Li Bai - Gazing at a Waterfall on Mt. Lu

Gazing at a Waterfall on Mt. Lu

a sunlit incense burner from which purple smoke emerges
a distant waterfall drapes like a curtain over the river
it flies straight down for three thousand feet
i could almost think it’s the Silver River, drawn from highest heaven

Gushiwensday

Looking toward a waterfall on Mount Lu: Sunlight through the censer’s purple smoke

Notes

Silver River: another name for the Milky Way; we saw “heavenly river” in a previous week’s poem. i’m collecting them. you will all see them.

highest heaven: literally “ninth heaven”. i don’t know if there are nine codified heavens or which cosmology, or if “nine” is used here in a general sort of “completeness” sense (cf. the nine provinces meaning all of China, etc.)

Exegesis

cobbled together from my own thoughts & my grandma’s 1987 Tangshi jianshang cidian (an anthology of Tang verse with commentaries)

the “incense burner” is supposed to refer to Incense Burner Peak, one of Mt. Lu’s seven peaks

(Burton Watson translates the first line as

Sunlight streaming on Incense Stone kindles violet smoke;

i particularly love “kindles” for 生, love a verb specific to fire and basically only fire. “Incense Stone” is a bit perplexing to me - i can’t imagine what it would look like, though it does recall “jade births smoke” 玉生烟 of a different poem)

love the movement in the first two lines - the smoke rises to heaven, the curtain hangs down. “hangs” is what the line 2 verb 挂 literally means, and (1) it’s a lovely, striking choice playing off “curtain” 瀑布 as an expression for waterfall; (2) the incense burner and the curtain are domestic images being repurposed to describe the majesty of nature

not much i can add about the third line, it’s straightforward and velocitous

i think there’s a fair amount of variation and personal taste in how to translate the start of line 4, 疑是 - 疑 as in 怀疑 “to suspect, doubt” - “i imagine”? “it seems”?

the last line is the most imaginative and least grounded, but it makes a complete circle with the incense smoke rising all the way to heaven in the first line