Eratosphere - Wu Songs

Eratosphere (https://www.ablemuse.com/erato/index.php)

- Drills & Amusements (https://www.ablemuse.com/erato/forumdisplay.php?f=30)

- - Wu Songs (https://www.ablemuse.com/erato/showthread.php?t=5250)

OK - now that we have an idea what we're trying to do, here's a serious attempt for Mary:

Black and White

My eyes are old: chiaroscuro’s
less distinct than in my youth;
yet I’ve less need for clarity -
my sandals know the mountain path.

I was going to use a risque hammer/forge metaphor, but couldn't make the meter work.

Quote:

Originally posted by Jerry Glenn Hartwig:

I may be wrong, but I'm under the belief that the kanji in Japanese and Chinese are basically the same - invented by the Japanese and adopted by the Chinese. Someone please correct me if that's wrong.

Just the other way, Jerry. Invented in China, adopted and adapted by the Japanese. I believe that the symbols themselves have remained similar enough so that a well-educated Japanese can at least partially understand written Chinese - possibly analogous to some of us puzzling out Latin - but the construction and pronunciation of the two languages are very different.

Japanese consists of a limited number (51) very distinct consonant/vowel syllables (ba, be bi, bo, bu; ka, ke, etc.) which are always sounded in exactly the same manner, and are combined to form words. One symbol per word, but anywhere from one to many syllables. With relatively limited sounds, but a huge number of characters (I was told that the daily papers assume a vocabulary of 1500 kanji, but the highly literary and scholars know 5000 or more), Japanese has many homonyms - far more than English. The symbols, of course, are quite different. Normally, meaning is clear from context when speaking, but it is not unusual to see Japanese sketching a character in their palm in a conversation to clarify a point.

Homonyms and puns are a more common element in Japanese poetry than English, and I gather are particularly prevalent in haiku. But haiku is a good example of an Asian poetry form where the guidlines and intent are clearly understood, and lend themselves to English. Hence, the popularity of haiku and tanka.

I'm not nearly as sure regarding Wu poetry, and I think the fact that this thread is wandering - and seems more concerned with googling, and flailing for information, than with writing anything - indicates that a beneficial match may not exist. But, with all the nifty googling by Pat and Jerry, I still see basic questions:

- What is Wu poetry?

- How is it written? What makes a good Wu poem, or a mediocre one? And are the criteria anything that relate enough to the English language or our mind set to be of value or interest?

- Why should we care? Is there life beyond Google?

[This message has been edited by Michael Cantor (edited August 07, 2006).]

Quote:

Originally posted by Jerry Glenn Hartwig:
Patricia

I don't think one can write in a Chinese dialect - the characters are ideograms that were invented long after the language was established. They are pictures, not representations of phonetics. 'Tree' is a three stroke (I think - I haven't looked at kanji in five years) symbol that looks similar to a tree. 'Forest' is two tree symbols (one character).

One of my dictionaries of Chinese characters includes the primitives, radicals, and phonetics.

From the introductory pages of Chinese Characters: Their origin, etymology, history, classification and signification by Dr. L. Wieger, S.J.:

Phonetic elements. -- Theoretically, the Chinese sounds not being numerous, four hundred characters would have been sufficient to compose a phonetic scale. -- Practically, the Chinese used as phonetic elements a greater number of characters; the reason of this will be given below. Some Chinese authors numbered one thousand of them, which they called the thousand mothers of sound. J. M. Callery, who made a special study of these characters and found in them a key to his system, numbers 1040. Our researches, circumscribed in the practical domain, gave 858 phonetic prolific elements. This list may be seen at the head of the Phonetic Series. In the choice of these phonetic elements, the Chinese cared only about the sound and not about the character. They employed, from [[Chinese character here]] which has one stroke only, till [[Chinese character here]] which has twenty-four.

The inflected words of European languages are decomposed into radical and termination. The radical gives the meaning; the termination indicates case, time, mood. The first sinologists applied those grammatical terms belonging to inflected languarges to the Chinese language which is not an inflected one. In the phonetic complexes, they called radical the meaning part. They dared not call termination the phonetic part, and with reason, for it would have been a mistake. They called that part phonetic. We make ours those two terms, radical and phonetic, but strictly in the sense above given, viz. Radical, formal element which gives the meaning. Phonetic, the formal element which does not give the meaning but indicates the sound.

