Good poetry, good translation

[This is a guest post by Denis Mair]

River Snow Liu Zongyuan (773-819)

Over ranged mountains, no birds are seen in flight On every pathway, human traces are being erased In a solitary boat, an old man in rough-weather gear Is out on the cold river, fishing in the snow

{Here the mountains are just a backdrop in a scene where falling snow makes things indistinct. Although precipitous mountains can "cut off" the flight of birds, I don't think this line is emphasizing the impassibility of mountains to birds. That would be a tangent. And to say that the birds are "receding in flight" would be over-particularizing the image, choosing only the birds that are flying away from the viewer. Surely, there could also be birds flying towards or lateral to the viewer. The important thing is that the snow is making it hard to see any birds flying, or they don't want to be out flying in the snow.}

Since we're on the subject of crappy translations, i would like to mention one of my bugbears—– a poem that has been abused by many translators. In Du Fu's poem (see below) If we just put ourselves in the poet's place, we can picture a bird flying into the distance, dwindling to the edge of visibility. There is no need for flinging the eyes out into space or splitting the eyeballs. This line says more about the poet's state of mind than about his eyeballs. He has the inclination to watch the bird until it is gone from sight: in other words, he is borrowing the bird's flight to savor the vastness of the view and the threshold of perception. As for the resonance between scudding clouds and the viewer's mood, it's almost a koan exercise in itself to marry the two into a seamless statement. The viewer seems to have endured some troubling events, so the wind-scalloped clouds seem to hit him in the pit of the stomach. I think that's where such clouds would "hit" an English speaker, instead of in the chest. The simplicity of a koan's surface doesn't mean it's simple to unpack.

 

望岳 

岱宗夫如何,齐鲁青未了。造化钟神秀,阴阳割昏晓。 

汤胸生层云,决眦入归鸟。会当凌绝顶,一览众山小。

————-

Pinyin and traditional characters added by VHM:

wàng yuè

dài zōng fū rú hé,

qí lǔ qīng wèi liǎo.

zào huà zhōng shén xiù,

yīn yáng gē hūn xiǎo.

dàng xiōng shēng céng yún,

jué zì rù guī niǎo.

huì dāng líng jué dǐng,

yī lǎn zhòng shān xiǎo.

 

岱宗夫如何，

齊魯青未了。

造化鍾神秀，

陰陽割昏曉。

蕩胸生曾雲，

決眥入歸鳥。

會當淩絕頂，

一覽衆山小。

 

Selected readings

• "Bad poetry, bad translation" (6/18/21)
• Nienhauser Jr., William H.; Hartmann, Charles; Crawford, William Bruce; Walls, Jan W.; Neighbors, Lloyd. Liu Tsung-yüan.  Twayne's World Author Series, No. 255.  New York: Twayne, 1973.