#13. Three Chinese Poets (Wang Wei, Li Bai, and Du Fu), translated by Vikram Seth
#13. Three Chinese Poets: Translations of poems by Wang Wei, Li Bai, and Du Fu, translated by Vikram Seth
1992, HarperCollins
Here is an interesting double play: a collection of poems by three Tang Dynasty Chinese poets, translated into English by Indian poet and novelist Vikram Seth.
I had not known Seth spoke Chinese (though looking it up on the Internet, apparently everybody else did: he is "a famous polyglot" who speaks German, Welsh and French as well as Hindi, Urdu, Mandarin and English, and one of his early award-winning books was a travel narrative through Muslim China and Tibet (From Heaven Lake, 1983, in case you were wondering)). In fact, I had not known much about Seth at all except what I decided/learned/concluded from reading about the first third of Golden Gate, his amazingly ambitious and eccentric verse novel about San Francisco, late one night when someone left it in the grad-student work room while I was procrastinating on writing my thesis. From reading this I concluded that Seth appeals to me. I like his playfulness, his eccentricity -- his standing-outside-of-the-orbitness; at the same time, his obvious irregular but snooty attachment to the Established. (Not that this is a universally admirable trait, but it's something I share, so I recognized myself in it.) I like his queer sensibility, his flashes of nastiness blurred with a deep attempt to reach for compassion and humanity. I like his baroque attachment to rhyme, which I also have and which is not very popular these days -- is very risky, also, because unsuccessful free verse is just boring, but unsuccessful rhymed verse descends into doggerel, which makes me sometimes too nervous even to make the attempt.
I think some of Seth's translations here are successful, and some of them really aren't. (Which is okay, right?) He has taken the -- to me -- very surprising approach of trying to translate the poems in metered and rhymed English versions; they are, in fact, metered and rhymed in Chinese, but of course the process of translation complicated everything... I feel like this inevitably puts such a personal stamp on the end results that in this entry I'm tagging Seth as the author, _as well as_ the translator. (Eccentric, maybe, but... so? Seth is eccentric; he makes me feel like eccentricity.) Even though, I should note in fairness, Seth gives the disclaimer that his translations "are not intended as transcreations or free translations" à la Ezra Pound.
I am going to copy a little of Seth's introductory description of the poets, because as a beginner with Chinese poetry it certainly helped me with not mixing up these three famous poets. Then I will note a couple of the poems that struck me -- they're not meant to be representative, they're just the ones I liked best. (BTW, the period is the Tang dynasty, in the eighth century A.D.)
... The standard trichotomy of Wang Wei as Buddhist recluse, Li Bai as Taoist immortal and Du Fu as Confucian sage has been rejected by some critics as unsubtle and artificial, but it can act as a clarifying approximation for those approaching Chinese poetry of this period for the first time...
Wang Wei's typical mood is that of aloneness, quiet, a retreat into nature and Buddhism. What one associates with him are running water, evening and dawn, bamboo, the absence of men's voices. The word "empty" is almost his signature. Li Bai's poetry sparkles with zest, impulsiveness, exuberance, even at the risk of bombast and imbalance. Sword, horse, wine, gold, the moon, the Milky Way and impossibly large numbers are recurring features of his work. ... Du Fu's poetry is informed by deeply suggestive and often sad reflections on society, history, the state and his own disturbed times, all central concerns of Confucianism. But what especially endears him to the Chinese is his wry self-deprecation combined with an intense compassion for oppressed or dispossessed people of every kind in a time of poverty, famine and war.
Now for a couple of poems I liked.
By Wang Wei:
Deer Park
Empty hills, no man in sight --
Just echoes of the voice of men.
In the deep wood reflected light
Shines on the blue-green moss again.
Living in the Hills: Impromptu Verses
I close my brushwood door in solitude
And face the vast sky as late sunlight falls.
The pine trees: cranes are nesting all around.
My wicker gate: a visitor seldom calls.
The tender bamboo's dusted with fresh powder.
Red lotuses strip off their former bloom.
Lamps shine out at the ford, and everywhere
The water-chestnut pickers wander home.
By Li Bai:
Parting at a Wineshop in Nanjing
Breeze bearing willow-cotton fills the shop with scent.
A Wu girl, pouring wine, exhorts us to drink up.
We Nanjing friends are here to see each other off.
Those who must go, and those who don't, each drains his cup...
Question and Answer in the Mountains
They ask me why I live in the green mountains.
I smile and don't reply; my heart's at ease.
Peach blossoms flow downstream, leaving no trace --
And there are other earths and skies than these.
By Du Fu:
from Ballad of the Army Carts
... Though you are kind enough to ask,
Dare we complain about our task?
Take, Sir, this winter. In Guanxi
The troops have not yet been set free.
The district officers come to press
The land tax from us nonetheless.
But, Sir, how can we possibly pay?
Having a son's a curse today.
Far better to have daughters, get them married --
A son will lie lost on the grass, unburied.
Why, Sir, on distant Qinghai shore
The bleached ungathered bones lie year on year.
