Ancient Literature in our Modern World

Clytemnestra wasn’t the first to bring so much violence into the House of Atreus!

Here’s the story of their violent family lineage

And a simplified family tree

Hi everyone,

Under “course assignments” you will find details for your online assignment due Feb 17. We’re taking a break from the blog to use Google Docs this week, so make sure you’re familiar and comfortable with the platform!!

Here are some helpful links:

Set up a Google Account (you can use whatever account name you want — all that matters is that your name and your partner’s name are at the top of the doc you share with me). Please note: only one of you needs to share the Doc with me. 

Link to Google Docs

How to use Google Docs and how to chat on Google Docs

How to share your Google Doc (you must share it with me at [email protected] to submit it)

The poem that stood out to me the most was Du Fu’s “Moonlight Night”. The poem relates in many ways to a song by Shedaisy, called “Come Home Soon”. Both, the poem and the song are based on the concept of missing someone. In Du Fu’s “Moonlight Night” he is writing about his wife and how she missed him while he was being held captive in the capital of Chang’an during the An Lushan Rebellion, while Shedaisy’s, “ Come Home Soon”, is also about a woman missing her husband, only he is out at war. Although one was written from a male perspective and the other one from a female perspective, they have many similarities. One similarity for instance, is the language being used. Another similarity would be the way both the poem and the song has a change in mood from beginning to end. In the beginning, the subjects seem full of loneliness, anguish and worry. Contrary to the end of both the poem and the song, where they had more of an optimistic outlook.

In the beginning of “Moonlight Night”, Do Fu says:

From her room in Fuzhu tonight
All alone she watches the moon

Far away, I grieve that her children
cant understand why she thinks of Chang’an.

As you can see, Do Fu uses words such as alone and grieve to express his wife’s emotions of loneliness, anguish and worry. With words as such being used the poem speaks directly to the audience.

The same was done in the song. In “Come Home Soon”, Shedaisy says:

And I sleep alone
I cry alone
And it’s so hard livin’ here on my own
So please, come home soon

Shedaisy also uses words that speak directly to the audience. Words such as alone, hard and cry lead me to believe that she was also full of loneliness, anguish and worry as Do Fu’s wife was.

The end of both pieces depict a different outlook. Total opposite, in my opinion. Instead of depicting a negative outlook throughout the entire pieces, the authors switched up and ended both on more of a positive one.

“Moonlight Night” ended with:

When will we lean by chamber curtains
And let it light the two of us, our tear stains dried?

These two lines represent the change in mood from negative to positive. It leads me to believe that their is hope after the storm. He believes that he and his wife will meet again. By him asking when, he is being optimistic. He is hoping for the best.

Just as in “Moonlight Night”, Shedaisy depicts the same positive outlook toward the end of the song.

I still imagine your touch
Its beautiful missing somebody that much
But sometimes love needs a fighting chance
So I’ll wait my turn until its our turn to dance

These lyrics depict a positive outlook. Yes, she is lonely and missing her husband, but to her the “love” is worth it. Which is why she is willing to wait as long as need be until the day its they’re turn to dance.

As I menntioned before, although we are dealing with two totally different pieces, there are many similarities between them. Starting with the language and ending with the mood.

When I read “Thoughts While Travelling at Night” by Du Fu, I am instantly reminded by the song “If I Lose Myself Tonight.” Originally by OneRepublic, I think of this cover of the song by Madilyn Bailey and Corey Gray. The original song is a little bit more upbeat with the EDM remix even moreso. This rendition of the song sets a somber mood, very similar to the mood of the poem.

I stared up at the sun
Thought of all the people, places and things I’ve loved
I stared up just to see
Of all the faces,
You are the one next to me

You can feel the light start to tremble
Washing what you know out to sea
You can see your life out of the window, tonight

Light breeze on the fine grass.

I stand alone at the mast.

Stars leap on the vast wild plain.

Moon bobs in the Great River’s spate.

When I read Qiang Village I by Du Fu it reminded me of Where’d You Go by Fort Minor. It was a direct corresponding relationship. To me, the song was a perfect prelude for the poem. The song by Fort Minor tells a tale of men and women leaving for the military and leaving their families behind.

“I miss you so,
Seems like it’s been forever,
That you’ve been gone,
Please come back home…”

The poem Du Fu wrote was about a man that is returning from a long journey and he is greeted with love and open arms.

“Wife and children marvel that I am here:

When the shock wears off, still they wipe away tears.”

