Mapping the Ancient World

Today we discussed about Du Fu’ s life and poems. As we now Du Fu was a prominent Chinese poet of the Tang dynasty along with Li Bo. He became famous because he was able to capture the historical events of his period. Du Fu dreamed of an official career but he stop trying since he failed the civil service examination. He eventually made his way to the court when An Lusham rebelled in 155, Fu obtained the court position he always wanted, But later, after the recapture of the capital he was exiled to a minor provincial post. He was upset and that is how he started a lifetime of travels.

We discussed two of Du Fu’s poems,  “Moonlight Night” which he wrote thinking on how his wife was feeling during his absence, but not only her, we can also see how he is feeling and how much he desires to come back home. the other poem is ” Quians Village”, this one talks about his homecoming. Express how exited him and his family were, snd even his neighbors, He never thought he would make it home and alive, and finally reunited with his family

In class today we discussed, how accurate a translation of a piece of literature really is. I discussed the poem Ch’ang Kan by Li Po, which has three different translations. The scholarly article which I used is all posted on the blog by the professor. The main point I was trying to show was how a piece of work which is translated could have many different versions. In all three poems there are some differences in the way it is formatted as well as how it is translated. In poem 1 and 2 it says green plums, and in poem three it says blue plums. As some of the native speakers helped us understand, that the real color is really turquoise and not what it says in the translation. The main part of the discussion was when a translator, translates something from another language how accurate is the translation, and how much of it is from what the translator wants to insert.
You could find the three poems by clicking HERE
The scholarly article could be found by clicking HERE
An original copy of the poem (in Chinese) could be found by clicking HERE

Tags: Poetry, Translation

In class today we looked at example close readings to think about / better understand what exactly makes an effective one. Here’s what we came up with:

First, here’s a link to Baruch’s writing center. I recommend you make an appointment if you’re struggling with your work.

http://writingcenter.baruch.cuny.edu/

Close reading tips:

*Integration of quotes and analyzing quotes

*Check grammar

*analysis — spend time explaining yourself and your ideas and make sure your meaning is clear

*Your primary focus is the passage itself, but you can make connections to the rest of the text