Tuesday, September 28, 2010

change, change, change...

Ran into this one perusing a book of contemporary Taiwanese poetry, by the Hakka poet Zhan Bing (詹冰), born in 1921 in Zhuolan, Miaoli County, Taiwan. It was written on his 70th birthday, and published on August 18th, 1991 in the Taiwan Daily. I took a pretty freely interpretive approach to translating it - it gave me a kind of e.e. cummings feel, and translating several sections quite literally resulted in some cummings-like turns of phrase that I appreciated. Also of course a liberal sprinkling of parentheses (gotta go nuts every now and then, ey?) helps out. Conceit aside, I definitely like the idea of using very directly literal translation occasionally to give a satisfying "strangeness" to passages, so here's my first vague shot at that.
Also, I think quite relevant to this poem, Zhan Bing is one of those extremely interesting authors who grew up in Taiwan during the Japanese colonial period. His childhood education was entirely conducted in Japanese, and with the 1945 "liberation" of Taiwan at the end of the second World War he faced the daunting task of switching from writing in one imposed non-native language (Japanese) to another (Mandarin Chinese). Wow. 變 變,變,變,。。。。。 時時刻刻, 萬物都在變化 自己,社會,人類,地球,宇宙。。。。。 變,我有一則不變的原則: 要變,就愈變愈美好! 象蓓蕾變成美麗的花朵 象毛虫變成漂亮的蝴蝶 象黑炭變成燦爛的鑽石 象凡人變成慈悲的佛陀 變成真,善,美,愛,是最美好的! 我要變成追求真理的科學家 我要變成多行善舉的善人 我要變成創造美境的美術家 我要變成充滿愛心的詩人 不然,我的人生毫無意義了 今天滿七十歲的我 日日月月,繼續努力學習 變,變,變。。。。。 change change, change, change..... (time time moment moment), the innumerable things all now changing self, society, humanity, earth, cosmos..... change, I have one unchanging principle: want change (yes the more change the more splendid)! as bud changes to exquisite flower as caterpillar changes to grand butterfly as black coal changes to resplendent diamond as mortal changes to merciful deity change to true, good, beautiful, love, is the most splendid! I want to change into a scientist, in search of the true I want to change into a welldoer, hands held up in compassion I want to change into an artist, creating worlds of beauty I want to change into a poet, brimful of kindness (or else, my this human life, will without meaning become) today filling seventy years this I (day day month month) goes on with the struggle of learning change, change, change..... -Zhan Bing (詹冰), t. Rob Voigt

