毛泽东诗一首英译

keatslover

　　　　　　七律有所思
     正是神都有事时，又来南国踏芳枝。
     青松怒向苍天发，败叶纷随碧水驰。
    一阵风雷惊世界，满街红绿走旌旗。
     凭栏静听潇潇雨，故国人民有所思。   
              Meditation
     (first draft, subject to further revisions)
While something portentous was brewing in the ancient city,
Once more I came to the South for the blossoming woods.
The angry pines thrust their heads into the lowering skies,
The decayed leaves were racing away on the limpid waters.
The rumbling thunder and stiff gusts of wind shook the world,
The streets thronging with people in red and green, and the moving flags.
Speechless, I leaned against the railing, listening to the pattering rain,
While the people of the Ancient Land were thinking and waiting.


     Notes: the ancient city refers to Beijing; the People of the Ancient Land refers to the people in China in general.

    The poem was written on the eve of the Cultural Revolution. Mao-tse-tung then went back to his hometown in Hunan province where, in the Water-dripping Cave, his favorite residence, he meditated on the launching of this historical event that was to shock the whole world. The poem makes much reference to the thoughts that he was turning over and over again in his head: for example, the angry pines and the decayed leaves are oblique metaphors to the then on-going struggle between Mao himself and the so-called revisionist cliques headed by Deng xiao ping and Liu shao qi; as to the storm, it is a metaphor of the imminent Proletariat Revolution of which Mao thought highly as one of the two major events he orchestrated as a leader in his life.   
    About the scansion of the poem: I initially planned to translate it in heroic couplet, the poem being about meditation; however, the final results seemed to be out of hand and strangle into seven feet. For example ,the first line could be scanned as follows: light, heavy |,light ,heavy , |light ,heavy |,light ,heavy |,light ,heavy ,|light ,heavy ,|light ,heavy, light ; the sixth: light ,heavy |,heavy light , |light ,heavy ,|light ,light heavy ,|light ,heavy ,|light ,light ,heavy ,|light, heavy. In general, it isn’t very satisfactory and I might recast it into another stanzaic form.



以前翻译的一首毛诗，算是初稿，也没时间仔细弄了，有兴趣的评论评论吧。