Li Bai holds one of the most august thrones in the history of Chinese poetry, as Matt mentioned in the introduction to Li Bai he published here back in November. Li Bai was also a man of his time - a man, that is, on the border of many worlds.
I mentioned during my translations of Zhang Jiuling that, while Westerners tend to think of Chinese history as largely separate from the larger world, the Tang Dynasty was defined by international trade, border wars, and multiculturalism. The Tang capital at Chang'an, which is known today as Xi'an, was the gateway to the Silk Road, an intersection between the Turkic peoples of Central Asia and the Han Chinese. The spices, cloth, poetry, and blood of many cultures flowed through Chang'an, and left a mark that can be seen to this day in the city's cuisine, architecture, and cosmopolitan attitude. Li Bai's life story shares something of this character.
He was born either in southern Gansu province, or (according to some soruces) even further out on the Silk Road, near the modern city of Tokmok, in Kyrgyzstan. Contemporary biographical sources are sparse, but he apparently grew up speaking Turkish as well as Chinese. His family moved to the more central province of Sichuan during his youth, and in his childhood he was captivated by Daoist mysticism and swordplay. He was a frequent and, apparently, enthusiastic duelist. After achieving initial success at court, he offended a chief Imperial eunuch, and found his hopes of advancement within the Tang bureaucracy blocked. During the chaos surrounding the An Lushan Rebellion, Li Bai joined a smaller rebel faction, and was exiled to Anhui province after the rebellion's failure.
Li Bai spoke the Turkish language and fought in a Turkish general's rebellion against the Tang emperor, and yet his poems are a wellspring of Chinese culture. In this nationalist age, it can be hard to imagine someone straddling worlds and lives to such an extent. Then again, that's what many of us try to do today, with travel, with translation, and with the internet: introduce one world to another, or live one life in the context of many others. In that case, maybe we should be looking at artists like Li Bai to help chart the way.
Showing posts with label poetry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label poetry. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
5: Sharing Wine and the Night with a Recluse Beneath Zhongnan Mountain, by Li Bai
Apologies for a late post! In my defense, I've been in London the last four days, wandering about with friends and enjoying some pints -- a past-time which Li Bai, whose poems I turn to this week, would have respected. So, without further ado:
005李白:下终南山过斛斯山人宿置酒
暮從碧山下, 山月隨人歸,
卻顧所來徑, 蒼蒼橫翠微.
相攜及田家, 童稚開荊扉.
綠竹入幽徑, 青蘿拂行衣.
歡言得所憩, 美酒聊共揮.
長歌吟松風, 曲盡河星稀.
我醉君復樂, 陶然共忘機.
Twilight from a green mountain falls; the
mountain moon follows their return,
but lonely they walk upon the path, a
gray, gray slash on a blue-green ridge.
Watch her led to the house in the fields: a
child opens the chaste-wood gate.
Green bamboo lines the quiet way;
green vines brush the gown.
With happy words achieve at last this rest,
beauty and wine all shared and scattered.
The pine-tree wind sings long songs,
melodies exhausted by sparse river stars.
I am drunk, and you are once more happy,
joyful, all the seeds of care forgotten.
---
mù cóng bìshān xià, shān yuē suí rén guī,
Twilight from green mountain down, mountain moon follow person return
què gǔ suǒ lái jìng, cāngcāng héng cuìwēi.
however lonley which comes path, gray gray across blue green hillside
xiàng xié jí tiān jiā, tóng zhì kāi jīng fēi.
watch taken by the hand to the farmer's house; a child opens the chaste-tree gate
lǜ zhú rù yōu jìng, qīng luò fú xíng yī
Green bamboo enters the secluded path, Green radishes are brushed aside by the gown.
huān yán dé suǒ qì, měi jiǔ liáo gǒng huī.
Happy words receive this rest, beauty wine for a time share and scatter
cháng gē yín sōng fēng, qǔ jìn hē xīng xī.
Long songs hum pine wind, melodies all river star sparse
wǒ zuì jūn fù lè, táo rán gǒng wàng jī
I drunk you again happy, happy and carefree all forgotten (root cause, seed)
005李白:下终南山过斛斯山人宿置酒
暮從碧山下, 山月隨人歸,
卻顧所來徑, 蒼蒼橫翠微.
相攜及田家, 童稚開荊扉.
綠竹入幽徑, 青蘿拂行衣.
歡言得所憩, 美酒聊共揮.
長歌吟松風, 曲盡河星稀.
我醉君復樂, 陶然共忘機.
Twilight from a green mountain falls; the
mountain moon follows their return,
but lonely they walk upon the path, a
gray, gray slash on a blue-green ridge.
Watch her led to the house in the fields: a
child opens the chaste-wood gate.
Green bamboo lines the quiet way;
green vines brush the gown.
With happy words achieve at last this rest,
beauty and wine all shared and scattered.
