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

[x_los]

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.

Comments

15. En la Ermita del Parque de los Venados

[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,]

Re: 15. En la Ermita del Parque de los Venados

[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.

Re: 15. En la Ermita del Parque de los Venados

[superborb]

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