Note 262 — XLV. THE TIGER GUEST.
Herbert Allen Giles translation
It is almost impossible to give in translation the true spirit of a Chinese antithetical couplet. There are so many points to be brought out, each word of the second line being in opposition both in tone and sense to a corresponding word in the first, that anything beyond a rough rendering of the idea conveyed would be superfluous in a work like this. Suffice it to say that Miao has here successfully capped the verse given; and the more so because he has introduced, through the medium of “sword” and “shattered vase,” an allusion to a classical story in which a certain Wang Tun, when drunk with wine, beat time on a vase with his sword, and smashed the lip. return to text