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

[superborb]

Oh, euphuism sounds fascinating, esp since the wiki article says similar phenomena appeared in other European languages?

Optimally, Chinese buildings face south to maximize sunlight.

Weirdly, Baike says Du Fu was 6 when he saw the dancer?

Hawkes' “Bō-làn: lit. ‘big waves and little waves’: i.e. every movement and gesture.” is a bit odd to me. Baike's gloss is more like, "something with varying undulations, here used to indicate the artistic style of the dance".

I'd think the dead grasses are just to show how desolate it is?

The ending is lamenting the vicissitudes of life, no?

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]

"Weirdly, Baike says Du Fu was 6 when he saw the dancer?"

This is odd/interesting bc there's a big contention in Victorian circles over how old Dickens actually WAS when he saw the famous clown Grimaldi, whose autobiography he ghost wrote, and he was about this young. People were saying he couldn't possibly remember the performance itself, and he was 'how very dare you' about it. So there's sort of a repeated case in a way of artists having STRONG early memories of other artists' work.

mm, I think I'm just looking at "an old man who does not know where he is going, but whose feet, calloused from much walking in the wild mountains, make him wearier and wearier of the pace." and thinking, what are the specific details herein adding.