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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.
4. 月夜 Yuè-yè
Yuè-yè
今 夜 鄜 州 月
1. Jīn-yè Fū-zhōu yuè,
閨 中 只 獨 看
2. Guī-zhōng zhǐ dú kān.
遙 憐 小 兒 女
3. Yáo lián xiǎo ér-nǚ,
未 解 憶 長 安
4. Wèi jiě yì Cháng-ān.
香 霧 雲 鬟 溼
5. Xiāng wù yún-huán shī,
清 輝 玉 臂 寒
6. Qīng huī yù-bì hán.
何 時 倚 虛 幌
7. Hé-shí yǐ xū huǎng,
雙 照 淚 痕 乾
8. Shuāng zhào lèi-hén gān?”
Read Aloud: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kntjN7i-ICY
Moonlit Night
Tonight in Fu-chou my wife will be watching this moon alone. I think with tenderness of my far-away little ones, too young to understand about their father in Ch’ang-an. My wife’s soft hair must be wet from the scented night-mist, and her white arms chilled by the cold moonlight. When shall we lean on the open casement together and gaze at the moon until the tears on our cheeks are dry?
Re: 4. 月夜 Yuè-yè
“The rules that we do need to remember when reading poems in Regulated Verse are (1) that the poem must be one of eight lines in four couplets; and (2) that the two middle couplets (lines 3–4 and lines 5–6) must each be antithetically arranged: i.e. line 4 must parallel line 3 in both grammar and meaning, and line 6 must parallel line 5 in the same way.”: Lol but that is nice to know
Without that explication I was not gonna understand those tears as happy
Re: 4. 月夜 Yuè-yè
I still don't understand why the tears are happy
Re: 4. 月夜 Yuè-yè
Re: 4. 月夜 Yuè-yè
Baike gives several cites of other poems that use the fragrance of the hair as a ... trope? And it's the fragranced ointment applied to the hair that gives it scent of course.
OH Baike's gloss / vernacular TL make it clear that it's happy tears because they've thinking of being reunited and shedding happy tears looking at the moon together.
Re: 4. 月夜 Yuè-yè