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“Complete poems” (Publication, 1979)

Year

1979

Text

Li, Ch'ing-chao [Li, Qingzhao]. Complete poems. Transl. and ed. by Kenneth Rexroth and Ling Chung. (New York, N.Y. : New Directions, 1979). [Enthält : Ling, Chung. A biography of Li Ch'ing-chao]. (Rex16)

Type

Publication

Contributors (3)

Li, Qingzhao  (Licheng, Shandong 1084-1151) : Dichterin

Ling, Chung  (Chongqing, Sichuan 1945-) : Professor National Sun Yat-sen University, Taiwan ; Übersetzerin, Dichterin

Rexroth, Kenneth  (South Bend, Ind. 1905-1982 Santa Barbara, Calif.) : Dichter, Literaturkritiker, Essayist
[The books of Rexroth are under copyright by New Directions. In the databse are all thr titles and authors of Chinese poems and online poems]..
[There are no translations from his poems in Chinese until 2014].

Subjects

Literature : China : Poetry / Literature : Occident : United States of America / Periods : China : Wu dai - Liao - Jin (907-1235)

Chronology Entries (2)

# Year Text Linked Data
1 1979 Li, Ch'ing-chao [Li, Qingzhao]. Complete poems. Transl. and ed. by Kenneth Rexroth and Ling Chung [ID D32233].
Sekundärliteratur
1985
William Lockwood : The poems are Rexroth's approach to the task of making Li Qingzhao's poems accessible to an English-speaking Western audience. With a clear grasp of what had been accomplished in the western tradition of lyric poetry. I suggest that Rexroth brought, especially to Li's most sophisticated love poems, resources of language and of sensibility that made him more fully adequate to the task. If he were to succeed in making Li's world familiar, that success would have to originate in such a resourceful capacity for discovering in his own ordinary world such extraordinary satisfaction as Li found in hers. Rexroth's attentiveness to his own vital dwelling place was linked to a comprehensive awareness of what had been achieved by men and women of articulate imagination in the history of civilized thought and feeling.
The English-speaking reader has not often found language so witty and so finely elegiac, within the lyric mode, over recent centuries of literary history. In this occasion of translating Li, Rexroth makes it available again. Among Li's most complex poems, those written out of occasions of separation from her husband during his travels to the mountains or his duty as magistrate in another town, seem most resistent to translation. Such poems project into the geographical landscape of Li's Shantung province the landscape of her own heart and mind.
Rexroth's versions of Li's song written in remembrance of lost love – following her exile from Shantung and the death of her husband – likewise retain a sensuous and luminous texture. We are grateful for Rexroth's ability to recreate the luminousness of Li's daydreaming songs and so to bring into our lives her bright, resourceful personality. In Rexroth's poems we have witnessed the affinity of one great love poet for another, at times, almost a merging of those kindred personalities, and the pleasure we take in those poems is very likely intensified by our own dreadful sense of living in 'the most loveless time imaginable'. The remarkable achievement of his versions of Li originates in his ability to make accessible and familiar to the English-language reader a sense of the fortitude with which he suffered losses as well as the resourcefulness by which she found satisfactions ; that he was impelled to recreate the wholeness of her world because he urgently felt the western world was losing such wholeness ; and that his own life-long journeying as an original poet and as a responsible man of letters had prepared him for the task. I began by suggesting that Rexroth at age 74, viewed Li's poems as a kind of garden or imaginary landscape in which he might recover the self-realizing resourcefulness of his youth ; and I would like to close by suggesting that it also became an occasion for acknowledging a world-wide sense of homelessness.
2004
Lucas Klein : Working with Ling Chung for the complete volume, Rexroth's translations – at least in the final versions – can be expected to be closer to the original Chinese, rather than representative of the partial portrayals found in his Du Fu. Comparing earlier translations with late, paying attention to the notes he offers for her translations, will elucidate the development of Rexroth's poetic, as well as how he uses words to create a specific reading of his poetry.
  • Document: Lockwood, William J. Kenneth Rexroth's versions of Li Ch'ing Chao. In : Tamkang review, vol. 15, no 1-4 (1984-1985). [Li Qingzhao]. (Rex17, Publication)
  • Document: Klein, Lucas. Original / translation : the aesthetic context of Kenneth Rexroth's translations of Du Fu and Li Qingzhao. (2004). [The article contains descriptions of the poems I pass the night at General Headquarters, To the tune 'Plum Blossoms Fall and Scatter', To the tune 'The Honor of a Fisherman'.]
    http://www.bigbridge.org/issue10/original_translation_from_big_bridge.pdf. (Rex12, Publication)
2 1979 Li, Ch'ing-chao [Li, Qingzhao]. Complete poems. Transl. and ed. by Kenneth Rexroth and Ling Chung. [ID D32233].
Joy of Wine, to the tune 'A Dream Song'
Springs Ends, to the tune 'A Dream song'
Thoughts from the Women's Quarter, to the Tune 'The Silk Washing Brook'
To a short version of 'The Magnolia Flower'
