"I was looking for the breath of life / a little touch of heavenly light"

[larryhammer]

In John Minford's translation of Pu Songling's Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio (Penguin Classics), in the story "Grace and Pine," a character encounters a book titled Jottings from a Distant Realm, which is glossed in the endnotes with:

An echo of an actual work of the Mongol dynasty, recounting expeditions into fairy realms. Here it is a condensed and elegant way of indicating that Kong has entered an otherworldly (fox-spirit) dimension. (p.512)

Does anyone have ANYTHING elucidating this? What's the original title, and is it available in English?

---L.

Comments

[thistleingrey.livejournal.com]

The non-link redaction of my earlier comment: is there a distinction in the texts between "fairy" and "immortal," or is the distinction merely translator's license? Fairy realms would seem otherwise to be what's sometimes called heaven in English translation, no?

A Yuan-era thing is The Twenty-four Paragons of Filial Piety, which I linked and flagged as probably unhelpful; I don't know it well. There's a chinahistoryforum post that I'm also not allowed by LJ to link which gives a version of Dong Yong's tale with a fairy weaver. But that's where I wondered in the original comment about translator's license.

Do you see comments flagged as spam? I can see my own on the post page, but the page doesn't count it in the comment tally.

brief response on way out the door

[larryhammer]

Usually, yeah, I do see comments flagged as spam -- nothing's showed up for this one, though. ETA: spam notice just showed up.

I am very vague on just when "fairy" is or is not an appropriate translation, and for that matter of what. I'll look for that title.

---L.