Some other shit that matters

I was working on a post about a classical Chinese textbook I like a whole lot, but that shit can wait. Right now I only have two things to say, neither of them related to translation, Chinese, Portuguese, or books.

1) Skateboarding rules. I've been skating a bit off and on since I quit working at the Jamail skatepark downtown almost eight years ago, but nothing more than a beer run to the convenience store, working on ollies in the driveway, or hitting the occasional parking block in the hopes of finally learning to grind or boardslide the damned things properly. Today, though, I went up to the North Houston skatepark, AKA the Spring park, for the first time since its construction a few years ago. I ate shit only once but bailed a lot, since it's fast as hell in places and I am woefully rusty when it comes to skating transition. Nevertheless, I left feeling like a fucking champ, because skateboarding does that. Also, Houston's own Pro-Designed pads deserved a shout-out, especially their wrist guards, which are the best out there, hands down. (Pun intended, since they saved me from shredding my palms earlier today, as they have many times.)

2) Listen to Yawning Man. I heard of these dudes ages ago, when they were a semi-apocryphal yet highly lauded band in the desert/stoner rock scene—and one that hadn't put out any records. They finally started releasing albums in 2005, and I finally started listening to them last year. 2010's Nomadic Pursuits is my favorite so far, though admittedly I haven't listened to the others nearly as much.

Até próxima, and take it easy, y'all.

End transmission.

Oito Elegias Chinesas de Camilo Pessanha, III: 王廷相的"登臺"

Bem-vindo to the third of Camilo Pessanha's "Eight Chinese Elegies." This one was written by  王廷相 Wang Tingxiang, a Ming-era philosopher and member of the Former Seven Masters, a group of writers who advocated a return to older literary styles. I am not, alas, a good judge of whether the following poem embodies that return to antiquity, but I can say that I like it quite a bit.

As for Pessanha's translation, I found some of it perplexing at first, primarily the last couple lines. I had no idea where he got "desterrado da pátria" until I stopped thinking of 斷 as a verb meaning "snap"  or "break" and thought of it as a noun, "that from which something has been severed." This is a move I frequently forget to employ despite the syntactical variability of classical Chinese words, so kudos to Pessanha for pushing me in the right direction. That said, I think he really took some liberties with the last line, and made the implicit almost too explicit. The sense of motion throughout the rest of the poem is maintained, though, so it works well enough.

I can understand why Pessanha chose to translate this poem, heavy as it is with longing. According to his notes, the terrace under discussion is the 鎮海樓 Zhenhai Tower, also known as the Five-Story Pagoda, in Guangzhou. In the poet's day the pagoda sat on the northern edge of the city and gave a fine view of the surrounding countryside. Pessanha and I both translated 臺 as "terrace" instead of "platform" or something similar; I don't know why he did so, but I followed his lead. But looking at pictures of the place, I discovered that the building's floors are slightly terraced, so I'm pleased with the choice of words.

Wild geese (雁) are a common symbol of separation in Chinese poetry, and as a native of Henan, Wang Tingxiang must have seen them migrating and missed his northern home all the more. The 百粵 "Hundred Yue" are the non-Han peoples of southern China—mostly assimilated/Sinified long before Wang was writing—and by extension the south as a whole; 粵語 is one of the words for Cantonese, widely spoken in what Pessanha calls the "two Kuangs," the provinces of 廣東 Guangdong and 廣西 Guangxi. (Guangzhou, AKA Canton, is in Guangdong.)


Finally, 蓬萊 Penglai is a mythical island east of China, home to immortals and such. The fact that it's gloomy in the autumn even there says a lot about Wang's mood when he wrote this, and I can see Pessanha finding that image compelling too. He chose this poem well.

That's about it for now, so I'll catch y'all later. As always, thanks for reading.

微臣
史大偉/DAS

-----

登臺
王廷相

古人不可見
還上古時臺
九月悲風發
三江候雁來
浮雲通百粤
寒日隱蓬萊
逐客音書斷
憑高首重回

-----

"Sobre o Terraço"
Uang-Ting-Hsiang

Os antigos mortos, invisivelmente
Vêm ainda ao seu terraço antigo....
Já sopra da nona lua o vento lamentoso.
De os três rios devem estar a chegar os gansos de arribação.

Cobrem nuvens a vastidão dos dois Kuangs
Declina, pálido, o sol, sobre P'ang-Lai.
Desterrado da pátria e sem notícias dela,
Para essas bandas volvo de contínuo os olhos.

