Category: Translations

Translation is an extremely useful discipline in deep reading, and that’s what we hope to showcase here.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Cutting a hatchet

I started to write a footnote to the previous post, but pretty soon it was longer than my poem, so I thought it deserved its own post.

Gary Snyder’s poem “Axe Handles” introduced a lot of American readers to a critical passage in the Confucian classic The Doctrine of the Mean, attributed to Confucius, who was himself quoting a folk-poem from the ancient Shi Jing. With the assistance of James Legge’s bilingual edition and my trusty Chinese-English dictionary, I’ve attempted my own translation — I hope it isn’t too much of a hatchet-job. (Fu can mean either axe or hatchet, of course. I prefer the latter here because I think a shorter-handled tool is at issue, though “axe” is certainly general enough to include hatchets as well.)

To cut a handle for a hatchet, what do you do?
Without a hatchet in hand it can’t be done!
In taking a woman to wife, what do you do?
Without a go-between it can’t be done!

Cutting a hatchet, cutting a hatchet,
The pattern is close at hand.
As soon as I laid eyes on the lady,
The serving vessel was ready to perform.

Folk poems tend to be earthy, and I see no reason to assume that this one is any different. If this were a country blues song, we’d take it for granted that “go-between” and “serving vessel” were both examples of double entendre. I guess it’s also possible that both were meant literally, and the only subsidiary analogy here is between woman and serving vessel (bian dou, “an ancient food container,” according to my dictionary. It would be a great help if I knew what one looked like). But in that case one would be left wondering about the violence of the hatchet-cutting image.

For the passage in the Doctrine of the Mean (13:1-3), I’m going to chicken out and just quote Legge this time. I’m sure there are better translations, but this is the best of the three I happen to have on my shelf (including the execrable one by Ezra Pound which Snyder references).

The Master said “The path is not far from man. When men try to pursue a course, which is far from the common indications of consciousness, this course cannot be considered The Path.

“In the Book of Poetry, it is said, ‘In hewing an ax handle, in hewing an ax handle, the pattern is not far off.’ We grasp one ax handle to hew the other; and yet, if we look askance from the one to the other, we may consider them as apart. Therefore, the superior man governs men, according to their nature, with what is proper to them, and as soon as they change what is wrong, he stops.

“When one cultivates to the utmost the principles of his nature, and exercises them on the principle of reciprocity, he is not far from the path. What you do not like when done to yourself, do not do to others.”

Chapter 13 concludes with an elaboration of the principles of reciprocity and absolute sincerity — or so Legge translates these key Confucian concepts. Since discovering and becoming a lurker at Manyul Im’s Chinese Philosophy Blog several months ago, I’ve gotten a pretty good idea of just how hotly contested these sorts of translations tend to be. I think it’s safe to say that the image of the hatchet handle appealed to Confucius because it spoke to his emphasis on ethical self-governing in the here-and-now. I love the way he derives the Golden Rule from this — especially since that seems (to me at least) to have been far from the mind of the original poet. My only, neo-Daoist criticism here concerns the fittingness of the image of carving itself. I don’t question the necessity of hatchets and hatchet-handles, but it seems to me that we can learn even more about how to conduct ourselves in the world from a contemplation of the uncarved tree. I admire the Talmudic way the Doctrine of the Mean borrows and reads into passages from the Shi Jing. But uncarved poems have a unique resonance and radiance that no single interpretation can ever quite do justice to.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

“El son de las hojas”: Five tree poems from Renaissance Spain

De los álamos vengo, madre,
de ver cómo los menea el aire.

De los álamos de Sevilla,
de ver a mi linda amiga.

De los álamos vengo, madre,
de ver cómo los menea el aire.

*

I come from the aspens, Mother,
from watching them tremble in the breeze.

From the aspen trees of Seville,
where I saw my beautiful lover.

I come from the aspens, Mother,
from seeing how they tremble in the breeze.

**

Tres morillas me enamoran
en Jaén:
Axa y Fátima y Marién.

Tres morillas tan garridas
iban a coger olivas,
y hallábanse cogidas
en Jaén:
Axa y Fátima y Marién.

