Du Fu: A Spring Scene in Wartime

[Gematria]

A Spring Scene in Wartime
Du Fu

The state's in shards, yet hills and streams remain.
Spring in the city: grass and vines on rock.
Touched by the times, the flowers spread their tears.
Loathing to leave, the birds bolt up in shock.
The torch of war has filled three months with fire.
One word from home is worth ten tons of gold,
I've scratched so much of my grayed hair away
A hairpin has become too much to hold.

Now, the original in traditional characters, along with a transcription. Because Middle Chinese poems don't often rhyme well if read in Modern Chinese pronunciation (anymore than Middle English poems rhyme when read in Modern English pronunciation) I've included a romanization not in modern chinese Pinyin, but in a transcription of Middle Chinese, as linguists have most recently reconstructed it. I've tried to make the romanization represent the sounds in a way that will at least not be positively misleading to English-speakers. For a recording of me reciting the Middle Chinese out loud click this link.

春望
杜甫

國破山河在，kwôk phà šen gha dsờy
城春草木深。jzêng jhwin tsáw muk shim
感時花濺淚，kám dši hwǎ tsền lwì
恨別鳥驚心。ghờn pyêt tḗw kêng sim
烽火連三月，phêung hwá lên sàm ngwêut
家書抵萬金。kǎ shew tấy mwềun kim
白頭搔更短，bǎk dư saw kằng twán
渾欲不勝簪。ghḕun yêuk pơt shing tšim

[clarabow]

I am a great fan of Du Fu, and his writings have inspired me. There is a wonderful exhibition in the British Museum and it is amazing how the West has up until recently (19th Century) overlooked Chinese civilisation and culture, which is possibly one of the oldest? Certainly it pre-dates the Greek upon which our culture judged its own literature and civilisation (hence all those Greek references in earlier poetry.) Anyway, I hope your post will inspire others to read more of his work and Chinese poetry in general.

[David]

I'm an admirer of your project, haphazard as it is, but I have to say I'm not impressed by the way you manage your own website. I posted a comment there, on one of your translations from French, with zero response. Not a good way to encourage people to engage with your endeavours.

[Lake]

Excellent. No doubt you have had a deep study of the classical Chinese poetry. High regards!

I'm especially impressed by your reading in "an ancient way" though I can't verify the authenticity of the pronunciation as I've never heard anyone read it like that. Who has? I can read it very well in modern Chinese (Mandarin), the way I teach and read to my students.

One thing I’d like to point out is that there’s no need to mention “war” in the title because a) the original does not have it; b) readers can get the war feel from reading the poem.

Great work. Thanks for sharing.

[Gematria]

David: Point taken. And I'm sorry.

Lake: Thanks. Mentioning War in the original seemed like it made sense, because I often feel the general western reader sometimes needs a bit of hand-holding when it comes to things that need not have been explicitly stated to the poet's contemporary public.

As for the recording, the pronunciation of Middle Chinese I used is based on several scholarly sources. Most notably:

Middle Chinese: a study in historical phonology. by E. Pulleyblank
A Handbook of old Chinese phonology. by W. Baxter
Tonal evolution from pre-Middle Chinese to modern Pekinese: three tiers of changes and their intricacies. by C.Y. Chen
Early Middle Chinese: Towards a New Paradigm by Abraham S. Chan
Tones and Prosody in Middle Chinese and the Origin of the Rising Tone by Mei Tsu-Lin

I took what seemed to me most likely, based on what is known about patterns of language development, and simply put it into practice with my voice. I don't know if you noticed, but I also included a recording in Mandarin near the bottom of my original post.

[Lake]

Wow, that’s a lot of reading. Sounds like traces of southern dialects. In the old times, poems were chanted rather than read like what people do today. Yes, I did notice your modern Chinese reading, very close. Good.

[David]

David: Point taken. And I'm sorry.

Nah, you're all right. I never sulk for long, and I still admire the project.

Cheers

David

[Gematria]

Wow, that’s a lot of reading. Sounds like traces of southern dialects. In the old times, poems were chanted rather than read like what people do today. Yes, I did notice your modern Chinese reading, very close. Good.

The southern dialects actually do preserve many features that Mandarin has lost, such as the T, K, M and P at the ends of syllables. For example the word for "moon" (ngwêut in middle chinese) becomes "yut" in Cantonese and "ngiet" in Hakka. Whereas Mandarin has Yuè, and has lost the "t." On the other hand, Mandarin preserves other features that southern dialects have lost. For example, the Middle Chinese word for "mountain" was "šen" (in my transcription below) where the "š" is like the "sh" of Pīnyīn. This sound has been preserved in Mandarin "shān" but lost in Hakka and Cantonese, both of which have "San" with a plain S. In fact, Mandarin (and by mandarin I don't mean just the standard Putonghua taught to foreign learners and newscasters, but all of the related nonstandard varieties native to places like Gansu, Manchuria, Shandong, the Liaodong peninsula, Guangxi etc.) has the distinction of being pretty much the only descendant of Middle Chinese to preserve this retroflex "sh" sound.

Sorry, I could fill up paragraphs ranting about Chinese dialects and the sound-changes from Middle Chinese. For a moment there, I forgot this was a poetry board.

Everyone else: sorry for the verbal detour.