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: 8. 春宿左省 Chūn sù zuǒ-shěng

[x_los]

- You know I really appreciate Hawkes having clumped a few temporally linked ones together, to create a sense of evolving narrative.
- Huh I like this recurring imagery of grand houses as ‘many doors’
- Remembrancer: a person who reminds another of something. a person engaged to do this. a reminder; memento; souvenir. (usually initial capital letter) King's Remembrancer.
- Omissioners: not a typo. Crops up in more Tang historical texts. I can’t really find out what IS though. Possibly memorisation specialists?
- Levée: The levee (from the French word lever, meaning "getting up" or "rising")[1] was traditionally a daily moment of intimacy and accessibility to a monarch or leader. It started out as a royal custom, but in British America it came to refer to a reception by the sovereign’s representative, which continues to be a tradition in Canada with the New Year's levee; in the United States a similar gathering was held by several presidents. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levee_(ceremony)#For_the_aristocracy)
- *Sighs in SV* yeah I—also know Yuan is wall.
- Jiū-jiū: this fucking guy again!
- “little bells which hung beneath the eaves of the palace roofs.”: Oh, huh
- ninefold sky: ?

Re: 8. 春宿左省 Chūn sù zuǒ-shěng

[superborb]

Remembrancer seems to be the translation for the zuoshiyi (left admonisher) and I think omissioner is the right version of this. During the Tang dynasty, the left is the higher ranked.

Re: 8. 春宿左省 Chūn sù zuǒ-shěng

[pengwern]

ninefold sky 九重天 is a set phrase, as baidu explains nine is a stand in for multi/myriad/the largest number, so the manifold sky? all those layers of clouds... very fantasy novel fuel material
https://baike.baidu.com/item/九重天/5195

Re: 8. 春宿左省 Chūn sù zuǒ-shěng

[x_los]

Oooh, cloud layering. I got stuck on the nine and some set cosmology rather than going, Chinese likes Large Scale Numbers.