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: How to Read Chinese Poetry in Context's Chapter 15, "Du Fu: The Poet as Historian"

[superborb]

Turned into fish, from reading the baike vernacular tl, seems to be something like, so many dead bodies like fish in the river.

The hair in knots is the way they're translating the way people would "bind their hair on coming of age" (dictionary defn).

Counting as a common person I think is roughly the equivalent of being able to hold your head up / looking at yourself in the mirror?