Song of Lasting Regret, Bai Juyi (300 Tang Poems #71)

Another big hunk of translation—this time, though, only one thing: the most famous long poem of Chinese literature. One of my goals for starting translating Chinese was to be able to do this, and now I have.

Though it claims to be set the Han Dynasty, this is to avoid a politically sensitive contemporary topic—it actually is a highly romanticized tale of Emperor Xuanzong and legendary beauty Yang Yuhuan Guifei. As part of the figleafing, the Emperor and his Consort are never named (though see l.87 and note), and to keep fact and fiction clear I’ll use those titles to refer to the characters and the names for the historical figures. As part of the romanticization, the drama of the central event is shunted aside in favor of dwelling on the emotions of the title (of which, see the end-notes). In fact, it could be argued that (content warning) the Consort gets fridged.

But enough pre-judging—on with the show:

Song of Lasting Regret, Bai Juyi

( Han’s Emperor prized looks, sought devastating beauty— / His household looked for years but couldn’t find him one... )

( Long wall of hanzi )

( Endnotes )

And now I get to sigh ...

---L.

Index of Chinese translations