Yangzi River Song, Li Yi
Monday, 24 June 2019 08:10![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lnhammerI married away to a Qutang merchant,
Who’s wrong every day about when he’ll come home.
Had I foreseen that the tide’s so dependable,
I would have married a tidewater boy.
江南曲
嫁得瞿塘贾，
朝朝误妾期。
早知潮有信，
嫁与弄潮儿。
Qutang Gorge is the uppermost of the Three Gorges of the Yangzi. The title is literally “south (of the) river song,” which is conventionally south of the Yangzi, but given the location, the river itself seems a better translation. The speaker uses the woman’s humble first-person pronoun (obscured by my loose rendering of the second line). I’m unclear whether to understand 误 (wù) as “be wrong” or “mislead.”
And that’s the last of the poems in this form—the next part switches to 7-character lines, which feels capacious in comparison.
—L.
Who’s wrong every day about when he’ll come home.
Had I foreseen that the tide’s so dependable,
I would have married a tidewater boy.
江南曲
嫁得瞿塘贾，
朝朝误妾期。
早知潮有信，
嫁与弄潮儿。
Qutang Gorge is the uppermost of the Three Gorges of the Yangzi. The title is literally “south (of the) river song,” which is conventionally south of the Yangzi, but given the location, the river itself seems a better translation. The speaker uses the woman’s humble first-person pronoun (obscured by my loose rendering of the second line). I’m unclear whether to understand 误 (wù) as “be wrong” or “mislead.”
And that’s the last of the poems in this form—the next part switches to 7-character lines, which feels capacious in comparison.
—L.
no subject
Date: 24 June 2019 15:32 (UTC)I would have married a tidewater boy.
That's great.
no subject
Date: 24 June 2019 17:05 (UTC)no subject
Date: 24 June 2019 22:14 (UTC)no subject
Date: 25 June 2019 15:16 (UTC)