Translation Review - The University of Texas at Dallas

It is not a bad translation, but their rendering of the lastline (in Chinese: ????????? “Outlandish as a flavoron the heart”) is extremely reminiscent of the closinglines in Pound’s “In a Station at the Metro” and thisImagist “extract” from one of Giles’s translations:Liu Ch’eThe rustling of the silk is discontinued,Dust drifts over the courtyard,There is no sound of foot-fall, and the leavesScurry into heaps and lie still,And she the rejoicer of the heart is beneath them:A wet leaf that clings to the threshold. (18)The textual similarities lead me to suspect the workwas a tribute to Pound, especially in light of the fact thatLi Yü, who was the last emperor of the Southern T’angDynasty and one of the founders of the tz’u, which cameto dominate the poetry of the conquering Sung Dynasty,spent his final years, like Pound, as a political prisonerwriting poems about the vanished glories of the past.Williams and his Chinese-American co-translator hadvisited Pound at St. Elizabeths, where they may havebeen struck by the similarities between these two imperiouspoets, and decided to turn their version into a tributeto the modernist whose Imagist principles had playedsuch a formative role in Williams’s own development asa poet. Unfortunately, we’ll never know, at least fromthis anthology, as Weinberger has nothing to say aboutthis particular work or, for that matter, many others thatwould well benefit from some editorial commentary.Even when he does bother to distinguish a paraphrasefrom a translation or place a text within a context thatmight enable us to illuminate its virtues and appreciateits liberties, he often skews or undermines the effort bysome bizarre liberty of his own. For example, in hisnotes to Pound’s Imagist chinoiserie, he repeatedly refersto them as “translations” even though the poet clearlyintended them to be read as poems. The New DirectionsAnthology of Classical Chinese Poetry was not designedto be a reference book, but better no notes than ones thatlead readers so far astray. Equally bizarre is his treatmentof this signature translation from Cathay:The Jewel Stairs’ GrievanceThe jewelled steps are already quite white withdew,It is so late that the dew soaks my gauze stockings,And I let down the crystal curtainAnd watch the moon through the clear autumn.By Rihaku (Li T’ai Po)Note: Jewel stairs, therefore a palace. Grievance, thereforethere is something to complain of. Gauze stockings, thereforea court lady, not a servant who complains. Clearautumn, therefore he has no excuse on account of weather.Also she has come early, for the dew has not merelywhitened the stairs, but has soaked her stockings. Thepoem is especially prized because she utters no directreproach. 25Pound always presented his translation and prosenote together. This was not just to apprise his readers ofthe indirect reproach for which Li Po’s elegant take onthe stock formula of the neglected courtesan is deservedlyadmired. He is using the note to voice his own indirectreproach to the “potential Medicis” of his era for failingto provide the patronage that would release him (andother deserving poets) from the alienation and pedestrianrivalry of the marketplace, which he believed was all thatstood between him and the “American risorgimento,” or“new arising,” he had been calling for since 1910. 26 It isthe same grievance that finds more overt expression inseveral other translations in Cathay, such as Li Po’s“Exile’s Letter,” which Pound sent to the art patron JohnQuinn, whom he was then courting as the last, best hopefor an American renaissance, with the note “I rather likethe ‘Exile’s Letter’. Yrs. E.P.”; and that most curious ofCathay inclusions, “The Seafarer,” whose speaker is, likePound, an Anglo-Saxon poet who has crossed the sea andis wont to complain that “There come now no kings norCaesars/ Nor gold-giving lords like those gone.” 27Instead of Pound’s note, Weinberger gives us thisrather indifferent version of the same poem by DavidHinton:Jade-Staircase GrievanceNight long on the jade staircase, whiteDew appears, soaks through gauze stockings.She lets down crystalline blinds, gazes outThrough jewel lacework at the autumn moon. (77)Translation Review 45