English Class: Several Translations by Li Bai

I showed a class of senior high school students a series of translated Chinese poems.  There weren't a lot of students so I had each one read one poem.  It was fun to watch who recognized what they were reading while they were reading it.  For some it was a visceral shock, and the shock was often quickly followed by laughter.  Several girls, by the second poem we read, had scribbled the original onto their paper apparently by heart.

Because of the laughing and guffawing, the first several poems actually took awhile to get through. They were laughing at, not only queerness of seeing the old words in a totally different context, but also the "mistakes" of the poems. Now I am a lot more lenient in understanding some of the choices the poets made, and that's why it was slightly a hard lesson learned for myself. When a poet uses "the third-month mists" he is trying to communicate the reality that in Chinese that they simply number the months; it is a literal translation. The translator also might be trying to communicate to the reader the strangeness of the original language. If one pretends it is an English poem, like any other, is it not disingenuous to the original's cultural, spacial, linguistic identity? But to them it just sounded lame. One of them declared, "it's not a 'long, long river,' the river's name is actually Long River." Again I felt more lenient: why had Li Bai chosen Long River as opposed to, say, Yellow River? Didn't he want to emphasize the fact that his friend was going a long way away, and wasn't it alright if this poet tried to replicate that?

And then there were some quite obvious differences in the poems themselves: sometimes the traveler was going east, while other times it was ambiguous, while other poems had the traveler definitely going west.

One boy kept shaking his head; obviously the English versions were all no good. Most of the students agreed. I told them that I liked when one poet said that the shadow of the traveler was like "his lonely sail." And they agreed that it was actually what the poem said.

I also pointed out that several of the poems were in the present tense and while others were in the past tense. Of course, it is always ambiguous in Chinese, but we talked about the differences in English. Did they like "border of heaven," or "edge of the sky?" While I liked heaven, they liked sky. I said, "but in Chinese don't you use the same character?" But they disagreed. One said, "it sounds like he died if you use heaven."

It made me think a lot more about translating classic Chinese poems, but it reminded me, that if I ever did, I would probably wait a long time before ever bringing them into my ESL class.

Here's my good old friend
At the Yellow Crane Terrace
For a western departure.
We're saying good-bye.
He's in a cloud of third-month blossoms.
He's off downstream to Yang-Chou.
That shadow is his lonely sail.
Now it is gone.
All the blue is empty now.
All you can see is that long, long river.
It flows to the edge of the sky.
tr. Ken Hope

My old friend takes leave of the west at Yellow Crane Tower,
in misty third-month blossoms goes downstream to Yang-chou.
The far-off shape of his lone sail disappears in the blue-green void,
and all I see is the long river flowing to the edge of the sky.
tr. Burton Watson

My friend bade farewell at the Yellow Crane House,
And went down eastward to Willow Valley
Amid the flowers and mists of March.
The lonely sail in the distance
Vanished at last beyond the blue sky
And I could see only the river
Flowing along the border of heaven.
tr. Shigeyoshi Obata

My old friend
Bids farewell to me
In the west at Yellow Crane Tower.
Amid April's mist and flowers
He goes down to Yang-jou.
The distant image
Of his lonely sail
Disappears in blue emptiness,
And all I see
Is the Long River
Flowing to the edge of the sky
tr. Greg Whincup

From Yellow Crane Tower, my old friend leaves the west.
Downstream to Yang-chou, late spring a haze of blossoms,

distant glints of lone sail vanish into emerald-green air:
nothing left but a river flowing on the borders of heaven.
tr. David Hinton

my old friend leaves yellow crane pavilion
he is going to the west

sailing to yangzhou in march
while blossoms curl like smoke on the river

how far away the lone sail
fading into the clear blue sky

only the yangtze river remains
it is flowing at the edge of the world
tr. John Knoepfle and Wang Shouyi


The next poem is one that we didn't discuss but also was on the website. Having time to read all of them that I had to choose from, I think it would have been interesting to include this one to see what they thought. It's a lot more definite and clear, more like a native English speaking poem--which probably means the poet took some liberties.

