The Poetry of He Zhu (1052-1125)
Sinica Leidensia Edited by
Barend J. ter Haar In co-operation with
P.K. Bol, W.L. Idema, D.R. Knechtges, E.S.Rawski, E. Zürcher, H.T. Zurndorfer
VOLUME LXXIV
The Poetry of He Zhu (1052-1125) Genres, Contexts, and Creativity
By
Stuart H. Sargent
LEIDEN • BOSTON 2007
This book is printed on acid-free paper. Detailed Library of Congress Cataloging-in Publication data Detailed Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data are available on the Internet at http://catalog.loc.gov
ISSN: 0169-9563 ISBN: 978 90 04 15711 8 Copyright 2007 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints BRILL, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands
CONTENTS Acknowledgements List of Tables Abbreviations Brief Chronology of the Life of He Zhu INTRODUCTION The Approach: Genre, Contexts, and Individual Voice Conventions and Texts Used in this Study The Name of the Poet Other Transcriptions Meter Poem Numbers and Texts Chapter One THE ANCIENT-STYLE VERSE OF HE ZHU, 1078–98 1078–80: Fuyang 1078: The Contingency of Historical Judgment 1079: Reportage 1080: Time 1080: Animals and the Question of Allegory 1080: Variations on the Poetic Heritage 1081: A Transitional Year 1082–85: Xuzhou 1082: Tang Echoes, Su Shi 1083: More Celebration of Su Shi 1084: ~Zai, Tang Predecessors 1085: The Ironic Traveler 1086: In the Capital Word Games Imitations 1088: Fanghui’s Version of the Zhang Liang Saga 1088-89: The South Gardens and Temples Ten Historical Sites in Liyang 1091–93: Jinshan and the Capital Teasing Mi Fu at Jinshan 1091: Wit in the Su Shi Mode 1093: The Past Recovered 1094: No-Mind in Hailing 1096: Hanyang The Inscription For Zhou Dunyi’s Thatched Hall The Reinterpretation of Tao Yuanming Obfuscation 1096–98: Jiangxia
ix xi xii xiii 1 2 6 7 7 8 10 12 13 13 15 21 27 33 36 38 38 45 47 50 54 54 56 64 74 74 84 86 86 89 90 96 100 100 105 110 115
vi
CONTENTS
1096: The Connoisseur 1096 and 1097: History 1098: Watchful Eyes Further Thoughts on Imitation, Inscriptions, and Rhyme Chapter Two THE SONGS OF HE ZHU, 1080–98 1080–85: Handan and Xuzhou 1080: An Ancient Site in Handan 1084–85: Sites and Poetry Sessions in Xuzhou 1088–92: Sending Songs from Liyang and Jinling 1088: A Suite Experiment Liyang Experiments in 1089 and 1090 1090–92: Innovative Songs from Jinling A Gift Enhanced by Rhyme (I) 1094: Hailing Laments First Farewell Songs 1096–98: Jiangxia Tao Yuanming Outdone Leftover Elder of Mirror Lake Tao Yuanming Out of Reach History A Gift Enhanced by Rhyme (II) East Slope Innovations in Songs: A Brief Review Chapter Three THE PENTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE OF HE ZHU, 1076–98 Poems Written before Xuzhou Xuzhou 1084: Imitation of an Extended Regulated Verse 1084: Twin Views from the Delightful! Pavilion Rhymed Opening Couplets 1087: In the Capital 1088–90: The Liyang and Jinling Area The Capital 1091: Civil Classification 1092: Stretching Form 1093–94: Leaving the Capital Mi Fu 1096–98: On to Jiangxia Going Upriver: Diction from the Past Hanyang: Responses to Assaults on History 1096–97: This is not Li Shangyin 1098: Farewell to a Buddhist Magistrate Pleasures and Precedents in Regulated Verse Chapter Four THE HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE OF HE ZHU, 1075–98 Issues of Form Situations in Which the Heptametrical Regulated Verse was Used Heptametrical Regulated Verse in the North, before Xuzhou
115 117 120 121 125 126 126 130 141 141 146 153 157 160 160 164 168 168 171 173 178 179 182 186 188 188 194 194 202 207 223 225 238 239 243 248 251 256 256 258 262 265 267 269 269 272 273
CONTENTS
1075: First-line Rhyme 1077, 1079: Order in Landscape, Order in Couplets 1082–86: Xuzhou Celebration of Place and Complexity Precedents to be Overturned or Celebrated Anomalous Form 1086: Yongcheng Playing with the Rhythm of the Line The Capital Zhao Lingzhi, Zhao Lingshuai 1088–91: Through Jinling to Liyang and Back Wang Anshi “First Poems” ABAB Sequences 1090–91: Absence in Jinling 1091: Two Clever Social Poems in the Capital 1093–94: Hailing Ambiguities 1095–96: From the Capital to Jiangxia Another Exile 1096: Up the Yangzi 1096–98: Hanyang and Jiangxia An Extended Regulated Verse Equanimity in Jiangxia Qin Guan, Lü Dafang, Su Shi, Huang Tingjian A Summary Chapter Five THE PENTAMETRICAL QUATRAINS OF HE ZHU, 1085–98 1085: Xuzhou The Capital 1086: Relationships with Past Poetry 1087: Ten Songs on Autumn Days 1088–90: Liyang and Quatrains for Monks 1091–92: Outspoken in the Capital 1095: Quirky in the Capital 1097–98: Mining the Past in Jiangxia Addendum: Hexametrical Quatrains in the Capital, 1086 and 1092 New Life for the Pentametrical Quatrain Chapter Six THE HEPTAMETRICAL QUATRAINS OF HE ZHU, 1077–95 Early Start in the North 1077: Quiet Scenes in Zhaozhou 1080: Restraint in Fuyang 1081: Making It Fresh 1081: Disingenuous Quatrains in the Daming Area 1081 and 1082: In and Out of the Capital 1083 and 1085: Xuzhou 1086–87 The Capital Liyang 1088–89: Southern Scenes
vii 273 276 280 280 285 289 296 296 300 300 304 304 306 311 319 327 331 341 341 344 351 352 355 358 366 368 371 375 375 380 386 391 395 397 400 404 406 409 409 413 418 420 423 425 428 435 435
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CONTENTS
1089–91: The Society of Others The Capital and Hailing 1091 and 1092: Spring Wind in the Capital 1094: Farewells in Hailing 1096: Up the River to Jiangxia 1096–98: Hanyang and Jiangxia Closing thoughts on This Genre and the Lyric CONCLUSION Chronology of Poems Translated or Mentioned Bibliography Four-Corner Index of Poems Translated Index of Poems by Poem Number Index
437 441 441 444 446 448 452 453 457 465 479 483 487
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS It was at one of our regular Friday afternoon departmental wine parties at Stanford University approximately thirty years ago that James J.Y. Liu suggested the lyrics of He Zhu as a possible dissertation topic. I am grateful for the suggestion and for his guidance through the ensuing work which, though very different in character from the present book, formed the starting point for my exploration of a fascinating poet. Since then, numerous individuals and institutions have sustained me and supported not only my research on He Zhu but also other projects whose results are reflected in the present book. The contributions of a few individuals are acknowledged at appropriate places in the body of the text; I should also note that some of the most valuable publications cited would not have been available or known to me had not their authors generously given me a copy. McKeldin Library at the University of Maryland, the Library of Congress, and the Diet Library in Tokyo were significant resources for my post-dissertation research on He Zhu. In recent years, Norlin Library at the University of Colorado and the libraries at Stanford University were critically important. Special mention must be made of Colorado State University and its Morgan Library, not only for the recognized excellence of the library’s interlibrary loan services, but also for the ways in which they kept this project from being derailed completely when storm runoff destroyed my office, my computer, and most of my personal library in 1997. The University provided funds to replace my ruined books and services to photocopy those papers that could be recovered from waterlogged file cabinets; the Library freeze-dried and restored important books in my collection that could not be replaced and appropriated funds to start its own Chinese-language collection. The time to use libraries for something besides class preparation is generally bought with grants. My chronological reading of He Zhu and three of his contemporaries was supported in 1982–83 by a Mellon Fellowship for Chinese Studies awarded through the American Council of Learned Societies. What you see before you now contains bits and pieces of the lengthy manuscript that resulted from that project but the present book is more directly the product of a sabbatical leave granted by Colorado State University in 2003-2004. For two quarters during that academic year, I had the privilege of teaching in the Department of Asian Languages back at Stanford, where I was provided with space
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to work, computer support, and of course access to a fine library. This was a fulfilling period, indeed, and I am grateful to all parties. There are more personal debts to be acknowledged. My interest in China was sparked by a woman named Elsie Anderson: youngest of my mother’s aunts, she embarked for China in 1918 to work for girls’ education; some years after her death it was her copy of Lin Yutang’s Wisdom of China and India that set me, as a young teenager, on the trajectory that would eventually lead to this book. Mention must also be made of the uncle who passed her books on to me, Wilbur J. Granberg, a well-traveled writer and journalist who found his material in everything from the life of Joseph Pulitzer to the seagoing canoes of the Quileute Nation on the Olympic Peninsula. Alongside these formative influences one must acknowledge my father and my two mothers, deceased and living, for their love and support. Those individuals and other friends, relatives, and teachers too numerous to mention here have been abiding sources of inspiration and guidance. None, however, deserves more direct credit for the completion of this work than Dominique Groslier Sargent (known in the U.S. primarily as Dominique Bachmann Sargent), my wife. A scholar of modern French poetry who traveled the long road to her doctorate while raising a dynamic, high-achieving daughter, Dominique understands the goals, pressures, and sacrifices entailed in our profession. The fact that the period during which the present study was successfully consolidated and completed coincides with our marriage to date bespeaks her impact on my life and my work. Her counsel on what worked and what didn’t work in the manuscript was crucial in shaping the final product. It is to her that this book is dedicated with loving gratitude.
