王維 Wang Wei: 鹿柴 The Deer Range

Earlier this morning while I was tidying up the titles of my posts, I accidentally re-posted my September 2010 post of a song by Ma Zhiyuan.  I do apologise for that.  Here is what I had wanted to post.  It is a little poem by the famed Tang dynasty poet Wang Wei, the "Poet Buddha", made all the more famous to Western readers by a little book "19 Ways of Looking at Wang Wei: How a Chinese Poem is Translated" (on 19 translations of this very poem) by Eliot Weinberger (Kingston, Rhode Island: Asphodel, 1987).  I hope you will enjoy my rendition too.  

Wang Wei (701-761):  The Deer Range

1  So hollow is the mountain, not a soul in sight;
2  Yet the sound of men talking is somehow heard despite.
3  (Into the deep, deep forest, rays of the setting sun peep,)
    Into the deep, deep forest, th' returning sun rays peep,
    (revised 14.9.11)
4  To shed again on the green moss the day's remaining light.

1  So hollow is the mountain, not a soul in sight,

2  Yet the sound of men talking is somehow heard despite.
3  (Into the deep, deep forest, rays of the setting sun peep,)

    Into the deep, deep forest, th' returning sun rays peep,
    (revised 14.9.11)
4  To shed again on the green moss the day's remaining light.

Translated by Andrew W.F. Wong (Huang Hongfa)        譯者:  黃宏發

28 February 2008 (revised 13.3.08; 17.9.08; 16.12.08; 5 9 11) (text and notes further revised 14.9.11)

Translated from the original - 王維:  鹿柴

1  空山不見人

2  但聞人語響

3  返景入深林

4  復照青苔上

Notes:-

*    This English rendition is in hexameter (6 metrical feet) although the original feature 5-character lines.  The  rhyme scheme is AAXA which is also a Tang quatrain rhyme scheme more demanding than the XAXA of the original.

*    Line 1:  Instead of “desolate” and the literal “empty” for 空, I have now chosen the word “hollow”, as suggested by my friend Gabriel C.M. Yu 余志明,  which here means empty, deserted, vacant, etc.  I like it because it subtly suggests that the sound of men talking in line 2 is “hollow” too.  For 不見人 I had considered “no man to be seen”, “no man in sight” and “not a man in sight”, but have decided for “not a soul in sight”.

*    Line 2:  As “somehow” and “despite” may be redundant, I had considered but rejected using “faintly” to replace “somehow” as this might add meaning to the poem.
   

*    Line 3:  I had originally penned “Deep into the thickets” for 森林 but have now decided for “Into the deep, deep forest” to try to somehow.  I have interpreted 返景 in line 3 as 返影 (not taken to mean “shadow”, but 返回的日光 “rays of the returning sun” returning since sunrise), hence, “th' returning sun rays”.  I am grateful to Xu Yuanzhong (X.Y.Z.) for the beautifully poetic word of “peep” used in his rendition of the same poem which he entitles “The Deer Enclosure”, p.87 in X.Y.Z., et al. (eds.), “300 Tang Poems --- A New Translation”, Hong Kong: Commercial Press, 1987.  This “Into... peep" formulation beautifully translates the word 入 “enter”.

*    Line 4:  復照 is taken to simply mean “shine again”, hence, “To shed again on the green moss", and with “the day’s remaining light” added so as to complete the meaning and the rhyme.