(Li Qingzhao & Karen An-hwei Lee)

A coincidence. Seeking a rare vision of grace in the ash of war, exile, and a ruined economy, my eye fell upon a Song Dynasty woman poet’s writings via an ideogram shared by our last names:  李.  As far as equivalencies between our languages, her last name and mine are one and the same.  

Her full name:  Li Qingzhao.

As a girl, I knew about the Tang Dynasty male poet Li Bai or Li Po, whose famous poem on moonlight I memorized and recited.  I was new to a woman poet named Li. I found Li Qingzhao while perusing Dorothy Disse’s on-line archive, Other Women’s Voices:  Translations of Women’s Writing before 1700. Romanized, Li Qingzhao’s beautiful surname is also spelled Ching-ch’ao.

For Anglophone tongues, the third syllable is close to “ts” in “tse-tse fly.”  

Li adored her husband Zhao Mingcheng, who shared her literary interests.  Li was perpetually in love with him. They collected art and played “poetry games.” After composing a line or identifying a quotation, the winner drank a cup of tea, which Li occasionally spilled on herself, laughing aloud. She took pleasure in book-collecting, observing chrysanthemums and pear blossoms, or sitting quietly with a burning censer after dusk.

Li wrote original poems set to the tune of popular songs called ci.

Lyrical and passionate, her work stands apart from Song Dynasty women who chose to write stylized verse framed by imperial culture.  At once intimate and universal, Li voices a timeless reality:  Love, memory, and loss are integral to human experience.  Indeed, her life of writing and art-collecting was doomed by the political instabilities of her time.  After the fall of the Northern Song Dynasty, she and Zhao fled into exile as their possessions were reduced to ash.

My desire is for Li’s voice to sing in these translations.

She recalls a youthful boating excursion with joy, observes a courtyard plantain tree flourish in her southern exile, listens to rain on the leaves of a parasol tree, watches for the first signs of yellow chrysanthemums, or alludes to her late husband with tender regret while her own hair silvers at the temples. In this trio, her solitude is quite transparent in a reference to the mythic peng bird who soars on wind over water for ninety thousand li.

Certainly, I am not the first translator of Li’s work, nor the last.

My deep respect goes to the historians Beata Grant, Wilt Idema, Kang-I Chang, and Haun Saussy, who translated and anthologized many of Li’s writings, circulating them in the West. Arthur Sze eloquently translated a number of Li’s poems. Heartfelt thanks to Lucy Chao, Lu-sheng Chong, and Dorothy Disse for their digital treasuries of Li’s poetry in the 21^st Century.

—Karen An-hwei Lee

• Read original in Chinese
• Read translation by Karen An-hwei Lee

漁家傲

by Li Qingzhao

天接雲濤連曉霧，

星河欲轉千帆舞﹔

彷佛夢魂歸帝所，

聞天語，

殷勤問我歸何處。

 

我報路長嗟日暮，

學詩漫有驚人句﹔

九萬里風鵬正舉，

風休住，

蓬舟吹取三山去。

To the Tune of Yu Jia Ao:
The lofty fisherman

by Li Qingzhao

When the sky, mist, and waved clouds mingle at dawn,

when a star-laden river, the Milky Way, wheels

in the dance of a thousand sails,

then my spirit, in a dream, drifts to the empyrean,

listening to heaven’s voice

gently asking me about a journey:

What is your desire?

I answer with a sigh:  The road is long at dusk;

I’ve studied poetry intently,

even written a few startling lines.

Yet the powerful peng bird

soars high for ninety thousand li

on pure wind, unceasing wind,

as I desire to send my little boat

three mythic mountains away.

translated from Chinese by Karen An-hwei Lee

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An excerpt from alphabet by Inger Christensen, translated by Susanna Nied

• Read original in Danish
• Read translation by Susanna Nied

7 [g] grænserne findes

by Inger Christensen

grænserne findes, gaderne, glemslen

 

og græs og agurker og geder og gyvel,
begejstringen findes, grænserne findes;

 

grenene findes, vinden der løfter dem
findes, og grenenes eneste tegning

 

af netop det træ der kaldes egetræet findes,
af netop det træ der kaldes asketræet, birketræet,
cedertræet findes, og tegningen gentaget

 

findes, i havegangens grus; findes
også gråden, og gederams og gråbynke findes,
gidslerne, grågåsen, grågåsens unger;

 

og geværerne findes, en gådefuld baghave,
tilgroet, gold og kun smykket med ribs,
geværerne findes; midt i den oplyste
kemiske ghetto findes geværerne,
med deres gammeldags, fredelige præcision findes

 

geværerne, og grædekonerne findes, mætte
some grådige ugler, gerningsstedet findes;
gerningsstedet, døsigt, normalt og abstrakt,
badet i et hvidkalket, gudsforladt lys,
dette giftige, hvide, forvitrende digt

 

 

 

”7 [g] grænserne findes” By Inger Christensen, from ALFABET, copyright ©1981 by Inger Christensen

7 [g] given limits

by Inger Christensen

given limits exist, streets, oblivion

 

and grass and gourds and goats and gorse,

eagerness exists, given limits

 

branches exist, wind lifting them exists,

and the lone drawing made by the branches

 

of the tree called an oak tree exist,

of the tree called an ash tree, a birch tree,

a cedar tree, the drawing repeated

 

in the gravel garden path; weeping

exists as well, fireweed and mugwort,

hostages, greylag geese, greylags and their young,

 

and guns exist, an enigmatic back yard;

overgrown, sere, gemmed just with red currants,

guns exist; in the midst of the lit-up

chemical ghetto guns exist

with their old-fashioned, peaceable precision

 

guns and wailing women, full as

greedy owls exist; the scene of the crime exists;

the scene of the crime, drowsy, normal, abstract,

bathed in a whitewashed, godforsaken light,

this poisonous, white, crumbling poem

translated from Danish by Susanna Nied

“7 [g] given limits” By Inger Christensen, translated by Susanna Nied, from ALPHABET, copyright ©1981, 2000 by Inger Christensen,Translation copyright © 2000 by Susanna Nied. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.

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