Poem of the Week 2013/31

Ch'ang Kan

When the hair of your Unworthy One first began to cover her forehead,
She picked flowers and played in front of the door.
Then you, my Lover, came riding a bamboo horse.
We ran round and round the bed, and tossed about the sweetmeats of green plums.
We both lived in the village of Ch'ang Kan.
We were both very young, and knew neither jealousy nor suspicion.
At fourteen, I became the wife of my Lord.
I could not yet lay aside my face of shame;
I hung my head, facing the dark wall;
You might call me a thousand times, not once would I turn round.
At fifteen, I stopped frowning.
I wanted to be with you, as dust with its ashes.
I often thought that you were the faithful man who clung to the bridge-post,
That I should never be obliged to ascend to the Looking-for-Husband ledge.
When I was sixteen, my Lord went far away,
To the Ch'u T'ang Chasm and the Whirling Water Rock of the Yu River
Which, during the Fifth Month, must not be collided with;
Where the wailing of the gibbons seems to come from the sky.
Your departing footprints are still before the door where I bade you good-bye,
In each has sprung up green moss.
The moss is thick, it cannot be swept away.
The leaves are falling, it is early for the Autumn wind to blow.
It is the Eighth Month, the butterflies are yellow,
Two are flying among the plants in the West garden;
Seeing them, my heart is bitter with grief, they wound the heart of the Unworthy One.
The bloom of my face has faded, sitting with my sorrow.
From early morning until late in the evening, you descend the Three Serpent River.
Prepare me first with a letter, bringing me the news of when you will reach home.
I will not go far on the road to meet you,
I will go straight until I reach the Long Wind Sands.

Li T'ai-Po, translated by Amy Lowell

If this translation by Amy Lowell sounds vaguely familiar, it might be because there is another famous translation into English of this same poem, known as The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter, by Lowell's friend and compatriot Ezra Pound. Neither American poet worked from the original Chinese of Li Po.* It's interesting to compare the two versions as English poems (I am unfortunately not qualified to speak of them as translations from the Chinese). But Pound and Lowell were very interested in Chinese poetry and published collections of their renditions; both were also modernists, interested in re-making poetic language for the twentieth century, and one way of doing that was opening American poetry to a different, non-European tradition.

Lowell's version nicely preserves a sense of the poem's foreignness, but sometimes I think it's at the cost of sounding sort of quaintly exotic; Pound is more direct and simple. For example, she says "the Eighth Month" and he says "August"; she notes without explanation that during "the Fifth Month" the Whirling Water Rock of the Yu River must not be collided with (is collision OK during the other months?) and he omits the part about avoiding collision and merely refers to "the river of swirling eddies." He will sometimes keep the Chinese place names, which perhaps oddly makes them sound less exotic in English: the river Kiang instead of Three Serpent River and Cho-fu-Sa instead of Long Wind Sands; "the look out" instead of Looking-for-Husband ledge. I especially like Pound's simplicity and directness in what are for me (in his version) perhaps the most haunting lines in the poem; here is Lowell's version again:

. . . my heart is bitter with grief, they wound the heart of the Unworthy One.
The bloom of my face has faded, sitting with my sorrow.

Here is Pound's version:

They hurt me.
I grow older.

Lowell's speaker seems more of a piece; with Pound's speaker I have a sense of a very reticent woman whose longing for her absent husband forces her at times to break out with unusual directness. As with Othello's "the pity of it, Iago, the pity of it" or Cordelia's "Love, and be silent," it's the simplicity within the complicated emotional context that makes these short straightforward lines so powerful. But perhaps familiarity plays some part in how I'm receiving these two poems, since I've only read the Lowell recently and I've known the Pound version for a very long time (longer than the age of the wife in the poem). Lowell's version has its own power and integrity, even compared with Pound's still contemporary-sounding rendition.

This is from Amy Lowell: Selected Poems, edited by Honor Moore, in the Library of America's American Poets Project series.

* Lowell's translation calls him Li T'ai-Po, and Pound's Rihaku, which is a transcription of the Japanese version of the name; he is usually known in English as Li Po or, more currently, Li Bai. I need to look through my books of Chinese poetry to see if I can find a current translation of this poem.

National Poetry Month: 19

From Ezra Pound (1885 - 1972):

The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter

While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead
I played about the front gate, pulling flowers.
You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse,
You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums,
And we went on living in the village of Chokan:
Two small people, without dislike or suspicion.

At fourteen I married My Lord you,
I never laughed, being bashful.
Lowering my head, I looked at the wall.
Called to, a thousand times, I never looked back.

At fifteen I stopped scowling,
I desired my dust to be mingled with yours
Forever and forever, and forever.
Why should I climb the look out?

At sixteen you departed,
You went into far Ku-to-Yen, by the river of swirling eddies,
And you have been gone five months.
The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead.
You dragged your feet when you went out.

By the gate now, the moss is grown, the different mosses,
Too deep to clear them away!
The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind.
The paired butterflies are already yellow with August
Over the grass in the West garden,
They hurt me.
I grow older.
If you are coming down through the narrows of the river Kiang,
Please let me know beforehand,
And I will come out to meet you,
As far as Cho-fu-Sa.
BY RIHAKU
Ezra Pound (1885 - 1972) adapted this poem from a work by the T'ang Dynasty poet Li Po ("Rihaku" is a transcription of the Japanese version of Li Po's name). Though the speaker is a very young wife by our standards, there is a clear sense of the passing of time, a sense which increases her longing for her absent husband. You get a sense of a woman with very deep feelings which are not often expressed. There's a wonderful combination of statements both indirect ("the paired butterflies are already yellow") and direct ("I grow older"). These sentiments might seem banal, but only because they are so basic, so essential, to us. In the right setting, as with a gemstone set to catch the light, they regain their original power. They remind me of a scene in Ozu's great film Tokyo Story, in which the unwanted grandmother is sitting in a field with her very young grandson. She muses to herself, wondering if she will be there next year. He plays carelessly among the daisies. It's all very simple, yet the cumulative power of what we've seen of the story so far makes the scene's simplicity all the more heart-breaking. I have always found the last line of this poem particularly haunting, because my ignorance of the specific geography leaves the speaker's motives mysterious: where is Cho-fu-Sa in relation to where she is, and where her husband is? Is she indicating that she will travel incredible, difficult distances to see him? Is she choosing a place whose moderate distance allows her to control otherwise overwhelming emotions? She seems reserved and by her own statement was a bashful girl: Is she trying to indicate a modest and appropriate distance to cover up emotions she feels are too nakedly strong?

Here's another poem, this one taken directly from a woman of the T'ang Dynasty, the courtesan Xue Tao (768 - 831). This comes from the collection Brocade River Poems, translated and annotated by Jeanne Larsen:

Gazing at Spring, I

Flowers bloom:
no one
to enjoy them with.

Flowers fall:
no one
with whom to grieve.

I wonder when love’s
longings
stir us most –

when flowers bloom,
or when flowers fall?

– Xue Tao