Apricot House (after Wang Wei)
We cut the finest apricot for roof beams
and braided fragrant grasses over them.
I wonder if clouds might form there
and rain upon this world?
The transliteration on Chinese-poems.com reads:
Fine apricot cut for roofbeam
Fragrant cogongrass tie for eaves
Not know ridgepole in cloud
Go make people among rain
Apricot was a given. It offered specificity, and feels lovely in the mouth. Roof beams, as well. Cogongrass didn’t make the cut. It is indeed used for thatched roofs in southeast Asia, but it felt clumsy; in this case, the specificity it lent detracted from my reading. And rather than use “thatched” I chose “braided” to imply the layered effect of thatching, and to imply movement, to mesh with and support the idea of clouds forming and drifting under the roof. “Not know” posed a question: did it mean ignorance or simply being unaware, or perhaps a state of wonderment? I first employed “unaware” but thought it took the poem in a different direction than Wang Wei intended (but who knows?). “Ridgepole” seemed unnecessary. So I chose to let the reader follow the unsaid – using “form there” to reinforce the impression already shaped by the roof beams and the grasses “over them.” I admit to some trepidation over the second couplet. It may still need work.
“Apricot House” first appeared here in December 2014.
This is wonderful. The art of translation fascinates me, and I appreciate this glimpse into your thought process as you worked through this poem. I wonder about the second couplet too. The literal translation “go make people among rain” is so evocative and takes my mind in a couple different directions.
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Doing these exercises my brain! I’ve also, for fun, done some English to English “translations,” which are fun, too, but the results sometimes trend to the ridiculous. 😀
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Impressive. Yours more accessible to my brain’s associations. Like braided! (I have braided, I have never thatched.) Maybe replace “there” with “beneath”?
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The process is interesting – deciding which words to emphasize, which to use. Hmm, I like “beneath,” but also like the one-syllable “there.” A dilemma!
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‘Wood of the fruit tree’ for our roof beams
we grass the roof and eaves
yet the clouds have no spine in their rafters
and the people all go about under their rain…
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I love the image of the clouds with no spines in their rafters!
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Well thank you very much… I just take the massive inspiration you give me by being the total genius you are… and then try and put myself emotionally in my writing. I deeply love being an academic, love reason and logic, and hate how academia is being wrecked by NeoLIberal economics. But Irving Layton certainly knew what he was saying when he wrote:
“If poetry is like an orgasm, an academic can be likened to someone who studies the passion-stains on the bedsheets…”
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Damn you! I had to clean off my keyboard after spewing beer everywhere.
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I do my best to entertain! 🙂
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😍
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I love academia. I love academics. Having spent most of my work life among and with academics, I can state that had I a life to live over, I’d likely become an academic (probably a linguist/cultural geographer), if I could survive the concussions sustained from repeatedly banging my head against the desk from my dealings with those who can’t recognize reality. But then I was once accused of being a soulless bureaucrat… 😈
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Someone called you a soulless bureaucrat? You probably just forgot the first rule of being a genius among dullards: If you make people THINK they’re thinking, they will love you. But if you actually make them THINK they will hate you! 🙂
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Well, I said “no” to a graduate student’s request. But there are times when “no” is justified, and this was one of them. Sigh.
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Oh my! A grad student didn’t get their way! What a crime against humanity! LOL! You should have not only said no, but also told him to f**k off, rewrite whatever he was working on, lose the trendy scarf, stop writing commentary/tractates on Rudolph Carnap, go have a shower, put on clean pants, make better lesson plans for his T.A. gig, and then f**k off again! I was a grad student twice… I was (and they are) fair game.
Like “they” say, if you want to know the power of human genius, read Yukio Mishima. If you want to know the insignificance of academia, read his commentators!
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Keep in mind… you have written great poetry, and I have commented on it… so the aphorism stands! 💩
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😊
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Only when you’re wearing your beret…
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^^That was supposed to be in response to your being a soulless bureaucrat!
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The sad part is that I am wearing my beret right now! LOL! And I am not even a bureaucrat!
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Haha! Neither am I (a bureaucrat, nor an academic in any official capacity), but now I really want a beret! A purple one! 💜
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My beret serves as a social message to everyone I pass: a man can wear a navy blue felt pancake on his head and not be pretentious about it!
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An inverted waffle cone might draw a few glances…
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I boldly sally forth with my blue head pancake and am not ashamed of it.
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With a ukulele to match!
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Okaji Sensei promised me that he would pose in his beret for me while drinking Bordeaux, to serve as inspiration for my 30/30 challenge… 6 Days To Go! Aaaaahhhhh!
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Drink heavily and doubt yourself… the best poems come from the seconds right before you give up…
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How right you are, Dr. Schnee,
Just when I was a flick of an index finger away from submitting a “roses are red” poem featuring a prominent f-bomb, masterpiece #25 spurted out…
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It is like the old Zen tale of the monk hanging from a weed on the side of a cliff. At the top of the cliff is a tiger waiting to eat you if you climb, at the bottom is your death if you fall… and then you notice a sweet berry hanging from a branch of an overhanging bush and you eat it and it is the best berry you have ever eaten… our shittiest poems are both tiger and death plummet… (y)our best work comes in the dangle…
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That’s the most optimistic take on dingleberries I’ve ever heard!
