Great Works I: Remixing Memory

While reading the various versions of “The Song of Ch’ang Kan” there were many apparent differences but most seemed to say the same story. I felt that some poems were a lot more difficult to read then others, the hardest one being “That Parting at Ch’ang Kan” by W.J.B. Fletcher because of the thick accent he tried implementing. That was for sure my least favorite because of the difficulty I had in understanding the different points he was trying to get across. Some of the lines also become clearer as I had read the different poems and heard the different interpreters’ versions of the same line. One example is the 3rd line of Ezra Pound’s translation “You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse” when I read this I was confused because of vague speech, and I didn’t understand what point she was trying to get across until I read the other versions where it was much more clear. Some examples of the other simpler to understand versions include “ When you, my Lover, came riding on a bamboo horse” by Witter Bynner and “You would come, riding on your bamboo horse” by Shigeyoshi Obata. Another clear distinction between the different poems is the varying amounts of affection accounted for by the author. In Shigeyoshi Obata’s translation he doesn’t have many descriptions for moments of love, heartbreak, or happiness except for one instance in his 13th line; but then in Witter Bynner’s translation he often mentions these feelings.

The mentioning of these feelings is why “A Song of Ch’and Kan” by Bynner was my favorite. Witter mentions the river merchant as the wife’s “lover” in line 3, as both of them being happy-hearted in line 6, and then in line 25 mentions the wife’s heart as breaking. The differences are interesting because of how the poem sounds less solemn and rigid and adds life to the poem. It makes it sound more like an interesting love story.

The Parting at Ch’ang Kan has a completely different writing style compared to other translations of the poem. While all other versions boast modern day prose, this poem is written with language used in Shakespeare’s plays. With such language, the poem has a heightened romance story as the words flow seamlessly, giving the reader the ambience of the love shared between the two. By using an old language the words seem to have more weight behind them as they depict a broad picture using a minimal amount of words. Each line has the ability to stand on its own while painting a detailed picture for the reader. Compared to other translations some lines rely on previous lines as they build upon each other. This compacted poem has the ability to read more clearly and passionately compared to the other translations.

Another difference used in the translations are the grouping of words in stanzas. Each poem has a variety of stanzas, each containing different words giving the poem a different read. While reading through the poems, the translators placed certain lines in different stanzas depending on whether they felt certain sentences belong with or separated from certain paragraphs.  In Two Letters From Chang Kan- 1 “At fourteen I became your wife” is part of its own stanza. The translator did the same for ages 15 and 16, giving each age a different paragraph. This could signal the different time periods within the poem or the changes that occurred between the two lovers that occurred. However in A Song of Ch’ and Kan, the translator pairs the age groups all within one stanza. The translator may have felt that the age groups were part of the story and needed to flow one after the next. Each line may build of the other providing the need to keep everything together, adding to the creation of one entire picture instead of 4-5 small pictures that tell a similar story. With different placings of the text, each poem can be read differently shaping a similar yet different story of the original poem.

Lastly and the most obvious is the actual words used in each translation. Each translation varies as the words used can either have more meaning, sound simpler, or flow better in each paragraph. In That Parting at Ch’ang Kan, the protagonist hides his face as he is shy to be in the presence of his wife. It states “My shamefaced head I in a corner hung.” In contrast in Two Letters From Chang- Kang- 1 it states “But hung my head, and turned to the dark wall.” In the first translation the meaning has such a stronger feel. The sentence is crafted with a dense definition, highlighting the embarrassment displayed by the character, all the while using simple terms. The second sentence isn’t as vivid as the first as it sounds very plain and boring. As a whole, the entire paragraph lacks detail and cannot compare to the single line from the translation. The use of words is a powerful tool in displaying how something will sound and how it will flow as depicted by the translations.

My favorite translation is by W.J.B Fletcher. In my opinion I felt his poem read with the most fluidity while displaying the compassion between the two characters. The use of the old language made me read the poem as a love story similar to Shakespeare’s writing style. I was able to follow the poem with ease as the simplicity and straightforward words shaped the life of the characters.

