Wang
Wei (699-761), one of the three great poets of the
earlier Tang
Dynasty, was born in Shensi, his father a local official
and his mother a member of a distinguished literary family.
At 16 Wei and a brother were introduced to society in the
Tang
capital of Chang-an, then the largest city in the world,
and at 23 he passed the shin-shih which guaranteed
entry into literary and official circles (exams which Du
Fu failed and Li
Bai never deigned to sit). A man of outstanding talents
— courtier, administrator, poet,
calligrapher, musician andpainter
— Wang was immediately appointed Assistant Secretary
for Music, which he seems to have found irksome. After a
minor indiscretion, was exiled to the provinces in Shantung,
where he remained some years before resigning and returning
to Chang-an. He married and set about developing an estate
in the Changnan hills south of the capital, to which he
returned whenever possible. Wang's wife died when he was
30, and, not remarrying, the poet returned to Government
service a few years later, dividing his time between Changnan
and various missions, including three years on the northwest
frontier. In 750 AD, when his mother died, Wang retired
to write and paint and meditate in his beloved Changnan.
Far more than the mercurial Li Bai or the plain-spoken Du
Fu, Wang Wei was a successful official — he amassed
several fortunes and gave lavishly to monasteries —
but he too was caught up in the 755-9 An Lushan rebellion.
Captured by rebels, Wang was obliged to collaborate, for
which he was briefly
imprisoned when imperial order was restored. But always
valuable, Wang returned to Government service and belonged
to the Council of State when he died in 761. Modest, supremely
gifted but detached from life, Wang was the model scholar
official, and his 400 poems are in many anthologies.
The Tang
poets
An
enormous
quantity of poetry
was written throughout the Tang period, and its greatest
exponents illustrate the three fundamental
strands of Chinese thought: Confucianism,
Taoism
and Buddhism.
Du Fu was more Confucian, looking steadfastly at life, even
its most harrowing aspects, with an understanding stoicism.
Duties and responsibilities are what make the virtuous man,
who learns from correctness in family relationships to adopt
proper attitudes to society. The mercurial Li
Bai exemplified the Taoist attitude: his sudden inspiration,
brilliant improvisations and unmatched technical felicity.
The Tao, unknown and unfathomable, is behind the flow of
pattern and process in the universe, which we can abstract
into concepts but not fully comprehend. Wang Wei was a Buddhist
mystic, viewing the world with a detached compassion. Life
is an illusion, and its ensnaring passions and appetites
keep us from our better natures — the more so in the
sophisticated court life of the Tang where Chinese culture
reached its apogee. All three poets were ambivalent towards
its refined charms, particularly during the corrupting last
years of Taizong's rule, though also bitterly sad at its
destruction by the An Lushan rebels. Li Bai's membership
of the celebrated Han-lin Academy lasted only two years,
Du Fu never held more than minor posts, and even the courtly
Wang Wei was happiest
in the Changnan, in monastery gardens or reflecting on unspoiled
nature.
Translating
the Chinese
Translation
commonly serves
several different if overlappingaims:
1. a close paraphrase (emphasizing the nuances of meaning),
2. a representation
of how the original appears to a native speaker (finding
corollaries of mood, tone, voice, intention, etc.), or 3.
something that actually works as an English poem (recreating
the essence of the original through the very different resources
and traditions of English poetry). Chinese poetry differs
particularly in its writingsystem,
use of tones and tone patterns, etymology,
concision
(no conjunctions, articles or plurals) fluid relationship
between nouns and verbs, free word order, and allusion to
previous events or poems
(often hundreds
of years in the past). Also different are the rulesandconventions
of Chinese poetry that necessarily exploit
the features of Chinese, which raises the bar further. Until
the twentieth century, translations tended to follow aim
3, producing poems that are not
to be despised but do not seem very Chinese. Under Modernism,
translations were often loose paraphrases (Pound)
and/or a form of stress verse (Waley
and Rexroth)
— at their best achieving something aims 1 and 3 but
not much of 2. Today,
often through collaboration
between poet and a native speaker, the emphasis is more
on aims 1 and 2, with aim 3 only being achieved when translators
are themselves good poets. Naturally, there are many exceptions
and variations — translation has become an academic
industry — and the different features of European languages
impart their own flavour: the assonance of Spanishverse,
the syllabic nature and more fluid sound of French
verse. Finally, it should be noted that poets often make
translations to push their own development in new directions,
either in sensibility or more effective use of their own
language.
