The Works of Li Qingzhao, Ci Poems 3.25 - 3.32

[x_los]

The fourth instalment of Li Qingzhao’s ci poetry. This 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 3.25 through 3.32, inclusive.

Four of this week’s poems have endnotes, but these offer only small points of Chinese language exegesis. 

How to Read Chinese Poetry has three chapters on the ci forms Li Qingzhao uses here:

 

Chapter 12, Ci Poetry: Short Song Lyrics (Xiaoling) 

Chapter 13, Ci Poetry: Long Song Lyrics (Manci) 

Chapter 14, Ci Poetry: Long Song Lyrics on Objects (Yongwu Ci)

This week, we look at Chapter 13 as recommended additional reading. 

It may interest you to know that if you’ve been doing the additional reading, you’re now more than 1/3 of the way through How to Read Chinese Poetry:

Ch 1 (Shi Jing)
Ch 5 (19 Old Poems)
Ch 8 (Du Fu
Ch 9 (Du Fu)
Ch 10 (Du Fu)
Ch 12 (Li Qingzhao)
Ch 18 (Du Fu)

These next two chapters related to ci poetry will see us to the halfway point.

In contrast, I’ve been neglecting Chinese Poetry in Context: I believe we've read only Ch 15. I hope to be more assiduous about recommending it in future, when we cover pertinent people. So far, we’ve been a bit misaligned (or I wasn’t yet recommending specific chapters for discussion, when something pertinent came up).

THIS WEEK, recall from the introduction that 3.24 - 3.28 may be misattributed.

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Comments

Chapter 13

[x_los]

A convenient discussion of the people Li Qingzhao discusses in her short essay on ci poetry (though it’s odd in a way that she’s being brought up here in the long ci chapter, and that she chooses to discuss these people, when so far we’ve only read what I believe to be her short ci works?).

I don’t know that I really get what the writer means by leading words

It’s fair to say tho that with the tunes mostly lost we don’t really have the substance of Li Qingzhao’s complaint about Su Shi anymore 

‘ Then he changes his mind. He forgives the moon’ lol

This critic doesn’t read the brother as an implied subject of 13.2, which I find a bit odd? That was v much my understanding

Nice that we’re gonna treat LinQingzhao directly now

‘One of the most prominent female figures’ dude seriously who else exists I legit want to know 

Odd that this counts as ‘long’

The preface on 13.5 is v cute

Heroic style is wanky but fun

How do we know this persona is female? That didn’t occur to me

Interesting re jun in the last poem. I read do not dance as a warning to a woman!