Mountain Q&A

Two translations of a poem by Li Bai, with notes

山中问答

Shān zhōng wèn dá

问余何意栖碧山,
笑而不答心自闲.
桃花流水窅然去,
别有天地非人间.

Wèn yú hé yì qī bì shān
Xiào ér bù dá xīn zì xián
Táo huā liú shuǐ yǎo rán qù
Bié yǒu tiān dì fēi rén jiān

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I.

You ask me why I live in these blue hills;
Laughing, I offer no reply—my heart is at ease.
Peach blossoms drift towards the river’s depths;
There is a world that is not of this world.

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II.

Being asked why dwell in blue-green mountains,
I smile, give no answer, for my mind is care-free.
Peach flowers drift, depart over deep waters;
Between heaven and earth, there is another world.

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Notes

I am quite happy with both translations.

The term “you” is not present in the original Chinese; it is presented in Tr. I. by way of context. Many translators of this poem (Fuller, Hinton, X. Yang, and G. Yang, et. al.) have also opted for the pronoun.

The term 山 (shān) can mean mountain or hill. Typically, anything resembling a mountain can be referred to by this character. My decision to render 山 as “hills” in Tr. I.—despite the title (Questions and answers in/among the mountains)—is purely poetic. The same goes for many of the characters in Tr. I., but especially 碧 (bì), which refers to green jade or a bluish green. Again, many of my choices for Tr. I. are driven by an effort towards simplification and (English) poetic sensibility.

There is a sense in the Chinese of some unknown, profounder world that is clearly represented by 窅 (yǎo), which can mean deep, distant, profound, but also obscure or remote. Some translators, such as Hinton, have rendered the third line like this: “Peach blossoms drift streamwater away deep in mystery.” Ho, another translator, has done this: “Peach blossoms flow with running water / Into the unknown.” These translations are fine. My decisions to not explicitly evoke the “unknown” or the “mystery” have more to do with Li Bai’s representation of nature. Táo huā liú shuǐ yǎo means, literally, peach flower flow water deep.

I struggled the most with the last line. Li Bai uses the character 人 (rén) which means person or human. He is wanting to make a distinction between a kind of “otherworld” which is not synonymous with “the world of men.” Some translators lean into this while others do not. My choice to lean away from 人 is an exercise in implicitness (more on this in a future post).

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