LIST OF TABLES 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Form of Songs of Three Birds Words in Poem 166 Typical of Wen Tingyun Anomalous Regulated Verses Pentametrical Quatrains in the Works of Selected Poets He Zhu’s Pentametrical Quatrains by Year Su Shi’s Pentametrical Quatrains by Year Heptametrical Quatrains in the Works of Selected Poets He Zhu’s Heptametrical Quatrains by Year
143–44 198 270–71 368 370 370–71 406–7 407
ABBREVIATIONS Changbian CSJC HJAS JAOS QSC QSS QTS SBBY SBCK SSSJ SSWJ
Xu Zizhitongjian changbian Congshu jicheng Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies Journal of the American Oriental Society Quan Song ci Quan Song shi Quan Tang shi Sibu beiyao Sibu congkan
Su Shi shiji Su Shi wenji
BRIEF CHRONOLOGY OF THE LIFE OF HE ZHU Huangyou 4 (1052)
Born; 1 sui.
Xining 1 or 2 (1068/69) to 8 (1075)
Capital
Leaves Weizhou for capital (Kaifeng) at 17 or 18 sui; marries.
Xining 8–10 (1075–77)
Lincheng, in Zhaozhou
First appointment outside capital. Collects wine taxes; acting magistrate at some point.
Yuanfeng 1–3 (1078–80)
Fuyang, in Cizhou
Arms factory.
Yuanfeng 4 (1081)
Fuyang to Capital
Leaves Fuyang post 2nd month, travels in vicinity of Daming, returns to capital 10th month. 30 sui.
Yuanfeng 5–8 (1082–85)
Xuzhou
Third appointment outside capital. Baofeng mint. Active in local poetry society.
Yuanyou 1 (1086)
Capital
Returns to capital via Yongcheng early in year.
Yuanyou 2 (1087)
Capital
Fourth appointment outside capital. Starts for He-zhou late in year, delayed at Chenliu.
Yuanyou 3–5 (1088–90)
Hezhou
Visits Jinling in 3rd month, reaches post at Liyang in Hezhou. Supervises militia. Leaves for capital, 12th month of Yuanyou 5.
Yuanyou 6 (1091)
Capital
Reaches capital by 4th month. On recommendation of Su Shi and others, given civil status after twenty years in military classifications. 40 sui.
Yuanyou 8–Shaosheng 1 (1093–94)
Hailing
Stays with relatives.
Shaosheng 2 (1095)
Capital
Returns to capital by 6th month, leaves for Baoquan mint in Jiangxia after 9th month.
Shaosheng 3 (1096)
Hanyang, Jiangxia
Goes up Yangzi, reaching Hanyang in 5th month; crosses to Jiangxia in 8th month. Edits poetry collection to date.
Yuanfu 1 (1098)–Jianzhong jingguo 1 (1101)
Suzhou
Leaves Jiangxia after 6th month of 1098 to mourn mother, travels in lower Yangzi region. Leaves for capital in autumn 1101.
Chongning 1–3 (1101–4)
Sizhou
Vice prefect; acting prefect at some point.
Chongning 4–5 (1105–6)
Taiping zhou
Prefect.
Daguan 2–Xuanhe 7 (1101– 25)
Suzhou
Retired and moving about in region with various short-term or titular posts; dies at 74 sui in second month of 1125 in Changzhou.
INTRODUCTION One day, well into the writing of this book, I suddenly realized that He Zhu ၅ ᦷ (1052–1125) had inserted a missing poem into his collection. There was a headnote describing what the poem was supposed to be about, but there was no poem. When I read the headnote more carefully a second time, I understood there never had been a poem. In all editions of He Zhu’s poems known to me a space is left where a poem should have been. Yet the missing poem never existed. Surely a few readers in the last nine centuries had “gotten” the joke before me, but it was a delicious moment of discovery nevertheless. A poet I’d known for two and a half decades could still surprise and delight me with his humor! Missing words, missing lines, missing poems, missing titles—these things are common enough in old texts. In fact, He Zhu’s entire poetry collection disappeared when the Jurchen armies swept south across the Yangzi River shortly after his death in 1125. Later, a copy of the first half of the collection (covering the years 1075 through 1098) was discovered in a trunk, but most of what He Zhu had written from around 1099 to his death was never recovered. 1 Those poems are truly missing. The surviving first half of the collection, with five hundred seventy-two poems (counting the poem that was never written), does not constitute anywhere near all the poems He Zhu wrote in his first forty-six years of life. A preface to these poems that the poet wrote in 1096 informs us that down to 1088 he had written over five or six thousand poems, not counting the ones he’d burned in the stove periodically because they were “reckless works.” In 1088, he had started to think his poetry was not necessarily going to get better as he got older, so he’d better take better care of what he had; it was the rejection of old drafts that had been “reckless,” not the works themselves. 2 He set about organizing
——— 1 Thirty-one of the later poems have been recovered from various sources. They form juan 11 in the Quan Song shi. (Five of these are attributed also to another writer.) I have not used those few poems in the present study because they lack the headnotes and dates that are so valuable in contextualizing the rest of the collection. For a convenient account of the textual history of the collection, see Zhu Shangshu, Song ren bieji xulu, 1:579–85. The poems were first printed in 1193 by a man who had been waiting in vain for the second half of the collection to reappear but was finally forced to publish what he had hurriedly before moving to another official post. 2 Zhong Zhenzhen, who has done the most extensive and important scholarship on He Zhu in China, reproduces and punctuates a version of the preface in his Dongshan ci, 519–21. A slightly different text is given in Zhu Shangshu, Song ren bieji xulu, 1:579–80. To get down to the present number of poems, it would seem He Zhu had once again thrown out well over ninety percent of his drafts. I surmise, however, that some of these drafts were alternative versions of the same poems.
2
INTRODUCTION
and revising his poems, wrote the preface, and added a few poems in the next two years. The resulting body of work is the object of the present study.
THE APPROACH: GENRE, CONTEXTS, AND INDIVIDUAL VOICE A critical issue facing all Song poets was how they were to handle the shi ᇣ genres that were available to them. 3 Each came with centuries of precedents, some relevant to eleventh-century practice, some not. The effect of a given genre on the tone of a specific poem is seldom mentioned in most scholarship on Chinese poets, though certain poets are declared to excel in one genre or another. My hope is that, by experiencing significant numbers of He Zhu’s poems in the groupings that he establishes, the reader will begin to develop a feel for the rhythms and ranges of thematic options that are associated with the various formal properties of the genres. This should help us develop an appreciation for He Zhu’s creative responses to the givens of the forms and make us better readers of Chinese poetry in general. 4 The astute reader may notice that we have slipped quietly past the vexing question of just what constitutes a “genre.” The genres we have listed are normally defined in formal terms: the number of syllables per line, permissible and/or dominant rhyme schemes, dominant metrical patterns, and so forth. The issue of “genre” seems simple when limited to such definite parameters. He Zhu himself, however, hints at something more complex when he tells us (in the preface referred to above) how he classified his poems, especially the nonregulated ones. “Songs” he defines as ᠧߢ᠏ᣉլࣅײ৳ृ “those that have mixed line-length [or] that change rhymes, regardless of whether [the meters of individual lines are] ‘ancient’ or ‘regulated’.” The second part of that statement shows his recognition that metrically regulated lines abound outside of Regulated Verse. (See below for a description of the four types of metrically regulated lines.) Even more interesting is his definition of “Ancient-Style Verses”: ᜢᆠ२ ײնڗ“ ृthose whose sound and sense are close to the ancient and whose lines are composed of five characters.” “Sound” we can interpret as meter; here, He Zhu indicates that he will avoid the smooth-flowing rhythms of regulated lines in favor of the “ancient.” “Sense” might be themes and feelings that are somehow more suited to the unregulated meters; it could also designate
——— 3 The term shi broadly covers all forms of poetry, especially those not sung to specific tunes, as lyrics were. He Zhu was a major lyricist, but this study is confined to shi, specifically the genres we are about to list. 4 Like most of his contemporaries, He Zhu organized his collection by genre. It starts with Songs, but our study examines Ancient Style Verses first. Spanning a slightly larger number of years, the Ancient Style Verses offer a better framework for introducing the poet’s life.