Y hallábanse cogidas
y tornaban desmaí­das
y las colores perdidas
en Jaén:
Axa y Fátima y Marién.

Tres moricas tan lozanas,
tres moricas tan lozanas
iban a coger manzanas
en Jaén:
Axa y Fátima y Marién.

*

Three Moorish girls caught my eye
in Jaén:
Axa and Fátima and Marién.

Three fine-looking Moorish girls
went out to pluck olives from the tree
and got themselves plucked
in Jaén:
Axa and Fátima and Marién.

Got themselves plucked
and returned in a tizzy,
all their color gone
in Jaén:
Axa and Fátima and Marién.

Three very lively Moorish girls,
Three very lively Moorish girls
went out to pick apples
in Jaén:
Axa and Fátima and Marién.

**

Las mis penas, madre,
de amores son.

Salid, mi señora,
de s’ol naranjale,
que sois tan fermosa
quemarvos ha el aire
de amores, sí­.

*

These troubles I’m having, Mother,
are all from love.

Come out, my lady,
from under the orange grove,
for you are so beautiful
that the very air, I swear,
will ignite with love.

**

So ell encina, encina,
so ell encina.

Yo me iba, mi madre,
a la romerí­a;
por ir más devota
fui sin compañí­a:
so ell encina.

Por ir más devota
fui sin compañí­a.
Tomé otro camino
dejé el que tení­a:
so ell encina.

Halléme perdida
en una montaña,
echéme a dormir
al pie dell encina:
so ell encina.

A la media noche
recordé, mezquina;
halléme en los brazos
del que más querí­a:
so ell encina.

Pesóme cuitada
de que amanecí­a,
porque yo gozaba
del que más querí­a:
so ell encina.

Muy bendita sí­a
la tal romerí­a:
so ell encina.

*

Beneath the holly oak, the holly oak,
beneath the holly oak.

I was going around
on pilgrimage, Mother,
and to show my full devotion,
I went alone,
beneath the holly oak.

To show my full devotion,
I went alone.
I took another road,
and left the one I was on,
beneath the holly oak.

I found I had lost my way
on the mountainside,
so I lay down to sleep
at the foot of a holly oak,
beneath the holly oak.

In the middle of the night,
I woke up, all miserable,
and found myself in the arms
of the one I love the best,
beneath the holly oak.

Poor me! I was so sorry
when morning came,
because I’d been enjoying
the one I love the best,
beneath the holly oak.

Oh blessed be
that pilgrimage
beneath the holly oak.

**

Con el viento murmuran,
madre, las hojas;
y al sonido me duermo
bajo su sombra.

Sopla un manso viento
alegre y suave,
que mueve la nave
de mi pensamiento;
dame tal contento
que me parece
que el cielo me ofrece
bien a deshora;
y al sonido me duermo
bajo su sombra.

Si acaso recuerdo
me hallo entre las flores,
y de mis dolores
apenas me acuerdo;
de vista las pierdo
del sueño vencida,
y dame la vida
el son de las hojas;
y al sonido me duermo
bajo su sombra.

*

The leaves murmur
in the wind, Mother,
and lull me to sleep
in their shade.

A breeze blows
soft and light,
moving the ship
of my thoughts.
It makes me feel
so content, it’s as if
I’ve been given
an advance taste
of heaven,
lulled to sleep
in their shade.

If I happen to wake,
I find myself
among flowers,
scarce able to recall
my cares —
lost to sight,
vanquished by dreaming —
and the sound of the leaves
brings me to life,
lulled to sleep
in their shade.

***

NOTES

These are all anonymous lyrics from the 15th and 16th centuries, translated with the help of a dictionary. I’m no scholar, but based on Cola Franzen’s translations in Poems of Arab Andalusia (City Lights, 1989), among other lines of evidence, I can only suppose that the vivid natural imagery in the Castillian cancioneros reflects strong Mozarabic influence. The association of trees with paradise and seduction seems especially Arab to me.

Tres morillas / Three Moorish girls
I resisted the urge to translate “tan lozanas” as “hot and spicy,” but somehow the racist stereotype of the vivacious, sexually available, brown-skinned southerner feels all too familiar.

