Although I wrote "Pound is correct, using "blue"," maybe I should have
written "blue" is not a mistake in his translation.

In English version for English speaking people, "green" might be better, for
the color green also suggests youth, innocence, and so on in European
culture.   Therefore, Waley and Cooper must have used "green" instead of
"blue" in their translations.

Hiroko Uno

----- Original Message -----
From: "Hiroko Uno" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, December 04, 2004 10:29 PM
Subject: Re: "The River Merchant's Wife: A Letter"


> Dear Dan,
>
> In the original poem Li-Po uses the Chinese character meaning the color
> blue, but the same character also means another color green as well as
> youth
> or immature condition in some context.  So, "blue plum" means unripe fruit
> of plum, which is actually green.
>
> Unripe fruit of plum is called "blue plum" in Japan, too.  By the way, in
> Japan we call one of the colors of a signal "blue," although it is
> actually
> green.
>
> According to Peter Brooker, Arthur Waley "has 'green plums'" in his
> translation.  Authur Cooper also has "green plums" in his book "Lipo and
> Tufu" in Penguin Books.  However, I think Pound is correct, using "blue"
> here, because he follows Chinese and Japanese cultures and because Li-Po
> actually uses the character "blue."
>
> According to Kumiko Kakehi, a Japanese scholar of Chinese ancient poetry,
> the line with "blue plum" refers to another ancient Chinese poem
> "Hyo-Yu-Bai" in Shikyo (I am sorry these are in Japanese pronunciation),
> in
> which very young people express their first pure love with unripe blue
> plums.
>
> Therefore, in this poem Li-Po suggests the faint or indistinct love
> between
> the two young children by the "blue plums."
>
> Hiroko Uno (Japanese)
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Back door" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Saturday, December 04, 2004 4:41 PM
> Subject: "The River Merchant's Wife: A Letter"
>
>
>>I was preparing Pound's translation of "The River Merchant's
>> Wife: A Letter" for class, when I came across another translation
>> of the same poem. This one is by a Gary Geddes, and is from the
>> Chinese original. He called it "The Song of Ch'ang-kan".
>> Pound's is from the Japanese Rihaku version.
>> Here are the first few lines of the Geddes:
>>
>> "While the hair barely covered my forehead
>> I plucked a flower and played at my front door.
>> You came by riding a bamboo horse
>> and we circled the well, innocent as green plums."
>>
>> Why Pound would have used blue for the
>> color of the plums. Green makes more sense?
>> WHich translation is correct?
>>
>> Any thoughts?
>> Thanks,
>> Dan.
>>
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>