Follow-up

[tarigwaemir]

Haste Street on the Feast of the Annunciation

worldserpent found the original Chinese text for the poem by Cao Zhi that I mentioned in my last post here. The English translation I found only refers to the first part of the poem, which has a second part that goes on to bid farewell to one of Cao Zhi's friends. Hence the title, 送應氏 (which does not translate to "The Ruins of Lo-yang").

aiwritingfic is kind enough to provide a rough translation in a comment here. worldserpent, aiwritingfic and tsutanai all weigh in on how and why the English translation deviates from the original context of the poem in the comments so I recommend reading through the thread if that sort of discussion interests you.

As for the papers I found on JSTOR while trying to find the Chinese title of the poem, one of them includes an alternate translation, which I'll quote for your benefit here (since you may not have the benefit of an educational subscription to the archive):

On foot I climb the Pei-mang slope,
Afar I view the Lo-yang hills.
Lo-yang--how desolate!
The palaces completely burned;
The walls are all in ruins
And brambles reach up to the sky.
I see no seniors, friends of old,
But only juniors, new and strange.
Sideways I step: there are no paths;
The barren fields are tilled no more.
The wanderer so long has not been back,
He does not know the criss-cross roads.
The countryside--how bleak!
A thousand miles without the smoke of man.
Remembering the home where long I lived,
I choke and cannot speak.

-- Cao Zhi, trans. Hans H. Frankel

Frankel goes on to add:

It is followed there by another poem which I do not want to discuss here. The two poems together bear the title, "Seeing off the One(s) Surnamed Ying." The second poem is clearly a farewell poem, but the first poem's connection (if any) with seeing off a friend or friends is not apparent. The Wen hsüan commentator Liu Liang (eighth century) informs us (on what authority I do not know) that the two poems are addressed to Ying Ch'ang and his younger brother Ying Ch'ü. These two brothers are known as poets and friends of Ts'ao Chih. For the time of composition several dates have been proposed by Chinese scholars. Huang Chieh, rejecting previous datings, believes the two poems to have been written in 211 when Ts'ao Chih and the Ying brothers may have met while passing through Lo-yang on separate official assignments; Ts'ao Chih was headed east, while the brothers were going north. Huang Chieh takes the "wanderer" of line 11 and the "I" of line 15 to be one (or both) of the Ying brothers, and surmises that he (or they) formerly lived in Lo-yang. Recent commentators have gone along with Huang Chieh.

Citation: Frankel, H.H. (1964). "Fifteen Poems by Ts'ao Chih: An Attempt at a New Approach." Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 84, no. 1, pp. 1-14.

Plus some interesting analysis of the poem's structure and parallelism, though I won't type it all up here.

worldserpent dug up a Japanese translation and an English site on the three Cao poets. Check the comments of her post for further input from sesame_seed.

For completeness' sake, I found a Korean translation of the poem here, but since it includes several of Cao Zhi's other poems, I'll quote the relevant translation:

북망산(北邙山)에 올라
낙양(洛陽) 땅을 바라보노라.
적막하도다, 낙양의 山河여!
궁실(宮室)은 잿더미로 변하고
담장 모두 무너진 채
잡풀만 우거져 하늘을 가렸구나.
왕년의 父老들은 찾을 길 없고
눈에 띄는 건 낯선 어린아이들 뿐......
가련한 저 백성들 두려워 문밖에도 나서지 못하니
버려진 들판엔 다시 노랫소리 들리지 않누나.
집 떠난 이들은 영영 돌아올 줄 모르니
고향 찾아오는 길도 하마 잊었단 말인가.
드넓은 벌판은 황량하기 그지없고
성안엔 밥짓는 연기도 오르지 않아,
단란했던 지난날 생각하자니
기가 막혀 말도 나오질 않는구나.

The image I admired so much, "heart-tied", is translated here as "choked" as well ("기가 막히다" is also idiomatic for "shocked speechless"). Note that the Korean translation too only bothers with the first part of the poem, although the translator refers to it by its proper title. Also, I think the Korean translation is even looser than the English. (Where on earth does "가려한 저 백성들" come from? And "노랫소리 들리지 않누나"?) Of course, I have no idea who the Korean translator is (could be another online amateur grasping at straws for all I know).

