Category: Scenery

作者：林逋 （Author:  Lin Bu,  10th century)

 

众芳摇落独暄妍   many fragrant sway fall alone warm beautiful
占尽风情向小园   occupy exhaust wind feeling toward small garden
疏影横斜水清浅   sparse shadow horizontal slanting water clear shallow
暗香浮动月黄昏   dim fragrant float move moon yellow dusk
霜禽欲下先偷眼   frost (white) bird about to go down first steal eye
粉蝶如知合断魂   pink butterfly if know should break soul
幸有微吟可相狎   luckily have tiny chant can each other intimate 
不须檀板共金樽    not need hard wood clapper together gold goblet 
Translation
This is the flower that shows us springtime beauty,
When the others have wobbled and fallen.
It’s the reason we love this small garden.   
   
Its thin shadows slant across the clear, shallow water
Its hidden fragrance floats beneath the yellow moon.
   
A snow-white bird steals a look before landing.
If the pink butterflies knew it was here, their hearts should break.
Luckily, I can make these flowers my friends by softly chanting poems.
There’s no need for a golden chalice or a singing girl’s wooden clapper. 
Translation Notes

The poet Lin Bu was a famous recluse in the northern Song dynasty and lived a quiet life in a mountain by the West Lake during his later years.  He was very fond of plums and cranes, and spent much time admiring them.  Since he never married, he earned the reputation of “considering plums his wife and cranes his children,” which was not a compliment in a Confucian society, despite the fact that Lin Bu was a much admired poet. Lin Bu was highly admired in Japan where he came to be regarded as one of the poetic immortals. A famous Japanese painting of Bu hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art today. 

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/78232

Plum blossoms were very highly regarded in ancient Chinese culture and considered to be symbols of purity, courage, hope, longevity, and many other virtues, in part because they bloom very early in the year, often when there is still frost or snow on the ground. Even today, people say that its three stamens represent Sun Yat-sen’s three principles of the people and that its five petals represent the five branches of government.
We have included many color words in our translation, but it would be possible not to do so. “Yellow moon” frequently refers to dusk and could be translated as such. The “white” which describes a bird literally translates as frosty. The word for pink may also be a shortened version of a word for rouge. Some translations of this poem do not use the colors; we have chosen to use them both because we thought they painted a vivid image in a poem that takes place in a garden and because we suspect that Lin Bu deliberately chose to use yellow, gold, white, and pink since they are the colors of plum blossoms. As with so many translation choices, however, some of the original nuances have been lost. Our translation does not have dusk, frostiness, or a reference to such feminine allurements as rouge, all of which are hinted at in the original. 
The second stanza of the poem is said to have originated from poetry first written by Jiang Wei, a poet living in an era slightly before Lin Bu.  The poetic lines written by Jiang Wei are as follows (translated version):  The bamboo’s shadows slant across the clear, shallow water; the cassia’s fragrance floats beneath the yellow moon.  The first word in each of the two lines, namely, “bamboo” and “cassia” in the original was changed by Lin Bu into “sparse” and “hidden”.  Lin Bu only changed two words in this stanza, both from noun to adjective, and he was able to demonstrate the beauty and fragrance of the plums.  Today we could no longer find the complete version of Jiang Wei’s poem and only that couplet remains. 
作者：柳宗元   (Author: Liu Zongyuan, late 8th century)
千山鸟飞绝，    Thousand mountain bird fly absolutely
万径人踪灭。    Ten thousand trails man trace extinguish
孤舟蓑笠翁，    lone boat grass coat hat old man
独钓寒江雪        Alone fishing cold river snow

Translation:

A thousand mountains: no bird flying.
Ten thousand trails: not one traveler’s footprint.
But an old man wearing a grass coat and hat in the snow,   

Fishes from a boat on the cold river.

 

Translation Notes:   
We make a great, though not always successful, effort to be faithful to the original Chinese by including all images in the poem and not adding any of our own unless we think we must have them to explain a crucial reference to contemporary readers. The results are sometimes awkward as we not only lose the meter and rhyme, but often end up talking about “railings” or “hats” that are not particularly evocative in English. Somewhat wistfully, we compare our translation above to this translation by adel@douban.  The translation was published on douban, a Chinese social media website. 
Not a feather amid the mountains 
Not a soul on the trails 
But an old fisherman in the snow 
Fishing in a drifting boat 

https://www.douban.com/people/des.fleurs/status/3480528599/

 

We think that adel’s version is much lovelier than ours and very much has the feeling of an elegant landscape painting. We do not think she took any great liberties by omitting the “thousand” mountains and “ten thousand” trails, as these numbers were really only used as a way of saying “many.” The “not a feather” is a neat way of reproducing a line that says the birds were “absolutely” gone, and “not one soul” is fairly close to the traces of men extinguished. 

