Scan barcode
spacestationtrustfund's review
4.0
Just a little fun fact before we begin: you're not supposed to copy material from other websites like Wikipedia to then put in reviews, because you don't own that content, but I've personally written a good portion (if not the majority) of Li Shangyin's English-language Wikipedia page. Anyway, I'd direct you there if you want to learn the basics about him.
Li Shangyin (李商隱) is nowhere near as popular in translation as his Tang-dynasty contemporaries Li Bai (李白), Du Fu (杜甫), or Wang Wei (王維), but a decent amount of his works have been translated as part of anthologies, and a few volumes dedicated to exclusively his poetry have been published in a couple of languages. This particular volume was edited and translated by Chloe Garcia Roberts, with additional translations by Lucas Klein and A.C. Graham also included in the appendices. The book includes select contextual notes on the poems at the end, as well as sources from which Garcia Roberts translated or included other translators' work.
As Garcia Roberts remarks in her introduction,
But how good are Garcia Roberts's translations, then? Well, it's pretty easy to compare her translations against the originals, because she includes the original Chinese text of the poems alongside her rendition. For example, here's part of the very first poem included in the book, 《七月二十八日夜與王鄭二秀才聽雨後夢作》 (herein "Composed After a Dream I Had the Twenty-Eighth Night of the Seventh Month While Listening to the Rain with the Two Scholars Wang and Zhen"):
I have no immediate issues nor obvious flaws to point out in Garcia Roberts's translation. She uses a single footnote to say that Penglai (蓬萊山) is "[the] name of a mountain located on a magical island in Daoist mythology" (not wrong). This quality of Garcia Roberts's translations is similar throughout.
But what about comparing Garcia Roberts's translations against Klein's and Graham's? One poem with all three options is 《夜雨寄北》 ("Night Rain Sent North"):
Compare Klein's translation ("Night Rain, Sent North"):
TL;DR I think this is an excellent translation, and I'd definitely recommend it.
Li Shangyin (李商隱) is nowhere near as popular in translation as his Tang-dynasty contemporaries Li Bai (李白), Du Fu (杜甫), or Wang Wei (王維), but a decent amount of his works have been translated as part of anthologies, and a few volumes dedicated to exclusively his poetry have been published in a couple of languages. This particular volume was edited and translated by Chloe Garcia Roberts, with additional translations by Lucas Klein and A.C. Graham also included in the appendices. The book includes select contextual notes on the poems at the end, as well as sources from which Garcia Roberts translated or included other translators' work.
As Garcia Roberts remarks in her introduction,
Li is not widely read or translated in the States. Until now, there has been only one monograph published in English, in 1969, translated by James Liu; other translations of Li’s poetry are scattered in various classical Chinese literature anthologies and scholarly texts. ... [Li's] lyricism is practically incongruous within the established expectations of classical Chinese poetry for American readers, and many translators have found him a particularly difficult, if not impossible, poet to translate.She continues,
Believing that the task of the translator is not clarification but reproduction, I have chosen to embrace Li’s elusiveness in Chinese and have tried to maintain that quality in my translations by carrying over the ambiguity inherent in the original texts. Most existing English translations of Li address this aspect of his work by accompanying or implanting the poems with explanations of context and history or by bending the poems to highlight one particular reading of the text. Instead, one of my primary aims was to re-create his foregrounding of the expansive, tactile, and shimmering beauty of the image over specificity and clarification of meaning and narrative.She does include at least a little bit of clarification in the endnotes, although more would certainly be welcome. Garcia Roberts explains that, in translating Li Shangyin's poetry, she landed on "three main priorities: preserving and reproducing the poetic imagery inherent in Li’s classical language, highlighting the philosophical and structural aspects of his poetic form, and reconstructing the sensual and emotional atmosphere of the poems." She continues:
Rather than focus on the traditional rhyme scheme of the original Chinese—hopeless to imitate in English—I chose to work toward similar line lengths and sentence structures by fixing more on the couplet and line construction as the formal foundations of the poems.In regards to the other translations included in the appendices, Garcia Roberts explains that, when given multiple translations of the same poem within the same volume, "readers can also compare two or three translations of the same poem," and thus (hopefully) gain a better, or at least more thorough, understanding of the poem itself.
