dankodes | Little Primer of Du Fu, Poems 16-20

This is week 4/7 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 16 through 20, inclusive.

How to Read Chinese Poetry (https://dankodes.dreamwidth.org/1483.html?thread=16843#cmt16843) 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 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 9

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

奉濟驛重送嚴公四韻
Fèng-jì yì chóng sòng Yán gōng sì yùn

遠送從此別
1. Yuǎn-sòng cóng cǐ bié,
青山空復情
2. Qīng shān kōng fù qíng!
幾時杯重把
3. Jǐ-shí bēi chóng bǎ,
昨夜月同行
4. Zuó-yè yuè tóng xíng?
列郡謳歌惜
5. Liè-jùn ōu-gē xī;
三朝出入榮
6. Sān cháo chū-rù róng.
江村獨歸去
7. Jiāng-cūn dú guī-qù,
寂寞養殘生
8. Jì-mò yǎng cán-shēng.

Read Aloud: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVS6kqBjF-g

A Second Farewell at the Feng-chi Post-station to His Grace the Duke of Cheng

The long farewell journey must at last end here. In vain do the green hills renew my emotion. How long will it be before we again hold the winecups in our hands and walk together under last night’s moon? The songs of two provinces regret your parting. Three reigns have seen you distinguished at court and in the field. Now I must return alone to my village by the river, to support my remaining days in quiet solitude.

- all these dudes pronounce the poem MUCH slower than they normally speak they really lay down an INTONING: even when it's not for kids they go SLOW, it's like you can tell this is the RSC voice, but Chinese. like for my purposes of--trying to learn how to guess what sound is gonna correspond to pinyin, I like it, but in RSC IAMBIC VOICE it kills performances, and it took a WHILE but it got David Tenant in the end and now he sing songs rather than speaks and it's a disappointment bc his hamlet was revelatory in its freshness, and his Much Ado strong. his Richard II was comparatively feeble

- “to couriers and mandarins travelling on official business.” https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/01/where-does-mandarin-come/579073/ D pointed me to this explanation of where Mandarin for officials and the language comes from. its interesting tho that the english usage for civil servants is SO official that Hawkes uses it here. Indeed, it enters British discussion of their own civil servants on the understanding that the comparison point is China. Hawkes could easily say—this is not what they'd call themselves, but rather X.

Baike says that Yan Wu visited Du Fu in his cottage and thus produced a deep friendship, but weren't they friends from court? Or is this just like, baike being poetical and not literal again.

Little Primer of Du Fu, Poems 16-20

18. 奉濟驛重送嚴公四韻 Fèng-jì yì chóng sòng Yán gōng sì yùn

Re: 18. 奉濟驛重送嚴公四韻 Fèng-jì yì chóng sòng Yán gōng sì yùn

Re: 18. 奉濟驛重送嚴公四韻 Fèng-jì yì chóng sòng Yán gōng sì yùn