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

1. 行行重行行 - Marching On and On

[x_los]

行行重行行
xíng xíng chóng xíng xíng
[walk] [walk] [again] [walk] [walk]
Marching on and on,

與君生別離
yǔ jūn shēng biélí
[from] [you] [live] [separate] [leave]
Living far away from you.

相去萬餘里
xiāng qù wàn yú lǐ
[each other] [remove] [ten thousand] [excess] [mile]
We stand more than a thousand miles apart,

各在天一涯
gè zài tiān yī yá
[each] [at] [sky] [one] [horizon]
Each of us at opposite ends of the sky.

道路阻且長
dào lù zǔ qiě zhǎng
[way] [road] [obstructed] [and] [long]
The way between us is long and obstructed,

會面安可知
huì miàn ān kě zhī
[meet] [face] [secure] [can] [know]
Who knows if we will see each other again?

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.

相去日已遠
xiāng qù rì yǐ yuǎn
[each other] [remove] [day] [already] [far]
Every day we grow further apart,

衣帶日已緩
yī dài rì yǐ huǎn
[clothes] [belt] [day] [already] [loose]
Every day my clothes become looser.

浮雲蔽白日
fú yún bì bái rì
[drift] [cloud] [conceal] [white] [sun]
The drifting clouds obscure the sunlight,

遊子不顧反
yóu zǐ bù gù fǎn
[wanderer][] [not] [consider] [go back]
The wanderer does not consider going back.

思君令人老
sī jūn lìng rén lǎo
[long for] [you] [make] [person] [old]
Longing for you makes one grow old,

歲月忽已晚
suì yuè hū yǐ wǎn
[year] [month] [suddenly] [already] [late]
The months and years are suddenly far behind me.

棄捐勿復道
qì juān wù fù dào
[reject] [abandon] [do not] [again] [speak]
But let’s not speak any more of this rejection;

努力加餐飯
nǔ lì jiā cān fàn
[exert] [strength] [add] [food] [food]
Please make sure you are eating well.

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,

Re: 1. 行行重行行 - Marching On and On

[elviaprose]

I really like the language of this poem. I wonder how the turn at the end reads to someone more familiar with this poetry/genre/emotional register?

Re: 1. 行行重行行 - Marching On and On

[superborb]

The TL of that last line seems strangely-- muted to me? Like, nuli feels stronger than just a please to me. But possibly it's just that the entreaty to eat more feels more loving in Chinese than English, so it comes out not strong enough in the TL.

Baike:

生別離 [Living far away from you] is a set phrase from that era, means an eternal parting/separation.

Baike glosses the barbarian horses as merely northern and also just says northern in its vernacular TL. Also says one source says that the 'depends' character can be read as a neigh.

The white sun in [The drifting clouds obscure the sunlight] used to refer to the sovereign king, here the husband.

Baike glosses the old in [Longing for you makes one grow old] as wasting away and a wan and sallow appearance.

The phrase 加餐饭 [Please make sure you are eating well], which literally means eat an extra meal, was a set phrase used to comfort others at this time.

Re: 1. 行行重行行 - Marching On and On

[x_los]

'Also says one source says that the 'depends' character can be read as a neigh.' oh so like, they whinny into the northern wind, maybe.

Re: 1. 行行重行行 - Marching On and On

[vorvayne]

Yeah like it's not as if eg Europe didn't have plenty of historical famines but I guess the recency in China is like - there's so much stuff in just everyday dialogue about like are you eating enough, have you eaten, it's like there's this deep awareness that there is no guarantee of that kind of comfort and security.

nuli - yeah I vibe with what superborb is saying. And jia canfan - like in a way I can see the book's interpretation, like if she's getting thin and she doesn't *want* to take care of herself bc she's wasting a way so through great effort she's trying to eat more now. Like I can see it.

But I don't...think that's what the poet meant tbh because 'please eat more' etc is usually a sentiment you turn on others to express love and care so in context. Yeah.

Re: 1. 行行重行行 - Marching On and On

[vorvayne]

I love this one actually it's very. Well for a start I knew most of the hanzi so that was nice and every time I see a gloss of a classical line I feel like I get more how to parse it.

I too don't see homesickness in the first line but I do see a kind of longing-over-distance so it's like. Similar? Ish? But I don't think it's *home* the poet is longing for. I don't know that it's even the person, or even a longing; they're just like feeling the weight of distance and separation. That's how the xing xings feel to me. I don't know, like, how and whether words that mean different things echo their other meanings in Chinese poetry because that's very like, language dependent, but chong (重) also can mean 'heavy, important'. And there exist other words for 'again' and 'repeated' in classical cn.

I wonder if the line

棄捐勿復道
qì juān wù fù dào
[reject] [abandon] [do not] [again] [speak]
But let’s not speak any more of this rejection;

contains a similar ambiguity. Like: wu fu dao, wu (do not) fu (return, go and come back) dao (road, walk) - you could also read it like, let's not close the distance between us and come back together. Like I worry I'm doing that thing where you read shakespeare and you're like, I know what this word means in modern English therefore - but I don't see why not bc afaik those meanings are all old.

Anyway I just really like this one. I feel like it uses similar sorts of conventions and metaphors as the Shijing ones but is just like a little more immediately comprehensible.

ALSO there's a lot of tianya ke vibes here actually and I think it's because of

各在天一涯
gè zài tiān yī yá
[each] [at] [sky] [one] [horizon]
Each of us at opposite ends of the sky.

and like tianya ke is 天涯客 - where 天涯 is, yeah, 'the edge of the sky/world, the horizon' but also metaphorically 'the other end of the world, a distant place'. Like this could even be the poem that that comes from. Like this is a whole Tradition, you get shit like

海内存知己，天涯若比邻
[whole world][exists][one who knows me], [distant lands][like][neighbour]
hard to fucking translate but like
'if in this world there is one who knows me, then the ends of the earth seem familiar/near'

Tang dynasty apparently, dude called Wang Wei google tells me. CanNOT help but feel Priest has read this one.