19 Ways of Looking at Wang Wei: How a Chinese Poem is Translated

This a a very short book, and really quite a riot. Even after reading, what, 29 translations of this short poem... how is the light hitting, where is that moss? Weinberger's comments are short, pointed, and often funny. But he brings it a lot of substantial observations too. The Daoist slant, opposites playing together, the western light as Amitabha's.

The whole thing reminds me of Borges. It's even more fantastical because it is real!

Especially given that this slim volume is barely 50 pages long, I unhesitatingly recommend it to just about anyone who is even vaguely conscious about what they read, especially if they regularly read anything in translation.

On its surface, and a gossamer-thin surface it is, this book is a comparative-literature exercise, with its laser focus on a single, four-line Chinese poem by Wang Wei, dated from about 1200 years ago. Per the title, there are 19 translations investigated by Eliot Weinberger, including one by Octavio Paz (in two versions), who also provided commentary on the art of translation.

Weinberger's prose is about as far from the original poem as it could be -- where the poem is placid, interrupted by two sublime instances, show more he is stalwart, headstrong, and, in a word, loud. At times, it verges on a situation where he, through sheer force of presence, threatens to overshadow the actual subject, but he can get away with it because he is, in essence, almost always correct in his declarations about why one poem works and one doesn't (eg., "Chang translates 12 of Wang's 20 words, and makes up the rest" and, when writing of an attempt by William McNaughton, "Line 1 has been turned into a statement, almost a parody of Eastern Wisdom"). show less

I'm taking a workshop on translation next semester, and my professor assigned this book to us ahead of time. I have learned more than I expected to about the difficulties of translation, particularly the problem of ego inherent to a poet's translation of another poet, from this tiniest of books. The snarky comments about various translations of Wang Wei's short poem are wonderful. My personal favorite: "To me this sounds like Gerard Manley Hopkins on LSD..."

Nineteen Ways of Looking at Wang Wei offers at least twenty versions by various hands of a quatrain by the eighth-century Chinese poet Wang Wei. The author comments, sometimes acidulously, on each. The Mexican Octavio Paz contributes his own perceptive comments (particulary regarding Ezra Pound's Cathay) occasioned by his own Spanish version of the poem.

The quatrain itself has the iconic qualities of classic Chinese verse, spareness, objectivity, and ambiguity. These seem irresistibly to betray the Western translator or critic into Symbolism. I am not convinced the poet intended the layers of metaphysical and spiritual speculation that Weinberger and Paz see in this simple, direct poem, though it may be these are derived from Chinese show more critical tradition, especially Ch'an Buddhist.


However, the very short (53-page) book is an intriguing exercise in both translation and criticism, a primer in classical Chinese poetics, and offers some entertaining commentary by its author. One does have to decide whether it is worth its price, in view of its brevity and, frankly, ephemerality. show less

Weinberger crams more insight and understanding into this slim masterpiece than many other tomes of literary criticism and translation theory. It should be reread on a regular basis by all translators of poetry.

"Not much rhymes with 'moss', it's something of an albatross."

This slim volume is interesting in that it compiles about 23 translated versions of a single Wang Wei poem. Editor Weinberger appends a brief commentary on the strengths and failings (more often than not, failings) of each. Unfortunately, said commentaries are childishly snide, which greatly decreases both the reader's enjoyment of, and attention to, the points he is trying to make.

A delightful, grumpy consideration of translation issues through a single Chinese poem.