Author: Hoiyan Guo

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See You at the Exhibition

Read 《展場裡見你》, Shiny Shuan-Yi Wu’s translation of ‘See You at the Exhibition’

In any museum visit, we tend to divide the exhibited artists into two major categories: friends, and other, gifted strangers we just don’t care about. I eventually navigated through various rooms and found our friends Leonardo, Botticelli, and Caravaggio, while imagining being one of the enthusiastic crowd with tears and awe in their eyes — or indifference, maybe? That was probably the most realistic part of my visit — I still felt no shame in going straight to whatever’s famous. What’s worse, it was nothing close to a pilgrimage.

What is an art pilgrimage anyway? A friend dropped me a link the other day which led to a long list of museums around the globe that can now be accessed through Google Streetview. I wasn’t consumed by greed. After careful consideration, I made this visit, to the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, my only destination for the day.

I was placed in a deeply extended hallway welcomed by gods and goddesses in their sculptures. They were beautifully pale just like their shadows on the wall behind them, but it seemed like they didn’t care to come alive. Each step triggered a moment of pixelation where the exquisitely painted ceilings, walls, tiles, and the elusive scenery outside the windows all melted into an opaque mass. But I was tenacious.

Travelling without moving used to be my dream. Legend says Caravaggio traveled to the twentieth century and stole photography, bringing back to Baroque. As he landed from the trip with his old brushes in hand, he found realism realer than real. We still haven’t figured out why he murdered. But we know he didn’t murder Medusa, Perseus did. Caravaggio only sealed the moment in a wooden shield, and it is still the most astonishing thing in the world. I carefully examined Medusa frozen at the moment of death floating in the vacuum of the display cabinet where her splashing blood is still cold. I tilted my head and knew that I should move on before she petrified me for staring into those eyes for too long.

I found Artemisia right across the display cabinet of Caravaggio’s Medusa. Another moment of violence: Artemisia planning for Judith to play it cool. Holofernes was almost gone. If you ever wonder why there have been no great women artists, there have always been, and they are friends too. Through Judith, Artemisia took her revenge. Since then, we no longer plan to stop debating if justice is a smokescreen for rage, or rage a smokescreen for justice.

I lingered and let my eye wander between Judith and the small exit of the exhibition room, not knowing where the exit led, although all it took was just one click to take me anywhere and another to take me back to yet another anywhere. I must have clicked a wrong spot on the screen that I found myself inside a wall where shadows of some strange windows (must be Italian windows) were projected. I lost sight of where I was, or rather, I never knew where I was this whole time. Who should I turn to for rescue?

It’s pretty ironic that, eventually, I found peace laying my eye on an empty chair between a fire extinguisher and an air conditioner at this temple of art. The place was haunted by deadly silence, the Muses were gone. I knew exactly why I lingered in front of scenes of murder, because a scream would make me feel so much more alive and I feel sorry that I can’t apologize enough. But in order to qualify the morality of a tourist, I didn’t leave until I took a ton of photos (or rather, screenshots).

A few days after my trip to Florence, my friend wants to meet in New York and I say of course. The link she sends takes me to the Met this time. I wait for her in an enormous exhibition hall standing next to a Greek column while before me, outside a wall of transparent glass, snowy trees stand frozen in the wind in the greatest city of the world (though I can’t really tell because I’ve still never been to New York, let alone all the other cities to compare, but that’s what people say). See you at the exhibition. But I begin to realize it’s most likely that I won’t see her. The scenery outside looks wintery, so does the exhibition hall.

