Selections of Ou-Yang Hsiu’s poetry appear in the collection “Love & Time, The Poems of Ou-Yang Hsiu,” translated by J. P. Seaton, 1989, Copper Canyon Press.
This post is part 1 of 2. Part 1 will cover form and background. Part 2 will cover content, and look closely at one translated poem.
Background: Ou-Yang Hsiu
Ou-Yang Hsiu lived from 1007-1072 in Sung Dynasty China. Raised in poverty and primarily self-educated, he became both a scholar and a government administrator. He was known for his strong code of ethics.
Ou-Yang Hsiu didn’t follow the approved pattern of highly formal poems on limited, conventional subject matter, full of obscure allusions.
Which sounds like about what the non-poetry reader thinks of poetry today. Hard to understand, needing someone to decode it for the reader. Something only for the in-crowd. You can’t really blame people. Schools tend to reinforce this approach. A student deciphers a poem to figure out ‘what it really means’ instead of understanding it, at least on one level, without overly-educated interpretation.
I think Ou-Yang Hsiu would not have approved. As the translator, J. P. Seaton, says in the introduction, the poet expressed
“a highly individual vision of the world in a sharp and unpretentious manner.”
In his later years, Ou-Yang Hsiu nicknamed himself “The Old Drunkard” and often placed this version of himself into his poems. He brought daily, mundane topics into his art, and looked at the depth of emotion and meaning in those supposedly unimportant moments.
I have the translations, not the original Chinese, or I could ask some of my daughter’s native Chinese friends how they feel about the accuracy.
The translator, J. P. Seaton, was a professor at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, at the time of publication and later became Professor Emeritus. He worked with poets Carolyn Kizer and Sam Hamill with respect to some of these poems and other translations. Therefore I’m taking it on trust that these translations are good, both with respect to their accuracy and their poetic sensibility in English.
Tz’u Form
From among the many forms of Chinese poetry, two appear in this collection. One is the tz’u, and another is a quatrain form of the already traditional shih, sometimes with a title.
The tz’u is patterned on a song. There were over 500 such songs, or perhaps more than 800 – fixed patterns of tone, syllable, emphasis, speed, tune etc. The title of a tz’u is often the name of the song the poem was patterned on — not anything to do with the poem. Many poems are titled the same. In this collection, the translator chose to simply title the tz’u by their first line.
Edward Hirsch writes in A Poet’s Glossary that tz’u were “written and performed by prostitutes in singing houses and later because the primary lyric mode of the Sung Dynasty (960-1279). The form flourished because it retained the freshness of its vernacular roots.”
Lost in Translation
Like much poetry in translation, especially highly structured poetry, the content and tone may be apparent but the full effect of the work is not achieved in English.
- Denotation may come over to us in translation, but the sound — rhythm and rhyme and tone — of the original may be incomplete.
- Not having the cultural code built into a Western, or modern, mindset, the impact and connotation of imagery and word choice can also be quite lost.
- The impact of the original song itself –it’s meaning in relation to the new work–is also lost, along with the impact of any intervening works, the sense of a continuing conversation, argument, or jazz riff from one work to the next, each coming from the same base.
Tz’u Form, Take 2:
This analogy may be crude, but here’s an attempt. The tz’u is a bit like:
- patterning a poem on a well-known Christmas carol, say Jingle Bells or Silent Night,
- writing new words to the tune
- and then noting the tune at the top of the poem, or as part of its title
I’m probably not describing the tz’u form well. It began as a form sung by women entertainers. Those of the literary or political elite who used the form before Ou-Yang Hsiu typically considered it an entertainment, a novelty, sometimes with erotic content.
Ou-Yang Hsiu brought the tz’u into a more elevated use–a lyric form with all the possibilities of subject matter now open, not just a bawdy or throwaway plaything.
What he did with the tz’u form is similar to writing poems to the tune of “My baloney has a first name…” and then suddenly making them, while still in that same tune, haunting and mystical, lyrical and deeply meaningful. (But, I trust the tunes of the Sung dynasty were probably not so sing-song or silly as my example.)
Analogue in English?
In English, like many other languages, there is plenty of traditional examples of writing in the pattern of other work, including songs.
There is the troubadour tradition. Plenty of traditional metered forms exist, as well.
What we don’t have is a set of 500 — or even 5 — common song upon which additional poems are often patterned.
Perhaps the limerick comes close? A limerick, however, has no base content to which it refers back, only the sound pattern, the rhythm and rhyme, and the general impulse to shock. Especially through use of the obscene.
Consider that almost any Emily Dickinson poem can be sung to The Yellow Rose of Texas. She wrote in common meter, lines of four beats followed by lines of three beats.
Common meter is also typical of ballads, Protestant Hymns, even television themes such as that for “Gilligan’s Island.” But when Dickinson wrote in common meter, she wasn’t linking each poem to the ones of that pattern that came prior. The cadence of common meter is simply too common to be a great analogy.
In the case of the tz’u in “Love & Time,” I don’t have a working knowledge of the original songs. Nor do I know how the new poems reflect upon or react to the old forms. I’ve a bit of history from the book’s introduction plus whatever else I might research.
Some are probably extensions of the feel, or spirit, of the original. Some might be parodies, along the lines of “Weird Al” Yankovic’s work–though “Weird Al” is working to parody both musically and visually.
But maybe I’ve run a bit too far afield here.
When in doubt, consult The Bard
Or, consider the Shakespearean sonnet, which you can read about at poets. org, among other places.
You can’t write a modern sonnet in the Shakespearean form that doesn’t have the echo of other Shakespearean sonnets and their conventions. Whether you like it or not.
No matter if you follow the conventions or deviate from them, your new sonnet is in relationship with those conventions. It is in conversation with the form and the past. You may follow or subvert conventions, but you cannot divorce your new poem from the traditional expectations.
They Made Ready on the Stage
OK. We don’t have the tune. Don’t know the original language. We’re relying heavily upon the translator and his poet colleagues. We are reading more than 900 years after the poet Ou-Yang Hsiu lived.
But here are a few lines of tz’u to wet your appetite until part 2 of this post comes out. This is the first part of one poem. It demonstrates the elevation of mundane to mystical:
They made ready on the stage,
composing sleeves and gowns,
and then their songs wound
to carved beams, to startle dusty darkness.
Soft and smooth and clean and round,
as pearl and pearl upon a single thread.
Stay tuned for part 2
Comments on the questions of form in translation–or other topics–welcomed!