There are quite a few differences I noticed between the difference translations of the single poem by Li Bo. W.J.B. Fletcher’s translation called “That Parting at Ch’ang Kan” was initially extremely difficult to understand due to the fact he used old style of writing that is not common today, such as “o’ver” “lo” or the word “aye”. This is mainly due to the fact that the translation was created in 1919, which would explain the old style of english writing. Another difference I spotted was Shigeyoshi Obata Translation called “Two Letters From Chang Kan-1” in which the translator was the first one to mention that the poem was written by a river-merchant’s wife (first line in the poem), which helps the reader visualize the scene ahead of time, something that none of the other translation did. Also Shigeyoshi was the only individual that  translated phrases into questions towards the end of the poem. For example, he wrote “Did you hear the monkeys wailing Up on the skyey height of the crags?….and each and every one is filled with green moss?“, instead of simply putting them into statements. Lastly, “Ch’ang-an Memories” translated and written by Wai-Lim Yip seems to be the most simplified version of the poem and the most straight-forward one, each of the poem lines is accompanied by a number as well, sometime that is not seen by any the other translations. I found this translation to be the most understandable one out of all of them. For example, when the other poems explains in several lines about the growing moss on the footprints, this translation sums up the same idea in three simple lines: “Before the door your footprints,  Are all moss-grown,   Moss too deep to sweep away”.

In “The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter” by Ezra Pound, the author wrote, “You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse,” (4).  However, in “Ch’ang Kan” by Amy Lowell, the author wrote, “Then you, my Lover, came riding a bamboo horse,” (3).  Amy Lowell misinterpreted the act of playing a game called ‘horse’ and translated it to riding an actual horse.  Aside from riding a horse, Amy Lowell also completely disregarded the lover being on bamboo stilts and translated it to ‘riding a bamboo horse’.

In “The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter” by Ezra Pound, the author wrote, “Two small people, without dislike or suspicion,” (6).  However, in “Two Letters From Chang-Kan – I” by Shigeyoshi Obata, the author wrote, “We were two children, suspecting nothing,” (6).  Shigeyoshi Obata misinterpreted the term ‘two small people’ for ‘two children’.  Shigeyoshi Obata also completely ignored the term ‘dislike’ and went straight to discussing the ‘suspicion’ portion of the line.

In “Two Letters From Chang-Kan – I” by Shigeyoshi Obata, the author wrote, “At fifteen I was able to compose my eyebrows,” (12).  However, in “Ch’ang-an Memories” by Wai-Lim Yip, the author wrote, “At fifteen, I began to perk up,” (11).  The two lines are very different and have very different meanings.  Composing ones eyebrows and perking up do not have similar meanings at all.  I am not quite sure how Wai-Lim Yip translated “to compose my eyebrows” to “I began to perk up”.

My favorite version of the poem is “The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter” by Ezra Pound.  This is because I found it to be the most straightforward version and the easiest to understand.  It was also the version that made the most sense when it came to translations.  I liked the way Ezra Pound worded things and found this version had a nice flow.

My analysis focuses on three translations of the famous Li Po poem by Ezra Pound, Amy Lowell and Wai-Lim Yip.

In Pound’s version the feeling of the woman speaker is presented throughout specific phases of her emotional development. We could feel how Pound divides the poem into different strophes, in order to define more contrastively the succeeding steps of revelation. He starts with: “While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead I played about the front gate, pulling flowers.” Use of words “while “ and “still” initiates into the story an anticipated feel of sentiment, nostalgia, lost purity and succeeding frustration, experienced by the narrator before she married her extant “Lord.” However, even thought the narrative tone of the poem is melancholic, it does not possess dramatic finish, rather regretful touch about transience of time, her naïve nature and sureness in everlasting passion that is implied in “Forever and forever and forever” line. Therefore, at the start of the poem a feel of ambivalence and nostalgia is implied, and the succeeding connection of the past state of innocence, through the stage of acceptance. Even thought the second part of the poem is very emotional, still we could trace this connection between the tone of childish and carefree insouciant and the regretful gravity of a young wife suddenly made older by the loneliness and anxiety of separation. Remarkably, this poem doesn’t offer you any explicit version of what was happened. Yes, we could understand that the narrator is struggle with loneliness, from the lines “They hurt me and I grow older”, but still, she seems too modest to complain openly, and Pound remains rather too tactful to hint at this, since she seems to have no reason to reproach her husband.

