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I'd add that the composition of Chinese characters makes possible poetic structures that are impossible in other languages. A famous poem by Tang dynasty poet L
by cleaver 15y ago
I'd add that the composition of Chinese characters makes possible poetic structures that are impossible in other languages. A famous poem by Tang dynasty poet Li Bai:
床前明月光
疑是地上霜。
舉頭望明月，
低頭思故鄉。
(Apologies if you can't see the characters on your system.) The key radical "月" (moon) repeats itself as a character on its own and also as a radical making up other characters. Thus, Chinese poems can have a measure of visual resonance as well as audible.
A sad fact is that the PRC government altered the written language to make it easier to learn writing and a lot of this subtle beauty was lost. Today, kids learn to type on a computer phonetically, so the complexity of the traditional characters is no longer an issue.
- autarch 15y agoYou could probably do something similar in English by using words that incorporate smaller words - "the sum of summer" or something like that. I'm sure there must be examples of poems that do exactly that.
- Jun8 15y agoGreat example! Here are ~40 translations of his "Drinking Alone with the Moon" poem, one of my personal favorites: http://clatterymachinery.wordpress.com/2007/01/26/li-bai-drinking-alone-with-the-moon-his-shadow-32-translators/ http://clatterymachinery.wordpress.com/2007/01/26/li-bai-dri.... The image of the moon and loneliness always reminds me of a well-known fragment of Sappho: http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/usappho/sph49.htm http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/usappho/sph49.htm. About 1400 years and thousands of miles apart, yet resonating with the same emotion. On the funnier side, the famous Lion-Eating Poet must be mentioned: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion-Eating_Poet_in_the_Stone_Den http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion-Eating_Poet_in_the_Stone_D.... Hilarious and beautiful example of constrained writing.