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Reflections on translating Xiao Liang’s《我在厨房摘下豌豆尖的花》

Read Xiao Liang’s《我在厨房摘下豌豆尖的花》
Read “In the Kitchen I Pluck a Pea Flower,” Hoiyan Guo’s translation of《我在厨房摘下豌豆尖的花》

Having read the poem time after time in the purpose of translation and its revision, I came to view the piece as a highly saturated image — in addition to being visually saturated, the poem is also vivid in its sensation and emotion. “捅破它的颅腔” (stabs through its skull) “抚摸着” (caressing) “剐蹭着” (scratching)… this series of actions between the poet and the pea flower brings the plant’s texture to its imagery. The intimate and private actions also make the writer’s unique perspective on the plant assessable and sharable to the readers. Moreover, the mention of “含氯清水” (chlorine bleach) evokes the olfactory sensation as its pungent smell overturns the sense of serenity which is oftentimes associated with a flower’s image. The poet shapes the sensational experience for her readers in a particular way that its spirit comes across as critical, provoking, and rebellious. The emotion in the poem is interestingly self-contradictory: while the writer “捅破” (to stab), “割断” (cut), feels “生气” (angry), and views the plucked flower as a “战利品” (trophy), there is a sense of sympathy and attachment at the same time when examining words such as “抚摸” (to caress) and “肉欲” (carnal desire).

There are a few challenges in the translation process, one of them being “无心” (heartless), which appears twice in the poem. Alternative translations in previous versions include “careless”, “don’t care to”, “aren’t meant to”. While “careless” fails at its accuracy to “无心” and “aren’t meant to” weakens the agency of “us”, it is translated into “don’t have the heart to” and “heartless” in the finalized version.

I intuitively translated “生气” into “mad” at my first attempt despite knowing that “mad” is closer to insanity rather than anger. The previous choice projects my interpretation of the poem as an underlying gender critique supported by a few potential hints: the three-time repetitions of “女人” (woman), the scene’s location in the kitchen, a space conventionally assigned to the female role, the mention of repression between forms/shapes/bodies in the second last line, and the hidden narrative in the right column “我 无心 是女人” (I don’t have the heart to be woman). The interpretation is rather subjective and has not been approved by the writer. I eventually turned back to “angry” in order to stay truthful to the original.

“剐蹭” is another word that may lead to a challenging decision — an alternative translation would be “rubbing”, which conveys more intimacy than “scratching” and fits the previous “caressing”. However, I chose “scratching” for it nicely imitates “剐”’s sound (gua – cra). The translation of “形” could also be “form”, “shape”… I picked “body” with the intention to reflect the poem’s physicality.

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An after poem 

Read 一個事後的詩, Shiny Shuan-Yi Wu’s translation of “An after poem”

After they drove away their chariots
I stole a suit of armor
Now the armor wears me

It wears me down
I fall to my knees
My weary knees bleed

No flood is enemy to bold blood
Shields against wild wind
The chariots crash like a waterfall

Each dawn is a denial while the city sleeps
I should escape to some frozen wasteland
         and think of running fast .

If we don’t       freeze

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Excerpts from Letters to a Young Poet — translations of Rainer Maria Rilke’s Briefe an einen jungen Dichter

Read Hoiyan Guo’s reflections on translating Rilke

Nothing touches an artwork so little as a person’s critical words: what arises from them are always more or less fortunate misunderstandings. Things are all not as easy to grasp and utter as people usually like to make us think; most incidents are unutterable and happen in a space which no word has ever passed, and more unutterable than anything is the mysterious existence of the artworks, whose life, alongside ours that passes by, endures.

Paris, am 17. Februar 1903

… Mit nichts kann man ein Kunst-Werk so wenig berühren als mit kritischen Worten: es kommt dabei immer auf mehr oder minder glückliche Mißverständnisse heraus. Die Dinge sind alle nicht so faßbar und sagbar, als man uns meistens glauben machen möchte; die meisten Ereignisse sind unsagbar, vollziehen sich in einem Raum, den nie ein Wort betreten hat, und unsagbarer als alle sind die Kunst-Werke, geheimnisvolle Existenzen, deren Leben neben dem unseren, das vergeht, dauert.

*

Seek to lift up the sunken sensations of this broad past; your character will come together. Your loneliness will become a dwelling at dusk or at dawn, by which the noise from others distantly drifts by.

