7.2 Images and image-G in“Jiangxue”
江雪
Jiangxue
千山鸟飞绝，万径人踪灭。
qianshan niao feijue,wanjing renzong mie.
孤舟蓑笠翁，独钓寒江雪
guzhou suoli weng,dudiao hanjiang xue.(https://www.daowen.com)
The concise and succinct five-character quatrain written by Liu Zongyuan presents a simple,straight forward approach of writing(a line drawing approach)and takes on a fresh and natural artistic style.By describing and depicting scenery,the poet reposes sentiment in images and combines sentiment with images to construct poetic atmosphere and artistic conception.The rich juxtaposed images in the poem,which are set free from connectives and syntactic marks,have abundant and profound aesthetic significance and also make clear to the Gestalt qualities of image-G of the poet's thoughts and feelings.The juxtaposition of imagery combination is to associate lots of images via contrast,parallelism or gradation so as to interrelate with each other,enhance aesthetic connotation emotion and enrich Gestalt effects.To be specific,all the presented images selected by the poet are infused with his perception and feelings,are imbued with strong symbolic meanings and exhibit a scenic picture of fishing in severely cold snow,which embodies the artistic conception of being free from things of the world with aloofness.Gestalt qualities of the poem permeate through the artistic conception and are realized in certain scene modes.As a result of complex interaction of images in the contextual whole,certain Gestalt qualities are constituted,namely,loneliness,solitude and otherworldly transcendence.A concrete analysis of prominent images and image-G of the poem will be presented as following.
In the first twolines,the images of qianshan(myriad mountains)and wanjing(endless roads)are served as the background of the holistic pictorial scene presented in the poem.Although the first two lines depicts snow-covered landscape,the poet even did not employ a word referencing to snow.At first,the images of qianshan(myriad mountains)and wanjing(endless roads)are expressive and affective since they are interpreted within the discourse and describe expansive background,namely in relation to the whole imagery.Then,the images of niao feijue(no bird in flight)and renzong mie(no man in sight)are a defined and vivid characterization of the images of qianshan(myriad mountains)and wanjing(endless roads),which fill up the blank place and highlight the immense silence and bleak desolation of the background.In addition,the adoption of two verbs,jue(devoid)and mie(no existence of),displays the intangible and dense nature of artistic realm represented by these background images,revealing the exactly ethereal beauty of artistic conception in the poem.As a result,a landscape that freezes coldly with snowflakes fluttering about seems to be just in front of translators'eyes.
When it comes tothe last two lines,the image of weng(an old man)is served as the foreground of the holistic pictorial scene presented in the poem.Through an intelligent use of focus perspective,the images of guzhou(a lonely boat)and suoli(straw cloak and bamboo hat)are juxtaposed with the image of weng(an old man).What can be said at this point concerning discrete point perspective is that it diverts translators'aesthetic vision away from a distant view to a close view.To be specific,translators'aesthetic vision is induced by spatial level of images with realistic sense presented in the poem,drawing from a distant view—the images of qianshan(myriad mountains)and wanjing(endless roads),to a close view—the images of guzhou(a lonely boat)and suoli(straw-cloak),and it finally focalizes on the central image(the image of weng“an old man”).In a sense,the scenery of images grouping with subtle layering effect is just like a classical Chinese landscape ink-painting,which demonstrates fine and rich sense of dimensional space.In this way,the carefully chosen images in the landscape painting have their aesthetic elements like artistic contour and mood,which present the aesthetic conception in an abstract way through the picturesque,harmonious and implicit beauty embodied in the organic integration of images—the images of guzhou(a lonely boat),suoli(straw-cloak),hanjiang(rigid river)and xue(snow).It fully displays the artistic essence being endowed within the last two lines,namely,a sense of solitude and isolation.In sum,by molding the image of an old detached and indifferent fisherman who is unconscious of the boundary between himself and the external world of snow and ice,the poet smoothly exhibits the artistic theme and creates a literary atmosphere of“rare voice of big sound,elephant invisible”,which represents his spiritual ideal about returning to his original nature and being detached from the secular(Xin & Qin,2013).
As far as we can see,the poet is good at both molding images with a line drawing approach and leaving the“blankness”in the scenic space of the poem that demonstrates the unfinalizability of the poem's artistic conception.Loosely speaking,the blankness can be regarded as a constituent part of holistic image-G in the poem since it retains the artistic value of the whole,possesses interrelated Gestalt qualities and shares the same aesthetic schema with holistic image-G.In a sense,it provides translators with proper aesthetic space in poem appreciation and realizes more finegrained and elaborated aesthetic value of the poem.In this way,translators can give a full play to their imagination and creativity as to actualize the holistic image-G of the poem.In that case,the blank space in the poem can inspire in translators a sense of fuzzy and hazy beauty,thus causing Gestalt qualities about abstruseness,vagueness and elusive illusoriness.
Turning to the perspective sparked off by gradational status of images,we find that the poet adopts the contrastive approach and virtual-actual combination approach in the hierarchically structural arrangement of the images in the poem to demonstrate gradation relations between logic gradation and image grouping system.For the contrastive approach,firstly,qian(hundreds)and wan(thousands)stand in marked quantitative(majority/minority)contrast to gu(lonely)and du(in solitude).Secondly,there is a clear density(being/not being and reality/nihility)contrast between qian(hundreds),wan(thousands)and jue(devoid),mie(no existence of).Thirdly,the contrast in state(dynamic/static)between niao feijue(no bird in flight),renzong mie(no man in sight)and guzhou(a lonely boat),suoli weng(a straw-cloak'd man)is noticeable.When it comes to the virtual-actual combination approach,the artistic conception is actually composed of the actual realm and the virtual realm and it is practically inseparable from each other.Specifically,the actual realm of the poem is composed of images of qianshan(myriad mountains),wanjing(endless roads),guzhou(a lonely boat),suoliweng(a straw-cloak'd man)and jiangxue(river snow),while the virtual realm of the poem consists of niao feijue(no bird in flight)and renzong mie(no man in sight).The virtual images manifest themselves gradually through the poet's depiction of the actual images,while the actual images are spotlighted by the misty and fuzzy virtual images.
It is therefore in general conclusion that the analysis above provides several key points that translators should pay attention to in their translation.Firstly,it is essential for translators to give insight into the semantic meaning of each individual image and continuously venture into experiencing its Gestalt essence for the purpose of actualizing the image schemata of the poem.Secondly,translators should realize Gestalt aesthetic experience of the poem and comprehend aesthetic factors of the poem(beauty of language form,images,poetic rhythm and artistic conception)so as to acquire images beyond the images and implied Gestalt qualities.Last but not the least,the smooth conveyance of artistic conception of being free from things of the world with aloofness contained in imagery combination is the key to the successful construction of image-G in TT.In a nutshell,the realization degree to which the image-G of the poem is constructed in TT rests briefly upon the harmonious integration of these three factors.