Emerald Walls - Three Poems #1, Li Shangyin
Wednesday, 17 June 2020 15:16![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lnhammer1
Within twelve emerald city walls with crooked railings,
A sea-beast’s horn repels the dust, and jade repels the cold.
Most messages in Langyuan are entrusted to cranes—
There’s no tree by the woman’s couch without a phoenix.
Stars sink beneath the ocean—face the window and see.
Rain floods that River’s source, now seen from another seat.
If these dawn pearls were bright as well as permanent,
All life-long one would face that crystal-water dish.
碧城三首
1
碧城十二曲阑干，
犀辟尘埃玉辟寒。
阆苑有书多附鹤，
女床无树不栖鸾。
星沈海底当窗见，
雨过河源隔座看。
若是晓珠明又定，
一生长对水晶盘。
So I once wrote a story based on this poem, based on a mash-up of two different translations. It finally occurred to me that I can now make my own. This is just as cryptic in Chinese as in translation—and probably was to everyone but an intended audience of one—but also strikingly evocative despite that. What can be teased out of the elliptical references and symbols (which I won’t detail beyond surface essentials) is that it’s about a love affair between a Daoist nun and an unnamed man-probably-author. Every female symbol is related to her, every male to him, and if you think you can see something as somehow related to sex, you are probably right.
Emerald walls indicate a Daoist residence, here of a Doaist nun. The sea-beast is the fabulous chenxi (“dirt-rhinocerous” —yeah, idk) whose horn supposedly repels dust. Langyuan (“lofty mansion”) is a dwelling of Daoist immortals, here used as a high-falutin name for the nun’s temple. The River is the Milky Way, and dawn pearls are morning dewdrops. Lost in translation: the phoenixes (which are male) are “perched.”
---L.
Within twelve emerald city walls with crooked railings,
A sea-beast’s horn repels the dust, and jade repels the cold.
Most messages in Langyuan are entrusted to cranes—
There’s no tree by the woman’s couch without a phoenix.
Stars sink beneath the ocean—face the window and see.
Rain floods that River’s source, now seen from another seat.
If these dawn pearls were bright as well as permanent,
All life-long one would face that crystal-water dish.
碧城三首
1
碧城十二曲阑干，
犀辟尘埃玉辟寒。
阆苑有书多附鹤，
女床无树不栖鸾。
星沈海底当窗见，
雨过河源隔座看。
若是晓珠明又定，
一生长对水晶盘。
So I once wrote a story based on this poem, based on a mash-up of two different translations. It finally occurred to me that I can now make my own. This is just as cryptic in Chinese as in translation—and probably was to everyone but an intended audience of one—but also strikingly evocative despite that. What can be teased out of the elliptical references and symbols (which I won’t detail beyond surface essentials) is that it’s about a love affair between a Daoist nun and an unnamed man-probably-author. Every female symbol is related to her, every male to him, and if you think you can see something as somehow related to sex, you are probably right.
Emerald walls indicate a Daoist residence, here of a Doaist nun. The sea-beast is the fabulous chenxi (“dirt-rhinocerous” —yeah, idk) whose horn supposedly repels dust. Langyuan (“lofty mansion”) is a dwelling of Daoist immortals, here used as a high-falutin name for the nun’s temple. The River is the Milky Way, and dawn pearls are morning dewdrops. Lost in translation: the phoenixes (which are male) are “perched.”
---L.