闲意

柴门虽设不曾开，

为怕人行损绿苔。

妍日渐催春意动，

好风时卷市声来。

学经妻问生疏字，

尝酒儿斟潋灩杯。

安得小园宽半亩，

黄梅绿李一时栽。

Kenneth Rexroth’s Translation of Lu You‘s Poem (One)

Idleness

I keep the rustic gate closed

For fear somebody might step

On the green moss. The sun grows

Warmer. You can tell it’s Spring.

Once in a while, when the breeze

Shifts, I can hear the sounds of the

Village. My wife is reading

The classics. Now and then she

Asks me the meaning of a word.

I call for wine and my son

Fills my cup till it runs over.

I have only a little

Garden, but it is planted

With yellow and purple plums.

Selected from One Hundred Poems from the Chinese by Kenneth Rexroth (p 109)

DeWitt Clinton’s Adaptation from Rexroth’s Translation of Lu You’s Poem (One)

After Watching Fireworks from a 55th Floor by the Lake

I Fall into a Relapse, Find Solace in Lu Yu’s “Idleness”

We keep the front door locked

In case aliens show up

Wanting to fix up our little place.

Road crews remind us it’s summer.

We’re lucky living with Lake breezes cooling

Us down on our warm summer days.

Sometimes my wife will read

Something new in the world of health.

We wonder if we’ll live longer.

Every now and then I’ll walk

For a new bottle of wine.

In our forest, I’ve planted

Food for rabbits and us

As well as purple day lilies.

张琼翻译的德威特•克林顿的“再生诗” (一)

在湖边的55楼观看烟花之后，我旧病复发，在陆游的“闲意”中找到了安慰

我们把前门锁上

以防外星人出现

来修理我们的小地方。

道路工作人员提醒我们现在是夏天。

幸运的是，湖风习习，

我们的夏日温暖舒适。

有时妻子会读一些

健康的世界里新的东西。

不知我们是否能活得更长久。

偶尔我会走去

买一瓶新酒。

在我们的森林，我种下

兔子和我们吃的粮食，

还有紫色的百合花。

秋思

利欲驱人万火牛，

江湖浪迹一沙鸥。

日长似岁闲方觉，

事大如山醉亦休。

衣杵相望深巷月，

井桐摇落故园秋。

欲舒老眼无高处，

安得元龙百尺楼。

Kenneth Rexroth’s Translation   of Lu You‘s Poem (Two)

Autumn Thoughts

Great fame can be obtained

By routing an army

With oxen carrying

Burning straw on their horns.

But after all, it is

No more important than

The tracks of sandpipers

On a wave washed beach.

Days go by and become

A year and I am too

Lazy to notice. The

Business of Heaven

Vanishes in a Wine cup.

By the river they are

Beating cloth for winter.

Moonlight penetrates the

Forest. The trees are losing

Their leaves. Autumn has come

To my withered garden.

I decide to climb to some

High place to enjoy the view.

But I can only manage

The hundred steps of the

Yuan Hung pagoda.

Selected from One Hundred  Poems from the Chinese by Kenneth Rexroth (p 112)

DeWitt Clinton’s Adaptation from Rexroth’s Translation of Lu You’s Poem (Two)

Leafing Through an Old “People” Magazine,

I Turn Instead to “Autumn Thoughts” by Lu Yu

It’s hard not to pay

Attention to the young

Russian sitting outside

The village coffee house smoking

Through two packs since I

Stepped in, but she’s

Oh so much more

Famous in my eye just

Sitting knees to chin her

Smoking nose unnoticed by who might

Walk by not even

A glance or

Sense the earth might spin.

We’re as good as vanished.

Winter’s still not here.

Tonight we dine

Out on our wedding day.

We dream of strolling soon

In faraway Granada.

It’s not that hard to climb

The bluffs to see our Lake.

I’m learning how to run

The 88 steps behind our

Lake Park Bistro.

