There are three possible reactions to reading Bei Dao’s poems- understanding, feigned understanding, and non-understanding. For me, the latter ones in the list occurs more often than the former. However, there is a certain aura to the tapestry of his words, a certain charm in how he juxtaposes images in fresh and unconventional ways, a certain vigor of language that leaps off from the page. That is how I reacted to his poem, “New Year” (1995). As a personal principal for works translated from Chinese, I try to read the original before I read its English rendering.
New Year
by Bei Dao, translated by David Hinton
a child carrying flowers walks toward the new year
a conductor tattooing darkness
listens to the shortest pause
hurry a lion into the cage of music
hurry stone to masquerade as a recluse
moving in parallel nights
who’s the visitor? when the days all
tip from nests and fly down roads
the book of failure grows boundless and deep
each and every moment’s a shortcut
I follow it through the meaning of the East
returning home, closing death’s door
My immediate, perhaps arrogantly premature, reaction upon a first read of David Hinton’s version is “I can do better than this.” I felt that his translation did not capture the of the original, the fluidity of the language, the cohesiveness of its ending. Take the two lines “hurry a lion into the cage of music/ hurry stone to masquerade as a recluse.” The imperative “hurry” seems weak, the phrasing “hurry stone” is disjointed, and “masquerade” is a word choice that is overly ornate and polysyllabic. The concluding lines, which should pack the most powerful punch, is just stilted. “I follow it through the meaning of the East/ returning home, closing death’s door.” The author seems to have gone for a literal transliteration of the words, without considering that fluidity of the language. Chinese by its very nature is more concise and omits words without losing rhythm. Bei Dao’s original line is, “我得以穿過東方的意義/ 回家，關上死亡之門.” The phrase, “關上死亡之門” contains soft consonants (if you can all it that) and six syllables provides a sense of serene closure, but Hinton’s is an abrupt, “closing death’s door”, the alliterative d’s and hard c’s not helped at all by its terse 4 syllables. Of course, criticism is easy. Art is difficult. Only through attempting to translate it myself did I realize the choices the translator had to grapple with, and the inherent constraints of the language itself. With that said, translating is an absorbing art, so I have enclosed my own attempt below.
New Year
Clutching flowers, a child walks towards the New Year
A conductor who tattoos black
listens for the shortest of pauses
Quick, shut the lion into a cage of music
Quick, have the stone disguise itself as a hermit
moving between parallel planes
Who is the guest? When the days
fall out of the nest and fly down the paths
and the book of failures deepen
Every moment is a shortcut
where I need to wade through the meaning of the East
to return home and shut the door of death
Happy New Year.
Bei Dao. “New Year.” trans Hinton, David. Poetry Foundation. www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/50070/new-year-56d22cd057a50
You are doing something very wonderful here, Anthony!
Your version is quite readable —I am startled by the effect you achieve with “quick” . . . part of this is your use of commas, which Hinton did not do in these lines . . . Thank you for taking on a project like this — I like your frankness that DOING something yourself is often more difficult than it appears, watching someone else!