ORIGINAL POST: Here is a 7-character quatrain by the late Tang dynasty poet Wei Zhuang on a landscape painting of Jinling (present day Nanjing) which I have rendered into English in heptameter with a caesura after the 4th beat and rhymed AAxA. I hope you will enjoy it.
Today is Easter Sunday, the day our Lord Jesus rose from the dead. Let us pray we be rid of the novel coronavirus the soonest. Amen.
Wei Zhuang (836-910): A Landscape of Jinling/ The Capital
City
1 The River in
rain, in mizzling mizzles, her reeds in stretches grow;
2 Your Six
Dynasties now gone like dreams, roosters in vain do crow.
3 Heartless, utmost,
therein your City, the unfeeling willow trees, still
4 Veil and shroud
the dyke for miles while their misty catkins blow.
Translated by Andrew W.F. Wong (Huang Hongfa) 譯者: 黃宏發
23 October 2019 (revised 24.10.19; 25.10.19)
Translated from the original - 韋莊: 金陵圖/ 臺城
1 江雨霏霏江草齊
2 六朝如夢鳥空啼
3 無情最是臺城柳
4 依舊煙籠十里堤
Notes:
*Form, Metre and Rhyme:
This English rendition is a quatrain in heptameter (7 feet or beats) to
emulate the original which is a 7-character “jueju” 絕句 (quatrain). To emulate the original, I have also given to
each of the 7-beat lines a caesura (main pause) mid-line after the first 4 feet
or beats. The rhyme scheme is AAxA as in
the original.
*Title and lines 2 and 3:
金陵
(present day: 南京 Nanjing) in the first title is rendered simply as “Jinling”
in transliteration as the second title lay bare Jinling was “The Capital City”.
Jinling was the capital of the 4
successive Southern Dynasties of 宋Song,
齊Qi, 梁Liang
and 陳Chen in
the 南北朝 Northern and Southern Dynasties period (420-581) and their 2
southern predecessors, namely 吳Wu
(222-280) and 東晉Eastern
Jin (317-420). These 6 are collectively
known as the 六朝 “Six Dynasties” referred to in line 2. 圖 is rendered as “A Landscape (meaning landscape painting)
of”. Wei has another poem with the same
title of 金陵圖 said to have been written after viewing 6 paintings of
Jinling in the Six Dynasties which runs: 誰謂傷心畫不成/ 畫人心遂世人情/
君看六幅南朝事/
老木寒雲滿故城. (I have yet to attempt a translation.) The present poem was probably similarly
inspired. The other title 臺城 refers to the old royal palace which had fallen into disuse.
I have taken this to stand for the whole
city, hence, rendered as “The Capital City” in the title and simply “City”
(capitalized) in line 3.
Line 1: 江雨 (river, rain) is rendered as “The River in rain” with River
capitalized to indicate it is the Yangzi River 揚子江 or Long
River 長江 being referred to. 霏霏 has 2 completely different meanings: torrential rains and
drizzles. I have opted for the latter as
it fits the tone of the whole poem and have, therefore, rendered it “in mizzling
mizzles”. The 江 in 江草 is not repeated but replaced by and rendered as “her” (a
personification of the River). 草 is rendered as “reeds” rather than sedges (for being too
pretty) and grass (for being too general).
齊 is not taken to mean “neat, tidy, trimmed, level”, but
“uniform, unmixed”. Hence, 草齊 is rendered as “in stretches (large and/or long patches of
unmixed reeds) grow”.
Line 2: 六朝 is translated literally as “Your Six Dynasties” with “Your”
added to personify Jinling. 如夢 is rendered as “now gone like dreams” with “now gone” added. 鳥 is taken not to refer to “birds” in general, but to “cocks or chicken
of the masculine gender” and I have decided for “roosters” after considering
“cocks” and “chanticleers”. You may wish to put this speculation of mine in the context of the Chinese idiom 聞雞起舞 "hearing the cock crows, rise to practise swordsmanship" derived from 晉書 "The History of the Jin Dynasty" which records the biography of a man called 祖逖 Zu Di (266-321, between the end of West and beginning of East Jin) who when young rose to practise swordsmanship every day upon hearing the first crow of the cock. 空 (empty) is rendered as "in vain" after considering "to no avail" and “for naught”. 啼 is translated literally as “crow”.
Line 3: 無情 (no feeling) is rendered as “Heartless”, and 最是 (the
most) as “utmost”. 臺城
(elevated city) is rendered as “therein your City” with
“City” capitalized to indicate it is the Capital city. (Please see note on the Title.) 柳 (willow) is rendered as “the unfeeling willow trees” with “unfeeling”
added to reinforce the opening translation of 無情 as
“Heartless”. I have enjambed the line by
adding at the end the word “still” to cover the translation of 依舊 (as of old) in the original’s line 4.
