Oito Elegias Chinesas de Camilo Pessanha, IV: 徐禎卿的"在武昌作"

The fourth of the Oito Elegias Chinesas translated by Camilo Pessanha is by 徐禎卿 Xu Zhenqing, a Ming dynasty poet and one of the 吳中四才子 Four Gifted Scholars of Wuzhong, a district of the lovely city of 蘇州 Suzhou. Unsurprisingly I know nothing about this group, the name of which resembles that of similar literary, artistic, and philosophical groups throughout Chinese history (e.g., the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove). I don't know why Pessanha chose this specific poem—the book he took it from may only have had these few poems, so maybe he didn't choose it at all—but he gets credit for his choice for a couple reasons: it wasn't terribly difficult to translate, and I really like the imagery, which is simple but evocative. I know that's a pretty generic thing to say about Chinese poetry, but hey.

Pessanha does a decent enough job here, but some of his choices are unusual. He reverses the order of the lines in the first couplet and makes the second line a dependent clause, which is something you see more in classical Chinese prose, where implicit "if/then" statements are common. In the second couplet, he attributes the act of listening or hearing to the poet where no such action is even mentioned; again, not exactly wrong, but unnecessary. Pessanha isn't the first translator who feels the need to make subjects, which are typically left out in classical Chinese, visible to his readers. Since the economy of words is one of the things I like most about Chinese poetry, I'm often frustrated when translators burden the text with extraneous material, but at the same time I can understand why they may do so—especially in the past, when tastes in poetry were different.

Pessanha translates 桑梓, or mulberry and catalpa trees, literally, but also makes reference to the phrase's other meaning, which is "native place." This isn't a bad idea, but again, it's more than is needed, in my opinion. Left with "mulberry and catalpa trees," readers who didn't get the reference (like me) could ponder why those particular trees elicit a mention; with "native place" (or as Pessanha puts it, the narrator's "father's house"), the trees are left out, but the point still gets made.

The final couplet reads fine in Portuguese—the whole thing does—but Pessanha reads part of it much differently than I do. 不知 can mean "don't know" or something similar but Archie Barnes points out that it's also used as "I wonder why," which could make the couple a question, albeit one not being posed to anyone in particular. Pessanha takes a broadly similar approach ("someone will understand the honking of the geese"), even though using 不知 in the musing sense would work fine in Portuguese. Lest you think I'm criticizing his decision, you'll note that in my translation I went with a straightforward use of 不知, so it's not like I took a daring approach.

I look at reading the Oito Elegias Chinesas not only as a study in translation, but as an opportunity to get a better sense of Camilo Pessanha's approach to poetry in general. In this case, however, all I got was a vague sense of... not frustration, but puzzlement. A number of people have claimed that Pessanha didn't really know that much Chinese; I don't ascribe to this theory—for one thing, none of the people who made the claim seem to have known much, if any, Chinese themselves—so I don't believe that a weak grasp on the language explains Pessanha's choices. And, to reiterate, I don't think he got anything wrong, based on my own limited understanding; I just wish I knew what led him to translate things the way he did. Guess I'll have to dig deeper and see what I can find out.

As usual, my rather off-the-cuff translation follows the original and Pessanha's translation. Thanks for reading, caro leitor! 謝謝你！

微臣
史大偉

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在武昌作

徐禎卿


洞庭葉未下
瀟湘秋欲生
高齋今夜雨
獨臥武昌城
重以桑梓念
淒其江漢情
不知天外雁
何事樂長征

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Em U-Ch'ang

Hsu-Chên-Ch'ing

Em Hsian-Hsiang é já quase outono,
Embora não caia ainda a folha nos jardins do Tung-ting.
É noite, e da minha mansarda oiço chover,
-Sozinho, na cidade de U-Ch'ang.

E lembram-me a amoreira e a catalpa da casa paterna.
Ao sentir perto às águas do Kiang e do Han....
Vá entender alguém a grulhada dos gansos,
- O festivo alvoroço com que emigram!

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Written in Wuchang

Xu Zhenqing

The leaves have not yet fallen on Dongting Lake
Yet it is on the verge of autumn along the Xiaoxiang

Raining tonight at the lofty retreat
where I lounge alone in the city of Wuchang

Pensive, I think back to my hometown
sharp, clear thoughts of the Yangtze and Han

I don't understand the far-off geese—
why are they so merry on their long journey?