1. Introduction
Gao Ping, the author of this book, was born in Gansu Province in April 1932. He joined the army in 1949 and participated in the liberation movement of Sichuan and Tibet. The author takes his own experience of living in Tibet for many years as the source of creation and writes down his indissoluble bond with Tibet. Many of Gao Ping’s works take Tibet’s magnificent landscape, unique cultural and historical environment, and Tibetan Buddhism as their writing themes, and enthusiastically praise Tibet’s natural landscape and folk customs.
This novel describes the short life and poetic creation of Tsangyang Gyatso, the great Tibetan poet and the Sixth Dalai Lama, based on the local politics, military, and religion in Tibet during the Kangxi period of the Qing Dynasty (Gao, 2010). During the author’s visit to Tibet, he was shocked by Tibet’s Buddhism and people’s devotion to Buddhism for thousands of years. A large number of poems of Tsangyang Gyatso were found in the singing poetry from the Tibetan people, so Gao Ping read lots of documents and visited local people, and found a large number of relevant clues from the preserved paper documents to the popular folk stories. Based on his own experience and impression to the Sixth Dalai Lama Tsangyang Gyatso, the author writes this novel from the third person point of view.
2. Literature Review
In 1930, Yu Daoquan, a famous Tibetan scholar, published Love Poems of Tsangyang Gyatso, creating a precedent for the Chinese translation of Tsangyang Gyatso poems. Since then, Tsangyang Gyatso’s poetry has entered the field of Chinese culture and attracted extensive attention from researchers. In the 21st century, Tsangyang Gyatso’s stories, legends, and poems have been widely accepted in different forms with the powerful network media. Tsangyang Gyatso’s life story, love legend, and poems with strong Buddhist nature are all talked about by the public, forming the “Tsangyang Gyatso fever” (Tan, 2019). The writer searched “Tsangyang Gyatso” on CNKI and found that most articles talk about Tsangyang Gyatso’s poems’ appreciation and the comparison of various English versions, some relates to the appreciation of his love songs, and about ten articles were about his life. Yunxia Yan makes a comparative study on the translation strategies, the uniqueness of text translation, and the prosodic style of selected poems of Tsangyang Gyatso, to explore the various styles of diverse translation versions (Yan, 2020). Naichang Yu summarized Tsangyang Gyatso’s life in detail from four aspects: the place of birth, ethnic origin, and religious belief (Yu, 1982). Pasang Norbu described the life of Tsangyang Gyatso and his parents based on a large number of Tibetan source materials (Norbu, 2019). Articles about Tsangyang Gyatso’s love stories are rarely found.
3. Research Design
This book Sixth Dalai Lama-Tsangyang Gyatso is a novel, which is full of strong emotional and imaginative elements. Tsangyang Gyatso wrote a lot of poems in his short life, and love is the main driving. The author of this paper choses the part of Tsangyang Gyatso’s love stories and love poems in this novel. Tsangyang Gyatso has four lovers in his life, and all of them were in his love poems, but his love poems are mainly about two of them: Rigzin Wangmo and Jade Joan Dolkar. The purpose of this paper is intended to analyze the characteristics of Tsangyang Gyatso’ love poems with the context of his love stories written in this novel.
4. The Analysis of Tsangyang Gyatso’s Love Stories and Love Poems
Tsangyang Gyatso came to the Gongba Temple to further his study at the age of 14. There he met a beautiful girl and began his first love. His first lover is Rigzin Wangmo, who lives in the Gongba town. He affectionately compares her footsteps to the willows blown out by the spring wind. The girl perceived the emotion in the passionate eyes of the teenager and took the initiative to start their beautiful love but without end. During this period, he wrote his first work: Growing old with my lovers is the same as adventuring treasures from the depths of the ocean. At this time, Rinzin Wangmo is the only person in his eyes. The boy grew up into a real man and proposed to Rigzin Wangmo. If the story continues to develop like this, the ending must be perfect, and no tragic love songs and the title of “The most beautiful lover in the world”. But everything ended in such a hurry, Tsangyang Gyatso was suddenly forced in enthronement, so that the beautiful first love was broken during the climax of the love, and their longing for future life came to a miserable end. These two poems “Since there’s no hope, why should I break my heart in vain?” are self-comforting words written by Tsangyang Gyatso after he apart with his first love, and the poet’s inner despair at this time are released. Later, Tsangyang Gyatso got to know that his first lover got married, in despair, the long-term stacked feelings in his heart turned into an eruption of resentment. He wrote “How could lovers who have loved each other since childhood become the descendants of wolves? Although they’ve lived together, she still wants to run back to the mountains.”, which aimed to express the irony of such love and the anger of ruthless betray from first lover. After he calmed down, he wrote “When the treasure is in my hand, I disregard its value; when it belongs to someone else. I can’t help being anxious and angry!” to express his helplessness and coward. Additionally, he wants to tell people to grasp the person who means a lot to you and inly cherish her. “Although the bitter love is noble, there is no release after all. If one hates himself all the time, he then would go mad.” The line “Once the lover changes her heart, divine power will not help.” was written to comfort himself. Many years later, he saw his first lover again, and she was already a nun. They recalled their wonderful memories and became close friends.
