#the literal translation of the last line of the poem would be

[nomoraamongfivearchons]

Hu Tao's Poem in Lantern Rite 5.3 (Spoilers)

There's a joke floating around that Hu Tao survived the ritual because Zhongli C6'd her (by finishing her poem, which is her constellation). I absolutely love that joke because funny haha aside, it shows just how well this event is written. As someone who plays genshin in CN, I love how they incorporated Hu Tao's constellation into the event by making it not only the poem Hu Tao recites before the climatic ritual, but also a foreshadowing of how she might be saved.

It would be difficult to tell at first if you only play in EN, since localization completely gave up on preserving the poetry in Hu Tao's constellation, but if you play in CN or look up the original text, the intent literally jumps out at you (the en constellation names are italicized) :

赤團開時斜飛去 A butterfly dances in a crimson bouquet (C1) 最不安神晴又復雨 For fear of the ominous rainfall that may soon show its face (C2) 逗留採血色 With one last, lingering glance at that carmine hue (C3) 伴君眠花房 She lies among the petals in the garden of eternal rest (C4) 無可奈何燃花作香 As she sets the floral incense ablaze. (C5) 幽蝶能留一縷芳 The lone butterfly left, but not without a trace. A fragrance remained, her butterfly's embrace. (C6)

The last two lines are especially pertinent to the event bc the word for word translation is: "With no other choice, she burns the flowers as incense, but the lone butterfly will leave a trace of fragrance". The first line calls back to the Lone Butterfly's sacrifice centuries ago and foreshadows what Hu Tao is prepared to do. However, the second line reflects how Old Man Wuwang preserved the Lone Butterfly's legacy AND how there's still a chance to help Hu Tao, which Zhongli drops hints to the Traveler with the subtlety of a meteor; and the Traveler uses the plum branch Hu Tao gave them—the "fragrance" left by the lone butterfly—to reach Hu Tao in time and pull her back from death.

It's setup and payoff done so economically, using material that is already known to the audience, and it all centers around Hu Tao, the legacy she carries, and the people who love her.

[yingdu-lover]

Cause I got nothing to lose : Xia Fei, my new hero in Link Click

before any serious shit wrecks havoc I want to ramble a bit

oh my god, I love xia fei. I mean I knew I would love him but that was for a different reason. He is probably gonna die in the near future, probably lu guang's action triggering his death (or he may not die at all! maybe he survives in this timeline, changing a major node! I hope, I hope), he is already a struggling student economically helpless abroad, his 'Emma' vibes are strong, he assures his worrying mother even though he goes through financial hardships. He is smart enough to know he is being exploited (and tbh the theme of surveillance and making him the 'morbid' object of gaze, I say morbid because in the last scene of his pv, it's a dead shot, his eyes look so dead, the camera's battery is dead. But yk what remains? his face card. The like button continually popping with likes made me very uncomfortable. The cinematography, symbolism and metaphor- link click's visual storytelling just never ceases to amaze.) Also how him being a model is not due to his passion, he desperately needs this money to survive (sounds familiar?)

But really...link click was really link clicking when we got xia fei's first appearance. Subtle social commentary at its finest. Not a woman, but a man is being made fun of for his astronomical career growth in exchange for supposed 'sexual favours'. Those ladies were not, in fact, subtle about it. I'll dive deeper into Xia Fei's psychology later but this encounter shows the harsh reality of the entertainment industries, mostly for those who did not join for passion but rather who had no choice.

Also the scene where his roommate. Man. It's important to address how 'casually' harassment can happen and an AMAB person can be a victim too. Anyway when the roommate tells him about ' the gig that pays quick money and they would like a hottie like you!' I couldn't help but flinch, I understand his rage. Of course, it's again insinuated to be something sexual. That's the first impression Xia Fei also has.

His pv is translated as 'lending body' or 'lending skin', ik it may have multiple meanings but one of them is very prominent.

Selling your face. Or maybe selling your body.

The way the camera fixes its gaze on Xia Fei continually, it's not really for fanservice merely. He is this object people ogle at. (and the way liu xiao and vein ogle at him in his pv makes me sick nvm). Even though it's his own body and beauty that makes him famous, he has no autonomy whatsoever. He realises it. That's why he says

Cause I have got nothing to loose

I don't really think link click is about time traveling. It's that archtexual exercise that constantly subverts genres at its level best. You know what, defamiliarise, many people do not like uncool stuff, for example : issues struggling young people actually face in real life, in this late stage capitalism. That's why link click should not reach that demographic of people. I hope it never does. I hope it gets famous within a community who actually understand and resonate with this show.

Also Xia Fei's story talks about another important theme of the donghua; photo! How photos taken in private spheres are meant to preserve memories of the loved ones, loved encounters. How you capture someone you love in that still image, alive with the emotion you associate with them, giving it an afterlife. The photo becomes the literal and metaphorical medium through which Lu Guang can rewrite history. Forget-me-not, remembrance. It empowers him.

On the contrary, for Xia Fei, it is the panopticon seizing his life and rendering it absurd. The emotive power and affect for lu guang changes into viscous institutionalised power politics for Xia Fei. Brilliant! 😭

I can't help but quote a few lines from a poem by Ama Codjoe

On Seeing and Being Seen

I am touching the photograph of my last seduction. It is as slick as a magazine page, as dark as a street darkened by rain.

When I want to remember something beautiful, instead of taking a photograph, I close my eyes. Desire made you beautiful. I closed my eyes.

.... Tonight, I am alone in my tenderness. There is nothing in my hand except a certain grasping. In my mind’s eye, I am stroking your hair with damp fingertips. This is exactly how it happened. On the lit-up hotel bed, I remember thinking, My body is a lens I can look through with my mind.

Lmao I didn't want to write all of this I'm so sorry 😭

So yeah, that was all the impressions hmph before yingdu ep 3. Now.

I want Xia Fei to be my bestie and go with me on friendship dates. Don't get me wrong, I love Cheng Xiaoshi, but he personally feels to be more like a brother to me, who is infuriating at times and that dumb bitch I'll protect at all costs. I want to befriend Xia Fei and it's serious 😭.

Also I would want, in another timeline, Cheng Xiaoshi and him being complete besties, two dumb twinks twinking with each other. Dumb gays basically. We have got INTJ nerd in Lu Guang, it's refreshing to see ENFP nerd in Xia Fei. Xia Fei could effortlessly be the best regular visitor of the time photo studio. I do not want to tear up thinking about him right now but I really want him to be happy...in another timeline. Blooming with happiness, close to his friends and loved ones, content and safe...

talking about loved ones...

I want an AU where he

fixes this mf

I want Vein to experience at least 1/5th of Lu Guang's anguish and melancholy for Xia Fei. I know, I know maybe Vein will kill Xia Fei when he defects, he is just using him from the very beginning but my love, that's what I am saying! In that AU, they will start off all toxic yaoi shit but at the end it will be...he was a cannibal and he was just a guy, their inter-timeline love will change your perception of love!

I mean no sorry, Xia Fei deserves to be loved and why Vein? because that's his punishment. Melancholic love can be the greatest punishment for someone who goes like a vendor and asks random people " would you like some punishment?" no, sir, thank you sir, would YOU like some sincere human emotions that chomp on your conscience? It's called love, it's limited edition but I'll arrange some for you!

Ok, I have got another fic to write 😭

returning to this post because @whispersoflullaby and I were discussing Xia Fei's body dysmorphia which seems specific to AFAB people and queer people. He isn't someone who is proud of his 'beauty', welp, that's odd for a typical handsome cishet person? His 'beauty' is turned against him. Ngl he reminds me of Ash Lynx a bit. You might say that he had a history of abuse and that's why he assumed the 'gig' his roommate mentioned as sex work. But there is more to it. He is definitely not a typical cishet boy, he is not projected to be one either. Even in the short span of ep 3, it's established that Xia Fei has some intimate connections to Vein, irrespective of whether Vein is using him or not. His anger at his roommate's remark feels very close to violating his identity as a queer person. The assumption that queer people are naturally 'lecherous', and they have no morality or anything whatsoever. But when Xia Fei is well established in the industry, this body politics is slightly changed. Money talks in the entertainment industry and money is the power in capitalist business. So those girls gossiping about the rumour that Xia Fei sleeps with the director for his career growth doesn't bother him like before. The most important thing is, he doesn't deny any rumours. He straight up says "Unlike some people, I always go for the best, whether it's a project or connection, isn't it right, boss?" His reply actually reinforces those speculations...it's giving " Yes I am a sugar baby, but ykw I can cry in my Tesla when you can't afford therapy". It's funny how at the end he says, "Right, boss?" to Vein! Link click...when I get you Link Click... *kowtows*

Also, I really wanna know what exactly did Vein say through the phone to get this reaction out of Xia Fei and cancel his plans to return home.

he is pleasantly shocked! You can see his eyes...that's some sincere emotions and then after the shock subsides, a soft look overcomes his expression. He softy sighs.

