Chinese Poetry

[Rob_Hugo@PortNW]

I really enjoyed the poetry discussion on October 11th. I decided to create this new thread and open it up to our class to post our individual viewpoints.

On page 3 there is a poem:

Guan Xiu (late 9th-early 10th century), " By the Passes: Songs" (second of four)

I think once you read it, you'll agree the images are very visual.

[Anonymous]

I reallyenjoyed it too. Had it not been for tonight I would have never felt comfortable reading Chinese poetry, let alone trying to analyze it, interpret it, or discuss it. Tonight's class took my fear of poetry away.

[Anonymous]

I also enjoyed the session. Art is in the mind of the observer. Whether we become experts on Chinese literature or we just read a few poems, I believe that whatever your own interpretation of a poem, it is a correct interpretation. Anyone who has ever written a poem would probably agree (for that matter created a painting or written a short story, play, etc..) that you don't do it with a singleness of purpose. You do it to do it.

[Anonymous]

I think we all enjoyed the session and wished we had more time to discuss it. Great facilitation from David Schaberg. It reminded me how important it is to give our students that opportunity to share their ideas and comments in our classroom as well. As for mdelaney's comment "creating art for art's sake", well written.

[Anonymous]

Any ideas of how to facilitate poetry discussions like our group with middle school (6th grade) ? I have worked with my students in interpreting reading novels and the Odyssey for Greek Cilivilation but never for Chinese literature. May I ask for recommendations that I could share that would be more age appropriate? Some of our discussion was perhaps more PG-13 than PG! =:O

[Anonymous]

Our discussion last Tuesday reminded me how important primary sources are for learning about the culture and history of any era. (I cringe at some of the artifacts left by our generation.) I feel like I thought more about warring Chinese states from the war poems than from reading the abbreviated summaries in our text. Certainly one could have a class extrapolate the meanings and feelings from those poems and compare and contrast them to the poems/songs/raps to which they listen.

I am inspired to find more primary sources of like kind. dan

[Anonymous]

As Mr. David Schaberg was reading one of the poems in Chinese, these thoughts were crossing my mind:

• How has he learned such a difficult language to the point that he can read its poetry and understand it?
• One very influential scholar believes that poetry translation from Chinese is more or less impossible. He even modestly claims that his translations have no poetry value (Edward Schafer). (This will be my argument within the coming lines)
• I can understand characters to represent objects. But how do Chinese write such difficult concepts using characters?
• How well must one understand a culture in order to translate its poetry?
• I wonder if students of Chinese language can really have a fair grasp of the conventions and metaphoric expressions.
• And a dozen more questions which I cannot remember now.

Some of these questions were based on the fact that when I read the English translations of Persian poetry (I am Persian) it seems like eating a tasteless food versus a tasty spicy food, or listening to a song with no music. Persian poetry carries its own music with it. The spice and the music are embedded as the poet writes the words. Persians live with poetry to the point when a father gives advice to his son, he might give it in poems. Two ordinary people might say things to each other in the form of poems. Two old ladies might get into an argument and throw poems at each other. Just wanted to give you a sense of how deeply one is immersed into poetry if he lives in a Persian society.
Now imagine these deeply flavored poems being translated. For example the word wine almost never has the literal meaning of wine as a drink. There are many similar notions which have no force whatsoever in the Western literary tradition. How could Persian poems be translated into a language which is so distant from it?
Still, many, with all the above experiences fail to understand, interpret or even correctly recite Persian poetry. I wonder how close one could come if he has not immersed himself into the Persian culture.
I said all of this just to reason that these Chinese translations could be far from what they should be. How do I claim this? Well my claim is not because I consider myself equal to any of the scholars who have done such valuable translations of Chinese poetry. But rather I use the simple logics as follows:
• Persian culture is much closer to the western culture and shares many of the same religious values and traditions as well as the fact that it is an Indo-European language (father is pedar, Mother is modar, brother is baradr, door is dar, House is hoash, spinach is esfenaj, lemon is leemoo, pajama, is pijame, and many more.)
• Persian language is much easier to learn. It has a simple grammar and a couple of tenses. Chinese, I hear, is grammatically simple, but the vocabulary is completely alien, so you have to learn every word from scratch.
• The Persian writing system, though unfamiliar, is no more difficult than English alphabet. Chinese requires years of study just to acquire a decent reading ability.
• Persian has been used as a lingua franca and is one of the easiest languages to learn.
• And yet cultural and literary traditions can hinder translation. Some features of traditional Persian poetry make life difficult for its translators.

