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Nineteen Old Poems: Week 1 of 2
* 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.
* 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.
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.
Re: 3. 青青陵上柏 - Green, Green, Cypress on the Mound
Thank you Baike for the 2384972389th discussion on the color of qing. Baike says here, it's the lushness of the vegetation.
It's interesting that Baike glosses the fact that 磊 is a combined ideogram formed of three 'stone' characters? I guess it must not be in wide use anymore, though the dictionary does not note that it is archaic or anything like that.
The 'guest travelling from afar' is a metaphor for the shortness of life, like a passing traveler in the world, who must go back soon.
The 'sparse' in 'our friendship is rife, let it not be sparse' is glossed as the aroma of the wine being insipid/weak.
The 'stubborn horses' are inferior, worn out horses. Also used as an adjective as a metaphor to mean substandard.
There were two palaces (north and south) in Luoyang city.
The towers are two platforms in front of ancient palaces, temples, or mausoleums, usually one on the left and one on the right, with a road in between, to allow people to keep watch. Also an alternate name for the palace gates.
Baike's gloss points out that it has the common theme of life being short with the poem 驱车上东门 in this collection, but the artistic implications are different.