Read The Anchor Book of Chinese Poetry Online
Authors: Tony Barnstone
It takes in like a watermill
and turns like a pearl marble.
It is beyond words
and these are clumsy metaphors.
Earth spins on a hidden axis
and the universe rolls slowly around its hub.
If you search out the origin
you'll find a corresponding motion.
Climb high into spiritual light.
Then dive deep into dark nothing.
All things for thousands of years
are caught up in the flow.
1
An allusion to a number of Chinese Daoist tales in which Daoists who become immortal fly off on the back of a crane.
2
These last lines suggest the dangers of saying too much, of overwriting. If you go on too long, Sikong Tu warns, you walk right out of the style, whereas a good line stops you like a great river, and echoes profoundly inside of you. This effect can be described by two lines from Tang poetry: “The song is over, the musician gone,/but the river and green mountains keep singing.”
3
South Mountain is famous in poetry as a place of Daoist peace and quietude. It often appears in the poetry of Wang Wei and Tao Qian.
Yu Xuanji is among the finest women poets of the Tang dynasty. Only fifty of her poems are extant, but they reveal a passionate person mourning absent lovers, letting her feelings out in nature, all in exquisite and imaginative language scarcely surpassed in her time. She was born in the Tang capital of Changan (modern-day Xian) and was a sophisticated courtesan. Eventually she became the concubine of the poet and government official Li Yi, whom she calls Zian in her poetry, but Li Yi abandoned her after taking her to the south of China. Yu Xuanji managed to return to the capital, where her extreme poverty may explain her decision at the end of her brief life to become a Daoist nun. She lived a pious life, and yet she continued to receive her lovers (among them the important poet Wen Tingyun) in her quarters at the Convent of Gathered Blessings—a double role that may seem more unusual to Westerners than it was in her time. When she was twenty-four she was executed on a trumped-up charge of murdering her maid in jealousy over one of her callers.
Snow-topped peaks fill my eyes with new spring sun
as my fingers brush a calligraphy of clear, clear silver hooks.
I hate my silk dresses. They veil my poems' lines.
I raise my head and admire in vain the names posted on the board.
Maple leaves cover a thousand, ten thousand branches.
An evening sail returns late, emerging from the river bridge.
Like water in the West River my heart aches for you,
day and night flowing east without end.
After these few happy nights in the Qin Tower,
immortal man, I didn't expect you to leave.
Sleep, don't speak of where the clouds have gone.
A wild moth flies into the guttering lamp.
Drunk from dawn to dusk, my body complains.
Now it's spring again I miss him.
A messenger runs off in the rain.
By the window I stand, broken inside.
Mountain. I roll up the pearl curtain and gaze.
My sorrow renews with the fragrance of grass.
Since I left him at the light banquet
how many times have the roof beams leaked dust?
I sigh to myself. Too much passion brings grief.
So much wind and moon
1
in this courtyard full of autumn.
The watchman beats his drum right by my bridal chamber.
Night after night with my lamp. My hair is almost white.
1
“Wind and moon” can be a symbol for a love affair.
Qi Ji was a monk poet. He was born in Yiyang, Hunan, but was orphaned when he was seven and entered a Buddhist monastery, where he worked herding cattle. He showed an early talent for poetry (he was said as a youth to have scratched his poems with a bamboo stick on the backs of cattle). He traveled widely, eventually gaining the patronage of the king of Nanping, who gave him a position of influence in a monastery.
A cold dark mountain pierces the sky's edge.
In my boat I watch it coated with late sun.
For ten years I've dreamed of it.
Today I finally can approach that ghostly height.
Huge rocks look black overhead,
flying waterfalls glimmer at night.
I need to climb up that solitary peak
and sit waiting for white clouds to rise.
Li Jing was the second emperor of the Southern Tang dynasty. He reigned for only nineteen years, dying at the age of forty-six. His father was a usurper who took over the state of Wu and founded the dynasty. Under Li Jing the capital became a great cultural center, but as an emperor with expansionist designs he led his people into costly wars that lost many lives and much territory. He was the father of Li Yu, the last emperor of the Tang, and like his son was an excellent poet, though only a few of his poems survive.
Hands roll the pearl curtain up to a jade hook.
She locks her hatred for spring in tall towers,
but who can own flowers falling in the wind?
Thoughts swing long.
No bluebird carries a message for her through clouds.
She can't keep grief from budding like a lilac in the rain
and turns toward Sanchu at dusk, as green waves darken,
flowing up into the sky.
