father,” to explicate how Pan’s father was tortured by the invading Japanese army. This led to him suffering from lung disease for many years. Here, the experiences of Pan’s parents reflect the story of Singapore. Aside from memories of scattered Chinese immigrants in the 19th and 20th centuries, the plight of Pan’s parents plight points directly to Singapore’s history of colonisation by the British and the Japanese (Lee, “Having Come to a Homeland for 60 Years”, 2020).
The poet has used his recollections to cleverly sketch and chronicle Singapore’s history. The narration of Pan’s experiences provides insight into and understanding surrounding the history of Singapore. As the history of Singapore has shaped Pan’s life, these two poems complement each other as they serve as connected attempts at recounting this history.
Conclusion
Reading Pan Cheng Lui’s poems provides insight into Pan’s observations and records of different events and objects across time in Singapore. Whether by writing history through the lens of a macro-narrative lens in his early work, or adopting a personal approach to portray and discuss the relationship between himself and Singapore in his later works, it is evident that Pan’s poetic work mirrors his different life experiences across multiple eras. Pan’s poetry allows readers to view Singapore from yet another unique perspective.
Works cited
Chew, Wee Kai. ‘Wandering Through the Cultural Ropes of an Island: Reading Exploring the Equator’. In Pan, Cheng Lui. Exploring the Equator. Singapore, The Aljunied Creative Writing and Translation Group, 1990.
Keywords in Cultural Studies. Ed. Wang An Min. Taipei: Maitian chuban, 2013.
Lee Yu-cheng. “Having Come to a Homeland for 60 Years”. In Pan, Cheng Lui. The Sun Is Making Its Way Through Mid-Afternoon. Singapore: Common Master Press, 2020.
Liu, Huijuan. “Postscript”. In Pan, Cheng Lui. A Tree Reborn. Singapore: Common Master Press, 1998.
Pan, Cheng Lui. Exploring the Equator. Singapore, The Aljunied Creative Writing and Translation Group, 1990.
—. The Sun Is Making Its Way Through Mid-Afternoon. Singapore: Common Master Press, 2020.
—. A Tree Reborn. Singapore: Common Master Press, 1998.
—. At Twilight, I am a Poet. Singapore: Common Master Press, 2006.
