A Poet's Translation

In my Chinese lesson today, we came across a character I did not initially recognize, gan 竿, a type of bamboo. Then I said, "Oh of course, I should know this character because of the poem by Li Bai, 'The Ballad of Changgan.'" At first she couldn't even think of what poem I was talking about, confirming my suspicion that it's not one of Li Bai's better known efforts. After I described it a little she remembered and seemed curious as to why I happen to be so familiar with this particular poem (there are so many much more famous ones that I don't know).

So I explained to her that "The Ballad of Changgan" it has in some sense been in some sense immortalized in English by Ezra Pound's 'translation,' better known as "The River-Merchant's Wife." I have no idea how he went about translating it, or who helped explain it to him. But since he uses Japanese romanization for almst all the place names, and even for the author's name (he calls him Rihaku), one wonders if it wasn't a Japanese person. Did Ezra Pound even know that "Rihaku" was a Chinese poet of the Tang dynasty? Did he mistakenly think him a Japanese poet?

If a Pound scholar out there happens to read this and knows the answer, please let me know. Or maybe someday I'll do the research and figure it out. I have a deep interest in and fondness for this poem, not least because it doesn't matter how good or not good Ezra Pound's Chinese was. There are other translations he has done that don't come off too well. But this particular one just clicked somehow. For once the translation seems almost to match or surpass the original.


The River-Merchant's Wife
by Li Bai, translated by Ezra Pound

While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead
I played about the front gate, pulling flowers.
You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse,
You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums.
And we went on living in the village of Chokan:
Two small people, without dislike or suspicion.

At fourteen I married My Lord you.
I never laughed, being bashful.
Lowering my head, I looked at the wall.
Called to, a thousand times, I never looked back.

At fifteen I stopped scowling,
I desired my dust to be mingled with yours
Forever and forever and forever.
Why should I climb the lookout?

At sixteen you departed,
You went into far Ku-to-en, by the river of swirling eddies,
And you have been gone five months.
The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead.

You dragged your feet when you went out.
By the gate now, the moss is grown, the different mosses,
Too deep to clear them away!
The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind.
The paired butterflies are already yellow with August
Over the grass in the West garden;
They hurt me. I grow older.
If you are coming down through the narrows of the river Kiang,
Please let me know beforehand,
And I will come out to meet you
As far as Cho-fo-Sa.