Little Primer of Du Fu, Poems 11-15

[x_los]

This is week 3/7 on David Hawkes' Little Primer of Du Fu. I'll replicate the poems themselves here, but as this book contains considerable exegesis I advise you to grab this copy.

 

This week we're reading poems 11 through 15, inclusive.

 

How to Read Chinese Poetry has two chapters on forms Du Fu uses extensively:

 

Ch 8, Recent Style Shi Poetry, Pentasyllabic Regulated Verse (Wuyan Lüshi) 

Ch 9, Recent Style Shi Poetry, Heptasyllabic Regulated Verse (Qiyan Lüshi) 

 

Three other chapters on other verse forms that Du Fu sometimes employs, or which people quoting Du Fu employ, also mention him:

 

Ch 10,  Recent Style Shi Poetry, Quatrains (Jueju): some mention of Du Fu’s “Three Quatrains, No. 3”

Ch 14, Ci Poetry,  Long Song Lyrics on Objects (Yongwu Ci): some mention of Du Fu's “Beautiful Lady” (Jiaren)

Ch 18, A Synthesis:  Rhythm, Syntax, and Vision of Chinese Poetry: some mention of Du Fu’s poem “The Jiang and Han Rivers” 

 

Additional Reading for this Week: Chapter 8

Comments

11. 月夜憶舍弟 Yuè-yè yì shè-dì

[x_los]

月夜憶舍弟
Yuè-yè yì shè-dì

戍 鼓 斷 人 行
1. Shù gǔ duàn rén xíng,
邊 秋 一 雁 聲
2. Biān qiū yí yàn shēng.
露 從 今 夜 白
3. Lù cóng jīn-yè bái,
月 是 故 鄉 明
4. Yuè shì gù-xiāng míng.
有 弟 皆 分 散
5. Yǒu dì jiē fēn-sàn,
無 家 問 死 生
6. Wú jiā wèn sǐ-shēng.
寄 書 長 不 達
7. Jì-shū cháng bù dá,
況 乃 未 休 兵
8. Kuàng nǎi wèi xiū bīng.

Read Aloud: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u72fymBb2VI

Thinking of My Brothers on a Moonlit Night

Travel is interrupted by the war-drums of the garrisons. The sound of a solitary wild goose announces the coming of autumn to the frontier. From tonight onwards the dew will be white. The moon is that same moon which shines down on my birthplace. My brothers are scattered in different places. I have no home to tell me whether they are alive or dead. The letters we write never seem to reach their destination; and it will be worse now that we are at war once more.

Re: 11. 月夜憶舍弟 Yuè-yè yì shè-dì

[x_los]

- The CLP has a podcast on this poem, actually: https://www.chineseliteraturepodcast.com/?p=235 

The Read Aloud audio uses Xu where Hawkes uses Shu, and reverses the first two syllables of line 2 (on the card, not out loud).

“My Brothers” does the collective term he uses not also include his sister?

Is she-di different from shidi?

‘Ssu’ that is a wild way to write a Chinese character

Odd that Hawkes believes so much that the named times in these poems correspond to a real composition time, rather than being a mere poetic conceit.

“From tonight onwards the dew will be white.” Is he just saying there will be frost on the grass from here on out?

Re: 11. 月夜憶舍弟 Yuè-yè yì shè-dì

[ehyde]

The translation I have says "from this night on, dew will whiten to frost" (although this version seems to be going for something more poetic than literal). The "look, a clue!" commentary was weird tbh but on the other hand, associating it with a holiday that would normally be spent with family adds to the loneliness of it, whether it was literally written then or not.

Re: 11. 月夜憶舍弟 Yuè-yè yì shè-dì

[x_los]

I'm starting to think that what Hawkes doesn't quite say is that occasional poetry, composed on/for moments, is such a tradition in this canon that it's often or mostly the case? So for an Anglophone, I'd suspect poetic conceit re timing first and foremost. I think for Chinese poetry, it's so often time-located at least in its very initial framing that I'm supposed to first and foremost go, probably that is true.

Re: 11. 月夜憶舍弟 Yuè-yè yì shè-dì

[superborb]

The term he uses is younger brothers, but Baike's gloss names all four siblings, so...

She-di is specifically younger brother, so different from shidi.

Yes on the frost.

Re: 11. 月夜憶舍弟 Yuè-yè yì shè-dì

[superborb]

Baike notes:

Glosses that geese were a metaphor for brothers, and so a lone goose indicates the brothers have been scattered.

