Bamboo Lodge, Wang Wei & Pei Di (Wangchuan Collection #17)

[lnhammer]

Alone in a quiet bamboo grove,
I play the qin, repeatedly sigh.
Deep in the forest, no one sees
The bright moon come to shine on me.

    I arrived at Bamboo Lodge
    As sun and road were close together.
    Coming and going: just a mountain bird—
    Quiet and deep: no people of the world.

竹里馆
独坐幽篁里，
弹琴复长啸。
深林人不知，
明月来相照。

    来过竹里馆，
    日与道相亲。
    出入唯山鸟，
    幽深无世人。

More literally, the title is lodge inside the bamboo, but as the name of a location, just bamboo lodge reads more naturally in English. (Out of context, as part of 300 Tang Poems, I rendered it as “Lodge in the Bamboo.”) (It’s also possible that 里 is the unit of distance li, so loosely bamboo-mile lodge, but Wang’s first line uses the inside meaning.)

Wang is still alone and getting consolation from nature. The qin is a usually 7-stringed zither with fixed bridges. Wang uses the same ambiguous sound word 啸 (xiào) as Pei’s #11, but with even less context, so commentaries are all over the place whether he’s whistling, singing, sighing, howling, or even making a drawn-out sound of effort/determination.

---L.

Comments

[oracne]

I play the qin, repeatedly sigh.

This is so vivid.

[lnhammer]

There's good reasons it was included in 300 Tang Poems.

[thistleingrey]

Winds, passing. Neat.

Is the "Poems from Tang" part of this title the relevant kind of Tang poem, or is it of a different set?

[lnhammer]

It is — that movement is based on a poem by Du Fu, Tang poet par excellence.

[thistleingrey]

ah, nice. Thanks.