POETRY Kimberly Ng & Mariah Ong

Ch'ang-an Travels Li Po

INFLUENCE OF LI BAI/LI PO IN THE WEST •  The ideas underlying Li Bai's poetry had a profound

impact in shaping American Imagist and Modernist poetry through the 20th century.

•  Li Bai is influential in the West partly due to Ezra Pound’s versions of some of his poems in the collection Cathay.

EZRA POUND

EZRA POUND •  Ezra Pound was born in Hailey, Idaho, on October 30,

1885. He completed two years of college at the University of Pennsylvania and earned a degree from Hamilton College in 1905. After teaching at Wabash College for two years, he travelled abroad to Spain, Italy, and London, where, as the literary executor of the scholar Ernest Fenellosa, he became interested in Japanese and Chinese poetry. He married Dorothy Shakespear in 1914 and became London editor of theLittle Review in 1917.

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 look out?

At sixteen you departed, You went into far Ku-to-yen, 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-fu-Sa.

The River Merchant’s Wife: A Letter By Li Po

Translated by Ezra Pound

EZRA’S TRANSLATION METHOD

Modernist translation

Imagism a movement in poetry that derived its technique from classical Chinese and Japanese

poetry—stressing clarity, precision, and economy of language and foregoing traditional rhyme and meter in order to, in Pound’s words, “compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in the sequence of the metronome.” (free verse)

EZRA’S TRANSLATION

Ezra’s 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?

Literal Translation Ten five begin exhibit eyebrow Willing same dust together ashes Forever exist embrace pillar trust How on look out husband platform? ⼗十五始展眉，願同塵與灰。常存抱柱信，豈上望夫臺。

Ezra’s 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.

Literal Translation Ten four be sir wife Shy face not yet try open Lower head to dark wall Thousand call not one return ⼗十四為君婦，羞顏未嘗開。低頭向暗壁，千喚不⼀一回。

EZRA’S TRANSLATION

“If you are coming down the narrows of the river Kiang, let me know beforehand and I will come out to meet you As far as Cho-Fu-Sa.” - The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter, Li Po translated by Ezra Pound

What I am, ever, is this: composure of stone. Spare weather visiting the garden, small as the hours I keep watch by. Beyond this wall

Must be better weathers. This claw of stars Must constellate somewhere into a bear, Else names would lie.

Since winter’s thaws, no script from you Save this: “I travel the river and follow The white gulls—”

Husband. See me walking the dusty pass Where loom our prior lives? Here the years pass that I enshrine

Within these walls, sparing nothing From the ardors of my stare. Blue plums, Paired butterflies repeat you

In a walled world. I tell myself To clear the moss, mend the gate So long unswayed and caked with dirt,

But nothing moves. Somewhere You are actual. Happen to me there.

As far as Cho-Fu-Sa Mookie Katigbak

ANALYSIS

•  POINT OF VIEW: Wife/Woman

•  THEME: Love and Longing

•  Similar cultural context

•  Same use of free verse

The Passionate Shepherd to His Love by Christopher Marlowe (1599) Come live with me and be my love, And we will all the pleasures prove That valleys, groves, hills, and fields Woods or steepy mountain yields

And we will sit upon the rocks, Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks By shallow rivers to whose falls Melodious birds sing madrigals.

And I will make thee beds of roses And a thousand fragrant posies, A cap of flower, and a kirtle Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle;

A gown made of the finest wool Which from our pretty lambs we pull; Fair lined slippers for the cold With buckles of the purest gold;

A belt of straw and ivy buds, With coral clasps and amber studs; And if these pleasures may thee move, Come live with me and be my love.

The shepherds' swains shall dance and sing For thy delight each May morning: If these delights thy mind may move, Then live with me and be my love.

The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd by Sir Walter Raleigh (1600) If all the world and love were young, And truth in every shepherd's tongue, These pretty pleasures might me move To live with thee and be thy love.

Time drives the flocks from field to fold, When rivers rage and rocks grow cold; And Philomel becometh dumb; The rest complain of cares to come.

The flowers do fade, and wanton fields To wayward winter reckoning yields; A honey tongue, a heart of gall, Is fancy's spring, but sorrow's fall.

Thy gowns, thy shoes, thy bed of roses, Thy cap, thy kirtle, and thy posies, Soon break, soon wither, soon forgotten, In folly ripe, in reason rotten.

Thy belt of straw and ivy buds, Thy coral clasps and amber studs, All these in me no means can move To come to thee and be thy love.

But could youth last and love still breed, Had joys no date nor age no need, Then these delights my mind might move To live with thee and be thy love.

References:

https://eastasiastudent.net/china/classical/li-bai-changgan-xing/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathay_(poetry_collection)

http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88v/burroughs-cutup.html

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/ezra-pound

http://www2.latech.edu/~bmagee/210/marlowe/shepherd_&_notes.htm