lnhammer: the Chinese character for poetry, red on white background (Default)
[personal profile] lnhammer
It looks remote, this Sichuan road—
Dangerous travel, ten-thousand li,
Disordered mountains, snow patches at night.
My candle’s lonely—a foreign spring—
My flesh and blood are growing distant
As I instead turn towards my servants.
That which endures the ‘winds and anchors’
Tomorrow sees a year that’s new.

巴山道中除夜有怀
迢递三巴路,
羁危万里身。
乱山残雪夜,
孤独异乡春。
渐与骨肉远,
转于僮仆亲。
那堪正飘泊,
明日岁华新。

Then, as now, the lunisolar New Year was whenever possible observed with one’s family at their hometown. Idioms: Sichuan is literally “Ba” in the title and “three Ba [districts]” in the poem (this was previously met in #43), Ba being an ancient province covering eastern Sichuan, and while flesh and blood is literally “bone (and) flesh.” Idiom translated literally: ‘(whirl)winds and anchors’ represent the life of a traveler.

---L.

Date: 17 May 2022 23:54 (UTC)
sartorias: (Default)
From: [personal profile] sartorias
Hard to wrap my head around this one.

About

Warning: contents contain line-breaks.

As language practice, I like to translate poetry. My current project is Chinese, with practice focused on Tang Dynasty poetry. Previously this was classical Japanese, most recently working through the Kokinshu anthology (archived here). Suggestions, corrections, and questions always welcome.

There's also original pomes in the journal archives.

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