Little Primer of Du Fu, Poems 26 - 30

[x_los]

This is week 6/7 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 26 through 30, 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 18

Comments

Re: 29. 閣夜 Gé yè

[x_los]

“a public building in K’uei-chou, part of which was placed at Tu Fu’s disposal in the autumn of 766” for what?

“local aborigines” they aren’t considered culturally homogenous?

Horse Leaper: weird-ass choice

“Sleeping Dragon and Horse Leaper ended in the yellow dust. Idle to feel melancholy at the vexations of life and the lack of news from friends and kinsmen!” so what’s this ending? Statesmen and emperors associated with this area long ago have passed away, so what’s the point of fretting over news of danger to your relations? What’s the relationship between these lines?

Re: 29. 閣夜 Gé yè

[superborb]

It seems like it's just housing for him?

Sichuan in particular still has quite a large ethnic minority population. Baike is incidentally sure that the songs are the songs of the local ethnic minority, not foreign songs.

Baike makes an interesting comment that the ending is how his loneliness doesn't mean much in the face of the more important chaos that is approaching.