Chinese Venise - autobiography of Marc Alyn
Marc Alyn, a great French poet and a friend of T'ang Haywen since 1960, has just published his memoirs: Le temps est un faucon qui plonge (Time is a falcon that dives) where he devotes an entire chapter to T'ang Haywen – “Venise la Chinoise et les lagunes imaginaires de T’ang Haywen” (Chinese Venice and the fantastical lagoons of T’ang Haywen).
“I wrote on the invitation card a “Portrait of T'ang”, a first homage of a contemporary poet to the painter destined to become one of the three great Chinese creators of modernity along with Chang Dai Chien and Zao Wou-Ki: “On the flower corollas born from his hand, bees come to rest”.” - Marc Alyn
We reproduce below a large extract from it:
Click here to read the original French version.
Click here to read the English translation.
Marc Alyn, born in 1937, received the Max Jacob Prize at the age of 20. He became a publisher and created the Poetry/Flammarion collection. He wrote the "poetry" column for Le Figaro littéraire at the request of François Mauriac. Alyn received the Guillaume Apollinaire Prize, the Grand Prize for Poetry from the Académie Française, the Grand Prize of the Société des gens de lettres and finally the Goncourt Prize for his work as a whole.
Le temps est un faucon qui plonge (Time is a falcon that dives) is published by Les éditions Pierre Guillaume de Roux, and they have generously authorized T’ang Haywen Archives to reproduce and translate this text.
Note from T’ang Haywen Archives: Marc Alyn somehow underestimates the support he has extended to T'ang.
Indeed the "Portrait of T'ang" used by the Talleyrand Gallery in Reims in 1966 was in fact the complete reprise of the text he had written in 1960 for an exhibition at the St Ferdinand Pimlico Gallery, Place St Ferdinand in Paris . It is also surprising to note that after all the peregrinations of his life Marc Alyn lives today just a stone's throw from the Place St Ferdinand.