The pine-tree wind sings long songs,
melodies exhausted by sparse river stars.
I am drunk, and you are once more happy,
joyful, all the seeds of care forgotten.
---
mù cóng bìshān xià, shān yuē suí rén guī,
Twilight from green mountain down, mountain moon follow person return
què gǔ suǒ lái jìng, cāngcāng héng cuìwēi.
however lonley which comes path, gray gray across blue green hillside
xiàng xié jí tiān jiā, tóng zhì kāi jīng fēi.
watch taken by the hand to the farmer's house; a child opens the chaste-tree gate
lǜ zhú rù yōu jìng, qīng luò fú xíng yī
Green bamboo enters the secluded path, Green radishes are brushed aside by the gown.
huān yán dé suǒ qì, měi jiǔ liáo gǒng huī.
Happy words receive this rest, beauty wine for a time share and scatter
cháng gē yín sōng fēng, qǔ jìn hē xīng xī.
Long songs hum pine wind, melodies all river star sparse
wǒ zuì jūn fù lè, táo rán gǒng wàng jī
I drunk you again happy, happy and carefree all forgotten (root cause, seed)
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
4: Some Changes Around Here
One of the great things about this project has been the feedback we've received from people who have studied Tang poetry a great deal longer than we. Matt's attracted most of that feedback, because he's more social about his interests than I am--I'm one of those writers who regards society like a sheer cliff over deep water: if you jump off and know what you're doing, you know you'll have an experience like no other, refreshing and exhilarating and rewarding, but before you jump you always have this creeping feeling that you're about to make a horrible mistake. Despite this, I get to benefit from the conversations Matt has, because he tells me about them.
As a result of Matt's chat with his friend Lucas, I'm trying out two experiments with this poem. First, I've placed the character-by-character translation below the full translation, for reasons I outlined in my response to Matt's excellent post on the questionable value of character-by-character translations. Second, I've posted the verse in traditional Chinese characters, rather than the simplified characters we've used thus far. Look at the difference between the two "spellings" of our poet's name, Zhang: 張 is what it looks like in traditional, as opposed to the simplified 张. Note the extra lines on the right side.
Chinese characters have thousands of years of history behind them, rising out of the oracle bone inscriptions of the Shang dynasty (1600 BCE) through their codification under the Qin (221 BCE) and beyond. These developments were sometimes matters of convenience, and sometimes of political import. Confucius regarded 正名 zhèngmíng , the rectification of names, as a key responsibility of good government - he was referring to the proper use of language in general, but it's good to bear this in mind when thinking about the import of language and writing in Chinese history. Anyone who's seen the movie Hero by Zhang Yimou has seen the import that character forms can have: the heroes of that film die (essentially) on behalf of a character set.
Traditional characters have roughly the same forms as those of the clerical script used in the fifth century CE. In the late nineteenth and early 20th century, Chinese scholars and statesman concerned with the country's modernization advocated a shift away from traditional characters, which they judged to be too complex to write and, more importantly, too difficult to teach. China at this point had a very low literacy rate compared to Western countries, and the thought was that public education required simpler characters. In the darkest of the "sick man of Asia" days, some scholars even advocated for abandoning the Chinese language altogether, in favor of the more "modern" language of (I kid you not) Esperanto.
To make a very long story unconscionably short and open the gates for gross overgeneralization, the Qing dynasty fell apart at the beginning of the 20th century, and early attempts at democracy devolved into the autocratic Guomindang on the one hand and the revolutionary Chinese Communist Party (CCP) on the other. Then the Imperial Japanese invaded and brutalized as much of China as they could get their hands on, while the Guomindang resisted with organized and the CCP with guerrilla warfare. The Japanese lost the war, but the CCP didn't stop fighting - the Guomindang lost control of China to Mao's CCP soon after, ultimately taking refuge (as Ming Dynasty loyalists did before them) on the island of Formosa, or Taiwan. To this day, the heirs of the Communists control the mainland, and the now-representative democracy that succeeded the Guomindang controls Taiwan.
The government of the People's Republic of China (set up by the CCP) undertook a number of reforms soon after their victory in 1949, including the simplification of the character sets, along lines proposed at the beginning of the century. The simplified forms, like 张 instead of 張 or 说 (speak) instead of 說, or 爱 love instead of 愛, were not created wholesale: many were cursive abbreviations of the traditional characters, used in private correspondence and in calligraphy, while some, like the change in the character for "love," removed elements of the initial composition (to quote a writing group friend, the science fiction writer John Chu, the simplification process "took the heart (心) out of love.")
