Eighteen Songs of a Nomad Flute: Poems 7-12

[x_los]

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: 

Sung and Yuan Paintings

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

Comments

8. Dawn

[x_los]

第八拍 (5 columns in standard script)
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

[x_los]

Interesting that the male poet has Wenji calling herself attractive (this is the second time). Possibly male gaze-y.

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

[douqi]

Is the 'attractive' part a translation choice? Because it seems to come from 恣嬌, which looks like a variant on the more common 恣驕 which I think could be rendered as just 'wilful'?

(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

[superborb]

It almost feels like attractive (cute) instead of attractive (hot) needs to be there to clarify, bc it really changes the meaning.

Re: 8. Dawn

[x_los]

It feels like in English we might say, 'I was a pretty child, and rather spoiled at home--' or something