Wouldn't it be great if you couldn't sleep at night and looked at the window and there was a delightful Moon soaked fog creating an elegant night sky. And then you could walk over at 2:00 in the morning to your neighbor and tell them to come outside and look at it with you. In Arizona, your neighbor would likely shoot you. This is great stuff.
Actually you do but mostly in the Foothills and not down in the valley so much. But in the winter sometimes it rolls in. I have no idea where the moisture comes from. Probably from the water treatment plant of our tainted water supply
The localized version of this, with the “water” coming from a heat mirage instead of moonlight, might be a little less appealing, but maybe that’s just my elitist coastal biases talking
Heat mirages are generally only during the daytime. Maybe I should have been discussing haboobs. That would be slick. Going to your neighbor and asking them to come out and watch the haboob come in and knock you over in a cloud of dust and sand. It's sort of the same thing.
My only real justification is "vibes," and it's not something I'm consistent on, but rhetorical questions, especially when they're really just assertions with a question tag, are one of the areas where my idiosyncratic standards of fidelity allow (and require) some license. It's an iffy move, and one I'm never really sure I should be allowed to get away with.
Here, retaining the question form felt like it distracted from the final line, which I take to be the point of the piece -- but that could just be a problem with my English.
Although I've spent fifty years with Chinese poetry and painting am still a novice at translation. Am asking to learn. I see your points and your translation conveys the tone and spirit of this poem. In so many of Su Shi's poems the questions point us to essential threads of narrative and meaning. Not here though, as you say. May I share your translation with my students?
Am really fortunate to return to Su Shi with a new group of students every spring. After reading and thinking through Entering the Gorges (1059) they are usually all in.
I share exactly the same vibes as Brendan. There are a lot of cases where what is formally a rhetorical question in Classical Chinese reads as a simple negative sentence. Like, we call them "rhetorical" questions, but they don't have a rhetorical feel in the source. Translating them as rhetorical questions in English makes them seem too impassioned, so it often makes much more sense just to translate them as declarative sentences.
It's interesting that I'm from the UK, so I don't think this is an English dialect-specific thing. I see it as just a feature of 文言文 rhetoric.
Yeah: I definitely wouldn't say that these should *never* be translated as questions -- it's hard to think of anything I'd say *has* to be done a certain way -- but when the text feels as if it came out the way it did because of the language, rather than because of a decision on the part of the author, I take the license to translate something that sounds natural in 文言 into something that sounds natural in English. In this case, having Su say "What night lacks a moon? What place lacks bamboos and cypresses?" in English just felt a little too Drama Kid.
Lovely rendition! I would say this is a xiaopin before they started calling them that —I wonder if it’s in the late Ming collection 《東坡小品》, reportedly the first collection to use the term to refer to leisure writing with that term (afaik). Did he really “undress,” because I don’t see where he says he “got dressed again”? Maybe he was streaking? Or maybe he just loosened his clothes, like we loosen our ties at the bar after work?
Absolutely a xiaopin avant le, um, caractère -- interesting that the term is first associated with him! Hadn't known that, but it feels perfectly fitting.
And yeah; I'm pulling "got dressed again" out of 起 here, just on the assumption that he would've gotten himself decent before stepping out. I think it's probably an open question as to whether 解衣 here is "just taking off" or "had taken off" -- I'm reading 解衣欲睡 as two things in sequence, but it could just as well be "was undressing/unbuttoning and getting ready for sleep," I think.
Now that you mention it, it’s odd that at first he is 欲睡 (“sleepy”? Or “about to get in bed”?) when the moon appears and he suddenly becomes restless and energized. Saying that Zhang Huaimin 亦未寝 suggests that Su hadn’t actually gone to bed either. I guess we’d have to know more about apparel and customs. But I thought 解衣 was also something you could do at a banquet or drinking party without being arrested for indecent exposure. Maybe he just slipped into something more comfortable?
