Beautiful characters. How very callous of you to jettison the last line of the story, though! Do you reckon the stone was a plaque in the marketplace: On this spot in 83BC, Dingbo sold a ghost for 1,500? Or was it scrawled mysteriously on the back of a ghosts' mountain latrine door: Dingbo sells you dead fuckers for fifteen hundred a pop...
Yeah, I dithered over the last line, but ultimately it felt like it killed the impact of the conclusion: it’s quoting Shi Chong, a stupendously rich bon vivant of the Western Jin, just repeating the punchline — “That Song Dingbo! Sold a ghost and got 1500 cash out of it!” — in case the reader has just sustained a traumatic brain injury or something.
(I’m being a little unfair to Gan Bao here — Shi was a Name, so for contemporaries or people familiar with him from his appearances in the Shishuo xinyu there was presumably a little flare of recognition. Maybe he’s there to authenticate the story, or to confirm for the reader that yes, that was one hell of a sharp move — but ditching the line felt like an improvement, or at least it did as of this morning’s train ride.)
Given that this is what it is, I find an inversion quite often captures this form well enough. So in this case you could put it at the top of the story: Shi Chong tells us that Song Dingbo sold a ghost for 1,500. It went down like this... That intimates to the reader that Shi Chong is someone whose name they probably ought to know, but avoids the repetitiveness at the end.
I LOVE this story!! Thank you!
Adorably dark.
Terrific story and presumably terrific translation
Beautiful characters. How very callous of you to jettison the last line of the story, though! Do you reckon the stone was a plaque in the marketplace: On this spot in 83BC, Dingbo sold a ghost for 1,500? Or was it scrawled mysteriously on the back of a ghosts' mountain latrine door: Dingbo sells you dead fuckers for fifteen hundred a pop...
Yeah, I dithered over the last line, but ultimately it felt like it killed the impact of the conclusion: it’s quoting Shi Chong, a stupendously rich bon vivant of the Western Jin, just repeating the punchline — “That Song Dingbo! Sold a ghost and got 1500 cash out of it!” — in case the reader has just sustained a traumatic brain injury or something.
(I’m being a little unfair to Gan Bao here — Shi was a Name, so for contemporaries or people familiar with him from his appearances in the Shishuo xinyu there was presumably a little flare of recognition. Maybe he’s there to authenticate the story, or to confirm for the reader that yes, that was one hell of a sharp move — but ditching the line felt like an improvement, or at least it did as of this morning’s train ride.)
Duh, I had no idea... They made me study this book at university, so I ought to know that kind of thing.
No shame in it; I remember a couple of characters and a handful of zingers from 世說新語 but it mostly passed from recollection some time ago.
Given that this is what it is, I find an inversion quite often captures this form well enough. So in this case you could put it at the top of the story: Shi Chong tells us that Song Dingbo sold a ghost for 1,500. It went down like this... That intimates to the reader that Shi Chong is someone whose name they probably ought to know, but avoids the repetitiveness at the end.
Brilliant. Thank you