Little Primer of Du Fu, Poems 1-5

[x_los]

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. 

Comments

Re: 3. 麗人行 Lì-rén xíng

[x_los]

“Yang Kuei-fei, now Empress in all but name, and her sisters the Duchess of Kuo, the Duchess of Ch’in, and the Duchess of Han.” Uhhhh how did ALL these sisters marry SO fucking well?

fête champêtre /ˌfɛt ʃɒ̃ˈpɛtr(ə),French fɛt ʃɑ̃pɛtʀ/ noun an outdoor entertainment such as a garden party.

Ch’ang-an: I have never in my life seen it spelled Like This

“Tu Fu’s description of the scene contains just that mixture of admiration, envy, and disgust which exhibitions of high living and conspicuous consumption are liable to arouse in the bourgeois breast.” Ah yeah I thought that was the vibe! Hateration! in the dancery

Lustrations: Lustratio was an ancient Greek and ancient Roman purification ritual. It included a procession and in some circumstances the sacrifice of a pig (sus), a ram (ovis), and a bull (taurus) (suovetaurilia).

Okay so do they retain enough of a sense of this picnic as a purification ritual, and a commotion to the natural, that the extravagance and artifice are rather obscene?

Passement: an ornamental braid or decorative trimming resembling lace and made of gold, silver, or silk threads.

Bandeaux: a narrow band worn round the head to hold the hair in position.


“Roasted camel-hump” what the fuck

“Bā-zhēn: the Chinese have a passionate weakness for numbered categories. There is an ancient text which enumerates eight particularly delicious and costly dishes; but the expression is used here to mean simply ‘delicacies’. The number is not meant to be taken seriously.” Just like-—wake me up when the numbers mean anything

Frogbit is an attractive aquatic plant that floats on the surface of ponds, lakes and still waterways. Looking like a small water-lily

“an incestuous relationship with his cousin, the Duchess of Kuo.” Cousins are incest for them?

“

Hsi Wang Mu, the Fairy Queen who rules over the Garden of Paradise in the Mountain of Kunlun” where can I learn more about this concept of fae?

billets-doux: love letters

Kingfisher-feathers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tian-tsui

“And now, with music of flutes and drums mournful enough to move the very gods, ” yeah you can taste the sarcasm

Re: 3. 麗人行 Lì-rén xíng

[douqi]

The sisters' 'Duchess' titles, as far as I can make out, are not titles by marriage. They were conferred directly by the emperor.

Yang Kuei-fei (or Yang Guifei in contemporary pinyin) is of course the artist also known as Strangled Girl.

Paternal cousins sharing the same surname is incest. Maternal cousins not sharing the same surname is generally a highly acceptable marital prospect. This is not meant to make sense.

Re: 3. 麗人行 Lì-rén xíng

[x_los]

Oooooh god that's a BIG title to just Create that'd be such a faff in like Tudor terms

a somewhat similar incest regulation system is described in Golden Bough, organised around totem-assignment