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The mountain is empty, no man can be seen;Did anybody else notice that the name of the Chinese pilot who collided with the American spy plane was... hold on, tighten your seat belts…Wang Wei?
but the echo of human sounds is heard.
Returning sunlight, entering the deep forest,
shines again on green moss, above.
“DEER PARK,” WANG WEI
The rendition quoted above of Wang Wei's most translated poem, “Deer Park,” is by the Santa Fe poet Arthur Sze, from his just-off-the-press Copper Canyon book, The Silk Dragon, Translations from the Chinese. Why should you buy this book? Because, as Eliot Weinberger and Octavio Paz put it in their sweet tome Nineteen Ways of Looking at Wang Wei (Moyer Bell, 1987), describing Gary Snyder's translation of “Deer Park,”
“Snyder's explanation is only one moment, the latest, when the poem suddenly transforms before our eyes. Wang's 20 characters remain the same, but the poem continues in a state of restless change.”What they are referring to is Snyder's treatment of the last line of the poem,
Again shining on the green moss, above
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Why is this so important? Because America needs an enemy. Our economy to a large extent depends on the boogie man threat. Anything we can do to humanize the Chinese right now has got to be positive. So it's important for us as world citizens to reach out to the country and the people who are shaping up to be the next big evil empire. It's important for us as poets to understand our shifting knowledge of Chinese poetry. Sze's Silk Dragon is a major shift in the quality of the translations available to us.
Silk Dragon contains an in-depth account of Sze's translation process, not only an interesting accompaniment to the poems, but a step-by-step guide should you want to try your hand at translating. Let's take a quick look under Sze's skull cap to see how he arrived at the title of this collection:
“I want to mention my idea that the mind is a dragon. In Chinese culture, a dragon embodies magic, transformation, and energy. Wolfram Eberhard once wrote, 'As a magic animal, the dragon is able to shrink to the size of a silkworm; and then can swell up till it fills the space between heaven and earth.' Li Shang-yin wrote, 'A spring silkworm spins silk / up to the instant of death.' That phrase can be taken as a metaphor for how a poet works with language. The silk dragon, then, is my metaphor for poetry.”The book also has a great biographical section on the poets, with inspiring and haunting facts like the story of Li Ho galloping on horseback each morning to trigger the rhythm of his poems, dashing off phrases and stuffing them in his saddle bag. Later in the day he would take the phrases and work them into poems. Now don't that make you wanna be a Cowboy poet? Here are a few lines from his poem, “Flying Light”:
Flying light, flying light--Sze describes this as the poet's attempt to stop time.
I urge you to drink a cup of wine.
I do not know the height of blue heaven
or the extent of yellow earth.
I only sense the moon's cold,
sun's burn, sear us.
Even more spooky is the story of Li Yu, who was sent a present of poisoned wine on his 41st birthday after the Sung emperor interpreted one of Yu's poems as meaning that the people should rise up against the emperor. Talk about taking poetry seriously! And the Chinese do take poetry seriously. Ten bucks to the first person who can name the last group of poets who were imprisoned in China for their poetry.
WITTER BYNNER'S GENEROUS SPIRIT
Santa Fe's history of poets involved with Chinese translations goes back to Witter Bynner. Who is Witter Bynner, you ask? Mostly his work is not read today. But his generous spirit is still felt through the Witter Bynner Foundation, one of the only foundations dedicated to giving money for poetry. Translator-poets -- click now to sign up! By the way, you can stay at his house in Santa Fe which is now a bed and breakfast run by Robert Frost (no relation).
Let us close this Southwest Museletter excursion with Sze's and Bynner's translations of the famous poem by Li Po. First Bynner:
IN THE QUIET NIGHTNow the challenger, Arthur Sze:
So bright a gleam on the foot of my bed--
Could there have been a frost already?
Lifting myself to look, I found that it was moonlight.
Sinking back again, I thought suddenly of home.
NIGHT THOUGHTS
The moonlight falls by my bed.
I wonder if there's frost of the ground.
I raise my head to look at the moon,
then ease down, thinking of home.
P.S. POET AS JOB
Remember the contest in my last Museletter to come up with a great idea to make a few bucks off your poetry? Well, the winner is Kennon Raines of LA. The winning fancy: Put poems in fortune cookies! Can't this most American of foods be the first step in saving the world?
