dankodes | Nineteen Ways of Looking at Wang Wei, Week 2 of 2

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This week, we're finishing Eliot Weinberger's "Nineteen Ways of Looking at Wang Wei". This short book discusses many ways to translate a single, brief Tang dynasty poem and the choices involved therein. This week, we'll look at the last ten poems.

I'll reproduce the translations under discussion here, but c/ping from the pdf is not very reliable and frequently introduces errors. I'm including the text here primarily as a reference point for our discussions: I advise you to look at the book file itself for your reading.

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From:

x_los

On the empty mountains no one can be seen,
But human voices are heard to resound.
The reflected sunlight pierces the deep forest
And falls again upon the mossy ground.

- James J.Y. Liu, 1962

From:

x_los

No title, huh?

Not the sense in which I normally understand New Criticism.

Good attention on their part to how these choices specifically function.

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I like the discussion here about why he doesn't like particular choices, but IDK that I necessarily agree with them??

From:

x_los

Deep in the mountain wilderness
Where nobody ever comes
Only once in a great while
Something like the sound of a far off voice.
The low rays of the sun
Slip through the dark forest,
And gleam again on the shadowy moss.

- Kenneth Rexroth, 1970

Edited Date: 2021-11-26 02:18 pm (UTC)

From:

x_los

I actually like the final line in this, for giving a sense of that ‘shine’ the others have sort of obscured for me.

From:

I love the use of ‘slip’ in the penultimate line as well.
. It captures the elusive nature of light in dark forests.

From:

forestofglory

His praise for this poem as being like "what Wang would have written if he had been born a 20th century American" feels out of place to me. Classical Chinese for Everyone talks about this as one extreme of translation philosophy, with word for word translation-ese as the other extreme

From:

I don't find this translation so especially poetic that it deserves such strong praise?

From:

x_los

Empty hills, no one in sight,
only the sound of someone talking;
late sunlight enters the deep wood,
shining over the green moss again.

- Burton Watson, 1971

From:

x_los

People really rate Waley, huh?

*Eyeroll for Modernist Revolution* In some key ways, the ascension of literary modernism was a movement away from 'vulgar', populist art in favour of avant-garde aesthetics formulated for and by posh guys, and characterising that turn as a ‘revolution’ is dubious. I really don't think you can look away from race, class, gender and proximity to official forms of intellectual recognition, and the way 'global modernism' frames nationalist literary movements as Pound-imitators of some stripe, and arrive at 'inherently PROGRESSIVE’ as the watchword for this aesthetic conglomeration?

Weinberger's "19 Ways of Looking at Wang Wei" is glib about Pound's sloppiness and orientalist vision of 'translated text as meat for the UK to make sausage out of' on a couple occasions. It has me wondering, vos macht a yid? A gen out of WWII, and you're not Thinking About Power? Shanda.

You know who shares the same subject position and is far smarter about translation and power? Cynthia Ozick, with her "Envy, or Yiddish in America". She committed a big, not unconnected intersectionalism fuck up in re Morrison's "Beloved", but was otherwise more attentive to materialism and questions of audience

Scholars of Chinese is frustratingly ambiguous here—in what language/culture? Western? Why the fuck would an antiquarian be reading your Little Magazine?

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Hm, given the next line, it sounds like Weinberger means scholars of Chinese /in English/ in comparison to the Chinese poets who were excited.

From:

This is thus far the translation that /feels/ the most like the poem in Chinese does, actually. The parallelism / concision probably?

Edited Date: 2021-11-28 12:51 am (UTC)

From:

x_los

Empty mountain: no man is seen,
But voices of men are heard.
Sun's reflection reaches into the woods
And shines upon the green moss.

- Wai-Lim Yip, 1972

From:

x_los

Mm yes the *singular* Natural Language we all have, sure

From:

forestofglory

Indeed.

From:

I kinda like "reaches into", but despite his poor phrasing of the crit, I agree with Weinberger that this isn't as pleasant sounding a poem.

From:

x_los

Hills empty, no one to be seen
We hear only voices echoed-
With light coming back into the deep wood
The top of the green moss is lit again.

- G.W. Robinson, 1973

From:

x_los

Some clever notes on physical relations and poetics

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lol he's so mad about this one (but it /is/ infelicitous)

From:

x_los

No se ve gente en este monte.
Solo se oyen, lejos, voces.
Por los ramajes la luz rompe.
Tendida entre la yerba brilla verde.

- Octavio Paz, 1974

[In the Deer Park Hermitage. No people are seen on this mountain. Only voices, far off, are heard. Light breaks through the branches. Spread among the grass it shines green,]

Edited Date: 2021-11-26 02:27 pm (UTC)

From:

x_los

Poor musgo—but arbitrarily making a plant into an unspecific ‘grass’ is exactly what Chinese would want.

This is for sure the first reading to engage with the Buddhism, or other implied content—I’m not sure the other translations didn’t bother, but the book didn’t call attention to their doing so if they did.