The Beginnings of Vernacular Poetry - Hu Shi

Here we are! This will be my first post actually on-location from Taiwan. Thanks to the Fulbright foundation for the hook-up, woot. More specifically, I’m sitting in a hilarious 50’s-style American diner with unlimited coffee refills and free wireless, two blocks from my house. Awwwwwright. This semester is looks like I’ll be auditing a Translation Theories class at Shida, and a Modern Chinese Poetry class at Taida. The rest of my time will be spent doing translations, most of which will go up on here. I’m living in a wonderful apartment right in the Shida Night Market area with three other foreigners, and things are generally going wonderfully so far. Anywho, this isn’t a personal blog, so that’s probably about as much as I’ll mention all that stuff for the duration. E-mail me or whatnot if you wanna talk about life.
Back to poetry – the poetry class I’m auditing at Taida is essentially a chronological survey of Chinese “New Poetry” (新) starting with the May Fourth Movement and moving to the present day. Naturally, we started off with Hu Shi (胡適, 1891-1962), a prominent Republic-era intellectual and writer who studied at Cornell and Columbia before returning to the mainland to commence his “literary revolution” in concordance with the other May Fourthers. I just found out during class that, in fact, Hu Shi fled to the U.S. in 1948 and only returned to Asia - Taiwan, not the mainland - in 1958, to die of a heart attack in 1962 here in Taipei while serving as President of Academia Sinica. I'd always thought of him as quite a mainlander, but turns out I wasn't 100% right about that. Anyway, specifically, the aforementioned "revolution" involved a massive shift from writings in classical to vernacular Chinese. Like the prominence of Latin as a written lingua franca in medieval Europe, until the efforts of writers such as Hu Shi and Lu Xun in the early 20th-century, literature in China written in the classical language and therefore only accessible to upper-crust educated types.
Hu Shi in particular was a vigorous advocate of this extreme shift from the classical language, and advocated for a strong poetic empiricism (詩的經驗主義), that is, a poetics based out of personal experience. As a result, his poems are generally quite direct, repetitive, easily understandable, and made up of very clear language. The poem below entitled “Dreams and Poems” can easily be seen as something of a treatise on this thinking. In all honesty, I’m not terribly into these poems, and particularly the translations, but they’re interesting in that they are some of the very very first vernacular poetry published in Chinese. Funnily, I saw someone post online that Hu Shi's poetry would be "torn apart in the online forums" were it written today. But starting at the start is a fine place to start, ey?
蝴蝶 兩個黃蝴蝶,雙雙飛上天。 不知為什麼,一個忽飛還。 剩下那一個,孤單怪可憐。 也無心上天,天上太孤單。 Butterflies Two yellow butterflies, taking flight as a pair. I don't know why, but one suddenly flew back down. The poor other one, so alone up there, lost the desire to fly, with the sky so lonely. 小詩 也想不相思 可免相思苦 幾次細思量 情願相思苦 Little Poem Perhaps I'd like to not feel longing to avoid this longing's pains. Yet many times I've mulled it over, and I prefer this longing's pains. 鴿子 雲淡天高,好一片晚秋天氣! 有一群鴿子,在空中游戲。 看他們三三兩兩,    回環來往,    夷猶如意,—— 忽地裏,翻身映日,白羽襯青天, 十分鮮麗! Doves Thin clouds in the high sky, late autumn glowing in the trees! Overhead a flock of doves, playing games in the breeze. Look at them in threes and twos, winding as they come and go, unhurried as they please, -- forgetting the earth, turning bodies in the sunlight, white feathers against a blue sky, how splendid!  人力車夫 警察法令,十八歲以下,五十歲以上,皆不得為人力車夫。 “車子!車子!”車來如飛。 客看車夫,忽然心中傷悲。 客問車夫:“今年幾歲?拉車拉了多少時?” 車夫答客:“今年十六,拉過三年車了,你老別多疑。” 客告車夫:“你年紀太小,我不能坐你車,我坐你車,我心中慘淒。” 車夫告客:“我半日沒有生意,又寒又飢, 你老的好心腸,飽不了我的餓肚皮, 我年紀小拉車,警察還不管,你老又是誰?” 客人點頭上車,說:“拉到內務部西。” The Rickshaw Runner The law dictates that anyone under 18 and over 50 may not work pulling a rickshaw. "Rickshaw! Rickshaw!" It came flying over. The customer saw the runner, and suddenly felt a sadness in his heart. The customer asked the runner: "How old are you? How long have you pulled this cart?" The runner answered the customer: "I'm 16, and I've pulled for three years, no need to worry, sir." The customer told the runner: "You're too young, I can't ride your cart. I'd feel distressed if I rode with you." The runner told the customer: "Sir, I've had no business all day, I'm cold and hungry, and your concern won't fill my belly. The cops don't bother me, so who are you then?" The customer lowered his head and got in, saying: "Take me to the Ministry of Internal Affairs." 夢與詩 都是平常經驗 都是平常影像 偶然湧到夢中來 變換出多少新奇花樣 都是平常情感 都是平常語言 偶然碰著個詩人 變換出多少新奇詩句 醉過才知酒濃 愛過才知情重 你不能做我的詩 正如我不能做你的夢! Dreams and Poems All ordinary experiences All ordinary images Gushing up by chance in a dream And becoming vast flux of new patterns All ordinary emotions All ordinary language Bumping by chance into a poet And becoming vast flux of new lines Only a drunk knows the richness of wine Only a lover knows the weight of emotion You can't make my poems Just like I can't make your dreams! Hu Shi (胡適), t. Rob Voigt