Beneath the Shadows a Complete Annotated Translation of the Overlooked Poet Pei Di

Beneath the Shadows A Complete Annotated Translation of the Overlooked Poet Pei Di Magan M. Powell Foreign Languages and Literatures, Chinese Honors Thesis Spring 2019 Introduction The Tang Dynasty (618-907) was arguably the greatest era for artistic and cultural development in China. Particularly, poetry during this time developed profound structural formatting and is among the most well-known poetry in China, as it was a means by which the educated elite could gain official positions in the government. With the blossoming of various religions, including Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism, poetry in the Tang Dynasty embodied some of the most extravagant cultural thoughts in Chinese history, making it important to understand, preserve, and cherish. In fact, over 48,900 Tang Dynasty poems from more than 2,200 poets are anthologized in the Quan Tang Shi 全唐詩 (The Complete Collection of Tang Poetry) to allow for the continuous study and appreciation of this art.1 Of the poets preserved in the Quan Tang Shi, many of the most famous ones composed during the High Tang, a period of the Tang Dynasty in which the economy, diplomacy, and government flourished. Some of these notable writers include Li Bai 李白 (701-762), Du Fu 杜甫 (712-770), Meng Haoran 孟浩然 (689 or 691-740), and Wang Wei 王維 (701-761), of which the latter two are among the most renowned nature poets. Many English translations of these celebrated poets have been published, affording the opportunity for scholars to analyze and appreciate their work across cultural and language boundaries. Pei Di 裴迪 (714 - ?) is a contemporary of these accomplished Tang nature poets, but he has received significantly less recognition for his work. As a result, “we know pitifully little about Pei Di.”2 While this is true, Pei Di is deserving of his own attention and analyses. His work provides a unique perspective to nature poetry, as it has a youthful, optimistic, and possibly even naïve spin on typical Buddhist- 1 Quan Tang Shi. Vol. 2, p. 1311-1315. 2 Jerome Ch’en and Michael Bullock, Poems of Solitude, p. 52. 2 tinged poetry, such as that of Wang Wei. Pei Di writes poetry that transcends boundaries of time, distance, and the mundane world. He often challenges the thinking of the great nature poet, Wang Wei, showing that his intellect is valuable and worth our attention. The application of parallelism, frequent allusions, and standard Tang poetry form with five or seven syllable lines give Pei Di’s poems profound complexity and beauty. As argued by Zeb Raft, translation is not an option; it is something we all do to give unfamiliar work meaning in our minds, even if that work is in the same language.3 Translating across languages, particularly that from classical Chinese literature to modern English, is a means of sharing Chinese culture and history with a broader audience, increasing the appreciation and scholarship surrounding this art. While Pei Di’s work contains insight worthy of detailed analysis, there are no comprehensive English translations of his existing poetry. 4 Thus, the annotated translation of each of Pei Di’s poems provided herein will serve as a stepping stone to scholarly analysis of Pei Di’s contribution to Tang poetry. Although Pei Di’s work has not been collectively translated, a few translations exist of his half of the Wangchuan ji 網川集 (Wang River Collection), a work written collaboratively by Pei Di and his dear friend, Wang Wei. The Wangchuan ji is made of twenty quatrains written by Wang Wei about the sites of his Wang River estate, and each poem was given a reply by Pei Di.5 However, most translations of the Wangchuan ji include only Wang Wei’s half, dismissing Pei Di’s work as 3 Zeb Raft, “The Limits of Translation: Method in Arthur Waley's Translations of Chinese Poetry,” p. 80. 4 The 29 poems of Pei Di found in the Quan Tang Shi are taken to be his complete set of poetry, and the poems are presented in this work as they are found in the Quan Tang Shi. Further, Pei Di’s last poem in the Quan Tang Shi, The Tea Spring of Lu Yu at Xi Ta Temple 西塔寺陸羽茶泉, is translated in Appendix A for completeness, but it is not discussed in the main body of this work because, while associated with Pei Di, it was not actually written by him. Therefore, the body of this work refers to the 28 poems written by Pei Di as found in the Quan Tang Shi. 5 There are only a few English translations of the Wangchuan ji that present Pei Di’s poems alongside Wang Wei’s: The first is Ch’en and Bullock, Poems of Solitude, pp. 47-75, and the others are Cyril Birch, Anthology of Chinese Literature, pp. 220-223; and John Minford and Joseph Lau, An Anthology of Translation: Classical Chinese Literature, pp. 702-709. 