Nevertheless, as the PRC propagated its simplified characters, the Taiwanese government, eager like many governments in crisis to preserve its authority with appeals to traditional values, held firm to the traditional character set. Meanwhile, overseas Chinese communities continued to use the characters that they always knew. Entering Chinatown in New York or Boston or San Francisco, you're more likely to encounter traditional Chinese than simplified, though this is starting to change. The simplified / traditional character debate is politically fraught, concerning the obvious tensions between the PRC and Taiwan, but also the PRC's relish in the glories of China's past, and the legally-enforced use of "standard" characters and "common" dialect. Those interested in the subject can check out Wikipedia's page dedicated to the debate.
This isn't a soapbox, nor is it a political blog (though if we're to believe Aristotle, man is a political animal, so we shouldn't ever expect politics to be far from any subject of human concern). I'm a man of peace, and limited understanding, and I think that if we're trying to translate these poems accurately we should present them as their poets originally conceived them, in traditional characters.
tl;dr: You'll notice more lines in the Chinese around here in the next few weeks. Do not adjust your television set.
As a result of Matt's chat with his friend Lucas, I'm trying out two experiments with this poem. First, I've placed the character-by-character translation below the full translation, for reasons I outlined in my response to Matt's excellent post on the questionable value of character-by-character translations. Second, I've posted the verse in traditional Chinese characters, rather than the simplified characters we've used thus far. Look at the difference between the two "spellings" of our poet's name, Zhang: 張 is what it looks like in traditional, as opposed to the simplified 张. Note the extra lines on the right side.
Chinese characters have thousands of years of history behind them, rising out of the oracle bone inscriptions of the Shang dynasty (1600 BCE) through their codification under the Qin (221 BCE) and beyond. These developments were sometimes matters of convenience, and sometimes of political import. Confucius regarded 正名 zhèngmíng , the rectification of names, as a key responsibility of good government - he was referring to the proper use of language in general, but it's good to bear this in mind when thinking about the import of language and writing in Chinese history. Anyone who's seen the movie Hero by Zhang Yimou has seen the import that character forms can have: the heroes of that film die (essentially) on behalf of a character set.
Traditional characters have roughly the same forms as those of the clerical script used in the fifth century CE. In the late nineteenth and early 20th century, Chinese scholars and statesman concerned with the country's modernization advocated a shift away from traditional characters, which they judged to be too complex to write and, more importantly, too difficult to teach. China at this point had a very low literacy rate compared to Western countries, and the thought was that public education required simpler characters. In the darkest of the "sick man of Asia" days, some scholars even advocated for abandoning the Chinese language altogether, in favor of the more "modern" language of (I kid you not) Esperanto.
To make a very long story unconscionably short and open the gates for gross overgeneralization, the Qing dynasty fell apart at the beginning of the 20th century, and early attempts at democracy devolved into the autocratic Guomindang on the one hand and the revolutionary Chinese Communist Party (CCP) on the other. Then the Imperial Japanese invaded and brutalized as much of China as they could get their hands on, while the Guomindang resisted with organized and the CCP with guerrilla warfare. The Japanese lost the war, but the CCP didn't stop fighting - the Guomindang lost control of China to Mao's CCP soon after, ultimately taking refuge (as Ming Dynasty loyalists did before them) on the island of Formosa, or Taiwan. To this day, the heirs of the Communists control the mainland, and the now-representative democracy that succeeded the Guomindang controls Taiwan.
The government of the People's Republic of China (set up by the CCP) undertook a number of reforms soon after their victory in 1949, including the simplification of the character sets, along lines proposed at the beginning of the century. The simplified forms, like 张 instead of 張 or 说 (speak) instead of 說, or 爱 love instead of 愛, were not created wholesale: many were cursive abbreviations of the traditional characters, used in private correspondence and in calligraphy, while some, like the change in the character for "love," removed elements of the initial composition (to quote a writing group friend, the science fiction writer John Chu, the simplification process "took the heart (心) out of love.")
Nevertheless, as the PRC propagated its simplified characters, the Taiwanese government, eager like many governments in crisis to preserve its authority with appeals to traditional values, held firm to the traditional character set. Meanwhile, overseas Chinese communities continued to use the characters that they always knew. Entering Chinatown in New York or Boston or San Francisco, you're more likely to encounter traditional Chinese than simplified, though this is starting to change. The simplified / traditional character debate is politically fraught, concerning the obvious tensions between the PRC and Taiwan, but also the PRC's relish in the glories of China's past, and the legally-enforced use of "standard" characters and "common" dialect. Those interested in the subject can check out Wikipedia's page dedicated to the debate.
This isn't a soapbox, nor is it a political blog (though if we're to believe Aristotle, man is a political animal, so we shouldn't ever expect politics to be far from any subject of human concern). I'm a man of peace, and limited understanding, and I think that if we're trying to translate these poems accurately we should present them as their poets originally conceived them, in traditional characters.
tl;dr: You'll notice more lines in the Chinese around here in the next few weeks. Do not adjust your television set.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
1: An Lushan
I know I was going to write about Taoism today, but after mentioning Zhang Jiuling's biography two days ago and chatting about it with Matt, I realized that there's some more historical context to this poem (and to the Tang dynasty in general) that will help set the stage for the rest of the Tang poetry we'll encounter on this project.
