A Conversation with Susan Wan Dolling: Bringing Tang Dynasty Poets to Contemporary Audiences
Susan Wan Dolling is a writer, teacher, and translator celebrated for her work on Tang Dynasty poetry. Her series, “My China in Tang Poetry,” published by Earnshaw Books, offers new translations and insights into the poems’ meanings and contexts. The series consists of three volumes: “Superstars,” “Floating on Clouds,” and “Friends and Lovers.” The first volume, “Superstars,” features poets Li Bai (李白) and Du Fu (杜甫), providing vivid portrayals of their lives and works.
What drew you to explore and study Chinese poetry?
I have loved poetry all my life, but I did not start studying Chinese poetry till I started translating these poets into English at a poetry workshop as an undergraduate at Princeton University, and once I started it became a part of my writing life. Perhaps growing up in British Hong Kong, attending an English-speaking school where we were taught “verse-speaking,” explain why English poetry was my first love. On the other hand, at home, I had a Cantonese speaking mother who recited Chinese classics as if they were everyday speech, and Chinese poetry found its way into my subconscious without my even noticing it until I dredged it up for translation. Because of these oral beginnings, poetry has always been a physiological experience to me and should be “tasted” or at least read out loud. This is why I have made little audio podcasts available on my website, www.susanwandolling.com, for those who want to hear me reading some of them.
Can you describe the process of translating classical Chinese poetry for a contemporary audience?
The poets I have translated so far are mostly from the Tang and Song periods (between 618-1279) and I have also translated from Modern or contemporary Chinese literature. I have not really found one so different from the other. Perhaps the older historical background requires translators/readers to do more research to familiarize themselves with the original language, otherwise, translating from one culture into another, ancient or modern, makes the same demands on the translator as on the audience. One has always to make that imaginative leap that perhaps all reading requires, even if the leap from foreign or ancient literatures is greater than that for reading contemporary or local literature. The translator has the responsibility, moreover, to make the original as accessible as possible for the audience.
That is to say, translators are first of all, readers. They must first be sympathetic and informed readers before they can bring originals across into so-called target languages. That process requires translators to be familiar with the genres they are translating from as well as the genres they are translating into. Poetry translators need to be poets. Literary translation is an art, a performance art, as I argued in the epilogue in My China in Tang Poetry, of which Superstars is the first volume.
What challenges did you face in capturing the essence of Tang Dynasty poetry?
The language, of course, as so many classical poetry translators have argued, is the primary challenge. Not only is the grammar different from contemporary Chinese, and far more economical, there are no verb tenses, few pronouns, and often many allusions and historical references in the poetry. That said, I don’t know how to encapsulate the “essence” of Tang poetry. Perhaps variety is it’s essence, as it is in any poetry.
How do Li Bai and Du Fu’s poems reflect the socio-political climate of their time?
Since Li and Du are such different poets, what they show us of the socio-political climate of their time is colored entirely by their different points of view, and even that is not consistent. The sense we get of the times they lived in is that life was hard and success arbitrary, and if one were unlucky and born into unfortunate circumstances, the difference between then and now is just a matter of degree. One could say, being eleven years Du Fu’s senior, Li Bai saw a more prosperous and peaceful Tang dynasty than the younger poet. I guess there is no shortcut to the answer to this question and I have no intelligent answer to it without writing a dissertation.
What role does nature play in the poetry of Li Bai and Du Fu?
Nature plays an important role in all of Classical Chinese literature. If Li Bai tended to use images from Nature mostly in his “Mountain and River” landscape poems, some as pure descriptions and few without symbolic significance, this is true in Du Fu’s poetry too, even though Du Fu’s references to nature are more seen and felt through the human lens. Things of Nature tend to widen our perspective, color our moods, shame us in comparison, or deepen out understanding of certain situations in both poets’ poetry. Many general statements have been made about the role of Nature in Chinese poetry, but I do not find general statements very useful.
How did their personal lives influence their poetry?
All poetry come from personal experience, even philosophical poetry, but the poems of Li Bai and Du Fu in particular may be described as “lyrical” or “personal.” By this, I mean that they are either occasional, that is prompted by some occasion, as in saying goodbye to somebody or celebrating something, or written as an emotional response to a particular situation or circumstance regarding oneself or another, such as homesickness, rejection, exhilaration, war, injustice and so on. So yes, their personal lives are reflected in their poetry. Sometimes, this poetry reads like a diary entry!
How do their poetic styles differ from each other?
Poetry, according to the Chinese since forever, expresses one’s mind or outlook or where one’s heart tends, 詩言志.
When Li Bai and Du Fu’s poetry is taught in school, one of the first things children learn about these literary giants is that traditionally Li Bai’s poetry tends towards that which is outside-of-the-world or society出世 and Du Fu’s tends towards that which is in-the-world or society 入世. In other words, Li Bai’s world view and style reaches beyond social cares or is free of social norms, whereas Du Fu’s poetry always expresses social concerns and people’s lives and livelihood. Philosophically, one might call Li’s poetry Daoist and Du’s poetry Confucian.
