"Violoncelo" por Camilo Pessanha

Today, 7 September, marks the 153rd birthday of Camilo Pessanha. To mark the occasion, here's a draft translation of his poem "Violoncelo." This particular version of the poem comes from the edition of Clepsidra edited by Paulo Franchetti; another version (also present in Franchetti's book) has a couple different words and different punctuation.

It's also Labor Day here in the United States. Last last year I celebrated by joining the National Writers Union, and I encourage you to unionize as well, since the bosses ain't gonna give us anything out of the goodness of their hearts—we gotta fight for it, and the only way to do that successfully is when we organize.

Enjoy the poem, folks. Até próxima.

D.A.S.

---

"Violoncelo"
Camilo Pessanha

Chorai, arcadas
Do violoncelo,
Convulsionadas.
Pontes aladas
De pesadelo...

De que esvoaçam,
Brancos, os arcos.
Por baixo passam,
Se despedaçam,
No rio, os barcos.

Fundas, soluçam
Caudais de choro.
Que ruínas, ouçam...
Se se debruçam,
Que sorvedouro!

Lívidos astros,
Soidões lacustres...
Lemes e mastros...
E os alabastros
Dos balaústres!

Urnas quebradas.
Blocos de gelo!
Chorai, arcadas

Do violoncelo,
Despedaçadas...


-----


"Cello"
Camilo Pessanha

Weep, arcades,
at the cello,
Convulsing,
winged bridges of
nightmare...

From which flutter,
white, the arches...
On the river below,
boats pass,
and break apart.

Deep within, they sob
rivers of tears.
What ruins, listen...
they lean over,
what an abyss!

Livid blue stars,
Lakeside solitudes...
Rudders and masts...
And the alabaster
of the balusters!

Broken urns.
Blocks of ice!
Weep, arcades,
shattered,
at the cello.

"Viola chinesa" por Camilo Pessanha

It's been a while since I translated a Camilo Pessanha poem, so here's "Viola chinesa". The viola in question, if you go by the images you get when you Google the phrase, is most likely a 琵琶 pipa, AKA the "Chinese lute."

I wish I knew the circumstances under which Pessanha heard the instrument, since the poem seems to juxtapose two elements: the sound of the pipa, and whatever dull conversation he's stuck having when he hears it. I doubt he was chatting with Cantonese-speaking locals, but rather Macau's stuffy, provincial Portuguese administrators and their families, or maybe the local Macanese, neither of which group would have serenaded their guests with the pipa. That's why this poem makes me think Pessanha was zoning out during some social event and heard, or imagined, a pipa somewhere in the distance that provided a distraction—albeit a painful one—from the situation at hand.

I've more or less given up on following Pessanha's punctuation, though I also try not to insert too much of my own. I've also rendered things a bit more colloquially than in the past.

Enjoy, dear reader/caro leitor/看倌, and I'll catch you soon.

DAS

-----

"Viola chinesa"
Camilo Pessanha

Ao longo da viola morosa
Vai adormecendo a parlenda,
Sem que, amadornado, eu atenda
A lengalenga fastidiosa.

Sem que o meu coração se prenda,
Enquanto, nasal, minuciosa,
Ao longo da viola morosa,
Vai adormecendo a parlenda.

Mas que cicatriz melindrosa
Há nele, que essa viola ofenda
E faz que as asitas distenda
Numa agitação dolorosa?

Ao longo da viola, morosa...


-----

"Chinese Viola"
Camilo Pessanha


As the viola slowly plays
the chatter drifts off,
my languorous attention is not on
the tedious prattle.

My heart isn't in it,
as, nasal, painstaking,
the viola slowly plays,
the chatter drifting off.

But what sensitive scar
does it bear, that the viola offends,
and makes its little wings spread
in a painful flutter?

As the viola plays, slowly...

"Vida" de Camilo Pessanha

Happy May Day, folks. I hope everyone's honoring picket lines both physical and digital, such as those at Amazon, Target, Whole Foods, Instacart, and Shipt. Don't be a fuckin' scab! Your convenience can wait; worker health, safety, and dignity can't. And while you're not buying shit online, you can celebrate Beltane in proper pagan fashion (within the limits of public safety, of course, since COVID-19 ain't going anywhere anytime soon).

Speaking of work, I've been translating like a motherfucker during the quarantine. I've got nine more 司空圖 Sikong Tu poems to put up, and I'm almost done with the first (very, very) rough draft of Virgílio de Lemos' Para Fazer um Mar. I also have another Camilo Pessanha poem for y'all. Once again, I owe this translation to Tashiro Kaoru, as I'm pretty sure I hadn't even read this poem before she wrote asking me about it.

Enjoy, caros leitores. Peace, land, bread, and roses for everyone. Solidarity forever.

-----

"Vida"
Camilo Pessanha


Choveu! E logo da terra humosa
Irrompe o campo das liliáceas.
Foi bem fecunda, a estação pluviosa!
Que vigor no campo das liliáceas!

Calquem, recalquem, não o afogam.
Deixem. Não calquem. Que tudo invadam.
Não as extinguem, porque as degradam?
Para que as calcam? Não as afogam.

Olhem o fogo que anda na serra.
É a queimada... Que lumaréu!
Podem calcá-lo, deitar-lhe terra,
Que não apagam o lumaréu.

Deixem! Não calquem! Deixem arder.
Se aqui o pisam, rebenta além.
— E se arde tudo? — Isso que tem!
Deitam-lhe fogo, é para arder...


-----

"Life"
Camilo Pessanha

It rained! And then, from the damp earth,
the field of lilies erupted.
It was quite fruitful, the rainy season!
Such vigor in the field of lilies!

