More Translations from the Chinese

IN the preface to Mr. Waley's volume of translations there is a remark to the effect that no reviewer treated his earlier book, "170 Chinese Poems," as an experiment in English unrhymed verse, though this was the aspect of it which most interested the writer. This remark is perfectly just. No one did treat Mr. Waley's earlier translations as examples of unrhymed versification. We, with our Occidental eyes, are so dazzled with the substance of Chinese poetry, as Mr. Waley has revealed it to us, the seemingly 'pellucid simplicity concealing great depths of feeling, as not to ask ourselves the question of how it is done. Mr. Waley may be excused his irritation at our blindness in this respect. For he has evolved a metre and style which show, in so far as one language can show the structure of another, exactly how the Chinese poets worked. And as the Chinese poets themselves undoubtedly set higher value on technique than on subject-matter, it is certainly necessary to analyze the technique of these translations, in order to understand one reason for the strange charm of Chinese poetry. Chinese poetry is based on a parallelism of thought and of substance. Even in its early examples, this parallelism is crudely manifest. This parallelism runs in fact not only through Chinese poetry but Chinese philosophy and religion. It corresponds to a deep-seated instinct in the Oriental mind. We Occidentals, when we make buildings, pictures, poems, music, or philosophic systems, seek to vary; the Oriental seeks to repeat. It is as if he could not create a form, a sound, a thought, without creating also its echo. For this reason, Chinese poetry is without climax; for this reason also (much like Chinese painting) it compensates for absence of climax by sheer breadth of handling. As Mr. Waley in the introduction to his first book of translations pointed out, this parallelism did not come to birth all at once. Indeed, the Chinese critics themselves have recognized two species of poetry-poetry written in the Old Style (Ku-shih), which lasted up to the fourth century A.D., and poetry written in the New Style (Lu-shih-or "strictly regulated"), which gradually evolved from the fourth to the eighth centuries A.D., reaching its culmination in the works of T'ang poets, who are, by common consent, the great masters of the art of Chinese Poetry. And since it is largely these T'ang poets whom Mr. Waley has chosen to translate, it is quite evident that, for the most part, his translations reproduce, so far as possible, the forms of this "new" or strictly regulated style.... -The Dial, Vol. 68