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Martin Bidney - The Be-Loving Imaginer Episode 33 - Speaking with the Chinese
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PODCAST # 33 Speaking with the Chinese
Theme: interior conversation. Friedrich Rückert completes in 1833 his 325
“adaptations” of the poems in the earliest collection of Chinese verse that we have,
an anonymous work composed by pre-Confucian poets from the 11 th to the 7 th
centuries BCE. Rückert, though he learned 44 languages, didn’t know any more
Chinese than I do. But he did have the recently discovered Latin prose translation
published by Lacharme, a Jesuit priest, in 1733. I call my recital of English
translations of Rückert “Speaking with the Chinese” because the poems Rückert
offers feel to me like interior conversations with the Chinese fictive speakers.
The poets, who lived centuries ago and are alive today through their poems, speak
– or more precisely, sing – their poetic wordsongs to the German listener, and to
each of these memorable people of Ancient China he “replies” by turning their
prose utterances into German poems, in melodious rhythmic forms he invents
to fit the feelings they convey to him.
(1) Introduction to Chinese Life
Poem 158. Pages from a Household Calendar.
Poem 234. The Farmer.
Poem 233. Competition: Outdoing the Steward.
Poem 246. The Wine Steward.
Poem 156. Faithful Steward.
Poem 55. The Building of the Royal House.
Poem 317. Forebears’ Temple.
Poem 310. Music at the Forebear Fest.
Poem 271. A Meal for Death-boy Shi.
Poem 169. Memorial Feast for the Dead.
Poem 225. The Imperial Courier.
Poem 112. Annoyances of Life at Court.
Poem 57. The Border Guard.
Poem 18. The Emperor’s High Priest Robe.
Characterizations and Conflicts
Poem 224. Distribution of Wealth.
Poem 212. Persecuted.
Poem 166. In Praise of Brothers.
Love: Rewards and Discontents
Poem 218. Friends at Odds.
Poem 94. Chance.
Poem 52. Faithful unto Death.
Poem 93. Expectation
Poem 148. By Moonlight.
Poem 149. A Restless Night.
Poem 135. The Queen’s War Song.
Poem 58. At the Entry of the Royal Bride.
Poem 26. Plaint of a Wife Unloved.
Epilogue
Poem 295. Nationwide Drought.
Poem 303. Prayer.
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