Reflection & Summary

    This week I read The Gay Genious day by day, chapter by chapter and I gained many thoughts about Su Tungpo and myself, especially the appropriate way of learning. I collected some expressions and interesting serendipities as follows.

1. decline (P57/58)

读到第六章时候，发现两处用到这个单词，但是语境和意境却大不一样。

Tseyu therefore declined the appointment.

I was sorry that you were so thinly clad in this weather, riding on a skinny horse in that declining moonlight.

decline在第一个句子里作动词，表示拒绝，然而到了第二句，又变成了形容月光倾斜的形容词，意境也格外美。

在59页也出现了月光的另一种说法——"moonbean": Now and then he would feel very lonely, but at other times, seeing the moonbeam in his wine goblet, he would be elated.

2. 诗作里的“答”、“和”的说法——"echo"/"ho" (P58)

The brothers often ho, or "echoed" each other's poems to "echo" a poem is to answer it with another one using the same rhyme words.

3. 和子由渑池怀旧——林语堂译文  (P58)

人生到处知何似，应似飞鸿踏雪泥。

泥上偶然留指爪，鸿飞那复计东西。

To what can human life be likened. Perhaps to a wild goose's footprint on snow;

The claws' imprint is accidentally left. But carefree, the bird flies east and west.

Personally, I liked this poem very much and appreciate this translation version.

Also, what Lin commented Su later was very beautiful.

In truth, the events and doings of Su Tungpo we are reading about in this book are but the accidental footprints of a great spirit, but the real Su Tungpo is a spirit, like a phantom bird, that is even now perhaps making dream journeys among the stars.

4. 如何表达多少“种” -- VARITIES (P59)

In the first year after his arrival Su Tungpo built a little house and garden as the deputy magistrate's official residence, with a pond in front, a very good garden planted with thirty-one varieties of flowers, and a pavilion at the back.

我们通常说有31朵花，但是要表达31种花，则可能用语会比较繁琐了，比如 thirty-one kinds of flowers，而这种表达其实不是很地道，也不很明晰。

5. “君子之交淡如水”的表达和思考  (P)

"The friendship between gentlemen is mild, like the taste of water"

It has no exciting flavor, but one never grows tired of it. Sincere friendship is never demonstrative.

Really good friends don't write letters to each other, for in the complete trust of each other's friendship, no one needs to write. And after a few years o£ parting, they meet again and find the friendship as true as ever.

这里的demonstrative是指表情外露的，或是喜怒形于色，前面王弗也告诫过苏轼少与这样性格的人来往，她说"Be careful of those people. A friendship which is too quickly formed never lasts." 不论是王弗的话还是林语堂对真正的君子友谊的评论都非常值得记诵。

6. episode的特别用法 (P62/66)

A sequel to this episode was that the god on the Taipo Mountain was promoted and appointed a duke by the Emperor.

There was an episode during his Fengshiang period of which Su Tungpo seemed a little ashamed and which he did not like to talk about in later life.

本来episode是集数的意思，平常追英剧的话会看到S01E01这种表示，这里的S表示season/季，E就是episode/集，然而林语堂在这里用了两遍，很生动地表示了‘人生某一阶段中出现的一件事情’，就像某一集一样。第一句话的sequel是续集的意思，也即是事情的后续。

7.  a  galaxy of

At the time of Su Tungpo's youth there was a brilliant galaxy of scholars gathered at the court of the Chinese emperor.

[熟词僻义] Galaxy: If you talk about a galaxy of people from a particular profession, you mean a group of them who are all famous or important. 一群名人、群星荟萃。初看到这个短语感觉非常惊艳，用来形容当时文坛群星闪耀，群贤毕至十分合适。

8. stud with  (P21)

Even in middle-class society, conversations were often studded with learned instances and clever allusions, and had an air of archaic refinement to those from the outside provinces.

Stud with: to dot or cover.  用……点缀/覆盖。 这个短语和P15页的'dot with'有异曲同工之妙~ Dot也有“散步/遍布于……；星罗棋布”的意思。

The little hill stood against a vast plain of rice fields, orchards, and vegetable gardens, dotted here and there with bamboo groves and curiously dwarfed palm trees.

Small Biography

A small biography of Percy Bysshe Shelley

    Percy Bysshe Shelley was a revolutionary and idealist, a romantic poet, philosopher and essayist in the English Romantic period. Shelley was born of noble blood in 1792 and his life experience is rather romantic. At Eton, he was known as "Mad Shelley" because of his fierce independence of spirit and hatred of all forms of tyranny.

    Therefore, his poerty expression his spirit of rebellion, his love of man and of freedom as well as his pervasive melancholy. I found his masterpiece both passionate and thought-provoking, especially Ode To West Wind and Prometheus Unbound.