A few changes to format here; I'll discuss them tomorrow. For now, enjoy my meager attempt at our last Zhang Jiuling poem for a little while!
004张九龄:感遇四首之四
江南有丹橘，經冬猶綠林。
豈伊地氣暖，自有歲寒心。
可以薦嘉客，奈何阻重深。
運命唯所遇，循環不可尋。
徒言樹桃李，此木豈無陰。
Zhang Jiuling: Four Poems of Encountering, Number Four
The Southlands have a red tangerine, that
endures the winter in still-green groves
In a realm of such mild weather
it has a heart to bear the cold.
You might give it to noble guests;
Why is it secluded so deep?
Fate and everything it meets: a
wheel whose end we cannot seek.
Someone says: tree, peaches, plums,
how can this wood not have shadows?
Jiāngnán yǒu dān jú, jīng dòng yóu lù lín.
River south has red tangerine, endure winter still green forest
qǐ yí dì qì nuǎn, zǐ yǒu suì hán xīn
how this place air warm, self have severe cold heart
kě yǐ jiàn jiā kè, nài hé zǔ zhòng shēn!
may be present good guest, nevertheless how kept heavy deep
yūn mìng wéi suǒ yù, xún huán bù kě xún.
luck / life (fate) think so encounter, cycle not can search
tú yán shù táo lǐ, cǐ mù qǐ wú yīn?
disciple say tree peaches plums, this wood how could not (shade, yin)?
I meant to comment earlier but was distracted -- I think this is your best translation yet. I really like "someone" for 徒, and "wheel we cannot seek". I'm curious about 奈何阻重深 and 運命唯所遇 -- I'd love to get more into those lines, perhaps in comments.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comment! Those are both tough lines to translate. For the second line, I think I erred in my char-by-char translation of 唯所; on reflection 所 reads better as "all" rather than "so". 唯 might be "only" or an intensifier on 所; I wrote last week about my decision to translate 遇 as encounter, or meet. Hence, "All that fate meets," which I spun around a bit to get the line above. I probably committed some sin there.
ReplyDeleteAs for 奈何阻重深, I read 奈何 more as "how could you?" than "How could you but," which is more how it's used in modern Chinese, though I don't have any special reason for that beyond gut-feel. It doesn't make any sense for the speaker to be talking with his patron about how useful the orange would be as a gift, and say "How could you do anything *but* keep it secluded in the mountain?" 阻 I'm reading as a verb, as in 阻礙 (to block), with 重深 as describing the place in which the orange tree is secluded, much as 嘉客 describes the person to whom the gift might be given. The parallelism between the two lines suggests this to me:
可以 薦 嘉客
奈何 阻 重深。
(Adverb of possibility) (verb) (object of verb)
These are my thoughts, anyway. Do you have any suggestions as to how I could do this better?