dankodes | Entries tagged with nineteen old poems

* There were two votes in favour of East Asia Student's translations, so that's what I've gone with. If you prefer or would like to bring another translation into the discussion, please feel free.

* Chapter Five of How to Read Chinese Poetry is specifically about the Nineteen Old Poems.

* Every week I search the poems' English results to see if I can find any scholarship or neat bits and pop the results in Resources. Here is this week's collection.

* Remember you can also look at How to Read Chinese Poetry in Context, though it doesn't specifically treat this collection.

* IF YOU HAVE FRIENDS WHO MIGHT LIKE TO JOIN or have other ideas, please let me know on this post.

* I found the best option for the weekly reminder emails, via Gmail. The external service options are more involved than our purposes require. Does anyone know anything about how to arrange an Apps Script? Basically all it has to do is tell ten people, on Saturdays, to come and get their juice/poems.

Until someone knows what to do there, I'll send out manual messages weekly. If you'd like to receive these and are not getting them, please let me know.

* Next batch of poems, the first half of Eighteen Songs of a Nomad Flute, MONDAY, AUGUST 30th.

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x_los

* The 'due date' for this batch is the week of August 18th: I just thought I'd make the post now so that people can trickle in whenever. There were two votes in favour of East Asia Student's translations, so that's what I've gone with. If you prefer or would like to bring another translation into the discussion, please feel free.

* Chapter Five of How to Read Chinese Poetry is specifically about the Nineteen Old Poems.

* Every week I search the poems' English results to see if I can find any scholarship or neat bits and pop the results in Resources. Here is this week's collection.

* Remember you can also look at How to Read Chinese Poetry in Context, though it doesn't specifically treat this collection.

* IF YOU HAVE FRIENDS WHO MIGHT LIKE TO JOIN or have other ideas, please let me know on this post.

Tags:

x_los

As we're gonna spend a couple weeks in August with the Nineteen Old Poems, I thought I'd showcase the variety of available translations. If anyone has a preference, please mention.

A Classical Chinese text version will be provided, whatever translation we go with for the 'house post'. (And of course you're welcome to separately seek out any of these options.)

If you'd like to check out some resources in the interim period, here's the articles round-up.

***

1. (第十四) Day by day, the departed are more distant

Those who leave grow further away each day, (去者 ‘those who leave’ or ‘the dead’?)
While those who come are more cherished/dear day by day. (来着 is literally ‘those who come’, but ‘those who stay/remain’ provides a better parallel to ‘those who leave’ in the previous line)
Leave the city gate and look out,
All you’ll see are mounds and graves.
Ancient tombs, when ploughed, return to fields,
Pine and cypress trees are felled for firewood.
The white poplars sway heavy with a mournful wind,
So melancholy, enough grief to kill a man.
I long to return; my hometown, my village,
Wishing to go back, but it is a journey without cause.

http://crockerymockery.blogspot.com/2012/06/nineteen-old-poems.html

***

2. Each day the one who left is farther away,
Each day the living one treasured more.
Going out the city gate, looking straight ahead
You see only grave-mounds and tombs,
Old graves plowed under for fields,
Their pine and cypress chopped up for firewood.
The white poplar moans in the wind,
Mournful enough to kill.
My thoughts go back to our old village gate.
I want to go home but there is no road back.

https://www.academia.edu/39660835/Translation_of_Nineteen_Old_Poems_%E5%8F%A4%E8%A9%A9%E5%8D%81%E4%B9%9D%E9%A6%96

***

3. Those who went vanish ever further,
and those to come draw ever nearer.

Leaving the city gate, I gaze ahead,
and it's all mounds and tombs, those

ancient grazes now plowed fieldland,
pine and cypress hacked for firewood,

and poplars tangled in wind's grief,
its whispered laments that can kill.

I long to set out for my old village, my
old home, but the road won't go there.

from Nineteen Old Poems ( 古詩十九首, Ku-shih shih-chiu), Classical Chinese Poetry: An Anthology, trans. David Hinton.

(This one, I'd download. No solid whole-collection link.)

***

4. The dead are gone and with them we cannot converse.
The living are here and ought to have our love.
Leaving the city-gate I look ahead
And see before me only mounds and tombs.
The old graves are ploughed up into fields,
The pines and cypresses are hewn for timber.
In the white aspens sad winds sing;
Their long murmuring kills my heart with grief.
I want to go home, to ride to my village gate.
I want to go back, but there’s no road back.

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/42290/42290-h/42290-h.htm

(Waley omits two, which I'd get from someone else.)

***

5. The Watson/Turner skips 14, but translates almost all others (I'd get the lost two from someone else): http://www.shigeku.com/xlib/lingshidao/hanshi/poem19.htm

***

6. 去者日以疏
qù zhě rì yǐ shū
[go] [those who] [day] [take] [distant]
The departed are more distant daily,

來者日已親
lái zhě rì yǐ qīn
[come] [those who] [day] [already] [close]
as daily those on their way draw closer.

出郭門直視
chū guō mén zhí shì
[leave] [city wall] [gate] [straight] [look]
I leave the city gate and look straight out,

但見丘與墳
càn jiàn qiū yǔ fén
[only] [see] [mound] [and] [grave]
only to see graves in their burial mounds.

古墓犁為田
gǔ mù lí wèi tián
[ancient] [tomb] [plow] [as] [field]
The ancient tombs have been ploughed into fields,

松柏摧為薪
sōng bǎi cuī wèi xīn
[pine] [cypress] [break] [as] [fuel]
their pine and cypress trees broken into firewood.

白楊多悲風
bái yáng duō bēi fēng
[white] [poplar] [much] [sorrow] [wind]
The white poplar, so sorrowful in the wind,

蕭蕭愁殺人
xiāo xiāo chóu shā rén
[desolate] [desolate] [worry] [murder] [people]
mournful, desolate, and deathly anxious.

思還故里閭
sī huán gù lǐ lǘ
[think of] [return] [old] [village] [village gate]
I long to return to my native village,

欲歸道無因
yù guī dào wú yīn
[desire] [return] [principle] [not have] [reason]
yet desiring to return is no excuse.

https://web.archive.org/web/20141113152430/http://eastasiastudent.net/china/classical/%E5%8E%BB%E8%80%85%E6%97%A5%E4%BB%A5%E7%96%8F-departed-daily

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Entries tagged with nineteen old poems

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