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.