Translation Review - The University of Texas at Dallas

Hinton has a huge presence in The New DirectionsAnthology of Classical Chinese Poetry. This is partlybecause Weinberger, believing him to be “a reliableSinologist,” has coupled many of his translations withthe Cathay poems so that “Readers may judge for themselvesPound’s reputation for ‘infidelity,’ that watchwordof translation’s morality police” (xx). Ironically, in thisinstance (and others as well), Hinton actually takes moreliberties with his Chinese source than the poet whosefaithfulness lies in question. Notwithstanding Pound’sreputation for playing fast and loose with his sources, hisversion of this Chinese poem is surprisingly faithful toboth the letter of the text and its rhetorical development.Like so much T’ang poetry, Li Po’s quatrain conveys itssense and sentiments through a poetics of oblique portrayal:first setting the scene (the evocative trompe l’oeilof the “jewelled stairs” glazed with dew) before commentingupon its significance (“It is late …”); thenamplifying the theme by abruptly altering our point ofview and/or advancing the “plot” (“And I let down thecrystal curtain”); and ending with a closing response thatagain enlarges our perspective on the situation (theevocative claire de lune of “And watch the moonthrough the clear autumn”). Hinton is less faithful to boththe letter of the text and its poetics. His transposition of“Night long” from the second line to the beginning of thefirst reverses Li Po’s rhetorical development by havingthe poem comment upon the scene before it has beenpresented. In the fourth line, his rendering of ling-lungtrades away the phrase’s primary interpretation (“clearand bright”) for an elaborate gloss (“jewel lacework”)that not only seems redundant after “crystalline blinds”but tends to deflect our attention from the courtesan’sgrievance to the splendor of her furnishings. His last linerolls nicely off the tongue, but the rest of his version isas prosaic as a telegram and his eccentric line breaks,which have no basis in his source text, give his Englishan awkwardness that could hardly have less in commonwith the elegant symmetry of his source.Rexroth made wonderful use of enjambment in manyof his “Poems from the Chinese,” as we can see fromthis version of a much-translated Tu Fu lü-shih, or regulatedoctave, that is among the better offerings inWeinberger’s anthology:Snow StormTumult, weeping, many new ghosts.Heartbroken, aging, alone, I singTo myself. Ragged mist settlesIn the spreading dusk. Snow skurriesIn the coiling wind. The wineglassIs spilled. The bottle is empty.The fire has gone out in the stove.Everywhere men speak in whispers.I brood on the uselessness of letters. (98)Rexroth took liberties with the Tu Fu poem, butthis is hardly surprising in light of the fact that it originatedas a paraphrase, one of several he published inthe closing years of World War Two to express hisdespair over the insolvency of his vocation as a poeton the Left. 28 These were hard times for any writer onthe Left, but Rexroth had not been able to find a venuefor his poetry or political views after America’s entryinto the war, and his strong pacifist convictions alienatedhim from the remnants of a once vigorous AmericanLeft for which he had, in the heyday of the PopularFront, harbored Whitmanic expectations of his role insociety: “I do not think there exists anything resemblinga political problem in adjusting the work of ournative ‘avant garde’ to the culture of the workingclassmovement.” 29 Moreover, his insolvency and isolationwere aggravated by the disintegration of his marriageand the discovery that former WPA “comrats” hadinformed against him during the FBI investigation ofhis application for draft exemption as a conscientiousobjector. 30 Read in this context, his Whitmanic “I sing/To myself” no longer seems an obtrusive anachronism,and we can see how the line break reinforces the ironyin the allusion by literalizing Rexroth’s break from theWhitmanic belief that he could sing the self and speakfor the nation. The next enjambment is no less meaningful,for it underscores his own powerlessness evenas it sweeps us up, like “the snow skurries [sic],” to thenext couplet, whose grammatical breaks and endstoppedlines compel us to reflect upon the spilt “wineglass”and other symbols of his diminished resourcesbefore carrying us to the final couplet, whose endstoppedlines fall upon our ears like an apocalypticjudgment: “Everywhere men speak in whispers./ Ibrood on the uselessness of letters.” It is not exactly TuFu, but it is wonderful poetry, and one of the bestpoems Rexroth ever wrote.Now look at Hinton’s version, which Weinbergerhas conveniently paired with Rexroth’s, much toHinton’s loss:46 Translation Review