Nineteen Old Poems: Week 1 of 2

[x_los]

* The 'due date' for this batch is the week of August 18th: I just thought I'd make the post now so that people can trickle in whenever. There were two votes in favour of East Asia Student's translations, so that's what I've gone with. If you prefer or would like to bring another translation into the discussion, please feel free. 

* Chapter Five of How to Read Chinese Poetry is specifically about the Nineteen Old Poems.

* Every week I search the poems' English results to see if I can find any scholarship or neat bits and pop the results in Resources. Here is this week's collection.

* Remember you can also look at How to Read Chinese Poetry in Context, though it doesn't specifically treat this collection.

* IF YOU HAVE FRIENDS WHO MIGHT LIKE TO JOIN or have other ideas, please let me know on this post.

* I found the best option for the weekly reminder emails, via Gmail. The external service options are more involved than our purposes require. Does anyone know anything about how to arrange an Apps Script? Basically all it has to do is tell ten people, on Saturdays, to come and get their juice/poems.

Until someone knows what to do there, I'll send out manual messages weekly. If you'd like to receive these and are not getting them, please let me know.

Comments

6. 涉江采芙蓉 - Crossing the River to Pick Hibiscus

[x_los]

涉江采芙蓉
shè jiāng cǎi fú róng
[wade] [river] [pick] [hibiscus][]
I cross the river to pick hibiscus,

蘭澤多芳草
lán zé duō fāng cǎo
[orchid] [good] [many] [fragrant] [grass]
the brilliant orchid and the many fragrant herbs.

采之欲遺誰
cǎi zhī yù yí shéi
[pick] [it] [desire] [leave with] [someone]
I pick it and desire to give it to someone,

所思在遠道
suǒ sī zài yuǎn dào
[that which] [consider] [at] [far] [way]
but the one whom I think of is journeying far away.

還顧望舊鄉
hái gù wàng jiù xiāng
[still] [look] [gaze] [old] [countryside]
I still gaze at the old countryside,

長路漫浩浩
zhǎng lù màn hào hào
[long] [road] [unrestrained] [vast] [vast]
the long road and its vast expanse.

同心而離居
tóng xīn ér lí jū
[same] [heart] [yet] [apart] [live]
We are of one mind yet live apart,

憂傷以終老
yōu shāng yǐ zhōng lǎo
[grief] [wound] [take] [end] [old]
and in the end I grow old, wounded by grief.

Re: 6. 涉江采芙蓉 - Crossing the River to Pick Hibiscus

[x_los]

Is there an implied time-jump in this piece between the youth gathering plants and thinking of someone merely absent and the ageing figure at the poem's end, still gazing at the old countryside, perhaps sundered from the partner by death?

Re: 6. 涉江采芙蓉 - Crossing the River to Pick Hibiscus

[ann712]

I think it’s Lan Zhan’s lament following his final sundering from Wei Ying.

The two in this poem never got together and he dies regretting it - the loss of his one true love.

Re: 6. 涉江采芙蓉 - Crossing the River to Pick Hibiscus

[superborb]

Baike:

Baike glosses the hibiscus as lotus -- that word is in the dictionary as 'hibiscus, cotton rose, lotus, foo yung (dish like omelette)'

I'm unsure if baike's gloss of 兰草 is orchid+grass/herbs, or one thing that is bluegrass. (The TL here reads it separately)

'We are of one mind' is a set phrase, in ancient times mostly describing romantic relationships

The thousands of students who left to become scholars and failed to get a position led to the 'wanderers' in these 19 poems. They were homesick and frustrated.

Some think this is the POV of the husband / wanderer, but then it doesn't make sense, bc it's the wife who is in the hometown. There is a pun-- the furong of the lotus sounds like the face of the husband. So Baike concludes that this is the POV of the wife. Then the POV changes to the husband on the distant road.