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

[douqi]

Re titles: you will be grateful for Du Fu's titles after you meet Li Shangyin and his endless slew of poems all called 'Untitled', trust me.

Re: 'Her flashing swoop was like the nine suns falling, transfixed by the Mighty Archer’s arrows; her soaring flight like the lords of the sky driving their dragon teams aloft' — there's a mismatch in the translation, I think. The two lines are structured in the same way in the original, so their subjects should either be Mighty Archer/lords of the sky OR nine suns falling/dragon teams. Not the current pick-and-mix.

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]

ah right so agent/agent or object/object