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

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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

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"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.

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"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