Empty hills, no man in sight —
Just echoes of the voice of men.
In the deep wood reflected light
Shines on the blue-green moss again.
— VIKRAM SETH, 1992
(Seth, Three Chinese Poets)
The well-known Indian novelist Vikram Seth studied classical Chinese in college. He believes that the rhyme and meter of Chinese poetry should be attempted in English translation: “The joy of poetry for me lies not so much in transcending or escaping from the so-called bonds of artifice or constraint as in using them to enhance the power of what is being said.”
Unlike other formalist translations, Seth’s version manages to avoid a great deal of padding to fill out the meter and rhyme. But there is something about the ABAB rhyme scheme that makes the poem seem not only trivial, but incomplete, as though it were merely the first stanza of a longer work. The closure that rhyme brings here has the opposite effect. The voice of men, rather than the specific voices of men or the abstract voice of man, is puzzling.