Translation Review - The University of Texas at Dallas

More documents

Recommendations

Info

likely a tea the speaker had been drinking in lieu of thewine he could not obtain or afford because of the privationsresulting from the conditions around him. But it isHinton’s rendering of the final couplet that take us farthestfrom Tu Fu’s Chinese, for “News comes fromnowhere” is open to the erroneous interpretation that thespeaker has actually received some news, albeit from anunidentifiable source, and the phrasing is so reminiscentof William Morris’s News from Nowhere as to suggestthe Hinton was making an incongruous allusion to thislate Victorian socialist fantasy. Ironically, his renderingof Tu Fu’s allusion (“tracing words onto air”) loses thepun on “letters” (shu) and, with it, the line’s complementaryreading. Moreover, the preposition “onto” not onlythrows off the rhythm of his line but is also illogical andunidiomatic, suggesting that China’s greatest poet wasnot quite in command of either his medium or faculties.In this regard, Rexroth is far more faithful than Hinton,for, despite his liberties with the form and content of TuFu’s poem, he does a superb job of conveying the relationshipbetween the two, wherein lies so much of themeaning of the poem: the poignant irony of being a poetwhose mastery of form can do nothing to master thechaos around him.We expect a Pound or Rexroth or even Snyder todepart from their sources. After all, they clearly belongto that tradition of writers who “seem to ask us,” asNietzsche observed of the French poets of the age ofCorneille and of the Revolution: “Should we not makenew for ourselves what is old and find ourselves in it?” 32Few of us expect a “reliable sinologist” to “MAKE ITNEW,” yet this is precisely what many of Hinton’s translationsdo (albeit with far less art and apparent purposethan the free verse poets who came before him) and preciselyhow he views his role as a translator, judging fromthis “author’s statement” he wrote at the invitation of theAcademy of American Poets after being awarded the1997 Harold Morton Landon Translation Award:Ancient Chinese poetry has been a major part ofmodern American poetry, providing an ancient traditionmuch more useful to the avant-garde thanthe traditions of the West, for they are rooted in acompletely discredited worldview. I approach theancients from this perspective, following Pound,Rexroth and Snyder. My intent is to translate themajor poets of ancient China, and thereby create anew tradition of contemporary American poetry, atradition with a coherent “voice” within which thedistinct voices of individual poets are clear andconsistent. 33There is a specter haunting the contradictions inthis statement and the tradition it invokes, and his nameis Walt Whitman. The author of “I Sing America” soughtto create a contemporary American poetry with a coherentvoice within which the distinct voices of “the mostpoetic of nations” would be clear and consistent andwound up with an imperious chorus of one, as, of course,did Rexroth. With seven volumes of classical Chineseverse already behind him, Hinton appears well on hisway to reducing the entire panoply of major poets to aWhitmanic chorus. Although he has made more effortthan Rexroth to suggest differences in voice and style,none of the many poets he has translated stand distinctlyapart from any of the others with the exception of hisHsieh Ling-yün. This may have less to do with the poetthan the prosaic nature of the selection, “Dwelling in theMountains,” a long fu, or “rhymeprose,” describing thescenery surrounding the poet’s immense estate in southernChina. In any case, Hinton has abandoned his customary“density” in favor of a more fluent and conversationalverse technique. Some passages have the powerand grace of a Rexroth or Snyder. Notable among theseis his rendering of the poem’s thesis, for here theenjambment not only makes all the sense in the worldbut also speaks volumes on the topic at hand:All these things —it’s their singularity that makes them nobletogether, each at ease in its own seasons. (46)True for Chinese poetry in translation as well asthe flora, fauna, and features of a Chinese landscape. Butit is one thing for a chorus of China’s greatest poets, eachat ease in his or her own “season,” to preserve a noblesingularity within their own poetic tradition and quiteanother for a single translator intent on making theirwork new for himself and finding himself in it. Havingpressed his imprint upon so much Chinese poetryalready, perhaps Hinton should venture some poetry ofhis own. Pound often recommended translation as a poeticexercise, but he also knew how readily it coulddevolve into an excuse to avoid the risks of originalcomposition. 34 Without these, however, how can anyoneexpect to “create a new tradition of contemporaryAmerican poetry,” much less one “useful to the avantgarde”?In one way or another, all of the free verse poetsrepresented in Weinberger’s anthology turned to ChineseTranslation Review 49
poetry in an attempt to refine or extend the Whitmanictradition in American poetry. Pound was the first to make“A Pact” with Whitman, but, having read his RemyDeGourmont, he knew that a poet “is valued by theabundance or the scarcity of his copy” and had the wisdom,at least when he still had his wits about him, tochoose the latter. 35 Thus, by default if not intention, thefourteen Cathay translations, for the most part from theChinese of Li Po, create the impression of a distinctpoetic voice even though they are part and parcel of anavant-garde effort to “set a critical standard” for freeverse. Williams, who had made his own pact withWhitman, avoided the dilemma of the Whitmanic translatorby simply avoiding publication. Snyder, who knewhis Pound, also had the wisdom to take the high road ofscarcity and confined his “conquest of the East,” by andlarge, to the “Cold Mountain Poems” of the early T’angpoet Han-Shan. 36 Thus, again, by default if not intention,his Chinese translations create the impression of a distinctand coherent poetic voice. Moreover, they have aclarity and lapidary cadence — the “rip-rap” of Snyder’sown early verse — that suggest the density of hisChinese sources without the awkwardness that mars somany of Hinton’s translations:In the mountains it’s cold.Always been cold, not just this year.Jagged scarps forever snowed inWoods in the dark ravines spitting mist.Grass is still sprouting at the end of June,Leaves begin to fall in early August.And here am I, high on mountains,Peering and peering, but I can’t even see the sky.