dankodes | Little Primer of Du Fu, Poems 11-15

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

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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.

- 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?

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.

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.

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.

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

Little Primer of Du Fu, Poems 11-15

11. 月夜憶舍弟 Yuè-yè yì shè-dì

Re: 11. 月夜憶舍弟 Yuè-yè yì shè-dì

Re: 11. 月夜憶舍弟 Yuè-yè yì shè-dì

Re: 11. 月夜憶舍弟 Yuè-yè yì shè-dì

Re: 11. 月夜憶舍弟 Yuè-yè yì shè-dì

Re: 11. 月夜憶舍弟 Yuè-yè yì shè-dì