The Works of Li Qingzhao, Ci Poems 3.1 - 3.8

[x_los]

This week we start working with Li Qingzhao’s ci poetry. As usual, the book is 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). We're reading the poems 3.1 through 3.8 inclusive.

This collection uses footnotes and endnotes to explicate the work. There are three endnotes for this week’s group of poems, but these aren’t very rich in exegesis.

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

Comments

3.4

[x_los]

如夢令

常記溪亭日暮。
沈醉不知歸路。
興盡晚回舟
誤入藕花深處。 爭渡。
爭渡。 驚起一灘鷗鷺。

To the tune “As If in a Dream”

I often recall one sunset in a riverside pavilion. Having drunk too much, I forgot the way home. Knowing it was late, I started back in my boat at dusk
but paddled by mistake into a thick patch of lotuses. Struggling to get out,
struggling to get out,
I startled a whole sandbar of egrets into flight.

Re: 3.4

[x_los]

This is interesting because these songs normally have female performers, and the POV is associated with them, which implies that it’s fairly normal for a woman (maybe even a woman of the poet’s class?) to operate such a canoe? on her own. That sounds trivial, but there’s been a ton of writing on what the bike did for women’s mobility and real liberty in Europe, and in a land as dominated by waterways as China, that could mean something.

Re: 3.4

[pengwern]

Song is generally known for the openness and freedom for women especially compared to the stifling horrorshow of ming and qing.
I really do love any of the lyrical verses involving the passage through lotus leaves.....such a mainstay of the waterways and lakes of the jiangnan region, and this very famous one is so so lovely.

Re: 3.4

[douqi]

This is interesting because I have often seen the Song (associated with neo-Confucianism) called a horrorshow for women (and marginalised people generally) compared to the Tang. I suppose things just kept getting worse.

Re: 3.4

[pengwern]

:(((((((((
Yeah after the Tang was ... the reaction against the Wu Zhou......
Every time something bad happens they goes home and take it out on the people they can control...

Re: 3.4

[douqi]

Digression but: the tune known as 'As If in a Dream' was originally known as 'In Memory of a Celestial's* Beauty' by its creator. Then Su Shi** came along and decreed that 'In Memory of a Celestial's* Beauty' wasn't elegant enough. He renamed the tune 'As If in a Dream' as the poem from which the tune originates has the repeated lines 'as if in a dream, as if in a dream'.

*That would be xian (仙), for survivors of the Great Xian Debate of 2021.
**Of course it would be Su Shi.

On a more related note: 'lost myself in the depths of the lotuses' is so evocative, and of course lends itself well to CQL fic.

Re: 3.4

[x_los]

NO NOT XIAN FLASHBACKS

Yeah it's a really Ophelia/Lady of Shallot image

Re: 3.4

[pengwern]

for me, it's rather distinct from ophelia and lady of shalott, which all have a lot of doomed lonely death associations? the lotus strewn lakes in the jiangnan like the lake tai, xihu/west lake etc or any given lake all tended to be hubs of social and economic activity. lots of women industriously working to gather the foodstuffs like lotus roots, fish, etc in boats (or bowls that were very big so you could sit in them :O), floating markets, etc.
People of a higher class than the gatherers would boat for leisure like punts in oxford, and you often have pleasure boats in these prosperous bustling cities, but in this poem everyone else has gone home from the parties etc and in the evening only the white waterbirds are left to be startled...www love this poetry form

Re: 3.4

[llonkrebboj]

akshgsshdk it's so gorgeous and she is SO GOOD AHHHHHHH

Re: 3.4

[pengwern]

It’s a really vivid word painting and I’m trying to think of a medium that can do it justice but nnno, honestly the compactness, the skill, it isn’t something that can be as easily evoked by image or video than in these small handful of words....

Re: 3.4

[superborb]

Baike is convinced this was written when she was around 16 and so is her earliest work.

Re: 3.4

[x_los]

I don't think I necessarily trust Baike on this one...