Thread 24788736

>床前明月光
>疑是地上霜
>舉頭望明月
>低頭思故鄉

>Chuáng qián míngyuè guāng
>Yí shì dìshang shuāng
>Jǔtóu wàng míngyuè
>Dītóu sī gùxiāng

>At the foot of my bed, moonlight
>Yes, I suppose there is frost on the ground.
>Lifting my head I gaze at the bright moon
>Bowing my head, thinking of home.

Dude was talking about cumming

yeah. crying and cumming himself to sleep alone on the new year thousands of li away from home

>>24788736 (OP)
this translation sucks

>>24789181
post a better translation then, faggot

>>24789204
nta, but David Hinton's is my favorite

>Seeing moonlight here on my bed
>and thinking it’s frost on the ground,

>I look up, gaze at the mountain moon,
>then back, dreaming of my old home.

>translating chink poetry

Can't be done

>>24788736 (OP)
My chinese ex-gf's demented grandpa would recite this poem to her on the phone whenever they got to talk once a year and she'd cry so much missing home.
>>24789204
>bed in front bright moonlight
>doubt is ground on frost
>lift head want bright moon
>lower head think old country

>>24788736 (OP)
do classical chinese poems always have an equal number of characters like that on each line?

>>24789473
The four line regulated verse form does, it's called jueju and was typical of the Tang poets. There were other forms of poetry with other regulations, some less strict and having no line limits. It's all complicated and I don't follow all the details but it's like how we have specific poetic forms in Western traditions like sonnets, blank verse and villanelles.

reminder: Chinese poems are near totally incomprehensible to chinese people unless they can read the written characters.
Such a shit language kek.

>>24789586
They’re written in classical chinese the pronunciation of which is lost

>>24789586
>Chinese people can read and understand poems in a completely different language because of their character system
>but they can’t understand a 1,000 year old language when it’s spoken with modern probunciation? lmao, what retards!

>>24789586
>Such a shit language kek
Idiot gweilo, Old Chinese, that is, the language of Mencius and Sima Qian, is a miracle bestowed upon humanity.

>>24789619
>>24789628
>>24789868
none of you studied Chinese. Your posts reveal that.

>>24788736 (OP)
>in the end I take a crap as offering.
>I repaid what I could but I was still left with one payment, this is just emptiness.
>who understands my Zen?
>anyone who does isn't worth a worn out copper.

>when the arrows of life and death meet they are split clean through

>>24789586
The average Chinese high schooler is forced to read and memorize a fairly sizeably chunk of the Chinese poetic canon, hence why a lot of the population understands "literary" chinese despite not specializing in that field

>>24789619
It's been reconstructed like P-I-E

>>24790182
>reconstructed
in other words, it's lost.

>>24790178
>hence why a lot of the population understands "literary" chinese
they can only read it, not audibly understand it first time heard.
This is literary also true of modern songs; if it isn't vernacular but poetic its mainly incomprehensible.

>>24789586
This is like complaining that the average modern American can't understand Old English.

NOTICE TO THE RETARDS ITT:

Modern Chinese read Ancient Chinese with modern chinese pronunciations. :)

>>24790190
it's not as speculative as PIE

>>24789586
reminder: Paradise Lost is near totally incomprehensible to English people unless they can read the written characters.

>>24790234
Sauce?

>>24790182
It doesn't need to be reconstructed. Southern Chinese hicks still speak Tang-Dynasty chinese

>>24790227
the average American/Brit/Aussie can't even understand Melville much less old English

>>24789586
The seethe to this lmao
Must be true then

>>24790234
does it rhyme tho?

>>24792123
*Ahem*
>The Measure is English Heroic Verse without Rime, as that of Homer in Greek, and Virgil in Latin; Rhime being no necessary Adjunct or true Ornament of Poem or good Verse, in longer Works especially, but the Invention of a barbarous Age, to set off wretched matter and lame Meeter; grac't indeed since by the use of some famous modern Poets, carried away by Custom, but much to thir own vexation, hindrance, and constraint to express many things otherwise, and for the most part worse then else they would have exprest them. Not without cause therefore some both Italian, and Spanish Poets of prime note have rejected Rhime both in longer and shorter Works, as have also long since our best English Tragedies, as a thing of itself, to all judicious ears, triveal, and of no true musical delight; which consists onely in apt Numbers, fit quantity of Syllables, and the sense variously drawn out from one Verse into another, not in the jingling sound of like endings, a fault avoyded by the learned Ancients both in Poetry and all good Oratory. This neglect then of Rhime so little is to be taken for a defect, though it may seem so perhaps to vulgar Readers, that it rather is to be esteem'd an example set, the first in English, of ancient liberty recover'd to heroic Poem from the troublesom and modern bondage of Rimeing.

>>24792140
Man, Milton can really turn a phrase.

>>24792123
only the first two lines do.

>>24788736 (OP)
>>24789428
My favourite:
>Before my bed, the moon is shining bright,
>I think that it is frost upon the ground.
>I raise my head and look at the bright moon,
>I lower my head and think of home.