You said good-bye at Yellow Crane Pavilion
and sailed west, down into the valley
through the flowers and mists of spring
until your lonely sail vanished
in the blue sky's horizon,
and I was left watching the river
flowing gently into heaven.
tr. Sam Hamill

And one more:

Guangling send Haoran
Li Bai
Yellow Crane Tower West by the enemy, fireworks in March in Yangzhou.
Gu Fan Yuan shadow Bishan do, only see the flow of the Yangtze River skyline.
tr. Google translate

Encouraged by a poem from a friend,
and by talking 'baby' with a previous co-worker
who impressed upon me the fact that not only
will the baby be able to smell the mother,
hear, and feel our touch when it is born,
but that it will respond to the voice of the mother
and of the father as well,

I recited five or seven poems that I knew
because I couldn't think of anything else to say
to the perfect audience
bound in silence
who gave a rowdy kick when all concluded
at least to say,
I heard you.

Waiting

Eating sweetened ice
listening to Deng Li Jun.
Pretty and sad,
her voice and my ears,
the darkness between.

I'm wondering if F-- is coming tonight,
or if she'll stay in town.

I've paid my electric and my rent
I've even tidied up the room.

There's no more money in my wallet,
just a bucket on my shelf
that brims with change.

Ice melts, and I think
of all the things I've bought.

Glancing Down

Perhaps this poem should be called "And I still have two months (and less) to go."

Started impulsively
compiling lists
between classes

of things to be taken
and things to be left behind.

Most of my things fall into basic categories,
yet others are mentioned all alone. And yet
everything in this world can be put down on a piece of paper.

What’s funny is I won’t forget these things.
I just had to write them
in that familiar perspective.

Like from a plane
glancing down.

These Things Remind Me That I Live in Taiwan;

At night middle-aged couples walking the park
*backwards*
reversing time if they can
to heal their barely smudged footprints off the wounded earth.

Speaking of footprints:
those bootless plump-y feet
sticking over the side of the
Veryca truck (a pretty farmer-blue)
from pig carcasses laid on their backs,
verily gutted,
in oblivion

having lusted on death and lost their organs
and other matters to procreate
or to recognize dimly the situation:
how all-in-all,
their life was so silly.

But today sunshine—and Heineken green tea,
yi-bei-hai-ni-gen-lu-cha!
which helped me clear the way.

Poem from the Archives

During the three days of rain and wind here, I've been pacing my room for most of the days and nights. One thing I began doing is looking at everything I wrote in college. I've saved practically everything I've ever written and ninety-nine percent of it is irredeemable in any sense. But the vast majority I like to scan through in any case as one likes to scan through old photos, even though they might not be well shot or well lit or otherwise lacking. There very existence seems a fascination. Here's one:

Sun again.
Cool creaks again.
Crayfish screaming between
Our fingers in the
Long silence of a
Summer afternoon.

It made me think vividly of home and even now how I imagine it. Spent in a stream "in the long silence of a summer afternoon."

Translating Du Mu: Part 3 (the Last)

To read Part 1 and Part 2, scroll down to the two previous blog postings.

After leaving my friends to play with Du Mu’s enigmatic translation for nearly a week, I sent an e-mail with Hun’s initial translation and also my first attempts at translating the poem.

Excerpt from “Jnabholz “to April, Sarah, and Jane, 10/28/08:

Mountain Journeys
Ascending the slant of a stony path on Cold Mountain,
There are peoples' homes where white clouds appear.
Halting the carriage, I sit to enjoy an evening of maple forests -
The frosted leaves are red as February flowers.
- by Du Mu 杜牧 (803-52)

山行
遠上寒山石徑斜，白雲生處有人家。
停車坐愛楓林晚，霜葉紅於二月花。

We [Hun and I] talked about many aspects of this attempt, especially the word "ascending," and how there was no subject with which it was attached and how, I thought, it gave the next line an ethereal feel. You assume that someone is ascending and telling you about it, but that's not what the grammar says. I pointed this out and Hun decided to change it, also considering that "ascending" sounded too spiritual. His next translation, I notice, substitutes "ascending" with "far up," which he says, is anyway, more accurate to the Chinese.* Plus now, there is no grammatical complication.