 

In the second couplet, however, adel deviates pretty significantly from the original. She omits the grass coat and hat as well as the cold river. Most importantly, She adds the term “drifting” to describe the boat. The grass coat and hat and the cold river may be seen as superfluous since these clothes are what a fisherman would be expected to wear, and if he’s fishing from a boat in the snow, it’s obvious that he is fishing from a cold river. Even so, inclusion of these terms serves to emphasize the man’s inadequate protection from harsh winter weather. 

 

The term “drifting” is not suggested by the original at all. It gives a romantic feeling to the poem, but it might not describe the fisherman. If he has gone out in freezing weather to earn a living or get a meal, he is more likely to be picking his spots carefully rather than to be drifting along. We believe that our more literal translation is harsher, colder, more focused on the fisherman’s plight, than adel’s is. If Du Fu, who was a great champion of the poor, had written the poem, our translation would probably be closer to the poet’s intent. As it is, who can tell? The title, River and Snow, suggests that this is primarily a landscape painting, in which case, Adel’s beautiful translation best captures its true spirit. On the other hand, the poem was written after Liu Zongyuan had been sent into exile, and some scholars have theorized that the persevering fisherman was meant to represent the poet himself. Comparing the two translations helps us to think more deeply about the purpose of the poem.

作者：徐祯卿 （by Xu Zhenqing, 15th or 16th century)

深山曲路见桃花，Deep mountain twist road see peach blossom
马上匆匆日欲斜。horse up hurry, hurry, sun will slanting
可奈玉鞭留不住，however helpless jade whip stay not stop
又衔春恨到天涯    again carry spring sadness arrive sky edge

 

Translation:

Deep in the mountain, the road bends — I see peach blossoms.
But the sun will soon set; I hurry my horse onward
Oh, I would stop time if I could, with my jade-handled whip.
Once again I carry the sadness of spring, all the way to the edge of the sky.

 

Translation Notes:

The poet Xu Zhenqing is famous writer in the Ming Dynasty and one of the four great talents in the South of the Ming Dynasty during that time.  He is also renowned for his achievements in calligraphy. The first two lines are translated in a deliberately choppy manner to reflect the suddenness of the peach blossoms, the poet’s hesitation, and then his onward rush. The words in the second line, “sun will slanting,” tell us that the sun is going down and that it’s near enough to the horizon to send slanting rays. The poem is not specific as to what the poet wishes to stop, but in the context of the setting sun and the sadness of spring, we thought that “time” best expressed his intent. 

作者： 李白 （Author: Li Bai, 8th century)

 

渡遠荆門外， travel far Jing Men outside
來從楚國游。 come follow Chu nation travel 
山隨平野盡， mountain follows flat field end
江入大荒流。river enters big wilderness flowing 
月下飛天鏡， moon descend flying sky mirror
雲生結海樓。 cloud form congeal ocean tower
仍憐故鄉水， still have heart for old village water
萬里送行舟。 ten thousand li send travel boat

Translation

I’ve traveled even beyond Jingmen now
In search of the Chu nation. 

The mountains have given way to plains 
And the Yangtze flows into a great wilderness.

Mirrored in the water, the moon flies through the sky,
Rising above the sea, clouds form a tower.

I still love the waters of my old home town
They’ve carried my boat for 10,000 li.  

Translation Notes

This poem is written by Li Bai, a renowned Tang Dynasty poet who has a vigorous and carefree character, has traveled to many places and is famous for his wild and romantic imaginations in some of his poems.  He and his friend Du Fu were sometimes referred to together as “Li Du” and considered the two most distinguished poets in the flourishing period of the Tang Dynasty. The first couplet tells how far the poet has come, and the last couplet tells us that he still loves and feels attached to his home town. We translated those lines in simple, personal language and took the liberty of adding “even” to the first line to emphasize the young man’s sense of wonder at having travelled so far from home. We did not use this personal language in the second and third couplets so that the majesty of their images could stand in contrast to the beginning and ending of the poem. 

作者：曹操   （Author: Cao Cao, 3rd century)

 

东临碣石，east climb Jieshi mountain
以观沧海。 to look dark blue sea
水何澹澹，water how peaceful
山岛竦峙。island rise peak
树木丛生，forest tree crowd grow
百草丰茂。100 grass abundant lush
秋风萧瑟，autumn wind grievance cold
洪波涌起。flood wave surge rise
日月之行，sun moon of travel
若出其中。like coming out its center
星汉灿烂，star wide bright glorious
若出其里。 like coming out its within
幸甚至哉，lucky very arrive oh
歌以咏志    sing to chant ambition

Translation

I rode east and climbed the Jeishi Mountain
To look down at this dark blue sea,
At its vast water,
At its islands and jutting peaks.

