![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Parted from home in the north and east, we meet in wind-blown dust—
We float and moor in the south and west, a gap ’tween heaven and earth—
By a tower high at these Three Gorges, we tarry days and months—
We’ve clothing from five different creeks, yet share this ‘cloudy mountain.’
The chief of this Jie-Hu affair—we couldn’t rely on him.
This traveler’s words, this time of mourning—yet I can’t continue.
That Yu Xin’s peaceful life became an excess of such sorrows,
And yet the rhapsodies of his evening years affected Jiangling.
咏怀古迹 之一
支离东北风尘际，
漂泊西南天地间。
三峡楼台淹日月，
五溪衣服共云山。
羯胡事主终无赖，
词客哀时且未还。
庾信平生最萧瑟，
暮年诗赋动江关。
First of a five-poem set, of which the 3rd and 5th were included in the first edition of 3TP and the rest added later. Poems were recited in a sort of chanted cadence. Possibly more accurate to the spirit of the title would be “Poetic Thoughts.” Possibly more accurate to the spirit of the contents would be “Historical Figures,” but that’s not what he called it. Written in 766 in Baidi.
The “five creeks” are tributaries of the upper Three Gorges. A “cloudy mountain” is a canonical residence for a Daoist hermit. The Jie were, like the Hu, a nomadic non-Han people of the northern steppes; An Lushan was actually of Turkic and Sogdian ancestry, but asking citizens of the Middle Kingdom for precision when it comes to all those barbarians outside the empire is obvs Way Too Much. An was raised from a young child within the Tang empire and followed his stepfather into the army, rising to even higher rank following several successful border campaigns, before rebelling as a power move. Yu Xin was a Liang Dynasty poet considered the last great writer of rhymed-prose rhapsodies (fu); he was held captive in Chang’an for the last 25 years of his life following the fall of Liang to the Northern Zhou—which was led by a Xianbei clan that, although sinicized for several generations, was formerly of the steppes and real Han Chinese never forgot this. Jiangling (in modern Jiangzhou, Hubei) was the capital of Liang Emperor Yuan (ruled 552-5), though it’d not been a capital for a few years by the time Yu Xin wrote “Lament of the South” in captivity.
—L.
We float and moor in the south and west, a gap ’tween heaven and earth—
By a tower high at these Three Gorges, we tarry days and months—
We’ve clothing from five different creeks, yet share this ‘cloudy mountain.’
The chief of this Jie-Hu affair—we couldn’t rely on him.
This traveler’s words, this time of mourning—yet I can’t continue.
That Yu Xin’s peaceful life became an excess of such sorrows,
And yet the rhapsodies of his evening years affected Jiangling.
咏怀古迹 之一
支离东北风尘际，
漂泊西南天地间。
三峡楼台淹日月，
五溪衣服共云山。
羯胡事主终无赖，
词客哀时且未还。
庾信平生最萧瑟，
暮年诗赋动江关。
First of a five-poem set, of which the 3rd and 5th were included in the first edition of 3TP and the rest added later. Poems were recited in a sort of chanted cadence. Possibly more accurate to the spirit of the title would be “Poetic Thoughts.” Possibly more accurate to the spirit of the contents would be “Historical Figures,” but that’s not what he called it. Written in 766 in Baidi.
The “five creeks” are tributaries of the upper Three Gorges. A “cloudy mountain” is a canonical residence for a Daoist hermit. The Jie were, like the Hu, a nomadic non-Han people of the northern steppes; An Lushan was actually of Turkic and Sogdian ancestry, but asking citizens of the Middle Kingdom for precision when it comes to all those barbarians outside the empire is obvs Way Too Much. An was raised from a young child within the Tang empire and followed his stepfather into the army, rising to even higher rank following several successful border campaigns, before rebelling as a power move. Yu Xin was a Liang Dynasty poet considered the last great writer of rhymed-prose rhapsodies (fu); he was held captive in Chang’an for the last 25 years of his life following the fall of Liang to the Northern Zhou—which was led by a Xianbei clan that, although sinicized for several generations, was formerly of the steppes and real Han Chinese never forgot this. Jiangling (in modern Jiangzhou, Hubei) was the capital of Liang Emperor Yuan (ruled 552-5), though it’d not been a capital for a few years by the time Yu Xin wrote “Lament of the South” in captivity.
—L.