Hi I very much enjoy your translations and explanation of the Tang poetry. That said can I say that the reading of the poetry is somewhat devoid of expression and modulation akin to someone reading text without emotion. Please forgive me if I offend. This comment is given in the hope that the reader can ‘up his game’ somewhat. It doesn’t have to be opera sing-song but perhaps more feeling?
Hi, Graham. I don't know Cinix at all. He's just a guy who posts his readings on Youtube. I agree that he's not giving a dramatic reading of the poems, and in some ways that is a shame.
The value of his readings is that they are in the language that (we think) the poets actually spoke, enabling us to hear the rhymes and something about the tone. He's had to learn an entire dead language, based only on linguists' calculations, to do these readings. It's a real feat! And in this case, hearing the reading in its original pronunciation made a big difference to my understanding of the poem, so it's a huge gift to us. That said, yeah, he's just enunciating the words, rather than trying to give a reading of the poem as a piece of art.
I could try to find some decent modern readings of the poems, and post them as well. One problem with the reading of these works is that we're fairly sure that the Tang poets would often sing their work, and we don't know any of the music, nor even how they fit the words to the music - was it melodic like opera, or more of a rhythmic recitation with musical background, or what? So any modern interpretation has to be understood as a modern invention, inspired by the words from 1,300 years ago, but not necessarily reflecting the poem as it was originally performed.
Still, there's lots of value in a good modern adaptation, so I'll keep an eye out for them, and post any good modern readings I find.
Hi I very much enjoy your translations and explanation of the Tang poetry. That said can I say that the reading of the poetry is somewhat devoid of expression and modulation akin to someone reading text without emotion. Please forgive me if I offend. This comment is given in the hope that the reader can ‘up his game’ somewhat. It doesn’t have to be opera sing-song but perhaps more feeling?
Hi, Graham. I don't know Cinix at all. He's just a guy who posts his readings on Youtube. I agree that he's not giving a dramatic reading of the poems, and in some ways that is a shame.
The value of his readings is that they are in the language that (we think) the poets actually spoke, enabling us to hear the rhymes and something about the tone. He's had to learn an entire dead language, based only on linguists' calculations, to do these readings. It's a real feat! And in this case, hearing the reading in its original pronunciation made a big difference to my understanding of the poem, so it's a huge gift to us. That said, yeah, he's just enunciating the words, rather than trying to give a reading of the poem as a piece of art.
I could try to find some decent modern readings of the poems, and post them as well. One problem with the reading of these works is that we're fairly sure that the Tang poets would often sing their work, and we don't know any of the music, nor even how they fit the words to the music - was it melodic like opera, or more of a rhythmic recitation with musical background, or what? So any modern interpretation has to be understood as a modern invention, inspired by the words from 1,300 years ago, but not necessarily reflecting the poem as it was originally performed.
Still, there's lots of value in a good modern adaptation, so I'll keep an eye out for them, and post any good modern readings I find.
Thank you for reading!