"Let's make love and listen to death from above"

This post has my attempt at an English equivalent of lüshi, the eight-line jintishi Chinese verse form, literally "modern verse" but more usually translated as "regulated verse".* Not all the regulations work in English -- specifically the tone patterns, as English isn't tonal -- but other features can be translated. More or less: eight homometric lines, which in Chinese are either five or seven characters long -- iambic tetrameter or pentameter seem to have about the same semantic density; even-numbered lines all rhyme together (and optionally the first as well); and each of the central two couplets (ll. 3-4 and 5-6) must be a semantic and syntact antithesis.

That last constraint makes it an interesting challenge, as it's all to easy to stop forward movement while antithecating. Du Fu** is called one of China's greatest poets, rightly so as far as I'm concerned, in part because he manages to keep things moving and still sound natural. Here's one that does by Li Bai (aka Li Po, usually) translated by Arthur Waley:

Clearing at Dawn

The fields are chill; the sparse rain has stopped;
The colours of Spring teem on every side.
With leaping fish the blue pond is full;
With singing thrushes the green boughs droop.
The flowers of the field have dabbled their powdered cheeks;
The mountain grasses are bent level at the waist.
By the bamboo stream the last fragment of cloud
Blown by the wind slowly scatters away.

No rhyme and only (very) loosely metrical,*** but it shows the two central antitheses to a T. And, well, Waley has a very good ear in English.


* Possibly because it was named "modern" in the early Tang dynasty, roughly 1300 years ago. Eventually we're going to have to figure out what to call all that "Modernist" poetry from the 20th century.

** Tu Fu if you're still reading Wade-Giles instead of pinyin.

*** Far too many English translations fail to bring out that traditional Chinese poetry was rhymed -- and for shi forms, strongly metered. Many don't even acknowledge the issue.

---L.

"Let's make love and listen to death from above"

This post has my attempt at an English equivalent of lüshi, the eight-line jintishi Chinese verse form, literally "modern verse" but more usually translated as "regulated verse".* Not all the regulations work in English -- specifically the tone patterns, as English isn't tonal -- but other features can be translated. More or less: eight homometric lines, which in Chinese are either five or seven characters long -- iambic tetrameter or pentameter seem to have about the same semantic density; even-numbered lines all rhyme together (and optionally the first as well); and each of the central two couplets (ll. 3-4 and 5-6) must be a semantic and syntact antithesis.

That last constraint makes it an interesting challenge, as it's all to easy to stop forward movement while antithecating. Du Fu** is called one of China's greatest poets, rightly so as far as I'm concerned, in part because he manages to keep things moving and still sound natural. Here's one that does by Li Bai (aka Li Po, usually) translated by Arthur Waley:

Clearing at Dawn

The fields are chill; the sparse rain has stopped;
The colours of Spring teem on every side.
With leaping fish the blue pond is full;
With singing thrushes the green boughs droop.
The flowers of the field have dabbled their powdered cheeks;
The mountain grasses are bent level at the waist.
By the bamboo stream the last fragment of cloud
Blown by the wind slowly scatters away.

No rhyme and only (very) loosely metrical,*** but it shows the two central antitheses to a T. And, well, Waley has a very good ear in English.


* Possibly because it was named "modern" in the early Tang dynasty, roughly 1300 years ago. Eventually we're going to have to figure out what to call all that "Modernist" poetry from the 20th century.

** Tu Fu if you're still reading Wade-Giles instead of pinyin.

*** Far too many English translations fail to bring out that traditional Chinese poetry was rhymed -- and for shi forms, strongly metered. Many don't even acknowledge the issue.

---L.