Whisper Arc Annotations for Part II

[shiraume_fic]

Whisper Annotations for Part II



[1] 二. 明月 [명월]. Generally it would be read "meigetsu", to mean "bright moon". It can be a poetic way of referring to the full moon as well. I do not know if there IS another reading for this one. For the purpose of the story, I made one up, as "Akizuki". Brackets contain the Korean reading, which is "myeong wol".




[2] Akizuki. This would be my invented reading for 明月. Though it's never mentioned as such, this is the geimei, or stage name, for him. I, um, chose this because this was actually the stage name of Korea’s most famous courtesan, Hwang Jini (1500s).




[3] Quoted from "Bamboo Adobe" [竹里館] by Wang Wei [王維], a famous Tang [唐] poet. Poems that I present here are all from Korean sources, so there may be some discrepancy between the version I have and the Chinese version.

獨坐幽篁裡
彈琴復長嘯
深林人不知
明月來相照

I sit along in the dark bamboo grove,
Playing the zither and whistling long.
In this deep wood no one would know -
Only the bright moon comes to shine.

I have no clue who translated it. >.> I found this English translation off the web. (This is the version used in the story.) "Bright moon" being an obvious reference to Akizuki's name.




[4] Quoted from "From Riverside Pavilion" [江樓書懷] by Zhao Gu [趙蝦], another one of the famous Tang poets.

獨上江樓思悄然
月光如水水如天
同來翫月人何在
風景依稀似去年

My heart is sorrowful as I stand in the riverside pavilion
The moonlight is like the river and the river is like the heaven
Where is the one who gazed at the moon with me? [Text is closer to "enjoyed" than "gazed".]
Only the scenery is unchanged from last year.

My own translation. I used a more "flowy" version for the in-story quotation.




[5] zhuyeqing. [竹葉青] "Bamboo Leaf Green". One of China's all-time favorite rice wines, containing 10 different herbs and bamboo leaves, dating back (presumably) to the Warring States Period (400-200 BC). There is a short mention of it on Wikipedia (scroll down to "Flavored" section). It's supposed to be a fairly high-class drink, and leave you hangover-free the morning after.




[6] floating world (ukiyo). Wikipedia article here, since I'm too lazy: ukiyo-e.