Week 3: REACH

Corot, Fountainebleau, oil on paper, 1822

If the Corot conveys something of this week's word, treated as landscape, here's a very different approach--this came up in conversation last night towards the end of class, with Natalie and Yafei. A poem from the T'ang Dynasty (about 750 CE) by Li Po...

 

Thoughts in Night Quiet

 

Seeing moonlight here at my bed, and thinking it’s frost on the ground,
I look up, gaze at the mountain moon,
then back, dreaming of my old home.


(Translation by David Hinton. Chinese title: Jing Ye Shi 靜夜思) 

Note: David Hinton's translation aims for the simplicity and directness of Li Po's language--the reader needs to fill in a lot by imagining being in the scene. Many other translations (and versions of the poem) are available online... We could think about visual representations of the poem (and of Li Po, or Li Bai) in the same way... Here's one of the most famous, by Liang Kai (Southern Song, before 1210). Ask yourselves, what qualities in the painting parallel that in the poem?

Liang Kai, Li Bai

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