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Little Primer of Du Fu, Poems 1-5
This week we start David Hawkes' Little Primer of Du Fu. I'll replicate the poems themselves here, but this book contains considerable exegesis, so I do advise you to grab this copy.
Because this exegesis is relatively substantial, let's start by reading poems 1 through 5, inclusive. There are 35 poems in the collection, so this should take us about seven weeks (unless we scale either up or down, after speaking about it).
I'm gathering additional research materials, but for this first week I'd like us to concentrate on Hawkes' introduction and the first of these poems.
Because this exegesis is relatively substantial, let's start by reading poems 1 through 5, inclusive. There are 35 poems in the collection, so this should take us about seven weeks (unless we scale either up or down, after speaking about it).
I'm gathering additional research materials, but for this first week I'd like us to concentrate on Hawkes' introduction and the first of these poems.
2. 兵車行 Bīng-chē xíng
Bīng-chē xíng
車 轔 轔
1. Chē lín-lín,
馬 蕭 蕭
2. Mǎ xiāo-xiāo,
行 人 弓 箭 各 在 腰
3. Xíng-rén gōng-jiàn gè zài yāo,
爺 孃 妻 子 走 相 送
4. Yé-niáng qī-zǐ zǒu xiāng-sòng,
塵 埃 不 見 咸 陽 橋
5. Chén-āi bú jiàn Xián-yáng-qiáo.
牽 衣 頓 足 攔 道 哭
6. Qiān yī dùn zú lán dào kū,
哭 聲 直 上 干 雲 霄
7. Kū-shēng zhí-shàng gān yún-xiāo.
道 旁 過 者 問 行 人
8. Dào-páng guò-zhě wèn xíng-rén,
“行 人 但 云 點 行 頻
9. Xíng-rén dàn yún: ‘Diǎn-xíng pín.
或 從 十 五 北 防 河
10. ‘Huò cóng shí-wǔ běi fáng Hé,
便 至 四 十 西 營 田
11. ‘Biàn zhì sì-shí xī yíng-tián.
去 時 里 正 與 裹 頭
12. ‘Qù shí lǐ-zhèng yǔ guǒ tóu,
歸 來 頭 白 還 戍 邊
13. ‘Guī-lái tóu bái huán shù-biān.
邊 亭 流 血 成 海 水”
14. ‘Biān-tíng liú-xuè chéng hǎi-shuǐ,
武 皇 開 邊 意 未 已
15. ‘Wǔ-huáng kāi-biān yì wèi yǐ.
君 不 聞 漢 家 山 東 二 百 州
16. ‘Jūn bù wén Hàn-jiā shān-dōng èr-bǎi zhōu,
千 村 萬 落 生 荊 杞
17. ‘Qiān cūn wàn luò shēng jīng qǐ.
縱 有 健 婦 把 鋤 犂
18. ‘Zòng yǒu jiàn fù bǎ chú lí,
禾 生 隴 畝 無 東 西
19. ‘Hé shēng lǒng-mǔ wú dōng xī.
況 復 秦 兵 耐 苦 戰
20. ‘Kuàng fù Qín bīng nài kǔ-zhàn,
被 驅 不 異 犬 與 雞
21. ‘Bèi qū bú-yì quǎn yǔ jī.
長 者 雖 有 問
22. ‘Zhǎng-zhě suī yǒu wèn,
役 夫 敢 申 恨
23. ‘Yì-fū gǎn shēn-hèn?
且 如 今 年 冬
24.‘Qiě-rú jīn-nián dōng,”
未 休 關 西 卒
25. ‘Wèi xiū Guān-xī zú.
縣 官 急 索 租
26. ‘Xiàn-guān jí suǒ zū,
租 稅 從 何 出
27. ‘Zū-shuì cóng-hé chū?
信 知 生 男 惡
28. ‘Xìn zhī shēng nán è,
反 是 生 女 好
29. ‘Fǎn-shì shēng nǚ hǎo;
生 女 猶 得 嫁 比 鄰
30. ‘Shēng nǚ yóu dé jià bǐ-lín,
生 男 埋 沒 隨 百 草
31. ‘Shēng nán mái-mò suí bǎi-cǎo.
君 不 見 青 海 頭
32. ‘Jūn bú jiàn Qīng-hǎi tóu,
古 來 白 骨 無 人 收
33. ‘Gǔ-lái bái-gǔ wú-rén shōu,
新 鬼 煩 怨 舊 鬼 哭
34. ‘Xīn guǐ fán-yuàn jiù guǐ kū,
天 陰 雨 溼 聲 啾 啾
35. ‘Tiān yīn yǔ shī shēng jiū-jiū.