Etc., etc., etc.

The moment you put the song to paper, you lose the dialect.

I read--somewhere!--that despite the large differences among Chinese dialects/spoken language(s), they all share the same writing system based on the Chinese characters/pictographs/ideograms. Therefore, if one was able to speak in a particular dialect, wouldn't one also be able to write it?

[**scratching noggin here**]

I may be wrong, but I'm under the belief that the kanji in Japanese and Chinese are basically the same - invented by the Japanese and adopted by the Chinese. Someone please correct me if that's wrong.

It's my understanding that it's the other way around . . . Chinese characters were adopted by the Japanese.

Tradition ascribes the idea of the characters to Fu-hsi, and their first drawing to Ts'ang-hsieh, two worthies of the prehistoric age. The systematisation of the Chinese writing is attributed to Huang-ti, the founder of the Chinese empire, 25th century B.C. . . . .

The oldest ku-wen graphies that have come down to us in their original form, are traced back to the 18th century B.C. Their study reveals the fact that, while their making was well defined, their form varied much. Towards the year B.C. 800, the grand-recorder Chou drew up, for the use of the official scribes, a catalogue of the then existing characters, and fixed their standard shape. Those ku-wen are called by Chinese philologists chou-wen, or ta-chuan greater seal characters, or k'o-tou-tzu tadpoles. The origin of the latter appellation is thus recorded: In the 2nd century B.C., when the house in which Confucius had dwelt was pulled down, old books written in ancient characters were discovered in a hiding-place. At the sight of the big heads and the slender tails, Kung, prince of Lu, who was not a learned man, exclaimed, "These are tadpoles!" The name has stuck to them ever since.

So-o-o . . .

"Kanji"? Or, "tadpoles"? Whatever! It's doubtful any of us can flatter ourselves into believing we'd be able to actually write a real "Wu Song" . . . except, perhaps, Linda Zeiser.

[**cough**]

http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtml/biggrin.gif

Edited to add:

Looks like we cross-posted, Jerry! Hafta shut 'er down to go get supper ready . . . and I'll have to make a printout of your reply and Michael's comments to read offline. Be back later . . . or tomorrow sometime!

All best--
Patricia

[This message has been edited by Patricia A. Marsh (edited August 07, 2006).]

Quote:

Therefore, if one was able to speak in a particular dialect, wouldn't one also be able to write it?

Or, perhaps, given the same script, would they not just pronounce it differently?

I'm in over my head here, I admit. But I'm finding the discourse fascinating.

Michael

I think the links have given us an inkling of what a Wu song is about, although not much on Chinese poetry. That's going to take a while to study, and then attempt to put into the wujei form (if we assume it's an IP quatrain). We're not going to create a Chinese poem, but perhaps we can hint at the flavors that are suggested in the links - a wu song flavor in a wujei form.

.

[This message has been edited by Mary Meriam (edited November 23, 2006).]

Quote:

Originally posted by Jerry Glenn Hartwig:

Or, perhaps, given the same script, would they not just pronounce it differently?

Perhaps . . . of course.

I'm in over my head here, I admit. But I'm finding the discourse fascinating.

Ditto! In fact, after I wearied of google.com, I did a little metacrawling. And . . .

Hey, Jerry! Did you know that, of the 305 poems/songs in the "Shih Ching", 165 of them are folk songs and poems and most of those 165 folk songs and poems are known as haozi, which uses four characters per line rather than the five words per line found in the classical wujei form? Anyway . . .

The more I read, the more I'm coming to believe that a Wu song is, basically, a song meant to be sung while working . . . a song with a strong rhythm, a rhythm that matches the bodily movements/monotony of, say, workers planting acre after acre of seeds or hoeing all day and, of course, singing while they work. I'm probably wrong, but I'm thinking: "gandy dancers", "sea chanteys", "field hollers", etc.

