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Eighteen Songs of a Nomad Flute: Poems 7-12
This week, we're reading poems 7-12 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. In case it's useful, here is a plain-text version of the scroll.
This is the second 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.
This Harvard project on the scroll looks interesting, but I can't access it in Chrome or Safari; it might just be dead.
The Met provides us with some short, online-accessible monographs which offer may context for the pictorial aspect of the scroll:
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. In case it's useful, here is a plain-text version of the scroll.
This is the second 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.
This Harvard project on the scroll looks interesting, but I can't access it in Chrome or Safari; it might just be dead.
The Met provides us with some short, online-accessible monographs which offer may context for the pictorial aspect of the scroll:
Landscapes Clear and Radiant: The Art of Wang Hui (1632–1717)
Beyond Representation: Chinese Painting and Calligraphy, Eighth–Fourteenth Century
Along the Border of Heaven: Sung and Yüan Paintings from the C. C. Wang Collection
7. Concert on the Steppe
男兒婦人帶弓箭，塞馬蕃羊臥霜霰。
寸步東西豈自由，偷生乞死非情願。
龜資茲篳篥愁中聽，碎葉琵琶夜深怨。
竟夕無雲月上天，故鄉應得重相見。
Their men and women both carry bows and arrows;
Their border ponies and native sheep lie about in frost and sleet.
How can there be freedom for me to take a single step in any direction?
Neither living stealthily nor begging for an early death can be my true wish.
I listen to the pi-li of Ch’iu-tzu in sadness;
The p’i-p’a of Sui-yeh makes mournful sounds in the deep of the night.
Through the cloudless night the moon rises high in the sky;
Oh, but I must see my home town again!
Re: 7. Concert on the Steppe
‘Neither living stealthily’ what’s this line doing?
Is the pipa originally a foreign instrument, then?
ENDLESS MUTTON
Her maids never look happy either.
This canopy before their tent is longer and gold now, it was blue before.
Re: 7. Concert on the Steppe
'Living stealthily' is in modern Chinese 'to live without purpose'; the first char means 'to steal' and the second is 'life'.
Wiki is pretty inconclusive about the origins of the pipa. "This may be due to the fact that the word pipa was used in ancient texts to describe a variety of plucked chordophones from the Qin to the Tang dynasty, including the long-necked spiked lute and the short-necked lute, as well as the differing accounts given in these ancient texts. Traditional Chinese narrative prefers the story of the Han Chinese Princess Liu Xijun sent to marry a barbarian Wusun king during the Han dynasty, with the pipa being invented so she could play music on horseback to soothe her longings.[1][2] Modern researchers such as Laurence Picken, Shigeo Kishibe, and John Myers suggested a non-Chinese origin.[3][4][5]"
8. Dawn
憶昔私家恣嬌小，遠取珍禽學馴擾。
如今淪棄念故鄉，悔不當初放林表。
朔風蕭蕭寒日暮，星河寥落胡天曉。
旦夕思歸不得歸，愁中想似籠中鳥。
I remember the past, when I was an attractive but spoiled child at home.
From afar was obtained a rare bird, which I tamed.
Now, lost and abandoned, I think of my old home;
I regret that I did not release my bird to the forest.
The north wind whistles and the cold sun sets;
The lonely river of stars hangs above, until dawn comes again in the nomad sky.
Day and night I think of returning, but I cannot return;
My sorrowful heart, I think, must be like that bird in its cage.
Re: 8. Dawn
Why do the guys preparing their horses look so furtive about it? Another guy looks to be creeping about, too.
Tent’s brown now? It really looks wintry. More fur hats, more tent covers.
Stretching guy: hello.
Is that a lake on the right, or just more sand?
The mechanism of the scroll itself serves to emphasise the vastness and desolation: just rolling landscapes of nothing. This subject choice must make the matter practically easier for the painter: there’s literally less to do than with a bustling crowd scene.
Re: 8. Dawn
(Having 嬌 instead of 驕 may have made things ambiguous, because the latter is straightforwardly 'pride'/'arrogance' and adjacent concepts while 嬌 is also the 'jiao' in 'sajiao')
Re: 8. Dawn
Re: 8. Dawn
9. Writing Home
當日蘇武單于問，道是賓鴻解傳信。
學他刺血寫得書，書上千重萬重恨。
髯胡少年能走馬，彎弓射飛無遠近。
遂令邊雁轉怕人，絕域何由達方寸。
In the past, when Su Wu was questioned by the Khan,
It is said that the migrating geese knew how to carry a message.