And also, idk if I am hallucinating but there is a little blush visible near his eyes (it's no longer there when he sighs)...I want to know what Vein said to him 😭 that interaction is shot in a very *jabsjksksdjnd* way, you can't deny it's intimate.

[youzicha]

Some quick impressions of translations of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

I fell in love with Marie Borroff's translation just from reading the preface, which is very insightful (definitely do read it, whatever other translation you pick!) and also unusually useful for the reader. We don't crucially need a translator's thoughts about what the themes of a story are because we can read it ourselves first, but Borroff talks about the tone (elevated, ironic, playful?) and that is really useful, since it is so easily obscured by time and translation.

Borroff's biography is extremely impressive: before even starting the translation, she spent a decade of her professional life reconstructing the pronunciation and meter of each line and the provenance of each word. Unsurprisingly, the translation is excellent; by the usual standards (accuracy, fluency, transparency/"invisibility") it seems hard to improve on.

Simon Armitage's translation seems to consciously reject fluency and transparency, creating "choppiness" as a deliberate aesthetic effect. Consider for example the use of modern colloquial English here:

and in the other hand held the mother of all axes, a cruel piece of kit I kid you not: the head was an ell in length at least and forged in green steel with a gilt finish

"Piece of kit" and "I kid you not" date the translation to the last few decades, while the "ell" unit has not been used for 400 years. By dragging the reader back and forth in time like this, the translation draws attention to itself. But it is not only a matter of choice of words, we get a similar effect from the ways Armitage breaks up or enjambs lines:

Gawain […] so bore that badge on both his shawl and shield alike. A prince who talked the truth. A notable. A knight.

This was a single sentence in the original, which got "chopped up" into four, including a full stop in the middle of a line.

George B. Pace's translation is the subject of a very charming story somebody posted on tumblr. It is abridged (12k words, versus 21k in the original), and translated into modern-sounding English prose, but if you are interested in the plot rather than the poetic devices it seems like a reasonable approach. I mostly didn't miss the parts he cut, although I do wonder about his focus when he e.g. omits lines of dialogue between Gawain and the Lady but leaves in the decorative filler about the zephyr warming the lands.

I have no particular thought about Burton Raffel's translation, except for one interesting pitfall. He translates most of the poem into prose (although it is kept divided in lines), but the four rhyming lines at the end of the stanzas are translated more loosely in order to make them rhyme. In theory this makes sense: for a modern reader the rhymes and iambs are very salient while we are not very attuned to alliterative verse, so translating just the bob-and-wheel into verse preserves most of the poetic effect.

But in practice it doesn't work so well. First, Raffel just isn't that good at it: Borroff and Tolkien manage to make their translations rhyme while sticking closer to the sense. But more interestingly, the rhyming couplets obviously draw the attention of the reader, and the author uses them to highlight the most load-bearing words, which are often chosen to be nicely ambiguous. The tale is written in 'lel' letters, which could mean that it's true, or only that it is composed in valid alliterative verse. King Arthur waits 'stif'ly to hear a tale or see a wonder, which (says Borroff) could be a heroic "resolute" or an ironic "stubborn". The lady enters Gawain's chamber and banteringly offers him 'my cors', which could mean "myself" but of course literally means body. And what were they doing to that deer? Actually these lines are the parts where you need to be most careful about the meaning.

J.R.R. Tolkien's translation is interesting because he seems to try something different. While Borroff and Armitage try to approximate the effect the poem would have on a 15th century reader by translating into current English, Tolkien uses archaic syntax ("him" for "himself", "we come not" for "we don't come" etc) and archaic vocabulary (the book includes a glossary, which you need to use to understand the translation at all). I think the idea is to capture what it is like for a modern reader who knows Middle English to read the Middle English original, with the particular pleasures of puzzling through a text as a non-native speaker.

Reading this (and even more his translation of Pearl in the same volume) I was surprised by how skilled Tolkien was at verse—he carries over a lot of the formal aspects, and I think his version sounds the best.

[mdzsxperience]

☾ Lan Wangji's names etymology

Here's a complete post on the etymology of our beloved Lan Wangji's various names. I've always appreciated how authors would give out names that fit their characters so well, which is why I chose to share this.

▷ Lan Wangji Master Profile.

Birth Name - Lan Zhan 藍湛

Lan 藍 (lán) – blue. In Chinese, Lan 藍 is literally blue.

Zhan 湛 (zhàn) – clear, deep. In Chinese, Zhan 湛 from 湛蓝 (zhànlán), azure blu

Lan Zhan’s formal name Zhan 湛 means deep or clear, without impurities. It is often prefixed to the front of the word “blue” to describe the color of sunny cloudless skies, azure. Wangji’s birth name 湛 (zhàn) derives from the 诗经 (Classic of Poetry), one of the Chinese ‘Five Classics’ dating back to the Zhou Dynasty and a core pillar of Confucian thinking, studied by scholars to this day. The common meanings of this word are “deep” or “crystal clear”. The phrase 湛清 (zhànqīng) is often used to describe a transparent personality or state of mind that is in its purest form, with no distractions or obscurities. The name is really perfect for Wangji, as the phrase 湛深 (zhànshēn) can be used to describe a person displaying profound knowledge and/or mastery of skills in a complex field. 精湛 (jingzhàn) also means to be deeply proficient and skilled at something, normally used to address masters and pioneers. Interestingly, 湛 has another pronunciation, dān, which means “happiness” or “indulgence”. A third, rarer way of pronouncing the word is chén, which means “to sink” or “to make extinct”. I think the multifaceted nature of the character 湛 perfectly embodies the deep and complicated being that resides within Wangji.

Birth name is rarely used by anyone other than close family members, teachers, and elders in the family, clan, or sect. Using it implies either a certain type of intimacy or a certain type of seniority over the person being spoken to. Side Note: The fact that Wei Wuxian addresses Lan Wangji as Lan Zhan so early on in their acquaintance would be considered rude.

Courtesy Name - Lan Wangji 忘機

Wangji 忘机 (wàngjī) – to be free of worldly concerns (a Daoist phrase) Wang 忘 means to forget. It may have negative connotations in English because it’s associated with a passive disease and loss of treasured memories. In Chinese, actively forgetting can also be a positive renunciation of worldly troubles, so the character is somewhat more romantic than an English speaker would assume. Ji 機 / 机 is typically used in common speech to refer to machines, mechanical things, opportunities, and worldly things that have many parts intricately connected with each other. In more metaphysical discussions, it implies the intertwined destinies and sophistication of the mundane. To forget the secular calculations and intricacies of the world is to live freely and without distractions; as an antonym of precision, it has heavy Taoist flavors because of its seclusive connotations.

There’s an interesting story behind Lan Wangji’s name. It comes from the last line of a poem by acclaimed Chinese poet Li Bai. The sentence reads “我醉君复乐 陶然共忘机” (wǒ zuì jūn fù lè, táo rán gòng wàng jī), which translates to “I become drunk and you’re merry; in our happiness we forget about all worldly matters”. In my mind, this scene perfectly brings to life Xianxian enjoying a jar of Emperor’s Smile with Wangji in the Cloud Recesses after his resurrection when he is no longer concerned with the vanities of the world. “Wangji” is a Taoist phrase that means “to hold oneself aloof from the world”. The direct translation is “to forget about worldly crafts”. Chinese fans often describe him as “一尘不染” (meaning not be soiled with even a particle of dust) and “不食人间烟火” (a Taoist phrase now used to describe a person who has otherworldly qualities, who does not associate himself with ordinary temporal matters).

The courtesy name, in The Untamed, is given early on. In many wuxia/xianxia novels, characters don’t receive their courtesy name until they are adults. This is a name friends, acquaintances, and peers (those of equal standing) use.

Title - Hanguang Jun 含光君

Hanguang Jun 含光君 (Hánguāng-jūn) 含 (hán) – to hold, to bring 光 (guāng) – light 君 (jūn) – honorific for a gentleman or man or noble character

Hanguang Jun is a title that praises Lan Zhan’s integrity. Jun 君 is a character (literally “lord”) with multiple meanings, but here it is attached to the end of a name to show respect. Wangji’s title directly translates to “noble bearer of light”. 含光 (hánguāng) is also the name of one of three of the most powerful swords in Chinese history/mythology, said to have been under the care of Shang Dynasty emperors. Its blade is described to be invisible, and a mortal cannot see it being wielded with their bare eyes. Later interpretations during the Warring States period described the three swords as symbolic stages of a person’s journey to finding the Taoist path, with Han Guang being the final stage of ‘preparedness to enter the Way’ (入道合体之状). The characters HanGuang 含光 separately and literally mean “hold/envelops light”, and in the novel, it is taken from a widely circulated legend about several of the main characters, which specifically goes like this about Lan Zhan: 景行含光藍忘機 (JingXing HanGuang Lan WangJi). The first two characters are taken from an ancient collection of poems, and describe a person of upright and faultless disposition. The next two characters, Han Guang, refer to a harboring of light. For me, it’s not the light part that’s interesting, but the state of harboring that defines the most significant cultural nuances. It is (or at least was) considered a form of virtue in China if you don’t flaunt your brightness in other people’s eyes; so the polite thing to do, if you’re brilliant as flames, is to shield that light so you aren’t so in-your-face about it.

