Dù Fǔ and his Father (via Jakdan)

Dù Fǔ wrote On Climbing the Yǎnzhōu Tower about a visit to his father during the last year of his father’s life. The poem reminds me of the last years of my own father’s life, when I would go to visit him in Tucson to take care of things for him. When I had free time, I would go out of town and climb up into the Saguaro National Park.

In the second quatrain of the poem, when Dù Fǔ looks on the remains of the past, I think he is reflecting on the end of his father’s life. A man that once seemed to have a place in the world is now standing alone, and things that once seemed permanent are now in ruins.

Here is my translation of Jakdan’s translation.

Yan jeo-i hoton-i taktu de tafakangge

dergi giyūn ama uilere fonde,

julergi taktu tuktan tuwame elehe,

neore tugi hai dai nurhūhai,

necin tala cing sioi nikeneme,

cin-i eldengge wehe emteli dabagan debi,

lu-i hoton deyen arkan susuha hede,

julgei unesi udu labdu bicibe,

enggeleme karade emhun guwele mele.

When attending to my father in the east county,

I first got my fill of the view from the south tower.

Just as the floating clouds connected me to Hǎidài,

the level plain drew me near to Qīngxú, and

the stele of Qín was alone on the mountain pass,

the city and palace of Lǔ were just a desolate scar.

Though the ancient relics were many,

when I leaned forward to look out, I did so alone, and furtively.

Notes

hai dai and cing sioi: Since Jakdan left hai untranslated, and did not render it as mederi (ocean), I take hai dai to be a proper name for the region from Mount Tai to the sea, rather than a phrase referring to two places, “Mount Tai and the sea.” Since cing sioi parallels it in the next line, I took that in the same way.

nurhūhai and nikeneme: The verb nurhūmbi means “to link together without a gap,” as in idu nurhūmbi, “to do shifts back-to-back without a break between them.” (That example comes from the Qianlong dictionary.) Presumably the subject of the verb is the thing that does the linking, and in this line that would be the floating clouds. However, if we are taking hai dai to be a single noun phrase, then what is being linked to what?

I think Jakdan understood these two lines to describe the way that the view from the tower connected the poet to the distant places around him. The clouds above connected him to the Hǎidài region, and the plain below connected him to Qīngxú.

It is interesting that nikeneme is not a finite form, giving the impression that the thought in the first quatrain is not yet complete. I tried to convey that by putting a dangling “and” at the end of the quatrain.

A poem by Du fu

In Jakdan's fifth fascicle, he has a translation of a poem by Du Fu, for which he gives the title as Qingjiang (清江). Since Stephen Owen has recently made a complete translation of all of Du fu's poetry freely available, I thought it would be interesting to compare Jakdan and Owen's translations. The same poem is found in Owen, vol. 2, book 9, poem 9.30 (under the title 江村). I won't include Owen's text here since it doesn't belong to me, but it is easy to find.

First, there are a few textual differences between the Chinese text in Jakdan and that in Owen. Here are the two poems, side-by-side:

Owen 9.30	Jakdan 5.7
江村	清江
清江一曲抱村流，	清江一曲抱村流，	(Rhyme)
長夏江村事事幽。	長夏江村事事幽。	(Rhyme)
自去自來堂上燕，	自去自來桨上燕，
相親相近水中鷗。	相親相近水中鷗。	(Rhyme)
老妻畫紙為棋局，	老妻畫紙為棋局，
稚子敲針作釣鉤。	稚子敲針作釣鈎。	(Rhyme)
但有故人供祿米，	多病所需惟藥物，
微軀此外更何求。	微軀此外復何求。	(Rhyme)

For his translation, Jakdan has chosen an en rhyme, which means the rhyming lines must end in -en, -in, -un, -ūn. He has also followed the same AAxA-xAxA rhyme scheme as Du Fu, though in the third line he has an accidental rhyme (cibin) that was probably unavoidable. Lastly, he has translated each line as seven Manchu words, reflecting the seven characters per line of the original.

Here is Jakdan's Manchu translation:

cing giyang ula
cing giyang-ni emu mudanggai tokso erguwere eyen,	(Rhyme)
ula toksoi sidaraka juwari-i baita anan-i elehun,	(Rhyme)
cihai deyenere cihai donjirengge daibu-i dergi cibin,	(Accidental rhyme)
sasa halanjire sasa halanarangge musei dorgi kilahūn,	(Rhyme)
sakda sargan hoošan jijurengge tonio tonikū-i muru,
ajige juse ulme dabtarangge welmiyere dehe-i efin,	(Rhyme)
nimeku hūsibuhai baiburengge damu okto hacin dabala,
ser sere beyeci tulgiyen geli ai erecun.	(Rhyme)

I think the en rhyme must have been a particularly challenging rhyme for Manchu poets because no Manchu finite verb forms end in -n. This forces every rhyming line to end in a noun or adjective, limiting the poet to an extremely narrow set of possible phrase types.

It also poses a challenge for the translator from Manchu, as you might see below in my very literal translation from Jakdan:

The Qingjiang River

A winding bend of the Qingjiang river, which flows around a village,
The events that unfold at the river and village each summer are continuously peaceful,
Those which come and go freely flying are the swallows above the oars,
Those which come and go trading places with us are our own gulls,
What the old lady draws on the paper is the shape of a chess board,
The children hammering on needles, a game of fishhooks,
Other than the kind of medicine that is sought by those who are sick,
Aside from this slight body, what could one expect?

Owen's translation and Jakdan's are generally fairly close, aside from the re-phrasing that Jakdan had to undertake to use the en rhyme. Obviously textual differences lead to differences in translation, so Owen's swallows are "in the hall" but Jakdan's are "over the oars", and the seventh line is completely different.

There are a few interesting oddities about Jakdan's text that bear mentioning, and I'm not sure what they say about Jakdan's process of translation.

1. Clearly, from the Chinese text, the swallows should come and go flying. In Manchu they certainly go flying (deyenere), but instead of coming flying they "listen" (donjire). Is this donjire just a mistake for *deyenjire, "come flying"? Or is this an intentional play on words on Jakdan's part, to inject a new meaning into the translation that was not present in the original?

2. From the Chinese text, the swallows are above the oars (桨), but the word used in the Manchu text is one I have not been able to identify: daibu. I am not sure what the origin of this word is, so I am not entirely sure about the meaning.

3. In the Chinese text, the children of the village very clearly tap on needles to make fishhooks. In Jakdan's Manchu, this is a game (efin), but the word efin sounds a bit like a synonym for needle, ifin.