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Title: Spring Essence by Ho Xuan Huong, John Balaban ISBN: 1-55659-148-9 Publisher: Copper Canyon Press Pub. Date: 01 October, 2000 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.86 (14 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Spring Essences
Comment: These poems by the 18th century Vietnamese poet Ho Xuan Huong (whose name means "Spring Essence") as translated into English by the poet John Balaban are truly delightful. The poems poke fun at self-satisfied government officials, intellectuals--men in general--with good-humored irreverence. "Young Scholars," picturing students who "can't even talk," suggests that "Someone. . . teach these fools/ to take their brushes and paint the pagoda walls." With the voice of a concubine who knows her clientele intimately, HXH writes of the "male member": "Newborn, it wasn't so vile. But now, at night,/ even blind it flares brigher than any lamp." Clearly, this poet is courageous, attacking convention at a time when few Vietnamese women even knew how to write. She does not reserve her wit for men alone, but accuses women of being weak-minded as well, as in this line from a poem offering "consolation" to a young widow: "If you've got weak blood, don't eat rich food."
As any attentive reader can see in the versions of the poems printed in modern Vietnamese, HXH utilizes rhyming forms. Balaban's translations pay homage to the forms by attending to rhyme and sound without being bound by strict rhyme. The near-rhymes in this couplet from a poem on cats offers a good example of the sound-play Balaban engages in : "their only thought is to pounce on a mouse/ then croon from rooftops arousing meows." (The poem, in Huong's clever use of double-entendre, also suggests more than it says). Despite the sometimes rough subject matter, this is an elegant book.
John Balaban and his publisher, Copper Canyon Press, deserve a lot of credit for bringing the poems of Ho Xuan Huong to a contemporary audience in three versions--the original ideographic Nom script, the modern, Romanized Vietnamese equivalent, and Balaban's lyrical English versions.
Rating: 5
Summary: It Couldn't Be Better!!
Comment: As a Vietnamese who has some background in the Vietnamese language and literature, I am amazed by poet John Balaban's keen interest in my language and its poetry as well as his poetic skills through his well-known and well-loved translation of Ho Xuan Huong's poetry entitled Spring Essence.
Balaban skillfully brings to life the three-century old Vietnamese female poet to the Western world. More importantly, he also makes it alive and appreciated by the intellectual, contemporary readers. Needless to say, Balaban has done a remarkable job translating Ho Xuan Huong's poetry.
Her poetry structure, which is complicated by the Vietnamese art of NOI LAI (reversals) that she cleverly applies in her poems and her very own way in creating sexual themes full of double meanings. To do this, it takes a translator's special talent and extraordinary effort to take on this major task.
Poet John Balaban's own art of translating Ho Xuan Huong's poetry is to reveal 'a poem behind a poem' in such a delicate way so that his non-Vietnamese readers can explore and enjoy Ho Xuan Huong's poetry further, which is what literary translation is all about.
Since poetry language is metaphoric that requires a certain level of understanding of literature, it is unrealistic to expect all readers (Vietnamese or non-Vietnamese) to catch the soul of Ho Xuan Huong's unsual poetic style. However, Balaban makes this possible.
Rating: 4
Summary: A valuable contribution.
Comment: Ho Xuan Huong was known to be an unusual poetess. In an early 19th century-society that shunned women, she not only learned to read nom, the Vietnamese language at the time, but also managed to write poetry. Her words were full of double meanings, sarcastic at times but also sensual at others.
Although Balaban's translation was somewhat "stiff" and less than optimal, we certainly thank him for bringing to the American public the voice of a very unique poetess.
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Title: The Tale of Kieu/a Bilingual Edition of Truyen Kieu by Nguyen Du, Huynh Sanh Thong, Du Nguyen, Sanh Thong Huynh, Huynh Sanh Thond ISBN: 0300040512 Publisher: Yale Univ Pr Pub. Date: August, 1987 List Price(USD): $19.00 |
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Title: Vietnam: A Traveler's Literary Companion (Travelers' Literary Companions) by John Balaban, Nguyen Qui Duc ISBN: 1883513022 Publisher: Whereabouts Press Pub. Date: March, 1996 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: Ca Dao Viet Nam: Vietnamese Folk Poetry (Kagean Book) by John Balaban ISBN: 1556591861 Publisher: Copper Canyon Press Pub. Date: August, 2003 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: An Anthology of Vietnamese Poems: From the Eleventh through the Twentieth Centuries by Huynh Sanh Thong, Sanh Thong Huynh, Sanh Huynh ISBN: 0300091001 Publisher: Yale Univ Pr Pub. Date: 01 September, 2001 List Price(USD): $24.00 |
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Title: On Love and Barley Haiku of Basho (Penguin Classics) by Lucien Styrk, Matsuo Basho, Lucien Stryk ISBN: 0140444599 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: January, 1986 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
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