Lowell’s version, entitled “Ch’ang Kan”, contrasting can be viewed as a dramatic speech. The difference between the two translations would be that in the Pound’s version the speaker’s emotion and attitude would be generated from within the narrative and the perspective provided, while in the Lowell a more external, outside-looking-in approach is embraced. Lowell’s version is more implied and we could see it right from the beginning. The narrator, “ the Unworthy one” start her story by using the third-person pronoun “she” and “her” in the first two lines. These third-person forms could indicate that Lowell wants to invoke the superficial Western stereotypes for self-effacing oriental modesty by making the woman-speaker ironically refer to herself in the third person. “Then you, my Lover…” in the third line is probably an attempt at irony. Similarly in the seventh line: “At fourteen, I became the wife of my Lord.” For some reason, this version for me sounds ironic and more emotional, then the first one. First part of the poem is explicitly telling the audience what happened with “the Unworthy one”, she is failed and frantic “I often thought that you were the faithful man / that I should never be obligated to ascend to the Looking for husband ledge” She is blaming her husband for everything that what happen to her: “my heart is beating with grief / the bloom of my face has faded, sitting with my sorrows”. For me this version is associated with a fresh wound, since it hurts and bleeds and you could never forget or distract from it, while the first version is reminds me the concealed long illness, when you could only approximate your condition. The interesting fact is also the use of tenses; in the Lowell’s version, in the second paragraph the author uses generally Present Progressive tense when he describes the feelings of the narrator, while Pound uses Past tense. Therefore, this grammatical mechanism could emphasize the fact of more melancholic and calm tone of the Pound version, compare to intense and dramatic tone of Lowell’s one.

The last translation I choose is the Wai-Lim-Yip version. For me this version has the most traditional feel. The author avoids excessively lengthily single lines, preferring where necessary to use two rather then one. So it gives to the author more poetic control. This version is less emotional then other two, and looks like translation without the author’s interpretation of the text or any emotional undertones. Likewise this version doesn’t have any formality, compare to the previous version, which softened by the direct address of “you” and “I”.

Perhaps, my favorite translation is The River – Merchant’s Wife: A Letter by Ezra Pound, since this version is feel more like interpretation rather then translation, and this particular version brings imaginative insight that strengthening our understanding without reasoning to amplification (as, for example, we can see in second version). This translation is a golden mean between two extreme versions discussed above. It has the right amount of emotions, elegantly and intelligently presented to the audience. Also, I like that Pound has transported over and constructed the image of a gentle, emotionally sophisticated and mature woman in his version without “emotional nakedness” of Lowell’s version and plain character of Wai-Lam Yip’s version.

With all the different versions of this poem, the author’s writing method and word choice separates the poems. Just from the titles of the poems, they each show a different side to the same story.

In “The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter” by Ezra Pound, the writing used in the poem is much more casual. Also, the tone here in this version is sad since every stanza describes the narrator as being sad and even the place where she lives is filled with sorrow.

With W.J.B. Fletcher’s “That Parting at Ch’ang Kan”, the poem is written in a very formal and old style. The words being used aren’t words you use everyday such as o’er, lo, and thee. With these words, the whole poem becomes difficult to understand. The tone from this poem seems to show the narrator as being very anxious of her husband’s return.

In contrast to the previous poem, Witter Bynner’s “A Song of Ch’and Kan” simplifies the words being used in the poem . The simplicity of it makes the poem relatively easy to understand . The writing here could be said as being the language that most people would talk with nowadays. The tone of the poem gives off also a sad and longing tone from the narrator.

The version I like more than the others would be Shigeyoshi Obata’s “Two Letters from Chang-Kan“. It gives the narrator an actual image when the first line describes her as being a river merchant’s wife. Also with how everything is described in the poem, I find it to be the most well described of the various versions.

All of the poems are very similar as they should be since they are translations of one original poem. However, they all focus on a different part of the wife’s story. Hence, each translation has a different title for the poem. The first translation is titled “The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter” by Ezra Pound and the second is titled “That Parting at Ch’ang Kan” by W.J.B. Fletcher. The first poem does bring up the wife’s sorrow over her husband’s absence but it has more of a mellow tone. She misses him but they are still married and she is writing him a letter as a way to communicate with him. The second poem focuses more on the  actual separation of the two. In the last stanza, it says, “I sit and wail, my red cheeks growing old. / Early and late I to the gorges go, / Waiting for news that if they coming told” (26-8).  In the first poem, I get the impression that the wife just wants the husband to let her know when he is coming back. In the second one, it’s as if the wife is hoping that the husband will be considerate enough to even do so. The disconnect between them is stronger.

