David Hinton
Photo by Aneleisa Gladding-Hinton
Bio
David Hinton's many translations of classical Chinese poetry have earned wide acclaim for creating compelling contemporary poems that convey the actual texture and density of the originals. He is also the first translator in over a century to translate the four seminal masterworks of Chinese philosophy: Tao Te Ching, Chuang Tzu, Analects, Mencius. He has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, numerous fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities, and both of the major awards given for poetry translation in the United States: the Landon Translation Award from the Academy of American Poets, and the PEN Translation Award from the PEN American Center. He was recently a fellow at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers in New York City.
Translator's Statement
This book will be the twelfth in a long-term project to translate China's major classical poets, recreating each one as a singular and compelling poetic voice in English. In spite of what may seem to be a vast cultural and temporal distance from us, this poetry feels utterly contemporary, and has in fact been an influential strain of American poetry for the past century. Although each of my translations is based on a close scholarly reading of the original text and includes a thorough apparatus, my primary intent is to make convincing English poems that will engage general readers. By translating a large number of poets in this way, I hope to establish a new literary tradition in English, a tradition with a coherent "voice" within which the distinct voices of individual poets are clear and consistent.
"Autumn Meditation" by Mei Yao-ch'en
[translated from Chinese]
Wu-t'ung trees spread above the well,
yellow, and crickets hide under beds.
Absence keeps deepening in presence.
No more false promise in the season.
Hushed wind starts leaves fluttering,
then blown rain clatters on rooftiles:
the ear hears, but mind is itself silent.
Who's left now all thought's forgotten?
About Mei Yao-ch'en
Mei Yao-ch'en (1002-1060 C.E.) was tall and good-natured, with bushy eyebrows, large ears, and red cheeks. This odd character, poor and faltering in his governmental career, came to be called the great "mountain-opening patriarch" of Sung Dynasty poetry, for his poetic thinking established the terms of poetic practice for the many great Sung poets who followed. This is to say that Mei is unquestionably one of the most important poets in the Chinese tradition, for the Sung Dynasty (960-1276 C.E.) is generally paired with its predecessor, the T'ang Dynasty (618-907 C.E.), as the most accomplished periods of classical Chinese poetry. This evaluation of Mei Yao-ch'en's stature has been the broad consensus over the millennium since his death, and his poetics make him especially relevant to modern American poetic practice.
Mei felt little need to poeticize reality, an attitude that allowed Mei to include the most mundane aspects of experience in his poems. It opened his poetic vision to everything equally, the lofty realm of mountain peaks and Ch'an (Zen) Buddhist insight together with the unsavory everyday realm of lice and latrines. This poetics was profoundly informed by Ch'an Buddhism. Ch'an was almost universally practiced by the intelligentsia in Mei's time, and it taught that enlightenment is nothing other than the clear mind's attention to everyday actuality. This Ch'an attentiveness is reflected in the realism and imagistic texture of these poems.
Blog Interview, July 21, 2011
"I treat a translation as a poem of my own, with the complication that it needs to correspond to an original."
David Hinton is one of 16 literary translators newly selected to receive fellowship support from the NEA to translate works of literature from foreign languages into English. A 2003 Guggenheim Fellow, Hinton has also received grant support from the National Endowment for the Humanities and two previous literature translation fellowships from the NEA. He also won the PEN American Translation Prize in 2007. Hinton's 2012 NEA fellowship will support the translation from Chinese of the selected poems of Mei Yao-ch'en, one of the most important poets in the Chinese tradition. This book is the 12th volume in Hinton's pursuit to translate China's major classical poets. Hinton---who is also a published poet in his own right---earned his MFA from Cornell University in 1981, and has published collections of ancient Chinese poetry with a number of literary presses, including Copper Canyon Press and Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. We spoke with Hinton via e-mail to get his take on poetry and poetry-in-translation.
NEA: What do you remember as your earliest engagement/experience with the arts?
DAVID HINTON: The perfectly empty clarity of a high snow-corniced ridgeline etched against sky.
NEA: Why do we---the general public---need poetry? Why do you need poetry?
HINTON: What poetry I need is poetry (which can be any kind of text) that is a deep way into the opening of consciousness. Do you think that would be useful to the general public?
NEA: Can you say something about your poetry project Fossil Sky? It seems that it is a work of visual art as much as it is a work of poetry.
HINTON: A map is our way of rendering space in two dimensions, so Fossil Sky is a poem written on a large sheet that folds down like a map. The text swirls around in the space of the sheet, and readers can create their own poems by following the text wherever it leads them. It's a way of rendering landscape and consciousness and how they interact.
NEA: How did you become interested in translating Chinese poetry?
HINTON: I had found almost no English poetry that is a way into consciousness, while Chinese poetry is a profound way in. And it's beautiful. Then I discovered I could do it well.
NEA: How is the work of the translator and the writer similar; how is it different?
HINTON: When I translate I speak in another voice, and when I write I speak in my voice. The question is: who speaks in one or another of those voices?
NEA: How does your own work in poetry influence your work in translation and vice versa?
HINTON: I treat a translation as a poem of my own, with the complication that it needs to correspond to an original.
NEA: You have previously received NEA translation fellowships. What did those fellowships mean to you and to your work?
HINTON: Time to complete a number of projects, each of which opened the door for what came next and next and next.
NEA: When we interviewed Kronos Quartet founder David Harrington he said, "I try to know as many of the things that are missing from our world of music as I possibly can--I try to put the thrust of my time into realizing those things that aren't yet part of our work but should be." When it comes to the field of poetry---or even the arts as a whole---what things do you see as missing? What should be part of the work that poets are making that isn't yet there?
HINTON: I think landscape and consciousness is missing and should be part of what contemporary poets are making. And philosophical authenticity.
NEA What does "Art Works" mean to you?
HINTON: Anything.