Trample, trample again, don't smother it.
Leave it be. Don't trample it. You invade everything.
Don't extinguish them, why do you degrade them?
Why do you trample them? Don't crush them.

Look at the fire moving across the mountain.
It's wildfire... what a blaze!
You can stomp it out, toss earth on it,
but it doesn't put out the blaze.

Stop! Don't stomp it out! Let it burn.
If you step on it here, it springs up elsewhere.
— And if everything burns? — So what?
Leave the fire alone, it's meant to burn...

"Rufando apressando" por Camilo Pessanha

Boa tarde, leitores. As societies and economies begin to unravel in the wake of the pandemic sweeping the globe, I'm having a hard time wrapping my mind around the enormity of the situation. I don't think I can, really, as it seems pretty clear that the effects of COVID-19 will be felt for years, and in the three months that it's been spreading things have already changed greatly, so who knows what things will be like a year from now.

Like a lot of folks, adjusting to a considerably circumscribed existence is proving to be more difficult than I imagined, but so far it's not too bad. It's hard to get motivated to work on translating projects, knowing that most of them will probably languish, unpublished, in the years to come, but it beats doing nothing. Among the writers I'm translating is (as always) Camilo Pessanha, as the title of this post should make clear. I did the first draft of this in 2018, I think, and polished it up a little earlier today.

I was inspired to do so by Tashiro Kaoru, a Japanese pianist based in Belgium, who first wrote me in late 2018 due to our shared interest in Pessanha's work. We've been corresponding ever since, and she's working on translating Clepsidra into Japanese. Now and then she asks for suggestions regarding the poems, and I help as best I can. Today was one of those days, and when I remembered I'd already translated this, I decided to post it here.

Enjoy, stay home if you can and away from other people if you can't, and remember: we'll only get through this together.

D.A.S.

-----

Rufando apressado,
E bamboleado,
Boné posto ao lado,

Garboso, o tambor
Avança em redor
Do campo de amor...

Com força, soldado!
A passo dobrado!
Bem bamboleado!

Amores te bafejem.
Que as moças te beijem.
Que os moços te invejem.

Mas ai, ó soldado!
Ó triste alienado!
Por mais exaltado

Que o toque reclame,
Ninguém que te chame...
Ninguém que te ame...


-----



Beating rapidly,
And swaying,
Cap to the side,

Dashing, the drum
Advances all around
The field of love...

Strength, soldier!
Double-time!
More swagger!

Lovers will smile upon you.
Girls will kiss you.
Boys will envy you.

But woe, oh soldier!
Oh sad, alienated one!
No matter how ardently

The bell makes its claim,
Nobody calls to you...
Nobody loves you...

Oito Elegias Chinesas de Camilo Pessanha, VIII: 邊貢的“幽寂”

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.

Oito Elegias Chinesas de Camilo Pessanha, VII: 李夢陽的"湘妃怨"

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

-----


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

-----

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.

-----

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

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.

Oito Elegias Chinesas de Camilo Pessanha, V: 徐禎卿的"春思"

First of all, I have to apologize for misspelling the pinyin of the poet's name in my last post. I didn't misspell it in the tags, or anywhere but the first sentence, but that's bad enough. 抱歉！ I updated it with the correct spelling on April 20.

This is another poem by Xu Zhenqing, who wrote the last one we read, as well as the next one. In terms of explanatory notes, I don't have much to offer, and neither does Pessanha, who supplies all of two. It's a pretty straightforward poem, though Pessanha and I read it differently. For starters, he uses 相 as an adverb "indicating transitivity and unidirectionality of following verb, usu. replacing direct object" (per the entry for 相 in Kroll's A Student's Dictionary of Classical and Medieval Chinese). This makes perfect sense, but I've left my initial translation, which uses 相 in the reciprocal sense, as an example of how flexible readings of poems like this can be. In one of his two notes Pessanha explains, via a Tang dynasty poem, how 沾衣 can be taken to mean "soaking one's clothes in tears." Once again, he shows that he knows this material quite well, furthering undermining the argument that Pessanha was actually ignorant of Chinese.

In the second line he refers to rain and trees that aren't explicitly mentioned. This is fine, since Chinese poetry leaves a lot to the visual imagination, but it seems unnecessary to me. The second couplet is noteworthy since a) Pessanha employs the linked-clause pattern typical to classical Chinese, and b) he makes a reference to the King of Chu's palace being in ruins. The first of these is perfectly orthodox, and reminds me yet again that I need to stop overlooking this basic pattern of usage (though I like my reading anyway); the second can be seen as extraneous or, if we take into account Pessanha's title, a detail that lends to the poem being a fantasia.

This is a point where he and I differ strongly—well, as strongly as one can differ with a dead man about a mostly moribund literary language. I'm not familiar with 思 being used as "fantasy" or "dream" or anything similar, though it's certainly not impossible. By doing so, Pessanha shifts the poem's subject matter into an imaginary mode, whereas my reading of 思 as "contemplating" makes the poem more observational or meditative. I could argue for either reading since I think they're both valid, but I tend to like stripped-down interpretations. Besides, Pessanha's version suits the poetic sensibilities demonstrated in his own work, which makes this and the other elegias chinesas worth studying.

That's it for now, y'all, so I'll bid you 再見, adeus, and catch you again soon. Enjoy the poetry!