Read Aloud: https://www.bilibili.com/s/video/BV1sh41197cL
Ballad of the Army Carts
The carts squeak and trundle, the horses whinny, the conscripts go by, each with a bow and arrows at his waist. Their fathers, mothers, wives, and children run along beside them to see them off. The Hsien-yang Bridge cannot be seen for dust. They pluck at the men’s clothes, stamp their feet, or stand in the way weeping. The sound of their weeping seems to mount up to the blue sky above. A passer-by questions the conscripts, and the conscripts reply:
‘They’re always mobilizing now! There are some of us who went north at fifteen to garrison the River and who are still, at forty, being sent to the Military Settlements in the west. When we left as lads, the village headman had to tie our headcloths for us. We came back white-haired, but still we have to go back for frontier duty! On those frontier posts enough blood has flowed to fill the sea; but the Martial Emperor’s dreams of expansion remain unsatisfied. Haven’t you heard, sir, in our land of Han, throughout the two hundred prefectures east of the mountains briers and brambles are growing in thousands of little hamlets; and though many a sturdy wife turns her own hand to the hoeing and ploughing, the crops grow just anywhere, and you can’t see where one field ends and the next begins? And it’s even worse for the men from Ch’in. Because they make such good fighters, they are driven about this way and that like so many dogs or chickens.
‘Though you are good enough to ask us, sir, it’s not for the likes of us to complain. But take this winter, now. The Kuan-hsi troops are not being demobilized. The District Officers press for the land-tax, but where is it to come from? I really believe it’s a misfortune to have sons. It’s actually better to have a daughter. If you have a daughter, you can at least marry her off to one of the neighbours; but a son is born only to end up lying in the grass somewhere, dead and unburied. Why look, sir, on the shores of the Kokonor the bleached bones have lain for many a long year, but no one has ever gathered them up. The new ghosts complain and the old ghosts weep, and under the grey and dripping sky the air is full of their baleful twitterings.
Re: 2. 兵車行 Bīng-chē xíng
“I’m so fucking mad never has anything sounded less like the letters used to describe it
https://youtu.be/orQEwNYljio
I thought only Wales could fuck me over like this
Does this guy have an accent or do words have no meaning
Xing ren is said ‘huang yan??’ what kind of establishment are they running. I would like to speak to the manager of pinyin.
OH THANK GOD it was Canto that’s why only some words made sense to me based off phonetics I know at all phew PHEW”
So you know, only do that—with caution.
In (Mandarin) recitation, this feels like it has iambs almost? I caught my fingers moving up and down on the tracking pad, expecting the movement of the line.
““xíng is a type of ballad” is this then a different sing from ‘how to read chinese poetry’’s xing, which was either the nature image the poem used to establish its mood or juxtapose its core content or the turn between the two components?
“Po Chüi’s famous ‘Song of Everlasting Grief’”: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Translation:Song_of_Everlasting_Regret We read this one! https://dankodes.dreamwidth.org/9382.html
how the fuck do they get Po Chüi from Bai Juyi?
“Rather it is a completely original poem written in the ballad style.” Is that common?
Fascinating point about the Book of Odes’ reputation
enclitic /ɪnˈklɪtɪk,ɛnˈklɪtɪk/ a word pronounced with so little emphasis that it is shortened and forms part of the preceding word, for example n't in can't.
hendiadys /hɛnˈdʌɪədɪs/ the expression of a single idea by two words connected with ‘and’, e.g. nice and warm, when one could be used to modify the other, as in nicely warm.
“Lǒng-mǔ: lǒng on its own is used of the baulks of earth which divide the fields in the Chinese countryside.” Like hedgerows but raised dirt?
“Note that Chinese frequently uses a rhetorical question where in English we would use a negative statement. The oddity of much translation from the Chinese is due to the failure of translators to make allowance for this fact. It isn’t English to say ‘Dare I tell you?’ when we mean ‘I dare not tell you’.” An interesting note!
“Bǎi-cǎo: the ‘hundred’ in such expressions is really little more than a plural prefix: ‘the grasses of the field’.” and this
Kokonor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qinghai_Lake
“Jiū-jiū” didn’t this crop up in shi jing too?
Re: 2. 兵車行 Bīng-chē xíng
Re: 2. 兵車行 Bīng-chē xíng
Plural prefix is a better term than 'imaginary number' for this phenomenon, but Cocoa's suggestion of indefinite number is definitely the precise term.
I've decided I'm not a fan of the method of translating each character with minimal grammatical correction. It's confusing to me.
Baike notes:
This is part of the Yuefu movement (which Hawkes calls ballads).
The "fathers, mothers, wives, and children" shows the age range of the conscripts, both the young (with parents sending them off) and the older (with children)
Could be satirizing two different campaigns against the Tubo or against the Nanzhao.
Re: 2. 兵車行 Bīng-chē xíng
That's a good point re: the age range.
Re: 2. 兵車行 Bīng-chē xíng