Lotus flowers' fragrance is burned up, emerald leaves torn.
The west wind like sorrow rises from the green waves.
My best days are gone, and I am withered.
I can't bear to look.
In drizzling rain my dream returns from a far frontier pass.
A jade reed pipe pierces the small tower with cold.
So much hatred, so much weeping.
I sag against the banister.
Madam Huarui was an important female poet of the Tang dynasty. Her husband, Meng Xu, the king of Sichuan during the Five Dynasties Period, gave her the appellation by which she is known—”Madam Flower Pistil.” After their kingdom was conquered by the founder of the Song dynasty, Emperor Taizi (ruled 960–975), Madam Huarui was forced to join the harem of the conqueror. She was said either to have been killed by the emperor's heir apparent or to have been forced to commit suicide at the emperor's command. Much of her poetry focuses on the life of women in the imperial harem. The poem included here was composed extemporaneously in response to the emperor, who had questioned her as to why her husband's troops had surrendered.
When the king raised a white flag on the battlements
how could I know deep in the palace?
One hundred and forty thousand soldiers dropped their weapons.
Was not even one of them a man?
Li Yu was the last emperor of the Southern Tang dynasty. He is also known as Li Houzhu (
houzhu
means “last ruler”). He ascended to the throne in 961 and ruled from the Southern Tang capital of Nanjing. But his rule ended only fourteen years later, when the House of Song conquered his realm. He was carried north to the Song capital, Kaifeng, and imprisoned. Years later, on his birthday, he was sent a glass of poisoned wine by the Song emperor, who was upset upon hearing the court's female musicians sing Li Yu's poem “To the Tune of ‘Beauty Yu.'” He died, forty-one years old.
Li Yu seems to have been much better at the business of culture than he was at running his empire. He was a noted painter, musician, and calligrapher, and under his reign the Southern Tang became an important cultural center. He is considered the first important innovator in the lyric (
ci)
form of poetry, which was to be the form in which much of the best poetry of the Song dynasty was written. In the hands of Wen Tingyun and Wei Chuang and other early
ci
poets, love of nature and romantic love were the principal subjects of the form but Li Yu expanded the form to include meditations upon great philosophical themes— the impermanence of life and the vanity of human wishes. He also made it startlingly personal. His best poems mourn the death of his first wife in 964, and bitterly lament his imprisonment.
Morning makeup is almost done—
a few more light touches on the lips.
Revealing the tip of a lilac tongue,
she sings transparently clear,
her mouth just parting, like a cherry.
Charming how her wide silk sleeve turns crimson wet
after sweeping across sweet wine in a deep goblet.
She is fragile, seductive, lying aslant an embroidered bed.
After chewing on her red hair-string,
with a laugh she spits it on her man.
The flowers flicker. Moon in soft mist.
Just the time to go to my man,
walking in stockings on fragrant moss,
gold-threaded shoes in my hand.
South of the painted hall we meet.
I throw myself on his chest, trembling,
tell him, “It was so hard to sneak out.
So love me now with all abandon!”
Since you left, spring is half gone
and everything I see breaks my heart:
a chaos of plum petals falling by the steps like snowflakes.
I brush them off and they cover me again.
Migrating wild geese bring me no word of you.
The road is so long that my dream cannot reach you.
The grief of departure is like spring grass
—the farther you go, the deeper it grows.
My family's kingdom lasted forty years—
three thousand
li
of mountains and rivers.
In phoenix pavilions and dragon towers built up to heaven,
among jade trees and branches like spring mist and vines,
how could I know anything about wars?
But since being captured and enslaved,
my waist has shriveled,
my hair turned gray.
I was most lost the day we parted at the Temple of Ancestors:
the imperial orchestra was playing farewell songs
while I stood in tears facing my palace girls.
Will spring blooms and autumn moon never end?
These memories are too much.
Last night east wind pierced my narrow tower again,
and I saw lost kingdoms in the clean bright moon.
The carved railings and jade steps must still be there,
though lovely faces must have aged.
How much sorrow do I feel?
Like river water in spring it flows to the east.
Spring red fades in falling forest blossoms
so quickly, so quickly,
no way to stop the cold rain of dawn, the wind of night.
You weep red tears
and keep me drinking here
not knowing when we'll return.
Sorrow like a river flows endlessly to the east.
Silent, alone, I ascend the west tower.
The moon is a hook.
