A great rarity – the published anthology of Ancient Chinese lyrics “River Snow” in Latvian / Article

The book is supplemented by a preface and comments, which serve as a source of knowledge for a better understanding and feeling of Chinese poetry. Such an edition in Latvian is a great rarity, Ieva Lapiņa has worked on it for a long time and thoroughly.

The thin grass by the shore will wither in the wind.

Tall mast, lonely boat at night.

Above the wide plain the stars in the sky,

The moon rushes to the waters of the Yangtze.

Would my name as a poet deserve fame?

A civil servant, old and sick, was dismissed from his post on leave.

I will forget in wanderings, I don’t know anymore – who am I? –

A seagull that glides between heaven and earth”.

It is a fragment of a poem by the 8th century poet Du Fu, translated into Latvian by the poetess Ieva Lapiņa.

The anthology of Ancient Chinese lyrics compiled and sung by Ieva Lapiņa covers a chronologically wide period –

from the beginning of the Jin Dynasty in the 3rd century to the decline of the Sun Dynasty in the 13th century. It includes the works of 21 poets representing different poetic styles and lyrical genres.

The translation required special skill from the poetess, because the poetic language of Ancient China is syntactically flexible, allows for different interpretations of the text, so it is very difficult to translate it into Latvian, says Ieva Lapiņa: “There are different forms of poetry, there is the regulated poem, its short and the long form. Then the simple form – poems of this and that genre. Each form has its own rules – in any case, I wanted to stick to my principles of poetry, so that this text does not sound like a translation, but let it be a poem.”

The poetry contains a lot of metaphors, symbols, abstract imagery, which is helped to understand by the explanatory comments: “Everyone can choose whether to read the comments or not. The artist, designer of the book, Alexey Murashko, has, in my opinion, very well solved how it looks visually, that the comments are in it on the page itself, but still stands out and at the same time is easy to read.

The commentaries, for example, explain the meaning of symbols often used in ancient Chinese poetry – jade, blue bird, diving dragon, gorse, chrysanthemums, cinnamon tree and others. The moon, for example, has a very broad symbolic meaning.

It is most often associated with longing for home, friends, family or a loved one, but the moon can also be interpreted as a metaphor for a beautiful woman’s face.

Mountains, birds, boat, river and snow are very popular motifs in poetry, all of which appear together in one of the best known and most translated poems of classical Chinese literature, “River Snow”, by Liu Zun-yuan. Ieva Lapiņa chose the title of this poem as the title of the entire anthology. Here is this poem:

In a thousand mountain ranges, the flight of birds rushes,

On the ten thousand paths, people’s tracks disappear.

Lonely boat. An old man in a reed cloak, a bamboo broadleaf

Fishing alone. Snow of icy rivers.

Poets of ancient China contemplate the mysteries of human existence and the inspiring power of nature, and at other times enjoy carefree playing the zither and drinking wine.

Poems often evoke a very strong visual imagination, says Ieva Lapiņa: “The kind of poetic painting that you visually imagine. That mood arises because the poem is always internally harmonious. This is already determined by the principles of the poem’s structure, where there are caesuras in specific places, then lines of poetry where the contrast between even and uneven tones is important and also where there is always a rhyme in a couple of lines of poetry. This creates that mood in the poem.”

The text of the poem is published bilingually, and in addition to the male poets, you can also get to know the work of two ancient Chinese poets – Yu Xuanji and Li Cunzhao.