Commissioner Lin Zexu as man-of-letters (#141; Topic L)

An official in China, whether in olden days or now, was/is expected to be a scholar as well. Such a person was/is invariably proficient in prose and poetry, masterful in calligraphy and painting, and frequently good at playing music and board games as well. In my brother-in-law Charles's album on Lin Zexu and the Opium War (#139-40), there is a poem by Lin. In commemoration of the 160th year of the Opium War, 1990, then-President Jiang Zeming used a couplet from that poem to do his calligraphy. The two lines are

苟利國家生死以
豈因禍福避趨之

which may be rendered into English as

For the country's welfare, life or death are not considerations;
Against unsure consequences, declining or undertaking are not options.

The implication is that, regardless of the outcome, one is duty-bound and must do one's best.

Chinese poems, couplets in particular, are a high-level art form. Not only must the number of words in each of the two lines identical, each word or word-combination in each line must come from the same part or subpart of speech (a noun for a noun, an abstract noun for an abstract noun, a noun-noun combination in direct opposition for another noun-noun combination in direct opposition, etc) and in exact word position. In the above, I hope I have captured the essence of these requirements and met the three principles of translation (#137) as well.