To elucidate [55-word story] | 23
When he was studying classical Chinese poetry, there was an unacknowledged problem he hadn't reckoned with.
Problem was, nobody he'd meet (outside academia) would know anything about such poetry. In this, does it quite surpass physics?
Once, on a date, he attempted to elucidate Wang Wei's grammatical parallelism. The girl was polite to a fault.
Problem was, nobody he'd meet (outside academia) would know anything about such poetry. In this, does it quite surpass physics?
Once, on a date, he attempted to elucidate Wang Wei's grammatical parallelism. The girl was polite to a fault.
posted by david raphael israel at 7:02 PM
2 Comments:
:):)
loved this one.
Grazzie bella!
I've struggled a bit with the precise wording of this one -- and indeed have just now revised it somewhat (even the title, erstwhile "Explaining," being now reworked a little).
Grammatical parallelism is one of the great wonders of Chinese poetry -- a thing whose beauty is deeply tied in with the unique form of the written language, and likewise with the monosyllabic nature of the language. Thru these factors, the grammatical parallelism becomes essentially physical (visual), in the flow of the lines in a couplet. There's a beauty and harmony of design involved which is at once musical and symantic, visual and syntactic. The terms of meaning and expression (words) array themselves in a kind of organization where the hierarchy of relationship (syntax) exerts a kind of architectural presence -- yes, very much like the "syntax" of architecture. If I may so elucidate! (though not attempting, here, to illustrate by example; -- a thing best done by scrawling a classical couplet on a napkin and pointing to the characters meaningfully, meanwhile intoning the sing-song lines in the most soulful manner available this side of the Tang dynasty). In an ideal educational system, such poetries would be studied in the original by diehard liberal arts acolytes of various persuasions. As things stand, only in this lost footnote does it occur to me to so preach & prostyletize.
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