3 insignificant, if mentioned at all.6 Ding Xiang Warner’s analysis discussed the importance of reading all forty poems collectively as a conversation between Wang Wei and Pei Di.7 However, her essay presents only four of the twenty pairs of poems in the Wangchuan ji, and it is limited to the Wangchuan ji alone, without mention of Pei Di’s other eight poems. Interestingly, the remaining eight poems of Pei Di all have a corresponding poem written by Wang Wei. Three of them have identical titles, suggesting the two poets shared similar experiences about which they both composed verses. Of the remaining four, one was written to Wang Wei, and Wang Wei replied with his poem, “Answering Pei Di” (答裴迪); one was dedicated to Wang Wei, and Wang Wei wrote a poem with the same title, but dedicated to Pei Di; the title of two others vary only by one character; and the final poems have different titles, but were written about the same experience. This illustrates the deep friendship between Wang Wei and Pei Di. In fact, Wang Wei famously wrote to Pei Di in a 746 letter, At this moment I am seated by myself, with servants hushed and out of sight. And my thoughts hark back to former days, when hand in hand we would walk along some mountain path to stop before a clear stream, composing verses as we went.8 This friendship between Wang Wei and Pei Di influenced Pei Di’s literature, and through this comprehensive annotated translation of all 28 poems written by Pei Di, it can be shown that a thorough understanding of Pei Di’s poetry can only be obtained with the concomitant examination of the corresponding literature written by Wang Wei. This is not to suggest that Pei Di is a less talented poet only capable of following the lead of a superior master; rather, it asserts that the 6 For example, Wang Lizhen, “Shi lun Wang Wei ‘Wangchuan ji’ de mohu mei.” 7 Ding Xiang Warner, “Two Voices of Wangchuan ji,” pp. 57-72. 8 Chang, H.C., trans. “Letter to Pei Di Written in the Mountains,” pp. 708-709. 4 complete story and intention behind the entire collection of Pei Di’s poetry can only be understood by looking at it in relation to that of his dear friend. As Tingshu Hu said, poetry without characteristics such as rhyme, rhythm, pun, and parallelism is just prose.9 Therefore, effort was made in these translations to preserve the poetic features of the original text, realizing the loss of some of these qualities is inevitable. Most Tang poetry, including Pei Di’s, was written in jueju 絕句, a four-line poem comprised of a pair of couplets, or lüshi 律詩, an eight-line poem. Both these forms typically had five or seven characters per line. In fact, the Wangchuan ji consisted entirely of jueju form. Effort was made to match two syllables in the English translation for every Chinese character. Thus, a line with five characters would have exactly ten syllables in the English translation to maintain some degree of rhythm. Where this proved difficult, each line within a couplet was at least given the same number of syllables, if not ten. While the tonal reflection present in the original texts cannot be mimicked in English, effort was made to match the rhyme scheme, where possible. Finally, word order was kept as aligned with the original text as possible to display parallelism, and all original allusions were left in the translated poem to preserve the original feeling, but these details were explained in the notes. Through these efforts, Pei Di’s work can be highlighted, and the contextual importance of Wang Wei’s poetry can be presented. The annotated translation will be divided into two sections: first, the forty poems of the Wangchuan ji, and second, the remaining eight poems written by Pei Di. Because of the diversity of each poem in the Wangchuan ji, the poems are presented with the English and Chinese for both Pei Di and Wang Wei, and a discussion follows each poem. The English translations for the poems 9 Tingshu Hu. “A Case Study of Formal Translation of Tang Poetry,” p. 2343. 5 by Wang Wei are from Pauline Yu’s The Poetry of Wang Wei,10 except for two poems (“Azure Bird Song and “Unexpectedly Visiting Private Gentleman Cui Xingzong with Official Lu in His Forest Pavilion”) which are not present in her book. I translated those myself. Furthermore, each poem written by Pei Di is numbered to keep track of the 28 poems, and any poem that is not numbered is the corresponding one by Wang Wei.

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