Du Fu's family residence had been destroyed by the rebellion.

Baike goes with the 759 date

12. 佳人 Jiā-rén

[x_los]

佳人
Jiā-rén

絕 代 有 佳 人
1. Jué-dài yǒu jiā-rén,
幽 居 在 空 谷
2. Yōu-jū zài kōng gǔ
自 云 良 家 子
3. Zì yún liáng-jiā-zǐ,
零 落 依 草 木
4. Líng-luò yī cǎo-mù.
關 中 昔 喪 亂
5. Guān-zhōng xī sāng-luàn,
兄 弟 遭 殺 戮
6. Xiōng-dì zāo shā-lù.
官 高 何 足 論
7. Guān gāo hé zú lùn,
不 得 收 骨 肉
8. Bù-dé shōu gǔ-ròu.
世 情 惡 衰 歇
9. Shì-qíng wù shuāi-xiē,
萬 事 隨 轉 燭
10. Wàn-shì suí zhuǎn zhú.
夫 壻 輕 薄 兒
11. Fū-xū qīng-bó-ér,
新 人 美 如 玉
12. Xīn-rén měi rú yù.
合 昏 尚 知 時
13. Hé-hūn shàng zhī shí,
鴛 鴦 不 獨 宿
14. Yuān-yāng bù dú sù.
但 見 新 人 笑
15. Dàn jiàn xīn-rén xiào,
那 聞 舊 人 哭
16. Nǎ wén jiù-rén kū!
在 山 泉 水 清
17. Zài shān quán-shuǐ qīng,
出 山 泉 水 濁
18. Chū shān quán-shuǐ zhuó.
侍 婢 賣 珠 廻
19. Shì-bì mài zhū huí,
牽 蘿 補 茅 屋
20. Qiān luó bǔ máo-wū.
摘 花 不 插 髮
21. Zhé huā bù chā fà,
采 柏 動 盈 掬
22. Cǎi bǎi dòng yíng jū.
天 寒 翠 袖 薄
23. Tiān hán cuì xiù bó,
日 暮 倚 修 竹
24. Rì mù yǐ xiū zhú.

Read Aloud: https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV165411V7wP/

A Fine Lady

There is a fine lady of matchless beauty who lives obscurely in a lonely valley. She says she is the daughter of a good family, driven by misfortunes into the wilds. When of late the heartlands were convulsed with disorder, her brothers met their deaths at the hands of the rebels. The high rank they had held was all unavailing: she could not entreat their dead bodies for burial.

The way of the world is to hate what has had its day; and fortune is as fickle as a lamp-flame. Her husband is not faithful to her. His new woman is as lovely as a jewel. Even the vetch-tree knows when it is evening; and the mandarin ducks do not sleep alone. Yet he has eyes only for the smiles of the new woman: no ear for the sobbing of the old. In the mountain the waters of the stream are clear, but once they have left the mountain they are muddy.

When her servant-girl gets back from selling her pearls, she has to pull creepers to cover the holes in the thatched roof with. The flowers which the lady picks are not for wearing in her hair; of bitter cypress she plucks many a handful. Her gay blue sleeves are thin against the cold. As evening falls she rests by the tall bamboos.

Re: 12. 佳人 Jiā-rén

[x_los]

“There is no reason at all why we shouldn’t think of it as a faithful record of a real encounter.” Is there any compelling reason to think his poetry diaristic in that way?

“it is only when we know something about a person’s history that the trivialities of his dress and deportment begin to take on significance” nice point

“Nineteen Old Poems” oooh it’s the same style as those!

“Vetch is a well known legume also known as common vetch or tares.”

“Hé-hūn: the albizzia julibrissia, a tree whose vetch-like leaves fold up at night time: hence the lady’s remark about its ‘knowing the time’.” I don’t exactly know this line does, what is the significance of sensitivity to the time?

“Once a woman has left her husband a thousand things will be said and believed of her, even though she is innocent, and her reputation is ruined past recovery.” Is this really the meaning of the spring water line? I find it rather unclear.

What’s the final line doing?

—

How to Read Chinese Poetry, on another poem’s usage of a quote from this one: “Another level of equation is found in the second strophe, which contains an allusion to a couplet from the poem “Beautiful Lady” (Jiaren), by Du Fu (712–770): “The day is cold, her green sleeves thin; / The sun sets as she leans on slender bamboos.”11 Du Fu’s “Beautiful Lady” depicts a highbred woman who has become a wanderer after having lost her brothers and been abandoned by her husband in a time of chaos and disorder. To preserve her integrity and purity, she lives in seclusion and solitude. This comparison of the blossoming plum and the beautiful lady provides the background for the subsequent strophes.”