(53)This is but one of fifteen fine “Cold MountainPoems” included in Weinberger’s anthology. These,together with Pound’s Cathay translations and Rexroth’s“Poems from the Chinese,” not only are worth reading aspoems but also have considerable merits as translations.But I would still not recommend The New DirectionsAnthology of Classical Chinese Poetry, for why spendtwenty-six dollars on this lamentable sampler of the NewDirections backlist when virtually everything in it worthreading is so readily and cheaply available online? Forthe same price, you can obtain second-hand copies, ingood to excellent condition, of Pound’s Selected Poems,Snyder’s Rip-Rap and Cold Mountain Poems, Rexroth’sOne Hundred Poems from the Chinese and Love and theTurning Year: More Poems from the Chinese, plus thetwo volumes of Chinese women’s poetry Rexroth translatedwith Ling Chung, and have most of the poems andtranslations in Weinberger’s anthology worth reading(and many more besides) without having to put up withpage after dreary page of Pound and Williams in theirdotage or Hinton’s belated efforts on behalf of the avantgardeor the prejudices of an editor who rather takes theluster off of New Directions’ reputation as the “primaryAmerican publisher of international modernism.” 37Footnotes1I borrow “Schumpeterian Gale” from David Harvey’smetaphor for Baron Haussmann’s massive reconstructionof the streets of Paris during the Second Empire modernization,discussed in The Condition of Postmodernity: AnEnquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change (Oxford:Basil Blackwell, 1989) 16. Harvey coined the metaphorin honor of Joseph A. Schumpeter, who was one of thefirst economists to observe the role of entrepreneurialinitiative and technological innovation in sweeping awaythe past to clear space for new waves of investment andproduction.2Although translations from the Chinese in fixed rhymeand meter continued to appear after 1915, most wereeither reprints of older work or new work by older translators,such as L. Cranmer-Byng and W.J.B. Fletcher.3The classical verse poets did not even employ that fundamentaldefining convention of lineation, which was notwidely adopted until the modern era. Prior to the introductionof free verse, there was simply no need forChinese poets to make line breaks because the metricalregularity and rhyme schemes of the classical formsmade it so easy to parcel out the verse lines.4The Art of Chinese Poetry (Chicago: University ofChicago Press, 1962) 21-22.5The words in quotations are borrowed from Dana Gioia,whose remarks on the aural pleasures of Western traditionalverse seem equally applicable to those of classicalChinese poetry (“Notes on the New Formalism,” in CanPoetry Matter? Essays on Poetry and American Culture.St. Paul: Graywolf Press, 1992: 175-184) 176.6I am, of course, speaking of children in Taiwan andother corners of the Chinese-speaking world where theclassical canon continues to maintain a toehold in theelementary school curriculum. Ironically, in Taiwan, withthe decision to make English a mandatory subject in theelementary school curriculum, more and more childrenare being asked to memorize English nursery rhymes andplayground songs instead of the classical Chinese poems.7Pound was forcefully returned to the United States in50 Translation Review
Page 2: TRANSLATION REVIEWNo. 66, 2003TABLE
Page 5 and 6: I could about the period. I tried t
Page 7 and 8: ings are for. But there are also so
Page 9 and 10: and we see how that is expressed in
Page 11 and 12: NOT GETTING IT RIGHTBy David Ferry[
Page 13 and 14: songs of the dead,” but it’s no
Page 15 and 16: oscilla ex alta suspendunt mollia p
Page 17 and 18: FROM DEAN TO DEANTREPRENEUR: THE AC
Page 19 and 20: elations and fundraising in part to
Page 21 and 22: academic leadership in the post-ent
Page 24 and 25: his ideas.” Schweder’s closing
Page 26 and 27: cially in light of the considerable
Page 28 and 29: ary allusion, to slogans or key wor
Page 30 and 31: SAD TROPICS, OR TRISTES TROPIQUES?B
Page 32 and 33: In São Paulo, it was possible to b
Page 34 and 35: the first issue in autumn 1972. A y
Page 36 and 37: During the period 1989-1997 when Da
Page 38 and 39: da fuori non si vede niente, però
Page 40 and 41: only to then qualify, rebut, or exp
Page 42 and 43: ON THE CATHAY TOUR WITH ELIOT WEINB
Page 44 and 45: “Thaar’s where ole Marse Shao u
Page 46 and 47: Chinese lady’s I or my beginningM
Page 48 and 49: It is not a bad translation, but th
Page 50 and 51: Facing SnowEnough new ghosts to mou
Page 54 and 55: 1945 to face trial for treason for
Page 56 and 57: METHOD OR MAESTRI: TWO APPROACHES T
Page 58 and 59: agreement than dissent. The authors
Page 60 and 61: analogy between author and SL reade
Page 62 and 63: vide the reader with the finest lit
Page 64 and 65: languages, every language is potent
Page 66 and 67: (10th c.) is remarkably similar to
Page 68 and 69: eight distinct cases, whereas Engli
Page 70 and 71: tadutpreksyotpreksya priyasakhi gat
Page 72 and 73: THE MEXICAN POET HOMERO ARIDJISBy R
Page 74 and 75: THE ART OF WARSUN-TZUEdited, Transl
Page 76 and 77: Knocking about, kicked around and a
Page 78 and 79: dence and bear close scrutiny wheth
Page 80 and 81: Street of Lost FootstepsBy Lyonel T

Translation Review - The University of Texas at Dallas

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?