Zt. Worpswede bei Bremen, am 16. Juli 1903

… Versuchen Sie die versunkenen Sensationen dieser weiten Vergangenheit zu heben; Ihre Persönlichkeit wird sich festigen. Ihre Einsamkeit wird sich erweitern und wird eine dämmernde Wohnung werden, daran der Lärm der anderen fern vorübergeht.

*

Here, around me is an enormous field over which the ocean wind blows, here I feel that no human is capable of providing answers to those questions and feelings that have their own lives in their depth; because for words with the lightest and almost innumerable meanings, even the best ones would stray. Nonetheless, I still believe that you don’t have to live in a state with no solution, if you hold on to things which are similar to what recuperate my eyes. If you hold on to nature, on the simple in her, on the small that one rarely sees, they can unexpectedly turn into the enormous and the unmeasurable. If you have love for the negligible and strive as an extremely humble servant for trust from things which appear pitiful: everything will become lighter, more consistent, and somehow more conciliatory, probably not in the terrified intellect which lags behind, but in your innermost consciousness, awareness, and knowledge.

… Hier, wo ein gewaltiges Land um mich ist, über das von den Meeren her die Winde gehen, hier fühle ich, daß auf jene Fragen und Gefühle, die in ihren Tiefen ein eigenes Leben haben, nirgend ein Mensch Ihnen antworten kann; denn es irren auch die Besten in den Worten, wenn sie Leisestes bedeuten sollen und fast Unsägliches. Aber ich glaube trotzdem, daß Sie nicht ohne Lösung bleiben müssen, wenn Sie sich an Dinge halten, die denen ähnlich sind, an welchen jetzt meine Augen sich erholen. Wenn Sie sich an die Natur halten, an das Einfache in ihr, an das Kleine, das kaum einer sieht, und das so unversehens zum Großen und Unermeßlichen werden kann; wenn Sie diese Liebe haben zu dem Geringen und ganz schlicht als ein Dienender das Vertrauen dessen zu gewinnen suchen, was arm scheint: dann wird Ihnen alles leichter, einheitlicher und irgendwie versöhnender werden, nicht im Verstande vielleicht, der staunend zurückbleibt, aber in Ihrem innersten Bewußtsein, Wach-sein, und Wissen.

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Reflections on translating Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet

Read excerpts from Hoiyan Guo’s translations of Rilke’s Briefe an einen jungen Dichter

I learned to transport myself to different places with pure imagination. When I was rereading Letters to a Young Poet, a collection of letters Rainer Maria Rilke exchanged with Franz Xaver Kappus, I saw myself peeping into a mailbox that stood alone in a garden — inside was a brown envelope in its aura. I fetched the envelope, eagerly opened it as I turned back onto the path leading to my imaginary study before I could reach a paper knife there. I held the letter extremely close to my eyes, then read it by the window.…

Starting reading Rilke’s letters with this vision becomes a ritual, even though the image does not quite correspond to my environment (I do envision moving into a nice house with a yard a lot though) nor Kappus’ (Kappus was in the military). I guess it is not about the actual surroundings, it is the act of finding, opening, and finally reading a letter addressed to a particular receiver that somehow stimulates me.

I do what I can to be a devoted reader and study the meaning of being a creative writer and translator thinking just how lovely it would be if I eventually deserve to be called one. I choose to follow Rilke, and every time I am deeply immersed in his texts, he asks me to do exactly what I did before reading him: to visualize a space for experiencing and learning, a space where I use my perception of the physical environment — weight against my body, pressure on my skin, or that feeling of being small in the middle of a vast field, to understand the intangible mental struggle in engaging the creative, the artistic, and the spiritual.

My deeper understanding of the texts was only awakened after two revisions of my own translation benefited from our class conferences. My first attempt was imbued with enthusiasm to bring forth the textual meaning, but the result did not show enough consideration to each word’s specificity, especially verbs’.

