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I’m back to translating Chinese poetry, and have built up enough drafts in the other journal to post another batch from 300 Tang Poems. This time the form is five-character “regulated verse” (lüshi): eight short lines, even lines rhymed together, a couple possible set tone patterns (similar to the jueju quatrain of part 7, which was originally half a lüshi) designed to enforce a varied melody, plus the additional constraint that the two middle couplets must each have tight semantic parallels (sometimes called an antithetical couplet). This (in both five- and seven-character lines) was the prestige poetic form of the middle Tang and a long time after, with a status similar to that of the sonnet in Renaissance Europe.
This form makes up the longest section of the collection, 80 poems, so again I’m posting it in digestible chunks—this time, 20 each. Most of the time, I render the five-character lines as four-beat iambics, but some poems (especially the more concretely imagistic) require the space of five beats to translate adequately. As usual, I am utter fail at any sort of rhyme.
Because this installment enters deep Du Fu territory, it’s time to give a potted summary of the An Lushan Rebellion as, even more than other poets, it shaped so many of his poems. In Emperor Xuanzong’s later years, his erratic governance devolved to his ministers, eunuchs, and generals, who all hella in-fought each other for power. Eventually a Turkic-born general, An Lushan, revolted outright in late 755 and captured the Chang’an capital the next year. Xuanzong fled to Sichuan (see esp. #71) then abdicated to his son, Suzong, who undertook the many-years project of taking back the empire (Chang’an was recaptured in 757) as well as bringing to heel other warlords who took advantage of the chaos to stop submitting to central authority. This latter task was never fully completed, and over the next 150 years the Tang Dynasty slowly devolved into complete disarray. IOW, there’s reasons the Rebellion shadows so much of Tang poetry, not just Du Fu’s.
But enough backdrop, on with the pageant.
( Out of the sea the bright moon’s born— / We share, the sky apart, this moment. )
And so ends another installment. The next poem begins with a cold wind at the sky’s end, which will be a suitably dramatic start of the next one.
---L.
Index of Chinese translations
This form makes up the longest section of the collection, 80 poems, so again I’m posting it in digestible chunks—this time, 20 each. Most of the time, I render the five-character lines as four-beat iambics, but some poems (especially the more concretely imagistic) require the space of five beats to translate adequately. As usual, I am utter fail at any sort of rhyme.
Because this installment enters deep Du Fu territory, it’s time to give a potted summary of the An Lushan Rebellion as, even more than other poets, it shaped so many of his poems. In Emperor Xuanzong’s later years, his erratic governance devolved to his ministers, eunuchs, and generals, who all hella in-fought each other for power. Eventually a Turkic-born general, An Lushan, revolted outright in late 755 and captured the Chang’an capital the next year. Xuanzong fled to Sichuan (see esp. #71) then abdicated to his son, Suzong, who undertook the many-years project of taking back the empire (Chang’an was recaptured in 757) as well as bringing to heel other warlords who took advantage of the chaos to stop submitting to central authority. This latter task was never fully completed, and over the next 150 years the Tang Dynasty slowly devolved into complete disarray. IOW, there’s reasons the Rebellion shadows so much of Tang poetry, not just Du Fu’s.
But enough backdrop, on with the pageant.
( Out of the sea the bright moon’s born— / We share, the sky apart, this moment. )
And so ends another installment. The next poem begins with a cold wind at the sky’s end, which will be a suitably dramatic start of the next one.
---L.
Index of Chinese translations