Reading 徐志摩's 再别康桥 - questions

[Demonic_Duck]

Full text of the poem available here: http://www.ccview.net/htm/xiandai/xzm/xzm001.htm (and many other places online).

 

I love the poem, as Cambridge is one of my favourite places in the world, but I'm having trouble with a couple of things:

 

Line 10 "油油的在水底招摇" - the "的" here seems to me like it should be "地", yet every copy of the poem I've seen has it as "的". Why is this? Am I parsing it wrong?

Line 18 "向青草更青处漫溯" - should the character "溯" be read "sù" or "shuò"? Is one of the readings seen as more poetic, formal, archaic, colloquial or simply incorrect? I've heard both variations in the various readings available on youku, youtube etc.

[tooironic]

I translated this poem on my blog a few years back, take a look.

 

Re Line 10: AFAIK, the differentiation of 的, 得 and 地 is a relatively modern "rule" in Chinese; they used to be used interchangeably, and indeed nowadays still many native speakers use them "incorrectly".

 

Re Line 18: According to both 現代漢語規範詞典 (a China "standard") and 國語辭典 (a Taiwan "standard"), 溯 should be read sù and not shuò, however some native speakers may not be aware of this. This would be an example of a variant pronunciation, a topic I've also covered on my blog.

[Demonic_Duck]

Thanks, very helpful reply!

 

I did have a vague recollection of 的/得/地 being a modern invention, but then again 徐志摩 is a fairly modern writer, so I wasn't too sure about whether that explanation would apply here.

[tooironic]

No worries. It's also one of my favourite modern Chinese poems.

 

Considering he was alive 1897-1931, it's no surprise that there are some stylistic differences between the way he wrote and the way Chinese is written nowadays. China itself went through more change post-Republic era than it did centuries before that.

[skylee]

Re the "incorrectness" mentioned in #2, this post (#12) is relevant → http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/37142-little-phrase-活多的做不完/?p=278384

[Meng Lelan]

Re Line 10: AFAIK, the differentiation of 的, 得 and 地 is a relatively modern "rule" in Chinese; they used to be used interchangeably, and indeed nowadays still many native speakers use them "incorrectly".

 

The DeFrancis readers (published 1967) I have here do the same thing too,  the 的 tends to be used in place of 得 and  地.