张琼翻译的德威特•克林顿的“再生诗” (二)

翻阅一本旧的“人物”杂志，我想起陆游的“秋思”

很难

不注意到

打我进来

那坐在村里的咖啡馆外

吸了两包烟

的俄罗斯年轻人。

哦，她

在看来

更不同的是坐膝，下巴微扬，

吸烟的鼻子丝毫不在意

谁打她身边走过

或是感觉地球旋转，

连眼皮都不抬一下。

我们就尽快走开。

冬天还没到。

婚礼当天，

今晚我们出去吃饭

我们梦想不久就能漫步

遥远的格拉纳达。

攀上悬崖

观看我们的湖并没那么难。

我正学着

在我们的湖公园小酒馆后

如何跑88步。

泛湖至东泾三首

春水六七里，

夕阳三四家。

儿童牧鹅鸭，

妇女治桑麻。

地僻衣巾古，

年丰笑语哗。

老夫维小艇，

半醉摘藤花。

Kenneth Rexroth’s Translation  of Lu You‘s Poem (Three)

Sailing on the Lake to the Ching River

It is  Spring on the lake and

I run six or seven miles.

Sunset,  I notice a few

Houses. Children are driving

Home the ducks and geese. Young girls

Are  coming home carrying

Mulberry leaves and hemp. Here

In this hidden village the

Old ways still go on. The crops

Are  good. Everybody is

Laughing. This old man fastens

His boat and climbs up the bank.

Tipsy, he holds fast to the vines.

Selected from One Hundred  Poems from the Chinese by Kenneth Rexroth (p 113)

DeWitt Clinton’s Adaptation from Rexroth’s Translation of Lu You’s Poem (Three)

After a Training Run Along the Lake I’m Surprised

With Lu Yu’s “Sailing on the Lake to the Ching River”

Signs along our beach remind swimmers

Not to even dream of going in

To float with sewage flows.

Along the Lake I pace

Myself with all the local soaring gulls

Who seem to swoop

Much faster than I can.

The village road crews stay

Much longer than we’d like them to.

Everyone at the Lake

Stands in line for custard.

The lifeguard rows and rows all

Afternoon weary of those who wade in.

张琼翻译的德威特•克林顿的“再生诗” (三)

经过一次沿湖的跑步训练，我惊讶于陆游的 “陆游的泛湖至东泾”

海滩沿岸的标志提醒游泳者

不要进去

随着污水漂浮。

伴随着当地翱翔的海鸥

我沿着湖边漫步。

海鸥俯冲过去

比我快得多。

村道路工作人员逗留

很久才离去。

大家在湖边

排队等蛋奶沙司。

救生员整下午都在嚷嚷

那些令人生厌的涉水人群。

 Translated by Zhang Qiong / 张琼 译

      While working on a final sabbatical from my university, I was curious to learn about collections of poetry with the generic title, “100 Poems…” The study was interesting, and I browsed through quite a few collections both American and international, but what intrigued me the most were the collections of ancient or classical Chinese poets.  All of these collections provided such a delightful change from what I had been researching, teaching, and writing about:  literature of the Holocaust and literature of genocides. 

        正值大学最后一次休假，我很好奇了解这些诗集，通用标题为“100首诗......”。这项研究很有意思，我浏览了不少美国和国际的诗集，但最让我感兴趣的是中国古代或古典诗人的诗集。这些诗集令我愉悦，有别于我一直的研究，教学和写作：大屠杀文学和种族灭绝文学。

      When I found Kenneth Rexroth’s volume, 100 Poems from the Chinese, I was struck by how they read like American poetry of the 1970’s, and of course the volume was published by New Directions in 1971. The lines and images were simply striking, quite lyrical and covering topics I seldom had been writing about, and because of the appeal of nature, lakes and rivers, seasons, love and regret, wars, and the general sweep of “the human condition,” I knew that I was finding a collection of poems that I simply couldn’t put down.  In fact, the poems felt like I was cleansing an old soul, and even after reading the first poem, one of Tu Fu’s poem about a family banquet, I thought I should take some notes, jot down a few impressions.  Before I realized what I was doing, I was creating the first of 114 “adaptations” or “improvisations” of all of his poems, something like an “after” poem of a 1970’s translation of a classical Chinese poem written sometime in the 8th Century C.E.

        当我找到肯尼斯·雷克斯雷斯100首来自中国的诗歌时，我对它们如何读起来就像1970年代的美国诗歌感到吃惊，当然这诗集也是由新方向（New Directions）于1971年出版的。诗行和意象引人注目，非常抒情，涵盖了我很少写的主题：大自然，湖泊和河流，季节，爱情和遗憾，战争，以及“人类状况，我知道我正在寻到一些令我根本无法放下的诗集。事实上，这些诗让觉得正在洁净一个苍老的灵魂，甚至在读完第一首诗，关于杜甫家庭宴会的一首诗之后，我想应该写笔记，记下一些印象。在意识到自己在做什么之时，我正在第一次对他所有诗歌的114次“改编”或“即兴创作”，就像是一首1970年代翻译的一首8世纪的中国古典诗歌的“后续”诗。

