Little Primer of Du Fu, Poems 6-10

[x_los]

This is week 2/7 on 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.

This week we're reading poems 6 through 10, inclusive.

How to Read Chinese Poetry in Context's Chapter 15, "Du Fu: The Poet as Historian", is relevant to Hawkes' focus. (Next week's Additional Readings are more focused on poetics.)

Comments

Re: 7. 哀江頭 Āi jiāng-tóu

[x_los]

- I know WHY but it's inherently comic that all these little kids chinese poetry educational materials are like ':) :) and so the hearts of the emperor's grandchildren were ripped from their chests in public by the pitiless barbarians, and it's all the fault of that feckless whore the emperor carried on with' *cheery flute music* memorise this kids, it's Du Fu.

- Huh so chang’an the imperial capital forever has a Serpentine Lake in its major park; London also has a river sculpted/terraformed  into such a shape and called that. Is theirs translated like that after ours, is it a random coincidence, is ours called that after theirs, or was our current park design a post opium war conscious and modelled attempt to aesthetically build an imperial capital? No idea but it’s interesting. 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Serpentine

It’s interesting bc this would have been a period of chinoiserie circa the rising popularity of tea in upper class circles:

“Chinoiserie entered European art and decoration in the mid-to-late 17th century; the work of Athanasius Kircher influenced the study of orientalism. The popularity of chinoiserie peaked around the middle of the 18th century when it was associated with the rococo style and with works by François Boucher, Thomas Chippendale, and Jean-Baptist Pillement. It was also popularized by the influx of Chinese and Indian goods brought annually to Europe aboard English, Dutch, French, and Swedish East India Companies.”

- “Yì xī ní-jīng xià Nán-yuàn
I remember formerly rainbow-banner descending-to South-park”

Du Fu used to ship Cartman/Kenny, huh

- This sounds silly, but this movement from rainbow banner as a metonymy/symbol and stand in for the emperor to 'but every creature in the park was adding to its colour' really strikes me in this fresh way re what metonymy can do in a piece, the strategy and care with which it can operate. The parallel here between the emperor's colour and finery and the colour and finery of the people/creatures of his realm doubles back onto that traditional image of the emperor as the quintessence of his land, a barometer and lodestone. 

- “maids of honour equipped with bows and arrows” interesting gender point

Re: 7. 哀江頭 Āi jiāng-tóu

[superborb]

Huuuh so unfortunately the Qujiang is now the name of a district elsewhere in China, making googling kind of difficult. However, the name would directly translate to something like 'the crooked river' so I have to imagine either one influenced the other or they were both influenced by something else?