BUTTERFLY DREAMS: 99 Poems with Ink Wash Paintings (Chinese Text with English Translation)

"Formerly I, Zhuang Zhou, dreamt that I was a butterfly, a butterfly flying about, feeling that it was enjoying itself. I did not know that it was Zhou. Suddenly I awoke, and was myself again, the veritable Zhou. I did not know whether it had formerly been Zhou dreaming that he was a butterfly, or it was now a butterfly dreaming that it was Zhou". This short Taoist parable is the best introduction to the magical poetic world of Chen Chong. A poetry, full of grace and candor, which starts from the simplicity and authenticity of the world of nature to lead us to the threshold of the ineffable mystery.

Mountains and waters; flowers and birds; dragons and phoenixes; lunar reflections and songs of shooting stars; wind and clouds; dancing rainbows and butterflies in love; turtles in Zen meditation and fireflies courageous witnesses of light, these poems are "Flying flowers as light as dreams". The knots of the heart are dissolved, nature becomes "transparent": wonderful opening of the eyes of the heart! Everything visible, said Novalis,is something invisible raised into a state of mystery. Phenomena are not illusions, they are images and symbols that speak to us of the ineffable. The artist internalizes the spectacle offered to her eyes, passes it through the sieve of heart, to discover what the ten thousand beings reflect. She becames a "mirror", a reflection of the invisible. Nature itself comes to her, its breath enters her.

These poems are like a gallery of paintings. The poet doesn't use a descriptive language, trying to explain from the outside, but an embodied language, which reveals both her intimate feelings and the secret movement of things. Poetry is a painting, painting a poetry. In addition to the poems, in this book there is a selection of paintings made by the author.