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熙长君思悲好仇旧蕤葳粲翠荣曜流华观冶容为谁感英曜珠光纷葩虞
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殊在者之品润乎愁苦艰是丁丽壮观饰容侧君在时岩在炎在不受乱华
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志惟同谁均难苦离戚戚情哀慕岁殊叹时贱女怀叹网防青实汉骄忠英
清新衾阴匀寻辛凤知我者谁世异浮奇倾鄙贱何如罗萌青生成盈贞皇
纯贞志一专所当麟沙流颓逝异浮沉华英翳曜潜阳林西昭景薄榆桑伦
望微精感通明神龙驰若然倏逝惟时年殊白日西移光滋愚谗漫顽凶匹
谁云浮寄身轻飞昭亏不盈无倏必盛有衰无日不陂流蒙谦退休孝慈离
思辉光饬粲殊文德离忠体一违心意志殊愤激何施电疑危远家和雍飘
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所春伤应翔雁归皇辞成者作体下遗葑菲采者无差生从是敬孝为基湘
亲刚柔有女为贱人房幽处己悯微身长路悲旷感生民梁山殊塞隔河津
This is the Tapestry Poem mentioned in Flowers in the Mirror. Lin Tai-Yi provides this explanation in the Notes:
The Tapestry poem is the pride and joy of Li Ju-Chen. It is, unfortunately, impossible to translate. The poem may be read backwards and forwards, up and down, in squares, whorls, diagonally, and in a dozen other combinations.
So, it is not a palindrome in the sense that the lines read the same in every direction, but the characters are placed in sequence which has meaning in relation to those around it. Please comment if there is a more correct term!
Although I rue the day (age 5?) I told my dad I didn't want to learn Chinese anymore, and thus can't translate any of it, this website appears to list poems contained within the Tapestry. It was found in this post:
The story of this tapestry apparently predates the novel, going back as early as a story about a Jin dynasty woman who crafted the 841 character weaving with 200-odd poems. I don't know if the author of "The Flowers in the Mirror" used an existing matrix or wrote his own. The novel, in any event, abounds with jokes, old legends, and linguistic curiosities--there's a great joke about a man named Wang and how he names his eight sons, for example.
In re other qishi: Su Dongpo was a poet known for his palindromes, among other things.
Posted by: zhwj at May 11, 2004 10:23 PM
1 comment:
Oh No! You said No! No! No! to the Chinese!! That sounds funny but I bet so many other kids make the same proclamation...
This is kind of weird, but I just googled "proclamation" to make sure I had spelled it correctly (I had), and this is the first thing which comes up on google:
Proclamations Issued by President Bush
Presidential proclamations to celebrate special days, weeks and months.
www.whitehouse.gov/news/proclamations/
I don't really like thinking about President Bush, but I like thinking about "Issuing Proclamations" and I had sort of forgotten about the use of that word in that kind of official proclamating way!
PS. Right now this spellchecker is underlining the word "proclamaing" and so perhaps this is a new verb!
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