Deserted parasol trees trap clear autumn in the inner courtyard.
Cut, it won't break,
straightened, it stays tangled
—the sorrow of parting
is a strange taste in my heart.
*
Sometimes called “To the Tune of ‘Encountering Joy.'”
*
Sometimes called “To the Tune of ‘Encountering Joy.'”
AFTER THE FALL OF THE TANG DYNASTY IN 907, CHINA DIS
integrated into a series of smaller dynasties warring for domination and seeking the reunification of the empire. The Song dynasty, which alongside the Tang and the Han is generally considered one of the three peaks of Chinese civilization, was founded by Zhao Kuangyin, who seized power in a coup d'etat in 960 and took on the imperial name Taizu. During the Northern Song (960–1127) the capital of the dynasty was located in Dongjing (which is today Kaifeng City); during the Southern Song (1127–1279) the capital was moved to what is today Hangzhou. Much of the administrative structure of the Tang dynasty, including the civil service and examination systems, had been maintained during the period of warfare that followed its collapse, and so when China moved into a new period of relative stability under the Song, the stage was set for another renaissance.
The early Song was a time of great economic expansion and stability and of reforms in the examination system and the bureaucracy. Taizu created a professional army, and he and his successors expanded the empire to the south, but the empire was always threatened by foreign invasion, and increasingly by peasant rebellions and internecine warfare. The decisive change came in 1126, when the army of the Jurchens of the Jin dynasty invaded from the north and took over the capital at Kaifeng. Emperor Huizong and much of his family were captured and taken prisoner to Manchuria, but his ninth son, Zhaogou, managed to flee to the south, where he established the Southern Song dynasty in 1127. The Southern Song was a prosperous time economically as well as a great period for the arts, but it was a weak dynasty, with limited territory, incompetent
officials, the constant threat of invasion from the north, and a defensive military strategy that played into the hands of the invading Jin, and later of the invading Mongols. Zhaogou, known as Emperor Gaozong, made peace with the Jin by accepting the humiliation of having to pay tribute. Warfare in the north among three forces, the Mongols, the Jin, and the Western Xia, resolved itself with the disappearance of the Western Xia and the conquering of much of the Jin by the Mongols. When the Jin turned against the Southern Song, the Song emperor collaborated with the Mongols to defeat them. The Mongols, in turn, turned against the Song and conquered Hangzhou in 1276.
The technology of printing, invented in the Tang dynasty, spread in the Song and made it possible for books to be preserved and widely available to different classes. The civil service ranks thus swelled with talented people who would in previous dynasties have had difficulty affording and attaining an education. Many people took up writing poetry in the Song, and they were able to carefully preserve their works. The new form of lyric verse called
ci
, which developed in the late Tang, achieved its apex in the Song. Though traditional poetry in the
shi
forms continued to be written, notably by the Southern Song poet Lu You, the heart of Song poetry lies in the lyric verse. As Burton Watson comments, “it was some time before a new style of poetry developed that was in any way distinct from what had gone before. The first 70 or 80 years of Song rule saw instead a prolongation of the Late Tang style—mannered, morose, with all the faults of Li Shangyin and none of his compensations.”
1
The
ci
poem is set to music and can be sung. It is characterized by erotic content (especially early on in the form's development), strict rhyme, tonal patterns, and irregular line length.
Ci
was a poetic reaction to the popularity and influence of Central Asian music and to native tunes. The 875 song patterns to which the poems were written remain, although they are known only by their song titles, since the music itself has been lost.
Li Qingzhao (1084-c. 1151), China's greatest woman poet, flourished during the Song, as did such great poets as Su Shi (1036–1101) and Ouyang Xiu (1007–1072). Su Shi helped to develop the
ci
poem away from the erotics and the occasional crudity of its original inspiration and toward a wider range of topics. The poetry of this period tends to echo the kind of realism and social critique that characterized the great Tang poets Du Fu and Bai Juyi. It allowed the use of colloquial expressions and diction and, as Watson notes, often treated themes heretofore considered “unpoetic” and mundane, in part because of the influence of neo-Confucianism. Though
shi
poetry declined in quality after the Tang,
ci
poetry, with its formal flexibility (there were many different patterns one could write to) and its introduction of vernacular and everyday speech and events into poetry, revitalized the poetic scene.
1
Burton Watson,
Chinese Lyricism: Shih Poetry from the Second to the Twelfth Century
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1971), pp. 197–198.