Introduction

Friedrich Ruckert was a German poet/university professor of the nineteenth century. Among his many literary works, the Kindertotenlieder collection (Songs on the Death of Children) survives the world's oblivion because of Gustav Mahler's decision to use part of it as text for his symphonic Lieder.

The verses of the poems are very touching, as they recorded the poet's spiritual agony trying to come to terms with the painful loss of two of his children. Initially, Gustav Mahler himself adopted Ruckert's verses for his Lieder only to commemorate the trauma caused by the deaths of his younger brother and sister back in his own childhood. But subsequently, the composition acquired added meaning when (after the composition) Mahler's own daughter died of scarlet fever at a very young age.

Although these poems and their musical setting were known to the translator since decades, the reason for their translation into Chinese was however not an accidental one. For he himself has lived through the same trauma of losing his son Clemens, who died young at the age of 15 after battling for two years against a brain tumour. The translation of the poems was for the translator not so much an academic endeavour than a way of seeking emotional purgation and spiritual resurrection. As a token of commemoration, the translation was first published on Clemens' first birth anniversary after his death.