The Birds Fly Away

Summing up all the chapter 5 poems

The Birds Fly Away

We’ve finally made it to the final poem of chaper 5. This one is deceptively simple.

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My Translation

Each Bird Flies To Its Own Tree

The official’s household decays.

The wealthy and nobles see their gold and silver scattered.

Those who showed kindness barely escaped with their lives.

Those who were heartless received their retribution.

Those who owed a life repaid it.

Those who owed tears have shed them all.

Retribution for wrongs is no light matter.

Partings and reunions are all predestined.

If you want to know why some die young, look at their past lives.

Attaining wealth and honor in old age is a true stroke of luck.

Those who see through the illusion end up in monastic gates.

The attached throw their lives away for nothing.

Just like how the birds return to the woods once the food is gone,

Leaving behind a vast expanse of desolate land.

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Translation Critique

Hawkes

David Hawkes translates each of these lines in the singular – for example, “the rich man’s fortune now all vanished.” His interpretation seems to be that this is a summative poem that refers to individual characters in the story. While this is true, I think it’s more likely that the poem is intended to be read in a general way, which is how I’ve translated it.

Hawkes uses the phrase office jack in the first line: “The office jack’s career is blighted.” I believe this refers to the old noun jack-in-office, a somewhat derogatory 19^th century word meaning a self-important but minor official.

Hawkes uses a few other vocabulary terms that need to be explained. Expiate means to make amends for a wrong. A coupling is joining together; the Chinese literally says a “reunion” or “gathering” (聚合). A sundering is a separating.

Finally, Hawkes mistranslates an important line near the end:

The disillusioned to their convents fly;

The still deluded miserably die.

The original does not say “disillusioned,” but, rather, 看破的. “The enlightened” would be a much more accurate translation.

Yang

The Yangs do some interesting things with this poem. They do a bit of topic comment sentence styling, almost like it’s a Yoda translation:

Those who took a life have paid with their own lives,

The tears one owed have all been requited in kind.

Not light the retribution for sins against others;

All are predestined, partings and reunions.

And so on. It works, I guess, but there’s really no reason to do it.

The Yangs translate the two difficult lines like this:

Those who see through the world escape from the world,

While foolish lovers forfeit their lives for nothing.

“Foolish lovers” is an interesting way to translate 痴迷的, although I think the juxtaposition with 看破的 (those who see through the world) has been lost on the Yangs. In other words, it’s not that the lovers are “foolish.” 痴 here instead implies that they are attached to the illusion of the world – almost like they refuse to see through (看破) the awful reality of the world.

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Chinese Text

飛鳥各投林

為官的，家業凋零；富貴的，金銀散痴盡；有恩的，死裡逃生；無情的，分明報應；欠命的，命已還；欠淚的，淚已盡：冤冤相報實非輕，分離聚合皆前定。欲知命短問前生，老來富貴也真徼倖。看破的，遁入空門；痴迷的，枉送了性命：好一似食盡鳥投林，落了片白茫茫大地真乾淨！

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Translation Notes

冤 (yuān) means to wrong somebody or to treat somebody unjustly

徼倖 means lucky; by fluke or by chance

遁入空門 is an idiom meaning to take refuge in religious life; it particularly referes to becoming a Buddhist monk.

痴迷 is not easy to translate here. It doesn’t mean to be “obsessed” in the sense of a modern stalker. Here it’s contrasted with 看破, which is a reference to seeing through the illusion of the world (看破紅塵, for example). In other words, 痴迷 should be understood as somebody attached to things in this world – somebody who deliberately clings to the illusions of the world.