Re: 12. 佳人 Jiā-rén

[superborb]

Baike suggests this poem is dealing with how Du Fu sees his situation reflected in her.

Baike mentions in their analysis that the flickering light is a metaphor for time passing rapidly and the world changing.

Baike says multiple possible interpretations of the spring water line. In addition to the interpretation that Hawkes takes, there's also the interpretation that she is the clear water and the husband the muddy, and by staying on the mountain, she's refusing to become muddy. Or it's about chastity, or the two wives.

Baike's gloss is the tall bamboo is a metaphor for the noble principles of the lady.

Re: 12. 佳人 Jiā-rén

[x_los]

Ah, that makes sense re the final line. I do wonder if it's pulling on like, friends of winter bamboo imagery et al that doesn't occur to me. And of course that bamboo kicker works better if you take Baike's line on the immediately preceding spring water question as relating to her withdrawal as moral choice, as abstention from sin.

13. 夢李白 Mèng Lǐ Bái (1)

[x_los]

夢李白
Mèng Lǐ Bái (1)

死 別 已 吞 聲
1. Sǐ-bié yǐ tūn-shēng,
生 別 常 惻 惻
2. Shēng-bié cháng cè-cè.
江 南 瘴 癘 地
3. Jiāng-nán zhàng-lì dì,
逐 客 無 消 息
4. Zhú-kè wú xiāo-xī.
故 人 入 我 夢
5. Gù-rén rù wǒ mèng,
明 我 長 相 憶
6. Míng wǒ cháng xiāng-yì.
君 今 在 羅 網
7. Jūn jīn zài luó-wǎng,
何 以 有 羽 翼
8. Hé-yǐ yǒu yǔ-yì?
恐 非 平 生 魂
9. Kǒng fēi píng-shēng hún,
路 遠 不 可 測
10. Lù yuǎn bū kě cè.
魂 來 楓 林 青
11. Hún lái fēng-lín qīng,
魂 返 關 塞 黑
12. Hún fǎn guān-sài hēi.
落 月 滿 屋 梁
13. Luò yuè mǎn wū-liáng,
猶 疑 照 顏 色
14. Yóu yí zhào yán-sè!
水 深 波 浪 闊
15. Shuǐ shēn bō-làng kuò,
無 使 蛟 龍 得
16. Wú shǐ jiāo-lóng dé!

Read Aloud: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixvCcFWSEkA

Dreaming of Li Po (1)

After the separation of death one can eventually swallow back one’s grief, but the separation of the living is an endless, unappeasable anxiety. From pestilent Chiang-nan no news arrives of the poor exile. That my old friend should come into my dream shows how constantly he is in my thoughts. I fear that this is not the soul of the living man: the journey is so immeasurably far. When your soul left, the maple woods were green: on its return the passes were black with night. Lying now enmeshed in the net of the law, how did you find wings with which to fly here? The light of the sinking moon illumines every beam and rafter of my chamber, and I half expect it to light up your face. The water is deep, the waves are wide: don’t let the water-dragons get you!

Re: 13. 夢李白 Mèng Lǐ Bái (1)

[x_los]

- The Read Aloud version misses lines 6, 7 and 8. What gives? Only to reinsert 7 and 8 back before 13! Madness!

“Tu Fu was completely captivated by the older poet’s magnetic personality and treasured the memory of their brief association for the rest of his life, addressing a number of poems to him at different times and from different places." Gayyyy

“when news of an amnesty in which he was included reached him in the early summer of 759, he was little more than half-way to his place of exile.” This is the most involved version of this story I have read but it is: Still Funny

“Scholars accustomed to handling dated sources easily forget that information they can obtain in three-quarters of a minute by taking a book off a shelf” pre-internet. Cute.

What’s up with the dragons?

Re: 13. 夢李白 Mèng Lǐ Bái (1)

[superborb]

Baike says that the dragon line is to say that the situation is dangerous, that he should be afraid of misfortunes, and to be careful.

Re: 13. 夢李白 Mèng Lǐ Bái (1)

[x_los]

Yeah, just seems quite a big like, folkloric image to throw in there at the end. Maybe less jarring if you're more familiar with that as a danger in stories.

Re: 13. 夢李白 Mèng Lǐ Bái (1)

[superborb]

Mmm but isn't it just following the line of allusion?