The title is just what it says on the box. It is used to express respect, but also a certain amount of distance.  Side Note: The young disciples of the Gusu Lan call Lan Wangji Hanguang-Jun because it would be disrespectful for them to address him as Lan Wangji, as they are not of equal standing. When Wei Wuxian returns from the Burial Mounds, he addresses Lan Wangji as Hanguang-Jun because he wants to distance himself from their earlier intimacy to prevent being questioned about his methods. 

Extra thought:

I must give props to Lan Wangji’s actor Wang Yibo. Early reactions from the Chinese audience had some unfavorable reviews that criticized his lack of facial expressions, but later retracted their opinions, because they realized that he was actually doing a superb job with his eyes and his body, considering the limitations. The script gives him very few lines in most episodes. You can see how he looks directly at anyone in the eye unless he’s about to kill you, or (later on) if you’re Wei Ying. If you don’t know him well, he seems unconfrontational with those cold shielded eyes, but as soon as you step over the line (sometimes a line named Wei Ying), you’ll feel the sharpness of that fierce light in his eyes like a blade to your throat. Just ask Fairy the spiritual dog...

Author Note: I am not an expert in Chinese at all, English isn't my native language either - I hope everything is correct.

▷ MDZS Home Page

[ completed ; 17/07/2024]

★ ⁺. ໒꒰ྀི｡- ˕ -｡꒱ྀི১ ૮꒰˶ᵔ ᗜ ᵔ˶꒱ა ˖⁺‧₊˚

[kvetchlandia]

Pompilio Villarubbia Norri Roman Poet Gaius Valerius Catullus c.1935

When I was in high school, everyone was taking smart choice foreign languages: French, Spanish, German. I'm sure people would have taken Mandarin had my school offered it. But no, not me. I had to do the lame thing and go for the useless. I took Latin. By the time I hit university, I was pretty advanced in the language, but hadn't yet subjected myself to the barbarism of Medieval Church Latin (sorry, but what can I tell ya? I'm a classicist, I guess). Anyway, in my first term at Berkeley, I took an intensive course so I could hop right into translation of serious classical documents. My instructor (I still remember her name, which was great. She was called Tizzzie) had us select a Catullus poem to translate, just as a warm up. At random, because I didn't know it, I chose Catullus 58, one of the Lesbia poems. Lesbia was Catullus' love for a while, and he wrote a bunch of lovely romantic poems inspired by and dedicated to her. Then they had a nasty breakup and he took out the literary knives. Here is Catullus 58 in Latin:

Caeli, Lesbia nostra, Lesbia illa, illa Lesbia, quam Catullus unam plus quam se atque suos amavit omnes, nunc in quadriviis et angiportis glubit magnanimi Remi nepotes.

The reason I'm telling this boring tale is this: Look at the last line. Do you see the first word in the line - glubit (3rd person singular of the verb glubere, if you really wanted to know, which I rather doubt is the case). Well, I had no idea what the verb meant, never having encountered it before. I looked it up in my little student's Latin/English dictionary, only to find that it didn't appear there. Mystified, I went to the Doe Library, Berkeley's main library, where they had a bunch of Latin/English dictionaries. I grabbed one off the shelf at random and finally found a definition, which was "to bark back." I was like, "to bark back," what the fuck does that mean? Finally, I went to the humungous Oxford Latin Dictionary, in which at last I found a definition that made some sense. That would be - glubere: to pull back the foreskin prior to giving oral sex.

Damn, Latin actually had a piece of sex slang which literally meant to pull back the foreskin prior to giving a blow job! I learned this at UC Berkeley. And people say college isn't good for anything!

And, for those few of you who've bothered to read this far, here's my translation of the poem:

Caelius, our Lesbia, that Lesbia, that same Lesbia, who alone Catullus once loved more than himself and all others, now in the crossroads and alleyways pulls back the foreskins and sucks off the descendants of noble Remus.

OK, that's our lesson for the day. Be prepared for a quiz tomorrow. Class dismissed.

[idylls-of-the-divine-romance]

Christus Victor/typological analysis of "Where Is Your Rider", please!

He has thrown down the cavalry as gravel sinks/and as the stone founders underneath the sundered sea of red and reed/the shadow of Hades is fading/for He has cast down Leviathan, the tyrant and the horse and rider.

Where is your rider? Where is your rider?

He will hold with all of His might/the armies of night/still as boulders laid to the side/he has hoisted out of the mire/every child/so lift your voices with timbrel and lyre/we will abide, we will abide, we will abide.

YESSSSSSSSS!!!! I was so hoping you would do this because this song is AWESOME!!!! And reading the lyrics and noticing all the hyperlinks drove me insane

“He has thrown down the cavalry as gravel sinks/And as the stone founders underneath the sundered sea of red and reed” IT’S MY FAVORITE SONG IN THE TORAH!!! THE SONG OF THE SEA!!! “He has thrown the horse and rider into the sea”. It is sooooooooooo cool. Also, they translated it right! In Hebrew it’s not the Red Sea but the Sea of Reeds and they do a combination with “sundered sea of red and read” — also they are awesome when it comes to alliterations. So the rider in Exodus is ofc Pharaoh who is (1) the archetypical tyrant in the Tanakh (see: Solomon being modeled after Pharaoh) and (2) was famous for having lots of horses and chariots. But of course the rider is also Death, the Cosmic Tyrant. Death is the rider of the Pale Horse from the previous song (which I haven’t listened to) and also the Tyrant who has the entire world enslaved to him…. Except not any more! Because “he” (who is not explicitly named in the song at all. Maybe he is in “Caesar” but I haven’t listened to that one yet either) has thrown the Cosmic Tyrant Horseman into the sea (which is itself a symbol of death and destruction from Genesis 1 to Revelation 21, “and the sea released it’s dead” and “there will be no more sea”). Death is dead. Also also Exodus literally says pharaoh sank like a stone in the sundered sea: “they went down into the depths like a stone”

“The shadow of Hades is fading/For he has cast down Leviathan, the tyrant, and the horse and rider” WHERE DO I EVEN BEGIN!?!? I am so in love with this song y’all. Okay so Hades is The Realm of the Dead; I am thinking that in this case Hades is like basileíā toû Theoû in the apostolic writings: primarily about reign and not location. To say the shawls of Hades is fading is to say to say that reign of the Cosmic Tyrant is passing away. And why is that happening? Because of the most badass line in this song: FOR HE HAS THROWN DOWN LEVIATHAN, THE TYRANT, AND THE HORSE AND RIDER!!! I will have everyone know that I have been screaming this line for the past hour and a half tyvm. Gosh so first of all I’m getting not just Job but specifically the first line of Isaiah 27 (the last lines of a poem, I think, about the return from exile) where it says Yahweh will crush the heads of the leviathan. In Job leviathan primarily seems to refer to a creature that is good but not evil; in Isaiah and Revelation (which was obviously a huge inspiration for a lot of this album) the chaos dragon is firmly evil. Also also: the Revelation 12!!!!! My favorite chapter in which Michael and his messengers cast that great drakon out of heaven and down to earth as the saints give their lives and blood down on earth below. All of these images — the chaos dragon, the cosmic tyrant, the pale horse, and it’s rider — are all such absolutely incredible symbols for Death. “I will sing to Yahweh, for He has triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider He has thrown into the sea.” Hallelujah and amen! Christmas Victor Rex!!!

“Where is your rider?/Where is your rider?” Paul would really love this song. This take on ““O Death, where is your victory? O Death, where is your sting?” The sting of Death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus the Anointed One.” is absolutely freaking amazing.

But here is where we get to how all of this went down.

