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More Translations from the Chinese
By Juyi Bai and Arthur Waley
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More Translations from the Chinese - Juyi Bai
The Project Gutenberg EBook of More Translations from the Chinese, by Various
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
Title: More Translations from the Chinese
Author: Various
Translator: Arthur Waley
Release Date: August 10, 2005 [EBook #16500]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MORE TRANSLATIONS FROM THE CHINESE ***
Produced by David Starner, Jonathan Niehof and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
Translations by Arthur Waley
A HUNDRED AND SEVENTY CHINESE POEMS
MORE TRANSLATIONS FROM THE CHINESE
MORE TRANSLATIONS FROM THE CHINESE
BY
ARTHUR WALEY
NEW YORK
ALFRED · A · KNOPF
MCMXIX
COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, Inc.
PRINTED BY THE VAIL-BALLOU CO., BINGHAMTON, N.Y. ON WARREN’S INDIA TINT OLD STYLE PAPER
BOUND BY THE PLIMPTON PRESS, NORWOOD, MASS
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
This book is not intended to be representative of Chinese literature as a whole. I have chosen and arranged chronologically various pieces which interested me and which it seemed possible to translate adequately.
An account of the history and technique of Chinese poetry will be found in the introduction to my last book.[1] Learned reviewers must not suppose that I have failed to appreciate the poets whom I do not translate. Nor can they complain that the more famous of these poets are inaccessible to European readers; about a hundred of Li Po’s poems have been translated, and thirty or forty of Tu Fu’s. I have, as before, given half my space to Po Chü-i, of whose poems I had selected for translation a much larger number than I have succeeded in rendering. I will give literal versions of two rejected ones:
EVENING
[a.d. 835]
Water’s colour at-dusk still white;
Sunsets glow in-the-dark gradually nil.
Windy lotus shakes [like] broken fan;
Wave-moon stirs [like] string [of] jewels.
Crickets chirping answer one another;
Mandarin-ducks sleep, not alone.
Little servant repeatedly announces night;
Returning steps still hesitate.
IN EARLY SPRING ALONE CLIMBING THE T‘IEN-KUNG PAGODA
[a.d. 389]
T‘ien-kung sun warm, pagoda door open;
Alone climbing, greet Spring, drink one cup.
Without limit excursion-people afar-off wonder at me;
What cause most old most first arrived!
While many of the pieces in 170 Chinese Poems
aimed at literary form in English, others did no more than give the sense of the Chinese in almost as crude a way as the two examples above. It was probably because of this inconsistency that no reviewer treated the book as an experiment in English unrhymed verse, though this was the aspect of it which most interested the writer.
In the present work I have aimed more consistently at poetic form, but have included on account of their biographical interest two or three rather unsuccessful versions of late poems by Po Chü-i.
For leave to reprint I am indebted to the editors of the English Review, Nation, New Statesman, Bulletin of School of Oriental Studies, and Reconstruction.
[1] 170 Chinese Poems,
New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1919.
CH‘U YÜAN
[Fourth Century b.c.]
[1] THE GREAT SUMMONS
When Ch‘ü Yüan had been exiled from the Court for nine years, he became so despondent that he feared his soul would part from his body and he would die. It was then that he made the poem called The Great Summons,
calling upon his soul not to leave him.
Green Spring receiveth
The vacant earth;
The white sun shineth;
Spring wind provoketh
To burst and burgeon
Each sprout and flower.
In those dark caves where Winter lurketh
Hide not, my Soul!
O Soul come back again! O, do not stray!
O Soul come back again and go not east or west, or north or south!
For to the East a mighty water drowneth Earth’s other shore;
Tossed on its waves and heaving with its tides
The hornless Dragon of the Ocean rideth:
Clouds gather low and fogs enfold the sea
And gleaming ice drifts past.
O Soul go not to the East,
To the silent Valley of Sunrise!
O Soul go not to the South
Where mile on mile the earth is burnt away
And poisonous serpents slither through the flames;
Where on precipitous paths or in deep woods
Tigers and leopards prowl,
And water-scorpions wait;
Where the king-python rears his giant head.
O Soul, go not to the South
Where the three-footed tortoise spits disease!
O Soul go not to the West
Where level wastes of sand stretch on and on;
And demons rage, swine-headed, hairy-skinned,
With bulging eyes;
Who in wild laughter gnash projecting fangs.
O Soul go not to the West
Where many perils wait!
O Soul go not to the North,
To the Lame Dragon’s frozen peaks;
Where trees and grasses dare not grow;
Where a river runs too wide to cross
And too deep to plumb,
And the sky is white with snow
And the cold cuts and kills.
O Soul seek not to fill
The treacherous voids of the north!
O Soul come back to idleness and peace.
In quietude enjoy
The lands of Ching and Ch‘u.
There work your will and follow your desire
Till sorrow is forgot,
And carelessness shall bring you length of days.
O Soul come back to joys beyond all telling!
Where thirty cubits high at harvest-time
The corn is stacked;
Where pies are cooked of millet and bearded-maize.
Guests watch the steaming bowls
And sniff the pungency of peppered herbs.
The cunning cook adds slices of bird-flesh,
Pigeon and yellow-heron and black-crane.
They taste
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