14. 夢李白 Mèng Lǐ Bái (2)

[x_los]

夢李白
Mèng Lǐ Bái (2)

浮 雲 終 日 行
1. Fú-yún zhōng-rì xíng,
遊 子 久 不 至
2. Yóu-zǐ jiǔ bú zhì.
三 夜 頻 夢 君
3. Sān yè pín mèng jūn,
情 親 見 君 意
4. Qíng-qīn jiàn jūn yì.
告 歸 常 局 促
5. Gào-guī cháng jú-cù,
苦 道 來 不 易
6. Kǔ dào ‘Lái bú yì:
江 湖 多 風 波
7. ‘Jiāng-hú duō fēng-bō,
舟 楫 恐 失 墜
8. ‘Zhōu-jí kǒng shī-zhuì!’
出 門 搔 白 首
9. Chū mén sāo bái shǒu,
若 負 平 生 志
10. “Ruò fù píng-shēng zhì.
冠 蓋 滿 京 華
11. Guān-gài mǎn jīng-huá,
斯 人 獨 憔 悴
12. Sī-rén dú qiáo-cuì!
孰 云 網 恢 恢
13. Shú yún wǎng huī-huī?
將 老 身 反 累
14. Jiāng-lǎo shēn fǎn lèi!
千 秋 萬 歲 名
15. Qiān-qiū wàn-suì míng,
寂 寞 身 後 事
16. Jì-mò shēn-hòu shì!

Read Aloud: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcP0duWXy5E

Dreaming of Li Po (2)

All day long the floating clouds drift by, and still the wanderer has not arrived! For three nights running I have repeatedly dreamed of you. Such affectionate concern on your part shows your feelings for me! Each time you said goodbye you seemed so uneasy. ‘It isn’t easy to come’, you would say bitterly; ‘The waters are so rough. I am afraid the boat will capsize!’ Going out of my door you scratched your white head as if your whole life’s ambition had been frustrated.

The capital is full of new officials, yet a man like this is so wretched! Who is going to tell me that the ‘net is wide’ when this ageing man remains in difficulties? Imperishable renown is cold comfort when you can only enjoy it in the tomb!

Re: 14. 夢李白 Mèng Lǐ Bái (2)

[x_los]

“three distinct and incompatible theories of dream interpretation” syncretic religion, baybe

“it is perfectly possible, outside the realm of theology, to believe or half-believe several quite incompatible things simultaneously.” Yeah that’s true David

Thousand-autumn—isn’t this that show?

“as if your whole life’s ambition had been frustrated.” Hm, is Li Bai ambitious?

Re: 14. 夢李白 Mèng Lǐ Bái (2)

[superborb]

Baike notes:

The floating clouds are glossed as the wanderer floating about -- this is a common metaphor.

Hawkes tone for the last line is a bit more negative than I feel like the original (or the baike vernacular tl) is?

Re: 14. 夢李白 Mèng Lǐ Bái (2)

[x_los]

I feel like Hawkes might actually be pre-conditioned a little in his reading thereof because some quite famous like, Shakespeare treatments of this theme basically work on these lines/say roughly this.

15. 天末懷李白 Tiān-mò huái Lǐ Bái

[x_los]

天末懷李白
Tiān-mò huái Lǐ Bái

涼 風 起 天 末
1. Liáng-fēng qǐ tiān-mò,
君 子 意 如 何
2. Jūn-zǐ yì rú-hé?
鴻 雁 幾 時 到
3. Hóng-yàn jǐ-shí dào?
江 湖 秋 水 多
4. Jiāng-hú qiū-shuǐ duō!
文 章 憎 命 達
5. Wén-zhāng zèng mìng-dá,
魑 魅 喜 人 過
6. Chī-mèi xǐ rén guò.
應 共 寃 魂 語
7. Yīng gòng yuān-hún yǔ,
投 詩 贈 汨 羅
8. Tóu shī zèng Mì-luó.

Read aloud: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLQOUs4Kt08

Thoughts of Li Po from the World’s End

Here at the world’s end the cold winds are beginning to blow. What message have you for me, my master? When will the poor wandering goose arrive? The rivers and lakes are swollen with autumn’s waters. Art detests a too successful life; and the hungry goblins await you with welcoming jaws. You had better have a word with the ghost of that other wronged poet. Drop some verses into the Mi-lo as an offering to him!

