Transcript: Guest episode 李商隐 Li Shangyin - 无题 Untitled

[Listen to the episode here.]

Three translations of an untitled poem by Li Shangyin.

---

finding time to meet is hard; parting is hard too.    we had a hard time meeting, I had a hard time leaving you the east wind brings in the new season gentle, but it withers the flowers all the same.    the flowers wither when the spring wind's all blown through

      it's hard to meet you in time. it's hard to leave you.       the east wind is so soft it can't even move flowers.

spring silkworms until they die spin out worries without rest;   the silkworm sits and spins her thoughts out till the very last     spring silkworms spin their lives into thread until they run out.

a candle burns down to ash and only then its tears begin to dry.    the candle turns to ash and suddenly the tears are in your past       a candle’s tears can’t dry until it’s worn itself to ash.

in the morning mirror you comb over and over your lovely hair. you recite verse instead of sleeping, in the cold light of the moon---

   at sunrise check my mirror and my roots are showing through    at moonrise stumbling over psalms while my lips turn blue

      the morning mirror shows my hair clouding over, changing into something else.       night. I can't sleep. poems run out of me. the cold moon watches over my shoulder.

but there's not much road between here and the queen mother's mountain.    a mile or two on down the road is the immortal mountain       not many roads stray close to the mountain dreaming, but

she's close; her green bird always comes to check on you.    queen mother's crow says girl stop sitting counting days without him       the three-legged bird flies to me to say: our lady of peaches is worried for you.

---

Trying to find a pleasing way to arrange these alternate translations together has thrown it into sharp relief for me which lines are very literal and hard to misinterpret, and which lines could be read in multiple ways. The couplet about the silkworm and the candle only varies by minor changes in word order, whereas the line about the east wind and the line about the roads to Mt Penglai can be read in two completely opposite ways. I think my favorite part of this was finding different ways to interpret the allusion to Mt Penglai; in the text it just says “Mt Peng,” but the reader understands this is a mythical mountain, idiomatically something like fairyland, and that the green bird is a messenger of the Queen Mother of the West, who keeps the peaches of immortality and presides over prosperity, longevity, and eternal bliss (according to Wikipedia). She’s a fitting patron for a girl who’s worried about love, and invoking her also gives the poem an east-to-west direction, like the travel of the sun.

[Episode transcript can be found here.]

无题 Untitled 李商隐 Li Shangyin

Guest episode from ghoul, my friend and frequent collaborator, presenting Li Shangyin's 无题·相见时难别亦难 "Untitled (finding time to meet is hard; parting is hard too)" in three interwoven translations.

相见时难别亦难，东风无力百花残。 春蚕到死丝方尽，蜡炬成灰泪始干。 晓镜但愁云鬓改，夜吟应觉月光寒。 蓬山此去无多路，青鸟殷勤为探看。

finding time to meet is hard; parting is hard too. the east wind brings in the new season gentle, but it withers the flowers all the same.

spring silkworms until they die spin out worries without rest; a candle burns down to ash and only then its tears begin to dry.

in the morning mirror you comb over and over your lovely hair. you recite verse instead of sleeping, in the cold light of the moon—

but there’s not much road between here and the queen mother’s mountain. she’s close; her green bird always comes to check on you.

---

we had a hard time meeting, I had a hard time leaving you the flowers wither when the spring wind's all blown through

the silkworm sits and spins her thoughts out till the very last the candle turns to ash and suddenly the tears are in your past

at sunrise check my mirror and my roots are showing through at moonrise stumbling over psalms while my lips turn blue

a mile or two on down the road is the immortal mountain queen mother's crow says girl stop sitting counting days without him

Further reading:

W. May, In the Same Light: 200 Tang Poems for Our Century (2022)

translator's notes

my Dessa pastiche translation