Du Fu was born during An Lushan rebellion, so there were many battles and wars all over the country. His poems tend to show senses of sadness, helpless, and sighing. In Spring Protest, he shows how he is worried about the country, felt sad about this time period, missed his home, and frustrated about the situation that he was in. Through the poem, he also illustrated how himself as a poet related to the country as a whole. In the poem, “Beacon fires three months in succession, a letter from home worth ten thousand in gold.” These two lines are very widespread of describing the riot during that period and how it affected people’s family by spliting them away from each other.
Also, some of the poems from Du Fu are ended with questions, such as Moonlight Night and My Thatched Roof Is Ruined by the Autumn Wind. What are the purposes of asking these questions and how the questions affect the meaning?
In Li Bo In the Quiet Night, I think the translation from Vikram Seth did not really present what really means in the original poem. How can we improve the translation?
It was really interesting how you showed the first poem’s importance in the time of the war. I think the purposes of asking questions at the end of ‘Moonlight Night’ is to show the importance of the poem. In ‘Moonlight Night,’ the poem asks “When shall we lean in the empty window, Together in brightness, and tears dried up?” I think the meaning of this is emphasizing how little they get to do this and how much it means to them. A time where no one is crying and everyone is happy, they are asking when they will be content and happy.
I believe ‘Moonlight Moon’ is purposely ended with a question in order to enhance the feeling of the poem. There is a a feeling of sadness through out the poem but the last line” when will we lean by chamber curtains and and let it light the two of us, our tear stains dried?” gave me both the feeling of emptiness and hope. The feeling of emptiness came from Du Fu missing a part of his life(his wife) but the feeling of hope came from Du Fu ending the sentence in a question as if he still considers a possibility of them being together again but doesn’t know when. I also agree with ‘In the quiet Night’ by Li Bo that a lot of it is lost on translation. Even though the main idea is hard to grasp, I still feel like Li Bo personality of being alone and having a certain connection with nature is shown in this poem. I believe this poem shows a parallel with ‘ Drinking alone in the moon’ because they both talk about the moon and it seems as if the moon had some sort of human relationship with Li BO such as a friendship.
I agree that this poetry lost a little in translation but I also believe that these poems were meant to leave the reader with options for their imagination to expand on. Li Bo and Du Fu both gave these images of things that would make your mind picture but they weren’t things that were obvious. They used humanistic comparisons in nature that leave the exact picture of what they are seeing to you. Because they are words and not pictures they are just explaining what they are seeing through creative words. The way they say it makes the readers mind picture it but most likely in a completely different way. I found this to be very interesting about these poems written by Li Bo and Du Fu.