New ghosts complain, and those who died before
Weep in the wet grey sky and haunt the ear.
1992, HarperCollins
Here is an interesting double play: a collection of poems by three Tang Dynasty Chinese poets, translated into English by Indian poet and novelist Vikram Seth.
I had not known Seth spoke Chinese (though looking it up on the Internet, apparently everybody else did: he is "a famous polyglot" who speaks German, Welsh and French as well as Hindi, Urdu, Mandarin and English, and one of his early award-winning books was a travel narrative through Muslim China and Tibet (From Heaven Lake, 1983, in case you were wondering)). In fact, I had not known much about Seth at all except what I decided/learned/concluded from reading about the first third of Golden Gate, his amazingly ambitious and eccentric verse novel about San Francisco, late one night when someone left it in the grad-student work room while I was procrastinating on writing my thesis. From reading this I concluded that Seth appeals to me. I like his playfulness, his eccentricity -- his standing-outside-of-the-orbitness; at the same time, his obvious irregular but snooty attachment to the Established. (Not that this is a universally admirable trait, but it's something I share, so I recognized myself in it.) I like his queer sensibility, his flashes of nastiness blurred with a deep attempt to reach for compassion and humanity. I like his baroque attachment to rhyme, which I also have and which is not very popular these days -- is very risky, also, because unsuccessful free verse is just boring, but unsuccessful rhymed verse descends into doggerel, which makes me sometimes too nervous even to make the attempt.
I think some of Seth's translations here are successful, and some of them really aren't. (Which is okay, right?) He has taken the -- to me -- very surprising approach of trying to translate the poems in metered and rhymed English versions; they are, in fact, metered and rhymed in Chinese, but of course the process of translation complicated everything... I feel like this inevitably puts such a personal stamp on the end results that in this entry I'm tagging Seth as the author, _as well as_ the translator. (Eccentric, maybe, but... so? Seth is eccentric; he makes me feel like eccentricity.) Even though, I should note in fairness, Seth gives the disclaimer that his translations "are not intended as transcreations or free translations" à la Ezra Pound.
I am going to copy a little of Seth's introductory description of the poets, because as a beginner with Chinese poetry it certainly helped me with not mixing up these three famous poets. Then I will note a couple of the poems that struck me -- they're not meant to be representative, they're just the ones I liked best. (BTW, the period is the Tang dynasty, in the eighth century A.D.)
... The standard trichotomy of Wang Wei as Buddhist recluse, Li Bai as Taoist immortal and Du Fu as Confucian sage has been rejected by some critics as unsubtle and artificial, but it can act as a clarifying approximation for those approaching Chinese poetry of this period for the first time...
Wang Wei's typical mood is that of aloneness, quiet, a retreat into nature and Buddhism. What one associates with him are running water, evening and dawn, bamboo, the absence of men's voices. The word "empty" is almost his signature. Li Bai's poetry sparkles with zest, impulsiveness, exuberance, even at the risk of bombast and imbalance. Sword, horse, wine, gold, the moon, the Milky Way and impossibly large numbers are recurring features of his work. ... Du Fu's poetry is informed by deeply suggestive and often sad reflections on society, history, the state and his own disturbed times, all central concerns of Confucianism. But what especially endears him to the Chinese is his wry self-deprecation combined with an intense compassion for oppressed or dispossessed people of every kind in a time of poverty, famine and war.
Now for a couple of poems I liked.
By Wang Wei:
Deer Park
Empty hills, no man in sight --
Just echoes of the voice of men.
In the deep wood reflected light
Shines on the blue-green moss again.
Living in the Hills: Impromptu Verses
I close my brushwood door in solitude
And face the vast sky as late sunlight falls.
The pine trees: cranes are nesting all around.
My wicker gate: a visitor seldom calls.
The tender bamboo's dusted with fresh powder.
Red lotuses strip off their former bloom.
Lamps shine out at the ford, and everywhere
The water-chestnut pickers wander home.
By Li Bai:
Parting at a Wineshop in Nanjing
Breeze bearing willow-cotton fills the shop with scent.
A Wu girl, pouring wine, exhorts us to drink up.
We Nanjing friends are here to see each other off.
Those who must go, and those who don't, each drains his cup...
Question and Answer in the Mountains
They ask me why I live in the green mountains.
I smile and don't reply; my heart's at ease.
Peach blossoms flow downstream, leaving no trace --
And there are other earths and skies than these.
By Du Fu:
from Ballad of the Army Carts
... Though you are kind enough to ask,
Dare we complain about our task?
Take, Sir, this winter. In Guanxi
The troops have not yet been set free.
The district officers come to press
The land tax from us nonetheless.
But, Sir, how can we possibly pay?
Having a son's a curse today.
Far better to have daughters, get them married --
A son will lie lost on the grass, unburied.
Why, Sir, on distant Qinghai shore
The bleached ungathered bones lie year on year.
New ghosts complain, and those who died before
Weep in the wet grey sky and haunt the ear.