Feeling awfully tired today despite having indulged in an afternoon latte. A sign that I should probably go to sleep early. _-_

Yours &c.

Comments

bah

[emblem.livejournal.com]

氣結不能言

I'd have made it "words catch in my throat" for the sake of sounding more poetic. If I absolutely had to stick to something air-related, "my breath catches in my throat" would also do. The point of poetry is to capture the effect, and "I choke and cannot speak" does not do it justice.

I don't like any of the 'published' translations. Half the point of the poem is to crystallize the poet's thoughts into rigid meters and rhymes, and everyone seems to treat the work like it's free verse. =_=

*waits to get jumped by those more fluent*

Re: bah

[troisroyaumes]

Well...I think the second translation I put up does pay attention to meter (it's consistently iambic, which I believe is a deliberate choice), and you can see more conscious effort on Frankel's part to convey parallel structure. It doesn't sound quite as poetic as Waley's version though, in my opinion.

Interestingly, the Korean translation does not use classical Korean meter or rhyme (as far as I can tell).

Re: bah

[emblem.livejournal.com]

Interestingly, the Korean translation does not use classical Korean meter or rhyme (as far as I can tell).

Huh ... any idea why? Is it good poetry in Korean? ^^

Re: bah

[troisroyaumes]

No, not a clue. I mean, the language isn't modern, but the poem doesn't seem to have classical structure. I have very little sensibility for what makes a good poem in Korean, but it doesn't sound like a bad poem to me.

P.S.

[emblem.livejournal.com]

Errr, that translation only applies to 氣結! Obviously I am not suggesting that I'd ignore half of the line XDDD;

[issen4.livejournal.com]

Interesting posts! Yeah, it's a pity that there's no Chinese equivalent of 'heart-tied'--sounds appropriately angsty, doesn't it?

The literal translation of 'heart-tie'，心结, means something else entirely. How annoying. I can't think of another suitable phrase at the moment.

[worldserpent.livejournal.com]

Hmm, is it because culturally the term heart doesn't really overlap semantically with the Chinese 心?

[issen4.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the Chinese go for the intestines.

[worldserpent.livejournal.com]

How different languages assign different meanings to gestures and organs and such drives me crazy in translating. -_-

Heh, would like to see more intestinal phrases, though, if you have any good ones. XD

[issen4.livejournal.com]

Yup, the heart is often used for contemplation or worry. For feelings, the gut's where it's at. ^_^

Offhand I can just think of 断肠/斷腸 (broken or cut intestines) to refer to the intensity of one's emotional pain.

And 牵肠挂肚／牽腸挂肚 can be seen everywhere in love songs (lit. connect intestines hang stomach) to refer to strong longing.

[troisroyaumes]

On a similar note, this sijo uses 애, which means "innermost guts", but the translator chooses "heartstrings" instead.

[troisroyaumes]

Oh, what does 心结 mean? Tied up in worrying?

[issen4.livejournal.com]

Nope, it means a hang-up or a complex, but for something non-trivial. Fandom example, but not a very good one: Hikaru quits Go because he has a 心结 about Sai leaving.

[love_archived]

Wow. I REALLY like Frankel's translation, and the note he includes as well. If I were an ancient Chinese poet, I'd like him to be my translator. I'm linking to this post, hope you don't mind. <3

[troisroyaumes]

Link away! (As I see you've already done.) Well, Frankel was publishing his translation in an academic journal, so of course he had the space to include extensive notes. I found the Waley translation in another book, so perhaps Waley originally published his version with notes too? That being said, I agree that Waley does have the looser translation, not to mention the mistake of completely retitling the poem...

[tsutanai.livejournal.com]

I don't know why the second poem is getting such a bad rap from these translators. (Okay, sure, I can only read for meaning or calligraphy, being as I read Classical Chinese by transposing it into Slightly-Chinese-ish-Classical-Japanese, but still.)

And I'd think bonus points would be there for anyone who connected the parting drinks line with pouring out a 40 for your homies. XD

[troisroyaumes]

Maybe they get tired after the first part and decide not to bother? XD;; Of course I have absolutely no idea what the second poem is like since I can only look up random characters without any sense for how they string together.