INTRODUCTION
3
a progression from line to line and couplet to couplet that rejects the semantic balance characteristic of Regulated Verse. Either way, more is at stake than counting syllables and identifying “awkward” strings of tones. Some theorists propose treating genres as “speech acts.” 5 Insofar as Chinese poems routinely are situated in specified situations of composition, this approach has much to recommend it. There are examples of poetry collections organized by situational or elocutionary properties rather than chronology or formal genre. A notable example of such an attempt is the topically arranged collection of Su Shi’s poetry attributed to Wang Shipeng ׆Լࣛ (1112–71). 6 The classifications in this collection have long been criticized as arbitrary, and perhaps that is inevitable: one problem with constructing a neat system of topical classification is that poems commonly perform more than one function. Despite those difficulties, it is often fruitful to identify typical situational contexts and functions for He Zhu’s poems. In the following chapters, we shall take special notice of forms that seem favored for imitations of Tang predecessors, for initiating literary exchanges, for inscriptions, for correspondence, and so forth. We shall find that, within a given genre, trends in the defined functions of the poems will shift with the passage of time, and of course that more than one genre may be used for a given purpose. Nevertheless, there are tendencies in the uses of poems that will help us appreciate the formal properties that make them variously suitable for those uses. Each chapter of this study, then, is devoted to one genre, and genre is one of the “contexts” in which a poet must write. That is, topics, situations, and the formally defined genres (as well as any predecessors we can identify in the use of these) are broadly defined “materials” or “givens” against which and through which the artist works. Other contexts include contemporary literary and intellectual practice, as well as extra-literary events. Often we relate the appearance of a bit of diction or a literary or cultural concept in He Zhu to its use in another writer at about the same time, especially when we can show the possibility of direct or indirect contact between He Zhu and the other writer. Because the works and the lives of Su Shi ᤕሊ (1037–1101) and Huang Tingjian ႓அഒ (1045–1105) are relatively well-documented and these two men were of unquestioned importance in He Zhu’s life, they figure prominently in this aspect of my research. Many other important figures in Northern Song politics and art will appear in these pages as well, giving the interested reader a more complete picture of how they were regarded in the context of the times.
——— 5 For an illuminating analysis of this and other analogies in genre theory, see David Fishelov, Metaphors of Genre. 6 For an excellent short account in English of this text and its vicissitudes, see Kathleen Tomlonovic, “The Poetry of Su Shi,” 114.
4
INTRODUCTION
The extra-literary contexts that illuminate He Zhu’s poetry include agricultural conditions, national politics, water management, and local flora and fauna. Let us illustrate with two examples from the following chapters. Only when we place certain heptametrical Quatrains from 1081 in the context of both the floods taking place along the Yellow River and the persecution of Su Shi for writing poems critical of the New Policies do we understand that the Quatrains are ironic. Similarly, when we are aware of campaigns to destroy “seditious” writings and to censor official historiographers in the 1090s, we can fully appreciate He Zhu’s interest at the time in preserving texts, in the scholarship his friends are doing on ancient works of history, and in the writing of unofficial records of current events. This kind of research is facilitated to an unusual degree in the case of He Zhu because he dated his poems and provided headnotes to tell us where and under what circumstances he wrote them. (Most of his contemporaries provide this kind of information only occasionally; extensive scholarship is required to date the rest of their poems, and even for those poets on whom such effort has been expended, not all poems in the end can be dated, securely or otherwise.) Therefore, the contents of each chapter are organized chronologically. 7 The reader will be led through the poet’s life six times, discovering new details as they are relevant to the poems at hand. Extensive cross-references and a chronological table of poems translated or mentioned will help the reader follow synchronic or diachronic relationships. Chronology enables us to be attentive to the fact that He Zhu’s output in each genre varied markedly across time, with peaks and valleys that are not at all synchronized. Moreover, the themes explored in a given genre and the uses to which the poems in that genre were put will change with the years. (A caveat must be declared here and repeated periodically: our view is always dependent on what the poet didn’t lose and on what he decided to keep when he edited his collection.) Finally, we come to the individual poet’s voice. Perhaps it is best to speak of the voice of the poet and the voice of the man who was the poet. The voice of the poet is the intellect we feel reshaping and reveling in his medium—the genres, the topics, the situations that demanded poetry. We are fortunate to be able to use the electronic tools of modern literary study to sharpen our perception of
———
7 My interest in chronology was stimulated by a chance meeting with Professor Tseng Yu མ of the National Palace Museum in Taiwan in the late 1970s. At the time, he was working on a series of charts that would align datable artifacts with datable texts on aesthetics or on perception of the object. This prompted me to organize the study of four Northern Song poets I was then beginning into a strict chronological framework. The present study and many of my publications over the past twenty years have been derived from that project, which eventually became too large for practical publication as a monograph. Professor Tseng’s charts might have been published as a “Chronological Table of Chinese Culture” around 1982, but in the National Central Library online catalog I can find only a խഏભڣ। (Chronological Table of Chinese Art) that was published under his name in 1998.
INTRODUCTION
5
these givens. 8 When we can get a good picture of the choices available to the poet, we are able to show how he innovates, how he uses the tools of diction, allusion, or rhythm to make the old new and name the heretofore unnamed. (Some of his favorite ideas and phrases become personal clichés after a while, and we shall duly note this.) Feeling the power of this creativity and mulling over the situations represented in the poems, one forms at least a tentative image of the real-life He Zhu. The man who was the poet we read must have been intellectually aggressive and self-assured. These excerpts from a biography written by a younger admirer, Ye Mengde ᆺኄ(1077–1148), confirm that image: [He Zhu] was seven feet [over two meters] in height, his eyebrows bristled, and he had a face the color of iron. He enjoyed conversing unreservedly about the affairs of the age; when it came to what was right and wrong, he made no allowances. Even if it were an important person whose power could overturn the times, if something was slightly off, [He Zhu] would scold him fiercely, not mincing his words. Because of this, people considered him almost a knight-errant. Yet he was broadly learned, strong in memory, masterful in language. His words were deep, subtle, and dense, as if [he were] making a piece of embroidery.… Important people often extended invitations to him: there were some he accepted, some he did not. Those he did not want to see did not hold it against him in the end. Early on, when he was inspector of works in Taiyuan, there was an influential man’s son who happened to be a colleague. He was proud and did not humble himself. [He Zhu] secretly checked and discovered he had stolen a considerable amount of construction materials. One day, he dismissed the attendants and locked the man in a secret room. He upbraided him with a rod, saying ‘Come here! At such-andsuch a time, you stole such-and-such materials for such-and-such use; at such-andsuch a time, you stole such-and-such a thing and put it in your house. This is true?’ The influential man’s son was flustered and admitted that it had happened. [He Zhu] said, ‘If you can accept the treatment I will give you, we can avoid an exposure.’ Then he made him rise and bare his skin and gave him ten strokes with the rod. The influential man’s son kowtowed and begged for pity. Then [He Zhu] gave a big laugh and released him. After that, all those who had been arrogant, relying on their power, averted their eyes and dared not raise their eyes to look at him. In those times Mi Fu ۏय़ (1051–1107)…was known for his imposing stature and for being extraordinary and unpredictable. [He Zhu] happened to be about the same in boldness and derring-do. Every time the two met, they glared at each other and pounded their fists. Their arguments swarmed [like hornets]. Neither was able to submit, even after an entire day!…
——— 8 The following resources have been particularly important for this study. 1) The database of Tang and Song poetry, including ci, at Yuanzhi University in Taiwan, http://cls.admin.yzu.edu.tw/QTS/HOME.HTM. Note that a few of He Zhu’s poems are missing (the nine poems on pp. 2.12512–13 and Poem 307, whose date is erroneously transferred to Poem 308) or garbled, and that the Song poetry database as a whole is not complete. 2) The Academia Sinica databases at http://www.sinica.edu.tw/~tdbproj/handy1/. 3) My own concordance to the poetry of Su Shi, available from
[email protected].
6
INTRODUCTION
He had over ten thousand juan 9 of books in his house. He collated them himself; not a single word was dropped or mistaken…. His family was very poor. His income was the interest on money he lent out, but if someone defaulted, he tore off the [promissory] coupon and gave it to him. He did not in the least pester others for money. 10
Quantitatively speaking, He Zhu is far more likely in his poetry to voice his longings and frustrations than to discourse directly on what is “right and wrong.” Yet he can also be boldly satiric and, with Mi Fu and other friends, mocking. Of course, his “broad learning, strong memory, and mastery” of language is evident almost everywhere in the poems we shall study. Some of the poems require all the resources at our command before they will divulge their meaning, and even then some points must remain tentative. Besides his library, He Zhu also drew on documents kept in prefectural or county offices. These may have included both printed local gazetteers (which begin to appear in the Song) and the maps, biographies, and other records that local offices would collect in manuscript form, often to accompany reports to the central government. 11 He Zhu was deeply engaged intellectually, emotionally, and artistically with the people and places around him, as well as with the history of his culture and his literature. We shall turn in a moment to his “deep, subtle, and dense” words, the poetry in which his voice still lives.
CONVENTIONS AND TEXTS USED IN THIS STUDY Before getting into the poems themselves, I would like to forestall potential confusion over what names I use for the poet, how I transcribe modern Chinese and the Chinese of (roughly) He Zhu’s day, and how meter will be represented. For the specialist, brief remarks on texts cited and exceptions in citation format are also appended.
——— 9 Juan originally referred to “scrolls,” but by this time designated “sections” of books written or printed on pages bound at the spine. He Zhu’s library may have included books in both forms, so we cannot say how many physical volumes/scrolls “five thousand juan” represented, only that it is a large number. Unlike the English ‘chapter,’ the juan does not imply a division of content. Divisions in content may be coincidentally coterminous with juan, but juan tend to be of roughly equal length while divisions in content vary according to the material itself. Thus, there is no regular correspondence. It seems best to leave the term untranslated. 10 Quoted in Zhong Zhenzhen, Dongshan ci, 523–24. 11 Interestingly, in later gazetteers He Zhu’s poems are often the only documentation cited as evidence for the existence of certain landmarks.
