#tang poetry

[grand-theft-carbohydrates]

Hi guys, I went ahead an translated one of Li Bai’s poems <3. Now, translations are an imperfect art and its hard to capture the beauty of the original text, so please forgive me for any inaccuracies that might occur! >u< *

Life it never die

Moon is my favourite guy

Wine, im wanting more

Tell An Lushan stop the war

Zoom hear the apes go whoop

By the river feel the grove

Struck by longing in the night

EVERYBODY FREE-VERSE!

[gennsoup]

We tell ourselves all love is foolishness-- And still disappointment is a lucid madness.

Li Shangyin, Untitled Poems

[yilinwriter]

I made a Classical Chinese Poetry Bingo card to help people recognize the common tropes and motifs.🤣

These show up frequently in the modern poetry I translate as well.

Do you recognize anything from your readings or from pop culture? Tag yourself. I'm "feeling sad on a boat" lol

[crowsummer]

deer enclosure

(translation 1 of 鹿柴 by 王维)

you do not meet anyone in the empty mountains but still, you hear the echoes of people speaking

at sunset, light reflecting off the clouds pierces the deep forest and touches once again the blue-green moss

[maggiecheungs]

answer based on personal preference! in the tags please tell me why, and also if you've read their work in the original or in translation :)

[creatediana]

“Staying in the Mountains in Summer” by Chinese poet Yu Xuanji (844–871), one of the most legendary female poets of the Tang dynasty

[leahsfiction]

there's probably at least one thesis (hopefully several) just covering friendships between the most well-known Tang poets

poems directly addressed to each other (and hopefully delivered)

referencing each other's lives indirectly -- "i heard such and such news"

anyway yeah i'm browsing this site's translations and catching feelings from this one from Meng Haoran to Wang Wei

[weatherwaxironboots]

I'm continuing my deep dive into cloud atlas and I'm investigating Han Yu so I'll share some of that here.

The Pheasant Struck By An Arrow

Han Yü

On the plain fires burn with silent determination,

Field pheasant, fearing the hawk

Come out and sink back down again.

The general wishes to humble others by his skill,

Turns his horse around, bends his bow.

But holds back and does not shoot.

The area gradually gets narrower, onlookers increase,

The pheasant starts up, the bow stretched in full,

A strong arrow in the notch.

It soars abruptly upward, against the people,

More than a hundred feet,

Red pinions and the silvery barb follow

Toward one another slanting.

The general looks up and laughs, his officers congratulate him,

As many-colored feathers fall scattering before the horse.

From Page 21 of "the poetry of Meng Chiao and Han Yü" by Owen Stephen

[these-summer-nights-in-december]

Wang Wei | A Green Stream

[ordinaryeternalmachinery]

Just let me go back to my place in town; I swear I'll never even look at landscapes painted on screens.

ANOTHER POEM FOR MINISTER WU ON ARRIVING AT THE BORDERLANDS by xue tao

[kohamarsonist]

aw yeah the pages of chinese literature are soaked in alcohol

So much so that 杜甫 Du Fu immortalised even 李白 Li Bai as a Tang dynasty literary boozer in his 《飲中八仙》 Yǐnzhōng bāxiān / "Song of the Eight Immortals of the Wine-Cup". It is amazing how literally most of the grandesque poems and calligraphy of that time were written when the dudes were wasted. Du Fu himself was also a poetry-spouting drunk and as much as I have the tendency to slander his name by calling him an absolute loser, the guy could write. But when you only look at his poetry and only his poetry for a whooole semester, track his life through the vast historical upheaval in the Tang Dynasty and the approx. 1500 poems he wrote, he becomes a bit too close to you and I just can't respect him for the Towering Literary Figure that he is....

One of Zhang Xu’s calligraphy works Zhang Xu (traditional Chinese: 張旭; simplified Chinese: 张旭; pinyin: Zhāng Xù, fl. 8th century), courtesy name: Bogao (伯高), was a Chinese calligrapher of the Tang Dynasty.

A native of Suzhou, he became an official during the reign of Emperor Xuanzong of Tang. Zhang was known as one of the Eight Immortals of the Wine Cup. Legend has it that whenever he was drunk, he would use his hair as brush to perform his art, and upon his waking up, he would be amazed by the quality of those works but failed to produce them again in his sober state.

Though more well known for his explosive cursive script, he excelled in the regular script. Anecdotes go that he grasped the essence of cursive writing by observing some porters fight for their way with the guard of honor of some princess, and by watching the solo performance of a famous sword-dancer. He was known as 草聖 (the Divine Grassist) for his great skill in the grass scipt.

[gennsoup]

overhead a moon and wilderness of stars here and there clouds and mist this universe is enormous my road goes on and on.

Du Fu, Leaving Qinzhou

[crowsummer]

the song of a new bride

(translation 1 of 新嫁娘词 by 王健)

on the third day, she goes down to the kitchen washes her hands and makes a soup

still unfamiliar with her mother-in-law's tastes she first asks her sister-in-law to try it

[bytebun]

OH HIGH MOUNTAIN, HOW I LONG TO REACH YOU BREATHING YOUR SWEETNESS EVEN HERE!

[beifongkendo]

Seven-character Buddhist scroll, by Kogetsu Sogan (1574-1643). After a poem by Tang-dynasty poet Liu Shang (12th century).

The original poem translates as ‘Since you left Mount Shunzan, I have no friend to play games with.’ In the original language this reflected a sense of loss, poignancy, but also acceptance.

[leahsfiction]

"If the sky but knows / The sky would have grown old"

Li He, "Journey of a Statue" 金铜仙人辞汉歌, transl. Wong May

the full title of this poem is actually something like "Song of a Gold-Copper Immortal Leaving the Han Palace"

the subject is a statue of the Wu Emperor of Han 刘彻, depicted carrying(?) some kind of funerary bowl, being taken by carriage from the Chang'an palace to Luoyang.

Li He composed it while he himself was on the road to Luoyang (from Beijing - an 8-hour drive of 800km in 2022) from Chang'an not Beijing - presumably bored, sick, and stressed after needing to quit his court position due to illness. so, imagining the procession -- the exact same route he was travelling on.

original text and preface (written by the poet):

魏明帝青龙元年八月，诏宫官牵车西取汉孝武捧露盘仙人，欲立致前殿。宫官既拆盘，仙人临载，乃潸然泪下。唐诸王孙李长吉遂作《金铜仙人辞汉歌》。

茂陵刘郎秋风客，夜闻马嘶晓无迹。

画栏桂树悬秋香，三十六宫土花碧。

魏官牵车指千里，东关酸风射眸子。

空将汉月出宫门，忆君清泪如铅水。

衰兰送客咸阳道，天若有情天亦老。

携盘独出月荒凉，渭城已远波声小。

(translation TBA maybe...)