Oito Elegias Chinesas de Camilo Pessanha, VI: 徐禎卿的"古意"

大家好 and olá, folks. Today I bring you the sixth of Camilo Pessanha's oito elegias chinesas, or eight Chinese elegies, and the third written by 徐禎卿 Xu Zhenqing. I had a hard time with this one; the first line really tripped me up for a while, Pessanha and I's readings are quiet different in places, and once again I find myself baffled by some of his choices.

Things get off to a rough start. For a while I simply could not figure out a good way to read, much less translate, the first line, and I'm still not content with what I came up with. Using 爲 as a simple equivalent to "to be" feels lazy and weird. I find Pessanha's translation wordy, because he gives more detail to the 郢客 "foreigner in Ying," than is called for, and which is covered more fully in the notes by his long quotation from 宋玉 Song Yu, one of the contributors to the 楚辭 Songs of Chu. Don't get me wrong, this is exactly the sort of explanation readers like me need, and without it I would've taken even longer to piece together an even worse translation, but it feels excessive. As I've mentioned before, I favor brevity, while Pessanha, at least in the elegias chinesas, tends toward a little more explanation. This tendency is interesting in light of his own poems, which can be wonderfully cryptic.

美人 might typically be read as "women," but in his notes Pessanha, who uses that reading, mentions that one meaning is "homens de valor excepcional," "men of exceptional worth." Either way works, since this is very much a poem of longing, and can even be read from a woman's perspective.

 山水音, according to Pessanha's notes, is not "the sound of mountains and streams", but two separate musical pieces by 伯牙 Bo Ya, a famous 春秋時代 Spring and Autumn period player of the 琴 qin, and I've incorporated this information accordingly. Despite noting this, however, Pessanha completely omits the 山 part of 山水音. Don't ask me why.

帝 means "emperor" and 子 can mean a number of things, including "sons" or "daughters." Pessanha teases out a reference to a couple of princesses who died alongside the Xiang River and became spirits. I imagine the dark clouds mentioned in the next line than hang over the semi-imaginary place known as 瀟湘 Xiaoxiang reflect not only that gloomy tale, but the themes found in what the link above describes as "Xiaoxiang poetry."

In the penultimate line, Pessanha perplexes me again when he decides to use 誰, which means "who," as "I." I'm also not entirely sure how he got "só eu penetro bem a essência," but whatever. His use of "desgarrado," which means "adrift," in the last line is another case of adding something that isn't there, but it works.

Some of Pessanha's choices here are strange, and even border on, well, not quite being wrong, but perhaps too flexible. His notes make it clear that he's done his research, but in this poem more than others I wonder about his knowledge of Chinese. I'm not in much of a position to criticize, since my own Chinese skills leave a lot to be desired, but man, I wish I knew what he was thinking.

Anyway, enjoy the poems, and I'll catch y'all soon.

微臣
史大偉

 -----


古意
徐禎卿

空為郢中客
不見郢中吟
美人高堂上
自奏山水音
帝子葬何處
瀟湘雲正深
寂寥誰共賞
江上獨傷心

-----

EVOCAÇÕES DO PASSADO
Hsu-Chên-Ch'ing 

Eis-me o forasteiro de Ing ... Mas baldada romagem!
Emudeceram de Ing os afamados cânticos.
É alto o pavilhão para onde beldades se retiraram.
A música da Torrente é a que ora modulam...

Os túmulos das princesas para que lado ficam?
Sobre Hsian-Hsiang pairam nuvens negras.
Deste abandono, - só eu penetro bem a essência,
Do Kiang à borda, desgarrado e triste.

-----

Remembering the Past
Xu Chenqing

In vain did the stranger come to Ying;
there are no signs of its ancient songs.
In the main hall, men of the highest standing
freely play songs of mountain and streams.
Where are the emperor's daughters buried?
The clouds over Xianxiang loom darkly.
With whom can one enjoy this lonely place?
Alone on the river, a heart full of woe.

A brief update, and happy birthday to Herman Melville!

Sorry for the radio silence, folks. I've been pretty busy lately, so I don't even have an off-the-cuff translation to share at the moment. In the near future I hope to put up another of Pessanha's elegias chinesas, though.

So what have I been up to? Meeting with a Chinese tutor again, only partially because I'll be visiting Taiwan in the fall. Grinding my way through the cases of 包公 Judge Bao in Chinese. Reading Erik Davis' awesome High Weirdness: Drugs, Esoterica, and Visionary Experience in the Seventies, about which I'll jaw more in another post. I'm about to start Paul Swanson's translation of the magisterial Tiantai Buddhist text 摩訶止観, which he calls Clear Serenity, Quiet Insight, and getting back into deeper Buddhist practice in general.

On the translation front, two things. I had the honor of talking to Goan poet Vimala Devi on the phone a while back, too, which was awesome. She gave me the rights to translate her first volume of poetry, Súria, which I'm working on right now. I don't know when it'll come out, or who will publish it, but I hope to do her justice. She's pushing 90, and I'd like the translation to come out before she leaves this world.

The book about the Santa Mónica nuns I mentioned a while back is going to be published in the near future, probably 2020, and that's been eating up most of my time. Me and my colleague are pretty stoked, even if revising our translation is a total drag. The working title is To Serve God in Holy Freedom.

I turn forty this month, but who cares about my birthday when today, August 1, 2019, marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of someone who reflects America in all its complexity and, no matter how often his work might appear on high school or college syllabi, will never get the respect and understanding he deserves: Herman Melville.

So go read Moby-Dick, or The Confidence-Man, or Clarel, or any other Melville work, and I'll catch you again soon, caro leitor.

DAS