Ambiguity in classical Chinese poetry.

[the_grynne]

Excerpt from 'Introduction to Chinese Poetic Form' in Tony Barnstone and Chou Ping (eds.) The Anchor Book of Chinese Poetry.

~

To understand the reasons why the move from classical Chinese poetry to the poetry of the modern era is often perceived as a further decline from the tepid and imitative poetry of the Ming and Qing dynasties, a discussion

Comments

[orange_crushed]

Although a translation can keep just one of the interpretations, the effect of reading the Chinese is that the text is wavering between readings, a door swinging open and shut.

Ah. This is a wonderful snippet of what I can only imagine is a wonderful essay, and I'm going to have to find this book.

[the_grynne]

I left behind most of my poetry books when I came to Shanghai, but I was lucky enough to find this book in a store over here.

I'm fascinated by these English-language descriptions of Chinese ambiguity; it always feels like to me that I've been striving for a similar ambiguity in my fiction/prose (omitting pronouns! I'd love to count how many times I've done that), even though I was never reared in that environment of memorising ancient texts, like my parents were.

[rez_lo]

Oh my god, that's so fabulous. So the part of reading a poem that is an intuitive sort of connection-making among the elements is magnified? The nonverbal part speaks louder? Do I have that right?

I need to acquire that essay.

[the_grynne]

the part of reading a poem that is an intuitive sort of connection-making among the elements is magnified

Something to that effect. A word that I've seen several times now in relation to it is image-gestalt, which was never something I expected would be evoked in translation.

In one of the passages I edited out, Barnstone discusses a line by Du Fu that can read both as "a time so bad, even the flowers rain tears" and "sad about the times, flowers make me shed tears," depending on how you interpret the syntax.