Chinese Poetic Writing by Francois Cheng

Author:Francois Cheng
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: New York Review Books
Published: 2017-03-28T04:00:00+00:00

The first line describes the luxurious course of life in the houses of the wealthy (red doors) where they let (leftover) meat rot after the feast, there is so much of it. The second line sets the scene for the poor, dead of hunger and cold on the road. Instead of using descriptive words such as “houses of the rich,” “feast,” “without shelter,” “abandoned dead,” the poet makes use of a series of metaphors available in the language. One is first struck by the contrasting images in the two lines; “red doors” and “icy roads” are in opposition along the interior-exterior polarity, “meat” and “bones” along the living-dead polarity; the two lines are opposed in their entirety by their contrast between the colors red-white. Then, one’s attention is drawn by the linking together of the images: the image of the red door leads to the meat dripping blood; the rotting meat seems to be none other than the flesh of the poor in decomposition (in Chinese, the same word is used both for “meat” and [living] “flesh”).

Red door → red blood of the meat → rotten meat → decomposing

flesh → skeletons

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