Missing Words in Red Pine’s Stonehouse (3)

The Zen Works of Stonehouse has an introduction by Red Pine, the translator, followed by ‘Three Books’. Book One is ‘Mountain Poems‘. This includes most of Stonehouse’s poems in traditional forms, namely, seven-syllable lǜshī 七言律詩, five-syllable lǜshī 五言律詩, seven-syllable quatrains qī yán juéjù 七言絕句, and songs gē 歌 of varying line lengths. Book Two is ‘Gathas‘ jiézàn 偈讚, and Book Three is ‘Zen Talks‘. The full title of ‘Zen Talks’ from the edition I’m using (T-xu:1399) is Fúyuán shíwūgǒng chánshī yǔlù juǎn zhī xià 福源石屋珙禪師語錄卷之下.

First, let’s take a look at the translations of Book One, Mountain Poems, starting with the five-syllable lǜshī.

As a rule Chinese two-syllable words don’t cross the caesura which is located immediately after the second character in each five-syllable line. (And the caesura is located immediately after the fourth character in a seven-syllable line.)

There are exactly eight lines in each poem and each line has exactly five syllables, five kanji. Since a three-syllable word in this form of poem would be exceedingly rare, we can assume that any five-syllable line will have at most, two two-syllable words with one one-syllable word remaining, totaling three words across five syllables. At the other extreme, each syllable in the line could be a word, so five syllables equals five words. (By ‘words’ I’m talking about main, substantive words, not “little” words like articles, prepositions, helping verbs, or certain pronouns which are usually implied in a ‘word’ of Chinese traditional poetry.)  In sum, a five syllable line can have a total of 3, 4, or 5 words. (In the same way, a seven syllable line can have a total of 4, 5, 6, or 7 words.)

I notice that Red Pine tends to use three main English words to translate a five-syllable line. This indicates that, on average, for translation purposes, he reads two two-syllable Chinese words plus one one-syllable Chinese word per line. In the dozen or so poems I’ve checked so far, he always sees more two-syllable words than I do.

As a poem in English, Red Pine’s approach produces superior results. This may be because he has fewer words to deal with in English, less balls to juggle, and this gives him more freedom to create the kind of sound or rhythm he likes, and he is very successful at this.

Here’s an example and I think it’s typical.

Take poem #62 in the book, p32 in my edition. This is the second of 31 five-syllable lǜshī, poems numbered 53-72 and 173-184. #184 is the last poem in Book I.

I’ve quoted poem #62 below with Red Pine’s translation to the right followed by my count of  the number of ‘words’ in parentheses.

L1: 屈曲  黃泥路      A winding muddy trail   (3)
L2: 團圝  紫槿籬      an immense hibiscus hedge   (3)
L3: 紙窓  開竹屋      a paper-window bamboo hut  (4)
L4: 瓦竈  爇松枝      stove-blackened pines   (3)
L5: 平澹  忘懷處      a humble place free from care   (4)
L6: 蕭然  絕照時      quiet untroubled days   (3)
L7: 何人  能似我      who can do as well   (4 ?)
L8: 無事  亦無為      nothing to do or change (4)

Since this is a five-syllable lǜshī the caesura will be found after the second character in each line. I’ve indicated it by adding a space.

Here’s the way I read the poem:

L1: 屈曲  黃泥路      Contorting, winding… the brown mud road in. (4 or 5)

L2: 團圝  紫槿籬      Encircling, reuniting… the purple hibiscus hedge. (4 or 5)

L3: 紙窓  開竹屋      Paper windows open up the bamboo shack. (5)

L4: 瓦竈  爇松枝      A clay stove, blackens pine boughs (above the roof). (5)

L5: 平澹  忘懷處      In the plain & tranquil, I’ve forgotten what was dear. (5)

L6: 蕭然  絕照時      In such utter isolation, I’ve grown impervious to hours. (5)

L7: 何人  能似我      Who else, can be like me? (5)

L8: 無事  亦無為      I have nothing to do and don’t pretend I do. (5)

As usual, the first thing you notice is that Red Pine’s translation reads better. If you count up the words, you see that he’s translating 28 or 29 words whereas I’ve found 38 or 40. Is the superior poetry of Red Pine’s English worth the sacrifice of 9 or 10 of the Chinese poet’s words? Perhaps there is no sacrifice. Perhaps the meaning of these missing words is embedded in the English?

For L1.3 and L2.3, you could say that the single word ‘mud’ suggests ‘yellow/brown’ and the single word ‘hibiscus’ suggests ‘purple’. But there are black muds and red muds and gray muds. And there are red, yellow, pink, and lavender hibiscus flowers. By using ‘mud’ alone we don’t know which color mud it is, and by using ‘hibiscus’ alone, we don’t know whether it is flowering or not, and if so what color it is.  If it were the poet’s choice to leave things vague, fine; we would have a different poem. But Stonehouse specifies the colors and, by placing them in perfect parallel, emphasizes them. And if we don’t follow suit, we may miss what I think is one of the implied meanings of the first distich: that in contrast to the poet-monk’s road to Stonehouse  which was/is twisted, contorted, not straight, and colored by earthy yellows and browns, pedestrian colors, once reunited with Stonehouse itself, he finds himself  encircled, protected by a flowering hibiscus hedge of purple elegance. If you don’t translate the color words, it’s hard to see a contrast between elegant purples and pedestrian browns and without that it is hard to make this interpretation of the difference between the trip to Stonehouse and living there. Therefore, in this case, I don’t think the sacrifice was worth it.

I don’t know where Red Pine got ‘immense’ for tuánluán 團欒, L2.1 and L2.2, which I think means something like ‘encircled’, or ‘reunited’ (tuánjù 團聚) and may even connote ‘graceful and lush bamboo’! Nevertheless it is always possible that he is right and I simply haven’t run into that meaning yet. Whatever its meaning, it is directly parallel to L1.1 and L1.2, which means ‘winding’, ‘crooked’, the opposite of straight. It’s a curvy muddy road to Stonehouse, but once you are there, you are ‘encircled’, embraced by the a luxurious purple hibiscus hedge, [with a hint of graceful bamboo.]

I found the parallel between kāi 開 L3.3 and ruò/rè 爇 L4.3 interesting and puzzling. They both seem strongly verbal, ‘opens’ and ‘heats’ or ‘opens up’ and ‘heats up’. Red Pine skips ‘opens’ entirely in L3, and ignores the caesura in L4. On the other hand, I like his jump from ‘hot/burns’ to ‘blackened’ which pulls in the image of smoke and heat and decided to use it.

My current favorite interpretation is that the paper windows are thin and drafty but, Hey, they ‘open up’ in an ‘architectural sense’ and ‘air out’ in a housekeeping sense the bamboo shack. And the clay stove, because it vents its smoke through openings in the roof (in contrast to a chimney or stovepipe, for example), ‘heats up’ or ‘blackens’ the pine boughs hanging over the roof outside however much it may heat up the shack inside. Both images call our attention to the flimsy construction of the shack and that it is only a minimal barrier, and a very porous one, between inside and outside.