1.1 Qu Yuan: A Great Patriotic Poet
"I would prefer to jump into the river and be entombed in the stomachs of fishes than to bow while purity is defiled by vulgar pestilence…" 1
宁赴湘流，葬于江鱼之腹。
安能以皓皓之白，而蒙世俗之尘埃乎？
—《渔父》
Qu Yuan is one of the great poets of China all times. For his devotion to his State of Chu, he has become a historic model of patriotism.
He was descended from the imperial family, and had been a high-ranking official of the State of Chu. Representing progressive forces he had advocated and upheld the idea of political reforms, which met with strong opposition of the decadent aristocrats. He was banished and, when he saw no hope of realizing his ideal, drowned himself in the Miluo River of Hunan Province. His tragic death is commemorated each year on the fifth day of the fifth month of lunar calendar, the day he committed suicide, by dragon boat races, which are said to represent the search for his body, and the zongzi （粽子）thrown into the water as food for his spirit.
Qu Yuan was an outstanding poetic genius. But, over and above this, the fundamental reason for his great achievement was his great love for the people and for his country, for truth and justice, and his ability to penetrate deeply into life and nature. His whole life was an immortal and magnificent epic. The historian Sima Qian （司马迁）, usually so critical, described him as “a man who, though cast in mud and filth, was touched with no impurity; and with such a heart he may be said to rival the sun and moon in giving brightens.” 2
1.2 Qu Yuan’s Works：Chu Ci
The misfortune that Qu Yuan suffered drove him to take his own life, but also moved him to write many excellent poems in Chinese language, a large number of which were composed in his exile. The representative collection of his works was compiled under the name of Chu Ci (《楚辞》literally, the poetry of the State of Chu. In general, the poems attributed to Qu Yuan include: Li Sao (《离骚》 also On Encountering Sorrows), Jiu Ge (《九歌》also The Nine Songs, 11 pieces), Tain Wen (《天问》also The Heavenly Questions), Jiu Zhang (《九章》 also The Nine Declarations, 9 pieces), Yuan You (《远游》also The Far-Off Journey), Bu Ju (《卜居》 also Divination) and Yu Fu (《渔父》also The Fisherman).
Li Sao is Qu Yuan’s classic work, which is also a long autobiographical poem and the long lyric poem in China. The poem resolutely uncloaks the repulsiveness of the ruling class by deploying a series of metaphors, and at the same time portrays some upstanding models who adhere to justice and who are unafraid of persecution and very devoted to their country and people.
In addition, Li Sao is a romantic lyric with measured realism. The poet utilizes a great deal of exaggeration in portraying characters and describing objects. The assemblage of fairy tales further enhances the poem’s romantic flavor. Metaphors are lavishly laid out in Li Sao, for example, a fragrant flower is compared to the people’ uplifting qualities, the love between a man and woman is likened to the relationship between an emperor and his subjects, and the reins of the horse akin to the management of a country. Li Sao originated from the local oral tradition, and its very concise language echoes the many dialects of the State of Chu. Qu Yuan’s works are rich, full of profound ideas, and bold and unrestrained vigor, having far-reaching influence on the works of later generations.
One of Qu Yuan’s most remarkable poems is Tian Wen, in which more than one hundred and seventy questions are raised about the formation of the universe, the creation of the heavenly bodies, the earth, myths and legends, and appraisal of historical characters events and what not. These ‘raving questions’ were said to have been written on the walls of the shrines of former kings and the ancestral halls of the nobles of the state of Chu. Qu Yuan’s boldness to pursue truth and challenge the accepted ideas and his originality in thinking are fully demonstrated in the poem.
Qu Yuan’s influence was immense. Not only the Han dynasty poets, but poets of much later ages worshiped him until he was regarded as a kind of god of poetry. According to written records, the history of poetry in China dates back for more than three thousand years. The number of poets, who left behind their names counts up by the thousands. Among those who turned out volumes of memorable poems, Qu Yuan takes the lead. Wu Juntao （吴钧陶） remarks in his postscript to Sun Dayu’s book Selected Poems from Chu Yuan: If Geoffrey Chaucer (circ., 1343-1400, A. D.) is entitled “Father of English poetry”, born in the 4th century B. C., Qu Yuan is “Father of Chinese poetry”.3
The term “Chu Ci” is capable of two interpretations: usually, it refers to the collection of poems composed by Qu Yuan and some other writers such as Song Yu（宋玉）; it is also used to denote a new literary genre initiated by Qu Yuan. And this new form in ancient Chinese poetry becomes the best medium for accommodating the poet’s love and sympathy for the people. Hence the form and content of his work are ideally integrated.
