Maurere + The Story of the Stone

    One thing Christopher Maurer mentioned that stuck out to me was that his brother Karl and Carlos Germán Belli "both tried to follow in each other's steps" which I thought was an interesting perspective. I immediately imagined Karl Maurer silently and carefully stepping onto Carlos' footprints so as to leave the same foot trail as him. At first, I couldn't understand why Karl chose language that was so uncommon that it was difficult to read the poems through at once, especially when the original doesn't quite do the same. Christopher Maurer definitely cleared that up for me, though, when he said that his brother's translations demanded more from the reader. There was a moment when he quoted his brother saying "poetry has memorable speech," which is when the nature of these poems and the stylistic choices Karl made in his translations began to make some more sense. Overall, Christopher's brother, Karl Maurer, not only presented new perspectives on translation, that readability is not necessarily a priority in poetry, but poetry in general. I came a bit closer to understanding the impact of Carlos' poems that Christopher Maurer described in the reading from last Monday. 

    The most interesting part of the sections we read of "The Story of the Stone" was in chapter 1 when the Stone, who can speak, explains that his love story provides a freshness to romance that other books do not. Last semester I took an Introduction to East Asian Literature class in which I read many classic Chinese love stories, so I find myself agreeing with what the stone says here. Most of them had a very formulaic beginning, stating the place and date of the setting alongside the protagonist's status and brief family history. I just liked this small detail. As for the translation, just off the surface, despite the occasional unfamiliar term, this story is easy to read and understand compared to other translations of older Chinese texts. 

Maurer & The Story of the Stone - Audree

 Christopher Maurer Lecture:

I found this lecture to be extremely rich, specifically because we got to hear Belli, Maurer and Shapiro read out their versions of the poems. Christopher originally spoke of the importance of reading a poem aloud and when he played those recordings it really rang true. Reading can be such a solitary experience, with your own mind (obviously with much guidance from the writer) setting the pace, hearing your own voice in your own head. Hearing the way the author reads their own work is an indication of how they perceive it. Indeed, hearing Shapiro read out her translation was so indicative of how she perceived them, while Maurer's were indicative of how he understood them. Not that either one is wrong, just vastly different. I liked the use of cognates in Karl's translation. I did find it harder to read but also more interesting, more fun. 

The Story of the Stone: 

I find Hawk's discussion of colors and their various connotations to be very interesting. Indeed, while I know that red is a symbol of wealth, abundance etc., in Chinese culture, I simply do not find this intuitive because it is not my culture. Gold and green feel more right to me because that is what I'm used to. So to say that the book lacked a "redness" in the English translation just shows how important colors are and the associations we make with them. I was also thrown off by the different titles that the work had. As Rose said in her comment, they all give off very different impressions. It was also interesting to see the different translations of Dreams of a Red Chamber. Indeed, the French translation, Le rêve dans le pavillon rouge, does make it seem like someone is dreaming under an outdoor roofed structure, while red chamber evokes more of a bedroom, and the room itself is having dreams, or many people have perhaps dreamed in that chamber. 

Christopher Maurer and Dream of the Red Chamber - Wes

 

Christopher Maurer Lecture & Reading Story of the Stone - from Suis

 I enjoyed Christopher Maurer’s talk on translating (or editing) poetry. Much of his lecture served as a reminder about how to approach translating poetry, that it is better to prioritize meaning over rhyme or rhythm, etc. He said that one “must hear the poet reading their own poetry” before one translates them. I thought that was very interesting. Although it could be useful, I don’t think many people have the luxury of doing that, especially when translating dead poets who have no recordings.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading David Hawkes’ introduction to his translation of The Story of the Stone. It’s a great investigation into the history of the writing and its authorship. I found it interesting that this story is compared to The Remembrance of Things Past because I initially saw the parallels between this work to The Tale of Genji (another work that is compared to Proust’s work.) The Tale of Genji has a similar form where the prose breaks off into poetry, or has a discussion of genre within the work to name a few similarities.

Upon reading the translation, I initially thought that the translator may favor domestication as I read what I’m certain are translated names of locations such as “Great Fable Mountains” and “Greensickness Peak” (47). A couple pages in, I noticed some foreignization with “the chou in a comedy” (50) and then going forward from there, the influx of the character’s names and proper nouns are all foreignized. It made me recall Julia Sanches’ lecture when she talked about how it could be overwhelming for the English speaking reader to see a large amount of foreignization on the first page and it’s better to ease the reader into the foreign world. I wonder if this technique is being used here? However, I still felt a bit overwhelmed with the long list of names that come up in chapter 2. Although I managed, it was a bit difficult to keep up with the characters.

In chapter 3, I noticed a peculiar use of foreignization followed by a domestication of a similar term on the same page. “Dai-yu kotowed” to her superiors while she “exchanged curtseys” with three girls (89). I had to look up what kowtow meant, and according to google, it's a term in traditional China that means “the act of supplication made by an inferior to their superior by kneeling and knocking their head to the floor.” This term is foreignizing the scene, while “curtsey” is a more western cultural term. I found the succession of these terms interesting.

