Let's discuss Chinese poetry. Who are your favorites? What periods do you like? Do you have particular translators/sinologists/critics who you believe to be good curators? What are you interested in reading? I'm reading Du Fu right now, I *almost* see what people mean about how great he is but I think I'm a little too caught up in the immediate experience of reading to really take stock of the whole, once I'm done I'll be able to look at him with more clarity. But it's obvious enough that he has the sense of scale/humor that is the seed of all genius.
>>23324522What translation, if any, are you reading?
>>23324730I am reading Stephen Owen's, I wouldn't recommend it for most people, it's very unpoetic. David Hinton and Burton Watson have done little selections that will probably give you a good idea of what he's about. Owen argues that he can't really be boiled down to a selection and he's probably right, but the full experience is either a big, imperfect undertaking or an immensely huge one.
>>23324751I don't see the point of a translation of poetry that makes no attempt to replicate the form of the original, unless it's just intended as a crib to aid with understanding the original.
>>23324764I agree that it's far from ideal, but it is capable of capturing certain dimensions of greatness nonetheless. I wish I had the patience to learn the languages of every poet I want to read, but that just isn't me.
>>23324772Well, if you like poetry Chinese opens up an especially great amount of good poetry.
>>23324783If I ever do it, Chinese will almost certainly be the one, yeah. And I've put a bit of time into it on and off, I know most of the standard poetic words, your yue, qiu, shanshui, all that. I'm just not enough of a poetic technique connoisseur to really feel like I need to prioritize it when my backlog is such a black hole of time and attention.
I'll just bump with random thoughts/observations/questions: Decided to skip ahead and check out the rhapsodies (ahead in the collection, that is, they were written very early on). Definitely feels a little smoother, a little more refined, with somewhat different concerns and a different flow, compared to the old rhapsodies. I suppose even the Wen Xuan rhapsodies were written over quite a long period, although even among those the later ones are already quite imitative. I had thought of it as a form that was not relevant after the Han, and I don't think Du's stuff disproves that really thus far, but it's interesting to see that it still existed in some capacity and great poets were still attempting to keep it alive.
Bump: The animal transformation stories vaguely referenced in the old myths associated with the Heavenly Questions are very interesting - they seem to hint at the animist religious practices of shamanism whose traces are quite hard to find in the Near Eastern/Mediterranean West, except maybe in preserved ancient rituals like the arkteia of Artemis at Brauron. I wonder to what extent these things existed and were replaced, vs. actually developing differently.
>>23327811Also interesting how this story reproduces the Zeus/Selene mytheme, since it's not really a foundational story and you wouldn't expect it to cross such distant cultural boundaries.
idk but my favorite poem about drunkardry is Li Bai's:Here among flowers one flask of wine,With no close friends, I pour it alone.I lift cup to bright moon, beg its company,Then facing my shadow, we become three.The moon has never known how to drink;My shadow does nothing but follow me.But with moon and shadow as companions the while,This joy I find must catch spring while it's here.I sing, and the moon just lingers on;I dance, and my shadow flails wildly.When still sober we share friendship and pleasure,Then, utterly drunk, each goes his own way—Let us join to roam beyond human caresAnd plan to meet far in the river of stars.花間一壺酒。獨酌無相親。舉杯邀明月。對影成三人。月既不解飲。影徒隨我身。暫伴月將影。行樂須及春。我歌月徘徊。我舞影零亂。醒時同交歡。醉後各分散。永結無情遊。相期邈雲漢。
>>23329046Oh god yes that one is divine. Tao Yuanming, aka Tao Qian, is another wine-loving poet who was a big influence on both Li Bai and Du Fu. I also just recently read Du's poem about falling off his horse when drunk, really does a good job of capturing what makes him so special: I, Du Fu, am an old guest of a lord of high rank;done with my ale, I sang tipsily, and hefted a gilded pike.At once I recalled riding my horse, how it used to be when young;I let hooves run free, kicking down rocks of Qutang Gorge.White Emperor Castle’s gates lie high, up beyond river and cloud,I hunkered over, went right downslope, eight thousand feet.White battlements flashed like lightning with my trailing purple reins;eastward I reached the plateau coming out from a cliff reaching toHeaven.River villages, wilderness halls came rushing to my eyes,riding whip dangling, bit hanging loose, I sped over purple lanes.This white-haired old man instantly shocked people by the thousands,trusting in skills of my youth to ride a horse and shoot.Could I have known that those wind-chasing feet set free to follow theirwill,the bloody sweat and headlong gallop like spurting jade,would unexpectedly stumble at last, and I would end up hurt?—when you do what you want in life, humiliation usually follows.Then I was utterly miserable, confined to pillow and sheets;worse still, old age added to my vexation.When my friends came to ask after me, I hardened my face;I forced myself up on my cane, leaning upon my servant.After we spoke, we then broke into open-mouthed laughter,helping me along, we cleared a new spot by the clear creek’s bend.Meat and ale came heaped like mountains yet another time,the moving strings at the party’s start stirred brash music of flutes.We gestured all to the sun in the west, it spares no man,we shouted and hooted, tipped upside-down the green ale in the cup.Why need you come galloping your horses to express your concern?—have you not seenhow Xi Kang took such care of his life and at last was executed?
