“Selected letters” (Publication, 1981)
Year
1981
Text
Bynner, Witter. Selected letters. Ed., and with an introd. by James Kraft. (New York, N.Y. : Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1981). (Byn7)
Type
Publication
Contributors (2)
Bynner, Witter
(Brooklyn, New York 1881-1968 Santa Fe) : Schriftsteller, Dichter, Übersetzer
Kraft, James
(1935-) : Dozent für englische und amerikanische Literatur Phillips Academy, Andover ; University of Cirginia, Wesleyan University, Université Laval Quebec City
Subjects
Literature : Occident : United States of America : Prose
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References / Sources
Chronology Entries (3)
| # | Year | Text | Linked Data |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1917-1964 |
Bynner, Witter. The selected Witter Bynner [ID D32346]. 1917 Letter from Witter Bynner to Barry Faulkner ; Shanghai, May 22 / 27 (1917). Korea was exciting - but Peking is almost everything. I can't get my breath from the wonder of it. Japan is but bothersome dust in the nostrils of the dragon. Thank heaven I was away and this far away when the Thing happened [The US declared a state of war on April 6] ! I can get a clearer view of its large aspects and better find my own place than if I had been on the spot of agitation. China's holy mountains counseling across deserts of ancient dead bid the soul smile at the hand. An so I cannot feel excitement or ardor – or even as yet resignation… China still stirs me to the depths – Japan (Kobe) seemed strange this morning, exquisite, clean, courteaous, suave, civilized, assured after that vast magnificent chaos. 1920 Letter from Witter Bynner to Haniel Long ; China, Aug. 1 (1920). Settled at last—in just the place I had dreamed of! On the top of a mountain, whispering with bamboos and our own waterfall, brilliant hot with sun, cool with moon; and before us, or rather under us precipitate, and then reaching far off, glimmer by glimmer, to the sea the sublimest landscape I have ever seen from a dwelling, all the Chinese mountain paintings put end to end, enchanted with mists and with unearthly green, blessed with great rainbows, guarded by fantastic deities of cloud: quiet folds and folds of healing, always another fold! Our luck was prodigious. The heat in China is all that is said of it. Six days in Shanghai, though important after my fatuous misconception of Shanghai as uninteresting, wilted us into wet beings almost unbalanced. Kiang was to take us to West Lake (Si Wu) for refuge; but the day before the day we had planned, in a blind rush which may only be described as panic, we fled to Hangchou (two miles from West Lake) not even letting Kiang know. We lacked his address; but a day was more than we could wait, so off we went, leaving a brief note of farewell. Kiang and I had talked for two years of visiting Si Wu together, a place rich with beauties and memories, a haunt of our poets; and yet it was a week before I could manage to send him word as to what had become of us. I tell you this to show you that there is a kind of madness in the weather. Hangchou was as bad as Shanghai, and after one day the Fickes fled again, to Mokanshan, a mountain of whose coolness we had heard. I, in a kind of spell, stayed behind and for three days in a city of 350,000 Chinese saw the faces of only three foreigners. I had moved to a native hotel and, consumed with heat and mosquitoes and unable to sleep much on the bed of slung matting, was physically miserable. Fortunately I like the food and, clad in only a long linen Chinese coat, ate it on my own picturesque little balcony—ardently companioned by two Chinese students of twenty who had come to my rescue with a little English on the roof of the Hangchou hotel, where I was listening, my first night there, to some singsong girls. The two likable lads were with me after that from dawn to eve, my guides, my bargainers, my friends. In return I paid their slight expenses on our jaunts and taught them English. With the elder and abler I became more and more charmed. His gentleness, his courtesy, his fine young integrity are interwoven for me with the beauty and wonder of West Lake. There is plenty of age in China ; I was glad of some youth. And I realized again, as I realize often in my experience, that the accidental move, the inexplicable, even the unintelligent, like this running away from dear Kiang, brings a happy outcome and adds to the general good. I needed, for instance, to discover for myself, anonymously, so to speak, without introduction, the simple beautiful humanness of a Chinese. And there it was, written quick for me, a new verse in my gospel. Incidentally I discovered him on the edge of Christianity