史大偉


***

春思
徐禎卿

渺渺春江空落暉
行人相顧欲沾衣
楚王宮外千條柳
不遣飛花送客歸

***

Fantasia da Primavera
Hsu-Chên-Ch'ing 

Cai o sol, no imenso horizonte, em flor, do Kiang.
Pára o viandante a olhar. A chuva, que do arvoredo ainda goteja,
     vai-lhe repassando a túnica...
Oh! se dos mil chorões, à volta das ruínas do palácio real de Ch'u,
As flores soltas me fizessem cortejo, à despedida, no regresso à pátria!

***

Contemplating Spring
Xu Zhenqing

The river in springtime, distant and dim as the light fails
Travelers glance at one another, their clothes nearly soaked through
A thousand willows stand outside the King of Chu's palace
But spare no blossoms to see off this homeward-bound traveler

"Na cadeia os bandidos presos!" por Camilo Pessanha

Bom dia, folks. Here we have another Camilo Pessanha poem, which has no official title and thus is known by its first line. "Na cadeia os bandidos presos!" appeared in the first edition of Clepsydra, not one of the later ones that included additional poems. I think there's an argument to be made that what didn't make it into Clepsydra doesn't mean Pessanha didn't want it published, but I can't say for sure without doing more research.

The more time I spend with Pessanha's poems, it feels increasingly necessary to push beyond straightforward translations and toward looser, more expansive interpretations. This doesn't mean that Pessanha's structure and sonorousness get left behind (which they may already have been, if my translation sucked), but rather that I want to present them in a way better suited to English expression, and that reflects more of my reading of the poem.

One step in this direction is finding a way to deal with much of his punctuation, which feels unhelpfully old-fashioned. I won't go so far as to say it's useless, but even in Portuguese, I often find it little more than a distraction, a sort of non-verbal flourish that doesn't add much to the experience of reading the poem, whether silently or aloud. Anyway, that's a subject I can explore at another time, whereupon I'm sure I'll think differently after giving the matter more thought.

The following poem is interesting in light of Pessanha's career as a lawyer and judge. I don't know when it was written—I probably have the date around here somewhere, if it exists—but it really doesn't matter, since Pessanha the poet and Pessanha the jurist coexisted for about the same amount of time. Here he seems much more sympathetic to the imprisoned than to the authorities, which echoes the disdain he received from some of his colonial contemporaries for being too easy on Chinese defendants in Macau's courts, or something along those lines. Whatever the case, it's clear that having much sympathy for non-whites, much less those accused of crimes, was frowned upon in Pessanha's day.


I'm not sure what exactly he's referencing when he mentions the "Campo florido das Saudades"/"Flowery field of longing", assuming he's even referencing anything. That line, as well as the "Estranha taça de venenos"/"Strange cup of poisons" one, is a jarring, intriguing interruption into the poem's observations of self and other, and I find myself wondering about both of them quite a bit.

As always, this is a work in progress. Enjoy!

Abraço,
D.A.S.

***

"Na cadeia os bandidos presos!"
Camilo Pessanha


Na cadeia os bandidos presos!
O seu ar de contemplativos!
Que é das feras de olhos acesos?!
Pobres dos seus olhos cativos.

Passeiam mudos entre as grades,
Parecem peixes num aquário.
— Campo florido das Saudades,
Porque rebentas tumultuário?

Serenos... Serenos... Serenos...
Trouxe-os algemados a escolta.
— Estranha taça de venenos
Meu coração sempre em revolta.

Coração, quietinho... quietinho...
Porque te insurges e blasfemas?
Pschiu... Não batas... Devagarinho...
Olha os soldados, as algemas!


***

"The criminals in prison—"
Camilo Pessanha

The criminals in prison—
They have the air of contemplatives!
Where are the beasts with burning eyes?
Poor wretches, with their captive stares.

Roaming mutely behind the bars,
They look like fish in a tank.
— Flowery field of longing,
Why are you in an uproar?

Serene... serene... serene...
The guard brought them in in shackles.
— Strange cup of poisons
My heart always in revolt.

Heart, be quiet... be quiet...
Why do you rise up and blaspheme?
Hush... don't beat... slow down...
Watch for the soldiers, the shackles!

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

-----

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

-----

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!

-----

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?

Oito Elegias Chinesas de Camilo Pessanha, III: 王廷相的"登臺"

Bem-vindo to the third of Camilo Pessanha's "Eight Chinese Elegies." This one was written by  王廷相 Wang Tingxiang, a Ming-era philosopher and member of the Former Seven Masters, a group of writers who advocated a return to older literary styles. I am not, alas, a good judge of whether the following poem embodies that return to antiquity, but I can say that I like it quite a bit.

As for Pessanha's translation, I found some of it perplexing at first, primarily the last couple lines. I had no idea where he got "desterrado da pátria" until I stopped thinking of 斷 as a verb meaning "snap"  or "break" and thought of it as a noun, "that from which something has been severed." This is a move I frequently forget to employ despite the syntactical variability of classical Chinese words, so kudos to Pessanha for pushing me in the right direction. That said, I think he really took some liberties with the last line, and made the implicit almost too explicit. The sense of motion throughout the rest of the poem is maintained, though, so it works well enough.

I can understand why Pessanha chose to translate this poem, heavy as it is with longing. According to his notes, the terrace under discussion is the 鎮海樓 Zhenhai Tower, also known as the Five-Story Pagoda, in Guangzhou. In the poet's day the pagoda sat on the northern edge of the city and gave a fine view of the surrounding countryside. Pessanha and I both translated 臺 as "terrace" instead of "platform" or something similar; I don't know why he did so, but I followed his lead. But looking at pictures of the place, I discovered that the building's floors are slightly terraced, so I'm pleased with the choice of words.

