Waiting For the Barbarians

THE TARTAR STEPPE by Dino Buzzati, translated by Stuart C. Hood

Boston, David R. Godine: 2005 (1938) 853.912 BUZ

"One September morning Giovanni Drogo, being newly commissioned, set out from the city for Fort Bastiani; it was his first posting."

Without the background details of local geography, civil society, or personal life, we are forced to identify with Giovanni Drogo. He is our Rorscharch test, a protagonist who moves through a landscape that, for all its solid physical aspects, seems vague and even menacing in its lack of meaning. As Drogo makes his way to the fort, Buzzati hints at tales of medieval knights in search of the Grail but this is modern day Europe and there are no pleasant surprises in store.

As it turns out, Drogo will never be tested as knights were, for his lot is to spend years of idle alertness, suspended in a state of waiting for an enemy who never appears. All the young officer knows for certain is that an army was sent to battle on the Asian steppes years ago; surely they will return.

At first consumed with schemes to get himself transferred back to the city, Drogo is gradually consumed by the atmosphere of lassitude on the northern front. Drogo understands immediately that a spell has been cast over the soldiers at the fort and that a sane person would leave. Yet when he is offered a medical dispensation by the military doctor, he refuses. Thirty years of waiting for a moment of glory to give meaning to his endless monotony end with the prospect of a real war - or possibly just another mirage.

The Tartar Steppe has been compared favorably with the novels of Franz Kafka and it is easy to see why from the above synopsis. Yet the writing is so precise, yet evocative, that suspense remains even on a second reading. Buzzati understands the psychological mechanisms that ensnare his character, but understands that they trap us, too. Published in 1938, as war in Europe threatened, Buzzati's fable is as close to timeless as a story can be. Like Anabasis by the Frenchman St. John Persse, published earlier in the decade, The Tartar Steppe suggests that when illusions collapse they retain a hold on us more tenacious than that of any fallen empire.

Chinese Poetry

THE MOUNTAIN POEMS OF MENG HAO-JAN, translated by David Hinton Brooklyn, Archipelago Books: 2004 895.113 MEN

Meng Hao-Jan (689-740) is revered as the first great Chinese poet. Living at the time Buddhism became popular in China, Meng's followers admired his life of solitary wandering for its faithfulness to 'The Way'. Tao, or The Way, is a cosmology of the natural world that is manifest in all living things, the 'ten thousand things' that first formed out of emptiness. For the Chinese then, rivers and mountains are a means to contemplate the origin of all things, being similar to the western idea of wilderness.Meng's poetry is similar to our Imagist landscapes in its clarity and succinctness. His imagery echoes the style of Chinese landscape painting. Unsurprisingly, the (sometime) imagist poet Ezra Pound based his Ideogrammic Method on his understanding of Chinese characters learned from the work of Ernest Fenellosa, an American orientalist.The poems are translated as a series of unrhymed couplets; the longest poem is sixteen lines. Within this framework, many things happen. Autumn Begins, the first poem in the collection, appears similar to Japanese haiku in its brevity but, as the reader moves on, a narrative thread asserts itself. This is not a poetry of snapshots or moods per se. Meng sometimes addresses his readers directly, as in 7/7 in a Strange Village, asking us: "Who can bear those star river distances?" ( a reference to the Milky Way). Things are given names that express their lived experience: Thought-Essence Monastery; Grand-View Mountain; Peak-Light Tower.Meng's solitude was not total; along with frequent addresses to the reader, his poems recount numerous visits to friends, other poets, renowned sages, recluses, and fishermen. He even tells of traveling to the capital to advise government ministers. This translation by David Hinton is the first time that an entire volume devoted to Meng's work has been assembled in English from some 270 surviving poems. Hinton has also translated the four major works of Chinese philosophy.

THE SILK DRAGON, translations from the Chinese by Arthur Sze

Port Townsend, Washington, Copper Canyon Press: 2001 895.11 SZE

TRANSLATIONS FROM THE CHINESE by Arthur Waley

New York, Alfred A. Knopf: 1941 891 WAL

Arthur Sze is a second generation Chinese-American who speaks Mandarin Chinese, a dialect far removed from that of classic T'ang Dynasty poets (7th through 10th centuries). In his introduction to The Silk Road Sze offers a fascinating walk through the process he follows in making translations from hanzi, the rectangular blocks arranged into vertical columns, into a language based on the Latin alphabet. The reader's enjoyment and comprehension of these poems is increased, as is appreciation for poetry in general. Sze is particularly interesting on his efforts to convey the rhythms of the original poems.

Arthur Waley (1889-1966) was a noted British Sinologist whose translations are still respected and of such good quality that they are considered poems in their own right. It is, in no small part, thanks to Waley that we have Chinese poetry available to us. Waley became fairly fluent in both Chinese and Japanese without ever traveling to Asia.

Both Sze and Waley include in their collections poems by T'ang masters Li Po (701-762) and Tu Fu (712-770), along with Po Chu-I (772-846), one of my personal favorites. Sze's translation "A Question for Mr. Liu" is relatively brief, but characteristically pithy. The personal fates of these poets are also noteworthy. Li Po tried and failed many times to pass the examination that would have allowed him to become a scholar/bureaucrat at the Chinese Imperial Court. His failure resulted in a life of poverty and exile, despite his great gifts. According to legend, the romantic Tu Fu leaned out of a boat one evening to embrace the moon and fell overboard and drowned.

AUTUMN WILLOWS: Poetry by Women of China's Golden Age

translated by Bannie Chow & Thomas Cleary Ashland, Oregon, Story Line Press: 2003 895.113 AUT

Most westerners have vague notions about the historic oppression of Chinese women, much as they did a generation ago about western women. Autumn Willows offers evidence of an alternative tradition of truth-telling and even protest. Many of the women who wrote poetry during the T'ang period were priestesses at court like Li Ye and Yu Xuangji, with access to more education than ordinary women. Li Ye's poem "Eight Superlatives" gives a sense of familiarity that speaks across centuries.

"Furthest and nearest are east and west;

Deepest and most shallow

Are pure clear valley streams.

Highest and brightest are the sun and moon:

Closest and most distant are husband and wife."

Illustration: Lady Under A Gnarled Pine Tree, Ming Dynasty, is in the Collection of the Freer Gallery, Washington, D.C>