Epigraph to Story of the Stone, Cao Xueqin
Thursday, 20 April 2023 08:43![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lnhammerPages full of absurd words
Wholly filled with bitter tears.
All say the author is a fool—
But who discerns its central flavor?
满纸荒唐言，
一把辛酸泪。
都云作者痴，
谁解其中味？
More from chapter 1 of The Story of the Stone/A Dream of Red Mansions, this being the narrator’s own comment at the end of the frame story. (No, I’m not going to translate all its poems—there’s too danged many.)
---L.
Wholly filled with bitter tears.
All say the author is a fool—
But who discerns its central flavor?
满纸荒唐言，
一把辛酸泪。
都云作者痴，
谁解其中味？
More from chapter 1 of The Story of the Stone/A Dream of Red Mansions, this being the narrator’s own comment at the end of the frame story. (No, I’m not going to translate all its poems—there’s too danged many.)
---L.