and discouraged him for all I was worth from differentiating among the wise and appointed teachers, from singling one of them out to the disparagement of the others, from yielding one jot of his birthright in Confucius, in Buddha, in Laotzu. There was a glad light in our eyes, and I knew for a moment the joy of being a missionary. When Nieh's vacation ended, so did mine; and I followed the Fickes to this rare place where we have taken a house and are at regular work again. Kiang will be joining us in a month (we are here till the 15th of September), and I shall have all I can do to put the first volume of Chinese poems into shape for his final revision. That means that I must renounce letter writing, in spite of all I have to say to you and a few others; but I could not rest nor work without sending you just this fond word to let you know of my happiness and of my love for you. I am hoping, before long, to hear from you that you are in patience with me again. I will not have it otherwise. Someday in a place like this you will be in person with me and there shall be long rich exchanges. Or perhaps something will bring about our living together in Berkeley; for that is where I wish eventually to have my being. I have even broached it to mother. I had rather be underground in Berkeley than above ground in New York. There will be difficulties; but I am not afraid of difficulties any more: I have a steadier spirit than once I had and a little money. Meantime this is what I wanted. I took it, and I am glad. China has much more to teach me at present than America. The discouragements in both places are the same: the greed of an eminent few corrupting the simple decency of the many. The marvel is how much a few can accomplish, whether for evil or for good. With a reminder to you that people may be hypocritical but that books are more so and with my two arms out to the three of you. 1920 Letter from Witter Bynner to Edna St. Vincent Millay ; Shanghai, Sept. 10 (1920). … I have written you another poem. I enclose it. It is not so much about you as about the holy wonders of this place, this Chinese mountaintop. In Japan, nature is material for artistic man ; here man is material for artistic nature. I shall try to explain it some time in verse, but I shall fail. I wish you were here to do it. I do not think of anyone else who could. For Edna. From a Mountain in China To the Young Poet Millay If I sent in a flash these hills to you Would you be hushed like me ? Or must one's heart fill with a view Gradually? And might you merely nod your head, Accepting as your due Valleys not to be mistreated Even by you – And not to be sent to you by me, No matter what I said Or sang or painted? Let it be. The wish is dead. 1921 Letter from Witter Bynner to Albert M. Bender ; Shanghai, Jan. 2 (1921). Your kindnesses heap up like the cliffs along the Yang-tse Gorges and darken my conscience. I do not deserve them. But that would be the last of your considerations, wouldn't it !... Kiang, according to the strange ways of life, I have only just found, again after four months. He is lecturing everywhere, enormously popular, offered governorships, etc. – and yet suspect and ahadowed as a former Socialist and possible future Bolshevik. Dewey I have played with ; and I have enjoyed and admired Bertrand Russell. The month ahead is to be intensive work with Kiang in Peking, whither I return from Shanghai as soon as I have dispatched mby friend, Mrs. Simeon Ford, with a note to you… I'll be lodging in Peking by another quirk of fortune, in the Chinese house of George Atcheson, one of my poetry pupils. He is a student-interpreter at the American Legation and is living there in one of the beautiful small buildings of what was formerly a fine old temple. I think I sail on February 28 for S.F.; but I never know much of anything – except that you and Anne are among those closest to the heart of. 1923 Letter from Witter Bynner to Kiang Kang-hu ; Hotel Arzapalo, Chapala, July 20 (1923). … Thanks for you comment on the Li Po translations. I enclose you a letter from a Chinese student, S.Y. Chu, with a referenct to Li Po's 'A song of Chang-Kan'. In it you will find some penciled queries which I wish you would answer. Long ago, by the way, I sent you a complete list of the poets in our anthology asking you to fill in such dates as I lacked. I wonder if that list failed to reach you. I enclose another. The book progresses a little more rapidly ; and as I have said before, the delay is advantageous for us in the fact that many of the poems are appearing in magazines and giving the volue, before its issue, a growing prestige. The question of notes troubles me. It seems to me that figures