I immediately began working on my own attempt, initially starting by just changing one word here and there, and then inverting lines. The most productive thing that I began to do was change which thoughts were connected to which. By looking at the original, Hun said that the first two lines seem naturally connected, and I agreed, but then I wanted to see what it would be like without that connection. What if the poem was like a series of slides, line by line. Something like this:

Evening—stony paths climb up Cold Mountain,
Clouds are appearing near peoples’ houses.
I watch the forest from my halted carriage—
The frozen trees are red like March’s flowers.

To date, my last stopping point with the poem is posted below. I was getting too anxious about iambic pentameter and so I exploded it. Also, I do consider it important—but it's so damned hard to fit in—that part about sitting in a halted carriage. This next poem is sans that and some other liberties, trying to get at what I thought it was about:

Near human habitation,
Where stony paths climb up Cold Mountain
White clouds have appeared at evening.
I stop—the hills of frozen maples settle into my heart
They are as red as March’s flowers.

At this point, knowing by help of Hun’s translation the general intent of the poet, it was much easier to write coherent pieces. And, by token, there was a high investment in an accuracy of meaning, this time less ambiguously invented or implied. Scrutiny of detail was now even more essential. I enjoyed Jane’s observation in response to my latter poem. She wrote:

“I appreciate many of the liberties you took in your most recent version. I'm curious about your intention in the use of different tenses. It really separates, to me, the setting and the occurrence. And also the observer and his act of travel.

Near human habitation,
Where stony paths climb up Cold Mountain
White clouds have appeared at evening.
/////////
I stop―the hills of frozen maples settle into my heart
They are as red as March’s flowers.”

Unfortunately, I couldn’t give her a response as to why. Perhaps the shift in tense stemmed from my early sense of unease in the poem, a disembodied quality that floated and merged in and out of the landscape, along with the clouds that were, “producing.”

Accuracy of meaning also meant, to a degree, accuracy of details. And knowing little of the context of the poem, or poet, this was hard. April, after several new attempts at the poem, wrote, “I want to say bright as FLAMES or something... it's hard to fit in ‘springs first flowers’ or ‘March's flowers...’ do you know the names of any SPECIFIC red flowers that bloom in the spring over there??? I do kind of like to say ‘pass’ and ‘shrouds’ because they can both be deathly... like he's going up on this mountain to die... slightly overlooking the village...”

She continued: “I had to leave out carriage I felt... I guess I can't see what kind of carriage gets hauled up a stony mountain ‘path’ unless it's a palanquin, in which case maybe Du Mu was a rich old fart with slaves and the whole poem gives me the sense of condescension.”

Upon reflection now, I am struck that we both sensed some sort of ghastliness in the poem, AND that neither of us could fit "sit" into the poem. I wonder what romantic notion Du Mu was evoking for his audience—surely something that resonated with one of his own class who would also be spending his time in a “carriage.” I told April that I thought it was very important that he might just be a “rich old fart.” I wrote that I also, “have been discouraged because I haven't been able to fit the ‘sit’ character in, but I think it is an important part of the poem. You're passing along (much like us) in our own luxury or foreign-ness—so much as walking the earth in shoes—and then, when we least expect, beauty rears its head and we have just a second to pause and look at it.”

I think that shocking moment is one poetic revelation that has always hung in the leafy shadows of Fall—death lingers there, and when it extends its hand, it is halting and beautiful in the simultaneous death and resurrection it evokes (in other words, the dying leaves are “red like Spring’s flowers”). It reminds me of Keat’s famous “Ode to Autumn.” Despite a drastic difference in form and language, the two poets may not be so different in poetic perception and sensibility. Keat’s poem “Autumn,” is first evoked as an everlasting continuum of Summer.

The next stanza, becomes melancholic, the fields are reaped; he writes of the season, “Thou watchest the last oozings [of the cyder-press] hours by hours.” The last stanza, he passes on to Spring: “Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they? / Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,— / While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day, / And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue.”