Line 4: 依舊 is moved up to line 3 and rendered as “still”. 煙 (smoke,
or mist) 籠 (encage, cover) is rendered as “Veil and shroud”. 十里 (10里 ‘li’ is about 3 miles) may well be just a hyperbole to say
very long. I have rendered it as “for
miles” rather than “ten ‘li’s’” or “three miles”. 堤 (embankment) is rendered as “dyke” after considering
“embankment/ bank/ banking”. And to end
the poem and complete the rhyme, I have added “while their misty catkins blow”
which is not in the original, but useful for an understanding of how willows
work to produce the “misty” look.
Posts
7 comments:
The poem translated here by Andrew makes me think of paintings of the “Jiangnan Landscape Style”, a style that developed in the Jinling area. My books show this style originating a little later that the poet though, (e.g. Dong Yuan d.962, Juran later than 960 and in particular Zhao Gun, mid tenth century, with his large scroll painting “Along the river at first snow”). Do you know Andrew, if the paintings referred to by the poet are extant, as presumably the style predates these artists?
The first two lines of Wei Zhuang’s “other” Picture of Jinling poem is translated in the book “Song Dynasty Figures of Longing and Desire” by Lara CW Blanchard as:
Who says that heartbreak cannot be painted
The painter’s heart corresponds to the feelings of real people
Perhaps then in both poems, Wei Zhuang was observing paintings in the “common, vernacular style” rather than in the court tradition: a style that emerged as the Jiangnan style which went on to influence future artists even where dominated by the Northern Song style (e.g. Juran continued use of light ink to capture the atmosphere of mist and rain).
The reference to Six Dynasties (and Jinling as its capital as well as a centre of culture) as I presume a comparison to the Sui (with its capital at Chang’an) and high cultural achievements of the Tang dynasties always strikes me as a little odd – reminiscing for a time past rather than appreciating the time one is in, or perhaps Wei (as in the Ballad of the Lady Qin), “envies the ghosts of Jiangnan” as a place of peace and stable government.
(Continued in the next comment...)
But to the specifics of the poem, and Andrew’s translation!
I interpret the double 霏霏 similarly to Andrew: rather than a heavy rain, more the mist caused by drizzling rain – Andrew intentionally, I think, leaves it until his final line to be reflective of the mists we might expect to see in the painting (as per many years later, Juran continues to capture such mists in his paintings).
I am somewhat uncertain about “mizzling mizzles", I find it an odd choice of words, more a “Scottish English" than common English and therefore seems rather contrived, though I would not advocate replacing this with another reference to mist, as Andrew has adequately dealt with that as mentioned already. I’m thinking towards “clouds are blurring” the river, but I haven’t found adequate words to match the duplication of sound as in “feifei" (and such as mizzling mizzles provides).
I had read 江草齊 as the river being level with the reeds, that is, in flood, perhaps due to the rains, or maybe the reeds being flattened level by the rushing waters: I think Andrew has it better, rather more pictorial and in keeping with the idea of the poet interpreting the painting.
I’m glad Andrew chose Roosters for line two, I don’t think his other considerations would have worked. I do like the Roosters crowing in vain: whether the poet was alluding here to government officials “crowing in vain" with their inability to save Jinling as the capital or even referring to officials of the late Tang failing to deal with the dynasty weakened by Huang Chao and in a slow terminal decline, doesn’t matter, nor does it need to be explicit in translation...there is enough in Andrew’s words to interpret as the reader so desires.
And in line three, the heartless unfeeling willow trees, an unusual allusion perhaps, as with the Roosters, possibly referring to scholar officials hiding their shame, covering the city in a fog of misty catkins. 臺城, was the location of the royal palace, and site of central government agencies from 332 to, I think, about 589: does this support the willows referring to scholar officials? Again, Andrew’s translation doesn’t commit us to this, and rightly so, as neither did Wei Zhuang!
Translating 依舊 as “still" is probably correct, but 舊 has an old meaning of a long friendship, could we have a play on words by the poet here? Rather than 依舊煙籠being “still shrouded in mist" (or as Andrew has it rather nicely, “still/veiled and shroud...” do we have a city personified just as perhaps the willows and Roosters have been, a dependable old friend now veiled and shrouded?