“He will hold with all of his might the armies of night/Still as boulders laid to the side till we pass by/He has hoisted out of the mire every child/So lift your voice with timbrel and lyre/"We will abide, we will abide, we will abide"” I mean this is as Christus Victor as it gets!!! That through by death Our Lord ransacked the grave and brought liberation to those who had died. And that by his resurrection and the laying aside of the boulder he has declared the defeat of the Cosmic Tyrant. Okay wait I’m just noticing this: the “armies of night” are compared to the boulders!!! Laid aside as if mere stones WHICH IS THE EXACT THING THE RIDER WAS COMPARED TO!!!! Oh yeah. It’s all coming together. And he has brought all his children (believers) out of the miry clay (as the psalmists say) and set out feet upon the rock. And so: we sing! With the greatest joy in the world we sing and make music like Miriam and her sisters: “Sing to Yahweh, for He is highly exalted. Both horse and driver he has hurled into the sea”!!!! And so then? After both horse and rider have been cast into the sea, after leviathan the slithering serpent has been cast down, after the cosmic tyrant has been dethroned — after this great victory, how could we “abide in him as he abides in us?” How could we not, like Israel before Mount Sinai say, “All that Yahweh has spoken to us, we will do.”

GOSH THIS SONG IS AMAZING!!!!

Also because you didn’t include this and I couldn’t resist: “Bury me where it pleases you, lover/At sea or deep within the catacomb/But these bones never rested while living/So how can they stand to languish in repose?” I love these lines. First, “lover” hurts me to my core every time I hear it. Second, the sea is where the dead rise in Revelation (one of my commentaries say this is the unhurried dead but idk I think it’s just about the dead rising in general), and this same concept is picked up in “Thus Always to Tyrants” where both tomb and sea are told to spit forth the bones (amazing imagery). And then the catacombs!!! I neeeeeeddd to go visit some ancient Roman catacombs where believers where buried. I know I’ve said I want to be placed in the mountains somewhere but I wouldn’t mind being buried in Rome in an ancient catacomb. I also learned that early believers used to have services there, take communion, and write prayers on the walls for dead saints to pray for them. I LOVE the catacombs.

[maya-chirps]

Leonora

by Sugarcane

New translation! This time I just felt like translating and talking about this song because I genuinely love talking about the little nuances here. It's one of the more recent videos that really pulled me back into OPM. I explain a lot of the nuances and the historical background below + some personal stories related to it too.

Leonora

This serenade I'm offering, for the maiden with unparalleled beauty, with the scent of roses If tricky fate would wish it I won't let it disappear

This letter I'm hoping your eyes would read I'm ready to do everything, I'll even court your family I've only now felt such eternal awe All I wish for is

The two of us be together at the end and at the beginning Proving that first love does last

How many poems has it been, why is it getting unnoticed? My only wish, at the end you'll be with me If it's possible, until the end of time I will never let you go forever

Our sweet past relationship, where'd it go? (I keep looking for you, whoa) How come between us, I'm the only one left? (I wish I could still see you) Your beautiful voice, would I still hear it? Ready to go through life[1] even if you're not here anymore

Wherever you are, may you be happy now (let you go free, whoa) Even if we won't be together anymore (I still love you) Just please listen to my wish that you would take care Oh, Leonora my love, ah

Alternative Translations and Additional Context

Ready to go through - this is just the literal translation of the line but contextually it's closer to the lyric I used or something close to "Ready to go through everything".

The song is based on the real-life historical figure Leonor Rivera-Kipping, one of the many lovers of the Philippine National hero José Rizal. The two were childhood sweethearts, however, due to Rizal traveling to Europe to study and Leonor's mother Silvestra Bauzon not liking how political he was while favoring an Englishman named Henry Charles Kipping so Silvestra and Kipping kept the letters that Rizal sent to Leonor. This made her think that she was abandoned and later on married Kipping instead (Quirino, 2015).

On the night of her wedding, she found the letters and in her frustration tore them apart sewing some of them on the hem of her wedding dress and burnt the others. After her marriage to Kipping, she vowed to never play the piano again. She died at 26 in childbirth alongside her newborn daughter, after which Kipping abandoned their only living son and traveled back to England just to die three years later, no mention of Leonor ever being his wife (Quirino, 2015).

Her final wish before her death was to be buried with the silver box that contained the ashes of Rizal's letters (Martinez-Clemente, 2011). Sadly, her grave was a casualty during the war and her remains and her grave site has been lost forever (Quirino, 2015).

Leonor serves as the inspiration for the character of Maria Clara in Rizal's acclaimed novels that Filipinos are mandated to learn at school Noli Me Tangere and its sequel El Filibusterismo. Maria Clara is the female love interest of the series protagonist Crisostomo Ibarra and the two have a severely tragic love story due to the politics surrounding Ibarra and both of their relationships.

From my understanding of the books, Leonor may also have been the inspiration for the El Filibusterismo character Paulita Gomez who abandons her relationship with her lover, one of the leading characters named Isagani, after he was accused of being an insurrectionist despite being innocent. At the end of the story, Paulita marries someone else and Isagani watches the reception from outside her house.

Random Trivia

The place this music video was shot is actually a historical house of another one of Rizal's many lovers Segunda Katigbak! The place is called Casa Segunda and is located in Lipa City, Batangas. My classmates and I visited the place and rented it out for a project a couple of years back.

Another fun fact is that the group most likely didn't actually play the piano in the house because they weren't allowed to considering how old it is. It's an antique and it was already falling apart when we went there way before this video was probably shot. That's the reason for them keeping the camera away from the keys.

They're also not allowed to sit on the antique seat in front of the piano because of how fragile it was and it already was falling apart too when we went there. We ignored this for one of our shoots and did it quickly before anyone could notice, but they may have just positioned the camera so they don't have to show them sitting down on the chair.

We found a random kitten in the house? I don't know what happened to it. It wasn't outside either, it was like inside one of the bedrooms. I don't know if the staff or family owned it but it did look like a stray.

Some of my classmates still hasn't paid me back for the rent we were supposed to split. It isn't a fun fact, I'm just a little salty.

Original Lyrics

'Tong alay kong harana, para sa dalagang Walang kasingganda, amoy-rosas ang halimuyak Kung nanaisin ng tadhanang mapanlinlang 'Di hahayaang mawala pa

'Tong liham na umaasang mata mo ang makabasa Handang gawin lahat, maging pamilya'y liligawan Ngayon lang nakadama ng wagas na pagkamangha Hiling ko lang naman na

Tayo na sanang dalawa ang siyang huli at ang umpisa Papatunayang ang unang pag-ibig ay 'di mawawala

Nakailang tula na, ba't tila 'di napupuna? Ang tangi kong hiling, hanggang dulo ikaw ang kapiling Kung puwede lang, hanggang pangmagpakailanman Hinding-hindi na papakawalan kailanman

Ang dating tamis ng pagsasama, nasa'n na? (Hinahanap-hanap ka, whoa) Ba't sa 'ting dal'wa, ako na lang ang natira? (Sana'y magkita pa) Tinig mong kay ganda, maririnig pa ba? Handang tahaking mag-isa kahit wala ka na

Kung nasa'n ka man, nawa ay masaya ka na (palalayain ka, whoa) Kahit na 'di na tayo magsasama pa (mahal pa rin kita) Dinggin mo lang ang hiling na mag-iingat ka Oh, Leonora kong sinta, ah

References

Martinez-Clemente, J. (2011, June 20). Keeping up with legacy of Rizal’s ‘true love’. Inquirer.net. Retrieved on 5 September 2024, from https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/16626/keeping-up-with-legacy-of-rizal%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%98true-love%E2%80%99

Quirino, E. (2015, February 17). Leonor Rivera, a Hero’s Sweetheart. Positively Filipino. Retrieved on 5 September 2024, from https://www.positivelyfilipino.com/magazine/leonor-rivera-a-heros-sweetheart

[sixty-silver-wishes]

well, @illumiost asked to hear my Russian, so here's me reciting a poem that's very important to me.

This is "Страхи" (Fears) by the Soviet poet Evgeny Evtushenko, written 1962. The poem was set to music for the fourth movement of Shostakovich's 13th Symphony.

The historical context to this poem is vital to understanding it. After Stalin's death in 1953, Khrushchev's government came with some easing of cultural restrictions, and the decline of the "Socialist Realism" art style, most prominent in the 30s-50s. This period of Soviet history is known as the "Thaw." While the Thaw resulted in a rise in avant-garde Soviet art, it was still heavily discouraged, albeit not to the extent that it was during Stalin's time in power; while the fact that this poem makes an appearance in Shostakovich's symphony is indicative of the changing cultural atmosphere, it also faced censorship and controversy (albeit not to the extent of another Evtushenko poem featured in Shostakovich 13, "Babi Yar").

The poem alludes to two major historical events that defined Soviet culture during the Stalin era- the Great Purges (1936-38) and WWII (in the Soviet Union, 1941-45). During the Purges, a culture of fear and distrust grew, and while the war resulted in devastating losses of life, wartime and postwar propaganda pushed an image of Soviet strength and military power. This cognitive dissonance between fear and trauma caused by one's own government, while projecting a cultural image of patriotic might and confidence, is reflected in the poem as well.