So ell encina / Beneath the holly oaks
This song is in a woman’s voice.

The holly oak, or holm oak, Quercus ilex, sports leathery, evergreen leaves and “forms a picturesque rounded head, with pendulous low-hanging branches.” The Wikipedia article also says it’s one of the three best trees under which to grow truffles.

Romerí­as were annual pilgrimages to local or regional shrines associated with saints or the Virgin Mary, and were often quite festive events — a tradition that continues to this day.

Con el viento murmuran / The leaves murmur
This could be in the voice of either sex.
__________

The next edition of the Festival of the Trees will be at Hoarded Ordinaries on January 1. Send your tree-related links to zenmama (at) gmail (dot) com with “Festival of the Trees” in the subject line by December 30.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Kobayashi Issa: haiku about shitting

Kobayashi Issa (1763-1828) is generally counted as one of the four greatest haiku poets, along with Basho, Buson and Shiki. Issa was a devout, if irreverent, Buddhist of the True Pure Land sect whose pen-name means “one cup of tea.” His haiku are extremely down-to-earth, making ample use of vernacular speech and often taking insects or other invertebrates for their subject matter. He wrote at least fifteen haiku about excrement and excretory functions, in which I believe he was not only riffing on the Buddhist doctrine about the essential oneness of nirvana and samsara, but also trying to challenge traditional Japanese concepts of beauty and purity. Japan is a purity-obsessed culture, in which cleanliness and beauty are closely linked. Foreign visitors to Japan are often surprised to discover that, in this otherwise extremely clean and tidy country, public restrooms, especially in train stations, can be unspeakably filthy. Since such places are considered inherently impure, little effort is expended to keep them clean. But to Issa, any place where people or animals pause to take a shit seems worthy of a second look. After all, anything that breaks us loose from our ordinary mental habits might lead to rebirth in the Pure Land.

For a more comprehensive sample of Issa’s work, see David G. Lanoue’s massive online archive (to which I am indebted for the Japanese texts below). The following are my own translations.

*

ta no hito no kasa ni hako shite kaeru kari

flooded fields—
wild geese take wing
shitting on the farmers’ hats

*

sôjô ga no-guso asobasu higasa kana

in the middle of the field
the high priest’s parasol—
taking a dump

*

no setchin no ushiro wo kakou yanagi kana

impromptu outhouse
screening bare asses from view—
the lone willow

*

musashi no ya no-guso no togi ni naku hibari

Musashi Plain—
listening to a skylark
while I take a shit

*

nichi-nichi no kuso darake nari hana no yama

cherry blossom time—
each day the mountain is deeper
in excrement

*

kado-gado ni aoshi kaiko no kuso no yama

at every gate
that blue-green mountain—
silkworm frass

*

uguisu ya kuso shi nagara mo hokkekyô

bush warbler
intoning the Lotus Sutra
even as it shits

*

kasugano ya dagashi ni majiru shika no kuso

between the temples
in Kasuga Field, deer pellets
mingled with cheap candy

*

hatsu yuki ya furi ni mo kakurenu inu no kuso

first snow:
not even enough to hide
all the dogshit

*

Revised 10/25/2020

Posted on by Dave Bonta

It Didn’t Speak in Words

by Luis Cernuda

It didn’t speak in words,
It could only draw near: an inquisitive body,
Unaware that desire is a question
Without an answer,
A leaf without a branch,
A world without a sky.

Anguish opens a path among the bones,
Travels upstream through the veins
Until it comes out on the skin,
Upwellings of dream made flesh
To question the clouds.

A brush in passing,
A stolen glance among the shadows
Are enough to make the body divide in two,
Eager to take another dreaming body
Into itself,
Half with half,
Dream with dream,
Flesh with flesh:
Equivalent in shape, in love, in craving.

But it never gets farther than a hope,
Because desire is a question whose answer nobody knows.

*

No Decí­a Palabras

No decí­a palabras,
Acercaba tan sólo un cuerpo interrogante,
Porque ignoraba que el deseo es una pregunta
Cuya repuesta no existe,
Un hoja cuya rama no existe,
Un mundo cuya cielo no existe.