I do like the idea of Su Shi in a skimpy negligee -- I may like the idea a little TOO much -- but to me, at least, 解衣欲睡 sounds like he's in the process of getting into his jammies, but hasn't actually completed it. But you're right, 解衣 could be everything from "loosening" to "unbuttoning," and I don't have any idea how many layers or buttons or fasteners we'd be talking about here. Mostly, I think it's there (besides whatever factual value it may have) to paint an image of a completely unremarkable nighttime routine being interrupted by something wonderful.
There's a real quantity-is-its-own-quality feature to this anecdote. The translation is great, but it's still too long, you know? The small moment, captured in a few careless characters that match the... lightness? serendipity? ephemerality? of the event is so gorgeous.
Do do that famous ci - I find all published versions of it to be nonsensical, and I'll be interested to see how you interpret it!
Absolutely -- it's such a perfect little work in miniature, and it feels like a concentrated shot of a lot of the things people love about Su Shi.
It'd be fun at some point to try producing a few different translations of a piece, each one focusing on translating a different aspect -- including compactness. I've seen a few things along these lines, like the early translations of 詩經 odes by Edward Harper Parker (as "V. W. X.", in "The Ballads of the Shi-King" - https://archive.org/details/thechinareviewv718781879 ). Sometimes they work really well, which means it *can* work -- though the failure mode is something like Wai-lim Yip's huffed-too-much-Ezra-Pound-ass dictionary cribs of Tang poetry, which read like they were written by an Orientalist caveman. (I assume someone somewhere must have liked them once.)
Yeah, there just need to be more translations out there, more options and approaches tried out. Without the music for the poetry and lyrics, working out exactly how they tick is always going to be guesswork, but it can be informed guesswork if a lot of different translations have bounced off the source pieces.
Wouldn't it be great if you couldn't sleep at night and looked at the window and there was a delightful Moon soaked fog creating an elegant night sky. And then you could walk over at 2:00 in the morning to your neighbor and tell them to come outside and look at it with you. In Arizona, your neighbor would likely shoot you. This is great stuff.
Do you *get* fog in Arizona? I thought that was kind of the point of the place.
Actually you do but mostly in the Foothills and not down in the valley so much. But in the winter sometimes it rolls in. I have no idea where the moisture comes from. Probably from the water treatment plant of our tainted water supply
The localized version of this, with the “water” coming from a heat mirage instead of moonlight, might be a little less appealing, but maybe that’s just my elitist coastal biases talking
Heat mirages are generally only during the daytime. Maybe I should have been discussing haboobs. That would be slick. Going to your neighbor and asking them to come out and watch the haboob come in and knock you over in a cloud of dust and sand. It's sort of the same thing.
It’s survivorship bias- the poets who popped over and woke up their Mongol neighbors didn’t leave poems about it.
Perfectly timed for my freshman seminar on Su Shi. Curious about your decision to make the last lines statements rather than questions.
My only real justification is "vibes," and it's not something I'm consistent on, but rhetorical questions, especially when they're really just assertions with a question tag, are one of the areas where my idiosyncratic standards of fidelity allow (and require) some license. It's an iffy move, and one I'm never really sure I should be allowed to get away with.
Here, retaining the question form felt like it distracted from the final line, which I take to be the point of the piece -- but that could just be a problem with my English.
Although I've spent fifty years with Chinese poetry and painting am still a novice at translation. Am asking to learn. I see your points and your translation conveys the tone and spirit of this poem. In so many of Su Shi's poems the questions point us to essential threads of narrative and meaning. Not here though, as you say. May I share your translation with my students?
By all means! The seminar sounds extremely cool -- I'm jealous of them!
Am really fortunate to return to Su Shi with a new group of students every spring. After reading and thinking through Entering the Gorges (1059) they are usually all in.
I bet -- 試看飛鳥樂 / 高遁此心甘 is pretty hard to beat. Which translation do you use?
Have you published a translation? If so where? Egan and Fuller (and Watson translated passages).
