Translator Shout-out: Chloe Garcia Roberts

All right, all right. Let's take a break from translating from Portuguese—these days I'm working on Orlando da Costa's novel O Último Olhar de Manú Miranda and Vimala Devi's first book of poems, Súria—to sit back, crack a beer, and tip our hats, proverbial or otherwise, to some of the translators whose work serves to reinforce not only the belief (shared by not only yours truly but millions of Buddhists, Daoists, and other folks far more with it than me, and that's just talkin' about the quote unquote spiritual side) but the very tangible fact that we are all connected. Maybe this'll become a regular column, since, as you should know by now, translation is an undertaking near and dear to Your Humble Corpse's heart. I read a lot of work in translation, and while the work may get acclaim, the person who translated it is often overlooked or relegated to an afterthought. Which is bullshit: there's so much translating going on these days that the world as we know it couldn't function without it. (No, Google Translate is not an acceptable substitute, and never will be, except maybe when Google Translate is making an attempt at rendering AI-only languages human-readable.)

Anyway, since y'all know how much I like classical Chinese poetry, let's start with Chloe Garcia Roberts, who's produced two deeply awesome books based on the work of 李商隱 Li Shangyin. For the sake of background, Li Shangyin was a late Tang dynasty poet known for allusively dense, sensual poems. I learned about him during my slow, ongoing studies of 李長吉 Li Changji, AKA 李賀 Li He; Li Shangyin wrote 李賀小傳, the first biography of Li Changji. In my book, that alone makes him cool, so when I started reading his poetry—in English, via Chloe Garcia Roberts' translations—I was stoked to find (yet another) Chinese poet whose work I dig. 

But enough about Li Shangyin, of whom you can read more about online. Let's talk about CGR's awesome translations, specifically Derangements of My Contemporaries: Miscellaneous Notes. Even if one sets aside the poems' specific historic aspects, which I don't recommend doing because it's important to remember that these poems (which, as the title implies, are mostly Li Shangyin's notes, themselves a literary genre in China) are over a thousand fuckin' years old, were written amidst a culture wildly different not only from our Western one but in many ways from that of modern China, yet still manage to sound modern and meaningful. I can't stress this enough: Derangements of My Contemporaries reads like an utterly contemporary document, an insightful, no-bullshit account of how shitty people can be, our small quotidian hypocrisies, the protocols we routinely breach. 

"Vexing"
[...]
Enjoying drink the whole night, then finding the wine vessel empty
[...]
Wearing unreliable clothing
A fan that doesn't shoo flies or mosquitoes 

"Displeasure"
Cutting something with a dull knife
[...]
Trees darkening the view
[...]
Summer months wearing thick clothing


"Crippling Injustices"
 [...]
To have money yet be unable to effect change
[...]
Grudging one's mouth food
[...]
Grudging one's body clothing
[...]
For a family to collect books and not appreciate reading
[...]
When near fine mountains and waters, to not wander in delight
[...]
A much-honored official committing a bribery offense

Li Shangyin, via Chloe Garcia Roberts' intuitive rendering, goes on at length in this fashion. It's easy to read snobbery into some of his words; after all, he was a scholar-official, versed (zing!) in poetry and aesthetics to a degree practically nobody else in the China of his time could hope for, but writing him off for that reason is lazy, ahistorical bullshit. What I love is how Roberts has taken these terse lists of observations and made poetry out of them. For her, as well as Li Shangyin, life itself is the stuff of poetry (groan, boring, I know, but fuck it, it's true), and snarky remarks about your coworkers and the random people you see in the street are no less worthy of being made poetry—hell, no less poetic by nature—than anything else. Nature, after all, encompasses everything; ergo nothing is unnatural, and thus can be fitted into "nature" poetry. People especially.

Since I'm not of a terribly analytical bent, I think I'll cease my commentary here. I'll close out by recommending that all y'all check out Chloe Garcia Roberts' translations of Li Shangyin. She apparently has had some poetry of her own published, and I'd be willing to bet it's awesome too. But since we're talking about translation, I'll reiterate that Derangements of My Contemporaries and her expanded Li Shangyin book are worth your time. I'm super-stoked to see someone making it crystal-clear that classical Chinese poetry resonates with our world; I have exactly zero doubts that you will read Chloe Garcia Roberts' work and understand that Li Shangyin is a voice in and out of time.

Thanks, Chloe. You're the kind of translator I want to be, and 李商隱 is honored to have had you share his work with the English-speaking world.


DAS/史大偉