Yi Feng

on translating Shuguang Zhang

It seems that every poet at least once writes about poetry and poetics in a poem, if not several. Shuguang Zhang’s 《一首诗》(“A Poem”) in particular strikes me, since at the beginning of each stanza, it negates itself by saying “a poem is not a poem.” However, after reading the poem, I think that it defines what a poem is precisely and accurately. 一首诗, by negation, actually values and emphasizes the ambiguity and multiplicity of meanings within a poem, as well as indicates the importance of readers in the reading of a poem. Zhang’s imagery reminds me of T. S. Eliot’s Wasteland which presents images of “rubble,” a “wasteland,” and “rock[s]” Meanwhile, 《一首诗》also contains many traditional Chinese poetic features, with images commonly found in Tang Dynasty poetry, such as “boat[s],” “mountain[s],” “cloud[s],” and the legendary “Wangchuan.” When translating this poem, I tried to make my English translation align closely with the original poem. For instance, I used a direct translation of Wangchuan River, a mythical river between the living world and the dead world, and provided a footnote for context. I also tried to combine my understanding of the poem with the meanings present within it. For instance, the direct translation of “任凭波涛把你带到哪里” is “allowing waves to bring you anywhere.” My choice of “nowhere” rather than “anywhere” here indicates that poetry brings you to a place that is remote and beyond your imagination. In the last line “你在上面雕刻出人形,” the word “上面” means “on,” yet I translate it as “into” in an effort to imply that the rock actually becomes a human instead of just a human figure — just as a poem becomes what it is after it is read.

I love this poem since it shows different perspectives about love, nature and aesthetics. The title includes the name Nabokov, which is a reference to Vladimir Nabokov, a famous Russian-American novelist whose work Lolita will perhaps come to the reader’s mind. There is a sense of intertextuality in this poem. Shuguang Zhang’s 《纳博科夫的蝴蝶》(“Nabokov’s Butterfly”) ponders over the topics such as what love is, the relationship between nature and human beings, as well as the diversity of aesthetics. We can see Zhang’s masterful writing, in which he fuses scenes from everyday life with images of nature and aesthetics. When translating this poem, I try to replicate the original’s by using simple and everyday language. I keep the Chinese onomatopoeia “哗哗” (huahua), the dynamic sound of running water in my English translation. Additionally, I use many prepositional phrases such as “in the distance,” “in silence,” and “in wrath” to show a sharp contrast between verbal phrases like “capture and kill them” and “nail them on cardboard.” With these contrasts, I would like to indicate the disturbing relationship between human and nature, killing and silence, nearness and distance.