春花秋月何時了，
往事知多少。
小樓昨夜又東風，
故國不堪回首月明中。
雕欄玉砌應猶在，
只是朱顏改。
問君能有幾多愁，
恰似一江春水向東流。
Starting From the Title: Translating a Captured Ruler and His Captivating Ci
The title of this poem has me stuck — not a good sign. Someone once said, “well begun is half done,” and I may have just jeopardized my shortcut.
This title (“Yü Mei Ren”) can be rendered as “Fair Lady Yü” but this lady is not related to the poet, Li Yu. In fact, the title is irrelevant to the content of the poem — specifically, of the ci.
As a traditional form of Chinese poetry, ci typically has a title that indicates the “set pattern” of the poem, which dictates the number of characters in each line, as well as their rhymes and tones (explained below). These set patterns initially evolved from lyrics of certain tunes, thus the restrictions, though the tunes themselves were lost in time. This particular tune is said to be written first for Xiang Yü’s (项羽, 232–202 BC) concubine, Yü (虞姬) (this is the Yü used in the title). Xiang Yü was a heroic leader of great nobility and virility, who led revolutions that overthrew the Qin Dynasty (221–206 BC). Later, however, he suffered a tragic military defeat and committed suicide. Xiang foresaw this failure, and thus bid a final farewell to his beloved beautiful concubine, Yü, before going to the battlefield. The love and grief between Xiang and Yü, intertwined with the fate of a regime and the tragic heroism, are well known to native readers. In analyzing a ci, people typically attach no importance to the background of the title, because the set pattern can be used for a variety of unrelated themes, and the origin of some tunes can be obscure. Still, it would be fun to speculate whether Li Yu chose this set pattern with a little dark humor, about which readers may form their own judgment after reading the poet’s biography and the translation.
But I hesitate to present such extraneous information before the reader gets to the content of the ci itself. On the other hand, if the translation of content is captivating, maybe the reader will seek out this information, and more.
Sound
The tones, which are strict, melodious, and crucial to the original poem, are not present in English — and in my opinion, impossible to render faithfully. There are four tones in Chinese, and most Chinese characters have only one of the four (some can have more than one tone, and people need to choose the most appropriate according to the context, e.g. the particular phrase a character is used in). In poetry, these four tones are divided into two categories, which we may call “even” and “oblique.” For every set pattern of Chinese poem, it is predetermined whether each character should be even or oblique. The tones therefore strongly limit the author’s choice of words. They, however, create a certain melody when one recites the ci in words. There are times I would try to recite a ci, but the words would get stuck on the tip of my tongue; I simply could not remember them. Yet the tones would still come to me spontaneously, and humming them was exhilarating. These were frustrating experiences, but they might speak to the significance of tones in appreciating a ci. On the other hand, studies show that humans selectively develop sensitivity to phonemes they are exposed to in the first twelve months after birth, and gradually lose the sensitivity to other phonemes (one reason why learning a second language can be so difficult, or why certain racial pejoratives were formed). While tones are different from phonemes, one’s attunement to and appreciation of tones likely rest on significant early exposure to them.
Rhyme is another aspect that requires consideration in terms of the sound of ci. The rhyme scheme of “Yü Mei Ren” is in couplets, if you will, though the original probably did not have the format presented above, with line breaks and punctuations. Therefore I hesitate to use words like “verse” or “stanza,” for fear of unfaithfulness and of creating an illusion that non-English poetry maps perfectly onto English poetry. It may be important to note that the standard of rhyme also works slightly differently. In English, the full vowel and the ending consonant, if there is one, must match. Only the ending consonant, or vowel, matters in Chinese. In this poem, for example, feng and zhong rhyme because of the ending consonant ng, while chou and liu rhyme because of the ending vowel u. The conceptual and nomenclative mismatch goes even further. In fact, the word “poetry” itself creates ambiguities in indistinctively referring to shi, ci, and qu, three different genres of classical Chinese poetry.