After returning to Lhasa, Tsangyang Gyatso seemed like living in a cage full of gold and jewelry. He had no personal freedom, was forbidden to violate Buddhist rules, and was expected to possess no thoughts of ruling rights. He wrote a poem to mock himself “If you become a Lama only by colorful cassocks, the wild ducks on the lake then also can understand the Buddha Dharma.” Therefore, he disguised himself as a rich youth, pseudonym Dangsang Wangbo, and drank in a pub named “Snow” under the Potala Palace. According to the owner of the hotel, Tsangyang Gyatso met a girl who were consonant with his spirit and soul. In Tsangyang Gyatso’s love poems, except the sweetness and sadness of first love, more words are about this unforgettable girl—named Jade Joan Dolkar. Before meeting Jade Joan Dolkar, Tsangyang Gyatso also met two girls, a noble lady who only loved money and a divorced young woman. The noble lady who only loves jewelry used her body as a tool to make money. Dava was the divorced young woman who was introduced by the pubkeeper. Dava is never satisfied with her marriage life, which is the reason for her divorce. Tsangyang Gyatso wrote “The beautiful woman who met by chance exudes fragrance all over, but it’s like picking up a white jade and then throwing it by the roadside.” to bemoan Dava’s fate.
When meeting Jade Joan Dolkar for the first time, the poet described her as a bright moon suddenly found in the familiar night sky in his poem, who can only be appreciated from a distance. After the two lonely souls exchanged their life experiences, both sides felt unprecedented comfort. It seemed that they had found a shelter for their hearts. Actually, they find the shelter for their whole lives. The feelings between them are heating up rapidly. They are reluctant to separate every night. The dark and ruthless night is like a year. Only in the early morning can Tsangyang Gyatso be happy again. The poet wrote “Three Arrows and Three Wows” for Jade Joan Dolkar, all of which describe the poet’s love for Jade Joan Dolkar and his hope of lover’s vow to him that she can swear to love him as he loves her, for example, “Please stamp the seal of faith on lovers’ hearts. Love is like a sharp arrow. It hit my hot heart at once.”. After all, pseudomorph will finally perish. On a snowy morning, people found a string of footprints leading from Potala Palace to the pub. Tsangyang Gyatso wrote “I think they praise me when they gossip about me.” to show this forbidden love. For Buddhist, not to mention the Dalai Lama, who is respected by thousands of people, he has to pay for his cynicism. His best friend Gangzu, later renamed Tajiannai, was assassinated as he helped Tsangyang Gyatso hide his improper behavior. What’s more, Jade Joan Dolkar was kidnaped by her landlord. It was too late when Tsangyang Gyatso got the news. Desperately, the poet can only use poems to repose the loss of his lover, hoping that the parrot in his poem can take his miss to her and bring back his lover’s information.
But until the end of his life, the parrot failed to come. After the military coup in Lhasa, Tsangyang Gyatso was framed up of rebellion. Emperor Kangxi was furious and ordered him to be sent to Beiging to be punished. On the way to Beijing, Tsangyang Gyatso dead at the age of 23 one night by the shore of Qinghai Lake. At the moment when he was pushed into the lake, it seemed as if there was a forbode. He shouted the word ‘Jade Joan Dolkar’ with the last strength of his life, and then his body disappeared into the Qinghai Lake. This scene was seen by Jade Joan Dolkar who came on the way to him. Unspeakable heartache and voiceless sadness gradually stacked in her chest. When she plunged into the water, the vast Qinghai Lake echoed a woman’s voice for a long time: Tsangyang Gyatso! At this moment, Tsangyang Gyatso’s love stories and his love poems ended.
5. Conclusion
This paper is about the love stories and love poems of Tsangyang Gyatso from the novel The Sixth Dalai Lama-Tsangyang Gyatso written by Gao Ping. The paper briefly describes the short life of Tsangyang Gyatso, and it mainly about his love stories and the love poems. It finds that the language Tsangyang Gyatso used in his love poems is simple, fresh and natural, and the emotion expressed in the poems is real. His words make the reader feel as if they are immersive and are able to resonate with him. However, there are certain limitations in this paper, the author of this paper only briefly analyzes the characteristics of Tsangang Gyatso’s love poems, so, the future researchers can conduct in-depth research on Tsangang Gyatso or his poems from other perspectives. Finally, for the readers, readers should combine the poems with the poet’s backgrounds and experiences to appreciate poet’s poems. In this way, readers can have a good understanding of poem and achieve ideological resonance with poets.