set here and there against words in the text are disfiguring and distracting. Hence I am arranging our note system and am thinking seriously of a geographical index at the back of the book in which those interested might find the modern equivalenst of T'ang places. The difficulty would be that some of these T'ang names, like Wu, mean in different poems, different places. In the case of such names I should have to differentiate and make specific references to the poems in which they appear. I mention this because I wish you would take pains on the group of manuscripts I am sending you today under separate cover, to set down the modern names of places for such us as I propose. You may either return me the manuscripts with your comments or send me the comments in a letter carefully listing them under the titles. From time to time as I can supply you with copies, I shall send you other groups of the poems, hoping thereby to save extensive revision on the proofs, and consequent expense. Please notice that I wish your supervision on the printed poems as well as those typed… Hoping to be in China within two years… 1931 Letter from Witter Bynner to Miss MacKinnon ; Santa Fe, July 20 (1931). [Betr. Fir-flower tablets by Amy Lowell and Florence Ayscough]. The third question is more difficult. I should say, first of all, that I consider my method more faithful to the balanced meaning of the original than Mrs. Ayscough's method. Suppose, for instance, the radical meaning of composite English words were translated into a for¬eign tongue—suppose "extravagant terms" were translated "beyond- straying terms" or "at daybreak" "when the day cracked"—then you might have a literal translation of what, in English, correspond to a combination of root strokes in a Chinese character; but the meaning and stress of the word in its context would be distorted and swollen beyond the intent of the author. It is true that a Chinese scholar pleasingly feels in an ideograph the two or three roots that make the meaning. It is true also that a Western scholar feels, say, in a word made from Greek or Latin the interesting original courtship of images which have quieted into a final everyday marriage of meaning. The Chinese character for "quarrel" indicates two women under one roof; but imagine translating it that way. Equally absurd is it to say "upper and lower garments" when the character, though literally conveying that, means "clothes." I made my translations from literal texts given me by Dr. Kiang —or my other Chinese friends. Their phrases were often, of course, odd and tickling to the fancy. My constant effort, however, was to I let detailed fancy go, for the sake of the imagination behind the poem—to find as nearly as I could, the exact English equivalent of, the Chinese word—the real rather than the literal translation—that I is if "literal translation" means translating parts of words and then | binding the parts of words into phrases rather than translating the customary finished meaning of the composite word. In a way, I was lucky in not knowing the Chinese language. A moderate knowledge might have tempted me astray from poetry into etymology. My first interest in Chinese poetry came from Chinese friends whom I met in California during 1917 and 1918. With their help I translated "ancient" poems (mostly from the Confucian "Book of Poetry", I believe) which appear in my "Canticle of Pan" (Knopf). In 1918, Dr. Kiang (on the faculty of the University of California, as I was) initiated me deeper into the realm, and ever since then I have been working with him on "The Jade Mountain", which the Chinese call "modern" poetry. Before that, in 1916, on my first trip to China, I had been drawn to its poetry by stanzas written on the earliest acquired of my collection of Chinese paintings. Some day I shall translate those inscriptions. 1962 1962 Letter from Witter Bynner to Mabel MacDonald Carver ; June 12 (1962). [Kiang Kang-hu is believed to have died in prison in Shanghai on December 6 or 7, 1954]. Poor Kiang made the grave error of accepting the secretaryship of education in the cabinet of Henry Pu Yi in the Manchukuo, called the Puppet Government. Kiang insisted to the end that he merely wished to keep the youngsters in his country educated, while subject ot Japan, and that he hever was in the least politically active. Unfortunately, the Nationalists did not take it that way and put the man in jail where later the Communists kept him until his tragic death there. A am amazed that my inscribed copy of The way of life was allowed to reach the prisoner and his note about it allowed to reach me. The sad en was when a note of his did reach his daughter living in China, asking her if she could bring him some candy. She did, only to be told by an official at the prison : Your father died last nith of malnutrition. They did not even return her the candy. 