Chu Ci, which marked a great reformation in Chinese poetry, broke free from the conventional form of tetrasyllabic lines, absorbed the vernacular of Chu and took advantage of Chinese myths and legends. Its new form lent wings to the unrivalled imaginative power of Qu Yuan, the greatest of great poets.
The style of Qu Yuan’s poems is different from that of Shi Jing (also The Book of Songs), which is termed as Feng-Style Poetry. Qu Yuan’s poems are called the Sao-Style Poetry（骚体诗）, in the history of Chinese literature. The Sao-Style Poetry is characterized by feature length, flexible form and a great use of local dialect and colloquialism. The best instance is the repeated use of the character xi (兮), a character which often appears in ancient folk songs, occurring frequently in the folksong section of Shi Jing. It is said that the character was pronounced formerly “ah”, and when we read it like this the true folk quality of Qu Yuan’s poems is apparent.
Compared with poetry before the period of Qu Yuan, the Sao-Style Poetry created by Qu Yuan has the following additional features: (i) in terms of sentence pattern, the Sao-Style Poetry broke away with the previous four-character pattern, and mainly adopted six-character lines, intermingled with five-character and seven-character lines; (ii) in terms of innovations in composition, the Sao-Style Poetry broke the confines of ancient poems, but gave loose to the author’s feeling, either narrating, sadly chanting or lamenting, and had a clear structure with the beginning and development of plots; (iii) in terms of the system, poems before were only short ones with over ten or tens of lines, while Li Sao written by Qu Yuan was made up of 2,496 characters in 372 lines, laying a foundation for the feature-length system of Chinese ancient poetry.4
To Chinese readers, this new literary genre is a cultural entity rather than a linguistic one. As we have seen, a large number of Qu Yuan’s poems were composed in his exile and at the same time these poems are deeply rooted in the local cultural tradition of Chu. So it stands to reason that the combination of the tragic life of the poet and the local cultural tradition give birth to this new literary genre. Throughout the history of China, Qu Yuan has been worshipped as the incarnation of patriotism, and the culture of the State of Chu is considered to be the avant-courier of romanticism in China, for Chu lay on the southern fringe of Chinese culture of the time, being located in an area of exotic plants and shamanistic religion.
1.4 The English Translations of Chu Ci: A Brief Introduction
Many translators have been involved in the translation of Chu Ci, including F. X. Biallas, H. A. Giles, D. Hawkes, E. H. Parkers, J. Legge, Lin Wenqing, Sun Dayu, A. Waley, R. Payne, Xu Yuanzhong（许渊冲）, Yang Xianyi and Cladys Yang. Among all the translators, D. Hawkes is the only one who has translated Chu Ci in its entirety.
According to Hawkes, the first English version would appear to be E. H. Parker’s “The Sadness of Separation, or Li Sao” published in the China Review, 5 without introduction, notes, or comments, under the initials ‘V. W. X.’ Hawkes observed that “it is really more a paraphrase than a translation, and its bouncing Victorian verse could have been written by a clever schoolboy.” 6
In his Gems of Chinese Literature, 7 H. A. Giles includes translations of Bu Ju （《卜居》）, Yu Fu （《渔父》）, and Shan Gui （《山鬼》） (the ninth of the Jiu Ge songs). Hawkes criticizes his translation thus: “These are elegant and extremely readable, but free in a rather arbitrary way and sometimes tiresomely Europeanized.” 8
J. Legge’s translation of Li Sao, ‘The Li Sao Poem and its Author’, 9 faithfully reproduces the interpretation of Wang Yi’s commentary. Hawkes thinks “it is more accurate than Parker’s translation, but is vitiated by the author’s obvious contempt for the original, which freed him from any obligation to make it attractive to the English reader.”10 His analysis of the poem11 ends with these words: ‘we rather like the man without admiring his poetry, and are sorry for his adverse fortunes and melancholy fate.’ Legge did not like poetry of any kind, and he would appear to have undertaken this translation only because “Li Sao was deemed an important literary work by Chinese scholars.”12
A. Waley’s A hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems13 contains a translation of Guo Shang （《国殇》） (the tenth of the Jiu Ko （《九歌》） songs), and his More Translations from the Chinese 14 a brilliant translation of Da Zhao （《大招》）.
