A Night Abroad

Du Fu

 A light wind is rippling at the grassy shore....
 Through the night, to my motionless tall mast,
 The stars lean down from open space,
 And the moon comes running up the river.
 ..If only my art might bring me fame
 And free my sick old age from office! --
 Flitting, flitting, what am I like
 But a sand-snipe in the wide, wide world!

Commentary

(Translated by Witter Bynner, 1929)

Here’s another translation of the same poem, by Vikram Seth

  "Thoughts While Travelling at Night"
  (Translated by Vikram Seth, 1992)

  Light breeze on the fine grass
  I stand alone at the mast.
  Stars lean on the vast wild plain
  Moon bobs in the great river's spate.
  Letters have brought no fame
  Office? Too old to obtain.
  Drifting, what am I like?
  A gull between the earth and sky.

I finally received a copy of Vikram Seth’s ‘Three Chinese poets’ after a long wait, and had to send out a nice one!!!

Du Fu (712-770 AD), one of the most well known Tang Dynasty Chinese poets, along with Li Bai and Wang Wei. This dynasty (618-907 AD) is considered the golden period of Chinese poetry, probably well-known to westerners through the collection : 300 Tang Dynasty poems. This collection is a must-read for every Chinese schoolkid. Both the originals and translations are online at an excellent archive at
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/chinese/frame.htm

I personally find this kind of poetry appealing, even in translation, because of the simplicity and universal appeal of the ideas. Chinese poetry loses most of the lyrical beauty in translation, hence different translations have really different degrees of impact: a point I want to make here.

Traditional translations in the 19th and early 20th centuries try to translate in a way which results in ‘English poetry’, sometimes taking undue (IMHO) liberties with language or concepts. Modern translations such as those of Seth (not many people know of his expertise in Chinese literature!) keep the English language simple, maintain the sentence structure and attempt to get the elegance of the ideas across. Some people consider Seth’s style inferior. I will reserve final judgement until I can understand these poems in the original. Meanwhile, other opinions are welcome!

So here goes! The poem itself I chose because I sometimes strongly identify with the feelings of aimlessness and smallness described. I personally feel the Bynner translation as more descriptive, but the Seth translation more emotionally appealing and overall, understandable. I might just be stupid… :-)

References
1) Witter Bynner: The Jade Mountain (1929), also at the UVA website above
2) Vikram Seth: Three Chinese Poets (1992)

The Wondering Minstrels, poem #1159 · 29 January 2003

Guest poem submitted by Rajarshi Bandyopadhyay

Fair use

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From the Wondering Minstrels mailing list, 1999–2008.

chr3 · 31 January 2003

Here is Kenneth Rexroth’s version of the same poem by Tu Fu:

Night Thoughts While Travelling

A light breeze rustles the reeds
Along the river banks. The
Mast of my lonely boat soars
Into the night. Stars blossom
Over the vast desert of
Waters. Moonlight flows on the
Surging river. My poems have
Made me famous but I grow
Old, ill and tired, blown hither
And yon; I am like a gull
Lost between heaven and earth.

–Coming after the first four sentences, the enjambments of the last five lines communicate a wonderful surge and fall of emotion. Charles H. Rammelkamp

Jordan · 14 March 2003

These two versions of “A Night Abroad” illustrate the helplessness of a reader of translation. If you do not read the original language, you cannot know which translator is more respectful of the poet’s intent.

In the Bynner translation, there is more energy and motion - the stars lean down, the moon runs, and the poet flits. In Seth’s translation the stars lean(less intensity), the moon bobs(less motility), and the poet drifts(less energy being expended).

In addition, the two translations describe circumstances that are significantly different, or at least may be interpreted quite differently by the reader. Bynner portrays a man yearning for the literary success that will “free” him from having to work as a public official; Seth’s narrator laments the difficulty in obtaining such an office.

The translators chose different birds as symbols for the discomfort of the poet. Bynner refers to a sand snipe, a bird that spends most of its life in the relative shelter of tall weeds. A sand snipe is a grouse, less graceful than a gull and more prone to rapid changes in direction while on its feet. Seth chose a gull, an elegant symbol of rootlessness and yearning.* The gull is condemned to live on land and the sea and in the air; it has no home. As a perceptive traveler in pastoral places, Du Fu must have chosen his symbols with care. To me, Seth’s choice of bird is more poetic. But I still don’t know which bird Du Fu was thinking about!

Seth’s translation “moves” more steadily due to his use of end rhyme. Bynner’s translation has less order of form, but its lack of structure lets my mind wander. In as much as one of the themes of “A Night Abroad” is the wandering of a man, Bynner’s translation seems more in tune with the mental and emotional condition of Du Fu’s traveller.

I will probably always associate the gull as a symbol of rootlessness with the elves of Middle Earth. Legolas claimed that no elf could ever again feel settled in Middle Earth after hearing the cry of a gull; he would ever yearn for his home across the sea.

STANTON HAGER · 27 July 2006

Dear Minstrel:
Wonderful webpage on Tu Fu’s “Night Abroad.” For those who want to know how well the Bynner, Seth, and Rexroth translations match the originals, I strongly suggest visting chinese-poems.com. There “Night Thoughts While Traveling”–and 55 other Tu Fu poems–are given accurate English transliterations for every line of the poem. My own translation:

NIGHT THOUGHTS AS I TRAVEL

A gentle breeze sways the deep grass
along the riverbanks.
At night, alone, glancing at my boat’s
tall mast,
I spot a star plunging into a far-off field.
On the still face of the Yangtze, the
moon traces its slow ascent.

I’ve not made my mark as a poet, and
Should, like an old and ill official, retire from my career.
Flapping and fluttering this way, that,
and back again,
My soul wheels in aimless circles,
a lost lone gull adrift
Between heaven and earth.
Tu Fu (712–770)
trans., Stanton Hager