583 words

[Anonymous]

Reza brings up a valuable point. When we look at foreign media, it comes down to trust in the translator. Whether it is a movie, song, poem, novel, text, anything.
I am reminded of my early undergrad years. For a class, I looked at copies of the ancient Greek and Hebrew texts of the Bible. I then grabbed a dictionary and did my own translations. Odd how my translations were dfferent from the Bible we've all seen. Some differences were minor, some were major.
I don't have any real answers to this issue except to find a translation that suits your personality or tastes. I have looked at over 20 different Tao Te Ching's and each one is diferent. Not to say one is any better than another, just that they are different.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the response Arthur. Maybe I was not able to express my thoughts as I meant it . I think I got half of my meaning through.
When I talk about singing without music, or eating a food without spices, I mean that I could have the best words picked for my translation, but there is that cultural uhm(if that's how you spell it)which will never let the tranlation create the same feeling in the readre. A persian poem that makes me feel sad, or happy, may not give me the same feeling by reading its translation, no matter how closely it is traslated. Maybe this analogy will help, eventhogh it is not very related: Sometimes a sad song, sung by a different singer does not create the same feeling. Words are the same but the quality of presentation is changed. And I don't just think what I am saying. I live it,and I've experienceed it often. Thanks for reading.[Edit by="rrustamzadeh on Oct 27, 4:56:16 PM"][/Edit]

[Anonymous]

Meanings, intentions and feelings are rarely the same between any two people. We all bring our own intentions, feelings, good and bad days that we carry. This happens in the best of situations with a shared language.

But if we are scared to make comment or develop opinions because of the even more monumental difference of language, we have over intellectualized, over politcally corrected ourselves and ruined another opportunity for fun. People are falible, we'll never know the mind of another, translations will further screw us up, but with charity and acceptance from all, we can go about sharing and having fun.

[Anonymous]

I agree. I am not a lover of poetry and avoided it at all costs in college. As much as I had fun "analyzing" the Chinese poetry (and I really did enjoy it and I am glad we had that session), I feel that we put way too much thought into these things. Even in our small group, we all had different opinions on what the poems meant. And maybe that's how it should be. We all bring something new and different to the table. Add to that, these poems are thousands of years old and have been translated numerous times and it really becomes something we should read and enjoy and take at face value. Whatever we feel that face value is. I have seen firsthand how english words have changed (notice I did not say slaughtered!) and have different meanings in the U.S. to what I was using back in England 15 years ago. What will they mean in 200 years and then add to that if they were to be translated into another language.
The mind boogles...........

[Anonymous]

I really enjoyed the post from kllewellyn. It really expressed a viewpoint I agree with and especially appreciated the idea that language wasn't slaughtered, but has actually evolved. We may not like the evolution it took, but I also think we invest the term evolution with a positive connotation. It is not, it is change, for some of us it is better, but often the opposite is also true.

I was especially amused by the comment, “What will they mean in 200 years…” Last week I told my 8th graders they would be translating English to English. I gave them a 230-year piece of writing, the Declaration of Independence. In one class, “We, therefore,…solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States.” became “We’re taking are party elsewhere!”

Two things to note, I told them to translate it into 5th grade language and they are one of my all-time favorite classes.

[Anonymous]

Please tell me , is this just change or is it slaughter?
"And I was like, no dude, and My Mom was Like, .....". How many likes are we allowed in a sentence?
I am not agreeing or disagreeing. I was just curious dude!!

[Anonymous]

'Likes', 'dudes', 'yeas' and the sorts may not be poetic, maybe even sound obsequious to our ears, but not only are they real, they transcend time and culture. If we look at our past classics, we may believe everything produced before was pearls and current generations and other cultures are swine. So dude, yea, you may not like it, but it is like forgetting that every culture and time had more shopping lists and personal notes than epic tales and incredible poems.

All groups have more ‘Bedtime for Bonzo’ than ‘Citizen Kanes’. Every culture and time had more nags, than stallions. Even though we may like to delude ourselves into thinking there were more Rocinantes in the past and in other places, it is a simple case of the grass always seeming greener on the other side.

[Anonymous]

Arthur, you made a good point that we need to have trust in the translator when reading/viewing foreign media. The problem, however, is that we don't know that person or their experieneces. AND even when we do, meanings gets changed through translation. Remember the game of telephone (You line up a group of people. One person says a sentence to the next person. The message is passed down the line. The last person says the message out loud...usually everybody laughs at the craziness of the new phrase). My point is..no matter how much trust we have in the translator, messages get lost through translation. Therefore, I feel that it's difficult to try to determine the intended meaning or expression. I think this is very important for our students to realize when examing literature and poetry. So often they are scared to answer questions becuase they don't know the "right" answer. They need to be trained, however, to understand that any answer is a "right" answer if they can justify their reasoning and logic.

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