Imitating Su Wu, I prick blood to write a letter;
In this letter I write a thousand and ten thousand grievances.
But the bearded barbarian youths are excellent horsemen;
They bend their bows and shoot flying birds, far and near.
Now the geese of the frontier are afraid of people;
How can I have my heart heard from these ends of the earth?
Re: 9. Writing Home
Can geese do this?
The qin is always covered, she’s never using it.
Those blue wagons are red now.
Re: 9. Writing Home
10. A Child Is Born
恨凌辱兮惡腥膻，憎胡地兮怨胡天。
生得胡兒欲棄捐，及生母子情宛然。
貌殊語異憎還愛，心中不覺常相牽。
朝朝暮暮在眼前，親生手養寧不憐。
How I am grieved by the indignities I have suffered, and revolted by rank smells;
How I despise the nomad land and hate the nomad sky!
When I became pregnant with a barbarian child, I wanted to kill myself,
Yet once I bore it, I found the love of mother and child.
His looks are strange, and his speech is different, yet my hate turns into love;
Deep inside, I feel the tug of my heartstring.
Morning and evening he is with me:
How can I not pity that which my womb has borne and my hand nurtured?
Re: 10. A Child Is Born
Interesting frankness re her anger and ambivalence.
Is she nursing in this?
The husband’s estrangement and distance in all these are evocative.
Does she STILL not speak this language, or is she talking about how the kid’s not speaking Chinese weirds her out a bit? (Is it even possible he doesn’t speak it, if his mother/care-giver does? Like, kids understand a literal mamaloshen every time, right?)
Re: 10. A Child Is Born
Re: 10. A Child Is Born
So it could actually mean she initially wanted to abandon the kid.
11. Watching Geese Fly South
日來月往相催遷，迢迢星歲欲周天。
無冬無夏臥霜霰，水凍草枯為一年。
漢家甲子有正朔，絕域三光空自懸。
幾回鴻雁來又去，腸斷蟾蜍虧復圓。
Days come and months go by, time hurries along;
By the movement of the year-star, it is now almost twelve years.
Winter or summer, we lie in frost and sleet;
When the water freezes and the grass wither I mark another year.
In China we have a cyclical calendar to mark the full and new moon,
But in these far-off lands the sun, moon, and stars only hang meaninglessly in the sky.
Many times the migratory geese come and go;
I am brokenhearted as the moon wanes and again grows full.
Re: 11. Watching Geese Fly South
The ‘meaningless’ stars are really evocative.
Nice foliage.
Wenji seems SO fucking depressed, mooning after the birds.
Again with the unplayed qin.
Something interesting in the rigid, unconsolable refusal to adapt.
Re: 11. Watching Geese Fly South
I guess the meaningless stars sound nice and she could care less about the captors' beliefs, but feels... vaguely racist considering the Xiongnu put a lot of stock by stars/moon phases?
Re: 11. Watching Geese Fly South
12. Messengers Arrive
破瓶落井空永沉，故鄉望斷無歸心。
寧知遠使問姓音，漢語泠泠傳好音。
夢魂幾度到鄉國，覺後翻成哀怨深。
如今果是夢中事，喜過悲來情不任。
A broken bottle dropped into a well is lost forever.
With no hope in sight, I have given up all thought of returning.
How could have I known that an envoy would come from afar, asking names?
The Han speech, pleasing to the ear, brings happy news.
How many times had my soul wandered home in my dreams?
Each time after I awoke my sorrow was deeper still.
Now that I am faced with what I dreamt,
Grief comes after joy; my emotions become unbearable.
Re: 12. Messengers Arrive
So does her husband have no say in an arrangement made between the two rulers? It doesn’t seem a question of whether he’ll go for it.
Again with the dreams.
Struggling to identify who the messenger is in this scene? Is he just not pictured? The guy in blue is her husband, right? The commentary on this suggests she’ll miss her husband, and honestly that feels like an extrapolation on these guys’ parts, she’s never said one good word about him. In fact, he’s scarcely present as a character in all this. …like, is husband necessarily the right word for, arguably, Wenji’s captor and rapist? Are they even necessarily ‘married’ in a way her tradition recognises?
Re: 12. Messengers Arrive