The trees grow thick here,
While the grass is still so lush.
Cold autumn winds blow:
Towering waves surge forth in answer.

To me it’s as if the sun and moon both
Rise up from these waters.
And the brilliant band of stars?
They burst from its depths.

Oh, my good luck to have reached this place!
I sing, I shout my ambition.

Translation Notes:

Cao Cao was a brilliant war lord who became very powerful by the end of the Eastern Han dynasty. He was also an influential poet, though, unfortunately, only a few of his poems remain. He wrote this poem after one of his significant victories against the northern Wuhuan tribes. At the end of the second stanza, we write that the water surges forth “in answer,” and we translate the last two lines of the third stanza as a question and answer despite the fact that there are not question words in the original. We made this choice because we thought that the question and response best represented the dynamic nature of the original poem.

作者：白居易 （Author:  Bai Juyi, 8th century)

離離原上草     lush, lush plain on grass
 一歲一枯榮   one year one dry glory
 野火燒不盡   wild fire burn not all
春風吹又生    spring wind blow again life
 遠芳侵古道   distant fragrance invade ancient road
晴翠接荒城    sun emerald-green meet ruined city
又送王孫去    again sendoff king’s grandson go
萋萋滿別情    dense, dense full separation feeling

 

Translation: 

Unstoppable, the grass on the ancient plain,
Each year it withers, then flourishes again. 
Wildfire cannot destroy it all.
The spring wind blows it back to life.

From far away, its fragrance invades the old road
Its emerald green surges all the way to the ruined city.
Again, I say goodbye to my noble friend,
Unending, my feelings at seeing you leave.

 

Translation Notes: 

Bai Juyi was only seventeen years old when he wrote Grass. Legend has it that when he went to the capitol city of Chang An, a gentleman reacted to his name, which means something along the lines of “relaxed, easy living,” by telling him that he wouldn’t find living in Chang An very easy. Bai Juyi then showed him his poem, and the gentleman corrected himself, noting that anyone with such extraordinary talent might indeed find life easy in Chang An.

When Bai Juyi wrote this, grass was already a metaphor both for the common people and for emotions. He was drawing on a long tradition when he combined the two. The repeated first word, which  means “lush,” also has a secondary meaning of “depart,” foreshadowing the final two lines. We chose to translate it as “unstoppable” both because unstoppable also hints at departure and because it is a very dynamic word, suitable to the raw energy of something that cannot be destroyed. 

 


作者：杜甫   （Author: Du Fu, 8th century)


江 汉 思 归 客 Jiang Han feel return guest
乾 坤 一 腐 儒。heaven earth one pedantic scholar
片 云 天 共 远 piece cloud sky together distant
永 夜 月 同 孤。long night moon together alone
落 日 心 犹 壮 fall sun heart still strong
秋 风 病 欲 苏。autumn wind illness will revive
古 来 存 老 马 old come keep old horse
不 必 取 长 途 not need use long trip

Translation:

Where the Han and Yangtze meet: a homesick traveler.
Between Heaven and Earth: a quibbling scholar,

I become one with a scrap of cloud in the distant sky.
I am alone with the moon in the endless night.

The sun sets, but my heart remains ambitious.
The autumn wind blows, but I will recover from my illness.

From ancient times, old horses were kept
Because they were the ones who knew the way home.

Translation notes:

While we are satisfied that we’ve come up with a reasonable translation, we did take liberties with the original and think that this is a poem that could yield many very different and equally valid translations. In lines three and four, the “I” is implied, and the verb tense is unspecified. We used the present tense because it gives greater immediacy, and we chose the words “I become” to give the lines a sense of vigor and personal agency, which we thought was important because the poem ends on a triumphant note.

The last two lines refer to a Chinese legend. In around 650 BC, Duke Huan of Qi, a famous ruler during China’s Spring and Autumn period, initiated an expedition against the State of Gu Zhu. The war between the two States didn’t end until winter time. On their way back home, the Duke’s army lost their way. Guan Zhong, Duke Huan’s long-time advisor, offered a suggestion that old horses in the army are wise animals who could know the way back home. Following Guan’s advice, the Duke let a couple old horses lead in front, with his armies following behind. Eventually they managed to find their way back home. If we had translated the poem more literally, an American might have understood it to be saying that old horses were kept even though they are not particularly needed, not that they were valuable for their wisdom. One of us is a bit of an old horse herself and vigorously objected to giving the impression that charity might be the only reason for keeping an old nag around.