INTRODUCTION
7
THE NAME OF THE POET The name of our poet has been transcribed above in pinyin: He Zhu. The chief problem attendant on that spelling in an English language context is that the surname He is a homograph of a capitalized English pronoun. A slight bit of mental energy is required on every encounter with the name to choose: is He a god? At the beginning of a sentence, is He a pronoun or a name? Many scholars, myself included, still use the older Wade-Giles romanization, in which the name would be written Ho Chu. That doesn’t make the name any easier to pronounce. For those who don’t know Chinese, let us note that He/Ho is pronounced to rhyme with ‘duh’ in a falling intonation; Zhu/Chu, whose initial is similar to the j in “judge” and whose final rhymes with the “coup” of “coup d’etat,” also has a falling intonation. In any case, for various reasons, this book uses pinyin Romanization, and we are stuck with “He Zhu.” 12 To minimize the effort required to disambiguate the sign , we shall use “He Zhu” only in possessive, accusative, and dative contexts. When our poet’s name is the subject of a sentence, he will be called by his cognomen, Fanghui (rhymes with “strong whey”). (“Cognomen” is one translation of zi ڗ, the by-name used to avoid the personal name, which would generally appear only in bureaucratic contexts.) 13
OTHER TRANSCRIPTIONS When talking about an individual word or phrase from a poem, we shall often simply transcribe it in Italics, in pinyin. The reading is thus modern Mandarin, a language Fanghui would have understood only with the greatest difficulty, if at all. When the sound patterns Fanghui would have recognized are important, we shall use the transcriptions derived from medieval Chinese by David Prager Branner. 14 These will be in Roman letters rather than Italics. Ordinarily, we
——— 12 My decision to use pinyin stems from the fact the “post office” spellings that were customarily used alongside Wade-Giles are now out of date. Thus, it becomes awkward to write “Chin-ling (the modern Nanking)” when no one uses “Nanking” anymore, although it is just as good an English word as “Munich” or “Greece.” Using Wade-Giles consistently would not solve the problem: “Chin-ling (the modern Nan-ching)” is peculiar-looking because almost no one used “Nanching” in the past. Much simpler is the consistent “Jinling (the modern Nanjing).” 13 When the cognomen comes up in Poem 462, we shall offer educated guesses about the rationale behind the name. Incidentally, let us note that there is also a homograph problem in Chinese! Fanghui ֱ ڃin Chinese is indistinguishable from the name Fang Hui, which belongs to a well-known literary critic, dates 1227–1306. Fortunately, Fang Hui’s name will not come up again in this study. 14 Professor Branner kindly shared his 2002 draft edition of Cyùn: a handbook of Chinese character readings with me. His transcriptions recommend themselves for our purposes because they use our
8
INTRODUCTION
shall omit details of the transcription that are not directly relevant to our concerns. Let us take our poet’s name, GheH1 TsyuoH3c in Branner’s transcription, to illustrate. If we ever had need to give his name in medieval Chinese, the subscript numbers and letters could be omitted if we were not interested in the classification of the rhymes: GheH TsyuoH. The final capital letters, which indicate the tone, would be dropped if we were not interested in the tone: Ghe Tsyuo. (The capitalization of “G” and “T” here has no significance in the transcription system and occurs only because our example is a proper name. I offer no explanation for the fact that He Zhu’s name sounds like a sneeze in the language of his day, as well as in Japanese: Ga Ch.)
METER Studies produced in China on the forms of Chinese poetry are often extremely useful, and we shall make extensive reference to them in this book. However, explications of individual poems in China, Japan, and the West seldom mention meter and almost never explicitly diagram the meter for the reader. This book seeks to remedy that, at least in part. The meter of Regulated Verses and Quatrains, where tonal patterns are generally required to stay within certain parameters, will routinely be included with the original text. Occasionally, meter will also be shown in the discussion of poems in other genres when it is obvious that the poet is manipulating the sound to create a special effect. Meter in Chinese poetry is defined by the tones of the syllables. The four tones we are concerned with when we talk about classical Chinese poetry are the “level” tone and the three tones classified as “deflected”: shang (indicated by Q at the end of the rhyme in Branner’s system), qu (indicated by H), and ru (ending in ~p, ~t, or ~k). Some characters have more than one reading, usually related to differences in meaning. It is common in Chinese poetry for the differences in meaning to be ignored if a certain tone is required to meet metrical requirements; therefore, we generally choose, without comment, the tone that fits the canonical pattern when we transcribe the meter. We do not need to go into the development of Regulated Verse here; Fanghui was working within a system that had been worked out three or more centuries earlier, in the Tang Dynasty—if fact, in his preface he speaks of regulated lines or poems as those that “follow Tang rules” (ൕା৳). Let us note
——— standard alphabet. It must be stressed that the system is not a reconstruction but “an attempt to transcribe the main categories of medieval phonology in a way that is mnemonically clear, pronounceable, and neutral with respect to historical realism.” See also his “A neutral transcription system for teaching medieval Chinese.”
INTRODUCTION
9
simply that regulated lines avoid awkward sequences of tones or too many syllables strung together with the same tone; regulated poems follow rules by which lines are pleasingly balanced against each other by relationships of contrast within couplets; couplets “adhere” to each other by relationships of identity between the adjoining lines. A sense of change or progression through the poem is created by the fact that regulated poems typically require a fixed sequence of four basic line types. The following chart shows all the possible configurations of regulated lines. We shall use the symbols Ϥ and ϥ to represent even and deflected tones, respectively. Ϩ designates syllables that can change without making the line unregulated. The lighter brackets enclose pentasyllabic line types; the heavier brackets mark heptasyllabic line types. AμϨϤθϨϥϤϤϥιν BμϨϥθϤϤϥϥϤιν CμϨϥθϨϤϤϥϥιν DμϨϤθϨϥϥϤϤιν The tonal opposition between corresponding positions in the A and B lines and the C and D lines is obvious. Usually termed “tonal parallelism,” this creates the balance within the couplet. It will also be observed that the tones of the evennumbered syllables in lines B and C are the same. This is the critical principle in establishing “adhesion” between the couplets. Looking at the changeable (Ϩ) positions in the chart above, we can see that each pentasyllabic line has two permissible forms, except the B type, which has only one, and each heptasyllabic line has four types, except the B type, which has only two. Ordinarily, it is very cumbersome to label these permutations without losing track of the basic structure of the poem. This is one reason for the relative neglect of metrical considerations in scholarship on Chinese poetry. Luckily, a system of notation worked out by Qi Gong ඔ( פb. 1912) solves the problem. In Qi’s system, each line type is designated either A, B, C, or D, depending on the tone of the second and last syllables. The chart above follows this system. Numbers are added to designate the variants. The regulated variants are designated A1, A2, etc. If non-changeable syllables are in the “wrong” tone, the line ceases to be regulated. Qi Gong designates unregulated lines as A ॺ 1, A ॺ 2, etc. We shall mark such lines as (A1), (A2), etc. One may generally ignore the numbers and note only whether a line is A, B, C, or D and whether or not it is regulated. Our symbols will show where violations occur by changing from round to square. Thus, in the heptasyllabic line ϥϥϤϤϥϭϤ, the penultimate syllable should be deflected ϥ, but it is level ϭ. In the pentasyllabic line ϥϥϤϮ ϥ, the penultimate syllable should be level Ϥ, but it is deflected Ϯ. There is no
10
INTRODUCTION
need to show changeable syllables with the symbol Ϩ, as we did above; the syllable is simply shown as it is. ϥϤϤϥϥ is a regulated C1 line; ϤϤϤϥϥ is a regulated C2 line; the fact that the first syllable in either line could have been in the opposite tone without violating the meter is of no significance for our analysis. It is important to emphasize that unregulated lines are common in Regulated Verse; moreover, there are various means of “compensating” for violations. Sometimes violations have a purely formal, structural effect (especially in support of poetic closure); the more interesting cases are those in which violations emphasize certain words or create emotional overtones. Meter thus opens paths of interpretation that might not otherwise be obvious. These points will be discussed in detail in the relevant chapters. With Qi Gong’s system of notation, one can see at a glance whether the progression from couplet to couplet is within the rules. The prescribed sequence of line types A, B, C, and D is the same as the ABCD sequence of our alphabet. The sequence does not have to start with A. Thus, ABCDABCD is a canonical sequence, and so is CDABCDAB. As we shall see, heptametrical Regulated Verse introduces a slight complication because it normally starts with two rhyming lines, BD or DB. (In Regulated Verse, only level-tone rhymes are permitted, so all rhyming lines will be B or D.) As long as the third line takes up the sequence from the second line, however, the poem remains regulated: BDABCDAB or DBCDABCD. After a D line the sequence begins with A again; a B line must be followed by a C line. Lines can be individually unregulated to the point where tonal opposition within the couplet is in shambles, but as long as the second syllables follow the patterns of identity and opposition dictated by the ABCD order (and the rhymes fall only in even-numbered lines, with the optional first-line rhyme), the poem remains regulated. Again, Qi Gong’s notation makes it clear that a sequence of, say, (A23) (B4) C (D14) is still an ABCD sequence.
