Eighteen Songs of a Nomad Flute: Poems 1-6

[x_los]

Eighteen Songs of a Nomad Flute is "a series of Chinese songs and poems about the life of Han Dynasty (202 BCE – 220 CE) poet Cai Wenji[;] the songs were composed by Liu Shang, a poet of the middle Tang Dynasty. Later Emperor Gaozong of Song (1107–1187) commissioned a handscroll with the songs accompanied by 18 painted scenes." 

This week, we're reading poems 1-6, up to page 40, in this collection. Because of the nature of the book in question, I'll ask you to refer here for Chinese and English copies of the poems and the images together.

You can view the scroll as a whole more easily and read some background on the Met's website; the Wiki page will also help orient you.  

This is the first of three weeks we'll be spending on this collection. I'll link us to some additional background information in the coming weeks, once we've had a chance to orient ourselves; this is the first time the piece we're looking at has come with its own explanatory material, and that's a sound starting-point. 

Comments

3. Encampment in the Desert

[x_los]

第三拍 (5 columns in standard script)
如羈囚兮在縲紲，憂慮萬端無處說。
使余力兮翦余髮，食余肉兮飲余血。
誠知殺身願如此，以余為妻不如死。
早被蛾眉累此身，空悲弱質柔如水。

I am like a prisoner in bonds,
I have ten thousand anxieties but no one to confide them to.
They can make me work, or they can cut my hair;
They can eat my flesh, and they can drink my blood.
Knowing this is death, I would suffer anything willingly,
make me his wife is worse than killing me.
Alas, how a pretty face has made me suffer,
How I resent it that I am weak and soft like water.

Re: 3. Encampment in the Desert

[x_los]

Are we getting into some blood libel type stuff here, is that a whole thing?

It’s very metal, I will for sure use this in a fic

I never quite know what gauze means re hats in this context

I guess you can tell the gender of random figures by the tonsure or lack thereof

Again good job on evoking a sense of nothingness outside the encampment

Btw, fairly dodgy that the book seems to suggest she should be Nicer to the captor/rapist who uh, killed much of her city and personal household.

Re: 3. Encampment in the Desert

[douqi]

Similar motif in Song general Yue Fei's Man Jiang Hong (poem here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_Jiang_Hong): 'There we shall feast on barbarian flesh and drink the blood of the Xiongnu.'

Re: 3. Encampment in the Desert

[x_los]

Interesting slippage here, between 'I don't care what the barbarians do, they can eat me if they like' to 'let's eat the barbarian enemy'; it makes me wonder about the historical roles cannibalism or figurations thereof played in these spaces.

Re: 3. Encampment in the Desert

[superborb]

Fascinating that the art appears to portray the captors as treating her well though, since you'd think it'd be as Han biased as the text?

Re: 3. Encampment in the Desert

[vorvayne]

Once again, suspicious of the translation

how the f did they get "knowing this is death, I would suffer anything willingly" from "誠知殺身願如此"???

Like I'm not sure whether in this context 誠 is more likely to be 'truly, really' or 'if indeed...' (or possibly even 'moral wholeness/integrity'? Tho grammatically that seems sus)

But genuinely does this not say something more like "If I knew how to kill myself, I would be willing to do it"??? V unsure and willing to be wrong; I could baidu it but my eyes are wavering.

"空悲弱質柔如水" no but more "in vain I grieve my weak nature, as yeilding as water". if yr local barely educated gremlin can summon up a line that goes harder than your translation then I have like, questions.

You're right tho this one is METAL. Parsing this is getting difficult for me; there are loads of two-character words! In poetry! Illegal, probably - this one has less of that so I like it.