Staying Overnight in the Hsu Family Library with my Friend and we are Badly Bothered by the Noise of Rats
(From the Chinese of Mei Yao-che’n, 1002-1060AD)
The lamp-wick blue, the people fast asleep.
Now hungry rats can sneak out from their holes.
A racket – it’s the crash of plates and bowls!
We’re startled by the noise, and all dreams cease.
Oh, fret! – they’ve knocked the inkstand from the desk?
They’re on the shelves, and gnawing books? We’re vexed!
Then that foolish boy starts with his: ‘Miaow’! in mimic of a cat…
A notion really stupid from the start, was that.
(From: ‘Beneath the Silver River’: Translations of Classical Chinese Poetry’)
Note: My translations from Classical Chinese are done on a strict character-by-character basis to convey the meaning / sense of each individual character. They are not free interpretations. With this homely and humorous piece by Mei Yao-che’n, however, allowing a translator’s latitude, I confess to having slightly tweaked the characters which express ‘fretfulness’ / ‘vexation’, rendering them – from a more correct ‘I fret’, and giving a trifle more nuance to being ‘vexed’ – to give an impression of some of the colourful English expressions of the present day. (In Chinese poetry, too, it happens that the character is operational and derived attachments only signaled; e.g., there are few pronouns ever in use). Whatever, your indulgence in a minor literary infelicity of the imagination is here requested.
The above is yet another example of the thoroughly down-to-earth poetry being penned in China over a thousand years ago.
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