To the tune 'Picking Mulberries'
Two Springs, to the tune 'Small Hills'
Red Plum Blossoms, to the tune 'Spring in the Jade Tower'
Plum Blossoms, to the tune 'The Honor of a Fisherman'
When the Plums by the Back Pavilion Bloomed, to the tune 'An Idle, Lovely Woman'
Peonies, to the tune 'I Celebrate the Clear Slow Dawn'
Watching Lotuses, to the tune 'Grievance against My Young Lord'
Cassia Flower, to the tune 'Partridge Sky'
Ninth Day, Ninth Month, to the tune 'Drunk with Flower Shadows'
The Beauty of White Chrysanthemums, to the tune 'Beauties'
Remorse, to the tune 'Rouged Lips'
To the tune 'The Silk Washing Brook'
On Spring, to the tune 'The Silk Washing Brook'
Spring in the Women's Quarter, to the tune 'Beautiful Nien Nu'
The Day of Cold Food, to the tune 'The Silk Washing Brook'
Thoughts from the Women's Quarter, to the tune 'The Silk Washing Brook'
To the tune 'The Bodhisattva's Headdress'
To the tune 'Happiness Approaches'
Sorrow of Departure, to the tune 'Cutting a Flowering Plum Branch'
Farewell Letter to My Sister Sent from an Inn at Lo Ch'ang, to the tune 'Butterflies love Flowers'
To the tune 'You Move in Fragrance'
Thoughts from the women's Quarter, to the tune 'Nostalgia of the Flute on the Phoenix Terrace'
Autumn Love, 'A Weary Song to a Slow Sad Tune'
"Search. Search. Seek. Seek.
Cold. Cold. Clear. Clear.
Sorrow. Sorrow. Pain. Pain.
Hot flashes. Sudden chills.
Stabbing pains. Slow agonies.
I can find no peace.
I drink two cups, then three bowls,
Of clear wine until I can't
Stand up against a gust of wind.
Wild geese fly over head.
They wrench my heart.
They were our friends in the old days.
Gold chrysanthemums litter
The ground, pile up, faded, dead.
This season I could not bear
To pick them. All alone,
Motionless at my window,
I watch the gathering shadows.
Fine rain sifts through the wu-t'ung trees,
And drips, drop by drop, through the dusk.
What can I ever do now?
How can I drive off this word —
Hopelessness?"
Spring Ends, I, to the tune 'A Complaint of My Young Lord'
Spring Ends, II, to the tune 'A Complaint to My Young Lord'
Thoughts from the Women's Quarter, to the tune 'The Boat of Stars'
To the tune 'The Bodhisattva's Headdress'
The Wu-t'ung Tree, to the tune 'Remembering the Girl of Ch'in'
Cassia Flowers, to a new version of 'The Silk Washing Brook'
Banana Trees, to the tune 'Picking Mulberries'
To the tune 'Partridge Sky'
Plum Blossoms, to the tune 'Immortals on the River Bank'
I Gave a Party to My Relatives on the Day of Purification, to the tune 'Butterflies love Flowers'
Fading Plum Blossoms, to the tune 'Perfumed Garden'
Spring Fades
To the tune 'The Perfumed Garden'
I Smell the Fragrance of Withered Plum Blossoms by My Pillow, to the tune 'Unburdening Oneself'
Spring Ends, to the tune 'Spring at Wu Ling'
To the tune 'A Song of the South'
A Song of Departure, to the tune 'Butterflies Love Flowers'
"Warm rain and soft breeze by turns
Have just broken
And driven away the chill.
Moist as the pussy willows,
Light as the plum blossoms,
Already I feel the heart of Spring vibrating.
But now who will share with me
The joys of wine and poetry?
Tears streak my rouge.
My hairpins are too heavy.
I put on my new quilted robe
Sewn with gold thread
And throw myself against a pile of pillows,
Crushing my phoenix hairpins.
Alone, all I can embrace is my endless sorrow.
I know a good dream will never come.
So I stay up till past midnight
Trimming the lamp flower’s smoking wick."
On Plum Blossoms, to the tune 'A Little Wild Goose'
Written by Chance
Sentiment
Poems on Yuen Chieh's 'Ode to the Restoration of Tang' to Rhyme with Chang Wen-ch'ien's Poem, I & II
Poems Dedicated to Lord Han, the Minister of the Council of Defense, and Lord Hu, the Minister of the Board of Works
A Satire on the Lords Who Crossed the Yangtse in Flight from the Chin Troops
On History
Written on Climbing Eight Poems Tower
Our Boat Starts at Night from the Beach of Yen Kuang
In the Emperor's Chamber
To the Empress
To an Imperial Lady
To the Imperial Concubine
Dream, to the tune 'The Honor of a Fisherman'
Written on the Seventh Day of the Seventh Month, to the tune 'You Move in Fragrance'
A Morning Dream
To the tune 'Clear Peace Happiness
Cassia Flowers, to a new version of 'The Silk Washing Brook'
At a Poetry Party I Am Given the Chih
To the tune 'Immortals on the River Bank'
To the tune 'Everlasting Joy'
"The sun sets in molten gold.
The evening clouds form a jade disk.
Where is he?
Dense white mist envelops the willows.
A sad flute plays "Falling Plum Blossoms".
How many Spring days are left now?
This Feast of Lanterns should be joyful.
The weather is calm and lovely.
But who can tell if it
Will be followed by wind and rain?
A friend sends her perfumed carriage
And high-bred horses to fetch me.
I decline the invitation of
My old poetry and wine companion.
I remember the happy days in the lost capital.
We took our ease in the women's quarters.
The Feast of Lanterns was elaborately celebrated —
Gold pendants, emerald hairpins, brocaded girdles,
New sashes — we competed
To see who was most smartly dressed.
Now I am withering away,
Wind-blown hair, frosty temples.
I am embarrassed to go out this evening
Among girls in the flower of youth.
I prefer to stay beyond the curtains,
And listen to talk and laughter
I can no longer share."

Cited by (1)

# Year Bibliographical Data Type / Abbreviation Linked Data
1 Zentralbibliothek Zürich Organisation / ZB