Little Primer of Du Fu, Poems 21-25

[x_los]

This is week 5/7 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 21 through 25, 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 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 10

Comments

Re: 23. 丹青引 贈曹將軍霸 Dān-qīng yǐn Zèng Cáo jiāng-jūn Bà

[x_los]

“Tu Fu is not much given to flattery, though living in an age when poetic flattery was a commonplace; yet this poem is loaded with the most obsequious flatteries. If it is constantly borne in mind that they are addressed to an old man who had once been famous but is now living in poverty and obscurity, I think they will be found warm-hearted and touching, and far from repellent.” Awh

oblique tone?

Lady Wei—interesting, a woman

“When the colours in the portraits of distinguished statesmen and soldiers in the Rising Above the Mists Gallery had become faded, you, with your brush, gave them a new, fresh look. “ Oh so they value art restoration as a painting skill

“Our late Emperor’s horse Jade Flower was painted by artists as numerous as the hills, but the paintings were not good likenesses” the inherent comedy of important horse painting

“Surely there can be no one in the world quite as poor as you!” yeah du fu this is what I wanna hear in a poem in my honour, hit me with that good reminder I am poor

“Tu Fu’s use of the heptasyllabic Ballad Style for this sort of descriptive study […] was an entirely novel departure, quite different, it should be noted, from the ‘dramatic encounter’ found in the Ballad of the Army Carts (No. 2), the Ballad of Lovely Women (No. 3), and The Unfortunate Prince (No. 5), which are much closer in style to the ballad of tradition. Tu Fu’s motive for adopting so improbable a medium for a poem about a painter can only be guessed at” maybe compare with like, Dar Williams’ Rothko Song, Cohen’s Suzanne

“Jūn” oh hey is this the jun as in—xianxia jun titles?

“Qīng-mén ‘cold-door’: a poor man” wonder quite what the etymology is on that, it’s nearly guessable but not fully

“Fēng-liú, which can be either an adjective or a noun, is always a difficult word to translate: ‘stylish’, ‘romantic’, ‘glamour’, ‘panache’, ‘refinement’ are a few of its meanings.” Nice

Ooooh NOT the real Lady Wei

“Hall of Southern Fragrance” strikes me as an odd name, but there’s a similar one in CQL

“duke of O” surely there’s not a place just called: O

“Yù-mǎ: yù is one of the honorifics used in court language when referring to objects belonging to the Emperor. Thus his reading is yù-lǎn ‘Imperial surveying’, his writing yù-bǐ ‘Imperial brushwork’, and his seal yù-bǎo ‘the Imperial treasure’.” Okay but you could use this for some dodgy fic, right, where is the Ranwan—

“nine-fold true dragon emerges” here and in the final translation, this is a bit opaque to me

Gōng ‘duke’: not how I’ve heard it used, but continue

Re: 23. 丹青引 贈曹將軍霸 Dān-qīng yǐn Zèng Cáo jiāng-jūn Bà

[superborb]

If you recall, middle Chinese had different tones than modern -- four, but a different four than modern Mandarin -- and level vs oblique (the other three) is the important distinction for poetry rhyme patterns.

This is a different jun. Someday you'll start learning characters and it will be all downhill from there.

"Door" is a metonym for a family/household. As qing no longer has 'cold' as a top level meaning, the modern Chinese equivalent (per Baike) is 寒门, "cold-door".

Regret to inform that the pinyin version is of O is E. :)

Per baike's gloss, the nine heavens is referring to the palace, and the ancients thought horses over 8 chi became dragons. Baike's vernacular says "for a moment, the dragon-horse of the heavens appeared on the silk"

Re: 23. 丹青引 贈曹將軍霸 Dān-qīng yǐn Zèng Cáo jiāng-jūn Bà

[x_los]

"Someday you'll start learning characters and it will be all downhill from there." never

"Regret to inform that the pinyin version is of O is E." ...........