The observation that death is in Autumn is not new. The observation—or is it conviction?—that unbounded life is found also while the natural world is just decaying is less spoken, but perhaps present in both Keat’s and Du Mu’s poem. Approximately true, or not true at all, one still most likely sees Du Mu through poetic lenses from a different culture, with different poet fathers and mothers.

In the end, again, it is simply then a play with language and imagination, bringing our own sensibilities to what might have been an objective piece of writing. It is just our minds rearranging the phenomenon on the table. But then again—is it?

April - 11/5/08:

Far up the cold steep mountain path
near homes hung thick with clouds, I
love to stop and sit a while beside the
leafed fires. Maples blooming red as flowers
though cased in frosted shrouds.

Sarah - original attempt before ever seeing Hun’s translation:

come, travel far up the cold mountain along the stone path,
which slants beside white clouds.
nothing produced a sense of place, except being part of people's families.
please stop this carriage.
sit, love, under the maple forest on this night with the
frosted leaves of fall red like the second month's flowers.

Joe – present attempt:

Far up stony, mountain paths
dwellings are
arranged near whitened clouds.
I stop the carriage
to see the hills of frozen maples—
they are red like Spring’s first flowers.

*I want to point out here a difference between Chinese and English. The general statistic I hear, and read, is that most college graduate level Chinese have a vocabulary of about 6-8,000 characters. In English, I think the number is generally twice that. The simple fact of the matter is that the English language has a lot more commonly used words. In practical measures of translating into English, a translator will have a variety of words to choose from for any one character, each with different hints and flavors of connotation, whether helpful or a hindrance.

Translating Du Mu: Part 2

To read Part 1, scroll down to the blog posting below.

Again, here is Du Mu’s poem translated word for word.

(far) (up) (cold) (mountain) (stone) (path) (slant)
(white) (cloud) (produced) (place) (be) (peoples) (homes/families)
(stop) (carriage) (sit) (love) (maple) (forest) (night)
(frosted) (leaves) (red) (like) (second) (month) (flowers)

Before I heard back from April and Sarah, I sent out a second e-mail, reviewing my request and poetry prompt from them.

Excerpt from “Jnabholz” to Jane, April, and Sarah, 10/20/08:

I also want to say that, of course, there is no right ‘answer’ to this puzzle. Neither is it a puzzle, to be mathematically unwound or grammatically unlocked. I will suggest that there is a very specific intention behind these words and it is up to us, in varying degrees, to realize what is before us. I realize what I have given you is imperfect even for this purpose […] but I will hazard the statement that what we make of the parenthesized words is not simply a subjective experiment either, but that if we endeavored hard enough, we would, in the end, come up with four chillingly similar pieces, achieved by our own imperfect and different means. Does this seem a contradiction? There is no right ‘answer’ BUT there is a truth latent that we can uncover?

I was rewarded soon after with work from both April and Sarah. To each, I responded to in turn. Excerpts from the e-mails are below.

Excerpt from “Anabholz” to Joe, 10/22/08:

Just looking at the words again now, here's my first (and off-the-cuff) attempts at forming them into something with a bit of rhyme and meter:

Play #1:
Struggle to the peak of this cold mountain path
rise over the valley clouded thick with woodash
descend the other side in a race against the night
forest scarlet with maples as if cast in firelight.

alternate line 2:
(smokey valley below, air thick with woodash)

Play #2:
Wind up the mountain cross gorge and then brook
descend into valley in a race 'gainst the night
it's a "whoa" to the horses for a long second look
towards the flaming red forest, leaves frosted in ice.

Excerpt from “Jnabholz” to April, 10/23/08:

Great. I'm glad your taking to meter and rhyme, which, to be honest, I hadn't anticipated. It sounds like E B Browning, especially the first with the second line substitute, and definitely a smaller piece of a larger whole. I'm interested in your use of speed and exertion, "struggle and race;" what elicited that for you? What do you have to say about that? It brings to me a lot of questions—perhaps to you, too. However, it certainly reveals the contours of the space as to a blind man. It is not steep—it is indicated as steep by "struggle." It is not steep down the other side either—it is again made obvious that it is steep by "race." Love to hear other re-workings. I'll probably send my poem out by Saturday and the second part of the prompt.

