Wang Wei

In 1987 Octavio Paz, the late Mexican poet (1914-1998) and Pulitzer Prize winner, published with his intrepid and accomplished English language translator, Eliot Weinberger, a slender volume entitled "Nineteen Ways of Looking at Wang Wei."

In actual fact, this is one poem by the famous Chinese poet, Wang Wei (700-761).  There are nineteen "chapters," beginning with the poem in Chinese script, untranslated.  Then follow several translations of the poem into English, French and Spanish, beginning in the year 1919 and ending with Gary Snyder's fine translation of 1978.

Snyder had first popularized the Chinese hermit poet, Han Shan, in a volume entitled, "Riprap/Cold Mountain," in 1960, I believe, having studied Chinese at Cal Berkeley.  The "mountain and rivers" school of poetry had begun in China about 300 years prior to Wang Wei's poem, but would continue to exert a major influence on Chinese poetry for another thousand years.

Out of all the versions or renditions in this book, I like Snyder's best.  However, I don't like his rather arbitrarily ending the poem with the word "above," so I've struck that in this post.  Here then is Gary's version of Wang Wei's poem, slightly abridged.

Empty mountains:

no one to be seen.

Yet -- hear --

human sounds and echoes.

Returning sunlight

enters the dark woods;

Again shining

on the green moss.