I share exactly the same vibes as Brendan. There are a lot of cases where what is formally a rhetorical question in Classical Chinese reads as a simple negative sentence. Like, we call them "rhetorical" questions, but they don't have a rhetorical feel in the source. Translating them as rhetorical questions in English makes them seem too impassioned, so it often makes much more sense just to translate them as declarative sentences.
It's interesting that I'm from the UK, so I don't think this is an English dialect-specific thing. I see it as just a feature of 文言文 rhetoric.
Yeah: I definitely wouldn't say that these should *never* be translated as questions -- it's hard to think of anything I'd say *has* to be done a certain way -- but when the text feels as if it came out the way it did because of the language, rather than because of a decision on the part of the author, I take the license to translate something that sounds natural in 文言 into something that sounds natural in English. In this case, having Su say "What night lacks a moon? What place lacks bamboos and cypresses?" in English just felt a little too Drama Kid.
Lovely rendition! I would say this is a xiaopin before they started calling them that —I wonder if it’s in the late Ming collection 《東坡小品》, reportedly the first collection to use the term to refer to leisure writing with that term (afaik). Did he really “undress,” because I don’t see where he says he “got dressed again”? Maybe he was streaking? Or maybe he just loosened his clothes, like we loosen our ties at the bar after work?
Absolutely a xiaopin avant le, um, caractère -- interesting that the term is first associated with him! Hadn't known that, but it feels perfectly fitting.
And yeah; I'm pulling "got dressed again" out of 起 here, just on the assumption that he would've gotten himself decent before stepping out. I think it's probably an open question as to whether 解衣 here is "just taking off" or "had taken off" -- I'm reading 解衣欲睡 as two things in sequence, but it could just as well be "was undressing/unbuttoning and getting ready for sleep," I think.
Now that you mention it, it’s odd that at first he is 欲睡 (“sleepy”? Or “about to get in bed”?) when the moon appears and he suddenly becomes restless and energized. Saying that Zhang Huaimin 亦未寝 suggests that Su hadn’t actually gone to bed either. I guess we’d have to know more about apparel and customs. But I thought 解衣 was also something you could do at a banquet or drinking party without being arrested for indecent exposure. Maybe he just slipped into something more comfortable?
I do like the idea of Su Shi in a skimpy negligee -- I may like the idea a little TOO much -- but to me, at least, 解衣欲睡 sounds like he's in the process of getting into his jammies, but hasn't actually completed it. But you're right, 解衣 could be everything from "loosening" to "unbuttoning," and I don't have any idea how many layers or buttons or fasteners we'd be talking about here. Mostly, I think it's there (besides whatever factual value it may have) to paint an image of a completely unremarkable nighttime routine being interrupted by something wonderful.
Lovely. Thanks, as always!
Glad you liked it! Su Shi is one of those writers it's almost impossible to dislike.
There's a real quantity-is-its-own-quality feature to this anecdote. The translation is great, but it's still too long, you know? The small moment, captured in a few careless characters that match the... lightness? serendipity? ephemerality? of the event is so gorgeous.
Do do that famous ci - I find all published versions of it to be nonsensical, and I'll be interested to see how you interpret it!
Absolutely -- it's such a perfect little work in miniature, and it feels like a concentrated shot of a lot of the things people love about Su Shi.
It'd be fun at some point to try producing a few different translations of a piece, each one focusing on translating a different aspect -- including compactness. I've seen a few things along these lines, like the early translations of 詩經 odes by Edward Harper Parker (as "V. W. X.", in "The Ballads of the Shi-King" - https://archive.org/details/thechinareviewv718781879 ). Sometimes they work really well, which means it *can* work -- though the failure mode is something like Wai-lim Yip's huffed-too-much-Ezra-Pound-ass dictionary cribs of Tang poetry, which read like they were written by an Orientalist caveman. (I assume someone somewhere must have liked them once.)
Yeah, there just need to be more translations out there, more options and approaches tried out. Without the music for the poetry and lyrics, working out exactly how they tick is always going to be guesswork, but it can be informed guesswork if a lot of different translations have bounced off the source pieces.