Wonderful, thank you. It’s poems like this that make me wonder how much guys like Du Fu and Li Bai among others were finding poetic inspiration in wine.
Thanks for the comments above. I'll explain a little more what I mean by saying, "This poem makes no sense."
Poems are usually quite short pieces of writing, and poets often use a single poem to express a single thing - a single emotion, or an image, or an idea, or a story, or... Whatever it is, there is usually a unity to a poem. The last line is, in some way, "about" the same thing as the first line.
This poem doesn't really follow that rule. It contains four separate sections with quite different tones and different poetic or aesthetic goals.
The first part is an innovation in sound: Du uses a very unusual rhyming pattern, with all of the first five lines having the same end rhyme. It's a description of a scene, with personification of the wind, and the rhyming "ow" sounds creating a lovely sense of its unending howl. This would be an interesting poem and impressive innovation just on its own - and many Tang poems were even shorter than this section, so Du Fu absolutely could have stopped writing there.
But he didn't, and his second section is narrative and humorous. Du allows a sudden shift of scene (he skips forward in time to the end of the storm), introduces characters, and changes tone entirely. Again, this section is strong enough to stand alone, and as a reader, we are left with the puzzle that faces every poetry reader: why did the author put these things together? What is the message?
I think, rather uniquely, the only message here is Du himself. He is expressing his own aesthetic view of the world by describing each of its features through his own eyes, literally pouring his inner self onto the page.
This is reinforced by the third and fourth parts, which bring in his love for his family, and fantasies about fixing the world. The big gaps in tone among all of these sections force us to recognise that the only through-line is Du.
Charles brought up the response of Chinese commentators, and they have always been keenly aware of this feature of Du Fu's poetry. In fact, a special term was invented to describe poems that shift in tone in this way: 沉郁顿挫. This phrase was taken from one of Du's poems and is applied almost exclusively to Du. In the book Charles recommended, it is used nine times to describe Du Fu's poems, and only three times to describe other writers. The Baidu-Pedia page for this poem (https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E8%8C%85%E5%B1%8B%E4%B8%BA%E7%A7%8B%E9%A3%8E%E6%89%80%E7%A0%B4%E6%AD%8C/2813957) also describes it as 沉郁顿挫.
So that's what I meant by saying the poem doesn't make sense: it doesn't follow the "rules," or rather, the same patterns, as most other poems. And that's what makes it unique and brilliant.
The “rule” you cite regarding Tang poems expressing merely “one idea” does not exist. You’re just making this stuff up, Baidu notwithstanding. It’s an eccentric reading, but that does not necessarily mean it it is wrong or unappreciated. It’s just weird.
Wonderful, thank you. It’s poems like this that make me wonder how much guys like Du Fu and Li Bai among others were finding poetic inspiration in wine.
This is a famous poem, and I’ve never seen a Chinese commentator who thought it made no sense. For a very thorough analysis see: 《唐诗鉴赏辞典》.
Maybe it’s the translation, but it seems logical enough to me?
Thanks for the comments above. I'll explain a little more what I mean by saying, "This poem makes no sense."
Poems are usually quite short pieces of writing, and poets often use a single poem to express a single thing - a single emotion, or an image, or an idea, or a story, or... Whatever it is, there is usually a unity to a poem. The last line is, in some way, "about" the same thing as the first line.
This poem doesn't really follow that rule. It contains four separate sections with quite different tones and different poetic or aesthetic goals.
The first part is an innovation in sound: Du uses a very unusual rhyming pattern, with all of the first five lines having the same end rhyme. It's a description of a scene, with personification of the wind, and the rhyming "ow" sounds creating a lovely sense of its unending howl. This would be an interesting poem and impressive innovation just on its own - and many Tang poems were even shorter than this section, so Du Fu absolutely could have stopped writing there.
But he didn't, and his second section is narrative and humorous. Du allows a sudden shift of scene (he skips forward in time to the end of the storm), introduces characters, and changes tone entirely. Again, this section is strong enough to stand alone, and as a reader, we are left with the puzzle that faces every poetry reader: why did the author put these things together? What is the message?
I think, rather uniquely, the only message here is Du himself. He is expressing his own aesthetic view of the world by describing each of its features through his own eyes, literally pouring his inner self onto the page.
This is reinforced by the third and fourth parts, which bring in his love for his family, and fantasies about fixing the world. The big gaps in tone among all of these sections force us to recognise that the only through-line is Du.
Charles brought up the response of Chinese commentators, and they have always been keenly aware of this feature of Du Fu's poetry. In fact, a special term was invented to describe poems that shift in tone in this way: 沉郁顿挫. This phrase was taken from one of Du's poems and is applied almost exclusively to Du. In the book Charles recommended, it is used nine times to describe Du Fu's poems, and only three times to describe other writers. The Baidu-Pedia page for this poem (https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E8%8C%85%E5%B1%8B%E4%B8%BA%E7%A7%8B%E9%A3%8E%E6%89%80%E7%A0%B4%E6%AD%8C/2813957) also describes it as 沉郁顿挫.
So that's what I meant by saying the poem doesn't make sense: it doesn't follow the "rules," or rather, the same patterns, as most other poems. And that's what makes it unique and brilliant.
The “rule” you cite regarding Tang poems expressing merely “one idea” does not exist. You’re just making this stuff up, Baidu notwithstanding. It’s an eccentric reading, but that does not necessarily mean it it is wrong or unappreciated. It’s just weird.