Category: Work by Hoiyan Guo

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第一組 Chat (Alex, Hoiyan, and Shiny)

Listen to Alex Mathews, Hoiyan Guo, and Shiny Shuan-Yi Wu on the intersections of original pieces, translations, and imitations, through their individual and group creative works.

[00:00:00—00:19:35] Shiny’s 不過也就過個幾十年 , an imitation of 張愛玲’s 愛 , followed by Hoiyan’s and Alex’s translations

[00:19:35—00:39:23] Alex’s The Woman in the Harbor, followed by Shiny’s imitation, and the three’s conversation

Links:

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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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的士高是什么 (translated excerpts of Hoiyan Guo’s “What Is Disco”)

Read Hoiyan Guo’s ‘What Is Disco’

的士高 —— 
要是你不喜欢缩写的话，那就的士夠格
像罐能量饮料
喝起来怪怪的，但有些人就是
情有独钟

的士高—— 
要是你非得来法国人那一套，那就discothèque
是舞池里七分钟的动感节拍混合另一个七分钟的动感节拍
不然就是
从舞池里七分钟的动感节拍修剪成短短三分钟
在你车里，缓慢淡出

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展場裡見你 — a translation of Hoiyan Guo’s “See You at the Exhibition”

Read Hoiyan Guo’s ‘See You at the Exhibition’

無論是去哪種美術館吧，我們都傾向於將參與展覽的藝術家們分成兩個主要類別：朋友，以及其他那些我們根本不 care 的富有才華的陌生人。最終我瀏覽遍了無數間展廳並找到了我們的朋友——李奧納多、波提且利、還有卡拉瓦喬，並在期間想像著自己也是那，眼睛裡充滿淚水與敬佩的熱血群眾的一員——或其實，那是無知？那應該是我的來訪裡最最真實的部分了——我依舊不會以自己拜訪任何有名之物的直截了當而感到羞恥。更糟糕的是，這一點都稱不上朝聖。

但到底什麼又是藝術朝聖呢？某位朋友某天丟給了我一條連結，透過 Google Streetview 新開放的服務，可以連到一整個長列表的，來自世界各地的美術館。我並沒有被貪婪吞噬。經過慎重考慮，我拜訪了佛羅倫斯烏菲茲美術館。那是我當日唯一的目的地。

我被放置在一個深度延展的長廊，夾帶歡迎的是那些附著於雕像上的眾神。他們美麗的蒼白，就好比他們在背後牆上的身影，但他們在意的程度似乎不足以讓他們復活。每一步，皆在那精美天花板、牆壁、地磚上引起一陣像素化，並隨著窗戶外頭的精美景象融化，直到變成一團不透明物。但我很頑強的。

旅行時不用四處移動——這曾經是我的夢想。傳說卡拉瓦喬穿梭到了二十世紀，將攝影學偷回了巴洛克時期。當他手握陳舊的畫筆返來，他發現，現實主義比現實還要現實。我們依舊不知道他為何殺人。但我們知道他沒有謀殺梅杜莎——珀爾修斯幹的。卡拉瓦喬只是將那個瞬間塵封在一個木製的盾牌，就還是世界上最驚人的事件。我謹慎的審視著梅杜莎，那個在死亡瞬間被冰凍的她正漂浮在血液四濺的真空展示櫃，且血還是冰的。我傾著我的頭，知道自己應該要在直視她過久而被她石化前，繼續移動了。

我在卡拉瓦喬的〈梅杜莎〉(Medusa) 展示櫃的正對面找到了阿特蜜希雅。又是一個殘暴的瞬間：阿特蜜希雅計畫讓友第德不動聲色。敖羅斐近乎陣亡。如果你曾困惑這世上為何從未有過偉大的女性藝術家，事實是其實一直都有的，而且她們也是我們的朋友。透過友第德，阿特蜜希雅執行了她的復仇。自此，我們不再寄望辯論能夠停止，基於正義只是肆虐的煙霧彈，又或者肆虐是正義的煙霧彈。

四處徘徊的我縱容我的雙眼神遊於友第德以及展廳的小出口之間。我不知道這出口會將我安置於何處，雖然只消一個點擊我就可以被帶往任何地方，然後再一個點擊把我帶回又一個別處。我一定是按了螢幕上某個不該按的點才發現自己身在一座牆裡邊，一座映有一些奇怪的窗戶（我敢篤定是義大利風格的窗戶）的影子的牆。我失去了辨別座標方向的能力，或其實，這期間我根本從不知道我在哪。我該向誰尋求救助？

蠻諷刺的。最終我憑藉著將我的眼睛定在介於一個消防栓與一台冷氣中間的一把空椅，在這藝術的殿堂找到了安詳。在這裡，死寂環繞，繆思失去了蹤跡。我知道我徘徊於這些殘殺景象的具體原因，是因為一個尖叫就能使我感到活著又感到抱歉因為我永遠無法至上足夠的歉意。但為了修飾身為一個遊客的道德，我在拍下一拖拉庫的照片後才離開（或其實，是截圖）。

我的佛羅倫斯行結束後幾天我朋友想約我在紐約見面，我說那當然！她傳給我的連結這次把我放置在大都會博物館。我站在一個巨大展廳裡的一個希臘式圓柱旁等待著她。同時，在那透明玻璃牆之外的積雪的樹一凍，也不動的站在這全世界最優秀的城市裡（雖然我還真不能保證畢竟我從未去過紐約，更別說是其他得以比較的城市了，但那是人們的說法）。展場裡見你！但我逐漸開始意識到其實我極大可能見不到她。外邊的景色看來荒涼如冬。展廳也是。

 

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一個事後的詩 — a translation of Hoiyan Guo’s “An after poem”

Read Hoiyan Guo’s “An after poem”

在他們開走他們的戰車之後
我偷了一身盔甲
而此刻這盔甲穿了我

這盔甲將我穿到疲憊不堪
我跌落在我的雙膝
我疲憊不堪的雙膝流淌著血泊

凡洪流沒有一個與堅毅勇忍的血泊為敵
強盾抵禦著亂狂的風
戰車倒的像個瀑布

在死亡和命運中不存在於虛構
對向著一個冰凍的虛蕪之地
我該逃跑，而且要想著跑快