Re: 15. 天末懷李白 Tiān-mò huái Lǐ Bái

[x_los]

“Chī-mèi are goblins who lurk in the hills and devour the unwary traveller.” Nice for fic

“The ‘wronged ghost’ is the spirit of the fourth-century B.C. poet Ch’ü Yüan, who was banished by the king of Ch’u as a result of false allegations made against him by his enemies and finally drowned himself in the river Mi-lo.” Is this dragon boat boy?

Re: 15. 天末懷李白 Tiān-mò huái Lǐ Bái

[superborb]

Yeah, Qu Yuan is dragon boat guy. Easier to google in pinyin, smh Hawkes

Re: 15. 天末懷李白 Tiān-mò huái Lǐ Bái

[superborb]

Baike does NOT think those goblins are literal goblins -- the gloss is villains or evil criminals. Also I think this word must be archaic, as Baike gives pinyin and defines it as hobgoblin.

Ch 8, Pentasyllabic Regulated Verse (Wuyan Lüshi)

[x_los]

“It saw an unprecedented rise of poetry’s status” wasn’t this always crazy-high, though?
What was shi poetry again?

“Each of the five genres has a unique pedigree of subgenres. The pedigree of the shi subgenre is the most complex of all. Owing to an almost uninterrupted development of about two and a half millennia, it had an ever-expanding corpus that continually needed to be reorganized. Tetrasyllabic shi poetry, represented by the Book of Poetry, is the oldest shi subgenre. The Book of Poetry is divided by provenance and function into three groups: airs (feng), odes (ya), and hymns (song)”

So this is fine on the origin and development of the shi, but honestly I still don’t know what differentiates a shi from the other four genres, like, why is a shi a a shi?

Honestly wiki doesn’t help for shit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shi_(poetry)

feel like 'shi' might be 'everything else' x_x the Hufflepuff of poetry forms. maybe pre-Han shi and Tang shi retain the same name due to historical convention/not being identifiably another category, but actually don't share many features bc of a historical process of drift? if that's what's up I wish the book would just say so tho, rather than going, 'well we all know what shi poetry is, the definition is uuuuuh. a secret. anyway!'

“One was the rise of heptasyllabic poetry (chaps. 9 and 10), a form only sporadically used before the Tang, to compete with the long- dominant pentasyllabic poetry” it’s fairly funny that this is the big innovation. ‘This one goes up—to *eleven*.’

Different way of saying ‘hating separation’ than mdzs

This argument about I and embodiment is a bit sketch

Mention Pound ONE more time. Do it. See what happens.

“or fifty-six words” ?

“The second structural rule is the optional observance of a four-stage progression: qi (to begin, to arise), cheng (to continue, to elaborate), zhuan (to make a turn), and he (to conclude, to enclose).”

If this style of poetry omits ‘I’ though, is it accurate to read it back in, in interpretation?

“Next, we can take the owers and bird to be the subjects of the trisyllabic seg- ments and come up with a third reading of the couplet:

As I feel the wretched time, flowers shed tears,
As I hate separation, birds are startled in their hearts.” Doesn’t make a ton of sense to me

“the ancient practice of lighting a fire atop a watchtower to relay the message of an invasion by nomads” Hawkes’ explanation, that it is instead about continuous ‘I’m still here’ signalling, parallels more neatly with ‘letters from home’ for me, which rely on extensive infrastructure to establish the same

The end of this section at the bottom of 168/top of 169 is rushed and blousy

“In collectively developing the lüshi form during the Qi–Liang and the Early Tang periods, Chinese poets, consciously or unconsciously, modeled it on the yin-yang cosmological scheme to such an extent that it practically became a microcosm of that scheme. Indeed, all its syntactic, structural, and metrical rules bear the imprint of the yin-yang operation”

Is poetry comforting to Du Fu in crisis because it is so controlled, representing both an operation of personal agency/skill and the formal constraint being fixed and rewarding, and also because it suggests this larger abiding cosmic order?

I don’t really get the end of poem 8.2

I do not see where the chapter writer’s getting this mountain beak shit from

Li Bai is just. A lot. He’s a fucking lot.

“In stark contrast to Li Bai’s unabashed deification of the self,” Li Bai and Blake would fuck. No questions at this time.

“The greenish haze, once I walk in to see it, disappears.” The fuck does that mean, Wang Wei?

“Wang Wei’s brilliant employment of these four terms in this poem attests to his consummate achievement as a visionary poet. With a touch of genius,” calm down sir

“a sensitive reader may experience some- thing like Buddhist enlightenment” sure.