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: 4. 月夜 Yuè-yè

[superborb]

Do you know how many poems are called Yueye. Do you know how many Tang dynasty poems are called Yueye (three with Baike entries). It's okay at least Du Fu only wrote one.

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

[x_los]

Yeah I wanna say image but it's not an IMGAE. So maybe a motif.