From: Sanyee_Tang@mindlink.bc.ca (Sanyee Tang)
Subject: Re: You Cannot Learn from Geshu ...
Organization: MIND LINK! - British Columbia, Canada
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1992 20:01:43 GMT

    Oh boy, Mr. H. Anonymous hasn't finished this round of lecture yet.  But
I am going to airport now.  So let me post my reply to what already received
in my site.

    In <100747@bu.edu>, <101132@bu.edu>, <101134@bu.edu>, <101250@bu.edu>
and <101280@bu.edu> (5-10 Nov 92) Mr. H. Anonymous (forwarded by Lix) writes,

> A mundane ancient document, e.g. a land lease agreement, is not necessarily
> any less valuable to a historian than Homer's Iliad.  In this context, any
> source material, such as poems exchanged between friends or "non-friends",
> IF PROVED AUTHENTIC, could be just as valuable as LiSao, no matter how
> poorly they may have been written ...

    You seem to forget what we are currently arguing :-).

    If Du Fu said Geshu swept the southeast Asia in his poem but there is
no record in any official history book, then it would be perfectly legitimate
to add this conquest to your Geshu eulogy, by quoting Du Fu.  However, you
used Li Bai and Du Fu's Gan-ye (High-ranking Official Be My Master) poems,
without any necessity, to enhance the halo you painted on Geshu.  And that
might make the two greatest poets in Chinese history turning in their graves.

    Let me quote Lix's summary of what is in dispute:

> 1) Whether Lao Li Lao Du's Gan-ye poems can be treated as expressing their
>    true feeling to Geshu.

    And let me repeat my point: No, they are not the proof that both Li Bai
and Du Fu "were friendly to Geshu."  It doesn't really matter when Du Fu
wrote his junk "To Geshu Kai-fu."

> First, it is only reasonable to assume every "decent" person, however
> "amateurish", should have some doubts about whatever our A*s-kisser
> Number One (and a self-acknowledged son of Joe Stalin) Guo Moruo might
> have said about Li or Du, especially after "enjoying" and "appreciating"
> Guo's "famous" book _Li Bai and Du Fu_.  Why is it that our usually
> anti-CCP Sanyee has decided otherwise?

    Surprised you would say things like that :-).  Talking of personality,
Guo Moruo was a son of bitch.  However, is there any decent man who thinks
Guo is unquotable?  If you disagree with his opinion that Li Bai's "To Geshu
Dai-fu" is a forgery, you'd better present some counter arguments first, then
tell us whether Guo Moruo deliberately twisted facts for political purpose.
Name-calling is not an argument, I think at least we can agree on that.

    Now return to "Jun Bu Neng," to which you like to stick, with a strange
interpretation.

    In Li Bai's poem, "Jun Bu Neng," "Jun Bu Jian," in the beginning of
a sentence, never literally means "you are/were not able," "you don't see."
Rather, they emphasize "_surely_ you are able," "_surely_ you have known."
"All of us who know some ABC of classic Chinese know" that those are just
rhetorical questions.

    What Li Bai said is that, surely his friend Wang the 12th was able to
get fame and wealth if he were _willing_ to behave like hooligans or General
Geshu.  I couldn't find any problem in compressing the previous long line
into a short form -- "You cannot ..."  A word-by-word mapping would lose
the very spirit.  Will you translate

    Jun1 Bu4 Jian4 Huang2-he2 zhi Shui3 Tian1 Shang4 Lai2

as "You doesn't see the Yellow River's water coming from the sky"?

    Wish now you can realize how laughable is your interpretation that Li
Bai "was lamenting someone's having been born a bit too late for achieving
the fame General Geshu had already done," and how ridiculous is your lengthy
digression on literary contrast.  No, pal, even you can read classic Chinese
better than Guo Moruo, Jun Bu Neng say "the appropriate translation [of 'Jun
Bu Neng' in Li Bai's poem] is simply: You are/were not able ..." :-).

> I would respectfully advise you to turn to other topics.  For you have
> really been painting yourself to a corner, from which it would be harder
> and harder to have a dignified retreat.  ...  Should you insist on claiming
> the _Bing Che Xing_ represents Du Fu's "true feelings" about (or against)
> Geshu KaiFu, I would cite a tell-tale encounter between Du Fu and a certain
> "Lao Jiu(9)".  It would prove beyond any doubt that you are absolutely
> wrong.  Think hard before you reply.

    If you like to say something, please just go ahead.  I am a peasant in
a business suit.  Usually I don't care to be chest-naked again, if I can
learn one or two pieces of knowledge by losing my shirt :-).

    I am sure Bing Che Xing represents Du Fu's attitude towards expansionist
war.  The Chariot Ballad was quoted in my first post of this thread as an
anti-war correction to your Geshu eulogy.  I assume you can understand the
scope of my wording, though my English may be not as expressive as yours :-).

    Finally, a correction to misgiving credit:

> Therefore, I can only conclude that Sanyee is again being "quite serious"
> in "translating" the very title of Old Du's _Bing Che Xing_ as "Chariot
> Ballad".  Indeed he seems to have taken a good deal of proprietary pride
> in this "translation" of the title.

    I would like to have this "proprietary pride," but unfortunately it is
borrowed from a scholar who translated many Chinese classics into English.
If we believe, as some critics liked to claim, every word in Du Fu's poems
has its literary source, then we may notice that a note in the "Tang Poems
300" gives "Bing-che zhi Hui" (the Gathering of Chariots, anyone interested
in writing a post about it?) as the source.  I will leave you to find out
whether people in the Spring-Autumn Period used chariot or not :-).  Can
you now appreciate the subtlety of this translation?  By the way, "wagon"
was used to refer the Che in "Che Lin-lin, Ma Xiao-xiao" :-).

    In any case, whether Tang troops used chariot or not is irrelevant to
Du's Chariot Ballad.  The title only indicates it is a poem about soldiers
and war.  In fact some Yue-fu's title have nothing to do with their contents.
Also, how to correctly translate the title has virtually no relation to what
is in dispute.

    I am tired of pointing out again and again the irrelevance of your
lengthy digressions, though they are quite enjoyable as history posts.
Excuse me if there will be no further comment on stuffs drifting too far from
the topic: You Cannot Learn from Geshu ...

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