The Works of Li Qingzhao, Ci Poems 3.33 - 3.40

[x_los]

The fifth 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 3.33 through 3.40, inclusive.
 

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 14 as recommended additional reading. 

Recall from the introduction that everything after 3.35 is relatively likely to be misattributed.

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Chapter 14

[x_los]

“There are many aspects of the late Song poets’ development of the song lyric, but two are especially important: the creation of what may be called a spatial design in the poems and the transformation of the direct self-expressive mode heretofore dominant in traditional Chinese poetry.”

“Thus wu connotes all concrete entities and phenomena in the material world and in human affairs, as well as abstract ideas and unreal and imaginary things. But the term yongwu ci has been used by poets and critics in a much narrower sense. It refers primarily to song lyrics on small objects in nature—such as flowers, birds, or insects—and never to landscapes and events in the poet’s life or in history.”

Stone Lake is a cool name

I really Nothing these two poems.

‘When Han Wudi (r. 140–87 b.c.e.) was a child, an aunt asked him how he felt about having his cousin A Jiao become his wife. He replied, “If I had A Jiao, I would keep her in a golden chamber.”’

“Let us now examine a song lyric from the late Song whose subject is not an object but that nevertheless is composed in the new aesthetic mode of yongwu ci.” I have almost no context to grasp what that mode consists of tho, so

man all the chapters of how to read chinese poetry are by different people, and this one sucks. all this writer has to tell me is what this type of poetry is, how it works. I couldn't define that for you at all, based on this chapter. 'it's a long ci poem about Objects. But here's a long ci poem in this specific style that isn't about an Object. ...??

'Even though it is not regarded as a bona fide yongwu ci, it is
clearly not cast in the traditional mode of direct self-expression but in the artistic
mode characterizing Jiang Kui’s “Dappled Shadows.” ' then w h y did we cover it in this chapter, I--

it was half this chapter and I still don't know what an yongwu ci actually is fuck this guy