It is frustrating, not to say humiliating, to think how much one is missing by not knowing any language except one’s own. When you travel in a country it does not open its heart to you unless you know the language. For another thing, great literatures in other languages hide their glories from us. It is simply not possible to get the full flavour, the soul, the innermost sense of writing in another language through translation.
This is especially true of poetry. Indeed Robert Frost defined poetry as “what gets lost in translation.” Translate a poem and the essence escapes us. I can’t remember which one it was but one of the great Russian writers said that a poem translated bears the same resemblance to the actual poem as kissing a beautiful woman through a handkerchief bears to kissing her properly on the lips.
But some translations are better than others. Indeed some translations stand as literature in their own right, transfigurations rather than literal translations. Scott Moncrieff’s translation of Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past is a marvellous, independent work of art. And Robert Lowell’s “imitations” of Villon, Leopardi, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Montale, and Pasternak are in fact Lowell poems in which he is absolutely reckless with literal meaning in his own attempt to preserve the tone, the fire, the finish of the originals.
The great translator of Chinese poetry, Arthur Waley, is another case. Of course I have no way of knowing how far he captures the essence of his originals but linguistic experts who know both English and Chinese say that he at least comes close. All I do know is that Arthur Waley’s versions of some of the great Chinese poets have at least given me a taste of something that I desperately wish I could feast on first-hand. His collections of translations of Chinese poems have been in my library ever since I was at Cambridge more than sixty years ago.
Arthur Waley’s favourite Chinese poet for translation was Po Chu-i. This great poet was born in 772. He was honoured as an outstanding scholar and efficient administrator. He became Governor of the important Chinese province of Honan before he retired in 833 owing to illness. He died in 846. He was one of the greatest poets who ever lived. Our own great poet Martin Carter loved the poetry of Po Chu-i translated by Waley. “He wrote poems about the moon and men and mountains,” Martin once told me, “which tell you all you need to know about life.”
I hardly know which of his beautiful, wry and shrewdly observant poems I like best. One of his favourite themes was the contrast and conflict between worldly office and ambitions and the life of quiet contemplation alone or conversation and a bottle of wine with just a few good friends. He was torn between the attractions of commanding men and events and the quiet satisfactions of reading, meditation, writing and enjoying the leisure of a good and peaceful home.
He observed that when men enter moneymaking, politics and government most often they succumb to selfish appetite and to lamentable mean-spiritedness, disrespect and incivility in their dealings with their fellow countrymen. They cannot resist the tawdry temptations of office. Human beings are weak and the traps set by flatterers, place-seekers, fortune-hunters and “those who whisper poisonously what favours may be gained” are hard to evade. Po Chu-i should know because he admits the faults in himself.
He called the world of business and administration and government the ‘Ants’ Nest’ and in the more than thousand years since he lived that has not changed and is not likely to change in a thousand more. Here is one of his poems in the English translation by Arthur Waley.
Climbing the Incense-Burner Mountain
Up and up, the Incense-burner Peak!
In my heart is stored what my eyes and ears perceived.
All the year – detained by official business;
Today at last I got a chance to go.
Grasping the creepers, I clung to dangerous rocks;
My hands and feet – weary with groping for hold.
There came with me three or four friends,
But two friends dared not go further.
At last we reached the topmost crest of the Peak;
My eyes were blinded, my soul rocked and reeled.
The chasm beneath me – ten thousand feet;
The ground I stood on, only a foot wide.
If you have not exhausted the scope of seeing and hearing,
How can you realize the wideness of the world?
The waters of the River looked narrow as a ribbon,
P’en Castle smaller than a man’s fist.
How it clings, the dust of the world’s halter!
It chokes my limbs; I cannot shake it away.
Thinking of retirement, I heaved an envious sigh;
Then, with lowered head, came back to the Ants’ Nest.
