Worldly Workshop with Albert Sze, US Poet Laureate extraordinaire!
It was a treat & an honor to attend the Words Bridging Worlds Poetry Translation Workshop here in Santa Fe. Our special Collected Works Bookstore features & fosters writers & artists of all genres & walks of life, like Albert Sze, US Poet Laureate appointed by Library of Congress, no less.
I wasn’t sure what the workshop would entail, but was prepared to translate one of my poems into Spanish, my second language. I was taken by surprise with the Chinese poem we would translate!
“Drinking Wine (#5)” by Tao Qian
Tao Qian (c. 365–427) was a pivotal Chinese poet from the Six Dynasties period, famous for rejecting mainstream living to be a reclusive farmer & pour his heart into poetry about nature, drinking wine & rural contentment. He championed living in harmony with nature, a Daoist ideal, & his famous prose piece Peach Blossom Spring became the Chinese symbol for utopia.
We set out to translate the piece in 15 minutes with Arthur’s prompt –
How do you make the reader feel the beauty the original author intended in translation? Give it a voice that’s compelling!
Arthur’s guidelines on Chinese poetry…
It’s not classical to use:
first person or pronouns
single or plural
past or present
“You” is addressed formally, como Usted
*There’s no distinction between heart & mind
“Drinking Wine (#5)” – as translated by Kelly Layne:
The hut is woven without eyes of the region watching
It only appears, announcing its carefully crafted presence without rolling cart or horse clamor
Ask You how can it be? Where did it come from?
It’s the vision of the secluded heart, from deep within the Earth
Chrysanthemums flown in decorate the hedge below offering scentual blessings to the East While the mountains South shelter remotely
Fresh mountain air exhales Western serenading sunsetsThe soaring bird tribe return to heaven with wind in wing
With this, the true sense of meaning lies here Desiring to distinguish with words, speech is forgotten
“Drinking Wine (#5”) – literal translation:
I built my hut on the realm of men
yet I hear no rumble of horse and carriage.
Pray, sir, how can this be true?
When the mind's far away, your land too is remote.
I pick chrysanthemums by my eastern hedge;
far off I see the southern hills.
How fine the sunset through mountain mists,
and the soaring birds come home together.
There is some real meaning in all of this,
though when I try to grasp it I forget the words.
Well, my poem is nothing like the literal translation, or like a single other person in class, but my very own interpretation & janky, unconventional translation!
As voiced by Albert Sze - “Living Language in Words”