Eight-Unit Formation, Du Fu (Tang Shi #235)

[lnhammer]

His exploits covered the Three Kingdoms,
His Eight-Unit Formation brought him fame.
The river flows, rocks are immobile—
His lasting regret: not seizing Wu.

八阵图
功盖三分国，
名成八阵图。
江流石不转，
遗恨失吞吴。

The Three Kingdoms is literally the “three-part kingdom,” referring to the breakup of the Han Dynasty empire; Wu is the one to the southeast, centered below the lower Yangtze. The “he” (pronoun unstated but assured by historical references) is Zhuge Liang, prime minister of Shu (upper Yangtze) who, despite his legendary strategic genius, didn’t win the game of thrones because of his kings’ bad decisions.

I don’t see a good way of making the first two lines poetic, not without a lot of padding. Ditto, avoiding lots of glossing/endnotes. OTOH, sticking to my short meter is forcing “seizing” instead of the better “conquering” so maybe I should redo this with longer lines.

Du Fu is the other greatest Chinese poet ever. I find it entirely characteristic that he enters this stream with historical moralizing. This isn’t his only poem about Zhuge Liang in the collection, either.

---L.

Comments

[thistleingrey]

ah, I see.

Ponies are useful for such exercises, yes! Alas.

[lnhammer]

Indeed. I try not to ride one until I think I'm done, unless I'm well and truly stuck. Fortunately, this collection is frequently studied by Chinese students (much like 100 People, 1 Poem Each in Japan) so there's lots of native-language study material online.