The Works of Li Qingzhao, introduction and poems 1.1 to 1.5

[x_los]

This week we're reading The Works of Li Qingzhao, freely available via De Gruyter's Library of Chinese Humanities in Mandarin and English and via several publication formats, including two open access options (the pdf appears to be better formatted than the ebook; it might be worth someone letting them know as much). We're starting with the introduction and poems 1.1 to 1.5, inclusive.

This collection uses footnotes and end notes to explicate the work (though none of this week's poems has an end note).

We might get into more English exegesis, but this week the Introduction gives us more than enough of that to be getting on with.

CLP has an episode on Li Qingzhao you might find relevant.

Comments

Introduction

[x_los]

Too long to reproduce here, so I'll skip to my comments.

the purge of the so-called Yuanyou 元­祐 faction: what *about*

"collating multiple copies of each book their acquired" so are they PDFing these before proofing?

"a student in the National University." so what's this set-up like in this period? I only know about the exams.

"I couldn’t stand it, so I decided that we would eat no more than one meat dish per meal and dress in no more than one colored garment at a time.

I wore no pearls or feathers in my hair and kept no gilded or embroidered article in my household." what's the significance of this?

This introduction writer is a bit quick to assign sinister meanings to statements that could easily be read other ways.

"Hanlin academician" ayyy

"Li Qingzhao drifted about “on the rivers and lakes” until she died" oh as in /rivers and lakes/?

"how gen- erally unlike what we would expect from a woman’s hand they are" calling it, this intro writer is a guy. Ronald Egan rather than Anna M. Shields

One way of reading this location of her financial position is that she could have sounded MORE critical of her first husband than she actually was, in an effort to secure financial security. She could also have been Constanze in Amadeus, talking him up in an effort at same.

"who could readily pass, to the audience’s ears, as the singer herself" eugh, people are always sloppy about this

"But in that earlier appearance they had been attributed to another author or had appeared without any attribution, meaning that the earlier compiler had no idea who the author was." So are already popular anon pieces simply being attributed to her?

"There is a long-standing and seldom examined tradition of reading all of Li Qingzhao’s song lyrics as unmiti- gated expressions of her life and feelings. This habit is problematic for a couple of reasons." no shit dude, that sucks ass

"The two trends simultaneously brought more and more attention to what Li Qingzhao had accomplished as a writer and made her decision to remarry after Zhao Mingcheng’s death less and less easy to accept. Some- thing had to give, because the contradiction between her literary fame and her conduct as a widow was becoming unbearable." v interesting considered in light of the retrospective refashioning of Austen's reputation, which is similar on both counts

"memorial halls" ?

You could also view not mentioning the remarriage as--it was a 100 day non-event where she divorced him. It's like, hook ups with an abuser. How big a deal is it?

This is a convincingly argued point about the tenor of her reputation over time

Re: Introduction

[douqi]

The National University is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guozijian

More about their research/archival process in this entry on Zhao Mingcheng here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhao_Mingcheng

'Rivers and lakes' — I bet that's 'jianghu' in the original text.

"I couldn’t stand it, so I decided that we would eat no more than one meat dish per meal and dress in no more than one colored garment at a time. I wore no pearls or feathers in my hair and kept no gilded or embroidered article in my household." — I assume they were spending all their money on books/storing and maintaining their collection? Would be super helpful if the editors had included the original Chinese text for these quotations.

"reflecting contemporary Ming notions of a “talented scholar and beauty” (caizi jiaren 才子佳人) match." — yeah, that only works if Li Qingzhao was the caizi, and Zhao Mingcheng the jiaren.

"There is a long-standing and seldom examined tradition of reading all of Li Qingzhao’s song lyrics as unmitigated expressions of her life and feelings." — there's sometimes an inverse thing happening with the interpretation of male ci writers' pieces. E.g. Xin Qiji's Green Jade Table, ostensibly about running into a hot girl at a Lantern Festival, is typically read as a commentary on the state of society (see https://londonjournalspress.com/on-the-english-translation-of-song-ci-poetry-under-the-three-level-poetry-translation-criteria-a-case-study-of-green-jade-table-lantern-festival)

Re: Introduction

[superborb]

Are you castigating that 30 volume work he produced? Hahahahhaha

And agree re: interpretation on the line about their austerity.