Wild geese (雁) are a common symbol of separation in Chinese poetry, and as a native of Henan, Wang Tingxiang must have seen them migrating and missed his northern home all the more. The 百粵 "Hundred Yue" are the non-Han peoples of southern China—mostly assimilated/Sinified long before Wang was writing—and by extension the south as a whole; 粵語 is one of the words for Cantonese, widely spoken in what Pessanha calls the "two Kuangs," the provinces of 廣東 Guangdong and 廣西 Guangxi. (Guangzhou, AKA Canton, is in Guangdong.)


Finally, 蓬萊 Penglai is a mythical island east of China, home to immortals and such. The fact that it's gloomy in the autumn even there says a lot about Wang's mood when he wrote this, and I can see Pessanha finding that image compelling too. He chose this poem well.

That's about it for now, so I'll catch y'all later. As always, thanks for reading.

微臣
史大偉/DAS

-----

登臺
王廷相

古人不可見
還上古時臺
九月悲風發
三江候雁來
浮雲通百粤
寒日隱蓬萊
逐客音書斷
憑高首重回

-----

"Sobre o Terraço"
Uang-Ting-Hsiang

Os antigos mortos, invisivelmente
Vêm ainda ao seu terraço antigo....
Já sopra da nona lua o vento lamentoso.
De os três rios devem estar a chegar os gansos de arribação.

Cobrem nuvens a vastidão dos dois Kuangs
Declina, pálido, o sol, sobre P'ang-Lai.
Desterrado da pátria e sem notícias dela,
Para essas bandas volvo de contínuo os olhos.

-----


"High Upon the Terrace"
Wang Tingxiang

The ancients, unseen,
return to climb this old terrace

In the ninth month a sad wind blows
I watch for wild geese migrating from the three rivers

Drifting clouds above the whole of the south
The cold sun sullen over Penglai

Cut off from home, I chase down visitors for news
And climb back up as high as I can

"Crepuscular" de Camilo Pessanha

Feliz Natal, dudes. Here's a translation of Camilo Pessanha's "Crepuscular," which has nothing to do with Christmas but at least has some imagery vaguely applicable to the season. I'd write a bit more about it, but Mithras' birthday demands my attention.

As always, it's a work in progress, but I hope you dig it anyway.

Até já!


Crepuscular

Há no ambiente um murmúrio de queixume,
De desejos de amor, d’ais comprimidos...
Uma ternura esparsa de balidos,
Sente-se esmorecer como um perfume.

As madressilvas murcham nos silvados
E o aroma que exalam pelo espaço,
Tem delíquios de gozo e de cansaço,
Nervosos, femininos, delicados,

Sentem-se espasmos, agonias d’ave,
Inapreensíveis, mínimas, serenas...
— Tenho entre as mãos as tuas mãos pequenas,
O meu olhar no teu olhar suave.

As tuas mãos tão brancas d’anemia...
Os teus olhos tão meigos de tristeza...
— É este enlanguescer da natureza,
Este vago sofrer do fim do dia.


---

Crepuscular

There's a murmur of sighs in the air,
Of love's desires, of stifled cries...
A sparse tenderness, bleating,
Fading away like perfume.

The honeysuckle withers among the brambles
And the scent it gives off
Is dizzy with joy and fatigue,
Nervous, feminine, delicate,

Spasms, a bird's agonies,
Elusive, tiny, serene...
— I have your small hands between my hands,
My eyes on your soft eyes.

Your hands so white with anemia...
Your eyes so meek with sadness...
— This is nature growing languid,
The vague suffering of the waning day.

Oito Elegias Chinesas de Camilo Pessanha, II: 王守仁的"登閱江樓"

In the fine Chinese tradition of commenting on the commentaries to an original work, here's another Chinese elegy translated into Portuguese by Camilo Pessanha, with comments by yours truly on the original poem and Pessanha's interpretation. Like the first, it is the work of 王守仁 Wang Shouren, better known as 王陽明 Wang Yangming. Wang wasn't known for his poetry, but for his contributions to neo-Confucian thought, so I'm not sure why the individual who assembled this short collection decided to include two of his poems; perhaps he chose them to remind the recipient of the book of the importance of poetry in a scholar-bureaucrat's life, or there was something within the poems that resonated with him.


The 江 jiang referred to in the poem is none other than the 長江 Yangtze, and the titular 閱江樓 River-Gazing Tower, located near 南京 Nanjing, appears to not have actually existed until recently, which is kind of weird given that it's been referred to in Chinese sources since the Ming dynasty. Pessanha calls it a "miradouro," which is a scenic overlook rather than a particular kind of structure, but in context it makes sense. (Incidentally, there are a number of miradouros scattered around Lisbon, and even a few in Macau.) Pessanha says that the 新亭 "New Pavilion," which dates back to the 晉 Jin dynasty and thus is not old at all, was a gathering place for patriotic poets to mourn the woes befalling their country, and was also located on the Yangtze.

I don't think the River-Gazing Tower and the abandoned tower discussed in the poem are the same place, but they serve analogous poetic functions in that they both represent the kinds of far-flung postings Chinese officials might expect to receive sometime during the course of their careers. Climbing the River-Gazing Tower, our poet recalls a similar place, one separated by a great deal of time and space and steeped in the grandeur of imperial China's early years (the Han dynasty, founded by 漢高祖 Han Gaozu, who's the 高皇 Great Han Emperor mentioned in the poem, was China's second imperial dynasty).