Since a Spanish professor advised me in graduate school to never translate anything, I’ve hesitated to begin.  On the other hand, I’ve been fascinated with texts from ancient worlds, and have been keenly interested in bringing them into the present through a poetic tradition known as improvisation. I’ve retold conquistador narratives into contemporary poetry, not because I have a keen interest in traditional translation, but because I’ve wanted to renew reader interest in fascinating texts.  I’ve also layered the Tao de Ching against images of Auschwitz in the hopes of examining the universality of evil. Regarding Kenneth Rexroth’s translations, I don’t have access to his translation team’s notes, but what I do like are his modern interpretations of classical Chinese life through his 100 Poems from the Chinese.  When I first read them, I was not interested in how faithful he might have been with the originals, but with how refreshing his interpretation was of life in the 8th century China. I don’t think his collection would have been as popular as it was, and still is, if he had been “faithful” to the 7 words per line/8 lines per poem, and rhymed.  His translation is refreshingly bright and clear and does read as contemporary American poetry of the late 1960’s with references to ancient Chinese cities, towns, rivers, court and family life, and making it sound completely relevant to today. I hope my own rendition of his collection will continue to bring the ancient Chinese life to a different landscape and sensibility. My collection of 114 poems of his 114 are not rhymed, purposely, as I was hoping to capture not the classical Chinese rhyme scheme, but instead, I hoped to renew interest in illustrating how contemporary the Chinese poets were, and are today.

        一位西班牙教授建议我在研究生院不要翻译任何东西，我有点犹豫不决了。另一方面，我对来自古代世界的文本着迷，并且一直非常有兴趣通过一种被称为即兴创作的诗意传统将它们带入现在。我把征服者的叙述重新写进了当代诗歌，不是因为我对传统翻译有浓厚的兴趣，而是因为我想让读者更加关注迷人的文本。我还将《道德经》与《奥斯维辛》的形象作了对比，希望以此来检验邪恶的普遍性。关于肯尼斯·雷克斯雷斯的翻译，我无法翻阅他的翻译团队的笔记，但我喜欢的是他通过他的100首中国诗歌对中国古典生活的现代诠释。第一次阅读时，对于他对原作的忠诚度，我并不感兴趣，但他对8世纪中国生活的解释令人耳目一新。如果他“忠实”于原诗的每首诗8行，每行7个单词，并且还押韵，我认为他的诗集不一定会这样受欢迎，无论过去还是现在。他的翻译令人耳目一新，明明白白，读起来像1960年代后期的当代美国诗歌，提到了中国古代的城市、城镇、河流、宫廷和家庭生活，使其听起来与今天完全相关。希望我自己对他的诗集的演绎将继续给中国古代生活带来不同的景观和情感。我收集他的114首诗，有意不押韵的，因为我希望捕捉的不是中国古典韵律，而是希望重新激发人们对中国诗人过去和现在的兴趣。

I am quite drawn to Rexroth’s 114 poems as they appear, in translation, to be remarkably contemporary to the human condition.  His translations are fresh, clean, crisp, tender, loving, fretful, melancholic, joyful, in fact, it seems he has captured in these poems the full array of human emotions grounded in the classical world of Chinese literature, but also completely relevant to human feelings and expressions today.  The references to the ancient Chinese world add immensely to the pleasure of reading them.  If I had read them as a soldier in Vietnam, I might be a completely different person than I am today, so I am deeply grateful for finding these poems, and I can only hope my adaptations of Rexroth’s American 1970’s renderings of ancient Chinese poems adds a dimension to his wonderful collection, 100 Poems from the Chinese.

        我对雷克斯罗斯的114首诗很感兴趣，因为它们在翻译中显得与当代人类的状况非常相似。他的译文清新、干净、清脆、柔情、爱、烦躁、忧郁、欢乐，事实上，似乎在这些诗中捕捉到了植根于中国古典文学世界的各种人类情感，但也与当今人类的情感和表达方式完全相关。对中国古代世界的提及，极大地增加了阅读的乐趣。如果在越南当兵时读到这些诗，我可能和现在的我完全不同。因此，能找到这些诗，我心存感恩。希望我改编的莱克斯罗斯的美国1970年代的中国古代诗作，能为他的精彩诗集，100首中国诗歌，增加一个维度。

Translated by Zhang Qion / 张琼 译