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Speaking of dingleberries…. I was a Little League catcher when I was younger, and one time a pitch went a little too south and… well, you get the rest.
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I was a catcher in Little League, too! The position didn’t carry quite the same degree of liability for me. 😎
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But… if the pitch were to be launched at the right angle and velocity, you might have your undercarriage end up looking like Georgia O’Keeffe’s “Jack In The Pulpit (1930)” !
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This thread is making me cringe…
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I once got my berries dingled at a judo competition as well…
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Owwwwwwwwwww.
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I am full of idle threats.
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I am full of tidal pets… (sashimi).
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I prefer yours.
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And by referring to my tastes as “yours”, you are referring to the delicate foodstuffs of the lovely Japanese people, your ancestors: makers of the finest foods in the world, with the Vietnamese coming in a VERY close second.
One has not lived until they have tried Osakan takoyaki with a little mustard mixed in with the mayonnaise.
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But not my cowboy hat!
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You certainly did a great job catching the essence.
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He totally did. Okaji Sensei is a master of so many things!
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I love the second couplet, but I have to admit a fondness for “go make people among rain”. (K)
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There’s another poem begging to emerge from that phrase!
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Yes there certainly is!
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Maybe you should write it!
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A challenge…I’ll see what I can do.
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Here it is:
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Wonderful work. I find translation to be a difficult place for my head to be, if that makes sense. The work of two poets, generally without the permission of one of them ;). But is it any different than a writing prompt (except more difficult)? Maybe it is?
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I prefer to call these pieces adaptations, since I neither speak nor read Chinese, and am working off of someone else’s transliteration. But they are good exercise for the brain! I think they’re akin to a prompt, except you don’t have as much wiggle room. 🙂
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Adaptations is a good name for it. Yes, it seems like a prompt, but much stricter.
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Challenging and fun!
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thank you so much for sharing this wonderful piece of artistry; I was wondering about what it might be like with the ridgepole outside of the apricot house; and the apricot turned over as its own cover. Not sure if that would make any sense. But this is a lovely poem and art segment. Thanks again.
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Perhaps you should give it a try! And thank you.
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I enjoyed the thought process, then re-reading in several different ways.
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One word can so easily shift the focus of the entire piece.
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This is lovely. Poetry of very few words is the hardest because every word has to do double or triple duty. The combination of images reminded me instantly of a Cat Stevens lyric that has always haunted me:
I built my house of barley rice
Green pepper walls and water ice
Tables of paper wood, windows of light
And everything emptying into white.
“Apricot” is great because we aren’t used to thinking of it as a wood, so it concentrates the attention–and you still get the benefit of the fruit, so to speak. And I like that you kept “fragrant” in there to pick that up. The second couplet is missing the idea “people” but it is very good in and of itself, especially by posing a question and inserting the “I.” You bring a lot that is not necessarily in the original, but as an adapter, you have that freedom. Adaptations tend to be aesthetically superior to true translations, where semantic equivalence has to be the first priority.
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It’s difficult to prevent my 21st century, middle-aged, Texan persona from sneaking into these adaptations, but I try (no pick up trucks in this one). True translations are hard! I bow to those who render them well.
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After all that has been said, more words seem superfluous but I want to offer the original text and some thoughts.
文杏館
文杏裁為梁,香茅結為宇。
不知棟裏雲,去作人間雨。
I would have chosen different words if I was to offer a word for word translation. For example, the Chinese word 裁 was given the word ‘cut’ in the first line. It is not wrong but 裁 implies a great deal more care than simply ‘cut’ – the word is used to describe tailoring, with exact measures to fit. Further more, since the subject is the apricot tree, the word 裁 can also be translated as ‘to plant’; that is, the line could mean ‘planting apricots to be made into beams’
Second line: 結 was translated into ‘tie’. Again it is not wrong, but the Chinese character can also mean ‘to knot’, ‘to unite’. 宇 may mean ‘eaves’ but it is more often used to mean ‘house’. So the reading of the first two lines may give you a totally different translation.
Third line: 棟is the pillar on which the beam rests so from the ground, the horizontal plane of growing (beam, thatch) we are lifting our heads along the vertical (pillar, sky/cloud) to the sky.
Fourth line: 人間 is rarely translated as ‘amongst men/people’. Here it definitely means ‘on earth’, or ‘mankind’ as the ‘sky’ refers to heaven.
I hope I did not confuse you further. 🙂
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Confusion is my natural state! I was hoping you’d chime in – the additional meanings/connotations add so much more to the poem, and offer additional readings. Thank you!
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I wanted to ‘chime in’ but I had visitors all week and preoccupied. It was interesting to read what others had to say.
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I always find it interesting and rewarding to read what others say. I’m like a sponge, and absorb what I can.
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Thank you, as always, Robert. Beautiful.
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You’re very welcome. The interaction on these pieces is well worth the price of admission. Much fun.
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