I disagree that Du Fu was “playing with parallelism” here. Parallel structures were omnipresent in 五言絕句 and other forms of regulated verse. Later, more strict interpretations of this poetic form, considered it mandatory.
Contemporaries would therefore most likely have regarded a break in the parallelism as a mistake unless there was a good poetic reason to do so. Du Fu was not in any way “playing with parallelism.”
Thanks, Charles! Lots of readings are possible, of course, and I don't particularly want to change your mind - we *should* all react to Du Fu poems in different ways.
But to see why I think that's what he's doing, read on! The reason is that this series of six poems, the parallelism is particularly heavy, and in fact Du seems to be exploring different things he can do with it. I hope you're enjoying the poems anyway, whether in the original or in the translation.
Another fine effort.
I disagree that Du Fu was “playing with parallelism” here. Parallel structures were omnipresent in 五言絕句 and other forms of regulated verse. Later, more strict interpretations of this poetic form, considered it mandatory.
Contemporaries would therefore most likely have regarded a break in the parallelism as a mistake unless there was a good poetic reason to do so. Du Fu was not in any way “playing with parallelism.”
Thanks, Charles! Lots of readings are possible, of course, and I don't particularly want to change your mind - we *should* all react to Du Fu poems in different ways.
But to see why I think that's what he's doing, read on! The reason is that this series of six poems, the parallelism is particularly heavy, and in fact Du seems to be exploring different things he can do with it. I hope you're enjoying the poems anyway, whether in the original or in the translation.