The Perils of Cross-Cultural Communication

 

I’ve been looking to find a good, medieval, Asian text for Crowhook since Orphan Zhao tanked. I found Li Po and Tu Fu listed in the back of one of my other books and decided to give it a go. There is a lengthy introduction (around 100 pages), but it is well-written and interesting. The actual poetry itself is short, but the translator has taken the time to unpack all the references and images for the non-Asian reader. The notes are long, up to six pages and sometimes have their own sub notes. 

At first all of this put me off. I felt that there was enough common human content that all the extras were bogging things down, but then all that extra content got sticky and I wanted to figure it out. I realized that here was a beautiful opportunity for my students to think about and work through through the difficulties of inter-cultural communication. All the texts I use in the medieval period are translations. These two poets are especially difficult because they are Chinese and the shapes of the words plays an important part in the beauty of the poetry. We as non-Chinese readers can’t see these important cues. We need six pages of notes in order to get a glimpse. Add to the fact that these poems were written in the late seven hundreds, and we are lucky to get it at all. 

These poems are profoundly human in a Chinese way that deserves attention even though it isn’t easy.