Where I Got Hung Up On the Translation

Mountain Home: The Wilderness Poetry of Ancient China by David Hinton
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

[Some great poetry here. Skip down to the dashes if you want to know how I feel about the original writers rather than my experience with this collection in particular.]

Lots of people love this translator. I just don't. I keep trying, but I can't get past his style.

The poetry in here, or at least a good bit of it, is familiar to me from other collections, other translators. Poetry I responded to positively elsewhere doesn't work for me. To be fair, he's doing exactly what he means to do, and other readers completely approve, but I don't like it.

The biggest difficulty for me is how he rearranges the original end-stopped phrasing and makes it break over lines and even between the unrhymed couplets. The break has no connection to meaning. It's entirely visual. In fact, the poems look like he's trying to right-justify everything. Why? Poetry that's supposed to breathe between lines instead rumbles on to the next line and the next verse. Once I become aware of the translator behind the poetry, I can't unsee it, and I can't focus on the poems. I pause at the end of the line and discover the thought continues below, and that little interruption takes me out of the poetry and back into my head. It feels like he's standing between us instead of bringing the reader and the poet together.

Did you ever watch a TV show or go to a movie where the music was too loud and the dialogue was buried in the mix? And it distracts you and it bugs you and frustrates you, taking you out of the show? That's me with this translation.

Other people seem to like it. Lots of 5 star ratings. I'm the outlier. If numbers mean anything, he's going about this the right way, and I can be safely ignored. But if you're like me and get distracted by stuff, be aware.

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As far as the original poets--I love these guys. I already have collections by many of them and find them not just esthetically pleasing by somehow deeply emotionally satisfying. Talking about escaping the day-to-day grind of the city to hike mountain trails and lose yourself in nature, traveling down rivers, visiting remote monasteries, reading your books on the farm, just letting life happen, really appeals to me. I may not be making sense of all the philosophical nuances, no doubt missing a lot of the chan doctrine (which is nicely summed up in the brief chapter introductions), but even without every layer of deep meaning, these poets and their work is probably my favorite.

Several of these poets, though, were new to me, so I'm gonna look for other books with more of their poetry. But hopefully I'll find someone whose translation ethos and style match my preferences.

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Where Chia Tao Hits All My Favorite Notes

When I Find You Again, It Will Be in Mountains: The Selected Poems of Chia Tao by Mike O'Connor
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

When I imagine classical Chinese poetry, especially Tang era poetry, especially with a hint (or more than a hint) of mystical religion, this is exactly what I have in mind. I may have to check to be sure, but this may be my new favorite volume of poetry. So much to love here.

Chia Tao was originally a Buddhist monk, an adherent of Chan Buddhism (which we would call zen), and though he stayed in contact with other monks his whole life, he dedicated his life to poetry. His religion was a huge part of his writings, including not just beliefs but people and places--the monks, the monasteries, the mountain retreats, and so on. The poetry is filled with trails, waterfalls, trees, and the distant sound of stone chimes, leading him toward remote monasteries. There's a lot of romance in these descriptions, and I'm here for it.

This is a nice example:

Sent to a Hua Mountain Monk

From afar,
I know your white-rock hermitage,
hidden in a haze
of evergreen trees.

When the moon sets,
it's mind-watching time;
clouds arise
in your closed eyes.

Just before dawn, temple bells
sound from neighboring peaks;
waterfalls hang thousands of feet
in emptiness.

Moss and lichen
cover the cliff face;
a narrow, indistinct path
leads to you.

There's a Wordsworth/Tintern Abbey feel to this, and I love it.

The translation is beautiful. While in some places the original elliptical phrasing is preserved (no verb, no article type of language) it is very readable and clear to an English language brain, and there's not a rhyme to be seen. (Rhyming poetry in translation is unbearable to me. A harmless prejudice, I hope.) Where it's helpful, the translator has provided notes in the back, so the reader can have the assistance without marring the look of the poetry, and I give him full marks for that choice, as well.

A lot of the poetry is contemplative and tranquil, and I adore it. But there's also a lot of emotion brilliantly captured.

Mourning the Death of Chan Master Po-Yen

Fresh moss covers
the stone bed;
how many springtimes
was it the Master's?

His profile in meditation
has been sketched;
but the body of the meditator
has been burned.

Snow in the pines
has closed the pagoda courtyard;
dust settles in the lock
on the sutra library.

I chide myself
for these two tears—
a man who hasn't grasped
the empty nature of all things.

That's very sweet. Lovely.

Highly recommended for readers of Tang poetry, or poetry more generally. Beautiful poetry nicely rendered in English, it bears many re-readings.

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