La angustia se abre paso entre los huesos,
Remonta por las venas
Hasta abrirse en la piel,
Surtidores de sueño
Hechos carne en interrogación vuelta a las nubes.

Un roce al paso,
Una mirada fugaz entre las sombras,
Bastan para que el cuerpo se abra en dos,
Avido de recibir en sí­ mismo
Otro cuerpo que sueñe;
Mitad y mitad, sueño y sueño, carne y carne,
Iguales en figura, iguales en amor, iguales en deseo.

Aunque sólo sea una esperanza,
Porque el deseo es una pregunta cuya repuesta nadie sabe.
__________

Luis Cernuda (1902-1963) was a Spanish poet and literary critic who spent most of his life in exile. He incorporated all his poems into one, regularly updated volume, La realidad y el deseo (Reality and Desire).

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Ballad of the Army Carts

by Du Fu (Tu Fu), ca. 750

The carts squeak and rattle,
The horses neigh and neigh.
Clouds of dust hide the bridge across the River Wei.
Bows and arrows at their waists, the conscripts file out;
Mothers, fathers, wives and children rush onto the highway.
Hands clutch, boots tromp, bare feet stand still.
The wailing rises straight to heaven — no need to pray.

I walk alongside the column, ask what’s going on.
A soldier says simply: “They call up more every day.

“Some of us were sent north to the Yellow River at age fifteen,
And now at forty we’re heading off to the garrisons in the west.
On our first tour, the village headman had to tie our bandannas for us.
When we came back, our hair was white, but still there’s more unrest.
The frontier garrisons run with blood, enough to fill an ocean,
But the Martial Emperor’s territorial ambitions have yet to crest.
In the hundred districts east of the mountains, throughout the land of Han,
There must be ten thousand villages that brambles now infest.
Even if wives are strong enough to handle a hoe and plow,
The crops grow every which way, the fields are all a mess.
It’s hardest for the Shanxi men, with their reputations as fighters:
They’re rounded up like dogs or chickens, every male impressed.

“But sir, though it’s good of you to ask,
Complaining isn’t part of the soldier’s task.
We can only shake our heads. Take this winter:
The Shanxi troops were never sent home.
The District Officers are demanding the land tax,
But where will it come from? You can’t get blood from a stone!
I honestly think it’s bad luck to bear a son now,
It’s better to have a daughter: at least she can marry
And live with the neighbors next door.
But a son will end up lying on some distant prairie.

“Have you ever been to the Blue Sea — Kokonor?
From ancient times, the bleached bones lie thick along its shore.
The new ghosts moan and mutter,
The older ghosts cry:
Thin chirps and twitters, under a gray and dripping sky.”
__________

I am indebted to David Hawkes’ detailed exegesis in A Little Primer of Tu Fu (Oxford: Clarendon, 1967) — highly recommended for anyone with more than a smidgen of Chinese. I have attempted to convey something of the rhythm and end-rhymes of the original, so the translation is a little freer than it might otherwise have been.

In his commentary, Hawkes notes that the poem was probably written to protest “a new drafting of reservists and ‘volunteers’ to fight against the Tibetans. … The old system of militia service which took the peasants away for regular periods of unpaid National Service was superseded a generation before the date of the poem by the recruitment of paid regulars who were kept on reserve and called out intermittently as occasion arose. Unfortunately the new system did not produce an adequate intake of recruits, and press-gang methods were frequently resorted to in order to raise armies for unpopular campaigns.”

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Fighting South of the Wall

by Li Bai (Li Po), ca. 746

Last year we fought at the source of the Sanggan River;
This year in Xinjiang, on the road to Conghe.
We pasture our horses on the snowy slopes of Tian Shan,
And rinse our weapons in the Caspian Sea.
The front stretches for ten thousand miles;
Our troops are all worn out, too old to fight.
For the Huns, fighting and slaughter take the place of plowing;
From ancient times, their fields of yellow sand have grown nothing but bones.
The Qin Emperor built the Great Wall to keep them at bay,
And a thousand years later, we’re still tending the beacons.
Again and again the beacon fires are lit,
And war rages on without end.
Men die fighting hand-to-hand;
The screams of fallen horses reach to the heavens.
Kites and vultures gorge on human entrails, carry them off,
And leave them hanging from withered mulberry branches.
Officers and soldiers bloody the grass and bushes;
What good are the generals’ strategies now?
They must know that war is a terrible tool.
The true sage never makes use of it.
__________

