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.