SOME NOTES ON FRANK BIDART'STRANSLATION OF TU FU, #5: THE CHARACTERS OF 麗人行

This post is a follow up to the previous post: SOME NOTES ON FRANK BIDART'S TRANSLATION OF TU FU #4

三月三日天氣新, the first line of Li-ren, Dazzling Women, is interesting to me in that there is an explicit character to the line setting a date and time. The date and time is actually not the third of March as one might first think, but a corresponding date on the Chinese calendar, April 10th, 753. In a more general sense the "third day third month" festival was a festival marked by open air and water side gathering. In Chang'an there was only one place that all favored for such retreat, Tu Fu's oft lamented and celebrated "crooked" lake. Also translated as Serpentine Lake, it is actually a river that flowed through the park in the south east of the city. In line 2 長安水邊多麗人 the characters indicating "water-side," refer to the river Serpentine Lake.

But there are also secondary or periphery meanings available to the translator. I'd like it to be true that Tu Fu is using his skills to language the poem elegantly, to cloak the event's "bad breath." But as I fiddle with these characters I'm not yet convinced Tu Fu was really up to such subterfuge--however desperately I want him to be.

For a character by character translation of line 1 click here: 三月三日天氣新.

In Tu Fu's autobiography liberally edited by Florence Ayscough ( a text I have been liberally excerpting from in all my posts) the line is translated, "Third Moon, third day, heaven's breath new;" --which as a function of its translation excludes the suggestiveness of the character 日. And the subtext of "heaven's breath," as the character 氣, means more than just breath so some of the potential play of the words is lost--this character might be seen as indicating "weather" or even "foul smell." I'd like to believe Tu Fu intended this irony, dressing up the occasion in a language that cloaks the event's flattulence. I suspect I want Tu Fu to be more devious than he really was. We'll see...

Here is a line by line set of links to a character-based translation of the poem:

1: 三月三日天氣新
2: 長安水邊多麗人
3: 態濃意遠淑且真
4: 肌理細膩骨肉勻
5: 繡羅衣裳照暮春
6: 蹙金孔雀銀麒麟
7: 頭上何所有
8: 翠微盍葉垂鬢唇
9: 背後何所見
10: 珠壓腰衱穩稱
11: 就中雲幕椒房親
12: 賜名大國虢與秦
13: 紫駝之峰出翠釜
14: 水精之盤行素鱗
15: 犀箸饜飫久未下
16: 鸞刀縷切空紛綸
17: 黃門飛鞚不動塵
18: 御廚絡繹送八珍
19: 簫鼓哀吟感鬼神
20: 賓從雜遝實要津
21: 後來鞍馬何逡巡
22: 當軒下馬入錦茵
23: 楊花雪落覆白蘋
24: 青鳥飛去銜紅巾
25: 炙手可熱勢絕倫
26: 慎莫近前丞相嗔

As I look through the character by character translation I see that much of the surface silkiness masks much irony. I see a poem festooned with the wit despite its apparent proper manners. In line 6 Tu Fu focuses on the pattern of the Mythical Chimera or Qi Lin---it combines the features of deer, ox, and unicorn--odd, beautiful in its own way but also frightening. The image seems commentary.

In line 15 the women never put down their rhinocerous horn chopsticks--this at first suggests they never stop eating, but on further investigation such rhino horn sticks were used for detetcting poison as they were beleived to have magical properties that warn the user if there is poison in the food. So wouldn't this suggest that they were always on guard for attack from others?

In Line 20 the poem focuses on a crowd of followers--but this applauding throng is not for the "dazzling women" but for Yang Kuo Chung, their cousin, who has just entered the scene. Tu Fu calls Chung a saddle horse literally but the reader is to take this as "metonymy for the rider." I quote this because it is an idea from another text, David Hawkes, "A Little Primer of Tu Fu." Hawkes' book is attributed by Bidart as being essential to his translation. Hawkes asserts that in lines 23 and 24 there is an obfuscated double meaning.

Hawkes adds, "They can be taken at their face value as a description of the scenery in the park. But Yang, [the first character in line 23] as well as meaning 'willow', is the surname of Yang Kuo-chung, the subject of this stanza. According to an ancient bit of Chinese folklore, frogbit (the bai-pin of line 23) was generated by the mutation of willow-down when it fell into water. Now there was a popular rumor, apparently believed by Tu Fu, that Yang Kuo-chung was carrying on an incestuous relationship with his cousin, the Duchess of Kuo. The 'Yang flower covering the frogbit' therefore has an indecent meaning concealed beneath its harmless exterior."

I'll continue to refer back to these notes at times and pair these character explanations with renderings from "The Autobiography of a Chinese Poet: Tu Fu" by Florence Ayscough in my next post. In following posts I'll look directly at Bidart's translation in combination with the study of Li Ren in David Hawkes' "Little Primer of Tu Fu."