Still Night Considerations
Posted on | June 5, 2009 |
I am, by no means, adept at translating Classical Chinese literature - much less classical Chinese poetry. However, I can’t help but try anyway. I was thinking about Li Bo the other day, and a poem that I read in my undergrad Mandarin classes with Jonathan Pease. I couldn’t remember the exact name of the poem, only that it was four lines long and he talked about the moon in every one of them. I saw the poem as simplistic after reading it, but Professor Pease talked for over an hour about the use of the moon to represent the woman that Li Bo was admiring in the poem. While 靜夜思 is not the poem that we read back then, it is still beautiful, and I had some fun trying to translate it this week.
In Chinese medicine, we talk often about Yin and Yang, the moon and the earth, etc… and I think that one of the best ways we can understand what these concepts mean is through reading classical Chinese poetry.
靜夜思
床前明月光。
疑是地上霜。
舉頭望明月。
低頭思故鄉。Jìng yè sī
Chuáng qián míng yuè guāng.
Yí shì dì shang shuāng.
Jǔ tóu wàng míng yuè.
Dī tóu sī gù xiāng.Still Night Considerations
Before the bed shine the beams of the moon.
Doubtfully is there frost atop the earth.
Raising my head to gaze longingly upon the moon.
Lowering my head in consideration of my homeland.
The way I have translated this poem makes it seem so completely simplistic that I don’t know what to do. Even so, I went to bed thinking about this, and in the only way that I know how - I started to think about the moon as a woman. This character, 前, shows the foot radical over the character for ‘boat,’ and can be thought of as someone standing at the prow of a boat. It does mean “in front,” “ahead,” “formerly,” “preceeding,” etc. And I can see so many meanings in this, one of which could actually point towards something like, “before I took the moon to bed,” or, from a vantage point of the bed, he is looking at the moon.
明月 means not only the moon, but a beautiful type of pearl. I don’t doubt that it could also serve as a name, or pet name. 光 has the meaning of “brightness,” but can also denote nakedness or smoothness. It was originally made from the fire radical 火 over the person radical 人. Given this, another way to translate the line might be: “Before bed Luna with fiery nakedness,” or something like that… :)
In the second line, 疑 tells us something about “suspect,” or “doubt.” This could be taken as a verb or noun (or maybe even something else). 是 is the simple “to be,” followed by 地上: on top of the earth. Or, perhaps, we can read it as simply “earth,” and then “atop,” as separate entities. The last character, 霜, shuāng, can be frost, or “white,” or even something “hoary,” “old,” “grey,” “silver.” The simple translation is stated above, but to take this to some deeper levels, perhaps what is suspect is the frost upon the earth… the old man upon the young, fertile girl?? It makes sense that he admires her either from the bed, or before the bed, but doubts that he would ever be able to be with her. I’m not sure how old Li Bo was at the time of this poem, or perhaps I could consider that idea further.
Moving on to the third line: 舉 is raising, made of the character for give, 與, over the radical for hand, 手. So, this is the idea of raising, but it’s a raising with generosity. 頭 is “head,” “the first,” the top end of something, the “chief.” Here it is raising the head in generosity - which, can be interpreted in some more erotic ways or perhaps it is just the idea of raising his head. I would be willing to bet that he meant both. 望 is a pretty brilliant character to use here, because not only does it mean “look,” but it means “full moon.” It’s the idea of gazing into the distance, there is hope, expectation. And once again, there is 明月. Raising his head to gaze into the distance at 明月 - almost as if he wants to give his love to her, but he cannot because he is the frost, the cold, the old, and as he said above, he doubts as if he could give that to her. All he can do is see her from afar, as all a human being can do is gaze up longingly at the full moon.
And in the fourth line: 低 is “low,” made of the person radical next to the foundation radical, 氐. Interestingly though 氐 is also an ancient constellation. 低 has the meaning of “lowering,” “submitting,” “drooping,” “hanging down,” or “reducing.” Again we have the head: 頭, and so we can see that in the previous line the head was raised towards the distance and now it has been lowered. 思 is “think,” “deliberate,” “consider.” It is a field 田 over the heart 心. The earth was referenced in line 2, and perhaps this is a reference to it again. Some sources say that the field radical was originally a representation of the brain… who knows. 故 is often translated as “therefore,” “reason,” “cause.” It is made of the radicals for ancient 古 and beat 攴. And then there is 鄉, a picture of two people, 乡 and 阝, sitting down at a table. It has the meaning of a countryside or a village. 故鄉 together can mean “birthplace.” This has some meaning about the humbling, submissive lowering of the head to the considerations about his home. All I can think is that the character for village is two people sitting by a table and so perhaps he is considering his loneliness in the world… which can reflect back on all of this and the constant references to the moon - something that is not unlike the poet in it’s ability to profoundly reflect the light on one side and hold the darkness on the other.
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