A Guest Arrives, Du Fu (300 Tang Shi #183)
Monday, 1 August 2022 07:40![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lnhammerBoth south and north of home, everything’s spring water—
Behold! a mob of seagulls comes here day after day.
The flowered path is not yet swept before the guest—
The aster gateway just now opened up for you.
For supper, the market’s far, so there’s no delicacies;
For wine, this house is poor, so just an unstrained brew—
Perhaps we’ll share a toast with my old neighbor beyond
The hedge—we’ll just shout—then down what’s left in our cups.
客至
舍南舍北皆春水，
但见群鸥日日来。
花径不曾缘客扫，
蓬门今始为君开。
盘飧市远无兼味，
樽酒家贫只旧醅。
肯与邻翁相对饮，
隔篱呼取尽馀杯。
According to a preface (喜崔明府相过) included in some collections, the visitor is one county-level magistrate Cui, his maternal uncle, and he’s delighted by this. In the poem itself, the guest is addressed with an honorific literally meaning “lord/ruler.” Written in 760 when living in a riverside cottage on this site outside Chengdu, during winter runoff season. Idiom: delicacies is literally “many tastes.” Lost in translation: not only is his wine unfiltered, but it’s “old” (freshly fermented was prized for rice wines). Getting the neighbor to supply presumably better wine for toasting, then drinking the leftovers with dinner, sounds tbh like a starving grad student move. (He’s actually 50 but legits in relative poverty.)
I carp about my base text’s arrangement of poems, but one nice touch is that within each section, Du Fu’s poems are in mostly chronological order. There’s a loose ordering otherwise, with a vague drift from early to late Tang within sections, but him—his poems are tracked.
Meanwhile, TIL the four couplets of a regulated verse called the head, chin, neck, and tail couplets.
---L.
Behold! a mob of seagulls comes here day after day.
The flowered path is not yet swept before the guest—
The aster gateway just now opened up for you.
For supper, the market’s far, so there’s no delicacies;
For wine, this house is poor, so just an unstrained brew—
Perhaps we’ll share a toast with my old neighbor beyond
The hedge—we’ll just shout—then down what’s left in our cups.
客至
舍南舍北皆春水，
但见群鸥日日来。
花径不曾缘客扫，
蓬门今始为君开。
盘飧市远无兼味，
樽酒家贫只旧醅。
肯与邻翁相对饮，
隔篱呼取尽馀杯。
According to a preface (喜崔明府相过) included in some collections, the visitor is one county-level magistrate Cui, his maternal uncle, and he’s delighted by this. In the poem itself, the guest is addressed with an honorific literally meaning “lord/ruler.” Written in 760 when living in a riverside cottage on this site outside Chengdu, during winter runoff season. Idiom: delicacies is literally “many tastes.” Lost in translation: not only is his wine unfiltered, but it’s “old” (freshly fermented was prized for rice wines). Getting the neighbor to supply presumably better wine for toasting, then drinking the leftovers with dinner, sounds tbh like a starving grad student move. (He’s actually 50 but legits in relative poverty.)
I carp about my base text’s arrangement of poems, but one nice touch is that within each section, Du Fu’s poems are in mostly chronological order. There’s a loose ordering otherwise, with a vague drift from early to late Tang within sections, but him—his poems are tracked.
Meanwhile, TIL the four couplets of a regulated verse called the head, chin, neck, and tail couplets.
---L.
no subject
Date: 1 August 2022 18:30 (UTC)no subject
Date: 1 August 2022 20:25 (UTC)I may steal that description ...