It's taken a while, but here's the penultimate elegia chinesa translated into Portuguese by Camilo Pessanha. This one was written by 李夢陽 Li Mengyang, whom Pessanha notes was a contemporary of the other poets translated in this collection. (He also notes that Li was known by the name of 天賜 Tianci, "Bestowed by Heaven," but Wikipedia doesn't mention that.) I haven't read much about him, but he was one of the 前七子 Former Seven Masters, a group of well-known literati of the early and middle Ming dynasty. Christ, so many literary and artistic groups to keep track of.
Anyway, since Li was a native of Henan, generally considered part of northern China, the following poem is interesting for its numerous references to southern China. 湘 Xiang is the abbreviation for 湖南 Hunan, a couple provinces south of Li's home province, and also the name of a major river there, which is probably where the nickname comes from. 洞庭湖 Dongting Lake is also in Hunan, while 蒼梧 Cangwu is a county in 廣西 Guangxi, even further south. Maybe further reading will reveal that Li Mengyang drew as much inspiration from the old southern kingdom of 楚 Chu as my man 李長吉/李賀 Li Changji (AKA Li He) did.
妃 comes up in online dictionaries of modern Chinese as "imperial concubine," but given the context, Pessanha's choice of "esposas," or "wives," makes more sense. 怨 has a number of uses, all involving complaints, unhappiness, and bitterness, but I saw it as less of an active complaint ("queixume") than a picture depicting why the wives of Xiang are discontent. It's what you might call a working landscape poem: you have the scenery of the south along with images of those who work its land—the wives, perhaps, but not necessarily so, as one can read the wives as observers instead of participants. I don't know enough about the division of labor in these particular industries (flower-picking and woodcutting; see below) to say for sure, but I do know that Chinese poetry purposely leaves a lot of room for interpretation, and that there are a lot of poems written from the perspective of mournful women, so I'm content leaving the matter of who the narrative viewpoint belongs to up in the air for now.
I don't have a whole lot to say about Pessanha's translation, which as usual illuminates individual elements I would've otherwise missed or glossed over, while giving me opportunities to further explore the flexibility of classical Chinese. His notes provide a lot of useful details, not just to readers of the Portuguese but perhaps also to those of the original Chinese, since I doubt a lot of people reading these poems these days have the ingrained knowledge of references that the original audience did.
I was tempted to make something of the word 木蘭, "lily magnolia," being split across two lines, albeit in reverse order, but Pessanha's reading of 蘭 as orchid and 木 as precious wood, e.g., camphor and such, makes more sense both factually and poetically, and the whole thing might be coincidental anyway. The verb used before 木, 搴, doesn't seem quite right, but it gets the job done, and my issue there is with the poet, not the translator. Pessanha didn't make any weird or puzzling translation choices here, which is a nice change.
The 玉 jade mentioned is probably some kind of stone chime like the 編磬 bianqing, or maybe it's just emblematic of the sound of a life of luxury being carried on the wind (not that anyone in possession of the former wouldn't be enjoying the latter). Kroll's A Student's Dictionary of Classical and Medieval Chinese tells us that 玉 as a descriptor of color isn't green, but "lustrous or pure white," which makes sense since the jade prized in China was usually nephrite, not jadeite, some of which I collected from a beach in Big Sur, California, almost a decade ago. Pessanha's remarks on the subject are in a similar vein, albeit without the reference to Big Sur.
All in all, Camilo and I are pretty much on the same page here. I commend his solid rendering of Li's poem, and thank him posthumously for not only introducing me to it, but providing such insightful notes. I probably took far less effort with my own hasty translation, but such is the benefit, or maybe curse, of living in this day and age, when we have such an unbelievable bounty of information but often choose to use it in the worst ways possible.
Adeus, leitores, e até breve. I'll finish this series before the year is out, I promise.
微臣
史大偉
DAS
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湘妃怨
李夢陽
采蘭湘北沚
搴木澧南潯
淥水含瑤彩
微風托玉音
雲起蒼梧夕
日落洞庭陰
不知篁竹苦
惟見淚痕深
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Queixumes das Esposas do "Hsiang"
Li-Mang-Iang
Ilhéus do Norte do Hsiang, onde as orquídeas se ceifam!
Plainos do sul do Lai, onde se talham as essências de preço!
As águas, puras, têm cromatismos de ágata,
Subtil, a brisa vibrações de jade.
Sobe a névoa, entre as sombras do Tsang-u
Baixa o sol entre as brumas do Tung-ting...
As penas dos bambus, quem é que as sabe?
Mas bem se lhes vêem os sinais das lágrimas.
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The Unhappy Wives of Xiang
Li Mengyang
Picking orchids on the Xiang's northern islets
Gathering wood on the southern bank of the Li
The clear water tinted with the color of agate
The sound of jade on the breeze
Clouds gather in the Cangwu dusk
The sun sets, Dongting Lake darkens
Who knows the misery of bamboo groves?
All we see is the deep stain of tears