E．Erkes，a German scholar，produced several word-for-word English translations from Chu Ci with copious notes and comments. A translation of Da Zhao （《大招》）—he had already translated Zhao Hun （《招魂》）into German in 1914—appears in Asia Major,15 This was followed by a translation of Zhao Yin Shi（《招隐士》）in Asia Major,16 ‘The God of Death in Ancient China’,17 contains translations of Da Si Ming （《大司命》） and Shao Si Ming （《少司命》）(the fifth and sixth songs of Jiu Ge). Hawkes comments “Erkes’s translations make painful reading, but they would be useful to a student beginning to study Chinese literature in the original.” 18
Lin Wenqing （林文庆） is considered to be the first Chinese who translated Chu Ci. He translated Li Sao into English: The Li Sao, an Elegy on Encountering Sorrows19 — of which Professor Giles remarked that it went ‘far to leave the British Empire precisely where it was before’, 20 is a good student’s crib. It has a very copious and on the whole useful notes. But the translation is less accurate than Legge’s and about equally void of literary merit.
Another English version of Chu Ci is done by Robert Payne. He edited The White Pony, an Anthology of Chinese Poetry from the Earliest Times to the Present Day.21 Its Qu Yuan section22 includes The Nine Songs （《九歌》）, Selections from The Nine Declarations （《九章》）, and Li Sao （《离骚》）. But Hawkes observed that ‘the footnotes are sometimes misleading, but the translations are fresh and readable, —the only extensive English translations of Chu Ci apart from Waley’s which do not positively deter the reader. They are also important for the serious attempt made by the authors to emancipate themselves from the restraints of Wang I’s （王逸） interpretation.’23
Li Sao and Other Poems of Ch’u Yuan by Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang24 is a translation of all Chu Ci poems from Li Sao to Zhao Hun (《招魂》)except for Tian Wen （《天问》） and Jiu Bian （《九辨》）. The fact that many of the poems are in the rhymed couplets apparently suggested to the authors that a pastiche of Pope’s Heroic style would be the most suitable medium of translation. The result is monument of ingenuity. But Hawkes thinks that this is not the best choice. 25 Later, Yang translated Tian Wen into English rhymed verse under the title ‘The Riddle‘. The translation has the defect of being long-winded and rhymed whereas the original Chinese is quite terse.
D. Hawkes is a very important translator of Chu Ci and in this thesis much attention will be focused on his translation. Born in 1923, David Hawkes studied Chinese at Oxford University between 1945 and 1947 and was a research student at the National Peking University from 1948 to 1951. He was Professor of Chinese at Oxford from 1959 until 1971. From 1973 to 1983, he was a Research Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. He is currently an Emeritus Fellow of the college. He and his wife spent several years in retirement in Wales and now live in Oxford. A renowned Sinologist, David Hawkes translated the poetry anthology The Songs of the South when he was still a young man.
His translation Ch’u Tz’u: the Songs of the South, an Ancient Chinese Anthology26 was originally written “as a part of a doctoral thesis contained a good deal research of a technical kind in to the problems of dating and authorship.”27 He appendixes a section of textual notes at the back of the book. His translation is somewhere midway between a literal and free one. He allowed himself an extra measurement of freedom in translating the titles of poems, which are considered to be obscure. Also he tried his best to reproduce the sound effect of the original by the use of rhythm and assonance, but on the whole, the sense takes precedence over the sounds.