Overall, "Страхи" is a poem about the lasting presence of cultural trauma and its consequences for Soviet Russia (and, one could argue, modern Russia). The first and last stanzas contain the line, "Умирают в России страхи" ("in Russia, fears are dying"), but as the rest of the poem states, this is not the case. Fear is still as alive in 1962 as it was in 1936, and it manifests as mistrust and a wariness to speak out against oppression. The poem purposefully contradicts itself multiple times; fears are dying in Russia, but they still permeate Russian society. Russians were unafraid of warfare during WWII, but were terrified of speaking aloud to themselves at home.

Here is my original English translation of "Страхи." It's not a one-for-one literal translation, but I did my best to preserve both the meaning and the original rhyme scheme.

In 2022, before Russia invaded Ukraine, I was taking Russian language classes in college in order to further my music history research. I was invited by my Russian professor to participate in the Evgeny Evtushenko poetry competition, which required Russian learners (both students learning Russian as a foreign language and heritage speakers) to recite a Russian-language poem on a Zoom call. Evtushenko's widow and son were on the judges' panel. As I was familiar with some of his work and knew he collaborated with Shostakovich- a composer whom I had been enamored with researching- I signed up for the competition and chose this poem, as I was already familiar with it from the symphony. My professor was surprised I decided to choose such a long poem with that sort of historical weight to it, but agreed to help coach me with the pronunciation and enunciation.

Reciting this poem in front of her was difficult, even before the war began. My professor grew up in Russia, and I didn't want her to think I was taking the poem lightly by any means; I was dealing with serious subject matter from a culture I was not a part of, and while my historical research had helped me somewhat understand what the poem was about, I knew there was a cultural component to it that I would never be able to fully grasp. However, my professor encouraged me to learn the poem, and urged me not to shrink away from some of the more cutting stanzas.

I was probably halfway through memorizing it when the invasion happened, and that made me gain another layer of understanding. Going on Reddit and reading posts from Russians who had previously dismissed the idea of an invasion of Ukraine as "western propaganda," only to be completely shocked and disillusioned when the invasion actually began, hearing how scared my friends in eastern Europe were, reading news reports of protesters being arrested just for holding anti-war signs, and seeing the war be met with apathy or claims of being "apolitical" by civilians as it went on made it harder to learn and recite the poem, as I was beginning to see just how relevant it was.

One day, I read a news report that a memorial in Babyn Yar, Ukraine, had been damaged by bombing- the site of the 1941 anti-Semitic massacre where, in 1962, as stated in the Shostakovich 13 setting, there "was no monument." When I went to practice the poem that day in front of my professor, I broke down crying. 1936 became 1941 became 1962 became 2022, and that day, I felt as if I had caught a glimpse of the impossible length of history.

I can hardly remember being on the Zoom call and reciting the poem for the Evtushenkos. I couldn't believe I was actually speaking to them, and that they were listening to me recite the words of the famous poet- to them, a husband and father- who had collaborated with the Dmitri Shostakovich on one of the most monumental symphonies of the 20th century. I wish I could have looked at their faces on the screen, but I didn't; I just recited and then listened to the rest of the students read their poems. I didn't win the competition, and didn't even place, but a few weeks later, my Russian professor handed me this small book of Evtushenko poems, which she said the Evtushenko family wanted to give me. It's by far my most prized possession.

[f-yeah-no-evil]

Great NE Rewatch: Judgement

No Evil: Judgment is required reading past episode 10, and I've just finished episode 19, so we're long overdue for this post!

The Tezcatlipoca mirror is a direct lift of the Aztec Sun Stone. Mirrors of the Aztec era were obsidian polished to a reflective surface, and stones like these were meant for telling(?) time and direction. Strange to think the mirror could not actually be used as a mirror! If you look closely, you can see the symbols around the face have been changed from the four suns/gods of the Tezcatlipocas to the Tezcatlipoca symbols in No Evil.

The most I know about Tlaloc and jars comes from this poem, by Octavio Paz:

Máscara de Tláloc Grabada en cuarzo transparente Aguas petrificadas. El viejo Tláloc duerme, dentro, soñando temporales.

Loosely translated:

Tlaloc's Mask Carved in translucent quartz Petrified waters. Inside, old Tlaloc lies sleeping dreaming temporarily.

(The last word, temporales, seems to have associations of being "temporary" as well as with the rough temperament of storms. Tlaloc may be "petrified" but he is not dead, only sleeping for a while. I initially translated this phrasing as “of cool rainwater” to “storms” before settling on a literal one.)

From a real-life standpoint, because jars were often full of cool water and protected from the elements, it probably wasn't unusual for an Aztec to find a frog in their earthenware jar; from a frog's standpoint, it's the perfect place to be. Hence why frogs may be carved into jars as decoration. Despite this, I haven't found any strong mythological associations in my research between Tlaloc and jars, but frogs and jars are associated nonetheless... which I suspect is the joke.

Constellations based on the Nazca Lines of Peru, the hummingbird and the condor.

Huītzilōpōchtli, as a sun warrior, fights against the army of stars every night to prevent them from taking over and plunging the world into darkness. That association appears to be fudged in No Evil, but eh... if every Tezcatlipoca was associated with the sun, things would get a little confusing. If we read the black Tezcatlipoca as eternal darkness, and consider the Hummingbird as a warrior against that scenario, things cohere quite a bit more.

More an observation than anything, but I'm intrigued by how the Judgment Scythe is a farming/harvesting tool, and the Mercy Bow is a weapon - their meanings are flipped. I would take the scythe to reference Xipe Totec's nature as an agriculture god, but the association in No Evil is more in line with the Grim Reaper. A machete is used to hack through jungle and vegetation as well as a weapon, so the association with liberation makes sense to me.

Mama is based on Great Goddess/Spider Woman of Teotihuacan, a mysterious but seemingly central figure.

[garden-ghoul]

We have a really cool new poem for you this Gushiwensday Shabbes. It's by Yuan Zhen and I'm calling it "Aubade."

Half the sky trembling on the edge of daybreak, half still dark… drunk on the scents of flowers, dreaming, and the songs of orioles--- A dog shivers and stretches, and the bell begins to sound. It's twenty years ago and I'm in the monastery again, this dawn.

Notes and original text under the cut.

春晓

半欲天明半未明，醉闻花气睡闻莺。 猧儿撼起钟声动，二十年前晓寺情。

So Yuan Zhen is most famous for his epistolary story called Biography of Yingying, which is about a love affair between a student and a mercurial young woman, and has been adapted into things like paintings and operas. I mention this because I'm taking this poem as referring to that work, being from the perspective of the student. With that let's get to the first note:

Aubade -- The title is literally Spring Dawn, but "spring" is often linked to sex and romance, and I take the last line to be in reference to Yingying leaving the student's room at dawn to go back to her house, for reasons that I'll talk more about in the note on that line. Do people know what an aubade is? It's a poem or song specifically on the subject of leaving your lover at daybreak. Love that we have a word for this.

half the sky... daybreak --- Literally "half wanting dawn;" though wanting here often has sexual connotations, it also idiomatically means "about to happen," as in, a thing wants to happen. I chose "trembling" here because it can also read as sexy.

drunk... orioles --- This poem is so tightly written that I'm just going to have to do a whole line at a time, huh? First of all, the grammar: the first couplet of this poem has a very dreamlike vibe, without any specific action or passage of time, so I've deliberately resisted trying to make anything grammatically complete. Second, the character used for smelling flowers and for hearing birds is actually the same character! This could be evoking a kind of half-awake confusion of the senses, or it could be about smelling your girl (莺 is the bird mentioned here; 莺莺 is the name of the titular character in Biography of Yingying).

shivers and stretches --- Pretty ambiguous. Due to the multiple meanings of 起 it could also be read as "begins to shake [the bell]." I didn't go with that partly because it would be pretty redundant and partly because I thought the image of a dog stretching so hard it shivers a little was cute.

It's twenty... this dawn --- Literally "twenty years ago dawn temple feeling." This is the twenty years ago dawn temple feeling! The feeling I've kept in mind while translating is the feeling of watching your lover get up and leave; the student in the story is staying at a monastery, and while mostly he goes over to her place there are a few times where she comes to his. So we have a poem from the perspective of the student twenty years later, now married to someone else, still thinking of Yingying when the sounds and smells remind him of her. We think Yingying might be based on a lover of Yuan Zhen's, so I'm imagining him fictionalizing his own feelings to write this poem.