The Tang, which lasted from 618 to 907 CE, was a Chinese cultural high point, a cosmopolitan and outward-facing dynasty which traded liberally with Central Asian and Turkic peoples. Innovations in art, design, architecture, technology, and cuisine rose out of these three hundred years of prosperity. The Tang reached its peak under Emperor Xuanzong in the 8th century CE, and then, toward the end of his life, started to fall apart.
Everything begins going south with the rise to power of a general named An Lushan, the half-Tujue, half-Turkic son of a sorceress (I swear) who rose to become a general of the Tang armies and rebelled against the dynasty, capturing the capital of Chang'an and setting off a chain of rebellion and riot that destabilized the dynasty and led to its fall in the next century. Many poets in the 300 Tang Poems were exiled or killed or scattered in An Lushan's wake.
Thing is, before An Lushan became a revolutionary, he was a military official, who failed to follow the orders of his superior in battle. Zhang Jiuling, who was the Emperor's counselor at the time, advised the Emperor to execute An Lushan.
Of course, the Emperor pardoned An instead, and listened to a number of pro-war advisors (including a guy named Li Linfu) who claimed An would be more useful alive and terrorizing the central steppe than dead. The rise of this military faction was Zhang Jiuling's undoing, and led to his exile into Hubei, where he ultimately died.
When An Lushan rebelled, captured the capital city, and nearly toppled the dynasty sixteen years later, I'm sure Li Linfu and all the rest involved in Zhang's exile were very pleased with themselves.
The Tang, which lasted from 618 to 907 CE, was a Chinese cultural high point, a cosmopolitan and outward-facing dynasty which traded liberally with Central Asian and Turkic peoples. Innovations in art, design, architecture, technology, and cuisine rose out of these three hundred years of prosperity. The Tang reached its peak under Emperor Xuanzong in the 8th century CE, and then, toward the end of his life, started to fall apart.
Everything begins going south with the rise to power of a general named An Lushan, the half-Tujue, half-Turkic son of a sorceress (I swear) who rose to become a general of the Tang armies and rebelled against the dynasty, capturing the capital of Chang'an and setting off a chain of rebellion and riot that destabilized the dynasty and led to its fall in the next century. Many poets in the 300 Tang Poems were exiled or killed or scattered in An Lushan's wake.
Thing is, before An Lushan became a revolutionary, he was a military official, who failed to follow the orders of his superior in battle. Zhang Jiuling, who was the Emperor's counselor at the time, advised the Emperor to execute An Lushan.
Of course, the Emperor pardoned An instead, and listened to a number of pro-war advisors (including a guy named Li Linfu) who claimed An would be more useful alive and terrorizing the central steppe than dead. The rise of this military faction was Zhang Jiuling's undoing, and led to his exile into Hubei, where he ultimately died.
When An Lushan rebelled, captured the capital city, and nearly toppled the dynasty sixteen years later, I'm sure Li Linfu and all the rest involved in Zhang's exile were very pleased with themselves.
Monday, September 27, 2010
1: Zhang Jiuling - Four Poems of Encountering, No. 1
Let's start with the raw language at first: the poem in its original Chinese, followed by the pronunciation with a word-for-word dictionary translation. Then, I'll try my hand at a full English translation.
001张九龄:感遇四首之一
孤鸿海上来,池潢不敢顾。
侧见双翠鸟,巢在三珠树。
矫矫珍木巅,得无金丸惧。
美服患人指,高明逼神恶。
今我游冥冥,弋者何所慕。
Gū hóng hǎi shàng lái, chíhuáng bù gǎn gù.
Lone swan ocean on come, pool puddle not dare visit
Cē jiàn shuāng cuìniǎo, cháo zài sānzhūshù
side see pair kingfishers, nest at three pearl tree
Jiǎojiǎo zhēn mù diān, dé wú jīnwán jù.
arrogant / military(x2) treasure wood peak, how not gold pellet terror
měifù huàn rén zhǐ, gāo míng yù shén wù.
beautiful clothes worry men point, high shine meet god hate
jīn wǒ yóu míngmíng, yìzhě hé suǒ mù
now I swim / wander high and far, arrow -ingperson how where admire
Zhang Jiuling, Four Poems of Encountering - 1
Lone swan comes over ocean; pools and ponds it dare not visit.
Beside, see a pair of kingfishers, nesting in a triple pearl tree.
Mighty on their treasure-wood peak, how can they not fear a sling's gold stones?
Beautifully clothed, beware pointing fingers; greatness and glory bring spirits' wrath.
Now I ramble high and far; archers, what hope have they?
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