Syntax
Classical Chinese is strange. Classical Chinese is beautiful. It has a great succinctness and vividness, both of which entice one to explore further. It is mesmerizing yet almost impossible to find an equivalent in English. Ezra Pound interestingly noted that one should use a proportionally antiquated language in translation, meaning that one should identify in the development of the target language a historical stage similar to that of the original language. While this notion sounds appealing at first, serious consideration reveals that it is impractical to compare the development of one language to that of another. What we take for granted today as modern Chinese originates from drastic social changes in China in the early twentieth century, as a tool of breaking free from obsolete traditions and revolutionizing people’s ideologies. Before that, classical Chinese had various forms and levels of sophistication — even Li’s own poems before and after his capture show distinctive changes in vocabulary. Therefore, the issue is more complicated than choosing a linguistic period, as there can be significant variations in a period itself, and the wiggle room just gets smaller (for the interested reader, I highly recommend a translation by Jone A. Turner, S.J., who had a similar notion to Pound’s, and partially succeeded). Other than feasibility, is it fair to create either a pseudo-archaic or modern rendition of the original, and to let readers assume its authenticity? Here, I was initially fascinated by the idea of Vladimir Nabokov, who proposed that translations should be absolutely literary, with extensive footnotes that explain every feature of the original that was lost in translation. After I translated the poem that way, however, the fascination ceased — the extensive footnotes, like “skyscrapers” on the page, were pompous and intrusive; it was difficult to draw the line between conveying versus interpreting features; and most importantly, the process was like sloppily dissecting a poem and laying out the valuable parts for auction. Whatever remaining liveliness in the poem was gone once I announced my translation as “complete.” As a result, I decided to include a word-for-word translation for anyone who wants a glimpse of the original and removed all footnotes, except one.
Confession
The above is mostly my extended justification (and self-exoneration) for choosing not to preserve the form of the original, as I found no satisfying way to do so. Of course, my judgment was partly clouded by my affection for the original, which I learned to recite from a young age and which represents a dense and riveting cultural history to me. It was my deliberate choice to write the translation as a third-person narrative, since it allowed me to integrate the historical background into the translation rather than provide a separate and dry footnote that broke the reader’s immersion in the story. The specific plot with guards and a dream, however, was arbitrary — I scribbled down the scene immediately after it came into my head during a relaxing hot shower. I hope this turns out to be an accessible and enjoyable translation.
Well, at least I managed to get away without a title.
Word-for-word Translation: Spring flowers, autumn moon, when will end? Foregone things, know much or little. Last night, again, east wind in small pavilion, Former country, in bright moonlight, bears not turning head back on. Carved railings, jade stairs, should still exist, Only those crimson faces* have changed. Ask thee can have how much sorrow, Just like a river of spring tide eastward flow. *Literally translated from the original, “crimson faces” (朱顏) is a variation of “red faces,” (紅顏) possibly as a result of the poet’s effort to fit the tone of set pattern. “Red faces” is a common phrase to refer to beautiful young girls in classical Chinese and does not suggest embarrassment or exertion.Translation:
Li Yü, dressed in a coarse, gray robe, was in a plain room with bare wooden furniture. The windows, carved with shapes of flowers, clattered in the wind. Li stood up to open the window and looked out at the fresh green leaves and budding flowers in the yard. He stared at them for a moment without any expression of joy or sorrow, turned, and sat back down beside a low table, leaving the windows open. Against the closed doors, he could see shadows of two armed guards. “They are to protect the safety of your Highness,” he remembered being told when he surrendered his kingdom to the army just outside the city walls. “At least no more innocent people in the capital will die because of me,” he thought. “Ah, it’s the third year now.”
In a spring drowsiness, Li dozed off against the wall. In a rare dream, he was back in his carefree teenage years. He was never thought of as the next ruler, as his older brother was in line to succeed. Li indulged himself with the maidens’ dancing and singing, with poetry and painting, and with Buddhism. When his brother died unexpectedly, and he became the ruler, he was not too bothered either — he had even more freedom and resources to do what he liked. Pitiable were the officials who tried to divert his attention to politics and military affairs — they were simply executed.
“Lunch!” a guard shouted as he barged into the room, holding a wooden tray with two bowls of plain buns and some pickles. Li, startled awake, silently watched the guard walking in, putting the plate on the table, and closing the door.
“What are my people eating now?” Li found his thoughts wandering back to the dream a moment ago. “But it's not my country anymore.” He quickly self-corrected. “Yet, how many of them are still alive? What kind of life are they living? Hopefully better than mine, of course. The palace will probably still be there — it’s too magnificent and too much work to rebuild. Did they change the drapes, and throw away my writing? Ah, the talented maidens, they will probably never be as generously rewarded.”
“Oh, this ruthless spring brings so much memory. But I shan’t blame the spring — how many more springs will I see? Ha. I used to say I knew of sorrow. Sorrow when an exquisite piece of music eventually ended, sorrow when my beloved wife died, sorrow when I couldn’t live long enough to read and write all the beautiful things. But now, now, I only long to see the Yangtze River one more time in the spring, with all its majestic tides, and let out a sigh.”