-----


"High Upon the Terrace"
Wang Tingxiang

The ancients, unseen,
return to climb this old terrace

In the ninth month a sad wind blows
I watch for wild geese migrating from the three rivers

Drifting clouds above the whole of the south
The cold sun sullen over Penglai

Cut off from home, I chase down visitors for news
And climb back up as high as I can

李長吉的“傷心行” / Li Changji's "Ballad of a Wounded Heart"

Here's another quick translation of a Li Changji poem. I don't have a lot to say about it, not because there's not much to say, but because I'm in a bit of a hurry and don't feel like writing a whole lot at the moment. So it's up to you, dear reader, to read the poem and mull it over. Chew it slowly, let the flavors of gloom, decay, and wistfulness meld on your tongue, and enjoy.

微臣
史大偉


傷心行
李賀 （李長吉）

咽咽學楚吟
病骨傷幽素
秋姿曰髮生
木葉啼風雨
燈青蘭膏歇
落照飛蛾舞
古壁生凝塵
羈魂夢中語


Ballad of a Wounded Heart
Li He (Li Changji)

Choking back sobs, studying the Songs of Chu
sick to my bones, lamenting my bare solitude

An autumnal visage—hair gone white
a tree whose leaves cry out in the wind and rain

The lamplight goes blue as the orchid oil runs dry
moths flutter and dance in the failing light

The old walls grow thick with dust
The wandering soul speaks in my dreams

李長吉的“客遊” / "The Traveler" by Li Changji

大家好！

Welcome to MMXIX C.E. The world remains weird, perilous, and uncertain, rife with human awfulness and beauty. In short, it's a fitting time to revisit our old pal 李賀 Li He, AKA 李長吉 Li Changji, the 詩鬼 Ghost of Poetry (as opposed to 李白 Li Bai, the 仙詩 Immortal of Poetry, or 杜甫 Du Fu, the 詩聖 Sage of Poetry). Of course, as a fan of weirdness, I'm always up for reading Li He.

The following poem isn't particularly weird, alas. I'd go so far as to say it's pretty straightforward by Li's standards—i.e., the references are a bit obscure, but the imagery and theme are clear. However, there's a pleasant degree of emotional ambiguity that gives the poem more depth than it initially seems to have.

Brief notes, all of which come from the indispensable J.D. Frodsham or 李長吉歌詞編年箋注—the annotated collection from which I took the Chinese text— are below the poems. Enjoy, and happy new year, folks!

微臣
史大偉

-----

客遊
李賀 (李長吉)

悲滿千里心
日暖南山石
不謁承明廬
老作平原客
四時別家廟
三年去鄉國
旅歌屢彈鋏
歸問時裂帛

-----

The Traveler
Li He (Li Changji)

A heart full of sadness for a thousand li;
the sun warms the stones of Nan Shan.

I can't present myself at the Chengming Hut;
When I'm old, I'll be a guest of the lord of Pingyuan.

Four seasons away from my ancestral temple;
three years since I left my hometown.

I often sing traveling songs, beating on the hilt of my sword;
sometimes, on a strip of silk, I send word that I'll come home.

-----


Notes:

The 里 li, a standard Chinese measure of distance, is roughly 1/3 of a mile. 南山 Nan Shan is probably located either in the 終南山 Zhongnan Mountains (Frodsham) or, as the annotators in my collection believe, the 女几山 Nüji Mountains (better known these days as 花果山 Huaguoshan). None of these mountains is very far from the Tang capital of 長安 Chang'an, known today as 西安 Xi'an.

The 承明廬 Chengming Hut (Frodsham calls it a "lodge," which sounds better, but everything I read points to "hut"; I wonder what it actually looked like) is where officials waited for an audience with the emperor during the Han dynasty. The 平原 Lord of Pingyuan was the famous statesman 趙胜 Zhao Sheng, from the Warring States-era state of 趙 Zhao. I'd say that Li's mention of seeking refuge in Zhao, which predates the Han dynasty, might be considered weird even by the standards of the classical Chinese love of historical reference, since you can read it as a double layer of nostalgia—or, if you prefer, time travel! The seemingly contradictory "four seasons/three years" chronology is odd, too.

As for Li's messages home, Frodsham notes that "[l]etters were sometimes written on strips of silk"—a cool image indeed.