Publisher's Note: Restless is Restless

Since its launch in October, Restless has been met with enormous enthusiasm. Perhaps our biggest success has come with The Israeli Republic, an account of a trip to Israel by Iranian writer Jamal Al-e Ahmed; it was featured on PRI, and Foreign Policy has excerpted portions of it. Our commitment to literature in translation from across the globe is clearly hitting a nerve.

Readers are hungry for a more diverse, complete menu than the diet of mostly American and English-language books coming from corporate publishing houses. Extraordinary work is constantly published everywhere, yet the United States appears to know little about it. Being interested only in exporting its culture and not importing that of others, America has become an island.

Of course, Restless isn’t alone in countering this solipsistic perspective, and we’ve sought to collaborate with other boutique literary endeavors around the world. We recently entered a partnership with Sexto Piso, an extraordinarily adventurous publishing house in Mexico City. Next season Restless will release in English translation a gorgeous graphic novel by Paco Ignacio Taibo II and illustrator Eko called Pancho Villa Takes Zacatecas. Other Sexto Piso titles—one about the U.S.-Mexican border—will follow.

As we continue to create bridges with others, we hope our readers will do the same by delving into the international literature we bring them. One way they can do this is to follow the exciting series we’re kicking off this year.

Launching a new bilingual series of important poets unknown in the United States, we released Song of Shadows by Chinese poet Xiao Hai on January 15th. Collections in Hebrew, Russian, and indigenous Latin American languages are to come soon.

Our line of science fiction books has begun with Nest of Worlds by Marek S. Huberath. Next will come classics of Cuban SF, such as Legend of the Future by Agustín de Rojas, translated by Nick Caistor, and A Planet for Rent by Yoss, translated by David Frye.

Another series, this one of women travel writers, is out next month with a travelogue by Edith Wharton, introduced by Lavinia Spalding. It will be followed by books from Kira Salak and Frances Trollope.

Chilean/French cult figure Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Donde mejor canta un pájaro will be released in September.

Our commitment to multilingual books is manifested in a celebration of Don Quixote of La Mancha. The only book that has sold more copies than this classic is the Bible. To commemorate the occasion of its 400th anniversary in 2015, Restless will publish portions of Cervantes’s masterpiece in six languages as well as a tour through the best English versions to date. Don Quixote happens to have sold best in English, a language into which it has been translated a total of twenty-two times.

Being the publisher of Restless keeps me on my toes. My task is straightforward but challenging: to make available to American readers epoch-changing literature in other languages. The life of the mind requires constant discovery. Why not feed it with hearty intellectual food?

Words from the Translator: Zhu Yu

As an often-helpless researcher of poets from centuries past, I used to envy those who translated contemporary poetry, for I thought that if they encountered any difficulties, they could always turn to the living author. However, when I translated Xiao Hai’s Song of Shadows, I preferred to waive this privilege. I came to understand translation as the closest form of reading, a process of understanding and re-creation—like playing a piece of music. First, the musician must read the composer’s score correctly, and then she can interpret it in her own style.

The original’s musicality is the greatest loss in translation. Modern poetry no longer emphasizes rhyme scheme, but its inner music still breathes a poet’s unique spirit. Though I try to preserve this quality in my translations, I can’t replicate what I hear in the original. The impossibility of doing so lies in the fundamental linguistic differences between Chinese and English; each language, as well as each poet, has certain sounds and rhythms to convey particular moods. But the issue also owes to the fact that musicality is subjective, beyond reason and logic. This problem is frustrating to a translator, but it is also where the creative quality of translating comes into play.

When I asked a fellow poet and translator whether my Seamus Heaney translations looked like poetry, he replied, “There is no such a thing as ‘like poetry’; they must be poetry.” If loss in translation is inevitable, it follows that the translator must do something to compensate.

As I began to translate Song of Shadows, I admitted to Xiao Hai that I was afraid of misunderstanding his poems, but he believed in me. Even misreading would enrich a poem, he said. Good poetry should be open to all potentialities. With this blessing, I proceeded with the freedom to employ a poeticism borrowed from English. For me it was more like writing than translating.

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For readers of both English and Chinese, some of my choices might seem puzzling. For instance, a Canadian teacher once questioned the phrase “starry chirps” in Poem No. 36, doubting the connection between starlight and bird sounds. I kept it, though, because I believe that all is possible in poetry and that strangeness and shadowiness are at the very heart of poetic language. I made every effort to retain the original poetic mystery and beauty, and to leave room for the imagination. Unnecessary transformation, paraphrase, or prosaic discourse would have killed the collection’s essence.

Xiao Hai once said, “The translator should share the poet’s spiritual vibration.” This is what I aspire to. When he gave me the hot-off-the-press Chinese version of Song of Shadows as a gift, I didn’t open it immediately.“Most of the poems are in my heart,” I told him. I am grateful to him for granting me the privilege of translating those poems and bringing them out of my heart and into the English-speaking world.