There are stylistic differences between the various translations. Not all of them have the same number of stanzas and not all the poets separate the verses in the same way. For example, the third translation, “Ch’ang Kan” by Amy Lowell only has to stanzas whereas the fourth translation, “Two Letters From Chang-Kan-I” by Shigeyoshi Obata has seven stanzas. “A Song of Ch’and Kan” by Witter Bynner is the only poet to use ellipsis. Wai-Lyn Yip is the only poet that chose to number each verse of his translation, “Ch-ang-an Memories”.

Not all of the transitions use the same type of language. W.J.B Fletcher in “That Parting at Ch’ang Kan” uses an old-fashioned language that made reading and understanding the poem a different experience than reading the other translations. The use of exclamation points gives the poem a different tone. Amy Lowell’s decision to translate the poem into two stanzas made me feel like I was reading prose rather than poetry. I had a similar experience reading Witter Bynner’s piece because he only uses one stanza. Wai-Lim Yip’s poem stood out the most to me merely because the poet chose to number every individual line of the poem. I suppose it is not that big of a change to the storyline of the poem but it makes it look so different that I felt like I was reading a new poem.

My favorite translation of the poem would have to be “Ch’ang-an Memories” by Wai-Lim Yip. I like Yip’s stylistic decision number the lines of the poem. Most importantly, I appreciate how Yip questions the lady’s husband. No other poet does this. He writes, “If you have the faith of Wei-sheng. / Why do I have to climb up the waiting tower?” Here, the wife is questioning why she and her husband are handling their situation differently.

Li Bo looking at the moon

We might think of translation as a relatively straightforward process of switching a text from one language to another—something you might just use a dictionary to do. But those of you who’ve learned a second (or third, or fourth) language know that a straight, word-for-word, dictionary translation is rarely satisfying and often doesn’t even make sense! Such a translation can’t capture tone, idiomatic expressions, irony, or any number of other things that are important to literature—and maybe especially to poetry. Instead, expert translators try to capture the tone of the original work, to evoke what the original text attempted to evoke. In this sense, translation (like adaptation) is a process of interpretation.

For Tuesday, read the packet of poems by Li Bo that I distributed in class. (It’s also posted on this blog under “Readings and Handouts” if you lose track of yours.) In a post of your own, first point out three differences you see in the different versions of “The Song of Ch’ang Kan” that you read; please be as specific as possible (quote lines and be sure to refer clearly to which version you’re discussing each time), even if you’re not sure of how to put your impression into words. Just try. (Note: you may not talk about every version.) Then, write a brief statement about which version you like best and why.

There will be no additional reading for next Thursday; just make sure to reread the poems (and annotate them!) to prepare for class discussion. And be sure to leave one comment on someone else’s post before class on Thursday. (Set yourself a reminder if you have to!)

Sita Sings the Blues is a 2008 animated adapation of The Ramayana, created by the American artist Nina Paley. In it, Paley experiments with what the medium of animation allows her to do both in representing the story of the epic and in incorporating elements from her own life experience.

For Tuesday, watch the film (which is about an hour and twenty minutes long), by going to this link: http://sitasingstheblues.com/watch.html

(Paley has distributed the film for free. She discusses this in her extensive FAQ, which you should also read: http://sitasingstheblues.com/faq.html)

After watching the film and reading the FAQ, leave a comment to this post discussing one decision Paley makes in adapting the epic. Explain what the decision is and why it is important (that is, why that decision changes the way we view the original work by revising something about the epic and/or by revealing something about the epic you hadn’t noticed before). Then, say a bit about what you think about the decision that she made. (You might recall the way we discussed staging and adaptation with Lysistrata or the way you thought about interpretation with the images of The Ramayana.)

Make sure you also finish reading The Ramayana before our class on Thursday.

As always, let me know if you have any questions!

Remember that Thursday, we won’t be having class face-to-face, since I’ll be out of town. You should, though, be sure to read up through pg. 105 of The Ramayana. And, as we get further into the epic, we should be thinking about what cultural values are being supported by the story but also about how the story is crafted: its mixture of the natural and supernatural, its pacing and sense of drama, its style.

By Thursday night, leave a comment on this post pointing to one (1!) sentence in the reading (quote accurately and provide a page number). In your comment, explain why you think the sentence is significant or puzzling or otherwise worthy of further analysis. You should also include a bit about how the sentence communicates what it communicates (that is, point out word choice, figurative language like a metaphor or simile, odd grammar, etc.). (Make sure to do both of these things to get full credit.)