LIU ZONG YUAN the OLD fisherman

#lizongyuan #chinese poetry #oldfisherman

The painting I showed you in the last post was an illustration probably of this famous poem.

Beware there is another famous poem with only four lines about a fisherman by this writer who was also noted for his prose essays.

Here are my notes and VERY ROUGH translation VERY ROUGH

I'm hoping for feedback so I can finish it.

THE OLD FISHERMAN

yu weng ye bang xi yan su
fishing elder night side west cliff spends night

West Cliff may be a place name not just a description
Whether the fishing elder was Liu Zong Yuan himslef or a different person I leave you to decide!

xiao ji qing xiang ran chu zhu

first light draws water clear Xiang lights fire CHU bamboo
Most translations just say river and don't mention its the Xiang River
Chu bamboo was he cooking with dry bamboo using a bamboo steamer or what ?
Chu is the name of an independent realm predating the unification covering the area Liu Zong Yuan was travelling thru so is CHU bamboo actually a cooking style or what?

Note the U final rhyme scheme
(then) yan xiao then into the mists disappears (as) sun rises not see man

ai nai yi sheng shan shui cui

alas regret literary form of verb to be or an adverb ? one sound landscape green
there is no mention in the original text of an oar so what is the sound ?

turn see sky edge down stream mid current

cliff above not have heart/mind cloud(s) each other one by one moving

so just as the river flows on so do the clouds above in the sky

Lets tidy that up

The old fisherman for the night moors beside West Cliff

At daybreak draws clear water from the Xiang cooks with Chu bamboo

Into the mists he disappears when the sun rises
or the mists disappear when the sun rises I no longer see the man ?

again who is making the one sound ? the poet or the fisherman ?

sighing make one sound at the verdant landscape

turning I look at the skys edge down mid current

above the cliffs mindlessly the clouds follow each other

Comments invited

The Lonely Fisherman

#Chinesepainting

The Lonely Fisherman is a cliched theme now but originally it was inspired by famous Tang dynasty poems by one poet. That will be the theme of the next few posts but first let us study this work.

There are towering peaks in the background and a fisherman anchored in a quiet backwater with not even a hint of ripple. The ink wash lead our eyes up to peaks across water and valleys from a starting point of a branching tree mirrored across the waters by other trees. We don't think of Chinese ink paintings as being tonal but look at the layout of the washes the shadows shaping the roof of the boat and the sides of the peaks. The dotting technique is used carefully for emphasis rather than wide brush strokes.There is only one human but a crowd of peaks. It seems very minimalist plus to the use of greys and blacks but there is actually quite a lot of detail. 

#hiroshige #japaneseprint

The year is drawing to a close and I have been using the Xmas break to research and plan blogs for next year

Coming next year The Lonely Fisherman theme along with Marici Year of the Pig and more 

DECEMBER SEMI_HIATUS

XMAS BREAK SCHEDULE

People  new TECHNOZI posts will be made over the next two weeks but at a reduced or erratic  frequency.

I have to finish and upload some Xmas specials to my Patreon

https://www.patreon.com/JVartndesign

and I'm behind due to the @#$%^&* building site across the street using some kind of equipment that interferes with wifi.
That and mid summer heat and humidity  means I can only post stuff from the laptop early morning or late evening in my time zone.
Please consider following me here or on G+ or my @JVartndesign twitter so you can get updates when I post !

Umbrellas and Ukiyoe

Here's a Ukiyo-e print featuring umbrellas We're expecting a summer storm this afternoon!

Note how most of the reds are in the foreground and the blues and ochre yellows lead the eye further into the image. There is no one central figure. Its a streetscape faraway from a Kano school sansui landscape reminding you how innovative Japanese art can be and how important prints were for preserving social and costume history before photography was introduced. 

Japanese Print Couple with a dog

The year of the Dog is coming to an end so to finish it here's an image of a young couple playing with a dog or throwing treats that look like rice balls to a dog? Whether this is a pet or a street stray I don't know. perhaps its not a couple but a brother guarding his sister while they walk to the shops or a temple? Perhaps.

Momiji again and Hoitsu

#hoitsu #japanesepainting #momiji

You might want to check my Kiitsu post and compare it to this one.

This is a painting in the pillar format

Note how Hoitsu balances the tones and colors and guides our sight through the painting using tonal and color variation. Darker tones at the bottom of the wash that forms the tree trunk then a lower branch that's orange and red paralleled above by a thicker darker branch and red leaves and more orange at the top.

No wonder the Ukiyo-e artists so quickly adapted to color printing with splendid examples of good color layout like this !

Hoitsu was not a Ukiyo-e artist and while this is a painting not a print painters from other schools could inspect and study works like this  at tea ceremonies or if they were displayed at temples or poetry parties.