Zhu Yu is a lecturer in the English department at Capital Normal University, Beijing. She received her PhD in English literature from Peking University in 2010 and was a Fulbright visiting student in the English department of Yale University from 2007 to 2008. Her research interest includes British Romanticism and contemporary poetry. She has published essays on William Wordsworth and Seamus Heaney in many academic journals. She has translated into Chinese selected poems from Seamus Heaney’s Human Chain (2013) and Seamus Heaney 2001-2010 (forthcoming).

译者感言

朱玉

我经常羡慕一些研究或翻译当代诗人作品的朋友，因为我想，如果他们碰到了难题，至少有作家本人可以问。不像我，研究的大多是两百年前的诗人，常感有苦难言。直到我开始翻译小海的诗歌时，我才发现，有时，这种可以提问的特权往往是被我弃权的。对于作品中实在不理解的地方，我确实也询问过。但除此之外，大多数时候，我是不问的。为什么呢？因为我渐渐将翻译的过程当作一种理解进而演绎的过程，这就好像读懂了曲谱之后，怎样演奏就要靠演奏者在准确的基础上进行再创造了。

在翻译之初，我曾多次向小海表达我的担忧，唯恐自己不能正确解读他的本意。但是他给予我极大的信任和鼓励，并且认为即使是误读也会丰富诗歌的意义，好的作品应该是开放的。这就让我有了充分的自由，得以用另一种语言来表达借来的诗意，与其说是翻译，不如说是另一种写作。我唯一认真请作者给我解释的一首诗，终究没有被我翻译出来，也许是因为我知道了答案，也许是因为我还是没有理解它。

在译文中，我会尽量保留原文的表达方式，即使这可能让读者摸不着头脑，无论是汉语还是英语读者。我保留这诗语的谜题，而不是用散文化的语言破解它，乃至让诗意尽失，因为陌生感与模糊性（shadowy）都是诗歌语言的特点。比如，当我的加拿大老师看到“星光的鸟鸣”（第36首）一句时，她曾提出质疑，认为星光与鸟鸣之间没有关联，是不是我弄错了。但我保留它，因为在诗歌中，一切皆有可能。我依照原文的表达方式来转译成英语，不做多余的解释和转化，以便在诗文中保留可供想象的诗意空间。

当原文转译为另一种语言时，总会失去些什么。最大的损失就是原文的音乐性吧。现代诗歌并不注重外在的格律形式，但内在的音乐性体现着诗人独特的精神气息。虽然我会尽可能让英语译文也具有相应的音乐性，但它肯定与原文的音乐性是不同的。这首先源于汉英两种语言体系的巨大差异，更因为音乐性本身是非常主观的，是超越理性与逻辑判断的。每一种语言、每一位诗人都拥有其相应的声音与节奏来传达特定的情绪和情感。这也是译者最无奈的地方吧。

另一个难题是小海诗歌当中涉及的中国古诗。我曾见过中国译者把西方现代诗歌译成汉语古诗的风格，虽然单纯作为一首诗来说不无动人之处，但是若将它作为译文来看，未免有古怪之感。因为原文和译文之间的风格迥异。同样，如何将一首汉语古诗译成一首英语古诗而非现代诗，保留其古意，也是困难的。在这一点上，我想我还需要改进。

我曾把自己翻译的希尼诗歌给一位诗人、翻译家朋友看，并且问他“这些译诗像不像诗”，他的回答是，“没有‘像诗’一说，它必须是（诗）。”凭借自己写诗的练习，我大致可以判断一首从英语译成汉语的诗歌是否“是诗”，但是反过来，我将小海的诗翻译成英语之后，它们还是不是诗，我渴望拥有一位母语为英语并熟谙英语诗歌者的敏感与悟性来帮我判断。

翻译是有助于理解的。翻译是最细密的细读。小时候，遇到不懂的汉语成语，我往往去查阅汉英词典。我发现，英语的解释让我一下子明白了汉语的意思。我在两种语言之间穿行，借由外来的语言去读懂母语。当小海把新出炉的《影子之歌》（汉语版）赠给我时，我甚至没立即打开它，只是跟他说，这里面的诗，我几乎都能背下来了。

这里所选的诗歌，都与译者自己的喜好和能力有关。有个别一两首诗，我甚至自行做了删节（第22首、第96首），仿佛我是艾略特的庞德。这里要请作者原谅。总之，这是一次非常主观的翻译活动，这样的特权，一生中恐怕不会有很多。

小海曾经说，在翻译诗歌作品时，“译者和诗人之间要有一种心灵的共振”。我也期盼能企及这样的境界。

It’s Difficult to Translate Poetry: An Interview with Xiao Hai

Translated by Zhu Yu

In poems inspired by his provincial childhood, the acclaimed Chinese poet Xiao Hai blends classical Chinese culture with Wordsworth’s reverence for nature. His most recent collection, the Ye Shengtao Award-winning Song of Shadows, will be published next month by Restless in a bilingual edition.

