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: 2.2 投翰林學士綦崈禮啟 A Letter Submitted to Hanlin Academician Qi Chongli

[pengwern]

ahhhh I hope you’re feeling better!

I guess that the self deprecation and abasement sound really off and weird in english bc it’s like.....only literati hearkening to these super mannered forms that says shit like this [忝在葭莩，敢茲塵瀆] it’s worded into elegant four word phrases..,,,：「孩兒叨賴母親福庇，忝中狀元，欽賜遊街。」basically I’ve only seen this character ‘shame’ used by scholar characters being formal; in the other sentence there “shamefully I became zhuangyuan” its direct equivalent there is “for my sins”.
but bc english goes for literal meaning alone it gets out of context a bit?
I could be wrong though about all of that, it’s just that the intensity of expressions used here is part of how they (the literati tend to say things) which isn’t to say that other people wouldn’t also say cringing things, but gushiwen words the meaning of the last sentence as “I’m fortunate to be the distant relative of (guy), sorry to have bothered you.”

Everything in this is in the kind of hugely....formal parallelism that novels have conditioned me to find hot....man really devastating stuff narrated with refined elegance and restraint is my kryptonite
aaaa /o\ she’s admitting to all this but in a virtuoso display of wordsmith skills, girlboss something idk XD

Re: 2.2 投翰林學士綦崈禮啟 A Letter Submitted to Hanlin Academician Qi Chongli

[x_los]

Yeah, I can REALLY see that re literal expressions vs references and more casually-intended standard turns of phrase.