Pessanha links 道德, the "virtue of the way," to the emperor, something I didn't do but maybe should have; after all, Wang Yangming wouldn't have been talking about 道德 in a Daoist context, i.e., 道德 as referenced in the title of the 道德經 Daodejing/Tao Te Ching. I think my rendering of the line about the tower's defenses sounds more poetic, since Pessanha decoupled 虛, generally read as "empty," as from 天, "sky" or "heaven," and used it in a broader sense to apply to 塹 "moat," whereas I applied 虛天 to 塹 and got, literally "empty sky moat." I considered the possibility that the moat was "empty to the sky," but liked the image of the sheer emptiness surrounding the tower serving as a moat better.

蠻夷 are the Man and Yi peoples, the sort of non-Han "barbarians" that the Chinese empire was constantly worried about. Pessanha seems to think that stone walls are useless, since the place was guarded by barbarians; I read the line as the poet saying that stone walls were useless against foreign incursions, especially given how remote the place was behind its airy moat. I'm not sure which is right, though I suspect that my interpretation may be taking liberties that Wang wouldn't have, as it might be taken as criticism of imperial policy—something an orthodox bureaucrat probably would've avoided.

I'm less thrilled about my version of the last two lines, as they don't quite hit the mark (the final line especially, which feels abrupt), but Pessanha's rendering of these same lines doesn't do it for me either. In the penultimate line he ascribes certain emotions to the poet's visit that aren't explicit, but admittedly could be there since, after all, this is classical Chinese. The duplication he uses for emphasis in the last line feels unnecessary, too. That said, I like his translation overall. His grasp of the material is firm (firmer than mine, for sure), his notes give much-appreciated background information that bolsters his poetic arguments, and his reading differs enough from mine to make things interesting.

Enjoy, folks!


微臣
史大偉/D.A. Smith



王守仁 (王陽明)

登閱江樓

絕頂樓荒舊有名
高皇曾此駐龍旌
險存道德虛天塹
守在蠻夷豈石城
山色古今余王氣
江流天地變秋聲
登臨授簡誰能賦
千古新亭一愴情

---

Uang-Shau-Jen (Uang-Iang-Ming)
"Ascensão ao Miradoiro do Kiang"

Este altíssimo torreão abandonado foi outrora célebre.
Aqui plantou seus estandartes, ornados de dragões, o fundador da dinastia Han.
Defendia-o, como inultrapassável fosso, a virtude do rei... Eram supérfluos os circundantes canais.
Faziam-lhe guarda as próprias tribos bárbaras. De que serviriam muralhas de pedra?

Hoje, como então, a montanha esplende de régia majestade.
Rolam do Kiang as águas; e céu e terra confundem as suas vozes outonais.
Da comoção que sente, assomando no alto, quem poderia ordenar o poema?
Pavilhão novo, pavilhão novo! - de pungentes mágoas milenárias...

---

Wang Shouren (Wang Yangming)

"Climbing the River-Gazing Tower"

this lofty, abandoned tower was famous long ago
the dragon banners of the first Han emperor were once raised here
remote, it kept the virtue of the Way behind a moat of empty sky—
what use were stone walls in keeping out barbarians?
then, as now, the hills suffused with a regal atmosphere
the river flows on as the sounds of autumn fill heaven and earth
climbing the tower and gazing out, who could write poetry?
the new pavilion, forever mournful

Oito Elegias Chinesas de Camilo Pessanha, I: 王守仁的“龍潭夜坐”

Here is one of Camilo Pessanha's Oito Elegias Chinesas, or Eight Chinese Elegies. My work, like Pessanha's, is the fruit of the "imperfect notions of a simple amateur scholar, acquired at random in my spare time" ("imperfeitas noções de simples estudioso amador, adquiridas ao acaso das horas vagas"), so I'm going to use his translation and mine as tools to make a few general remarks on Pessanha and Chinese poetry. As much as I know you've been dying for one, this isn't a particularly in-depth study.

In his preface to the series, Pessanha tells us he bought the book of poems from which the eight elegies come for the princely sum of two patacas. The collection had been assembled as a gift from a high-ranking minister in Beijing to his protégé about a century before Pessanha's translations appeared in the newspaper O Progresso. It's not entirely clear why the minister included these particular poems—all of which date to the Ming dynasty, and none of which are by well-known poets—or why Pessanha decided to translate them, or even buy the book in the first place. In his Revista de Cultura article "Camilo Pessanha e Oito Elegias Chinesas", 姚京明 Yao Jingming attributes Pessanha's choice to curiosity and the "spiritual pleasure" of spending his idle time translating from Chinese, and/or the fact that the collection dealt with the "same traces of his life: solitude, sadness, exile, escape from the real world, and nostalgia for his abandoned homeland." Both of these reasons make sense to me.

In addition to the book I've been referencing, China: Estudos e Traduções, I've found the text of this poem in a couple places online, and there are some discrepancies. In the fourth line, Yao Jingming's article reads 烏 (crow) instead of 鳥 (bird), and in the sixth line, 松 (pine) sometimes appears instead of 春 (spring). In both cases I've gone with the latter character, as Pessanha did in his version, and because in the case of 松/春 the former doesn't make as much sense. Yao Jingming thinks Pessanha made a mistake by mentioning a "bird" instead of a "crow," but the text printed with Pessanha's translation looks to have used 鳥 instead of 烏 (Christ, they're hard to tell apart), so Yao's criticism strikes me as unfounded.

In Pessanha's footnotes, the location of 龍潭 Longtan (literally "dragon pool") can't be nailed down definitively, but he seems to think it's a spot along the 烏江 Wu River in 貴州 Guizhou, where the poem's author was posted. I kept the title pretty literal, which might be the wrong way to go, but it works, I think.

