Let’s start from the beginning shall we? Not from the beginning of Chinese recorded history, rather my own experience with classical Chinese poetry. This was the first Chinese poem to really capture my attention. Much of Wang Wei’s writing is imbued with Buddhist themes. This poem is one of his most famous, and therefore one of his most translated. However, almost all translations focus only on the first stanza. The elusive second stanza hasn’t quite made it into popular culture, but I feel it adds much more meaning.
鹿柴
空山不見人，
但聞人語響。
返景入深林，
復照青苔上。
日夕見寒山，
便為獨往客。
不知深林事，
但有麇麚跡。
Deer Place
At the wild mountain I see no people
but hear echoes of human voices
light returning enters the deep forest
once more illuminating green moss above
In evening glow I watch the cold mountain
at the moment a lone traveller appears
I don’t know the ways of the deep forest
only the tracks left by the water deer
Translation notes
The first characters presented to us pose some fun challenges. First, the title, Luzhai 鹿柴, is understood to be the name of a place close to where the poet lived. The second character is often translated as enclosure, or the title is often translated as Deer Park but I have chosen to convey the meaning of a place where deer are.
The first characters of the poem itself kongshan 空山 literally mean ‘empty mountain’. We can already get quite deep here, and try to reflect the poet’s focus on emptiness rather than the mountain itself. However, to Western eyes I think the idea of wilderness is more easily conveyed. A place where the poet is alone, which may already imply more spiritual ideas.
The first stanza is a joy to translate, so much so that an entire book has been written about the different approaches that can be taken. The poem can be read as taking place between two realms: the human realm which manifests itself more clearly as the poem goes on, and the spiritual realm represented by the elusive deer and depictions of the natural world.
Some translators take this idea further in the first stanza, by interpreting the character fan 返 as referring to an indirect light source. Therefore, rather than the light returning after a period of absence, the light itself is being reflected from another object not mentioned (we might imagine from the leaves of a tree) and this indirect light source illuminates the green moss. This dual meaning is tough to translate in poetic form, but the phrase ‘light returning’ is suitable because the light has something modifying it with this phrasing.