Recent searches
Search options
You asked when I was coming back:
no date fixed yet;
In the hills of Ba the rain by night
spills over autumn ponds.
When might we trim the candle’s wick together
at this window facing west,
And speak back upon this moment:
of night rain falling on the hills of Ba?
君問歸期未有期，巴山夜雨漲秋池。
何當共剪西窗燭，卻話巴山夜雨時。
For tonight - a lifelong favorite, by the late Tang Dynasty poet Li Shangyin
李商隱 - of time, loss, and rain.
#everynightapoem #poetry #translation
@chowleen That's beautiful!
@cwwilkie thank you!
@chowleen Beautiful translation. Time is a circle.
I'm teaching Li Shangyin on Thu to my grad seminar. Can I show them your translation?
@grahamsanders oh thank you Graham - I did it quickly a while ago and haven’t really thought it through again, but you’re welcome to share, of course. Looking it over now I really don’t think I captured the final line well!
I think you captured the overall mood well, which is what LSY is all about. The hard part to reproduce is his verbatim repetition of 巴山夜雨 in L2 and L4, which I imagine was a very deliberate choice.
Perhaps you could revise the last line to something like:
And speak then of this moment of the rain by night in the hills of Ba.
I've been experimenting with some freer forms of translation; you have inspired me to try my hand at this one...
“Sent Back North in the Rain at Night”
When will I be home?
I don't know yet
in the rain at night
in the hills of Ba
autumn pools are rising
When will we trim together
the candle in the westward window?
then, we will talk of this moment
in the rain at night
in the hills of Ba
君問歸期未有期
巴山夜雨漲秋池
何當共剪西窗燭
卻話巴山夜雨時
@chowleen Nice translation. I was surprised to see a Tang poet pop up a lot on Twitter but he does--often w v cool illustrations (see below Wow)--incl. a thread abt translating this poem in particular (a recent anth. LI SHANG-YIN, ed. Garcia-Roberts, apparently has 3 translations of each poem).
@SanSol so interesting!
@chowleen If you think of the poem itself as "this window facing west" (it's the paper rectangle one is looking at / viewing scenes thru), "the candle's wick" might be the reader, whose luminous sight helps to bring everything back to life (from memory & words), with as well the mantra-like repetition of 巴山夜
@SanSol that is wonderful.