Jade Dressing-Table, Quan Deyu (Tang Shi #243) (revised)
Saturday, 8 June 2019 07:51![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lnhammerLast night, my girdle came undone—
Today, a good-luck spider floats.
I can’t discard my makeup now
Nor give up him, my “chopping block.”
玉台体
昨夜裙带解，
今朝蟢子飞。
铅华不可弃，
莫是篙砧归。
The speaker is a concubine or wife whose husband seems to have spent the night with her for the first time in a while. The name of the spider (a type of orb-weaver) is a homonym of happy event, making it a good omen. The chopping block is the type on which a condemned criminal rested their head to be decapitated by axe, and via another homonym (that no longer works) was slang for husband. “Good luck” and “him” are added to double-translate these meanings.
The translation of the title is a guess—today, 台体 means the base of a conic section or pyramid.
ETA: Okay, I've revised this yet again (I'd misconstrued the temporal order of events) and finally worked out what the title meant. Saving this version for the compilation post, though.
—L.
Today, a good-luck spider floats.
I can’t discard my makeup now
Nor give up him, my “chopping block.”
玉台体
昨夜裙带解，
今朝蟢子飞。
铅华不可弃，
莫是篙砧归。
The speaker is a concubine or wife whose husband seems to have spent the night with her for the first time in a while. The name of the spider (a type of orb-weaver) is a homonym of happy event, making it a good omen. The chopping block is the type on which a condemned criminal rested their head to be decapitated by axe, and via another homonym (that no longer works) was slang for husband. “Good luck” and “him” are added to double-translate these meanings.
The translation of the title is a guess—today, 台体 means the base of a conic section or pyramid.
ETA: Okay, I've revised this yet again (I'd misconstrued the temporal order of events) and finally worked out what the title meant. Saving this version for the compilation post, though.
—L.
no subject
Date: 8 June 2019 14:35 (UTC)