Chinese poetry usually doesn't bother providing an explicit subject, and this poem is no exception. I find it interesting that Pessanha treats the speaker as the object most of the time, but then briefly addresses a second person. It's a valid approach, and I like the image of the poet speaking to his wife, or a friend, that it entails, but in my version I've kept the subject to the individual poet, since I didn't see the need to interrupt his thinking by interpreting the fifth and sixth lines as being directed at someone else.

Another point of difference that demonstrates the flexibility of classical Chinese poetry is the initial line, specifically the first two characters. 何處 can be read as a question, which is what Pessanha does, but it can also mean "somewhere" (thanks to Archie Barnes' fantastic Chinese Through Poetry for reminding me of this). Pessanha and I differ on a number of other points as well, but honestly I don't feel like breaking down, character by character, those points of divergence. If you want to know more, dear reader, drop me a line.

The original Chinese, Pessanha's Portuguese, and my English versions of the poem follow. Enjoy, caro leitor, and I hope to have another elegia chinesa for you soon.

微臣
史大偉


王守仁 (王陽明)

龍潭夜坐

何處花香入夜清
石林茅屋隔溪聲
幽人月出每孤往
棲鳥山空時一鳴
草露不辭芒履濕
春風偏與葛衣輕
臨流欲寫猗蘭意
江北江南無限情


Uang-Shau-Jen (Uang-Iang-Ming) 
"À Noite, no Pego-Dragão"

De onde vem este perfume de flores, embalsamando a noite puríssima?
Entre bouças e fragas, uma cabana de ola, perto da qual um arroio murmura...
Como de costume, o eremita parte ao surgir a lua.
Em um covão do monte, um pássaro, poisado, ininterruptamente gorgeia.

Não lhe importa que as ervas, impregnadas do orvalho: lhe encharquem as alparcatas de junça.
As suas vestes de ligeiro cânhamo, soergue-as, enviezando, a brisa primaveril...
À borda da torrente, intento fazer versos ao viço das orquídeas.
Embargam-mo as saudades, violentas empolgando-me, do Kiang-Pei e do Kiang-Nan.


Wang Shouren (Wang Yangming)
"Sitting by the Dragon Pool at Night"

From somewhere, the scent of flowers fills the clear night
in the thatched house among the stones, I can't hear the brook
at every moonrise, the hermit turns inward
birds nesting in the empty hills sing unceasingly
my straw sandals get wet in the still-dewy grass
and the spring wind ruffles my hemp clothing
overlooking the stream, I want to write, recalling the orchids—
endless thoughts of Jiangbei and Jiangnan

Updates: Sita Valles bio and Pessanha translations

After working on it for a year and change, I've finished my translation of Leonor Figueiredo's Sita Valles biography. If all goes well, Goa 1556 should be putting it out later this year, and I'll be launching it in Goa. I'll keep y'all posted.

In other news, I learned that a bilingual edition of Camilo Pessanha's poetry has recently been released. On one hand, the news was not only surprising, but frustrating, as I've been slowly working on my own Pessanha translations, and now I've been beaten to the punch. On the other hand, though, it's a relief. I was working on something from Clepsydra a while ago and thought to myself "this sounds terrible in English." Part of that is my own fault, no doubt, and it was just the first draft, but still- Pessanha's work is hard to render into English, and I'm thankful someone else has taken it upon themselves. I'm eager to check it out, even as I find myself still wondering what the hell I'm gonna do with all the Pessanha material I've amassed over the years. Write a biography, maybe?

Speaking of Pessanha, when I was in Lisbon I unearthed the names of the poets who wrote the poems Pessanha translated as "oito elegias chinesas." Once I do some reading, I'll write a little something about them, translate the poems into English, and make some comments on the quality of Pessanha's translation. His knowledge of Chinese was (and maybe still is) a point of contention, so I'm curious to see how well he read classical Chinese. (Not that I'm an expert myself, but I feel confident enough to pass basic judgement.)

Later, folks!

MMXVIII

Salvēte, dudes, and welcome to 2018!

This year (March 24, to be precise, a date I'll probably miss) marks the 15th anniversary of your humble Corpse's presence on the World Wide Web, at least in blog form, as blogs are understood today, or were in 2003. Whatever. The Internet sucks. Except when it doesn't.

Anyway, things are quiet on the cadaverous front. The usual stuff's happening: translation, hanging out with cats, cooking, meditation, reading, etc. I don't make New Year's resolutions, but this year I'd like to establish a habit of studying a little Latin and/or classical Chinese each week, and start assembling the skeleton of  a book about Camilo Pessanha. In the case of the former pseudo-goal, a couple dedicated hours per week should suffice; as for the latter, I first need to figure out what kind of book I want to write, then amass the necessary materials and, you know, start writing.


I'd also like America, shambolic mockery of democracy as it may be, not to be choked to death by the cowards, flag-suckers, bootlicking sycophants, capitalist vampires, fascists, and assorted other wretched fucks currently howling in a nightmarishly confusing chorus of glee and despair as yet another global empire enters its long, painful senescence and History grinds on (but, mind you, not necessarily Forward).

It'd also be nice if the rest of the world didn't have to fear nuclear (or, far more likely, since it's already happening, conventional) death at the hands of a certain idiot in the White House and his bargain-basement administration. (Christ, what would Hunter Thompson, who so despised Nixon, have thought of our current shitheel-in-chief? No wonder the good doctor cut out early.)

Then there's the desire for the planet itself not to be rendered uninhabitable by humans, courtesy of climate change and our species' addiction to short-term thinking, but I'm trying to not let my usual pessimism sink its claws into me too deeply, so I'll pass on thinking too much about that at the moment.

