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Here, the word order accords well with that in the
original; in addition, Snyder so deftly employs
punctuation and space that the visual effect is
stunning. The three consecutive dashes transform the
“boat,” the “coat,” the “hat” and the “old man” into
four frames of imagery that appear one after another
in the reader’s vision. After the reader visualizes the
boat, then the coat, the hat, and eventually the image
of the old man, the exclamation mark would bring a
surprise to him: indeed, it is an old fisherman! In the
second line, between every two words, there are three
typographical spaces, which can draw the reader’s
attention to every single word. Snyder says, “The
placement of the line on the page, the horizontal white
spaces and vertical white spaces are all scoring for
how it is to be read and how it is to be timed” (The
Real Work 31). This spacing device would slow down
the reading speed considerably; the reader’s focus will
be placed on each word, creating a mood of isolation.
This is the only line to which Snyder applies such a
spacing device; the aim is obvious: while the grand,
panoramic landscape is depicted by the two images in
the first two lines, “these thousand peaks” and “all the
trails,” the “old man” line focuses one’s vision on a
single spot in the vastness. As a result, the spacing
device could strengthen the sense of desolation and
the idea of the relative insignificance of humans.
In these translations, Snyder adheres more to the
formalistic aspects of classical Chinese poetry,
whereas the “Cold Mountain Poems” pay less
attention to the rules and thus read more fluently.
Snyder’s deviation in the second of the “Cold
Mountain Poems” is renowned: “Go tell families with
silverware and cars / ‘What’s the use of all that noise
and money’” The couplet should be rendered: “go
tell the family with bells and caldrons in its dining hall
/ ‘What is the use of vain fame’” Snyder’s
contemporized version has become a showcase of
translation. There also appears to be a drastic
departure from the rules in the T’ang translations,
although it is controversial: his interpretation of a
word in the “Deer Camp” written by Wang Wei (699–
759) (Snyder, The Gary Snyder Reader 539). The last
two lines of the original quatrain “Lu ch’ai” (Chüan
T’ang Shih 128, chüan 1300) should read:
fan ching ju sên lin
return shadow enter deep woods
fu chao ch’ing t’ai shang
again shine green moss on
Jerome Ch’en and Michael Bullock’s translation
is by and large accurate: “At an angle the sun’s rays /
enter the depths of the wood, / and shine / upon the
green moss” (Minford 704). Shang is a preposition,
and thus the phrase ch’ing-t’ai-shang should be
rendered as “on the green moss.” However, Snyder
renders the word shang as an adjective “above” to
modify the “moss”:
Returning sunlight
enters the dark woods;
Again shining
On green moss, above. (The Gary 539)
Some sinologists told me that this misreading is
unthinkable. However, there must be a reason for
Snyder’s deviation, because he certainly knows shang
is a preposition. When I visited him on July 18, 2001,
at Kitkitdizze, his homestead in northern California, I
found the answer. As I brought up this issue, we were
walking in the wild wood that surrounded his Ring of
Bone Zendo. He recited the two lines in “Deer Camp”
that he had rendered and then pointed to the high tree
trunks of pines and oaks nearby, saying, “You see that
sunlight shining on green moss above” Indeed, there
were reddish-brown mosses high above on the trunks,
some as high as four meters. He said, “After it rains in
the fall, it gets green again” (Snyder, Videocassette).
Thus, Snyder interpolates his life experience in the
wild into these two lines written by Wan Wei, a poet
who lived 1,200 years ago in his mountain hermitage
in China. Snyder also revises the title of this poem in
the same vein. The original title “Lu ch’ai” literally
means an humble fenced residence that deer frequent
— a recluse’s home in the mountains. Ch’ai,
“firewood,” a euphemism for modesty, could be
translated into “thatch” or “hut”; Ch’en and Bullock’s
“enclosure” (Minford 704) can connote the fence
image. Bynner’s title, “Deer-park Hermitage” (189), is
quite accurate. But Snyder’s “Deer Camp” is clearly
an interpolation of his own experience, because
camping is his favorite activity; he was already
camping alone in the deep, wild wood near his home
in Washington State when he was only nine (Snyder,
58