The Bei Yue Publishing House for Literature and the Arts is set to publish a book of conversations between Xiao Hai and Restless publisher Ilan Stavans, based on their meeting in China last year. Zhu Yu, translator of Song of Shadows, recently brought the two together again in an exchange.

IS: Tell me about wearing glasses.

XH: Glasses are apart from the body and therefore alien. But once you get used to them, they become a natural part of yourself. Through glasses, I can see the world as others do, as if my short sightedness were normal vision. Glasses seem to be a metaphor for civilization. But sometimes I take off my glasses when I am at rest or in contemplation.

Where do you write?

No fixed places. I write at the dining room table, on the bed, in the bathroom at home, or on the computer in my office. I also write down my ideas on notes or on my cellphone if I’m running or on a journey. But when I write a paper, I choose the study, where I can easily consult my books.

What in Song of Shadows might get lost in translation?

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It’s difficult to translate poetry. A translation can be correct or wrong, good or bad. A translation may gain or lose something from the original, too. The present translator of Song of Shadows is one I trust in. She has been studying, teaching, and translating English poetry for many years, and she writes poems, too. She translated Song of Shadows because she loves it. She didn’t think of getting it published when she started the translation. Instead, she wanted to compare the subtle differences of the long poem expressed in different languages. The things that are difficult to translate lie in 1) the classical Chinese poems and historical stories I mention in this work that may be unfamiliar to a Western audience and 2) pun and polysemy that may not work in different languages.

What is the status of poetry in China now?

Poetry still enjoys a loyal readership in contemporary China. Every good poet (past and present, home and abroad) has his or her audience, though poetry is not as popular as movies or music.  Poets cannot feed themselves on writing alone, but they always have their followers as long as they stick to their free will and creative power and are willing to lead a simple or even hard life.

How did you encounter Wordsworth and Whitman?

I got to know them in my teens from a revered poet and translator, Chen Jingrong, with whom I had correspondence for years. I read not only Wordsworth and Whitman but also Victor Hugo, Baudelaire, and Rilke. I can even recite some short pieces by them. Wordsworth and Whitman were my guides into English poetry. 

How about Pablo Neruda?

I like Neruda very much. Remember we talked about him passionately when you visited China last year? His poetry is all-inclusive, spacious, and splendid. He has the rare passion, courage, and open-mindedness to embrace the whole world.

Which Chinese poets should the West be reading?

It’s possible and necessary for Western people to read some Chinese poets. In this global age, they need to know some classical poets such as Qu Yuan, Li Bai (Li Po), Du Fu, Bai Juyi, Su Dongpo, and Li Qingzhao. Of living poets, I recommend Bei Dao, Duo Duo, Yu Jian, Han Dong, Du Ya, Yang Jian, and myself as well. Of course, nothing will happen if they don’t read! (Laughs)

Is it right to ask every Chinese writer today about censorship?

Certainly. If they answer in a prudent way, there are usually two reasons. One is economic, the other political. Publishing poetry is like publishing academic work; they share a similar fate. One problem lies in front of them: money. The ISSN fees and the cost of printing add up to at least USD $5,000. Most poets have to pay themselves in order to get their poetry published. Years ago, I submitted my poems to a publisher who told me that they didn’t pass the censorship. But the real message was that they wouldn’t sell well! Scholars in the universities or academic institutions have funds for publishing. As for ideological censorship, if a book contains politically incorrect elements or other sensitive content, it won’t be accepted either, even if it would make money. (Laughs)

From Song of Shadows

4.

One meter only from the tips of my toes,

the shadow of the tree was cold

as it spread out.

It cast so far

like a huge fishing line,

fluttered and then faded

at the touch of the sun’s finger.

The little woods was still in darkness

when I walked through it early.

As I returned, the burnt-out

hay ropes on the ground

seemed swords back in their sheaths.

At noon, the shadow of the tree, upside down,

rebounded and quickly carbonized into

an ash-laden crow at the foot of the tree.

No matter how it fluttered its wings,

it could never fly onto the branches.

7．

Nameless and faceless, shadow

pursues the song like

the soundless beat

with polished and softened edge—

a cloak of darkness.

Whistling? Well…

You’ve seen the sea, whose

hotbed and wardrobe

are under your body

Open it, shadow

the last wall of the world

the huge bird that stands up again

the silver bell among the funeral procession

Only it itself knows

for what it fears

Only it itself knows

What we know not

Fleas hide in stray dogs

Shadow walks to the tomb with a soldier’s feet