But how good are Garcia Roberts's translations, then? Well, it's pretty easy to compare her translations against the originals, because she includes the original Chinese text of the poems alongside her rendition. For example, here's part of the very first poem included in the book, 《七月二十八日夜與王鄭二秀才聽雨後夢作》 (herein "Composed After a Dream I Had the Twenty-Eighth Night of the Seventh Month While Listening to the Rain with the Two Scholars Wang and Zhen"):
At the start of the dream a dragon palace appeared—The equivalent lines in the original text:
Treasures aflame, burning.
Rosy glowing clouds, brilliant, beauteous,
Filled the bright sky.
Whirling drunk, I leaned against a tree
On the eternal island of Peng Lai.
There was an immortal there,
Patting my shoulder.
Shortly after, I heard from afar
The playing of delicate flutes.
I heard these sounds without seeing,
Separated by flying mists.
I hesitated to press on
While rains passed over the Xiao and Xiang rivers.
Rain striking the fifty strings
Of the Xiang River spirit.
初夢龍宮寶焰燃，瑞霞明麗滿晴天
旋成醉倚蓬萊樹，有箇仙人拍我肩
少頃遠聞吹細管，聞聲不見隔飛煙
逡巡又過瀟湘雨，雨打湘靈五十絃
first or beginning / dream / Dragon- / -Palace / treasure / flame / burn // auspicious / red cloud / bright- / -beautiful / full / clear- / -weatherThe Dragon Palace (龍宮) refers to the palace of the dragon king at the bottom of the East China Sea; "hesitate" here is the literary term 逡巡 (literally "retreat" + "patrol"); "Xiaoxiang" (瀟湘) is the literary collective name for the Xiao (瀟水) and Xiang (湘江) rivers in what is now modern-day Hunan; the character here used to mean "string" (絃) is a variant form of 弦 ("string of a musical instrument").
spin / become / drunk / lean on / Peng- / -lai / tree // exist / one / immortal- / -person / pat, slap / me / shoulder
short- / -while / distant / hear / blow / delicate / flute // hear / sound / not- / -see / partition / flying / smoke
hesi- / -tate / also or again / cross / Xiao- / -Xiang / rain // rain / strike / Xiang- / -spirit / five- / -ten / string.
I have no immediate issues nor obvious flaws to point out in Garcia Roberts's translation. She uses a single footnote to say that Penglai (蓬萊山) is "[the] name of a mountain located on a magical island in Daoist mythology" (not wrong). This quality of Garcia Roberts's translations is similar throughout.
But what about comparing Garcia Roberts's translations against Klein's and Graham's? One poem with all three options is 《夜雨寄北》 ("Night Rain Sent North"):
You ask the date of my return.Rather similar to a certain poem by Du Fu, if I do say so myself. Here's the original poem:
No date is set.
The autumn pools on Ba Mountain
Welling with night rain.
How will that moment ever be: Together,
Trimming a candle at the west window,
And me, recounting
This rainy spell on Ba Mountain?
君問歸期未有期，巴山夜雨漲秋池
何當共剪西窗燭，却話巴山夜雨時
you / ask / return- / -date / not yet / is / scheduled time // Ba- / -Mountain / night / rain / rise or swell / autumn / pondNote that the character 巴 in 巴山 can also mean "near" or "close to" (which I think is a very clever bit of irony), and the character 當 can refer to undertaking a task together or side-by-side. The character 君 is used in a literary sense as a second-personal singular formal masculine pronoun, or in a spoken sense as a second-person singular informal polite neuter pronoun used between couples.
when (literary) / undertake / together / trim / west / window / candle // however / speak of / Ba- / -Mountain / night / rain / time
Compare Klein's translation ("Night Rain, Sent North"):
You ask when I’ll be back but there is no when.Graham's ("Night Rains: to my Wife up North"):
In the hills night rains are flooding autumn pools.
When will we sit and trim the wicks in the west window
and talk about the hills and night and rain?
You ask how long before I come. Still no date is set.These are all relatively similar examples, with minor changes. I don't actually know when 君 began to be used between romantic partners, or if that use was literary in the Tang dynasty, so I wouldn't count that character as revealing information about the speaker or recipient of the poem. I actually like Klein's translation the least, because he omits the name of the mountain, although I think an ideal translation would mention the double meaning of the mountain's name.
The night rains on Mount Pa swell the autumn pool.
When shall we, side by side, trim a candle at the West window,
And talk back to the time of the night rains on Mount Pa?
TL;DR I think this is an excellent translation, and I'd definitely recommend it.
partypete's review
3.0
I dislike the translator’s decision not to provide context to these poems. I found the lucas klein and ac graham translations better, though I respect what she sought to accomplish this project at all and am grateful for a greater understanding of the ancient masters
More...