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

Postscript

[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"

Re: Postscript

[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.

Re: Postscript

[superborb]

Anything interesting in the other 10?

Re: Postscript

[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."

Re: Postscript

[superborb]

Thanks~!

Re: Postscript

[superborb]

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."

Re: Postscript

[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.