The Works of Li Qingzhao, Prose 2.1 through 2.5

[x_los]

After a delay in which I came down with various interesting illnesses, we return to 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). This week we're reading the prose chapter: 2.1 through 2.5, inclusive.

This collection uses footnotes and end notes to explicate the work. A few of this week's poems have footnotes, so look out for that.

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

Comments

Re: 2.3 金石錄後序 Afterword to Catalogue of Inscriptions on Metal and Stone

[x_los]

‘ding tripods, steamers, li tripods,’ ?

‘colophons on all those inscriptions that suffice either to affirm the Way of the sages’ ? so just–salutary moral shit?

A scholar so inclined could get something out of this and working with Anglosphere writing on misers such as the titles cited in Our Mutual Friend (lives of the misers, et al)

‘The Zhaos and Lis are undistinguished families that have always been poor.’ Bitch you JUST SAID—

‘ Once awakened to the flavor of this activity,’ curious phrasing

This is dumb to say but it really is interesting that someone in 1134 has a concept of earlier writing as *ancient*.

I still don’t have a clear concept of these nobles’ functional relationships to their ancestral homes: the extent to which they live there, their relationship to these places’ rents and governance.

The transition into this ‘no more than one meat dish’ bit was awkward in the intro, and it’s awkward now. It seems to relate to frugality in order to buy books, the theme of this section of the essay, but to have an strange causal relationship to the rest of the paragraph it sits in.

What IS the Zuo Commentary?

“Formerly, when Xiao Yi was conquered at Jiangling, he did not regret the loss of his kingdom, but he did destroy his books and paintings [so that his enemies would not obtain them]. When Yang Guang was over- thrown at Jiangdu, he did not bemoan his own death, but he did arrange to take his books and paintings with him into the afterlife.” This is the stupidest shit I ever heard, I am appalled

I think you can read her husband as careless, but perhaps also read both of them as completely unprepared for and ignorant of the scale of the coming conflict. And honestly, who can prepare for or immediately gauge and adapt to that level of crisis? Ought we to live in expectation of it?

Re: 2.3 金石錄後序 Afterword to Catalogue of Inscriptions on Metal and Stone

[superborb]

Dictionary defns: ding is ancient cooking cauldron with two looped handles and three or four legs, li is ancient ceramic three-legged vessel used for cooking with cord markings on the outside and hollow legs.

Zuo Commentary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zuo_Zhuan