I don't remember where I first read about the Tang dynasty poet 李賀 Li He, also known by his courtesy name of 李長吉 Li Changji. Odds are it was on Wikipedia, where he's referred to as the "Ghost of Poetry", or 詩鬼, for his strange imagery and unconventional style. It took a while for me to get around to reading some of his work, which is unfortunately, but somewhat understandably, under-represented in English translation. What little I've read has been as weird and obscure as it was made out to be.
Below are two of Li's poems and my translations thereof. The first was chosen because I got excited by the title: 巫 means "witch" or "wizard", but it turns out that 巫山 Wushan is the Wu Mountains, which encompass one of the gorges that make up the Three Gorges along the Yangtze River. I like to pretend that the mountains got their name from an unusually large sorcerer population in the past. I translated the second poem because it's autumn, or what passes for autumn here.
The Chinese text comes from the two-volume 李長吉歌詩編年箋注, which contains annotations and notes for what I think are all of Li's poems; I owe much of my translations' accuracy, such as it is, to the 1983 edition of J.D. Frodsham's excellent Goddesses, Ghosts, and Demons: The Collected Poems of Li He, which also annotates Li's poetry, albeit in a manner better suited to Western readers lacking a background in classical Chinese poetry, history, and mythology (e.g., yours truly). Many of my own notes on the poems are based on Frodsham's annotations.
When it comes to dictionaries, I consistently rely on 梁實秋 Liang Shih-Chiu's 遠東漢英大辭典 Far East Chinese-English Dictionary, the MDBG Dictionary, and Paul W. Kroll's A Student's Dictionary of Classical and Medieval Chinese, all of which are indispensable for various reasons.
I hope y'all enjoy these, even though I have some serious doubts about the quality of the translations, and that you're having a good autumn. Happy Halloween!
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巫山高
李長吉
碧叢叢，高插天，大江翻瀾神曳煙
楚魂尋夢風颸然，曉風飛雨生苔錢
瑤姬一去一千年，丁香筇竹啼老猨
古祠近月蟾桂寒，椒花墜紅溼雲間
"The Lofty Wu Mountains"
Li Changji
Tall blue-green masses pierce the sky
The great river tumbles along, mist trailing behind spirits
The soul of Chu's king seeks a dream in the cool breeze
The dawn wind brings rain and life to the moss
The Jade Concubine left a thousand years ago
Among the cloves and bamboo old gibbons wail
The old shrine is near the moon-toad's frozen cassia tree
Sichuan pepper flowers fall red and wet among the clouds
Notes: The King of 楚 Chu once spent the night with 瑤姬, the Jade Concubine, who is the female spirit of 巫山 the Wu Mountains. The moss mentioned, 苔錢, is coin-shaped, but it sounded weird to include that. Gibbons signify loneliness, and the shrine is ostensibly dedicated to 瑤姬. The moon-toad is a Chinese equivalent of the man in the moon, though I'm not sure what it has to do with the cassia (cinnamon) tree- maybe the tree has ties to the moon in Chinese folklore. Anyone who's had Sichuan (AKA Szechuan) food is familiar with the 麻 numbing flavor of the Sichuan peppercorn.
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秋來
李長吉
桐風驚心壯士苦
衰燈絡緯啼寒素
誰看青簡一編書
不遣花蟲粉空蠹
思牽今夜腸應直
雨冷香魂弔書客
秋墳鬼唱鮑家詩
恨血千年土中碧
"Coming of Autumn"
Li Changji
Wind in the tung trees rouses this scholar from bitter thoughts
As the lamplight wanes and katydids drone dully in the cold.
Who will read even a single green strip of this book
If I can't get rid of the colorful bugs that turn its pages to dust?
Thinking should straighten out my twisted feelings tonight.
In from the cold rain, a perfumed wandering soul consoles me.
Among autumnal graves spirits chant Bao's poem.
A thousand years in the earth, the blood of the resentful becomes jade.
Notes: The seeds of tung trees are the source of tung oil, which is used in wood finishes and oiled paper umbrellas. I'm not sure if katydids survive the winter, but there's really no mistaking 寒 for anything other than "cold" in this context. The strips referred to are the pieces of bamboo that were bound together to form books before paper became prevalent; the bugs Li mentions are probably bookworms of some sort, but the use of 花 as a descriptor leaves me baffled as to their precise nature. The "wandering soul", or 魂, is one of two souls found in traditional Chinese beliefs, the other being the 魄, which is tethered to the body. Frodsham thinks that it being 香 "perfumed" means it's a feminine spirit, which makes sense in this context, but I don't know if Li means an actual supernatural being or is being poetic about a living woman. Frodsham says that 鮑 Bao is 鮑照 Bao Zhao, whose poem 代蒿里行 is referenced here (I know nothing about it, though that may change). The image of blood turning into jade, sayeth Frodsham, is a reference to a story in Zhuangzi 莊子, the famous Daoist text (parts of which I've read, but this rings no bells).
If any of the allusions or references pique your interest and you'd like to know more, drop me a line, because odds are I feel the same way, and I'd be happy to do a little research.
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