[classicslesbianopinions]

Does one need to be smart to read classic literature by writers such as Homer or Virgil? I follow various people studying the classics because it's fascinating but half the time I don't understand what they are saying. Whenever I try to read any of the epic poems, for example, it just makes me feel very unintelligent because I have a vey hard time understanding what I'm reading.

i don't think you have to be smart-- you just have to be patient.

i'm about to do a wall of text, so here's the tl;dr: it's very common to feel unintelligent, but it makes sense to struggle when reading something so old, and you should not be afraid to use outside resources to help you understand the context of what you're reading. also, it might help if you start with shorter or abridged works.

"classics" is a really broad field, and even a highly educated classicist will have areas they don't know as much about. like, i also don't understand what other classics bloggers are saying a lot of the time. most of the people i follow have dedicated a lot of time to their specific interests, and if my own interests don't overlap, i'm not going to understand everything they say. but it's very easy to feel like you aren't as smart as others because you haven't read the same stuff or because you struggle to keep up. i feel this way often, even after years of study.

the other thing is that if you're studying classics in college/university, the standards are absurdly high. you're expected to learn both latin and greek, and you're expected to read a lot on top of that. it's very hard to keep up with, and there's often a sense that you are the only one struggling to keep up (even though that's not true). it's also hard to enter into if you haven't already learned some latin or greek, which are not often taught in public schools (in the us at least). so the field is genuinely difficult to enter into, especially if you are not wealthy, white, able-bodied, neurotypical, etc.

to the specific point of trying to read epic poetry-- it makes sense that you would have a hard time understanding. it is hard to understand! and there's a lot of context that you might be missing: it's a work from another time and place, and some of it might be completely unfamiliar to you. that's okay. it is unfamiliar to everyone, no matter how smart they seem. go slowly, and don't be afraid to use summaries and study guides to figure out what's going on. like, literally just read the sparknotes if that helps. (you can probably google "[title] sparknotes" or "[title] study guide" or "[title] summary" and find stuff that will help you understand. i also will sometimes just go to the wikipedia page for a work if i need to know or remember what happened in it. and you can google specific references, too, or lines. if you have a question about something, chances are someone has had the same question at some point in the last ~3000 years.) you might also try reading abridged versions of the texts to get an idea for what's going on, and then when you go back and read the actual text it will be easier to understand.

you might also benefit from starting with some shorter works. the iliad and the odyssey are really interesting, but they're also long and can be hard to get into. personally, i recommend plays, mostly because they tend to be short, and i find them more accessible. sometimes you can even find performances online, which can also help a lot with understanding. i also would recommend hesiod's theogony as an intro to epic; it's much, much shorter than the iliad or the odyssey, and it covers a lot of basic myth. ("theogony" literally means "god origin"-- it gives you the godly family tree.)

translation also makes a huge difference. if you're struggling to read something, you might want a different translation. there are a lot of translations free online, but they tend to be pretty old. if you have access to a library, see what they have to offer; if you want advice on specific translations, you can send another ask and we'll answer and/or publish it and get followers to recommend their favorites.

also, if you post a question to tumblr and tag it #tagamemnon, there's a really good chance people on here will help you answer it. a lot of us really love helping other people understand the stuff we're interested in! it's really fun to share information. (if you're wondering, "#tagamemnon" is a pun on agamemnon, a character from the iliad-- it's the tag classics tumblr uses because #classics has a bunch of other stuff in it.) or if you have a question about something someone posts, you absolutely can go into their ask box and ask for clarification. most people really really want to talk about their interests and are happy to give a basic explanation.

most importantly, though, don't let yourself be intimidated. i have been studying classics for years and i still feel not good enough or not intelligent a lot of the time-- the field has a long history of gatekeeping and elitism, and it's really hard to break out of that. but it's okay and normal to need outside resources to understand a text, or to need to read an abridged version before you read the original. there is no shame in not knowing stuff! and it's okay if it's hard to learn.

anyway i hope this helps. i promise you are not alone in feeling unintelligent. but if you're interested in classics i absolutely believe you can find ways to understand the texts you want to read. good luck! <3 our ask box is always open if you have questions or want to start a conversation about what you're reading-- we can't answer everything but we can publish the ask and see if followers can answer it. and of course if anyone reading this has any input or advice for anon, please reply or reblog!

[starlitwishforu]

青玉案 · 元夕 - 辛弃疾 english translation (and notes!)

ok well. all this chinese poetry posting has put me on a bit of a translation high so i wanted to share my most recent translation project, which i actually just finished recording and uploading yesterday after two whole months of waffling. the poem itself is SO fucking cute but SO hard to translate and i'm honestly very proud that i stuck with it to the end. it instantly became one of my top favourites the very first time i heard it so i hope other people can also find some joy from it!

here is the original:

青玉案 · 元夕

【宋】 辛弃疾

东风夜放花千树，更吹落、星如雨。宝马雕车香满路。凤箫声动，玉壶光转，一夜鱼龙舞。

蛾儿雪柳黄金缕，笑语盈盈暗香去。众里寻他千百度，蓦然回首，那人却在 灯火阑珊处。

and here is my translation:

Qing Yu An: Lantern Festival at Dusk

by Xin Qiji

Fireworks blossom beneath the touch of evening's eastern breeze; flurrying as they fall, sparks shower like stars. Prancing steeds pull chiseled carriages, sweeping fragrance across the path. The xiao’s decadent notes adrift, the jadelike light’s prismatic shift; the dragon-fish dance as the night-hours pass.

Combs shining in their hair, golden, silver, silken sway; sweet perfume and tinkling mirth linger in their wake. My searching gaze is futile as I scan the thronging crowds; at last I turn, and you are there, in the quiet dark of evening wane.

translation notes beneath the cut! there is a LOT, be warned!

translation notes:

so to start from the very top, let's first introduce the title 青玉案 · 元夕.

青玉案 (pinyin: Qing Yu An, lit. the matter of the verdant jade) is actually the name of a 宋词排名 (song cipaiming, song dynasty poetic/musical form). just as shakespeare wrote sonnets and basho wrote haiku, so the poets of the song dynasty wrote, among hundreds of other forms with fun names like this, Qing Yu An poems.

each 词排名 had a set number of characters per line, set rules for its tone patterns, and even came with its own tune. maybe a better western parallel would be twinkle twinkle little star, which uses the same tune as the alphabet song and baa baa black sheep.

the end result is that there are many titles under the heading of Qing Yu An, and even, according to chatgpt, another 青玉案 · 元夕.

anyway, this one by Xin Qiji, the most famous one, is titled 元夕 (yuanxi); 元 refers to 元宵节 (yuanxiaojie), the lantern festival held on the fifteenth day of the lunar new year which marks the end of the spring festival/chinese new year, and 夕 is dusk. hence a very naturally poetic name, lantern festival at dusk.

before i get into the text of the poem, i want to note that i often sacrifice rhythm/rhyme for precision of meaning. i ✨artistically✨ speed up/slow down some syllables while recording to preserve some sense of metre lol, but it does read quite awkwardly on paper. i'm a very inexpert student and have a lot to improve on!

ok so! line by line!

东风夜放花千树

--is a literally genius pun. it transliterates as: the east wind in the evening blows open the flowers of a thousand trees. very spring, right? haha spring festival get it.

however! its a chinese celebration, so what will there definitely be? fireworks 😎 and it just so happens that one word for "setting off fireworks" in chinese is 放烟花 (fang yanhua). yep, that's the same 花, which means flowers, but when combined with 烟 (smoke), it becomes a "fire-flower" 🎆!!

it's also the same 放, which in the context of actual flowers means the opening of petals, but in the phrase 放烟花 means to set off (the fireworks).

together, this line evokes both the blooming of the spring flowers under the eastern breeze* and the blooming of a thousand fireworks in the evening sky.

*spring comes from the east ofc; this is folklore and not science i think but lends to the spring-ness of the line

更吹落，星如雨

this one is pretty straightforward. lit. blown through the air by aforementioned wind, falling like a rain shower of stars.

宝马雕车香满路

oh boy. when i tell you my mom (who is my chinese teacher) and i got in several petty arguments over baomadiaoche...

so 宝马 (baoma) are just well-bred horses, prize steeds with a pedigree. a 雕车 (diaoche) (lit. carved chariot) is a very expensive carriage carved with lots of intricate decorations. in other words, these ppl are RICH.

however, it was difficult to convey the sheer decadence of 宝马雕车 without either using a miles worth of syllables or entirely losing the original cultural context. carved was too direct and ugly to hear besides, etched was not elite enough, sculpted conveyed entirely the wrong image... also, for some reason, "proud" to describe steeds was vetoed for being inaccurate???? hence the arguments.

in this scenario, the final word choice really is a matter of the least bad option.

at the same time, the second half of this line 香满路 (lit. fragrance fills the path) implies movement: the carriage is passing by, leaving the fragrance of rich people perfume in its wake. for the sake of syllables, i shifted that movement to the fragrance part of this line. i also like that this evokes a high-headed noble sweeping elegantly through the crowds.

overall, this line adds to the picture of a decadent, bustling market street during the most joyous celebration of the year.