POEM NUMBERS AND TEXTS Each of He Zhu’s poems has been assigned a number (even the “missing” poem, Poem 418). These numbers appear next to the upper left hand corner of poems that are quoted set off from the text; they are also incorporated into references to lines: “line 273-3” refers to line 3 of Poem 273. There is an index by poem number, but these numbers do not correspond to any index or text outside of this book and are useful only for cross-references within this book. Nevertheless, the reader may find that they foster a sense of progression through the poems as well as a sense of cohesion in the discussion. Whether reading sequen-
INTRODUCTION
11
tially or dipping into the text from the index or cross-references, it is helpful to be able to see at a glance that Poem 403 is still under discussion, that one has moved on to Poem 404, or that a reference to Poem 307 has been inserted. Source citations for Fanghui’s poems are to two texts. The first citation is always to the 1995 Quan Song shi (Complete Song Poems; hereafter QSS), volume nineteen. He Zhu’s poems are on pp. 12497–613 of volume nineteen; in the continuous juan series that runs from volume one through volume seventytwo, his poems are in juan 1102 through most of juan 1112. However, our citations are to the subordinated numbering of the eleven juan of He Zhu’s poems. Thus, the citation for Poem 1 (in juan 1 of his poems) will be to 1.12497, not 1102.12497. The second text cited is an edition of Fanghui’s poetry collection that was edited by a Li Zhiding ޕհቓ and published in 1916 as part of a series compiled by Li as the Songren ji (Song Poets’ Collected Works), second series ݚԳႃ Ԭႃ . The name of this and all unabridged editions of Fanghui’s poems is Qinghu yilao shiji ᐜྋᙊ۔ᇣႃ (Poetry Collection of the Leftover Elder of Lake Qing). The juan divisions correspond to those of the QSS edition, except that the supplementary juan in the Qinghu yilao shiji have names instead of numbers; the one we shall cite most often is “recovered works” (shiyi ਕᙊ) in Li Zhiding’s edition, which is juan 10 in the QSS. Thus, Poem 559 is cited as “10.12606; Shiyi.18b.” Source citations to all other texts follow standard practice. Please note the following, however. Citations to the Shishuo xinyu are to juan and item number, not to juan and page. In this way, a single reference such as “16.2” can be used for both Richard Mather’s translation and the standard Chinese editions. (I cite Mather’s translation explicitly when the translation itself or some supplementary information supplied is significant.) Citations to the Wen Xuan are simply by juan. There is no way of anticipating what edition the readers of this book will have at hand. The edition of this sixth-century anthology that I own and use is one of many descendants of the 1809 edition, but different versions of that same edition have different paginations. 15
——— 15 The 1997 Zhonghua shuju photoreprint of the original 1809 edition shows ten columns per page; my version has sixteen. My edition was printed by the Wenruilou and Hongzhang shuju in Shanghai. It is undated, but might have been printed in 1900 or 1928, when these two publishing houses worked together on other books. (Source: Harvard University’s Hollis Catalog.)
CHAPTER ONE
THE ANCIENT-STYLE VERSE OF HE ZHU, 1078–98 Fanghui wrote one hundred twenty-one Ancient-Style Verse (gu ti shi ฎ㜚, hereafter simply “Ancient Verse”); this form comprises over 20% of his extant shi poetry. As noted in the Introduction, Fanghui defined his Ancient Verse as poems “whose sound and sense are close to the ancient and whose lines are composed of five characters.” Ancient Verse, whether the pentametrical form covered in this chapter, or the heptametrical “Songs” we shall study in the next chapter, is “ancient” in contrast to the Recent-Style Verse, or Regulated Verse, that matured in the Tang Dynasty. Ancient Verse is not restricted in length; rhymes do not have to be in the even tones; rhymes may change within a poem; and tonal sequences within lines and between lines are not determined by any rigid rules of balance or aesthetic patterning, although some patterns sound awkward to the ear and are generally avoided. Often, Ancient Verse is characterized by the noticeable rejection of rules rather than indifference to rules. Once Regulated Verse had established prosodic proscriptions and the patterns of subtle correlations we call “parallelism,” poets could make their poems “ancient” by employing diction, syntax, and metrical patterns that were prose-like and “clumsy.” Less conspicuously, one could employ to some degree the semantic parallelism that had become habitual with Regulated Verse but still be unconcerned about following the tonal rules. For example, one mark of “clumsiness” is a line whose last three syllables are three level tones or three deflected tones. Fanghui’s Ancient Verses almost always contain such lines, which is a typical characteristic of the genre. (In Regulated Verse, only two of the last three syllables should be the same tone; moreover, these two syllables should be contiguous: a level–deflected–level or deflected–level–deflected sequence, which sounds jerky even in the abstract, is a violation of the metrical pattern and brings the poem closer to Ancient Verse.) The freedom to change rhymes in the course of an Ancient Verse can be exploited by poets to signal shifts in topic within a long composition. However, this freedom is actually only theoretical in pentametrical verse; rhyme changes are much more common in heptametrical Ancient Verse, or “Songs.” Fanghui respects this difference. In his preface he mentions rhyme change as one criterion for classifying a poem as a Song but makes no mention of rhyme in connection with Ancient Verse. In only three out of one hundred twenty-one Ancient Verses does he change rhyme within the poem. As one might expect, each of these three
ANCIENT VERSE
13
cases is a relatively long composition, but he writes many other long poems that do not change rhymes. 1 In fourteen poems He Zhu does something more unusual: he rhymes the first line, which is seldom done in pentametrical poetry, whether Ancient or Regulated. The fact that twelve of these poems were written in 1080–86 suggests that his experimentation in the form was especially vigorous in the earlier part of the period for which his works are available to us. Indeed, a high proportion of He Zhu’s surviving early poetry was Ancient Verse. From 1078 to 1080, his Ancient Verses far outnumber his Regulated Verses and heptametrical Quatrains. It is only from 1092 on that there is a marked decline in the quantity of his Ancient Verse—though a set of ten poems under one title and seven other Ancient Verses create a noticeable spike in the record in 1096. When there are no strict metrical rules, we cannot look for “unusual” metrical patterns to guide our readings of the poems—to signal the presence of sub-texts, linguistic bravado, or agitation—as we shall with Regulated Verse. Our emphasis in this chapter will therefore be on themes, ideas, and precedents. Once we have become familiar with the poems themselves we shall try to suggest why Ancient Verse was chosen for certain purposes.
1078–1080: FUYANG 1078: THE CONTINGENCY OF HISTORICAL JUDGEMENT The Ancient Verses begin with a poem titled The Former City of Ye ㈛. 2 This was composed on horseback one evening in the ninth month of Yuanfeng 1 (1078) near Fuyang ṕ㓁, the seat of Ci Prefecture, or Cizhou ⏛Ꮊ, in Hebei West Circuit. (Fuyang is modern Cixian, just inside Hebei Province on the rail line north from Anyang to Shijiazhuang and Beijing). Fanghui was assigned in Fuyang to a Chief Manufactory (ㇺ㒮), where arms were made. 3 Ye (less than a day’s ride south of Fuyang) had been an important city from the third century until the last quarter of the sixth century, when warfare sent it into decline. There were many such sites in this part of the North China Plain, and Fanghui’s long sojourns
——— 1 The changes take place in Poems 052 (1080, in Fuyang), 082 (1085, in Xuzhou), and 136 (1093, in Xuyi). 2 2.12510; 2.1a. 3 Hucker, Dictionary, places the Chief Manufactory under the Directory for Armaments (Junqi jian ァེ⋙), and that Directory does seem to have exercised supervised arms production both inside and outside the capital in a concrete way after 1073, but Gong Yanming’s Song dai guanzhi cidian makes the Manufactory subordinate to the Circuit Judicial Supervisorate (Lu tidian xing si 〝ឭ㤭ೃ ม). See Gong, 364 and 559. In view of the fact that Fanghui later became a Coins Officer in Xuzhou, it may be relevant to note that a mint for iron coins was established in Cizhou in the middle of 1077. Li Tao, Xu Zizhitongjian changbian 9:283.6a–b (3007a).
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here may account in part for his interest in this kind of historical poem. Contemporaries such as Huang Tingjian, Su Shi, and Chen Shidao 㒸 Ꮷ (1053–1102) seldom treated such topics in their poetry. Because of its length, we shall not translate the entire poem, but there are a couple of points worth mentioning. The Former City of Ye asserts that history, as recorded on stone relics, is indecipherable. The steles alongside the roads that led into tombs have fallen; if not simply smashed, they have been recycled for practical new uses: Viatical steles lie this way and that, 㓢⏇❙ᯖ their inscriptions long damaged and missing. ㏾ᢥਭᱼ➩ Fulling blocks for cloth, plinths for columns, Ꮱ⎐⥜ᩇ␆ dragons and their heads are separated, split. ⲱ㚂㓣ಽⵚ I point at this, which I can cup in one hand: ᜰᱝ৻ᛨ㑆 32 ‘Wise’ and ‘foolish’–what difference between the two? ⾫ᗱౌ The bits of stone that one can hold in one’s palm contain only a few characters. Either because no useful text can be reconstructed from these fragments or because even the characters themselves cannot be made out clearly, one can no longer distinguish the worthy (xian) from the foolish (yu). That means that the whole purpose of history—to judge the past as guidance for the present—has been lost. Su Shi raises the dichotomy of worthy and foolish nine times in his poems. An interesting example that contrasts with the destruction of inscriptions in Fanghui’s The Former City of Ye is these lines from 1060, in which Su assumes that the character of people in the present, though their lives pass so quickly, will be available to the historical judgment of people in the future: นᘿጊ೨ቴ㧘 ଡ଼ᔮ ᤊㆊⲜ⾫ޕᗱᧂಽ㧘ૼ⠪⇧⥄೬ “How remarkable, the travelers before the mountain; / gone in an instant: stars passing over a fish-trap! / No time to divide the worthy and the foolish; / future generations will make the distinction.” 4 In the ruins of Ye, however, time erases history, and with it these distinctions are lost. If 039 28
———
4 ፇጊ, Su Shi shiji, 1:2.75, final four lines. See the important textual note by the editors regarding the word we translate “fish trap”: they reject the received version of the line, which used the character 㔴, and substitute Ⲝ. Su Shi’s expression is based on a line in Ode 233 of the Classic of Poetry that is itself opaque: “The three stars are in the fish trap.” One traditional interpretation of this line is that stars (leaders) reflected in a fish trap (that holds no thrashing fish and therefore represents the hunger of the people) will not be seen for long. Karlgren assumes that Ⲝ, “fish trap,” is a borrowing for 㔴, “central roof hole,” and translates accordingly. (See his Book of Odes and Grammata Serica Recensa, 286.) This also gives us an appropriate image for brevity: stars passing across a relatively small opening, a process that takes a surprisingly short time. Regardless of the merits of Karlgren’s assumption as it applies to the Odes, however, the editors of Su Shi shiji reject this as a possibility for Su Shi’s poem because it is in the wrong rhyme category for Su’s poem. They also point to the fact that a Song edition of the Classic of Poetry uses Ⲝ, “fish trap.” It is possible that Su Shi thought this was a borrowing for the other character and ignored or was unaware of the difference in tone, but we shall never know, and I follow their emendation here.
