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

Re: 12. Deer Fence

[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?

Re: 12. Deer Fence

[superborb]

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