With regard to all these things, a dude can hope, but hope has never been, and never will be, enough, so, to paraphrase Laxmanrao Sardessai:

Avante, camaradas! Avante!


DAS

李長吉的 ”龍夜吟" / Li Changji's "Dragons at Night"

Once more I return to 李長吉 Li Changji, AKA 李賀 Li He. This poem was particularly difficult: it's somewhat longer than what I'm used to, and I made the mistake of reading a lot of characters according to their modern, or sometimes merely different (in classical Chinese terms), usage. Fortunately, J.D. Frodsham's translation was there to put me on the right track, only for me to deviate from it when I felt doing so benefited the translation.

Some notes on the poem follow, but first I want to discuss the title. Frodsham's "Song: Dragons at Midnight" works well enough in the context of his naming convention for Li's poems, but 夜 encompasses more than just midnight, and I can't imagine beginning a recital of this, or any, poem with a phrase dependent on a colon. Since Li has a considerable number of poems that he refers to as "songs" (喑， 曲， 歌， 樂) because they're probably meant to accompany popular tunes of his day, I've opted to put that element of the title aside. Doing so raises the issue of just how musical my translation is, or rather isn't, but I'm more concerned with conveying the poem's palpable feeling of being trapped by emotion and environment.

By the way, today (September 7) is Camilo Pessanha's birthday. I don't know if he ever read Li Changji, but I suspect he would've liked his work immensely.

Enjoy, dear reader/看官/caro leitor!

微臣
史大偉

-----


李長吉
龍夜吟


鬈發胡兒眼晴綠，高樓夜靜吹橫竹
一聲似向天上來，月下美人望鄉哭
直排七點星藏指，暗合清風調宮徵
蜀道秋深雲滿林，湘江半夜龍驚起
玉堂美人邊塞情，碧窗皓月愁中聽
寒砧能搗百尺練，粉淚凝珠滴紅綫
胡兒莫作隴頭吟，隔窗暗結愁人心


Li Changji
"Dragons at Night"



A curly-haired foreign boy, green-eyed
Plays the flute in the still night amidst tall buildings

Each note approaches the heavens
In the moonlight, beautiful women long for home, weeping

Lined up across seven holes, fingers conceal stars
Unnoticed, gong and zhi notes merge with the cool breeze

On the road to Shu, deep autumn, forest thick with clouds
At midnight dragons rise from the Xiang river, startled

For beautiful women the imperial harem feels like a frontier fortress
Bright moonlight through jade windows, gloom in the audience hall

A hundred feet of silk beaten upon cold blocks
Tears form pearls on face-powder, drop onto red thread

There are no foreign boys to play the hilltop song
Behind dark lattice windows, somber hearts bound together

-----

What I've translated as "foreign", 胡, is used to describe Turkic peoples from west and north of China. 宮徵 Gong and zhi are the first and fourth notes, respectively, of the pentatonic scale, which wouldn't have taken so long to find out if I'd bothered to read Frodsham's notes sooner. 蜀 Shu is one of the Three Kingdoms, about which there's been a certain well-known romance written; it's also the abbreviation for its present-day descendant, 四川 Sichuan province. The Xiang river runs through 湖南 Hunan province, and 湘 is the abbreviation for Hunan.

玉堂, literally "jade hall", showed up in one dictionary as "imperial harem", which seemed a fitting counterpoint to 邊塞, "frontier fortress" - I read a lot of uneasy relationships between people (especially women) and architecture in this poem. The bit about silk and blocks refers to the fulling of cloth; Frodsham says "the sound of silk being beaten on the fulling-blocks in autumn, to make winter clothes, is a familiar symbol of parting and sorrow." He also calls 隴頭吟 the "Long-tou tune" without explaining what "Long-tou" might mean. I've chosen to translate it as "hilltop" because 隴 can mean hillock or mound (or even "burial mound"), and 頭 head or top. Of course, that doesn't help if one wants to know what the "hilltop song" is.

I've made the decision to treat most of those referred to in the poem in the plural, rather than as individuals. Doing so deepens the poem's wistfulness, and makes sense in the context of the imperial harem and its occupants. While this poem's far from uplifting, it's definitely given me a better appreciation of Li's skill. There's a lot going on here, and one day I'll understand more of it.

Camilo Pessanha: "Floriram por engano as rosas bravas"

Apresento-lhes mais um poema daquele homem entre mundos, Camilo Pessanha. Geralmente dizemos que uma pessoa está entre dois mundos, mas no caso de Pessanha temos um homem entre um conjunto de muitos mundos contrários: os do Ocidente e do Oriente, do metrópole e da colônia, dos deveres do funcionário público e do estetismo, do exílio e do integração. Obviamente, esta série de díades não basta para esboçar um retrato completo de Pessanha (ou, na verdade, qualquer pessoa, coisa, ou ideia, porque não vivemos num mundo binário).

Este poema é, espantosamente, um que nunca li até há poucos dias. Pensei que tinha lido todos os poemas de Clepsidra, mas estava enganado. A ortografia é moderna, mas a pontuação da versão portuguesa está em acordo com a versão de 1920 de Edições Lusitânia (que não usa o circunflexo no seu nome!). Como de costume, não ha título próprio, e por isso uso a primeira linha do poema.

Agora, na cúspide do verão, pode-se dizer que um poema sobre a neve do inverno não faz sentido, mas que poderia fazer? Espero que vocês gostem do poema e a sua tradução para inglês. Vou escritar mais em breve, porque o dia de Portugal, de Camões, e das Comunidades Portuguesas (10 de Junho) está a chegar!

Obrigado e adeus, caros leitores!

Abraços,
D.A.S.