In the song, the artist expresses various emotions when loves ones leave to pursue careers or into the military. After a certain amount of time has pass by, the families start to get worried and miss their love ones. At the same time, the artist show anger toward them for leaving and leaving behind their families by themselves. The artist ask if they can still remember their home, their backyards where they once had barbecue and ribs. I feel Du Fu poem shows the emotions of the family once they returned from their journey. Even though they’ve been gone for such a long time, their family will still greet them back with open arms and tears of joy. No matter how angry or sad the families might be when their love ones are missing, once they return the same feelings of love and happiness come back with it.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xk5jIDzWv_s

After reading Du Fu’s “Qiang Village” I was reminded of a J. Cole song titled “Visions of Home”

In the poem, Du Fu describes his arrival home after having spent years of his life away from family and friends:

“And the homebound stranger from a thousand li arrives

Wife and children marvel that I am here

When the shock wears off, still they wipe away tears”

Du Fu is referring of himself as a stranger because he feels he’s been through so many experiences that he is no longer the same person who left years ago. Similarly, J. Cole says  “it’s been awhile/ I’m still your child/ I’ve grown in ways that you’ve never known/ I’ve ventured into the world.” Both, Du Fu and J Cole, feel like a different person after being away for a long time.

Du Fu’s description of his family crying portrays not only the joy they have of seeing him but also the pain and suffering they experienced during his absence. In his song, J. Cole also shares this sentiment; by saying “I hate to leave you alone” he is acknowledging that his departure saddens the people who are close to him.

Du Fu wrote poetry while he was away from home; smilarly J Cole says “Seen shit you wouldn’t believe, I write em down in these poems” I think both of them see it of importance to write down their experiences as a way of being remembered. The line “That I return alive is a happening of chance” expresses Du Fu’s belief that he is lucky to have returned home alive. In addition, Du Fu’s saying that his family was shocked to see him implies that nobody expected him to come back; however, had he not been able to return, he would at least have had his cautiously written poems as legacy to his family and the world.

Hi all,

It was very difficult for me to find the relationship between a poem and a song and that is why it took me so long to post. But I finally realized what I was doing wrong. I know the meaning of the songs because I hear them over and over again and tried to do the same with a poem after only reading it once or twice. I read this poem a zillion times today and I finally made it speak to me. We had a beautiful conversation and this is what it told me…

“The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter Ezra Pound” translated by Rihaku tells the story about a love that started when they were both very young. The woman in the poem didn’t know any other love. He departed after just a short time of enjoying love and she decides to wait for him even if it hurts.

I relate this poem to the song “Right Here Waiting” by Richard Marx.

At the beginning of the poem I see how the author tries to represent how young they were when the love began, when it says:

“While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead

I played about the front gate, pulling flowers.

You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse,

You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums.

And we went on living in the village of Chokan:

Two small people, without dislike or suspicion.

She wanted to be with him forever, “I desired my dust to be mingled with yours”. That love had no end in her heart. Her love departed and she kept waiting. She waited a long time, so long that the moss grew deep. She is getting older and she knows it, the wait is hurting her but she doesn’t care. She will still wait for her one and only love.

Reading you can feel her desperation and anxiety because she misses him and wants him to come back. In his song Richard Marx starts by saying:

“Oceans apart day after day And I slowly go insane…”

I can picture her in my head looking out the window and going crazy waiting for her love.

When I compared portions of the song and the poem, they both gave me the same feeling. A feeling of desire for a love to never end. The conviction of waiting for that one person no matter how long it takes.

Poem:

“I desired my love to be mingled with yours

Forever and forever and forever”

 Song:

“Wherever you go Whatever you do I will be right here waiting for you Whatever it takes Or how my heart breaks I will be right here waiting for you

I took for granted, all the times That I thought would last somehow”

I have a very mixed taste for music. I saw a posts about “Wake Me Up When September Ends”, “Chandelier”, “Day And Night”, and I love them all. It all depends on the mood I wake up in. I hope some of you like Richard Marx as well, he is a great artist and his songs continue to be perfection even after so many years.

Here is the link, I know after listening to this song some of you will feel like listening to romantic songs like this all night. I do 🙂

One of the Tang Dynasty poems that stood out for me was Du Fu’s Moonlight Night.  Du Fu writes of his wife, who, along with his children, were sent away to safety before rebels captured the city, and their longing to be with each other again.  Thinking upon what they each felt as these events unfolded around them, I feel that Coldplay’s Til Kingdom Come is an appropriate companion to the poem.

Til Kingdom Come isn’t necessarily a song about a war setting, but there are certain lines that can be interpreted as such:

The wheels just keep on turning,
The drummer begins to drum,

They provoke an image of the enemy’s war chariots charging onward into the capital where Du Fu was, and the war drums sounding the attack.  But more importantly, Coldplay’s song revolves around the concept of waiting for a loved one.  Waiting, personally, is a particularly potent display of love and affection for another.

For you, I’d wait ’til kingdom come.
Until my day, my day is done.
And say you’ll come, and set me free,
Just say you’ll wait, you’ll wait for me.

