Little Primer of Du Fu, Poems 31 - 35

[x_los]

This is week 7/7 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 31 through 35, 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: Ch 4 of Chinese Poetry in Translation, “Purpose and Form: On the Translation of Classical Chinese Poetry”

Comments

Re: 31. 觀公孫大娘弟子舞劍器行 Guān Gōng-sūn dà-niáng dì-zǐ wǔ jiàn-qì xíng

[pengwern]

I cannot read grass/cursive _(´ཀ`」 ∠)_ Though apparently if you hand write enough it becomes clear (muscle...understanding of where the shortcuts occur?).
I think I’ve seen Gongsun daniang as a character in some games? Can’t remember where though.
The third from last line [When pleasure is at its height, sorrow follows. The moon rises in the east] is so very directional — feels almost like a description of a movie/video moment.
I feel like chinese/brush calligraphy is very close to dance though, even if western calligraphy with nibs doesn’t work out that way (I say, blithely swooshing away at it with flex nibs and shiny ink) there’s a video out recently that I’ll try to find of a performance of the Lan Ting Xu, a famous Wei-Jin era piece of calligraphy.
㸌如羿射九日落 About the shooting the suns line, there’s no comma or pause in the original, so maybe it’s just this translation!
Re title did you ever see one of those poems that in these days would be an i stagram post, I think li bai or someone with full date + tagged people in the picture.....they title poems like I label test tubes XD
Her dance is...I’ve never quite seen this particular way it gets used 剑器, where it’s sword....artifact? probably not the right word. Qi 器 is -ware, machines, things created by artifice etc https://baike.baidu.com/item/剑器/198168
I see it’s some kind of ceremonial object, or at least not an actual blade, which makes sense. Most dances from ancient (Xia dynasty on) times that were recorded are the shamanistic formal kinds for seasons turning, rain, large enterprises/events etc, all the way attenuated into the Tang as just performances now...
But back in the day you’d get the aristocrats participating in the dances too!

Re: 31. 觀公孫大娘弟子舞劍器行 Guān Gōng-sūn dà-niáng dì-zǐ wǔ jiàn-qì xíng

[x_los]

"I feel like chinese/brush calligraphy is very close to dance though, even if western calligraphy with nibs doesn’t work out that way (I say, blithely swooshing away at it with flex nibs and shiny ink) there’s a video out recently that I’ll try to find of a performance of the Lan Ting Xu, a famous Wei-Jin era piece of calligraphy."

This is a real point, and the PERFORMANCE element I didn't think of, I can see in re dance. I was thinking really 2d about it, just--the end product.

Oh that's a REALLY neat temporal note, that it might well have once had religious dimensions and now it's largely artistic/entertainment.

Re: 31. 觀公孫大娘弟子舞劍器行 Guān Gōng-sūn dà-niáng dì-zǐ wǔ jiàn-qì xíng

[pengwern]

from what I've seen glancingly in webnovels (>_>), even the final 2d product is spoken of as the marking left from the movement (and hand) that produced it? (I am assuming stuff like seal script etc doesn't count but I should look). all those comments on how sinewy, strong, or how delicate, or rushing like the wind etc the calligraphy is - I need to look it up later, but the term for the mark formed by the brush being semi-dry and thus leaving lots of empty white space has one of those energetic, sky or wind related names.