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: 1.望嶽 Wàng yuè

[douqi]

The Five Great Peaks: also Very Significant in wuxia. The peak of Huashan features as a meeting place for the martial arts greats in the first two books of Jin Yong's Condor Trilogy. Jin Yong's later novel The Smiling Proud Wanderer heavily features an alliance of five sects each of which are based on one of the Great Peaks. In that novel, one of the most powerful moves of the Taishan Sect is named after this poem: 岱宗如何.

PS Anon comment above is also me.