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

Re: 1. 行行重行行 - Marching On and On

[x_los]

'How to Read Chinese Poetry' confidently asserts that the *speaker* is the one forcing herself to eat well. Though does that really mesh with her noticing how thin she's getting above?

it's also very sure this embedded xing is about homesickness, but it doesn't say why, and I don't feel a real immediate connection?

"胡馬依北風
hú mǎ yī běi fēng
[barbarian] [horse] [depend] [north] [wind]
The barbarian horses need the winds of the North,

越鳥巢南枝
yuè niǎo cháo nán zhī
[_Yue_] [bird] [nest] [south] [branch]
The birds of Yue nest in the branches of the South."

It gives 'lean into', for that 'depend'.

Re: 1. 行行重行行 - Marching On and On

[(Anonymous)]

Rejection implies to me this is a break up not homesickness. The last line reads to me like an exhortation to a former lover to look after themselves better than the poet. It’s rather tender.

There’s a sense of unbreachable division created by the mention of barbarian horses and the birds of yue. As if two people realise they need different environments to thrive,