Li Bai (0699–0762)

É bem difícil você julgar uma tradução poética de uma escrita que você desconhece que por si só tem uma especifidade na própria grafia comparada à pintura, julgando os poemas através do meu conhecimento do taoísmo e budismo, eles são vastos em sua simplicidade, mas dos três poetas presentes na coletânea o que mais me instigou foi Du Fu, pelo seu tom não tão passivo perante a contemplação do mundo.

“Great men have a curious way of appearing in complementary pairs” – Kenneth Clark.

Li Po, perhaps better known as Li Bai, and Tu Fu, whose name is better Romanized as Du Fu, were two great poets of the Tang Dynasty in 8th century China.

Li Po was a rebel against conformity, a wanderer fond of wine and of spontaneous revelry in the moonlight. There is both an imagination and a loneliness to his work. Tu Fu was a traditionalist but also an innovator; his poetry has both the honesty and show more the subtlety often found in great art.

Tu Fu was clearly the “yang” to Li Po’s “yin”; Tu Fu the Confucian and Li Po theTaoist. The two met and respected one another, and in fact Tu Fu idolized the older poet.

One has to read the poems slowly and without distraction to be rewarded. Chinese is not a flowery language to begin with and I believe there is a bit lost in translation. Furthermore the translations in this edition are a bit dated and I’ve seen better in a collection from Whincup, which I’ll review later.

However, the overall ‘feel’ of this book is very nice – informative introduction, nice notes on the poems, and occasionally poems printed in both English and Chinese. It’s a great introduction to two great poets.

I extract three poems that resonated with me when I first read them long ago, and which still do as I read them today.

Quiet Night Thoughts (Li Po)
-------------------------------------
Before my bed
there is bright moonlight
So that is seems
like frost on the ground:

Lifting my head
I watch the bright moon,
Lowering my head,
I dream that I’m home.

Longing (Li Po)
-------------------
Sunlight begins to fade,
mist fills the flowers,
The moon as white as silk
weeps and cannot sleep,

Chao zither’s Phoenix frets
no more shall I touch,
Shu lute’s Mandarin Duck strings
I’ll sound instead:

This song has a meaning
that no one can tell,
It follows the Spring wind
as far as Yen-jan

To you far, far away
beyond the blue sky –

Whom once I gave
A sideways glance
With eyes that now
Are wells of tears –

If you do not believe
that my heart breaks,
Come back and look with me
into this glass!

Nine Thoughts Afloat (Tu Fu)
--------------------------------------
By bent grasses
in a gentle wind
Under straight mast
I’m alone tonight,

And the stars hang
above the broad plain
But moon’s afloat
in this Great River:

Oh, where’s my name
among the poet’s?
Official rank?
‘Retired for ill-health.’

Drifting, drifting,
what am I more than
A single gull
Between sky and earth? show less

The flocks rise and dissolve until the last is flown away.
The clouds drift and swirl until the last fades away.
The mountain and I remain to regard each other, until only the mountain remains.

... is the translation I'm waiting for, but Obata is pretty good here. With this and one or two others in hand, somewhere towards the centre is a glimpse of the truth.

Some good stuff in here. My favorite:
Lines Three, Five, Seven Words Long
Autumn wind clear,
Autumn moon bright,
Fallen leaves gather in piles, then scatter,
And crows settling-in, cold, startle away.
Will we ever see, ever even think about each other again?
This night, this moment: impossible to feel it all.