A poet Ezra Pound, by translating 15 Chinese poems written by Li Po into English, made a great contribution to the Chinese literature becoming famous in the Occident. The name of the collection was Cathay (1915), and The River Merchant’s Wife was one of those. The original version of it, 《长干行》 by Li Po will be followed first before the English translation of Ezra Pound.
Literature is always interactive. Thus, not only can the thoughts of people who write/translate it, but also those of people who read it can interfere. Different cultural backgrounds, growth environment etc. of different people will be the factors that can disrupt the intact understanding of the readers. Furthermore, the ‘taste’ of a word also can be related to the perception
…show more content…
Take a Chinese traditional character 东(東) as an example, he argued that it carried a poetic image of the sun(日) rising in the East and shining on the branches of the trees(木). And he also seemed to believe that as Manchester (1951) once expressed that keeping the soul alive is more important than maintaining the original form since a translator will lose the spirit of the original writer when s/he is obsessed only over the words. As a matter of fact, when the poetic feeling of Ezra Pound’s Fan Piece, for her Imperial Lord is appreciated, a much powerful image can come into readers’ minds; perhaps stronger than the one with ten lines written by Herbert Allen Giles. While reading his English translation, the readers in English-speaking countries can be fallen into an exotic flavor far from Chinese for a moment; such as frost on the leaves, and a white and shiny silk folding fan is laid aside. Without looking at the metaphor beyond the words with studying, it is still a beautiful and mystic scene to …show more content…
The Bible can largely be divided into two parts: the Old and New Testament; it is said that the Old Testament was written in Hebrew and Aramaic language and the New one in Greek originally. And since at first it was written for being recited or spoken aside, the 66 books are still sorted as chapters and verses. Commonly, people consider the Bible as a prose (or novel, for some). Yet, the primitive form of a poem actually can be seen in the Bible, the origin of the ancient Hebrew
William Blake was probably more concerned than any other major Romantic author with the process of publication and its implications for the interpretation of his artistic creations. He paid a price for this degree of control over the process of printing, however: Blake lived in poverty and artistic obscurity throughout his entire life. Later, when his poems began to be distributed among a wider audience, they were frequently shorn of their original contexts. For William Blake, there has been a trade-off between the size of the audience he has reached and the degree of control he exerted over the publication process.
Bearing this in mind, we see that he inserts those mythical figures into the political contexts. As Jean-Michel Rabaté puts it in his Language, Sexuality, and Ideology in Ezra Pound's Cantos, he “connects the world of ancient myth with the actualities of political synthesis. For Pound needs the concept of ‘gods’ and ‘myth’ precisely because he wants to avoid of the fate of Sordello; gods reconcile time and eternity’s concern” (63). Moreover, his allusions to Dante and Homer shouldn’t be overlooked in his search of order of values as Perkins states that “He was Odysseus, but he was voyaging in order to choose the purpose of his voyage. He was Dante in the dark wood and he hoped that if he went through the chaos of experience and history, he would gradually see that it had a structure” (232). In this regard, we can infer that he attempts to produce an order on the page or rather in his mind through his method of putting various people, incidents, and civilizations side by
It contains sixty-six smaller books, and those books are divided into two different parts, called the Old Testament and the New Testament (“Fast Facts about the Bible”). The Old Testament has thirty-nine books, and even those books are divided into sections. The first five books of the Bible make up the Pentateuch, which contains the laws that the early Israelites had to live by. The next group of books are the Historical books, which tell the stories of many different people that Christians look up to. After those come the books of Poetry, and the Major and Minor Prophets. In the New Testament, there are twenty-seven books, which are also made up of different parts. The first four books in the New Testament are different accounts of the Gospel of Jesus, which tells of His life and ministry on Earth. Those are followed by the Church’s history, and Paul’s letters to the churches from that time period. And, the last book of the Bible is a part of its own theme, the prophecy. It depicts the future events of the world, and what will happen during the end
The Jewish Bible, Tanakh is made of 39 books, which consists of law (Torah), history,
Emily Dickinson was a polarizing author whose love live has intrigued readers for many years. Her catalog consists of many poems and stories but the one thing included in the majority of them is love. It is documented that she was never married but yet love is a major theme in a vast amount of her poetry. Was there a person that she truly loved but never had the chance to pursue? To better understand Emily Dickinson, one must look at her personal life, her poems, and her diction.