凤箫声动，玉壶光转，一夜鱼龙舞

lit. the notes of the phoenix xiao (chinese recorder) move, jade gourd light shimmers, the fish dragons dance all night.

chinese ppl, ok, use two motifs to describe the beauty and virtue of every artistic thing ever: phoenix and jade. phoenix xiao means NOTHING. it's like virtuous xiao. jade gourd is a little harder; some say it's the moon, some say it's the lanterns. jade and light put together kinda implies moon anyway, so i just sidestepped the problem entirely.

as for 鱼龙 (lit. fish dragons), theyre a type of dragon lantern which supposedly has some characteristic of a fish. they are puppet-danced on sticks - dragon dancing, the classic. my mom and i both had a vivid image of this dragon-lantern-dancing, but we couldn't find it ANYWHERE. if anyone knows the right search query to pull this up, please lmk how to tame 谷大哥*. anyway, i left the lanterns implied because idk how the fuck to explain this whole thing in four syllables.

*lit. big bro google. its funnier in chinese

蛾儿雪柳黄金缕

this is the line that, when i finally bothered to properly research it, made everything about this translation click into place. these are all hair decorations. 蛾儿 (lit. li'l moth) are silk moths, 雪柳 (lit. snow willow) are silver tassels, and 黄金缕 (lit. yellow-golden cords) are gold cords lmao. hence golden silver silken sway, which was SO satisfying to come up with.

笑语盈盈暗香去

lit. laughing speech tinkles and faint fragrance goes by. this one is also fairly straightforward. 去 means to go, so we specifically want the image of a group of giggly teenage girls fading into the crowd.

众里寻他千百度。蓦然回首，那人却在 灯火阑珊处。

and finally we reach the most famous line, the 千古名句 (qiangumingju) - iconic line of a thousand histories!

lit. within the crowd, searching for him* in a thousand hundred directions; suddenly the head turns, it turns out that person is standing in the darkness where the lights have gone out.

*"him" is highly debated. 他, used in modern chinese like the pronoun "he", was historically a catchall pronoun for people of any gender. iirc, 她 for "she", and the gendered distinction, was only introduced when china started integrating to the west. in this line, 他 could be the teen girl that just passed by, or her beau. whichever way, one is the searcher, the other is the searched. i chose here to sidestep this by using i and you bc fuck gender.

anyway, when the searcher's head turns - even this bit had to be suitably poetic, a nightmare - they find their lover in the 灯火阑珊处.

灯火阑珊处 this phrase refers to a very specific image. imagine, in the early hours of the morning, a dwindling market street; the stands are closing one by one, lights winking out, leaving a gentle blanket of dark and calm behind. it is the quiet after the rain, the breath after the shout; it is the sigh of closing your front door at the end of the night. it's not the absence or complete lack of light, but rather the exit of it. a place of that just-left-behind dark is a 灯火阑珊处.

this sentence gave me so much grief and i am so proud to have done it even just a little bit of justice.

so after all that, the scene described by this poem is something like this: a lively late-night market street. people from many walks of life fill the path, celebrating the lantern festival, the turn of a new year and coming of spring, a riotous party of light and noise and joy. as the night slips into the sixteenth, the market begins winding down, stalls closing and lights winking out. amongst the teeming crowds ambling their way home, a young person searches for the their lover from whom they were separated; on some sudden instinct, they turn, to find their lover already looking back from the darkness of the fading festival, gaze caught in the divide between light and dark, wake and sleep: a quiet young love on the edge of spring, something fresh and new.

if anyone made it to this point, thank you and i hope this was an interesting read! please feel free to add comments questions and observations!! i would love to discuss at any level with someone other than my mom and chinese poetry truly is one of my passions even when it makes me want to kill, so i'm always down to talk. :] <3

[oneminutereviews]

Selected Poems of Gabriela Mistral, translated by Ursula K. Le Guin

Winning the Nobel Prize in Literature is generally regarded as a great honour. But the prize was never awarded to authors such as Leo Tolstoy, Henry James, Anton Chekhov, Mark Twain, Henrik Ibsen, Marcel Proust, James Joyce, Jorge Luis Borges and Vladimir Nabokov. On the other hand, how many people still read the works of Sully Prudhomme (first Nobel Prize for Literature in 1901), Giosuè Carducci (1906), Verner von Heidenstam (1916), Frans Eemil Sillanpää (1939) or Johannes Vilhelm Jensen (1944)?

Gabriela Mistral was the first Latin American author to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, but when Literature Stack Exchange suggested a Gabriela Mistral reading challenge, I had to overcome my prejudice against what seemed one of those long forgotten Nobel laureates. It helped that Ursula K. Le Guin had published a large selection of Mistral’s poems with her own English translations in 2003. Even though Le Guin is best known for her science fiction and fantasy novels, she was also a poet. This volume, published by the University of New Mexico Press, is the largest selection of Mistral’s poems ever published in English and fills the gap left by earlier translations, by Langston Hughes (1957) and Doris Dana (1971), which have gone out of print.

Le Guin selected poems from five of Mistral’s published volumes: Desolación (1922), Ternura: canciones de niños (1924), Tala (1938), Lagar (1954) and the posthumously published Poema de Chile (1967). She also included four unpublished poems. The Spanish text and Le Guin’s translation are usually printed on facing pages, except when the lines are short enough to print both text side by side on the same page. Le Guin did not attempt to reproduce the metre and only reproduced the rhyme if it came without forcing. She also included some of the dark, difficult poems from Mistral’s last two books, but the admits that the choice was otherwise subjective.

Le Guin’s translations capture the spirit of Mistral’s poems very well. In order to achieve this, the translations can’t always be literal. Sometimes, it even seems as if Le Guin is taking liberties, for example when she translates estanque as millpond (in “El amor que calla”, pages 12–13) or al roce del cilicio as at the touch of the lash (in “Íntima”, pages 14–15) or “Habla con dejo” (literally: “[She] speaks with [an] accent”) as “She chatters” (in “La extranjera”, pages 192–193).

Mistral’s work is influenced by her Catholicism, which is reflected both in some of the poems’ themes and in metaphors, even in poems that are not religious. That does not mean you need to be religious to appreciate her poetry.

The book would have benefited from more careful editing and proofreading, especially the first part. Typographical errors include “I stretched our my arms” (page 29), “a mis casa” and “infinto” (both in the second stanza of “Desolación”, page 40) and “Roció” (the title of the poem “Rocío”, page 57).

Gabriela Mistral: Selected Poems of Gabriela Mistral. Translated by Ursula K. Le Guin. Mary Burritt Christiansen Poetry Series. University of New Mexico Press, 2003 (431 pages). ISBN 9780826328199.

Review submitted by Tsundoku.

[mdzsxperience]

☆ Wei Wuxian's names etymology

Here's a complete post on the etymology of our beloved Wei Wuxian's various names. I've always appreciated how authors would give out names that fit their characters so well, which is why I chose to share this.

▷ Wei Wuxian Master Profile.

Birth Name - Wei Ying 魏嬰

Wei 魏 (wèi) – tower over a palace gateway; from the radicals 鬼 "ghost" & 委 "entrust/shift". His surname Wei primitively meant “ghosts and spirits” (the radical 委 means spirit and 鬼 means ghost). After it became a royal family name, it is to this day used to describe something as “grand, tall, or mighty”. The surname Wei is familiar to history majors, as it’s one of the three nation-states in the Three Kingdoms Period. The original meaning of the word 魏 is grand and majestic – the left half of that character means god or entrust, while the right half means ghost. Fitting surname for a grandmaster who deals with the deceased.

Ying 嬰 (yīng) - infant. Wei Ying’s formal name Ying 嬰 literally means babe. In ancient times it used to also refer to necklaces. Historically there are at least a handful of well-known figures with that name. The Taoist term YuanYing 元嬰 refers to a state of primordial transcendence, often considered an intermediate phase on the path toward deity WWX’s birth name Ying (婴) commonly means “infant”. Another meaning for Ying is “to pester, to touch”. This second meaning derives from a famous piece of literature by Western Jin Dynasty official and writer Li Mi called 「陈情表」 (chén qíng biǎo). The first two words 陈情 are also the name of WWX’s flute. The work describes the story of Li Mi’s grandmother’s great sacrifice to bring him up and his determination to repay her. Today it is one of the most famous literary works for teaching new generations about filial piety, a key Confucian virtue. Even though 陈情 on the surface has two meanings, (1) “to convey one’s inmost feelings”(abbreviation of 陈述衷情) and (2) “former relationship” (abbreviation of 陈旧的情义).

Birth name is rarely used by anyone other than close family members, teachers, and elders in the family, clan, or sect. Using it implies either a certain type of intimacy or a certain type of seniority over the person being spoken to.