Translated with the help of a dictionary. I’m reasonably certain I got the gist of it, though.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Matsuo Basho: a new hearing

frog
detail from “Frog and Mouse” by Getsuju, ca. 1800, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

The temple bell stops—
but the sound keeps coming
out of the flowers.

The contrail dissipates—
but the sound keeps coming
out of the sky.

*

Such stillness—
The cries of the cicadas
Sink into the rocks.

Such stillness—
the hum of the air conditioner
drowns out the traffic.

*

The old pond.
A frog jumps in.
The sound of water.

The mitigated wetland.
A frog hops toward it.
The sound of tires.

Translations by Robert Bly (1); Donald Keene (2); damn near everyone (3)

[Poetry Thursday – dead link]

This week’s prompt — project, really — was guerrilla poetry, and while I wasn’t able put the suggestion into effect (yet), I guess bowlderizing some of the greatest works of a justly beloved poet is sort of guerrilla-esque. Links to other Poetry Thursday posts can be found here.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Tree questions

white oak burl

Today is the deadline to send tree- and forest-related links in for the upcoming Festival of the Trees. Email your submissions to kelly (at) ginkgodreams (dot) com, with “Festival of the Trees” in the subject line.

I just opened up my copy of Pablo Neruda’s El libro de las preguntas (The Book of Questions, a bilingual edition from Copper Canyon, with translations by William O’Daly) at random, and found this:

Cuánto dura un rinoceronte
después de ser eternecido?

Qué cuentan de nuevo las hojas
de la reciente primavera?

Las hojas viven en invierno
en secreto, con las raí­ces?

Qué aprendió el árbol de la tierra
para conversar con el cielo?

I can’t improve on Daly’s translation:

How long does a rhinoceros last
After he’s moved to compassion?

What’s new for the leaves
of recent spring?

In winter, do the leaves live
in hiding with the roots?

What did the tree learn from the earth
to be able to talk with the sky?

El libro de las preguntas bears a strong, if superficial, resemblance to the 4th-century B.C. Chinese work Tian Wen, “Questions of Heaven” (which are really questions for heaven, though I’d be the first to agree that there’s something divine about the impulse to raise difficult questions). It too features riddles without answers, such as:

焉 有 石 林? Yan you shi lin?
何 � 能 言? He shou neng yan?

Where do the stones have their forest?
Which animals can talk?*

Of course, both books were written in the absence of internet search engines. I typed “question tree” into Google and found this intriguing sentence: This is a leaf Question in a boolean Question tree and its pointers to boolean operands are null values.

It occurred to me this morning that if I wanted to make the contents and purpose of this blog more readily apparent to first-time visitors, I could replace the Rene Char quote with something like, “Living with the questions.” But that’s not a question, is it?
__________

*I studied classical Chinese in college. I haven’t kept up with it, but the grammar is fortunately quite basic and I haven’t forgotten how to use a Chinese dictionary.

Steven Field did a translation of Tian Wen for New Directions, but I haven’t seen it.

Incidentally, if you see only question marks in front of the Pinyin in the two lines of Chinese above, that’s not me trying to be cute. It means you don’t have Chinese characters enabled in your browser.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Through green glasses

paper cranes

Yesterday was the coldest morning so far this year; all the public schools were on a two-hour delay, and the streets were nearly deserted. I sat at a table in the bookstore window, waiting for one of the music stores to open so I could buy a new harmonica. Long strings of colorful paper cranes hung between me and the street — not quite a thousand of them, but nonetheless intended, I think, as a concrete expression of hope for peace.

I had just picked up a a bilingual selection of poems by the great 17th-century Mexican poet Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, translated by Alan S. Trueblood: A Sor Juana Anthology. As I’d remembered from his translation of Antonio Machado, Trueblood is a competent but not very imaginative translator, which is fine for my purposes: I’d prefer to have to struggle through the Spanish, referring to the English only for help with vocabulary.