Sarah approached the prompt from a different angle from either April or Jane did by writing a poem in response to the prompt, as a way to uncover what the prompt might be asking her to do. However, the poem is insightful I think to the larger discussion of language.

Excerpt from “Currie.sarah” to Joe, 10/22/08:

…At first I played around simply adding words to what you had, then scrambling words, and, ultimately, wrote a response of sorts using all of the words.

(Carriage)

I would (like) to walk with you
(up) the (mountain) along the (stone) (path).
To feel the brisk wind press against my cheeks
with (forest) (leaves) (frosted) (white) spreading below.
But the poem is not an invitation,
with missing words and unknown authorship,
and I must (stop) to remind myself of what is real:
the (cold) of my fingers pressing into my palm,
this pencil,
the words of your poem,
which I've been walking like a labyrinth.

Poetry is a language,
which I do not always speak.
Now, I take each word one at a time
like a step on the (path) leading inward
- hold it, taste it, smell it -
to see what it means to me.

I left my (home)
with the Japanese (maple)s lining the drive
because it cultivated the past.
I would like to go back,
just for a moment,
to (be) a child again playing at (be)ing grown,
climbing in the branches,
imagining all that I needed was right there.
From that vantage point I could name
the (people) I call (family), our roles, and the best way to (love) them.

I'm traveling the curve of your poem,
nearing the center.
Without a way to translate the spaces,
I find myself (sit)ting here
in my yellow room
with Eva Cassidy singing to fill the silence.

Snow covers the ground in February,
the (second) (month),
making it impossible for those (flowers) you mention
to push through and show their (red).
If nothing is blooming,
does the color exist?
Or is there still the potential for (red),
a color that knows me so well,
even in winter?

From the center of your poem,
the (place) where I am now,
I am no closer to unfolding its riddle,
though I know more of myself.
I can see where I have bounded ahead of each word's meaning,
where I have layered my thoughts on top of them,
(cloud)ing implications.

If poetry is a language,
then this can (be) a conversation
traveling (far)ther than this paper, this (night), or I can.
There is space for you to (produce) your own meaning
from my words and ( ).
In that case,
I will risk writing that
I come to (love)
as (love) comes to me –
(slant)ed (like) the truth,
which I share too openly,
even in this poem.

Excerpt from “Jnabholz” to Sarah, 10/22/08:

Your poem is very insightful to me. It is everything that I suggested and could have hoped for. Indeed, by the poems I've been sent so far, I too find it hard to believe that I ever posited that we might all write something similar. I find it most instructive when you say, after considering each word at its own nobility (tasting and smelling it), that we nevertheless find ourselves bounding "ahead of each word's meaning." The interplay between intelligence and phenomena describes something more about our selves then anything I wished to discover through this extended experiment. But in this, it is not a failure but a success.

Translating Du Mu: Part 1

In October of last year, my friend Hun Lye posted upon his blog several poems of a ninth century Chinese poet that he had in his evenings translated. At the time I saw the translations alongside the original Chinese, I knew only several characters in the poem (moon “月,” mountain “山,” two “二,” and white “白”), but already I was intensely curious about Chinese to English translations (and desirous to do one of my own). The next time I talked to Hun, which was soon, I hounded him with questions over the phone. What did he mean by “ascending?” What does it mean: 'frosted?'" And so on.

The more we talked the more it became clear that the poem Hun had posted was entirely open to reinterpretation (though kudos, only by his graciousness and forbearance). Hun began to review some word choices (did “ascending” carry an unwanted spiritual connotation?) and I became more and more excited with just how much there was to explore with this simple four line, twenty eight word poem.

After the phone conversation, I had the original (in Chinese), Hun’s translation, and, most importantly, a word-by-word literal translation, described thus:

(far) (up) (cold) (mountain) (stone) (path) (slant)
(white) (cloud) (produced) (place) (be) (peoples) (homes/families)
(stop) (carriage) (sit) (love) (maple) (forest) (night)
(frosted) (leaves) (red) (like) (second) (month) (flowers)

Was there something inherent in the Chinese system of characters that solidifies their meaning? Furthermore, does this quality in form influence its poetic use? Or in another fashion, is 月(yue), more real in its description (almost depiction) of "what is moon," than our four letter, casually phonetic "m-o-o-n?"

