Border Songs 1, Wang Changling (300 Tang Shi #36)
Thursday, 3 March 2022 08:19![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lnhammerCicadas cry in empty mulberry trees—
It’s Eighth Month on the road through Dreary Pass.
We leave the border, enter the border again,
And everywhere is yellow reeds and grass.
Since ever guests from You and Bing first came
They’ve all grown old ’mid sand and empty fields.
Don’t imitate that dashing son of a hero
Who boasts about his lavish chestnut charger.
塞下曲 之一
蝉鸣空桑林，
八月萧关道；
出塞复入塞，
处处黄芦草。
从来幽并客，
皆向沙场老；
莫学游侠儿，
矜夸紫骝好。
Oh, botheration, base text—you are annoying me. You title this poem 塞上曲 and the next poem 塞下曲, even though they’re both from a four-poem set called 塞下曲. Every other edition I’ve checked uses 塞下曲 for this—so why can’t you? (That you have only two of the four poems is not your fault—the original editor had, I’m sure, his reasons for omitting the others.) This is annoying enough, Imma overrule you and emend this title to 塞下曲, and add numbers. Title issues aside, this poem has a lot of textual variants, but since you are at least coherent, I’m otherwise sticking to you.
This is the first poem of 3HTP Part 2, the five-character folk-song-style poems. Xiao (“dreary”) Pass was on the northwest frontier, in the middle of modern Ningxia Autonomous Region. You and Bing were ancient provinces on the northeast frontier, covering roughly Liaoning, northern Hebei, and northern Shanxi, both once known for their wandering warriors. Possible mistranslation: I should probably understand that the cavalryman is a “hero young” instead of “hero’s son,” but I like the averted cuss, conveying the speaker’s contempt.
---L.
It’s Eighth Month on the road through Dreary Pass.
We leave the border, enter the border again,
And everywhere is yellow reeds and grass.
Since ever guests from You and Bing first came
They’ve all grown old ’mid sand and empty fields.
Don’t imitate that dashing son of a hero
Who boasts about his lavish chestnut charger.
塞下曲 之一
蝉鸣空桑林，
八月萧关道；
出塞复入塞，
处处黄芦草。
从来幽并客，
皆向沙场老；
莫学游侠儿，
矜夸紫骝好。
Oh, botheration, base text—you are annoying me. You title this poem 塞上曲 and the next poem 塞下曲, even though they’re both from a four-poem set called 塞下曲. Every other edition I’ve checked uses 塞下曲 for this—so why can’t you? (That you have only two of the four poems is not your fault—the original editor had, I’m sure, his reasons for omitting the others.) This is annoying enough, Imma overrule you and emend this title to 塞下曲, and add numbers. Title issues aside, this poem has a lot of textual variants, but since you are at least coherent, I’m otherwise sticking to you.
This is the first poem of 3HTP Part 2, the five-character folk-song-style poems. Xiao (“dreary”) Pass was on the northwest frontier, in the middle of modern Ningxia Autonomous Region. You and Bing were ancient provinces on the northeast frontier, covering roughly Liaoning, northern Hebei, and northern Shanxi, both once known for their wandering warriors. Possible mistranslation: I should probably understand that the cavalryman is a “hero young” instead of “hero’s son,” but I like the averted cuss, conveying the speaker’s contempt.
---L.