Apr 24: Christopher Maurer Talk, The Story of the Stone Readings - Rose

  Christopher’s talk was a sweet way to end the translation lecture series this semester, and hearing Belli read out his poems completely changed my perception and reading of them. I think it was interesting to see how Shapiro and (Karl) Maurer offered something different in their translations, where Shapiro’s version was immediately clearer in general meaning and could be understood from the first reading, whereas Maurer’s version did not immediately let readers in. I agree with Christopher that translations of poetry should be accompanied by the original text, especially in this “palimpsest” that he proposed and could be followed as such: Horace → Francisco de Medrano → Belli → Karl Maurer → Christopher Maurer → David Rade (and with other helping invisible hands, of course). As Christopher quoted, “Poetry is language thick with happiness, dense with being,” and I feel so grateful to have been able to relish the Baroque illusions, motifs, and heart that Belli poured into his poetry. 

I enjoyed the lofty, dream-like language in the first and third chapters of The Story of the Stone by Cao Xueqin, and in David Hawkes's introduction, I was fascinated by the discussion on varying titles of the book. “A Dream of Golden Girls” gives me a completely different feeling and set of images than “Dream of the Red Chamber” and “A Dream of Red Mansions” do, not to mention “The Story of the Stone.” I am also not sure how Proust’s works came to be a recurring theme this semester, because even here, I wonder why there has be a comparison where The Story of the Stone is a “sort of Chinese Remembrance of Things Past” (22), especially if The Story of the Stone was published over 100 years earlier. In the translations of the chapters themselves, I was surprised by the lack of footnotes, although I did learn quite a bit by looking up terms on my own, for example with the description, “she had a boy cousin who was born with a piece of jade in his mouth and who was exceptionally wild and naughty” (97) and the term, “balustraded loggias” (88). Additionally, in Chapter 1, I thought the “Won-Done Song” (63-4) was quite playful. I wonder what the original rhyme was between “won” and “done,” as well as if there were any other clever phonetic effects. 

Maurer -- Brennan

 Professor Maurer gave a very touching presentation and was also a very clear and understandable speaker.  Many of the ideas he presented intrigued me.

As if we hadn't already put enough nails in the coffin of the Original, I was fascinated by his description of working with poetry that appears in multiple unpublished versions. To my way of thinking they would all be equally original. This got me thinking, though, what is a "final" version? If we are questioning the idea that the original is supreme, we should also question the idea that the final is supreme. Without even mentioning publishing, an author may go through many drafts of a work before it is final. Working with a Dead Author, there is nothing to prevent the reader from saying that an earlier draft is preferable to a later.

But we do have to mention publishing. I was sad that the publishers couldn't see the sales potential of the title "35 Poems". Title or absence of title can be such an important part of a work, as we saw in discussing how to translate The Face of My Daughters. I also have to think of Saturn Devouring His Son, the painting by Goya. Says Wikipedia, "It is important to note that Goya never named the works he produced at Quinta del Sordo; the names were assigned by others after his death." The title absolutely colors the interpretation, and so I have to wonder what Azure Cloister would have been under a different name.

I can't get on board with the idea of insisting on translating words by their cognates, especially when those cognates will have come via Latin rather than directly from Spanish. The different strata of the English language all come with their different social and political histories, and Latin is the most elevated. Not every poem is best served by elevated language.

Maurer's Lecture + Reading Response (04/24) - Marina

I've been thinking about the layers in translation that Christopher Maurer's mentioned in his lecture last Friday. How all translations convey different layers: the authors and works that the author absorbed before writing the source text, the editors that edited that text, the text's translation, and the translator, who at the same time absorbed many other texts themselves. I would also add the layers of culture, of history, of gender, or race, background, nationality, etc. It's impossible, at least, in my opinion to know, and even more difficult, to be aware of all these layers. But I believe it's the translator's job to discover as many layers as possible and take them into account when translating a text. And, so, a big translator task is to investigate. Investigate about everything, read as much as possible on the source text, on its author, on its historical and cultural context...and that is something that David Hawkes presents to the reader in his introduction of Cao Xueqin's The  Story of The Sone. And it's been something that I've had to learn when translating my capstone. I've come to realize that translation is 80% research, 20% translation. I think this is something we don't learn a lot when learning about the theory or practice of translation, and it's something that we should bring out more in conversations with our peers. 

I find David Hawkes decision to "translate everything, even puns" very interesting. I think that it's a very tough decision to make, but I feel like his choice was made having a scholarly audience in mind rather than a more literary niche. I believe his goal was to make the reader understand the content rather than appreciate the form. I wish I could prove this hypothesis by accessing the source text. I wonder if my classmates agree with this.