What is moon and how do we talk about it? 月 is always 月, and never can it be made to be "moony," or "moonish," nor does it distinguish, "a moon," between, "the Moon." 月, however, is synomous with "month"--or reversely, perhaps it is more correct to say that "month" is no different from 月. Additionally, "sun," ㄖ (ri), can be combined with 月 to form the etymologically self-evident "one day and one night" 明 (ming), or "tomorrow."

In any case, Chinese, that seems to have picked up the objects of the earth and described them individually and exactly in its characters, or English, that mimics a chemist's lab's worth of endless combinations of variety and meaning, it seemed to me to be an advantage to have a literal translation, striped of the "poetry." The words remain implicit in their own beauty: "mountain," "cold," "white," "cloud," "love," "sit." There is no "half-sit." There is no, "sort-of-love." Just like a variety of food-stuffs that can be reduced and then nearly perfectly reconstituted, the poem also could be thus manipulated.

However, after playing with the poem myself, first changing one word here out of curiosity, another here out of dissatisfaction, inverting lines, changing the grammar, changing which thought was connected to which, gradually I couldn't see or hear the poem anymore. You run a distance along and then change back exactly what you seemed to have had such a problem with for so long.

When asked about his progress with a poem, Oscar Wilde once said, “This morning I added a comma, and this evening I took it out, again."

And I wanted to remain true to what great thought that I felt was hidden in these four lines. This Du Mu--was he any different from Robert Frost, halting his carrier to stare mutely into the landscape? Both preserve the landscape for us beautifully and perfectly.* If there was no great thought, couldn't we put it there? How much difference in meaning could be twisted out of those words without denying their seemingly implicit and substantive meaning. It was a great test to language and worthy to be shared.

I sent an e-mail to three friends (Jane Shuput, Sarah Currie, and my sister April), which included the word-by-word translation, but I left it entirely unexplained. I wrote: “I'd rather not clarify too much what this is about (or what it isn't about), but below you find a prompt, an incomplete account that desires the satisfaction of more complete realization—from you! Take the moment, evening, or week to consider and produce something then let me know your result. Though there is no inherent seriousness in this task, I do suggest earnestness for the sake of our collective edification. After all, in the cases of art, the endeavor with which you invest something is equal to the reward you ultimately reap.”

Jane responded:

the amazing thing about this exercise for me thus far is that it reconnects me with the immense contents of individual words laid bare.

produced
be
stop

sit
love

maple
forest
night
frosted

red

second
month
flowers

in other words, it isolates, for just a moment... shining a golden light as it were on individuality and authenticity. the maple, for instance.

just then, the words reach out of their parentheses and grasp their work, using parts of sentence to realize a world. the lack of connecting phrases emphasizes our understanding and insight into the way we connect and relate things to one another, and, hopefully, the way that they relate to one another naturally.


place
be
peoples
homes

families
stop
carriage
sit

love


love

frosted
leaves
red
like
second
month

flowers.

there is much more that intrigues me. my thoughts are only slowly coming to surface.
consider this the first chapter.

*Perfect, literally, in form; Du Mu has strict seven word lines, and Frost, with his interlocking rhyme, lays down an effortless 16 line poem in perfect iamb.

A Short Post

A--,

Swept my floor,
Wiped down the walls,
Organized everything,
Including Pai Pai.

A washer, in a dark yard,
where I was a night intruder,
refused to empty its grayish water,
and therefore refused to wash my clothes.

Ate a grilled cheese sandwhich--
Vella Mezzo Secco
Comte French Alpine
and significantly Aged Gouda--
until my skin, when I moved, stank.

Drank dark eternal puerh.
Stayed up late until sleep came,
and I obeyed, but not before reading
one last poem, which pleasantly evaded comprehension
at every turn.

Originally posted, 1:00 am, Wednesday morning; re-recounted Wednesday evening, 6:00pm.