A cloud in the wind, at the corner of the world.
---Tu Fu.
Clouds in the wind above the passes
touch their shadows on the ground.
In depths of shadows frozen for centuries ..
the wind which roams without design
cleanses of passion's transient strife
and for a while the dust weighs lightly on my cloak
Useless to call this spiralling wisp of life one
strand in the the web that heaven and earth weave.
Less than a day in paradise
and a thousand years have passed among men.
While the pieces are still being laid on the board
All things have changed to emptiness.
Nothing is what it was but the stone bridge.
Where shall there be an end of old and new?
A thousand years have whirled away
in the mind.
The sounds of the ocean change to stone.
Fishes puff bubbles at the bridge of Ch'in.
The drunken eyes.
How many men grow old before the wind?
Dim, dim, the path in the twilight,
branches curl on the black oaks by the road.
Darkened torches welcome
a new kinsman:
In the most secret tomb these fireflies swarm.
Passion too deep seems like none.
They rejected life to seek the Way. Their
footprints are before us.
They offered up their minds, ripped up
their bodies; so firm was their resolution.
See it as large, and a millet-grain cheats us
of the universe.
See it as small, and the world can hide in a pin-point.
The amber, when it first sets,
remembers of a former pine.
If we trust the true and sure words
written on Indian leaves
We hear all past and future
in one stroke of the temple bell.
----Li Po.
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Whose translation is that?
The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter
While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead
I played about the front gate, pulling flowers.
You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse,
You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums.
And we went on living in the village of Chokan:
Two small people, without dislike or suspicion.
At fourteen I married My Lord you.
I never laughed, being bashful.
Lowering my head, I looked at the wall.
Called to, a thousand times, I never looked back.
At fifteen I stopped scowling,
I desired my dust to be mingled with yours
Forever and forever and forever.
Why should I climb the look out?
At sixteen you departed,
You went into far Ku-to-en, by the river of swirling eddies,
And you have been gone five months.
The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead.
You dragged your feet when you went out.
By the gate now, the moss is grown, the different mosses,
Too deep to clear them away!
The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind.
The paired butterflies are already yellow with August
Over the grass in the West garden;
They hurt me. I grow older.
If you are coming down through the narrows of the river Kiang,
Please let me know beforehand,
And I will come out to meet you
As far as Cho-fu-Sa.
Ezra Pound
Note:
"The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter" is one of the most anthologised of Pound’s poems. It is based on the first of Li Po's "Two Letters from Chang-Kan." and was published in 1915 in Pound's third collection of poetry, Cathay: Translations, which contains versions of Chinese poems composed from the sixteen notebooks of Ernest Fenollosa, a scholar of Chinese literature. Pound called his English versions of the poems which resulted from the Fenollosa manuscripts "translations", but they have been much derided by scholars of Chinese language and literature as being so far removed from the original Chinese as to be in fact entirely different poems. On the other hand, they have been admired and appreciated in their own right for their rare clarity and elegance Pound’s versions have been variously described as "translations," "interpretations," "paraphrases," and "adaptations", but to me this is poetry of a high order, whatever its derivation.
Working with the literary traditions of other cultures was typical not only of Pound, but of most of his contemporaries, who were not convinced that the only culture of value was European. However, Pound's work has significance not only for its cross-cultural innovations, but for the "cross-chronological" breakthrough notion that the human response to the world links us all, so that an American in the twentieth century can share and learn from the human experience of an eighth century Chinese river-merchant's wife.
The simple dignity and restraint with which the wife describes the progression of her life and relationship with her husband, developing from the bashful child-bride to the adult capable of feeling and expressing true passion is infinitely moving.
Blue mountains to the north of the walls,
White river winding about them;
Here we must make separation
And go out through a thousand miles of dead grass.
Mind like a floating wide cloud,
Sunset like the parting of old acquaintances
Who bow over their clasped hands at a distance.
Our horses neigh to each others
as we are departing.
-Li T'ai-po, trans. Ezra Pound
Thanks for that Celeste. I'm not sure how good the translations are. If Chewy (Hassan ) ever reads my blog I think he'll be able to tell you.
they are from a penguin book called late tang poets.
As for "translations" I think you've raised a difficult problem which is not just one of technical accuracy. even to write anything down is already a 'translation' of sorts. no? And to read someone else's work yet another. And assuming we come back to a work again and again, bringing our own experiences to that reading , it is perhaps possible to say that there will be a series of translations. The problem then becomes not where to begin , but when to end.
I've got two translations for montale's 'the eel'. I'll try and post them. Lowell's is a 'free' version whereas Galassi's is supposed to be more true...but true to what? the sound, the meaning, the tempo? Makes me think back to the problem of improvisation in Jazz and wonder how much is a 'faithful' translation of the score and how much is an expression of the artist's creativity. Freedom and necessity. The 'and' is highly problematic...no?
I like the notion of empathy across civilisations, times. I think Herder had a word for it but for the life of me can't remember it. Perhaps it was fantasia.
Translation. There is, it seems to m,e (and this is not an original thought) literal truth and poetic truth, in relation to any written work. The successful translator effects a balance between them. For this reason I prefer, for example, Scott Moncrieff’s version of A La Recherche to the literalists’ efforts. I haven’t read the entire oeuvre in French , but enough to convince me that he won’t lead me far astray from the meaning and intention of the original.
Some translations, of course, become better know and loved than the originals: Omar Khayyam? The Bible? Nowt wrong with that, in my book. Dororthy Bussy’s translations of Andre Gide (tu sais?) are a triumphant exposition of the translator’s art, and wholly truthful in every sense.
Jazz improvisation, to me, is a journey on which the traveller can improvise and invent along the way ad lib so I don’t see where ‘necessity’ comes into it.
My heart really isn't in this discussion-and I suspect yours neither. This stems from my total incomprehension of creativity.
On necessity: the rules, the score. Improvisation can only come once these have been internalised. No? For a work to be an 'open work' it still has to be a 'work' on pains of ending up as a random series of 'events' that are wholly incomprehensible and incommunicable.
Translation requires limits, 'necessity'. what happens when the tension between mortality and imoortality fades away? What happens when we live in a 'liquid modernity'? Bourgeois revolts against limits are now the norm! "Rebel Sell"
O.K. Enough!
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