Eight-fold Formation, Du Fu (300 Tang Shi #235)

[lnhammer]

A repost with significant revisions after learning about the rocks, thanks to researching #182.


His exploits spread throughout the Three-Part Kingdom,
Famed for making this Eight-fold Formation.
The river flows, the rocks remain immobile—
His lasting regret: he couldn’t conquer Wu.

八阵图
功盖三分国，
名成八阵图。
江流石不转，
遗恨失吞吴。

“He” is Zhuge Liang, premier of Shu (one of the Three Kingdoms succeeding the Han Dynasty empire) who despite his legendary strategic genius, didn’t win the game of thrones because of his kings’ bad decisions. Wu was a rival kingdom, centered on the lower Yangzi.

Commentaries disagree on whether his Eightfold Formation is a battle-troop formation (the easiest reading of 阵图) or a complex rock formation. Either way, it’s called “eightfold” from supposedly being based on the bagua, the eight trigrams. The rock formation, also called Stone Sentinel Formation and Stone Sentinel Maze, was on the shore of the Yangzi near the upper end of Qutang Gorge, and was supposedly designed by Zhuge to confuse and trap pursuing Wu troops (the incident is in chapter 84 of Romance of the Three Kingdoms, written 750 years after Du Fu’s poem, but not Records of the Three Kingdoms, written 500 years before). (If you’ve ever met an “array” in a wuxia/xianxia/xuanhuan, this is a historical root of the concept.) Until it was flooded by the Three Gorges Dam, the formation was submerged during the spring runoff but revealed when waters fell in the autumn. Given the imagery of line 3 is relevant and that Du Fu lived nearby in Baidicheng for a couple years, I’m inclined to take it as the rocks.

---L.

Comments

[sartorias]

I woulda assumed that with the "stone" hanzi there.

[lnhammer]

At the time, I assumed the water and stones were generic imagery of endurance. This was the 11th poem I'd translated, and it shows. (I've been going back and cross-checking all my early work.)