Mit nichts kann man ein Kunst-Werk so wenig berühren als mit kritischen Worten…

Nothing touches an artwork so little like a person’s critical words…

I first translated berühren into “involve” — compared to the quotidian use of berühren, namely to touch an object, the relatively abstract idea of involving something seemed appropriate in the context of engaging an artwork through critical words. Nonetheless, compared to involving, there is more specificity to the action of touching which entails the aiming of the eyes and the reaching out of an arm in order to feel the texture of the touching object. In this sentence, the gesture of touching an artwork could be interpreted as capturing the artistic essence, but however abstract it appears, the rhetoric is intended to show the endeavor and the precision the understanding of art requires. In this sense, “touch” is a more accurate translation than “involve.”

Die Dinge sind alle nicht so faßbar und sagbar…
Things are all not as easy to grasp and utter…

Both faßen and sagen describe the basic, straightforward, uncomplicated actions of catching and saying. Once again, I projected my own interpretation of the context and slightly adjusted the words’ connotation through translating them into “capture” and “articulate” at my first attempt. Similar to translating berühren into “involve” rather than a word as simple as “touch,” I constrained myself within a particular set of vocabulary relevant to literary interpretation and expression, while basic verbs more used in the daily setting would be more consistent with Rilke’s word choice.

The translation of sagen , “to say,” is a surprisingly challenging one. Throughout the paragraphs I selected for the translation exercise, sagen also appears as a motive through its variations of sagbar, unsagbar, das Unsägliches… While I find “sayable,” “unsayable,” “the unsayable” a little awkward-sounding, alternatives of translating sagen including “articulate”, “express,” and “describe” fail to convey the instinctive quality of “saying”. “Utter” remains an appropriate choice that preserves this quality.

These are only a few examples of the factors being considered during the text’s translation and revision. These brief illustrations should reveal the major challenge for my exercise, that is to translate the particular energy and tension contained in the original text through being attentive and sensitive to each word choice, especially the choice of verbs. Rilke’s verbs play a crucial role of adding physicality to the abstract intellectual world and translate the invisible inner struggle into actions that we can imagine.

Considering the texts as letters, Rilke was likely to let his thoughts on being a poet intuitively and naturally flow on paper instead of carefully constructing words and sentences to speak in a strictly academic tone. His lengthy sentences and sometimes hazy expression may not let his texts come across as a well theorized guidance for writers, but there is much inspiration in his poetic and sincere language — even though the process of writing could be complex, frustrating, and demanding of strength, what comes out of the challenge is meaningful. The experience of translating Rilke’s letters brings forward the onus on a translator to focus on not only sense but also the motion under the surface, between words. That is the only way to transmit the unseen yet tangible space constructed by Rilke to readers of the target language.

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What Is Disco 

Read Xiao Liang’s《的士高是什么》translations of excerpts of ‘What Is Disco’

Disco (or discothèque if you prefer) 
is an energy drink 
tastes kind of bizarre, but somebody is lovin’ it 

Disco (or discothèque if you still prefer the French way) 
is a seven-minute long track mixed into another seven minutes 
or a three-minute long radio-edit version 
fading out in your car 

cut from the (more or less) seven minutes of dance beats on the dance floor 

For disco (now I’ll just abbreviate it as everybody does) 
you should expect very unbuttoned shirt and other accessories in their fashion-edit version 
Kings and divas spinning while calling angels trapped in neon
and that you are your own king you are your diva 
you are the angels  

Disco is you should be dancing 
but don’t be misguided by the Bee Gees 
or blinded by heterosexual love 

It’s you should be dancing 
but dance on the margins 
and use it as a cussword if you insist 

Disco is impressively good teeth 
while your lip is still yours you can bite it or press it on someone else’s 

It’s I feel good about myself and actually it is the only moment I feel good about myself

Disco is abusing ecstasy accompanied by non-fatal or fatal heart attack

Disco is nothing ever lasts
still I wish …