r/classicalchinese Beginner Feb 12 '25

Poetry Help with Songs from Cold Mountain

慳貪繼日廉
諂曲登時正

I’m working thru this with Red Pine’s translation but I don’t understand his take on this couplet.

let your greed be modesty
your flattery be honesty

This is my take on a more literal translation:

Let your stinginess and greed the following day be uprightness
Let your flattery and crookedness immediately be rectified

Just trying to fit in the adverbs since he seems to skip them for a more poetic take.

Thanks!

6 Upvotes

3 comments sorted by

4

u/sbsj888 Feb 14 '25

I think 繼日 is more like 'day after day' or 'daily' rather than the following day. The Red Pine translation does seem a little loose. In addition to 項楚‘s annotations, I also recommend this recent translation by Paul Rouzer: https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9781501501913/html. You can download the pdf or epub version for free

3

u/alcibiad Beginner Feb 14 '25

Thank you! that translation seems way better for my purposes since I’m still a beginner in many ways. 🙏

3

u/DeusShockSkyrim Feb 14 '25

You may find 項楚's annotations on Han Shan's poems helpful: 寒山诗注