From:

Why is the exegesis about the poem itself stuffed into exegesis about the translation...?

From:

x_los

In empty mountains no one can be seen.
But here might echoing voices cross.
Reflecting rays
entering the deep wood
Glitter again
on the dark green moss.

- William McNaughton, 1974

From:

x_los

This albatross joke is funny, but I’d punch him for it.

Thumpety thump

From:

Sometimes efforts to make a poem rhyme sound childish. This is one of those times.

From:

x_los

Montagne deserte. Personne n'est en vue.
Seuls, les echos des voix resonnent, au loin.
Ombres retoument dans la foret profonde:
Dernier eclat de la mousse, vert.

- Francois Cheng, 1977

[Deer Enclosure. Deserted mountain. No one in sight.! Only, the echoes of voices resound, far off.! Shadows return to the deep forest:/ Last gleaming of the moss, green.]

From:

x_los

Is it quite right for the translator to make so much of Wang Wei’s elision of ‘I’, when I’m given to understand that’s a very common formulation in Chinese?

From:

Don't literature people closely analyze the choice of POV and such though always?

From:

x_los

More--IS this an active choice THIS poem is making, versus something the entire genre does? Like, are you talking about Shaun of the Dead like it invented zombies, versus just engaging with a pre-existing strong convention?

From:

Ah, that makes sense.

From:

x_los

Not the shadow on a man on the deserted hill-
And yet one hears voices speaking;
Deep in the seclusion of the woods,
Stray shafts of the sun pick out the green moss.

- H.C. Chang, 1977

From:

x_los

Brutal.

Hjkghjfghgfh only the shadow knows.

This bitch.

From:

x_los

Empty mountains:
no one to be seen.
Yet--hear--
human sounds and echoes.
Returning sunlight
enters the dark woods;
Again shining
on the green moss, above.

- Gary Snyder, 1978

From:

x_los

Neat point re multiple meanings presented.

From:

He was so mean to 9 for breaking up the lines, but now this one is ~one of the best~? (Though it is definitely one of the best, that's true.)

From:

douqi

'...my wife (Japanese) too'.

I mean I should not be surprised that Asian Wife Guys existed back then.

From:

x_los

lol re never found his theory persuasive, but man litnerd guys this age are absolutely dick drunk on Pound, like an English boy with Oasis: neither is even good?

This point about parallels is good.

From:

x_los

antistrophic?
Great drama
Overall a very interesting, if sometimes frustrating, book

Some comments I made earlier on in the reading process:

"Ok finished reading and making notes on 19 Ways of Looking at Wang Wei which I think poetry club can do after du fu in 1-2 weeks, it’s a really interesting insight into the history of translating Chinese into European languages even if it’s also frustrating
Like it’s really given me to understand how BIG an influence Pound had on everyone’s process

Also this is maybe me being a ween but it is weird to have a big fash brought up again and again in these inherently raced translation and lit canon discourses like it’d be impolite or unreasonable to remember he did all that
Like oh you wouldn’t be so uncool as to recall that and wonder why we are not speaking of it at all SURELY
idk it does change how I think of Heidigger how can it not
Because it’s just like. Wiki curiosity
Lit is KEEN to not say
It is a Thing
Like you can’t gloss over this AND YET
I feel like the description of conditions is supposed to make me go oh poor scholar as well
But uh fuck around and find out
You know whose survival id trade Benjamin
Soooo"

From:

forestofglory

Boodberg sounds like a character! I've seen a few lines of his translation of the Dao De Jing and it's equally unreadable.

Having mostly encountered Pound via references to his poetry translation I would have no idea he was a fascist if you hadn't told me.

I have the reprint of 19 Ways of looking at Wang Wei form 2016 which includes 10 more ways.

From:

Anything interesting in the other 10?

Edited Date: 2021-11-28 03:34 am (UTC)

From:

forestofglory

Weinberger seems a lot more interested in how translations influence latter translations in the new section.

There's some German translations and some more french translations. Also the translation that's in The Anchor Book of Chinese Poetry which I wondered about because I have that book and its popular with anglophone c-ent fandom. (The commentary on it is about the influence of other translation and also notes that hanging moss is not native to China)

I liked this bit:
"A translation of, say, a poem into English is a a kind of palimpsest. It is not a poem in English, as it will always be read as a translation: a text written on top of another text. Yet it is appreciated (or not appreciated) in the same ways we respond to an original poem: in awe at the delicacy and intricacy of its manipulation of the language, or disappointed by its chunkiness."

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Thanks~!

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The timeline of how aesthetics changed were really interesting.

I wonder what Weinberger would think of the Baike vernacular translations lol. It doesn't add a pronoun, but it sure does add some extra details. "The golden rays of the setting sun shine directly into the deep forest."

From:

x_los

Yeah that IS another thing that's kind of absent from this inquiry--changing Chinese receptions over time, from PoV, from language subcultures.

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