Translations — Love Seeds/ 相思
Hear and attend and listen; for this befell and behappened and became and was, O, my Best Beloved; I have been reading blogs of late. I find it interesting that many poets post short lists of what they are reading; however, the one thing we do not do very well as blog-poets and thinkers of blog-poetry, it seems, is to explain why we reading what we are reading. Eduardo C. Corral says he likes Collin Kelley's blog simply because he likes it. Perhaps that is a good reason. Kelley does review The Bionic Woman DVD and Kate Bush, two subjects I can appreciate. I do not want to single out either Corral1 or Kelley, both of which have blogs I do enjoy, for it seems common enough with loads and loads of poets. We like what we like and that is enough and so should it be with you.
Maybe it is because there is so much poetry, mammoth amounts that go untended, fallow, in desperate need of mulch, like vast Pennsylvania Dutch farmlands abandoned and feral for a generation or so … no longer controllable, it is best to either pick up the homestead and flee to Malibu or take occasional jaunts through the roto-tilled corn-maze your high school kids have made in a far corner. You can't nuke poetry from orbit, as if that’s the only way to be sure, so it's best to take a polite stance with it. "I like it." "I don't like it." For some, why even take a stance? Someone might call you on it; for when we do, it tends to be more emotional than artistic; "I hate Slam Poetry because I am shy and have no stage presence" or "Robert Frost is terrible because I was forced by a bad teacher to read him once." But without being able to say why we like something, we bring these attitudes with us, into our poetry and ideas and convictions, and it affects our work.
Even being able to do something as simple as to choose between two different versions of the same poem becomes tricky. For example, when I was in Chicago last year, and I stopped in with Shelby to Peking Book House, formerly in Evanston and now on 2131 W. Howard Street. Mr. Chen Chan Cheng runs the establishment and he introduced me to a wonderful translation of ancient Chinese poetry, Gem of Classical Chinese Poetry, translated by Xu Yuanzhong (2000). I have been going over the work of Wang Wei (王维, Tang Dynasty, 701-761) of late. The New Directions of Classical Chinese Poetry (2003) says of Wang Wei:
"Sometimes government official, sometime Ch'an monk, inventor of the landscape scroll painting … recluse on his family estate along the Wang (Wheel-Rim) River. 'Wang Wei is one of those model poets, personally and artistically flawless, who occur very rarely in the history of literature.' (Kenneth Rexroth, Love).
….
"Wang Wei (letter): 'Without the animation of feelings of grief, one's style flows lightly and is insipid.'" (pages 229-230)
What interests me is how dramatic one translation of the same poem can be to another! Take for example the poem "Love Seeds" (相思). The sense of hot absence, the manipulation of the lover's hunger, the feeling of lost fervor, are all portrayed here in four simple lines:
相思
红豆生南国,
春来发几支。
愿君多采摘，
此物最相思。
Amazing; though hardly a bold stance on my part. Weng Wei is one of the most anthologized Chinese poets one can find2. I have located on the Internet alone two very different translations; one that seems to reflect the work of Xu Yuanzhong and one that goes off in a new direction. Now, I am not a Chinese scholar nor do I pretend to be. I have a hard enough time with English; try teaching to a TEFL student the difference between "b", "d", "p" and "q" … it is the same character doing back-bends and jumping tricks. But I work blind with poetry most of the time so I can only sense the differences between meanings, even if I am not sure what those meanings might add up to. What I am trying to say is, I don't really like either of those two translations. Here is my translation of Weng Wei's poem:
"love seeds"
red kernels bloom in the southern land;
how many sprout from seasonal trees.
harvest them until they fill your hand;
they are the fervor between us lovers.
It is not a direct transliteration of the poem, I have been more free and easy with it than the other two translators. Yet, I enjoy my translation because it is mine, because it fleshes out in my head a bit more richness in English than the literal meaning leaves us. One can argue that from "spring" to "seasonal" and from "yearning" to "fervor" might be slight modifications. It is true. But they are modifications that bring out shades and tones I like. More than just like, they are shades that I love.
- The love child of Robert Hayden and Federico Garcia Lorca is welcome to say whatever he wants any day! [back]
- A little like taking the bold stance of saying one likes Leaves of Grass or The Wasteland I suppose. [back]
October 10th, 2005 at 11:28 pm
Interesting translation…I’m going to print it out and bring it into the office with me and see if Nia has any light to shed! Not being able to read the original, I don’t know what level or kind of subtext comes through in the Chinese, but I think that your interpretation is evocative in more ways than one.