ANCIENT VERSE
15
the future is dependent on inscriptions on stone, Su Shi’s faith in 1060 that those who look back on us from the future will be able to judge who was wise and who was foolish is misplaced. Fanghui’s next four lines indicate that the past is not entirely effaced, for the water in the nearby river and the moon over the terrace built by Cao Cao ᦡᠲ (155–220) remain to complement the heroic spirit of the place. Nevertheless, the poem concludes with a fruitless quest for a philosophy of history, an explication that the poet thinks he might find in the peasants. 039
40
↰⊠⸰ㆮ⠧ ⻐⥝ᎅ ૉ⡱㤠㔌▻ ป‐⠹ਇバ
In field and paddy I visit the remaining elders; it is said they have a theory of the rise and fall. All I hear is the Shuli piece, and they curse the oxen, plowing without pause.
Note: 039-39/ Shu li is the name of Ode 65 in the Classic of Poetry. It is traditionally taken to be the expression of the sorrow and frustration an officer of the Zhou Dynasty feels upon seeing the ruins of some Zhou ancestral temples.
Although Fanghui imagines he hears the farmers singing an ancient song to lament the ruin of Ye, he gets no discourse on the rise and fall of ancient cities from them. The oral tradition is as indecipherable as the texts on fragments of steles. Fanghui’s predicament is not without precedent; see, for example, this Tang couplet: ⧐⨲⥄↢ችᲚ⯪㧘’┬⺕⼂Ꮲ₺ၔ “Fragrant plants already sprout on the site of palaces and halls; / what herdboy would discern the walls of thearchs and princes?” 5 Even if Fanghui’s ruminations in the former city of Ye are informed by such precursors, however, his feelings about history will evolve during the period covered by this study to the point where he has an almost desperate hope in Su Shi’s “future generations making the distinction.”
1079: REPORTAGE He Zhu’s three Yuanfeng 2 (1079–80) Ancient Verses are engaged with life in the present. The first, written in the fourth month, is called ༑㔎 Joy over Rain. In his title note, Fanghui tells us that in the spring of this year there was hot weather and drought; it wasn’t until the fourth month that rain began to soak the ground. By that time, the wheat and barley had already dried up and died. Fanghui ends his note with this statement: “I gathered the words of an old farmer and composed this poem.” 6 This leads us to expect a poem in the style of certain works by Du Fu
———
5 Liu Cang ഏṋ (ninth century), ㈛ㇺᙿฎ, QTS, 18:586.6788. Not only is the sentiment reminiscent of Fanghui’s early poems, the location is, too: the old city of Ye. 6 2.12510; 2.2a. The drought afflicted most of north China. See Changbian, v. 9, juan 296, 297, et
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or Mei Yaochen ᪢ႌ⤿ (1002–60), in which the poet reports what common folk suffering from corvée labor or military draft have to say about their plight. Fanghui’s poem, however, is more dedicated to imagistic and linguistic invention, at least overtly. 040
4
8
12
16
20
24
⚳ᤐਭᣫ ௫ᄐଧṅᥤ ၁ᳩᶒⶸ ᪢ᵤ⫳ᩇ␆ ႓㕀㐽⿒᥊ ᷹㍲ㄖඦ ᴕῆㅙ㘑㡇 ⠡㘧ḽૼ㔎 ⚗⚗⊕⠀▨ 㥱⊔⪦‐ᒒ ⪭ⅽᓳ㡆㓏 ᶋṺᅤᴣᾚ ፏᦺᏇᴗᶑ ᨗྐ㗐ᷡ≈ ↰ῳ༑ㆊᓬ ㄫ㐷ᅢ⋧⺆ ⴅ᪀⭯นౕ ⽋㈬⥜◹㥏 ᠭศ⻢ฌ Ꮔᆷ⟓⁅⥰ ᥄Ἲ㘻ৼჾ ᐤ═⠹╥㣧 ✭㤇⒅ᦼ ᐼዂ⑺Ⓙ ャᄥୖਛ ⭅⢈છ႓㥘
All spring, endless drought and adustion; cross into summer: suddenly humid and sweltry. Dust and grime befouled the clothes and lappet; moisture of plums steamed from column and plinth. Yellow sandstorms shut out the Red Phosphor; reckon the time, and you’d confound early morn and noon. Sand-martins pursue wind-kites, flip and fly upstream the oncoming rain. In a flurry, white-feathered arrows are fired at once from enormous bows and fall on roof-tiles, and ring on steps in a floating foam that seems to boil. By full morning the deluge is everywhere and the parched are given clean succor. Farmers happily visit and mingle, welcoming at their gates with pleasant talk. Silkworm mulberries are scant but enough; there’s pig and brew, pipes and drums: Picking a lucky day, they give thanks at the bosquet shrine: shaman Mother gives up her frenzied dance. Morning meals fill the able-bodied young; shaded by straw hats, they plow the hardscrabble ground. Let up a little on the deadline to pay wheat taxes; we should be able to make it up with the autumn crop. If it’s taken away and goes into the Great Granaries, all the richness will go to brown rats.”
Notes: 040-4/ This line reflects a belief that south of the Yangzi in the fourth and fifth months, when plums are about to turn yellow and fall, the bases of columns produce a “sweat” that evaporates and becomes rain. 7
———
passim. 7 This is reported in a nearly contemporary source, Lu Dian’s Piya, CSJC, 1172:13.323. The rain that falls at this time is called “plum rain,” according to Lu. (Surely this supports the theory that the term for the spring rainy season in Japan, baiu, means ‘plum rain’ rather than ‘mold rain.’) Oddly, though, Lu states that no such relationship between plums and rain was seen in the area where
ANCIENT VERSE
17
040-20/ The shamanka had been dancing to bring rain.
The first half of the poem is truly impressive for its fresh imagery and precise evocation of both drought and deluge. “Cross into summer” is an unusual phrase in poetry, though it is found in Wang Wei ₺⛽ (d. 761) and Yuan Zhen రⒼ (779–831). Even rarer is Red Phosphor (the Sun), a term derived from the old belief that a Red Crow lives in the sun (which with the moon constitutes the Two Phosphors). 8 The phrase translated “enormous bows” is literally “bows [that would take] ten thousand oxen [to pull]”; the epithet “ten thousand oxen” is not unusual for great trees and by extension it can be applied to the mighty brush of an esteemed writer; but Fanghui may be unique in describing bows this way. The second half of the poem captures the energy of village life released, as it were, by the rain. We might wonder, however: were there really enough resources after the drought in Fuyang to make offerings at the shrine (line 040-18); was there enough food for hearty breakfasts (040-21)? When the peasants argue that any grain they pay into the storehouses now will be eaten by rats–a reasonable argument, to be sure–aren’t they really worrying that they won’t have enough to live on between now and autumn without that grain? We don’t know enough about the local situation to know how desperate the Fuyang peasants would have been. The drought was widespread enough to come up for discussion at court more than once. Hebei West Circuit, where Fuyang is located, had the highest percentage of irrigated land in north China, but such a widespread drought could mean there was no water for the canals to deliver. Although there was a navigable river east of Fuyang that might have had a reliable flow for irrigation, only 11.16% of the land in Hebei West Circuit was irrigated, according to figures for 1070–76, and we cannot assume that irrigation was available to or had ameliorated the effects of the drought on the peasants observed by He Zhu. 9 In any case, when Fanghui’s headnote tells us that the wheat and barley crops have failed and that he is collecting reports from “old peasants,” it gives us both the background knowledge and the generic expectations that lead us to look for an indictment of indifferent officials in the tradition of Du Fu, Mei Yaochen, Su Shi, and many other poets. Instead, we get happy, well-fed peasants. I think Fanghui has found a fresh approach to “social criticism”: telling good news while hinting at disaster. (A camouflaged message was also safer, in view of the case building against Su Shi, whose reportage in poems that were widely circulated in print would lead to his arrest three months later.) The second of Fanghui’s 1079 Ancient Verses, written four months later, is
——— Fanghui wrote the poem. 8 See Edward Shafer, Pacing the Void, 163–67. 9 Liang Fangzhong, Zhongguo lidai huko, tiandi, tianfu tongji, 142, 289, and 291.