>>23329759>At once I recalled riding my horse, how it used to be when young;I let hooves run free, kicking down rocks of Qutang Gorge.fuck reincarnation just send me to the past to be this dude.
>>23329773I don't think you want that anon, he was a pretty miserable guy most of the time. But hey that's what the 好酒 is for. >https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbC733ejPnM>ignore the video title idk why that was thrown in there
>>23329046That one's definitely a classic.
>>23329046that's lovely
Here's a poem I quite like (no I am not a fujoshi... okay maybe a little)詠少年吳均董生惟巧笑子都信美目百萬市一言千金買相逐不道參差菜誰論窈窕淑願君奉繡被來就越人宿
>>23331368>fujoshi>Fujoshi is a Japanese term for female fans of manga, anime and novels that feature romantic relationships between men>woman, fag, trannyIn order>show tits>get a therapist>kill yourself
Bump - I'm about to take The Banished Immortal on vacation, although I generally prefer Du Fu
>>23329046That's great poetry.
>>23331440Last time I posted my tits on a blue board I got banned for three days. (Also if you had to look up what "fujoshi" means then you do not belong on 4chan.)
>>23331486>although I generally prefer Du FuWhy do you like him better? Also what are your favorites by him? I think I'd have a really hard time choosing one although I suppose Du's qualities are more essential and fundamental. But I also haven't read much of Li besides the most famous ones.
>>23324522Just stop. There's just too much that's lost in translation, everything from the structure of the poem, to the interplay between tones (see https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E6%A0%BC%E5%BE%8B%E8%AF%97/90168, don't know what the term is in English), and the beauty of the language itself. With Chinese being such a context-dependent language, tense, subject, and even object, can often be omitted, giving it a quality of vagueness which gives the language a naturally poetic feel. Not to mention that you would never be able to discern, from translations, that most Chinese poetry, with the exception of modern poetry (which is dogshit), is written in Classical Chinese (文言文) - a now anachronistic form of written Chinese that is distinct from modern written vernacular Chinese (白话文). I'll use (arguably) the most famous Chinese poem as an example.Classical Chinese:床前明月光疑是地上霜举头望明月低头思故乡Direct Translation:Bed front bright moon lightSuspect it's floor ontop frostRaise head gaze bright moonLower head think native home"Proper" Translation:Moonlight before my bedI suspect it could perhaps be frostLooking up, I gaze at the moonLooking down, I think of my homeIn the original, each line of the poem consists of five characters and each character is one syllable. This is a form of poetry known as Wujue (五绝). In translation, this five syllable structure is clearly lost and, consequently, also its tonal contour. I could say more, but I'll just let you see the difference yourself.
>>23332746Yes anon that is a very nice copypasta, good job posting it again. Now do you have any opinions on the actual poets or poems?
>>23332823I'll let you have some time to think why I post this, come on use your head.
I'd like to get into Chinese poetry but all I've read is Hánshān. I love his style as I'm also a Buddhist. Where go now?
where am i supposed to read these
>>23332824I think the imperative is silly but it's informative so I don't mind your posting it, I'm just asking you to share something more specific. >>23332831Wang Wei is the most famous Buddhist poet, Meng Haoran, Su Shi and Bai Juyi are also Buddhists but I don't think their poems are quite so philosophical in themselves most of the time. >>23333418Translations by David Hinton, Red Pine, Burton Watson, Kenneth Rexroth, Arthur Waley, David Hawkes, etc. constitute common entry points. A translation will also tend to select things that are approachable by a Western reader without too much cultural background knowledge, and/or the translator will try to provide some of that knowledge in a concise note/introduction. De Gruyter has some great academic translations available for free in pdf form, with a pretty interesting selection of authors, but those are a little less user-friendly.
Are there any good classical Chinese poems that prominently feature the sun?I see a lot on the moon but virtually nothing on the sun
Bump: What's the deal with Song dynasty poetry? Anything good there?
We get it, you like nature. Move on, faggots.
