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Scaling the Heights, Du Fu (300 Tang Shi #186)
Friday, 5 August 2022 07:36The wind is quick, the heavens high—apes wailing mournfully.
The islet’s calm, the sands are white—birds circling around.
Eternal are the scattering trees, soughing soughing down.
Endlessly the long Yangzi rushing rushing comes.
Ten-thousand li, a downcast autumn—always I’m a guest.
A hundred years, I’ve many ills—alone I climb the terrace.
Arduous woes, bitter regrets—increasing frost in my hair.
I’m laid prostrate—there’s new delays … a cup of unstrained wine.
登高
风急天高猿啸哀，
渚清沙白鸟飞回。
无边落木萧萧下，
不尽长江滚滚来。
万里悲秋常作客，
百年多病独登台。
艰难苦恨繁霜鬓，
潦倒新停浊酒杯。
A poem written on the Double Ninth Festival, still often observed by ascending a nearby height. In the Three Gorges, apes* on the canyon walls were often heard by river travelers. The onomatopoeia for the leaves is pronounced xiao (roughly: /shyow/) in modern Mandarin, with a reconstructed Tang pronunciation of seu—“sough” is surprisingly close in both sound and sense. I like to imagine a long sigh punctuates the middle of that last line.
Regarding that comment about Du Fu’s poems being in mostly chronological order, this is one of those mostlys: this skips ahead to 767, before we drop back to 764 for the next one.
* Language neep: per this article on exactly which primate living in the Three Gorges in Tang times was called a 猿, which in modern Chinese means a gibbon or generically an ape, these were actually langurs. I’m still going to translate it as “ape” wherever possible, even though langurs are monkeys.
---L.
The islet’s calm, the sands are white—birds circling around.
Eternal are the scattering trees, soughing soughing down.
Endlessly the long Yangzi rushing rushing comes.
Ten-thousand li, a downcast autumn—always I’m a guest.
A hundred years, I’ve many ills—alone I climb the terrace.
Arduous woes, bitter regrets—increasing frost in my hair.
I’m laid prostrate—there’s new delays … a cup of unstrained wine.
登高
风急天高猿啸哀，
渚清沙白鸟飞回。
无边落木萧萧下，
不尽长江滚滚来。
万里悲秋常作客，
百年多病独登台。
艰难苦恨繁霜鬓，
潦倒新停浊酒杯。
A poem written on the Double Ninth Festival, still often observed by ascending a nearby height. In the Three Gorges, apes* on the canyon walls were often heard by river travelers. The onomatopoeia for the leaves is pronounced xiao (roughly: /shyow/) in modern Mandarin, with a reconstructed Tang pronunciation of seu—“sough” is surprisingly close in both sound and sense. I like to imagine a long sigh punctuates the middle of that last line.
Regarding that comment about Du Fu’s poems being in mostly chronological order, this is one of those mostlys: this skips ahead to 767, before we drop back to 764 for the next one.
* Language neep: per this article on exactly which primate living in the Three Gorges in Tang times was called a 猿, which in modern Chinese means a gibbon or generically an ape, these were actually langurs. I’m still going to translate it as “ape” wherever possible, even though langurs are monkeys.
---L.