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titled ⠧᭸ Old Scholartree. 10 This time, there is no sympathy for the peasants or their culture. The subject is a large dead tree in Handan Commandery that has become the object of assiduous worship because humming and sighing were once heard to come from it at night. Fanghui is sure that what the locals supposed to be spirits is really owls and foxes living in the tree. In his poem, he reviews this situation as described in the preface, then refutes the superstition: the real reason the tree reached a ripe old age is because it was unsuitable for timber, not because any god of the soil protected it. 041
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12
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⠧᮸ਭᨗ⑱ ୄ⥃ᷡ〝Ⴒ ᦦήᏨ㒶 ᐤᥡᣁ᳃ ᪰ൃ⥜⁍ⓣ ఴᕋ⋧ᙀⷫ Ⴚཕጅ㒶㤤 㛳័ᣋㄭੱ Ⅳ▽⚖ს ┙␠⑺ᤐ ᣢ੨ਇ᧚ᄈ Ử⇧ ൩ᖺᏄᇚ⸒ ⺧ើ᮴⠪ᢹ ₈⇼⚳┘ᠻ ᓳᓟૼ⮌
An old tree, long withered and bare, leans over the dust of the unsullied road. There’s never been shade to lay a mat on the ground where shelter from heatstroke might extend to the People. Owl nests and burrows for foxes— malevolent fiends attach themselves here. Their howling attends the dim blackness; with frenzied tremble, they close in from the side. Round about, a stepped altar is built, a shrine set up for prayer in autumn and spring. Since the tree enjoys the longevity of the useless, it is outrageously supposed to house a local god. Do not be confused by the words of the shaman-woman; please brandish the ax of the woodcutter. If you hesitate, in the end it will be pilfered and be firewood for those who come next.
Notes: 041-2/ “Dust of the unsullied road” seems contradictory, but “unsullied” here appears to be an old-fashioned epithet. The phrase “dust of the unsullied road” appears in sixteen times in Tang poetry, usually without reference to its original metaphorical use in a poem by Cao Zhi ᦡᬀ (192–232). 11 Most likely, Fanghui is reaching for the flavor of antiquity as he sets the scene. 041-11/ If a tree is useless for timber, it is not harvested. This is an old notion from the Zhuangzi. 12
Fanghui clearly does not value “little tradition” religious practices. His true motivation for writing the poem probably extends beyond a desire to impose some sort of orthodoxy on the superstitious masses, however. He wants to impress us with his wit. Note that the last two couplets undercut the Daoist lesson of the utility of uselessness that he evoked in line 041-11 to explain the real reason for
——— 10
2.12511, 2.2b. Exception: Han Yu’s 㖧ᗡ poem ㈬ਛ⇐ⶪ㓁᧘⋧ (890). Han Yu quanji jiaozhu, 2:833–35. 12 A. C. Graham, 72–73; Watson, 63–65. The tree in that story shades a village shrine to the local god. 11
ANCIENT VERSE
19
the preservation of the tree. That hoary cliché fails to recognize that what cannot be used for timber still can be burnt for fuel! As Fanghui gleefully points out, there is no point in leaving the tree around for somebody else to exploit in the future. The third of these old-style poems written in 1079 also gives unexpected twists to old lore. It is titled Calling on Administrator Chao Duanzhi ㆊᤧអ┵ᥓ, 13 and it is basically a complaint about being a poor official. 042
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㘑็ඡ㔎 㘫㓴ོኙฌ ᢥ⥞ወ⺣ቴ ထᘚ⸌⼺ⓨ ༷ቸㆆሶ ⽺∛⇛⋧ห ᛬⣶ᓧ ㉎㍦Ᏹਇଏ ำ⋴ർ㉿ా 㜞ၴῆ㏹ 㔃㈬ή▚ 㘻ᓾ↱⽃ ๋⼼਼⠪ ਇὑᆄᆆኈ ᳗ᙿ౽ᯩᠲ ᧂᇽዼ㈸㓶
The West Wind blows an evening rain; starving magpies make a racket in the chilly thicket. Wenju faces the chatting guests; so chagrined that the goblets and tripods are empty! Alas for us wanderers-in-office: poverty and illness more or less the same. A peck of salary: by bending waist obtained; cash to get tipsy on: usually not issued. Look you, sir, at the lads of the North Ward: lofty halls with songs from Yan, and bells. Although they boast the cost of their brew is to be ignored, “filled with your bounties”—whence comes such richness? Could I ever be one who begs by the tombs?! I don’t put on a pleasing face for my wife and concubine. Always I cherish the integrity of ice and cork, unabashed before heroes among the butchers and brewers.
Notes: 042-3/ Wenju is the cognomen of Kong Rong ሹⲢ (153–208), a learned man who attracted many admirers. He is said to have sighed, “The seats are always filled with guests; the goblets are never empty of brew—I have no worries!” 14 042-7/ Tao Yuanming 㒻ᷗ (365–427) refused to “crimp” his waist for a salary of five pecks of rice. 15 042-9/ North Ward: Another name for Pingkang Ward ᐔᐽဌ of the Tang capital, Chang’an; but see also discussion below. By extension refers to the entertainment district in any capital metropolis where courtesans were to be found. 042-10/ The ancient state of Yan, in the area of modern Beijing, was known for its fine singers. 042-12/ “Filled with your bounties”: a phrase taken from a feasting song in the Classic of Poetry. 16
——— 13 2.12511, 2.3a. There are two branches of the Chao family that produced men in the eleventh century whose given name started with the syllable Duan; Chao Duanzhi may be a brother or cousin of one of these more famous scions. His formal title would have been มᴺ෴ ァ, unofficially called fa cao ᴺᦡ or fa yuan ᴺអ, according to Gong Yanming; Fanghui calls him facaoyuan in his title note. His office probably handled punishments or sentencing. 14 Hou Han shu, 8:70.2277. 15 A. R.. Davis, T’ao Yüan-ming, 2:165. 16 The song is ᣢ㉎, Ode 247. Legge (She King, 475) translates de as “kindness.” My translation
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042-13/ Begs by the tombs: Mencius tells of a man who tried to impress his wife and concubine by coming home “having partaken heartily of brew and flesh,” supposedly in the company of the rich and famous. In fact, he had been begging for the leftover sacrifices among the tombs. 17 042-15/ Ice and cork: drinking ice and eating the bitter bark of the amur cork tree (Phellodendron amurense, now an invasive plant in the northeastern U.S.) symbolize a life of hardship. An official who is drinking ice and eating bark is probably not accepting bribes. In 824 Bo Juyi wrote a six-line pentametrical poem that begins, ਃᐕὑೝผ㧘㘶౽ᓳ㘩ᯩ “For three years I’ve been a prefect, / drinking ice and also eating cork.” 18 042-16/ Butchers and brewers: a common term for the common lot of men, though it frequently designates the “pool” from which someone rises to greatness.
The arrayed allusions following the vivid images of the first couplet obscure the dynamic structure of the poem at first. In the second and fourth couplets, the allusions are not used “straight”; rather, figures of the past are invoked only to show how far Fanghui and Chao Duanzhi are from living up to them. The comparison of Chao to Kong Rong shows that he is much esteemed of course, but more importantly highlights the fact that, in contrast to Kong, he cannot afford to keep his guests’ cups full (042-3–4). The poet alludes to Tao Yuanming’s famous refusal to “crimp” his waist to people for a salary of five pecks of rice only to stress that he needs his salary—one fifth of Tao’s!—and will bow and scrape to secure it (042-7). Chao probably shares this sad condition. 19 The train of sighs and regrets is brought to a halt in line 042-9 with the apostrophe “Look you, sir,” which recalls earlier ballad traditions. Though the lines that follow are even more allusive, now the allusions are used more conventionally. The reference to North Ward in line 042-9 constitutes a bit of conscious archaizing. Reaching back to pre-Tang times, we find North Ward already as a general term for the districts in which young nobles entertain themselves. The third in a series of eight Recitations on History ⹗ผ (Wen xuan 21) by Zuo Si Ꮐᕁ (ca. 250-ca. 305) contains this couplet: “In the Southern Neighborhood they strike bells and lithophones; in the North Ward they blow on mouth organs.” Fanghui is phrasing his resentment in the terms of a bygone age, an age of aristocratic dandies. Fanghui and Chao (provisionally assuming he is talking about both himself and
——— reflects Karlgren’s (Book of Odes) rendition; an emphasis on the material side of the host’s generosity fits better in the context of Fanghui’s use of feng, which often implies “rich year.” The only other use of this phrase in poetry that I know of is in a 1073 heptametric Ancient Verse by Su Shi, ᩉሶ₹ ༑㔐ᰴ㖿๒ㅀฎ , SSSJ, 2:11.527 17 Legge, Mencius, 340–41. This specific phrase does not occur in Tang poetry and is rare before the Southern Song. To my knowledge, it is used only by Su Shi and He Zhu, once each, in the Northern Song. 18 ਃᐕὑೝผ, second of two poems. QTS, 13:431.4763. Bo was prefect in Hangzhou at the time. 19 One would like to identify a corresponding allusion in 042-8, but so far as I can determine, “cash to get tipsy on” is a phrase coined by He Zhu. It is vaguely reminiscent of Tao Yuanming’s use of land attached to his post to grow rice for brew.
ANCIENT VERSE
21
his host) are poor and do not pretend to be otherwise. In fact, far from “begging by the tombs,” they take pride in the integrity of hardship. Fanghui’s reference to heroes among the butchers and brewers (or to the heroism of these common men, to use another plausible translation) has resonances with his assertions, seen in other poems as well as his lyrics, that his youth was spent as a righteous knight-errant. 20 We have moved beyond the sighs and chagrin of the first half of the poem. As he drops his witty twisting of allusions and defines his integrity in the last eight lines through more direct refutations of past examples, Fanghui’s language becomes more direct and forceful. We are told to “look” at the lads of the North Ward; and the conjunction “although” governing lines 042-11–12 adds prosy clarity. There is a rhetorical question in line 042-13 (“Could I ever be one who begs …?”) and a denial in line 14 (“I don’t put on a pleasing face…”). In line 042-15, Fanghui eternally (yong, “always” in our translation) holds integrity in his bosom and, in line 16, he has never been (wei) abashed before the heroes. The two halves of the poem complement each other: the witty indirection and self-pity of the first eight lines provide a ground against which the assertions of heroic integrity and pride in the last half stand out, expressed in the modalities of the absolute.