Modern scholars believe that the Hebrew Bible, or Tanakh, was composed by four or five writers between 1000 to 400 BCE based on much older traditions. The New Testament was composed by a variety of writers between 60 to 110 CE. The contents of the New Testament were formalized by Athanasius of Alexandria in 367 CE, and finally canonized in 382 CE (Geisler and
Critics have been fascinated and often baffled by Ezra Pound's shifting poetic style, which ranges from the profound simplicity of "In a Station of the Metro" to the complex intertextuality of the "Cantos." Pound's significance derives largely from his constant resolve to break traditional form and ideology, both literary and poetic. What is particularly unique about Pound, however, is that as he continually establishes precedence, he rarely abandons his thorough knowledge and appreciation of classical literature, drawing heavily from his literary and historical education in even his most groundbreaking works. "Coitus," one of Pound's early short works, exemplifies both his interest in the simple, efficient techniques of vorticism and his homage to the classics, interrelating them to create a statement that is unique and anti-traditional.
There are also cases when texts written in readers’ first language fails to enlightened them. This is because they have no prior knowledge on the ideas or facts written. A student majoring in Arts will have problem comprehending a text written on Chemical Engineering and vice versa. This inevitably causes ‘tunnel vision’ to resurface. They could go on reading till the last page of the text without understanding the content.
For Pound, the knowledge of history is crucial in translation. In his essay, “How to Read” (1928), Pound states that “every new heave is stimulated by translation; every allegedly great age is a great age of translations” (Selected Writings 34-5). More impressive, though, is Pound’s ability to make the poetry of the past seems alive in the present, almost contemporary in nature (Apter 47). Pound’s legacy of resurrecting dead poems in a modern vernacular is a renewal as well as a revival, wherein he revives dead poems by means of his translation. Pound’s endeavors, though, are more complex than those which attempt mere contemporizing older works; in point of fact, he employs a mixture of archaic and modern styles.
Translator: This is so inexplicable. First, in my method of translation, I consider sentence as unit of translation. Second, should the translator be faithful to the word or meaning? I think, this question is absurd, because the literature is expressed with words. Every word has its own place. If someone says that, he/she takes account of concept, what does it mean? What do you take from concept? When you perceive the concept of political or economic books you do not work with words, where you are not faithful to words, but in literature any word has its own meaning. I am one of those translators, who believe that every word must be used in its place, but not necessarily as, the author has applied. I do not use word-for-word strategy, but,
Li, Bai, and David Hinton. The Selected Poems of Li Po. New York: New Directions Pub., 1996. Print.
The poems ‘lines composed on Westminster Bridge’ and ‘London’ are created by William Wordsworth and William Blake respectively. Wordsworth’s work originated in the eighteenth century and he himself lived in the countryside, and rarely visited large cities such as London. This is reflected on his poem, making it personal to his experience in London, however William Blake on the other hand had a vast knowledge of London and was actually a London poet, which allowed him to express his views of London from a Londoner’s point of view. I therefore will be examining comparisons in both poems, as well as their contrasting views of London and the poetic devices used to express their opinions.
In "London", William Blake brings to light a city overrun by poverty and hardship. Blake discards the common, glorifying view of London and replaces it with his idea of truth. London is nothing more but a city strapped by harsh economic times where Royalty and other venues of power have allowed morality and goodness to deteriorate so that suffering and poverty are all that exist. It is with the use of three distinct metaphors; "mind-forg'd manacles", "blackning Church", and "Marriage hearse", that Blake conveys the idea of a city that suffers from physical and psychological imprisonment, social oppression, and an unraveling moral society.
languages. Thus I feel that the translated works cannot provide the same affect on the reader
Historic poetry is unique in the respect that it gives readers an insight into a certain historic time period that textbooks cannot provide. Historic poetry not only gives a description of the time period but it allows the readers to connect to the emotions of the poet and to a point experience what it would have felt to live in that era. This is the case with William Blake’s poem London. London not only describes the horrid condition of England’s lower class during the industrial revolution but it also connects this description with a strong emotion response from the speaker. Blake’s stylistic and structure choices through out the poem paint a dark and morbid view of London but the emotion of the poem remains divide. The words of the poem’s speaker evokes both sympathy for the lower classes at the same time as he is chastising the people who have the power to change the situation.