In any case, a Wu song would certainly have a melody, wouldn't it? I mean: Among other things, the Chinese communists went so far as to use the Frere Jacque tune to help the workers think about overthrowing the landlords, etc.

Hm-m. Now, there's an idea to sleep on: Use Frere Jacque as inspiration for a Wu song!

Michael

I think the links have given us an inkling of what a Wu song is about, although not much on Chinese poetry. That's going to take a while to study, and then attempt to put into the wujei form (if we assume it's an IP quatrain). We're not going to create a Chinese poem, but perhaps we can hint at the flavors that are suggested in the links - a wu song flavor in a wujei form.

Edited to add: In the four-line poems I've been reading, there is a parallelism between lines 1 & 3 and between lines 2 & 4 . . . therefore, perhaps the Wu mountain song from Xiakou village that I posted earlier should have been formatted as follows . . . without seeing the Chinese characters, who knows for sure? [**shrug**]

The more you sing a mountain song,
the better it sounds.
The more you beat the copper gong,
the more brilliant the sound.

If you don't have a hammer,
no sound from the gong.
If you don't have a girl [literally, sister-in-law],
you can't sing a song.

All best--
Patricia

[This message has been edited by Patricia A. Marsh (edited August 08, 2006).]

Quote:

Originally posted by Mary Meriam:

Mary--

Lovely as these poems seem to be, well . . . [**sigh**]

I've read through the following poems a number of times and, sorry to say, I fail to understand what makes them "Wu Songs"--more than likely because I'm just learning about such things myself! However, if the only "rule" needed to write a Wu song is simply to write "Four lines, four beats per line."--as you indicate at the top of this thread--I'm wondering how you're counting those beats. I mean: Would it be too much to ask that you show how you'd scan these poems?

All best--
Patricia

Shake trees! Shake it all down!
I’m hungry for kiwi, mandarin orange,
apple red, the warm blushing mango,
the shade of the trembling cherry grove.

~~~

Before dawn, I dig for potatoes
in the soaked dirt, heavy hay,
and thick dark air. Last night,
I found a pearl in the mussel in my mouth.

~~~

You're as distant as Andromeda,
a galaxy smudged in the October sky.
I make that bed with clean sheets
where we rolled, charged, so many times.

~~~

The old photograph is missing
but you find the losing lottery tickets.
People you love die, and your memory
fades and fails, fallen petals.

~~~

The moon is almost full, as if la lune
is a new event created just for me and you -
though I can’t see her, not even from my window -
too many gauzy clouds in the way.

Here's a "Wu Song", supposedly . . . based on material found in Jason Kerr's Jou tau-la haiku (posted in Non-Met in early July):

Wu Farmer's Daughter Singing New Work Song in Hong Kong
. . . . . to the Tune of "Frere Jacque"

. . . . . After sunset, neon flashes--
. . . . . everywhere--fish-ball stands:
. . . . . city girls make money; hoeing corn makes blisters.
. . . . . Calloused hands. Calloused hands.

[This message has been edited by Patricia A. Marsh (edited August 08, 2006).]

Quote:

The more I read, the more I'm coming to believe that a Wu song is, basically, a song meant to be sung while working . . . a song with a strong rhythm, a rhythm that matches the bodily movements/monotony of, say, workers planting acre after acre of seeds or hoeing all day and, of course, singing while they work. I'm probably wrong, but I'm thinking: "gandy dancers", "sea chanteys", "field hollers", etc.

I believe your belief is correct *grin*. Reminiscent of songs attributed to the plantation workers of the Old South, with a different theme.

I know the four-line things I posted need work. Don't feel like scanning them now, but maybe later.

I like your idea about the work theme, but I think a Wu Song can also be about love.

Here's a quote from Zeiser's book:

Quote:

The Chinese Wu Song, a form of poetry over 3,000 years old, traps the moment's vision in the net of four lines. They are not designed for analytical response, but to be experienced as "paintings" that evoke feelings. Wu Songs are similar to haiku since the author must say "everything" in a fleeting moment.

Why didn't I post this sooner? I had to type it. Lazy. Sorry.

Mary