Courtesy Name - Wei Wuxian 魏无羨

WuXian 无羨 (wúxiàn) – to have no envy Wu 无 means none, nil, the lack of Xian 羨 means envy. Wuxian is a perfect name for someone who embodies the untamed, envious of none. His outlook on life is never to bemoan his fate, come what may. He doesn’t know the meaning of jealousy. He is complete in and of himself. His courtesy name Wuxian comes from the last line of a poem by Ming Dynasty literati Xu Ben. “即无羡鱼志，外物非所迁” (jí wú xiàn yú zhì, wài wù fēi suǒ qiān) translates as “to be free of envy and aspire to greater heights; not be misguided by honorary reputation and personal gain”.

即 - to seek; aspire. 无羡 - to be free of envy. 鱼志 - derives from the Chinese idiom 鲲鹏之志, originating from a literary work by Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi meaning “to be ambitious”. 外物 - literally means “objects external to the body”, now used to describe personal gain and external honors. 迁 - misguide; led by.

The courtesy name, in The Untamed, is given early on. In many wuxia/xianxia novels, characters don’t receive their courtesy name until they are adults. This is a name friends, acquaintances, and peers (those of equal standing) use.

Title - Yiling Patriarch / Laozu 夷陵老祖

Yiling 夷陵 (yílíng) – a place; 'barbarian mound' YiLing is simply a place name, literally the Yi Hill. However, it sounds a lot more sinister and ghastly in the original language because of the connotations. The character Yi is historically used to refer to barbarous and uncivilized regions to the east of ancient China, while the character Ling refers to hills and mounds of dirt that are often associated with mausoleums. Yeah, it sounds worse than it looks in the show.

Laozu 老祖 (lǎozǔ) – patriarch Laozu doesn’t have anything to do with patriarchy, since the original Chinese is a unisex term. The characters separately mean “old” and “ancestor” but the combined term is typically used about the founder of a religious sect.

This title is about Wei Ying’s place of origin where a grandmaster established himself (people are starting to forget he was from YunMeng originally because they’re so fearful of him) and his unorthodox powers (he’s the first one to successfully harness the dark arts). The reverence is inseparable from abhorrence.

The title is just what it says on the box. It is used to express respect, but also a certain amount of distance. 

Would anyone be interested in Mo Xuanyu's name etymology?

Author Note: I am not an expert in Chinese at all, English isn't my native language either - I hope everything is correct.

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[ completed ; 17/07/2024]

★ ⁺. ໒꒰ྀི｡- ˕ -｡꒱ྀི১ ૮꒰˶ᵔ ᗜ ᵔ˶꒱ა ˖⁺‧₊˚

[liberty-or-death]

Yunmeng & Wei Changze (Meng Haoran 孟浩然’s "A Visit to Chancellor Zhang at Lake Dongting 望洞庭湖赠张丞相")

Has anyone ever wondered why Yunmeng was associated with a ton of lakes?  Turns out that there’s an actual historical and geographical basis of this.  And as a small bonus, Wei Changze’s also part of this meta.

The Yunmeng Marsh (云梦泽 Yunmeng Ze or the 云梦大泽 Yunmeng Big Ze) refers to a series of ancient lakes that spread across the Jianghan Plains in the Hubei Province, China.  In the early Qin Dynasty, these series of lakes stretched 450km across.  But however, due to the continuous sedimentation of the Yangtze River and Han River, the delta of the Han River was extended and the Yunmeng Ze has since been reduced.  During the Wei, Jin and North and South Dynasties, it was reduced by half, and in Tang and Song Dynasties, it gradually became a cluster of small lakes.  In modern times, these series of ancient lakes are gone and are no longer connected to one another.  

And yes, Marsh/泽 Ze is the same word in Changze’s name.  If you break Cangze’s name down, it means 长泽 Long Marsh, and it’s very similar form to 长江 Long River aka Yangtze River. 

There’s a really cool documentary on its history but unfortunately it’s not subbed 😂😂

This line also appears in the Tang Dynasty poet Meng Haoran 孟浩然’s ”A Visit to Chancellor (丞相 Cheng Xiang) Zhang at Lake Dongting) 望洞庭湖赠张丞相".  Zhang Jiuling 张九龄, is the chancellor who served in the Tang Dynasty under the Emperor Xuangzong.  

During the period of the Three Kingdoms, the chancellor would assist the emperor in governing the country.  This post was eventually abolished in the early Ming Dynasty.  The poem is a gift, and it expresses the poet’s wish to meet the chancellor and laments that he can’t cross the Lake Dongting and envys the fish.

Lake Dongting is located in Western Hunan.  Hubei (translated: North of the Lake) and Hunan (translated: South of the Lake) are both named after this lake. 

八月湖水平，涵虚混太清。

In August, the lake’s almost levelled with the shore.  Water and sky seems to blur together.

气蒸云梦泽，波撼岳阳城。

Mist rises from Yunmeng Ze, the waves seem to shake Yueyang City. 

T/N: Yueyang City’s 岳阳城‘s located on the east of Lake Dongting.

 

欲济无舟楫，端居耻圣明。

I wish to cross the river, but I struggle to find a boat. Thus, I staying at home shamefully in theses peaceful times.

坐观垂钓者，徒有羡鱼情。

Sitting and watching the anglers cast their baits, but unfortunately I can only be envious of the fish. 

羡鱼 - This is the same phrase that Wei Wuxian’s name’s based off.  It's in the last line of the poem that I've previously translated. It does mean to covert after, but when literally translated it does mean “envy of fish”.  I’ve translated it literally in this case so preserve the theme of the sentence . (ie. the anglers and the fish) 

Related Meta:

Wei Wuxian's Name

More MDZS Meta

[mountainsea-chronicles]

Weekly Shanhaijing 2 - Yóng ( 颙 )

Author’s notes under cut.

又东四百里，曰令丘之山，无草木，多火。其南有谷焉，曰中谷，条风自是出。有鸟焉，其状如枭，人面四目而有耳，其名曰颙，其鸣自号也，见则天下大旱。

Four hundred li to the east is [a place] called Lìngqiū mountain. It has no grass or trees and much fire. To the south of it is a valley called the Middle Valley, from whence tendrils of wind flow out. There is a bird whose appearance is like an owl’s, human-faced, four-eyed, and with ears. Its name is Yóng, and it calls its own name.

-From the Classic of Southern Mountains ( 南山经 )

I wandered to a far mountain

where no tree was to be seen

but fires blazed through night and day

and winds whistled through the ravines

There lived a creature in these parts,

making its nest amidst the gale’s howl

Though its face beguiled, its eyes burned bright

and its body was that of an owl’s

And high above this cursèd place

it sang its dissonant song

It rings in my ears yet-

“Yong! Yong! Yong!”

A/N: This week’s one came a bit late, sorry about that! I had a lot on my plate.

It’s complete coincidence that this week’s installment is a bird from the Southern Mountains like last week’s. While I was thinking of what to feature this week, I was reminded of the yóng and wasn’t paying attention to details like that.

Translation

“…the Middle Valley.” - Decided to use the literal translation of the name as opposed to “Zhōng Valley” since it felt more appropriate.

“…tendrils of wind…” - The word “条” is a measure word generally used for things that are long, in strands, etc. This was my best attempt at trying to capture that image in English.

“…it calls its own name.” - “号” means “marker” or something along those lines. An indicator of identity. A more literal translation would be “its call marks/signifies itself,” but I went with “it calls its own name” because that conveys the idea better, in my opinion.

Art

When I picked out this creature, I knew I had to include the description of the area along with it.  The image of this eerily human-faced bird of prey framed by fire and smoke drifting in the wind was just too dramatic to not draw. It’s also quite a hyperbolic way to express the creature’s significance as an omen of drought.

There’s more to it than that. The word for “owl” used here ( 枭, xiāo ) is an onomatopoiea of the word for “reduce” ( 消, same pinyin ), also a component of words like “annihilate” ( 消灭, xiāomiè ) and “disappear” ( 消失, xiāoshī ). Fitting for a scene like this, isn’t it?

As for the owl itself, it’s modelled off an Eurasian eagle owl. I considered a barn owl due to its ( somewhat ) human-looking face, but decided that would be too obvious. I ended up choosing the Eurasian eagle owl due to various other reasons: the mention of the “ears” in the text; the large, powerful appearance; and the fact it can be spotted in the real-world equivalent of its range, down in South China.

Caption

I was at a loss for the caption at first, but then, for whatever reason, I suddenly thought of Shelley’s Ozymandias and various Edgar Allan Poe poems. Hence… this. It’s not meant to be good or anything, if anything, it’s supposed to be kind of cheesy ( as a lot of old poetry tends to be ).