a poem a day, translated — “day” very loosely defined, this being a (very) occasional series
a few thoughts on poems and quinces.
Was reminded of an old exercise today, when an accidental poetic encounter at the Watts Elementary School spring carnival gave my six year old the thrill of asking for and receiving a “quince poem.” #PoetryFox (aka Chris Vitiello) had set up shop for a few hours at the school carnival, generously pecking out poems on his manual typewriter in a corner of the playground to all who sought him out with a word.
Two summers back, I scribbled the following notes to another quince poem , when a few friends and I were circulating daily poetic translations and exegeses amongst ourselves for fun and inspiration and as a way to limber up our linguistic muscles before diving into our separate writing labors for the day.
A brief chat with Clare earlier about how one names and translates ancient botanical terms brought to mind my favorite poem from The Book of Songs (11th-7th century BC). The 詩經 Shijing is the oldest existing anthology of Chinese poetry in the tradition, purportedly collated for the emperor in order for him to eavesdrop on the joys and plaints and brewing discontent of the folk of his realm, as expressed in their songs. To the modern reader, many of these poems sound more like straight love lyrics, folk ditties, and ritual odes composed for special occasions, rather than as weighty vessels for overt social or political messages. Yet all 305 poems in the collection have been the subject of generations upon generations — indeed, an entire cultural canon’s worth — of obsessive and exhaustive political allegoresis, a Talmudic-like tradition of ritual study and analysis. We have always been instructed that they do not mean what they mean — true meaning lies elsewhere.
衛風。木瓜
投我以木瓜，報之以瓊琚。
匪報也，永以為好也。
投我以木桃，報之以瓊瑤。
匪報也，永以為好也。
投我以木李，報之以瓊玖。
匪報也，永以為好也。
A particular favorite of mine from the Shijing is today’s poem. “木瓜” was read at the occasion of our wedding in Barcelona, and is also in fact the inspiration for our littlest daughter Q’s name both in English and in Chinese. The translation here, in somewhat of a break from our summer routine, is not mine but Arthur Waley’s (with a few minor emendations) — his somewhat archaic yet incomparably lovely word choices (requital! quince! girdle-gem!) are hard to improve upon, and so perfectly capture the tone of the poem.
She threw a quince to me;
In requital I threw a bright girdle-gem.
“Quince” is the 木瓜 mugua of the first line — the characters literally mean “tree melon,” but as a speaker of modern Chinese knows, that is the term for the tropical fruit “papaya.” Yet, our modern papaya did not yet seem to be in existence at the time of Shijing, and certainly not in that part of the world.
In fact, this mugua was probably one and the same species of fruit as (or at least a close cousin to) the coveted Golden Apple of Greek mythology — the goddesses were not clambering over a Golden Delicious as much as over what we might now call a quince fruit or even Asian pear. When is an apple not an apple? When it is in fact a κυδώνιον μῆλον, or “Kydonian quince.”
To make the origin story of her naming even more fey (and even more obviously begat of the fervid fancies of a pair of lit prof parents), Quince’s name in Chinese is neither the ancient or modern quince fruit — rather, it is an archaic name for jade, 瓊 Qiong. That is to say, the name itself is the fruit of a poetic/linguistic/love back-and-forth: it is the “girdle-gem” of the second line, the jade love token 瓊琚 qiongju that is gifted in return for the initial tossed quince of the opening line.
This short lyric composed of incommensurate exchanges — between fruit and gem, lover and beloved, gifter and giftee of promise tokens of different value, weight, and permanence — always struck me as the perfect embodiment of the fraught process of both of love and linguistic communication. The first throw is ‘natural’ — the response, however, immediately sets up a problem of meaning that demands elaboration, explication:
No, not just as requital; But [meaning] that I would love her for ever.
What also is the function of the thrice-repeated toss? Does it indicate seamless interchangeability between objects, actions, stanzas? The successive naming of fruit — “tree melon,” “tree peach,” “tree plum” — and the successive naming of gems — “girdle-stone,” “greenstone,” “jet stone” — seem to point to something fundamental to the act of translation: that the exchange of meaning is always a series of substitutions, trade-offs, and inexact equivalences that accrue certain power and valence with every incantation, every repetition.
It was Octavio Paz, I believe, who once said that “when we learn to speak, we are learning to translate.” I think the inverse is also true. The act of translating between unlikes — whether they be of fruit and gem or of time past and time present or of cultures across vast distances — is precisely the process of learning to speak, of making possible the articulation of love and of requital.
The poem, then:
She threw a quince to me;
In requital I threw a bright girdle-gem.
No, not just as requital;
But that I would love her for ever.
She threw a peach to me;
In requital I threw a bright greenstone.
No, not just as requital;
But that I would love her for ever.
She threw a plum to me;
In requital I threw a bright jet-stone.
No, not just as requital,
But that I would love her for ever.
And this afternoon, out of sheer happenstance, we strolled into another exchange of poetry (and photo-op.) Presumably, our latter day quince poet knew nothing of the ancient Chinese song — yet his spontaneous composition, as well as his playful process of asking for a word from his audience in exchange for a poem, so beautifully mirror the sentiment of the much earlier text, from long ago and far away.
Thank you for the gift of your poem, #poetryfox!
4/23/16 Saturday, Watts Elementary, Durham NC
