Nineteen Old Poems: Week 2 of 2

[x_los]

 * 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.

* Next batch of poems, the first half of Eighteen Songs of a Nomad Flute, MONDAY, AUGUST 30th.

 

Comments

14. 去者日以疏 – The Departed Are More Distant Daily

[x_los]

去者日以疏
qù zhě rì yǐ shū
[go] [those who] [day] [take] [distant]
The departed are more distant daily,

來者日已親
lái zhě rì yǐ qīn
[come] [those who] [day] [already] [close]
as daily those on their way draw closer.

出郭門直視
chū guō mén zhí shì
[leave] [city wall] [gate] [straight] [look]
I leave the city gate and look straight out,

但見丘與墳
càn jiàn qiū yǔ fén
[only] [see] [mound] [and] [grave]
only to see graves in their burial mounds.

古墓犁為田
gǔ mù lí wèi tián
[ancient] [tomb] [plow] [as] [field]
The ancient tombs have been ploughed into fields,

松柏摧為薪
sōng bǎi cuī wèi xīn
[pine] [cypress] [break] [as] [fuel]
their pine and cypress trees broken into firewood.

白楊多悲風
bái yáng duō bēi fēng
[white] [poplar] [much] [sorrow] [wind]
The white poplar, so sorrowful in the wind,

蕭蕭愁殺人
xiāo xiāo chóu shā rén
[desolate] [desolate] [worry] [murder] [people]
mournful, desolate, and deathly anxious.

思還故里閭
sī huán gù lǐ lǘ
[think of] [return] [old] [village] [village gate]
I long to return to my native village,

欲歸道無因
yù guī dào wú yīn
[desire] [return] [principle] [not have] [reason]
yet desiring to return is no excuse.

Notes on this poem
Like a lot of the other poems in this collection, pine, cypress and poplar trees are mentioned. All of these symbolise the grave. This is because they are traditionally used to mark tombs, as they are evergreen and this represents immortality.

The 蕭蕭 (xiāo xiāo) repetition also appears in this poem. Individually, the character means ‘mournful’ or ‘desolate’, and both these meanings were used in the translation above. Another option would be to repeat a single word, or emphasise the phrase in English with ‘so’.

Re: 14. 去者日以疏 – The Departed Are More Distant Daily

[x_los]

Here we are back at the city gate, looking out at graves. How fun can it be?

So are the trees traditionally planted around cemeteries? Oh NM footnote said yes. Thanks, footnots.

No excuse for what?

There's a character with a kind of similar verbal tic of repeating things in the novel Douqi is translating. Maybe it's just generally more of a thing in Chinese.

Re: 14. 去者日以疏 – The Departed Are More Distant Daily

[superborb]

Oh yeah, repeating syllables for emphasis / cuteness is a thing in Chinese. I wouldn't call it a verbal tic, just a feature of the language.

I had the most fascinating conversation with a white guy who thought it had been offensive that people were joking around with someone with a Chinese name that she should repeat the syllables of her name (for disambiguation, bc there were a lot of people with the same pinyin name), and in retrospect, it didn't ping me as immediately wrong for this reason.

Re: 14. 去者日以疏 – The Departed Are More Distant Daily

[x_los]

Yeah, though this character does it WAY more than the other people around her, it feels like Her Thing.

Re: 14. 去者日以疏 – The Departed Are More Distant Daily

[superborb]

Baike:

In ancient times, 5 households were neighbors, 25 were a 'li'. Later this became a general term for village.

Baike says this is different from the other 18 poems, which primarily use bixing and reveal the natural scenery + its connotations gradually, by starting immediately with a general summary. Normally, you'd start by walking out of the gate and seeing the tombs.