Du Fu must have felt despaired watching his country’s capital fall to rebels firsthand, yet he remembers and yearns for his wife.  It reminds me of many dramatic period love stories in cinema that are set against a war backdrop, where the two protagonists are separated and must overcome adversities to reunite for a happy ending.  For Du Fu, it’s not just a movie, but his reality, and that, to me, makes me empathize with him all the more in Moonlight Night.

Lyrics available here: http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/coldplay/tilkingdomcome.html

You can access the link to the video “I Drink Alone by” George Thorogood if you click HERE

You can access the link to the lyrics if you click HERE

Hi, I’ll have to be honest that I couldn’t think of any song to relate to the poems while reading them a couple times. I then had to search online for something I thought would relate to “Drinking Alone with the Moon” and I came across “I Drink Alone” by George Thorogood. Both of the works have a very similar title and once I read the lyrics and watched the video I felt it would be a good choice for my post.

In Li Bo’s poem, he starts his poem off saying he finds wine laying in the flowers and he’s drinking alone without friends and he invites the moon to have a drink with him which is unreal. He also considers himself, the moon, and his shadow to giving him company with the quote:

“I raise the cup to invite the moon.

He and my shadow and I make three?”

The way that I believe “I Drink Alone” relates to this is that George is also drinking alone at the bar if you watch the video and he talks about how he prefers to be by himself when he drinks. Although in Li Bo’s poem there is nothing that says that he’s an alcoholic but someone may assume he is due to him drinking with the moon and alone. The way the song relates to the last quote is that he considers his company to be different types of whiskeys. They both create imaginary friends which they drink with. The quotes from the song that prove this are:

“So I caught up my pal Jack Daniel’s

And his partner Jimmy Beam”

and

“Just me and my pal Johnny Walker

And his brothers Black and Red

And we drank alone, yeah

With nobody else”

Another thing I noticed was how in the poem he states how he sings and the moon moves “to and fro” and when he dances his shadow “leaps and sways”. He imagines the moon and shadow enacting these actions while in the song he has the whiskeys but later states that his “Old Grand-Dad” is the only person that would spend time with him. From that, I understood it as he imagines his dead grandfather drinking with him and giving him company while he drinks.

In both the poem and the song some people can say that they are depressed or lonely but I believe they are happy with drinking alone. In the song he states multiple times that he prefers to drink by himself. On the other hand in the poem, Li Bo states:

“I’ll make merry with them both”

Which shows that he accepts that he’s alone and he’ll make due with what he has.

I hope I made my points clear. If you have any questions feel free to comment.

As I was reading Qiang Village by Du Fu, the first song that came in my mind it was “Let me go home” by Michael Bubble, and I’m coming home from Diddy. As I went deeper the context of the poem didn’t seem to completely sync with this two choices. As the few feelings that I got from this poem was the pain he been through while he was in the war and held hostage” Red clouds tower in the west,/The sun is sinking on the plain” but yet an unbelievable happiness that he is back home. “Laugh, I nearly Died” by Rolling Stones lyrics says

“I’ve been traveling but I don’t know where
I’ve been missing you but you just don’t care
And I’ve been wandering, I’ve seen Greece and Rome
Lost in the wilderness, so far from home
Yeah, yeah”

Lines that relates with the poem how far the poet traveled to finally get home. And then the lyrics say

“I’m so sick and tired
Trying to turn the tide, yeah
So I’ll say my goodbye
Laugh, laugh
I nearly died”

This line shows how the singer was ready to die, but yet he can laugh now because he missed death.

Probably “I’m coming home” by P. Diddy has stanza that says:

” Ain’t No Stopping Us Now”, I love that song
Whenever it comes on it makes me feel strong
I thought I told y’all that we won’t stop
We back cruising through Harlem, these ol’ blocks
It’s what made me, saved me, drove me crazy
Drove me away then embraced me
Forgave me for all of my shortcomings
Welcome to my homecoming
Yeah, it’s been a long time coming
Lot of fights, lot of scars, lot of bottles
Lot of cars, lot of ups, lot of downs
Made it back, lost my dog (I miss you BIG)
But here I stand (here I stand), a better man! (a better man)
Thank you Lord (Thank you Lord)
Thank you all!”

This stanza makes me feel like is a more modern situation as the one Du Fu describes. “Lot of fights, lot of scars, lot of bottles/Lot of cars, lot of ups, lot of downs/Made it back, lost my dog (I miss you BIG)” can be compared with the war and the hard situation that Du Fu experienced at the time and P. Diddy says that he been through fights, he got scars (probably he has been disappointed by people, but also physical scars), then he says how he lost his “dog” as he is referring to Notorious BIG, his close murdered friend and also a legend for Hip Hop.

At the end of this stanza, Diddy says:

“But here I stand (here I stand), a better man! (a better man)
Thank you Lord (Thank you Lord)
Thank you all!”

These final verses state the same thing Du Fu stated, that he made it home, thanking God for it as Du Fu lighted also his candles at night. And yet all that seemed a dream.