My Facebook friend, Aliki Barnstone, is the co-editor of the
anthology, A Book of Women Poets fromAntiquity to Now, which I have borrowed from the Alden Library at Ohio
University. It is a huge book, and,
after perusing it with great interest, I decided to ask Aliki this:
“If I were to ask you to recommend one poet
from your anthology of women poets from antiquity to the present whose work I
probably don't know, who would that poet be? And, if I asked you to recommend
one poet from that anthology to study in depth, regardless of the likelihood of
my knowing that poet's work, would that be a different woman?”
Aliki’s response to the initial part of
that two-part question was this:
“…the poet Yu Xuanji, translated by
Geoffrey Waters - that might be the one you don't know.”
While she also generously answered the
second part of the question, giving me plenty of names, several of which I was
well aware of, and several more that I will need to check out in the future, I
decided to start at the beginning, with Yu Xuanji.
Indeed, Aliki was correct: I did not know
of Yu Xuanji. I own several books containing Chinese poetry in English translation,
but none of them included the works of Yu Xuanji. I went online to search the
Alden Library catalog for “Waters, Geoffrey” and could not find a listing for
his translations of the recommended poet. I next searched the OhioLink
university inter-library loan system catalog, with the same result.
Alden Library does, however, have a
translation of the complete poems of Yu Xuanji
entitled, The Clouds Float North;
translated by David Young and Jiann I. Lin. So, this morning, I borrowed that.
Having done so, I thought that it might be interesting to compare some of
Geoffrey Waters’ translations with those of Young and Lin.
Translation, particularly from non-European
languages into English, can be a tricky thing. Although I don’t know enough to
attempt a learned explanation here, I do know enough to say that Chinese
poetics do not work like English poetics, so that literal translations are literally
impossible.
Below I will compare two translations of
the same poem by Yu Xuanji. You will note that even the two titles of the poem
have been translated differently. First, Geoffrey Waters:
Selling Ruined Peonies
Sigh, in the wind
fall flowers, their petals dance.
Their secret
fragrance dies in spring’s decay.
Too costly: no
one bought them.
Too sweet for butterflies.
If these red
blooms had grown in a palace
Would they now be
stained by dew and dust?
If they grew now
in a forbidden garden
Princes would
covet what they could not buy.
And now, Young and Lin:
Selling the Last Peonies
Facing the wind makes
us sigh
we know how many
flowers fall
spring has come
back again
and where have
the fragrant longings gone?
who can afford
these peonies?
their price is
much too high
their arrogant
aroma
even intimidates
butterflies
flowers so deeply
red
they must have
been grown in a palace
leaves so darkly
green
dust scarcely
dares to settle there
if you wait till
they’re transplanted
to the Imperial
Gardens
then you, young
lords, will find
you have no means
to buy them.
How different these two translations are. Just compare, “Too
sweet for butterflies” to “their arrogant aroma / even
intimidates butterflies” -- yet both translations convey the
extraordinary essence of those last peonies, as experienced by the poet. I am
grateful to Aliki Barnstone for turning me on to this wonderful poet and her
talented translators.
X
