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Subject:
From:
bernard dew <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
- Ezra Pound discussion list of the University of Maine <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Sat, 4 Dec 2004 08:56:00 -0400
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text/plain
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text/plain (76 lines)
blue plums sounds better anyways... just my my opinion....

Hiroko Uno wrote:

> 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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>

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