Sun Dayu （孙大雨）, a Chinese scholar, translated most poems of Chu Ci except Tian Wen （《天问》）. In his works Selected Poems of Qu Yuan, 28 Sun Dayu devoted more than half the whole book to the background information, including Qu Yuan’s time, Qu Yuan’ thought and his position in China’s history, which, I believe, is of a great help to the western readers who want to get a thorough understanding of Chu Ci and the poet. In terms of translation, Sun Dayu has attempted and succeeded in giving it a poetic flavor all its own that reproduces the archaic and yet vigorous style of the original. Unlike Yang’s translation, whose translation is only one of their numerous efforts in rendering Chinese poetry and prose into English, Sun Dayu has devoted during his long life much of his time and energy to the study and translation of Qu Yuan’s poetry that develops an intellectual as well as an emotional affinity between the ancient poet and the living.
More recently, Xu Yuanzhong （许渊冲） has been engaged in the translation of Chu Ci. His translation Poetry of the South 29 is an attempt to reproduce the formal properties of the original, for Xu always advocates that a translation should be beautiful in sense, in sound and in form.
Qu Yuan is a great patriotic poet in the history of Chinese literature, and due to his life experience and his great contribution to the development of Chinese poetry, Chinese people have established an historical and psychological link between the Sao-Style Poetry created by him and his tragic life as well as the local cultural tradition of Chu. His influence on the Chinese language and the development of Chinese literature is far-reaching. His major contribution to Chinese literature — the creation of the Sao-Style Poetry – — marked a great reformation in Chinese poetry. The combination of the poet’s tragic life and the local culture gave birth to the new literary genre and in turn this new literary genre becomes the embodiment of sad feelings, patriotism as well as romanticism. So it is deemed a cultural sign rather than a linguistic one. A brief introduction to the English translations of Chu Ci paves the way to the discussion that follows.
Notes:
1. See Britannica Concise Encyclopedia, p.6069
2. 司马迁，《史记》，长沙: 岳麓书社, 2001年, 第495页
3. 孙大雨，《屈原诗选英译》，上海：上海外语教育出版社，1996年，第659页。
4. 潘啸龙，《诗骚诗学与艺术》上海：上海古籍出版社，2004年，第120页。
5. See China Review, vii (1879), pp. 309-14
6. David Hawkes, Tran. Ch’u Tz’u: The Songs of the South, 1957, p.215
7. See H.A. Giles, Gems of Chinese Literature, Shanghai: Kelly and Walse, 1884, pp.478-480.
8. David Hawkes, Tran. Ch’u Tz’u: The Songs of the South, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959, p.215.
9. See Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, xxvii, 1895, pp.847-64.
10. David Hawkes, Tran. Ch’u Tz’u: The Songs of the South, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957, p.215.
11. See Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1895(27), pp.571-9.
12. ibid.
13. See A. Waley, A hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems, London: Constable, 1918.
14. See A. Waley, More Translations from the Chinese, Allen and Unwin, 1919.
15. See Asia Majo, 1923 (Hirth Anniversary Volume), pp.67-86.
16. See Asia Major, 1924(1), pp.119-24
17. See E. Erkes, ‘The God of Death in Ancient China’, T’oung Pao, 1939(35), pp.185-210.
18. D. Hawkes, Tran. Ch’u Tz’u: The Songs of the South, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957, p.215.
19. Lin Wenqing, Tran., The Li Sao, an Elegy on Encountering Sorrows, Commercial Press, Shanghai, 1935.
20. David Hawkes, Tran. Ch’u Tz’u: The Songs of the South, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957, p.215.
21. R. Payne, The White Pony, an Anthology of Chinese Poetry from the Earliest Times to the Present Day, New York: John Day, 1947, pp.79-109.
22. ibid. pp. 78-109.
23. David Hawkes Tran. Ch’u Tz’u: The Songs of the South, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957, p.215.
24. Yang Xianyi & Gladys Yang, Tran., Li Sao and Other Poems of Ch’u Yuan, Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1953.
25. David Hawkes, Tran. Ch’u Tz’u: The Songs of the South, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957, p.216.
26. ibid., p.217.
27. ibid., Preface.
28. Sun Dayu, Tran. Selected Poems of Qu Yuan, Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press, 1995.
29. Xu Yuanzhong, Tran. Poetry of the South, Changsha: Hunan Publishing House, 1994.
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