![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Mawei Hill, Zheng Tian (Tang Shi #306)
Monday, 23 March 2020 07:56Xuanzong returns by horse, his Yang-fei dead—
Their rain clouds won’t be forgotten in days ahead.
Thus the enlightened son of heaven ends it:
Who would repeat the Jingyang Palace well?
马嵬坡
玄宗回马杨妃死，
云雨难忘日月新。
终是圣明天子事，
景阳宫井又何人。
It’s Yang Guifei again: Mawei (“horse-lofty”) is where she was beheaded by Xuanzong’s bodyguards as they fled Chang’an ahead of its capture by her adoptive son, the rebel general An Lushan. The last emperor of the Chen Dynasty, as the victorious Sui armies closed in, hid in a palace well with his two favorite concubines.
The second line was hard to render effectively: “clouds (and) rain” is idiomatically marital (or at least sexual) bliss, and the days ahead is literally “new suns (and) moons.”
—L.
Their rain clouds won’t be forgotten in days ahead.
Thus the enlightened son of heaven ends it:
Who would repeat the Jingyang Palace well?
马嵬坡
玄宗回马杨妃死，
云雨难忘日月新。
终是圣明天子事，
景阳宫井又何人。
It’s Yang Guifei again: Mawei (“horse-lofty”) is where she was beheaded by Xuanzong’s bodyguards as they fled Chang’an ahead of its capture by her adoptive son, the rebel general An Lushan. The last emperor of the Chen Dynasty, as the victorious Sui armies closed in, hid in a palace well with his two favorite concubines.
The second line was hard to render effectively: “clouds (and) rain” is idiomatically marital (or at least sexual) bliss, and the days ahead is literally “new suns (and) moons.”
—L.