Word jewels

"Chinese poems are like strings of jewels."

"The jewels are Chinese characters, each of which represents a one-syllable word."

"These little word-jewels are hard and unchanging, but when they are translated into English, each one seems to have several different meanings."

". . ."

"The heart of the jewel never changes but its surface reflects the light in many different ways."(Greg Whincup. The Heart of Chinese Poetry)


:: note :: . . . reading the poems of Li Bai . . . Quiet Night Thoughts & many more . . . the above was written about Question and Answer on the Mountain . . . the link has not the word-jewel translation that Whincup creates . . . some poems are jewels . . . some days are jewels . . .

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