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dankodesThis 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]"