Arthur Waley, A Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems

[flemmings]

Have been rereading Waley's One Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems- or possibly reading it for the first time, because I don't think I made it to the Po Chu'i (Bai Juyi) section last time. Nor do I have any idea when last time was, but I note that this book cost me $2.60 new, so it was a long way back.

Used as I am to more concise translations, Waley reads oddly prosaic to me now:

The good time will never come back again:
In a moment,-- our parting will be over.
Anxiously-- we halt at the road-side,
Hesitating-- we embrace where the fields begin.
The clouds above are floating across the sky:
Swiftly, swiftly passing: or blending together.
The waves in the wind lose their fixed place
And are rolled away each to a corner of Heaven.
From now onwards-- long must be our parting
So let us stop again for a little while.
I wish I could ride the wings of the morning wind
And go with you right to your journey's end.

I don't have the Chinese text to compare and probably couldn't make much of it if I did. Obviously Waley expands: not excessively, not for poetic 'effect', just enough to give grammatical and rational meaning to concise verse. But it's more than I'm used to, which may be why this doesn't read like 'poetry' to me. And what I have no way of knowing is whether a Chinese poem reads as logically as this to a Chinese reader.

Whatever, Waley gives me a new appreciation of Bai Juyi, whom I had dismissed as the guy the Heian courtiers liked to weep over. But his preface is what makes *me* weep. Those were indeed the days, my friend.

I took Classics at Cambridge and would like to have become a Don. But in the tripos I only got a 1.3 and my chance of getting a Fellowship very remote. I had an uncle who exported things (chiefly pianos, I think) to South America. It was decided that I had better go into his firm and for that purpose it was essential that I should learn Spanish. I was sent to Seville where for a time I lived in a room looking out on to the Giralda. The view was one several times painted by Matisse, who once occupied the same room. I got to know the french painter Bréal... To him I confided that I did not like the idea of the export business. He said there were other much more civilized forms of business; for example his friend Oswald Sickert, the brother of the famous painter, had recently (with nothing to recommend him save a few stories in the Yellow Book and an unpublished novel) become director of the Encyclopedia Britannica, and would certainly be delighted to give me a job. After a year in Spain I returned to England armed with a letter to Sickert. He was extremely kind and welcoming; but it turned out he was not a 'director' at all. He had secured, not without difficulty, a very minor post, and was far from being in a position to hand out jobs to other people. He asked if I had ever thought of going into the British Museum. ... Sickert said there was certainly a vacancy in the Print Room at the Museum. His friend, the poet Laurence Binyon, who was on the staff had just told him so. I asked my father if I might try for the post. He told me he did not think I had any chance. There was a very stiff examination (Sickert had dismissed it as a mere formality) and he also told me that the cleverest young man he knew, Laurie Magnus, had recently sat for it and failed. (J note: we shall stop here and contemplate this nice young Jewish Englishman obtaining his father's permission before applying for a job. Edwardian England was perhaps closer to Confucian China than it is to us.) However there seemed no harm in trying, and I passed quite easily.

Waley then spent a miserable time sorting modern German bookplates.

Shortly afterwards I heard that the Print Room was to be split up into European and Oriental sub-departments. Binyon was to be head of the Oriental part and I asked (simply to escape from German bookplates) if I might become his assistant. ... At that time, apart from a mild interest in Japanese prints, I knew nothing about Oriental art or languages.

Yeah, right. 'I'm kinda interested in manga, I'll apply for that librarian's position cataloguing books in the Oriental Institute's Japanese library.' Background in oriental art? None. Training in print conservation? Non-existent. Knowledge of Asian languages? Nil. One sighs in envy for a time when anything was possible for someone with a few connections and a good classical education.

Possible indeed. If Waley's lack of formal training was a problem, why, he simply set out to remedy it.

I soon found that it was very difficult to do the work I was now supposed to do without some knowledge of both Chinese and Japanese. (J note: no shit.) ... So I set to work to learn both languages simultaneously.

No prob. Don't know Chinese and Japanese? Why, just sit down and learn them. Piece of cake. (Current fangirls, take note.) I fancy, as petronia says somewhere, that once you've been thrown at a tender age, all unprepared, into a couple of foreign languages (Latin and Greek in Waley's case) and expected to make your way in them sink or swim, all other languages become- well, just another language, no sweat.

And in short order you'll be reading poems and looking for more at the Oriental Institute- which in those days has no catalogue. The boundless self-confidence of the Edwardians, or just of Waley himself, added to what looks a hundred years later as an utterly slapdash approach to scholarship, leaves me quite speechless; and more than a little envious.

Comments

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

The Waley translation, read strictly as rather free English poetry, is lovely. He and Watson are still my (sentimental?) favorites for Japanese poetry in English. I have to admit I imprinted so much on Bynner that his versions take precedence in my head over any other. I fell madly in love with Bai Juyi's poems in his translation, especially the long poem about Wang Kueifei/Guifei. I read that one aloud to my mother once and made her cry, even though (especially though?) we knew nothing whatsoever about the history behind it. I suspect that one of the reasons for Bai Juyi's popularity with the Japanese is that it translates fairly straightforwardly and is more accessible to non-Chinese in its moods and characterization than the other High Tang poets.

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

His admirable approach to learning Chinese and Japanese is a little like the way I taught myself Portuguese. I had the advantage of multiple cribs and the fact that Portuguese is exponentially closer to English, plus is written in the same alphabet. I doubt Waley set out to learn his languages solely to read erotica, though. (Except perhaps the Latin.)

[petronia.livejournal.com]

I'm kinda interested in manga

This made me laugh a lot. XD

[i-am-zan.livejournal.com]

One is duly impressed and envious! *sigh* I bet he didn't have to run around after two little horrors erm...angels! ^_~ though!

I wish I could just 'sit down' and learn Chinese and Japanese. *double sigh*

Thank you for sharing, gives a little more insight to the man behind the translations. ^__^

[rasetsunyo.livejournal.com]

And what I have no way of knowing is whether a Chinese poem reads as logically as this to a Chinese reader.

To someone not classically educated such as yours truly, no. English translations always read like free translations of Vernacular Chinese renditions to me; and the only reason I know is because I depend on Vernacular Chinese translations to read poetry.

'I'm kinda interested in manga, I'll apply for that librarian's position cataloguing books in the Oriental Institute's Japanese library.'

Lol, and don't we all wish.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Vernacular Chinese renditions are what? Expanded versions of the original? or versions where the words have been placed in more modern order? (= vague recollection of what the Japanese do when they quote Chinese poetry: it's still not modern Japanese but the original hanzi are rearranged with some kana to indicate their grammatical function in the sentence.)

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

I wish I could just 'sit down' and learn Chinese and Japanese. *double sigh*

I'm uniquely fortunate that I've had, and have, the opportunity to do just that. True, I shall still be doing it twenty years from now when I'm living alone in a seniors' facility, which is what happens when you don't have horrors angels; but the real pity is that I still haven't managed to *learn* the one I started studying twenty years ago. I fancy a certain innate talent comes into this as well.

[rasetsunyo.livejournal.com]

Hmm expanded to read like modern spoken Chinese, usually. Sometimes it's just a modern Chinese explanation on the side.