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: Ch 18, A Synthesis: Rhythm, Syntax, and Vision of Chinese Poetry

[pengwern]

[the “round toad,” a Chinese mythical metaphor for the moon,” ??]
you know how chang e and that woodcutter wu guy and the bunny live on the moon? there’s also a (gold) toad (more elegant/archaic term 蟾蜍 rather than the hilarious 蛤蟆 which seems earthier）there, so people use it as part of the florid vocab for the moon all the time.

Re: Ch 18, A Synthesis: Rhythm, Syntax, and Vision of Chinese Poetry

[x_los]

ahh I didn't know they had a roommate

Re: Ch 18, A Synthesis: Rhythm, Syntax, and Vision of Chinese Poetry

[pengwern]

Sometimes the moon pavilion is also called 蟾宮 toad palace _@ but in context it sounds elegant! (蟾宮折桂 to pluck osmanthus at the toad palace also means succeeding when you take the metitocracy exams)

the toad is from the arrangement of craters upon the lunar surface, similar to the rabbit in many other mythologies.
...also a three footed crow 三足乌 lives on the sun, because sometimes they saw sunspots, those darker patches with golden tongues of flame flickering out.