The Lantern and the Night Moths

Translating poetry is no easy task. Not only do you have to deeply understand two languages, you also have to divine the intent of the writer you are translating while traversing vastly different cultural landscapes to bring that intent to its final destination.

I was curious and excited to read The Lantern and the Night Moths, Yilin Wang’s translations of the work of five Chinese poets: Qiu Jin (1875–1907); Zhang Qiaohui (1978– ); Fei Ming (1901–1967); Xiao Xi (1974– ); and Dai Wangshu (1905–1950).

There are two main reasons why I was moved to read this collection. Firstly, because I didn’t recognize the names of these poets—when people talk about Chinese poetry, almost everyone recites poetry from the same few names: Li Bai, Wang Wei, and Du Fu. Even I, who came to Canada when I was four, recognize their words when I hear them. But there is a much broader range of work by contemporary Chinese poets that deserves our attention. This is one of the main reasons Wang gives for doing this work—to broaden the reach of these poets to a wider audience that would appreciate their craft.

Secondly, I wanted to see how Wang would perform these transmutations. As a Cantonese speaker, I can read some traditional Chinese, which in turn allows me to recognize some characters in simplified Chinese—a middle ground of sorts between a fully fluent reader and someone who is completely unfamiliar with the language.

With tens of thousands of characters, both Putonghua (the spoken language for most simplified Chinese readers) and Cantonese (the spoken language for most traditional Chinese readers) provide an especially massive palette of homophones and wordplay that a writer can use to paint multiple worlds, often using just a single word. I’ve always believed that it is nearly impossible to translate Chinese poetry perfectly into any other language.

This is partially because of the language’s tonal nature, which makes classical Chinese poems especially pleasing to the ear, and actually fun to read out loud. The closest tonal equivalent in English is probably the rhyme, though tones provide an exponentially greater number of possibilities when it comes to wordplay. The other difficulty with translating Chinese poetry is that like other monosyllabic languages, each Chinese character has only one syllable, which means the meter and rhythm can never be fully captured in an English translation.

The meaning and spirit of the words—which are no less important—are often all that’s left within the control of a translator in their work. As I read through these poems and translations, it was clear that even with all of these challenges, Wang endeavoured to, and did, capture this spirit as faithfully as possible.

In Qiu Jin’s “Inscription on My Tiny Portrait (in Men’s Clothes),” Wang chooses the translation “I have swept the dust of the world away” when the original Chinese line doesn’t explicitly say anything about the world—it merely says to sweep “floating dust.” But in the context of this poem and the themes of gender, belonging, and an imagined future, I agree with Wang and believe that this is most true to Qiu Jin’s intent behind this line.

In Xiao Xi’s “the infinite possibilities of trees,” there are two elements of the original poem that a translator must preserve—the deceptively simple style and the dense meaning. Wang maintains the poem’s pared down form in their English translation, while also conveying the mundaneness (“sometimes it’s a door; sometimes a bed”), the beauty, and the terrible power that lies in a tree (“sometimes, endless shovels, burying the truth”).

Every poet in this collection has a distinct style, from Qiu Jin’s more rigid rhyme and meter to Zhang Qiaohui’s narratively rich verse—which makes the translation work all the more demanding and impressive.

One of the most powerful things about The Lantern and the Night Moths is the range in subject matter of the poems that Wang chose. These poets engage with the world in so many different ways. In these poems, there are dreams of women becoming heroes (“A Reply to Ishii-kun in Matching Rhyme”), days spent gardening with Mother (“Dialect”), references to Descartes (“I Think”), and of course, thoughts about the moon (“Púsāmán: To a Female Friend,” “nipping flowers,” “To Answer the Visitor with Classical Imagery”.

For anyone who is interested in exploring the range and complexity of Chinese poetry— rigorously and respectfully translated—Wang’s collection answers that question while revealing much about the culture, the ideals, and the past and present that have shaped Chinese thinkers. And for those who read the language, it is a profound exploration of how translations can give poems second lives and, in Wang's words, reach kindred spirits and touch new readers in various corners of the world.