-----

I give you another translation of a poem by that man between worlds, Camilo Pessanha. We usually speak of a person being between two worlds, but in Pessanha's case we have a man between a set of conflicting worlds: East and West, homeland and colony, the duties of the public servant and and aestheticism, exile and integration. Obviously this series of dyads doesn't suffice to sketch a full picture of Pessanha (or, really, any given person, thing, or idea, because the world isn't binary).

Surprisingly, I hadn't read this poem until a few days ago. I thought I'd read every poem in Clepsidra, but I was mistaken. The spelling is updated, though the punctuation remains true to that found in the 1920 Edições Lusitânia (which on the book's title page doesn't use the circumflex!) version. As usual, the poem doesn't have a proper title, so I've used the first line instead.

Now that we're on the cusp of summer, a poem about the snows of winter might not make sense, but what can you do? I hope y'all enjoy the poem (in both of its forms), and I'll be writing again soon, as Portugal Day is coming up on the 10th.

Thanks for reading, and take it easy, folks.

Yours,
D.A.S.

-----

"Floriram por engano as rosas bravas"
Camilo Pessanha


Floriram por engano as rosas bravas
No inverno: veio o vento desfolhá-las...
Em que cismas, meu bem? Porque me calas
As vozes com que há pouco me enganavas?

Castelos doidos! Tão cedo caístes!...
Onde vamos, alheio o pensamento,
De mãos dadas? Teus olhos, que um momento
Perscrutaram nos meus, como vão tristes!

E sobre nós cai nupcial a neve,
Surda, em triunfo, pétalas, de leve
Juncando o chão, na acrópole de gelos...

Em redor do teu vulto é como um véu!
Quem as esparze — quanta flor — do céu,
Sobre nós dois, sobre os nossos cabelos?

***

"By mistake the wild roses bloomed"
Camilo Pessanha

By mistake the wild roses bloomed
In winter: the wind came and stripped away their leaves...
What are you pondering, my darling? Why do you silence
The voices with which you fooled me just now?

Lunatic castles! How soon you fell!
Where are we going, lost in thought,
Hand in hand? Your eyes, which for a moment
Looked deeply into mine, how sad they are!

And over us the snow falls, bridal,
Deaf, triumphant, petals lightly
Covering the floor in the acropolis of ice...

It is like a veil over your face!
Who scattered them — so many flowers — from the sky,
Over the two of us, over our hair?

No 90o aniversário da morte de Camilo Pessanha

No dia 1 de Março, 1926, o poeta português Camilo Pessanha faleceu em Macau. Hoje, 90 anos depois da morte do autor de Clepsydra, ele está homenageado na Rota das Letras, o Festival Literário de Macau. Eu li que os estudantes da Escola Portuguesa de Macau vão fazer romagem à sua sepultura e declamar poemas; estou de acordo com essa ideia.

Apologies for the silence as of late. I've been pretty busy with one thing or another: trying to find an agent or publisher for my novel, working on a project I don't want to discuss until I have a better idea of its future, attending Owlcon, and studying Portuguese online via the Instituto Camões, which has already proven to be a welcome challenge. I'll try to get back to writing here more often.

Até breve, caros leitores!

Camilo Pessanha: "E eis quanto resta do idílio acabado"

It's been a while since I wrote anything about my old friend Camilo Pessanha, at least in English. (Full disclosure: I'm not getting around to translating the post I wrote about his tombstone anytime soon). I haven't even revisited Clepsydra lately for my own enjoyment. So, Thursday afternoon, after wrapping up some other translation business and doing some sparring in preparation for my martial arts rank test the following Saturday, I pulled some of my Pessanha books off the shelf and got down to reading.

My usual online source for the text of Clepsydra titles the following poem "No claustro de Celas", while the original 1920 edition of the book gives no title at all. I'm going with the latter, not only with regard to the title, but to punctuation as well; spelling follows modern Portuguese orthography where it doesn't interfere with the original. (These decisions, made after reading António Baronha's postface to the Assírio & Alvim edition of Clepsydra, aren't set in stone, but make a lot of sense to me.)

While I'm unsure how the online source chose its title, it did lead me to learn about the Monastery of Santa Maria de Celas (sorry, there's no equivalent Wikipedia page in English) in Pessanha's hometown of Coimbra, which once belonged to Cistercian nuns- the kind of neat information that sheds light on the poem, as well as the possible experiences Pessanha had that led to its creation.

Enjoy, caro leitor.

D.A.S.



***



E eis quanto resta do idílio acabado,
— Primavera que durou um momento...
Como vão longe as manhãs do convento!
— Do alegre conventinho abandonado...

Tudo acabou... Anémonas, hidrângeas,
Silindras — flores tão nossas amigas!
No claustro agora viçam as ortigas,
Rojam-se cobras pelas velhas lájeas.

Sobre a inscrição do teu nome delido!
— Que os meus olhos mal podem soletrar,
Cansados... E o aroma fenecido

Que se evola do teu nome vulgar!
Enobreceu-o a quietação do olvido.
Ó doce, ingénua, inscrição tumular.


-----


And behold what remains of the finished idyll,
— Spring that lasted a moment...
How far away the mornings of the convent!
— Of the happy little convent, abandoned...

Everything is gone... anemones, hydrangeas,
Mock-oranges — flowers that were such friends of ours!
In the cloister now grow nettles,
Snakes crawl through the old loggias.

Over the inscription of your effaced name!
— Which my eyes can barely spell out,
Tired... And the withered scent

That emanates from your common name!
The quietude of oblivion has ennobled it.
Oh sweet, naive, tombstone inscription.