1964 Letter from Witter Bynner to Ruth Witt-Diamant ; Santa Fe, Aug. 7 (1964). … I envy you the life in Japan. In 1917 and 1920, when I wen there and to China, I found the beauty and assuagements of Japan very pleasant both before entering, and after leaving China. I think an indication of what was a bit difficult was the fact that in Japan, for all the slight squirming and giggling, I was never sure whether or not we were seeing and feeling with the same humor, whereas in China the mirth bottle would pop with champagne. Perhaps this Japanese eagerness to be laughing with us has reached through the years toward an inclination to be laughing at us. When I was in the Orient, I thought it would have taken very little decency for us to earn and keep a warm liking from the Chinese people, whereas the Japanese largely baffled me with their apparent eagerness toward a liking they could not really muster. And I shoud say that on the whole we Americans were better then all round than we are now – both more real and more civilized. But as I say I wish I could go again to the Orient. |
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| 2 | 1920-1921 | Witter Bynner traveled to China from June 22, 1920-April 3, 1921 with Beniamino Bufano : Beijing, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Mogashan, Yangzi. He studied Chinese literature, had a meeting with Sun Yatsen and John Dewey. He shipped back to America about two hundred scroll paintings and over a hundred jade girdle clasps. |
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| 3 | 1931 |
Letter from Witter Bynner to Miss MacKinnon ; Santa Fe, July 20 (1931). [Fir-flower tablets by Amy Lowell and Florence Ayscough]. The third question is more difficult. I should say, first of all, that I consider my method more faithful to the balanced meaning of the original than Mrs. Ayscough's method. Suppose, for instance, the radical meaning of composite English words were translated into a for¬eign tongue—suppose "extravagant terms" were translated "beyond- straying terms" or "at daybreak" "when the day cracked"—then you might have a literal translation of what, in English, correspond to a combination of root strokes in a Chinese character; but the meaning and stress of the word in its context would be distorted and swollen beyond the intent of the author. It is true that a Chinese scholar pleasingly feels in an ideograph the two or three roots that make the meaning. It is true also that a Western scholar feels, say, in a word made from Greek or Latin the interesting original courtship of images which have quieted into a final everyday marriage of meaning. The Chinese character for "quarrel" indicates two women under one roof; but imagine translating it that way. Equally absurd is it to say "upper and lower garments" when the character, though literally conveying that, means "clothes." I made my translations from literal texts given me by Dr. Kiang —or my other Chinese friends. Their phrases were often, of course, odd and tickling to the fancy. My constant effort, however, was to I let detailed fancy go, for the sake of the imagination behind the poem—to find as nearly as I could, the exact English equivalent of, the Chinese word—the real rather than the literal translation—that I is if "literal translation" means translating parts of words and then | binding the parts of words into phrases rather than translating the customary finished meaning of the composite word. In a way, I was lucky in not knowing the Chinese language. A moderate knowledge might have tempted me astray from poetry into etymology. My first interest in Chinese poetry came from Chinese friends whom I met in California during 1917 and 1918. With their help I translated "ancient" poems (mostly from the Confucian "Book of Poetry", I believe) which appear in my "Canticle of Pan" (Knopf). In 1918, Dr. Kiang (on the faculty of the University of California, as I was) initiated me deeper into the realm, and ever since then I have been working with him on "The Jade Mountain", which the Chinese call "modern" poetry. Before that, in 1916, on my first trip to China, I had been drawn to its poetry by stanzas written on the earliest acquired of my collection of Chinese paintings. Some day I shall translate those inscriptions. |
Cited by (1)
| # | Year | Bibliographical Data | Type / Abbreviation | Linked Data |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Zentralbibliothek Zürich | Organisation / ZB |
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