This is the last of the eight Chinese elegies translated by Camilo Pessanha. As I think I noted early on in my leisurely study of these translations, The copy of China: Estudos e Traduções I draw the text from has mismatched the original Chinese with Pessanha's versions. This poem usually gets listed as #7.
邊貢 Bian Gong was, like everyone else whose work has appeared among the elegias chinesas, a Ming dynasty poet. An official in the Ministry of Revenue, he was also one of the 前七子 Seven Former Masters along with 李夢陽 Li Mengyang, author of the last poem, and a proponent of old-style writing. (Shocking, I know.)
In this final poem, I find myself reiterating the same points I've been making about Pessanha's translation skills: nothing leaps out at me as being overly obtuse or plain wrong; I wish I knew why he made certain choices; his version of the poem is in line with his own aesthetics and the poetics of his time; any claims that Pessanha didn't know Chinese (at least in its written form) are pretty much full of shit; and I always learn something from his translation.
蓬戶 appears in my usual online (modern) Chinese dictionary as "thatched cottage" or "humble abode," but I went with the solitude theme and envisioned it as a run-down place out in the middle of nowhere. These sorts of dwellings appear fairly frequently in Chinese poetry, but I doubt that all of them were quite as decrepit as their inhabitants liked to portray them. Think more "nicely furnished little getaway" than "tumbledown hut."
吟 is both reciting/chanting, and a song, i.e., a poem. Pessanha translates 懷舊吟 as "the remembrance of friendly voices," which I get—懷舊 is "nostalgia"—but again, going with the image of this poet's solitude, I imagined him being cold and miserable and turning to his old favorite songs for solace.
Pessanha, who spent most of his life in self-imposed exile in Macau, reads 非故國, which is literally "not the old country," as "country of exile" ("país de exílio"). Not only does this suit his temperament, but exile is a prominent topic in Chinese poetry. Of course, I had to be contrary, and brief, and keep it literal.
春 means "spring," which was odd to me in a poem set in the second lunar month, but I put it into my first draft anyway. However, Pessanha's translation led me to the dictionary once again, where I learned it can, quite fittingly, also mean "life" or "vitality." That helped my own translation quite a bit.
碧 is usually taken to mean blue-green, often deeply so; Kroll
specifically cites its use in 碧空 "the cyan void," which is an awesome
way to describe the sky. Here, however, Pessanha translates it as
"ferrete," which is not only a branding iron but anything dark and
iron-colored, which kinda misses the mark in my book. He also does his usual thing of adding in details that
aren't specifically mentioned, but can be extrapolated from the Chinese:
嗷嗷 can mean "incomprehensible honking" ("algaravia dos grasnidos"), but
it can also just be the geese's loud honking, without adding any
judgement.
And that's that. I have no idea if anyone reads these commentaries, but I dug writing them for a number of reasons. The chance to interact with Camilo Pessanha's work more closely and bring a little more of it to an English-speaking audience (even if that audience is one or two people), learning more about Ming poets and poetry, flexing my own translation muscles a bit—all of this made it a gratifying exercise. In the future I'll be translating more of Pessanha's work from Clepsydra and maybe one day I'll actually write that book about him I've been wanting to do for ages. Sei lá.
Thanks for your time, dear reader, obrigado, car@ leitor/a, and 謝謝看倌.
微臣
史大偉
D.A.S.
XXXX notes: 蓬戶 classical vs modern
吟 voice vs song
yinfeng
-----
幽寂
邊貢
幽寂耽蓬户
凄涼懷舊吟
鶯啼非故國
草色亂春心
落日黃雲暮
陰風碧海深
嗷嗷北來雁
二月有歸音
-----
"Soledade"
Pien-Kung
Deleita-me a solidão desta choupana...
Mas doi-me ao recordar vozes amigas.
Sim, geme o verdelhão- mas em país de exílio
Conturba-me a cor da relva o coração, que remoça.
Desce o sol, em um poente de cirros amarelos.
Passam nuvens sobre o mar, -que é mais ferrete.
Segunda lua.....E, na algaravia dos grasnidos,
Oiço gansos darem o alarme p'ra o regresso.
-----
"Solitude"
Bian Gong
Deep solitude in the ramshackle hut—
Numb with cold, taking solace in old poems
The warbler's song isn't that of the old country
The color of grass riotous, heart pulsing with life
Setting sun, golden evening clouds
Cold wind, deep blue-green sea
Clamorous honking of southbound geese—
Second month, the sound of return.