I thank Ray Heaton for his 2 learned comments, but am afraid that we are completely at cross purposes at least insofar as the 1st comment is concerned. I know next to nothing about the history and essence of Chinese painting, but the point of this poem and the other Jinling landscape poem (which I will post in May) is not "painting styles", but the "grieving heart" of the painter and the poet grieving the decline and fall of the 6 dynasties and the imminent fall of Tang dynasty. He could have been unduly influenced by Lara Blanchard"s translation of the 1st 2 lines of the other poem as "Who says that heartbreak cannot be painted/The painter's heart corresponds to the feelings of real people" to suggest a "common vernacular style". I hope he will consider a comment on my translation of the same as "Who says 'tis truly impossible to portray a grieving heart---/Painters being prone to paint what the worldly deem as art". To be continued.
Now on Ray Heaton's 2nd comment: the specifics of the poem.
I am grateful to him for his generous understanding, if not also appreciation, of my rendering 霏霏 in line 1 as "in mizzling mizzles". I know "mizzle" is obsolete and dialectic (Shorter Oxford). I only hope it will come to be accepted as a well-coined description of 霏霏 even if for now considered contrived.
I am also grateful for his accepting my rendition of 江草齊 as "her reeds in stretches grow" with "reeds" to translate 江草 and "in stretches (of reeds unmixed) grow, despite he would rather interpret the phrase as "the river 江 and the reeds 草 on the same level 齊".
I am particularly glad that Ray Heaton has brought out my rendering 鳥 (birds) as "roosters" which he endorses.
This reminds me of my cutting short my note on line 2 omitting my justification for using "roosters" rather than "birds". This is reproduced below (and will be inserted in the post as part of the note):
You may wish to put this speculation on mine in the context of the Chinese idiom 聞雞起舞
"Hearing the cock crows, rise tom practise swordsmanship" derived from 晉書 "History of
the Jin Dynasty" which records the biography of a man called 祖逖 Zu Di (266-321, between
the end of West and beginning of East Jin) who when young rose to practise swordsmanship
every day upon hearing the first crow of the cock.
The poet seems to be saying: Roosters crow in vain as there aren't men like Zu Di anymore.
As for the 2 lines on the "heartless willows" 無情柳, my interpretation is "Dynasties come and go, regimes prosper, decline and die; yet nature remains unchanged." Such is the human predicament.
Hi Andrew, thanks for your comment! I think we are less at cross purposes than you suggest. I guess I failed to explain myself properly in the first comment!
I agree that the poem isn’t about the painting or painting styles. But if we assume the poem was inspired by Wei having seen paintings of Jinling, I was simply positing that these paintings are more likely to have been paintings in the “Jiangnan Landscape Style” rather than paintings from the 6 Dynasty period. In my opinion, Wei’s poem seems to be more reflective of such a style, indeed I consider the Jiangnan Landscape Style as to be more likely to instil a grieving heart in the viewer. At the time such paintings would have been considered as vernacular as opposed to the court painting style of Wei’s and earlier times.
The Jiangnan Landscape Style is recognised as emerging quite some time after Wei’s death: but I am also positing the poem provides (somewhat tenuously) that the Jiangnan style of paintings must therefore have begun rather earlier than my books suggest. (To be hugely over simplistic, the Jiangnan Landscape Style can be thought of as horizontal landscapes of Jinling and the Yangzi with cloudy hills and misty rains).
But as I said, the paintings were merely an inspiration for the poem, not the subject of the poem. Indeed I agree the poet does have a “grieving heart”, at least for Jinling as the historically relevant centre of culture (historical even in Wei’s lifetime) and more likely for when comparing the fall of the 6 Dynasties to the declining Tang. I’m hoping this comes across better in my second comment! I am suggesting in my second comment that there are references (roosters and willows) that could be taken as referring to officials who earlier “allowed” the 6 Dynasties to fall, and to those of Wei’s time unable to stop the decline of the Tang.
I see the second line of “the other poem”, as the painter is able to satisfy the feelings of the people (that is, the painter can indeed paint a grieving heart). I don’t believe this is expressed correctly in Lara Blanchard’s translation. Your translation Andrew, “Painters being prone to paint what the worldly deem as art” doesn’t really fit my viewing of the line, it seems you regard the painter as reacting to the popular view of what the painter should paint rather than my reading where the first line sets up a question, the second line answers it.
I do like your two explanations, Andrew, both Zu Di and the description of the heartless willow seem to fit very nicely!
Dear Ray, It seems we are in full agreement on this poem, and only differ on the other poem, particularly lines 1 and 2. I take the 1st line of the other poem not to be a mere question but a rhetorical one. "Who says ... impossible" (= possible) paves the way to lines 3 and 4 where the "grieving heart" is portrayed in the 6 Jingling landscapes. Hence, the 2nd line is not an answer to the 1st, but a sequel in explanation of why the claim "'tis truly impossible to portray a grieving heart". The addition of "As" or "Most" before "Painters" to begin line 2 (which I am not proposing) can clarify my position. Shall we pick this up when I post my other poem next month? Best wishes, Andrew.
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