10 february 2024

10 february 2024

John Bjarne Grover

Chinese poet Gao Qi = 高啟 (1336-1374) wrote the following four-liner:

渡水复渡水，
看花还看花。
春风江上路，
不觉到君家。

Translation by Google
Translation by the Yabla dictionary

I recognized in this poem the same poetic complex as I observed in my study of the italian artist Gaudenzio Ferrari relative to my own 'The Endmorgan Quartet' - the four examples I discuss correspond with some (historic) precision to the four lines in Gao Qi's poem. I discovered it in line 3 wherein I recognized example 4 with my TEQ #1492 - and I understood that the remaining three lines of the poem could be recognized in the remaining 3 examples. The graphic origins of the signs (where they are available) can add explanatory value to this correspondence - the Wiktionary dictionary articles contain also semantic definitions of the signs. For the first sign 渡 there is no graphic origin but see related form 皮, particularly the Shuowen Jiezi form is interesting for its similarity with Ferrari's angelic wings of example 1. For the 'seven' of example 4, there are some similarities with the chinese signs 七彩 for seven colours in Ferrari's example 4. It seems that lines 3 and 4 are the easiest to solve - but there are reasons to recognize the relevance also for lines 1 and 2 - notice for these the parallel texts for examples 3-4. Could be the same applies to the other pair (lines 3-4 for the parallel texts to examples 1-2) as well. I notice the story of the fate of Gao Qi.

渡水复渡水 = example 1 = TEQ #632
看花还看花 = example 2 = TEQ #1088
春风江上路 = example 4 = TEQ #1492
不觉到君家 = example 3 = TEQ #228

I found a black-textile 'ethereal' type of sock recently. Is it this?

Source:

100 ancient chinese poems. Sinolingua, Beijing 2010.