南國有佳人
容華若桃李
朝遊江北岸
夕宿瀟湘沚
時俗薄朱顏
誰為發皓齒
俯仰歲將暮
榮曜難久恃
曹植
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There’s a belle in the southern country
Her face like peach and cherry
She visits the northern shores mornings
She lodges at river islets of Siu and Seung evenings
It’s the custom to slight flushed faces now
Who’s left to be delighted by glittering teeth
Looking up and down, year end is darkening
It’d be hard to keep the light shining
Cao Shi (tr. El Zorro)
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Cao Zhi ( 曹植) (192-232 AD ) is the third 3rd son of Cao Cao (曹橾), King of Wei (魏) one of the three kings in the period of the Three Kingdoms (三國). His brother Cao Pi (曹丕), the second son of Cao Cao, was jealous of the talent of his brother and used all kinds of methods to try to have him killed until stopped by their mother . In this poem, Cao Zhi compared his political fate to that of a Southern belle whose fast fading beauty was overlooked by the times. His talent was still being ignored at the time he was approaching the dusk of his life, when the poem was written, long after Cao Cho died and power passed to Cao Pi. But some say that here, Cao Zhi was not talking about his own plight but that of his half brother Cao Piao (曹彪). Whatever the truth may be, I think this is a good poem, He was comparing his talents to that of a beautiful lady whose beauty was ignored.
早晨 Elzorro ... 今日好好太陽呢
回覆刪除[版主回覆03/08/2013 00:20:37]
[自由熊回覆03/07/2013 22:34:42] 中英對照 .. 勁呀
[版主回覆03/07/2013 12:35:03]Yes, but I got to work!
You are right, Cao Zhi was not talking about his own plight but that of his half brother Cao Piao (曹彪). You will remember the poem《送白馬王彪》（並序）in which Cao Zhi lamented both their miserable fate.
回覆刪除[版主回覆03/08/2013 19:05:01]The two interpretations are not mutually exclusive. That's the beauty of poetry: the ambiguities of its images, which are seldom singularities but more often multiplicities . They are an open rather than a closed form: there are always room for connotations, not just denotation. There're sufficient details to enable us to construe it one way in one kind of reading but there may also be other hints which may with equal plausibility suggest another. That's why they're poetry, not bald and bad prose. The poetry exists not only in the poet's mind but in the way the poet's thoughts and sentiments are concretely, and in a good poem, imaginatively reduced into a certain pleasing written form, which yet paradoxically cannot be the "real" poem. The "real" poem is a process, a process of re-creation, a re-creation which is the co-creation of the poet and his reader through the medium of the relevant poetic form.
A not so easy to translate poem but you have done it so well!
回覆刪除[版主回覆03/09/2013 10:58:15]Thank you so much for your encouraging words. I'll continue to translate other masterpieces so that people who don't read Chinese can have a chance to savour the taste and the feel of Chinese poetry.
回覆刪除[版主回覆03/09/2013 23:44:10]
El Zorro 翻得好！ 太不容易了！
回覆刪除[只微回覆03/10/2013 09:18:41]好謙虛呀！
[版主回覆03/10/2013 09:00:10]Thank you so much for your encouragement. It'll spur me on to do better in future.
花了不少心思呢﹗自己不懂翻譯，只覺好優雅﹗
回覆刪除[版主回覆07/30/2013 19:23:04]You're very kind. Glad you like it.