I opened the book to this sonnet, an indictment of shallow faith:

Verde embeleso de la vida humana,
loca esperanza, frenesí­ dorado,
sueño de los despiertos intricado,
como de sueños, de tesoros vana;

alma del mundo, senectud lozana,
decrépito verdor imaginado;
el hoy de los dichosos esperado
y de los desdichados el mañana:

sigan tu sombra en busca de tu dí­a
los que, con verdes vidrios por anteojos,
todo lo ven pintado a su deseo;

que yo, más cuerda en la fortuna mí­a,
tengo en entrambas manos ambos ojos
y solamente lo que toco veo.

After I bought the harmonica, I had a little bit of time to kill before lunch, so I went for a brisk walk. The temperature had risen to perhaps 10 degrees (F), but the sidewalks were still pretty empty. I walked around the west end of town, trying to remember all the front porches on which I had partied at one time or another. I counted twelve. I didn’t feel in the least bit nostalgic, though: that was fun while it lasted, but after a while I felt I had heard just about every conversation it was possible to have while drunk.

I slowed down to admire a line of large sycamore trees. On one of them, some artist had mounted a pair of green eyes — verdes vidrios, indeed! I resolved to attempt a translation, however inadequate, of Sister Juana’s poem.

sycamore face

Green enchantment of every human life,
mad hope, delerious gold fever,
convoluted sleep of the sleepless
where dream and treasure are equally elusive;

soul of this world, leafy senescence,
decrepit fantasy of green
that the happy call today
and the unhappy, tomorrow:

let those who wear green glasses
and see everything just as their desire paints it
chase your shadow in search of a new morning.

For my part, I’ll give fate the greater latitude,
keep eyes in both my hands
and look no farther than I can touch.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Poems for a trip to the shore

Spanish-language poets never seem to tire of writing poems about the sea, and I never tire of reading them. Here are four favorites, freshly translated for the summer beach season. (Some of you may remember the first of these from a post back in March — The owl’s insomnia. I like my new version better.)

***

SONG (Canción)
by Rafael Alberti

If my voice should die on land,
carry it down to the sea
and leave it on the shore.

Carry it down to the sea
and make it captain of a white
ship of war.

Oh my voice, decorated
with the emblem of a sailor:
over the heart an anchor,
and over the anchor a star,
and over the star the wind,
and over the wind the sail!

***

THE SHORE (La orilla)
by Roberto Sosa

The great shore
gives shelter
to the smallest minnows.

Mother to boats and travelers,
she looks after that blue child the water.
She swallows hooks.

At night she sings, and the fishermen dream
of dragging the sea’s skeleton
back to their huts.

My little girl, my minnow,
this whole great shore’s for you.

***

THE LONGSHOREMEN (Los estibadores)
by Roberto Sosa

Yesterday’s courier and cross of rubble. From somewhere or other they came up with walls, docks and black ships. Boxcars that eclipsed the morning, the longshoremen already diminished by their bulky loads … even the ice was a form of outrage. Courier of yesterday — my father was one.

The breakers of late afternoon always subsiding, but still always rising up. To me, everything seemed to have grown dark — the tourist and the fisherman, the masts, the flotillas of gulls — all, all but the flying foam.

The workers on the docks went home to their cooking fires like failed angels. I was six, and dread was already dread.

***

Me at the Bottom of the Sea (Yo en el fondo del mar)
by Alfonsina Storni

There’s a house of glass
at the bottom of the sea.

It fronts on a street
of solid madrepore.

At five o’clock,
a fat golden fish
comes calling.

He brings me
a scarlet spray
of coral blossoms.

I sleep on a bed
just a bit bluer
than the sea.

An octopus
winks at me
from the other side of the glass.
In the green forest
all around —
ding-dong, ding-dang —
the sea-green pearly
sirens sing
and sway.

And over my head
in the twilight, burning,
all the bristle-points
of the sea.

*

In October 1938, Storni drowned herself in the ocean at Mar del Plata.