How did you decide which poems to include in the book?
No one would dispute the supremacy of Li Bai and Du Fu in the literary canon of Chinese literature. Since My China in Tang Poetry is about Tang poetry in relation to my own experiences of them, their inclusion is a given. As for the rest, Meng Haoran, Wang Wei and Bai Juyi, at one end of the series, and Li He, Du Mu and Li Shangyin, at the other, are also pretty much chosen for me both in terms of personal exposure and conventional wisdom. The so-called “Four Female Talents of the Tang Dynasty,” Li Ye, Xue Tao, Liu Caichun and Yu Xuanji, are included to represent “the other half” as it were of the Tang population. I must confess that their poetry came to me later on in life, when I began “studying” Tang poetry as opposed to my “breathing in” these poems as I was growing up.
So far, I’ve only answered the question as to how I chose the poets and not how I chose which poems of theirs to include. This latter question has to do with how I chose to tell their stories, and that has to do with themes, or how their stories organized themselves as I began to put them together. There is also the question of my ability and inclination. Some of the poems I left out were because I could not bring them across into English effectively, and some are excluded because they do not draw me to them, and vice versa.
Can you describe any specific poem that resonated with you the most and why?
Well, that is a tall order, and the answer depends on the poet because each of them moved me in different ways. As an example of one such poem, let me give you Li He’s angry poem, “Fall is Coming,” which made a deep impression on me during a time when I was frustrated with publishers.
FALL IS COMING
Wind rustles through the wutong leaves, coming at my warrior-heart.
Lamp burns low as I listen to the shuttle of crickets anticipating winter.
Who will unfurl this bamboo scroll and read my writing? And how long
will it take for worms to make holes and turn my work to a heap of dust?
This miserable night and the thought of worms will surely pull my insides out.
But wait, the cold rain brings a ghostly figure, an ancient come to comfort me.
I hear voices singing from the grave, chanting Master Bao’s rugged verse,1
a thousand years in the earth must have turned his aggrieved blood to jade.2
Li He, however, is in Volume Three, so, if you’d like one from Volume One, Superstars, let me give you one from Li Bai.
This was one of the poems Li Bai wrote when the Tang Emperor finally sent for him and invited him to the capital. “The Story of Zhu Maichen” referenced in the poem is found in the Hanshu (History of Han): Zhu Maichen lived in Huiqi and was very poor in his early years. He sold firewood for a living and was a scholar. He could often be seen reading a book even as he took firewood to market. His wife couldn’t stand being so poor and left him. Later, Emperor Wu of Han discovered him and made him Prefect of Huiqi. “That stupid woman” here, borrowed from Zhu’s story to refer to Liu, was the woman who lived with Li Bai for a while but had left him, just like Zhu Maichen’s wife, and in his case, it was because she looked down on him as a drunk and a failure. Lastly, Qin is an antiquated way to refer to the capital, Chang’an. Qin 秦 is the dynasty previous to Han 漢, and both are often used as synonym for China.
ON MY WAY TO THE CAPITAL, STOPPING TO SAY
GOODBYE TO THE CHILDREN AT NANLING
Home from the mountains to find white wine just fermented
and chickens looking fat, picking and pecking at autumn feed.
I tell the houseboy to make a meat dish to go with the wine
as my little children sing and laugh and pull on my clothes.
Singing while drinking is just the thing to do, how true. Let’s
get up and dance and compete for light with the sinking sun.
Many miles I’ve traveled, so many people I’ve seen, so late
in the day to start this long journey, my horse is raring to go.
Tell the stupid woman at Huiqi who looked down on Maichen
that I, too, must say goodbye to my family and go west to Qin.
Tossing my head back, laughing to the sky as I go out the door.
People like us cannot be obscure for long, hidden in wild grass.
What do you think makes Tang Dynasty poetry timeless and relevant today?
My first response is that this is because these poems are personal, and the personal is universal. My second response is that the Tang dynasty is cosmopolitan and relatively free or open-minded, conditions which makes for timelessness and relevance.
What are your future plans for writing and translation projects?
Earnshaw Books will be publishing my Song poetry series after this Tang poetry series, most likely in 2025. I have also been working on a memoir called What Price Sunshine, and a collection of essays inspired or instigated by my life with my daughter, plus Pu Songling’s “strange tales” have been popping up in my writing folder over the years and eventually, some of them will make their way into another collection.
1 Master Bao is Bao Zhao 鮑照who lived in the fifth century and is known for his fu rhapsodies. He was, like so many of these great poets frustrated in his political ambitions and wrote a group of poems called “The Rugged Road”, the verse Li He is referring to in this poem.
2 Zuangzi said of Chang Hong, another aggrieved virtuous man, that his blood will turn to green jade after three years in the ground.
Photos courtesy of Susan Wan Dolling
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