1080: TIME We have just examined a poem that, by implication at least, deals with the gap between youthful ideals and adult careers and responsibilities; we have also noted the problem of an unbridgeable chasm between the present and the past embodied in the remains of a great city of the past. In Yuanfeng 3 (1080–81), Fanghui repeatedly returns in his Ancient Verse to the issue of time. On the last day of the third month, in Facing Brew ወ㈬, 21 Fanghui begins by evoking the old adages that life passes as quickly as a galloping white colt glimpsed through a crack and an “inch” of time is more precious than a jade disk a whole foot in diameter. 044
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⊕㚤ਇน㚢 ዤ⅜㕖ᚲ⃟ ₡ᝇ৻ᮻ㈬ ᖤㅍᓖᤐ 㑬㈬੦⋘ ࿁㚂〔Ꮗ㒸
———
The white colt cannot be halted; the foot-wide jade disk is not to be prized. Alone I ladle out a cup of brew, with melancholy song send off the departing springtime. My song fades and the brew runs out— with a turn of the head the traces are already old.
20 See especially his lyric to the tune Liuzhou getou Ꮊ㗡, which Zhong Zhenzhen ascribes to 1088. See Dongshan ci, 4.420, 427–38. 21 2.12511; 2.3b.
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⥄╉චᐕ ዏㅅᄤਅᵤ ⼼ήữ➝᳓ ᄹῺ㐳〝Ⴒ ᓳ ੱ₈ᤄੱ
I laugh at myself: ten years’ of service and still I can’t find the fording places in the world. Of course there is water to wash one’s hatstrings, but what to do about the long road’s dust? It is fate: what more is there to say? the people of today are like those of yore.
There are three significant motifs in this poem. First, we note that spring is “departing,” moving away from the self (line 044-4). This notion of time as something that abandons the poet will be repeated. Second, though many readers will recognize that “not being able to find the ford” is a common expression denoting an inability to find one’s way in life, line 044-8 should remind us also of Fanghui’s inability to obtain any guidance from the peasants two years earlier, in The Former City of Ye (039). There is a passage in the Analects in which Confucius is rebuffed by a pair of recluses when he stops and sends a disciple to ask them where the fording place is. One of them says the world (tian xia, all under heaven, the same phrase used by He Zhu in line 044-8) is surging and swelling and that it would be best to follow those who withdraw from the world. He goes on covering his seeds “without pause”—the phrase and the situation are the same as in 1078, where the peasants “curse the oxen, plowing without pause” (see line 039-40 above, p. 15). 22 Line 044-8, then, implies He Zhu’s predicament of not finding anyone who can tell him the meaning of the present moment of history or direct him to the right path of conduct. Third, line 044-9 evokes the ancient “Canglang Song”: “When Canglang Stream limpid sings, / It serves to wash my hat’s strings; / When Canglang Stream turbid flows, / It serves to wash mud off my soles.” The Song is quoted in the Mencius (Legge, 299), where Confucius draws a lesson from the stream being treated differently by people according to whether it is clear or turbid. It is also the song a fisherman sings to Qu Yuan ዮේ (ca. fourth cent. BCE) after advising the earnest but unheeded minister to the state of Chu that he should be content to withdraw when the times are unfavorable and serve only when the times permit him to be effective. 23 In most allusions to the song, the washing of the capstrings is taken to symbolize a resolution to live a pure life apart from the world; that appears to be its meaning here, though we shall see that the significance of the story varies in the context of other poems. Note that in the story behind He Zhu’s allusion, we find again the situation of an uncommunicative wise man ignoring the plight of the confused person who cannot bring himself give up his commitment
——— 22 For the Analects passage, see Legge, 333–34. In one version of He Zhu’s poem, “world” is replaced by the names of the recluses. 23 For the Mencius passage, see Legge, 299. For the encounter between Qu Yuan and the fisherman, see David Hawkes, The Songs of the South, 206–7.
ANCIENT VERSE
23
to society: the fisherman sings the Canglang Song as he punts his skiff away from Qu Yuan, leaving him standing forlornly by the shore—just as the peasants in the field at Ye turned their backs on He Zhu. This time, our poet does have an answer of sorts. In line 044-10, he realistically observes that a long, dusty road—his career—lies between him and clean water of reclusion, or (to propose a different reading of the line) he questions whether the water will be enough to wash off the defilement of his career! The precise meaning of the last couplet of Facing Brew is unclear to me. As translated, it would apply that judgment to humans in general. It could also mean “This person I am today is still the person I was in the past.” 24 In the context of line 044-11, “It is fate: what more is there to say,” either reading may be taken pessimistically: there is no progress. The notion that nothing really changes is repeated in the conclusion of 㗴Ꮔጊ Inscribed on a Painting of Shamanka Mountain, composed in the following month. 25 047
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Ꮔጊᓐ⟤ ⑲⦡⊔ᦺ㔕 ⛋㤀ਇนᝇ 㘢㘞ή∥ ᬩᄞ৻ᄕᓟ ⫷ጊ⑺ᓳᤐ ⋡ᣆ⣺੦ᣆ ᓔૼฎੱ
Shamanka Mountain—that lovely goddess: uncommon beauty beaming from morning clouds. Her dazzling charm cannot be drawn close to you; lightly gliding in the air, she leaves without a trace. A Chu dream—and after that one night, a grey-green mountain where autumns turn to springs. The view breaks off, and my insides are broken, too— they go and they come, the people of now and then.
Note: 047-5/ Most versions of the legend about this goddess have her appearing from the clouds to have sexual intercourse with a king of the ancient southern state of Chu. 26
Like spring (line 044-4 of Facing Brew), the goddess of Shamanka Mountain leaves, goes away from the observing self. After the dream is finished, the cycle of the seasons and human history only perpetuate this eternal losing. In an inscription Fanghui wrote on a sixth-century stele in the Fuyang area in the ninth month of 1080, 㗴⯗㒺₺⎼㒶 Inscribed on the Back of the Stele of the Prince of Lanling, 27 this familiar cycle of change is not seasonal but “geological”:
———
24 Wang Anshi ₺⍹ (1021–86) has a poem that may shed light on this, ொ⥄⼭ Praise on my Own Portrait: ᚒ⥜ਤ㕍ౌᐛり㧘㑆ᵹヱᦩᚑႲޕૉ⍮ᱝ‛㕖ઁ‛㧘⩨ੱ₈ᤄੱ “I and the painting are both illusory selves; / as we circulate in the world we shall turn to dust. / I only know that this object is no other object; / don’t ask if the present person is like the person of yore.” Linchun xiansheng wenji, 29.326. 25 2.12512; 2.4a. Written the fourth month of 1080 on a painting owned by a man in Fuyang. Fanghui’s headnote surmises that it was done by a Tang artist. 26 See David Knechtges, Wen Xuan, 3:325–39. See also, especially for the importance of the goddess in He’s lyrics, my “Experiential Patterns in the Lyrics of Ho Chu,” 75–95. 27 2.12514; 2.7a. Written on the tenth day of the ninth month. The Prince of Lanling, a military hero, is known to history as Gao Changgong 㜞㐳ᕶ, but Fanghui, presumably on the basis of the
24 056 12
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චઍ⊖ᐕ ੱ㑆឵㒺⼱
Ten dynasties—six hundred years; in the human world, ridges and valleys change places.
The Chinese speak of geological reversals of mountains and valleys—even dry land and ocean—over eons of time, but in the “human world” such alternations would be a metaphor for social and political change. In another poem from the ninth month, we return to the adjective “departing” that described spring in the third month (line 044-4 of Facing Brew). Now it is “light”—the word used connotes ‘time’—that “departs.” 28 057 8
ඡᓞ㚵ᓖ᥊ ⟟ᙿᔨ൏↢ ੦Ꮗਭ Ꮖᐕᓳᐬ
The notes of the late season drive on the departing light; with a traveler’s yearnings, I ponder the burdens on my life. I left my homeland long ago indeed: a ji year now has reverted to a geng.
Notes: 057-7/ I translate “late notes/pitches” as “notes of the late season” in view of the belief that each of the twelve pitches corresponds to a month; the phrase could also refer simply to notes heard late in the day from a flute or garrison horn. The phrase is unique to He Zhu, as far as I can ascertain. 057-10/ The binary enumerators for Yuanfeng 2 (1079) were jiwei; those for the present year (Yuanfeng 3) are gengshen. However, this poem was written in the ninth month, so the change of year is very old news. I think that in the context of the previous line’s reference to leaving home, we have to go back to the previous ji year, jiyou Ꮖ㈥ (Xining 2, 1069–70), which, it turns out, is probably when Fanghui and his mother moved to the capital. 29 To paraphrase and expand: “Since the ji year when I left home (which was followed by a geng year, gengxu ᐬᚎ, Xining 3) we have gone through a ten-year cycle to another ji year, after which we have reverted to another geng year, gengshen.”
Finally, let us first record another juxtaposition of the personal experience of time “leaving me” and historical time, also from the ninth month of 1080. 30 058
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㜞㘑⭡ᴡṽ ⊕㔺ⵍኙ⩵ ਅ⛊✲ⳗ ᶼ㉄↢ᗧଦ ⪇ᐕਇ⋧ᓙ ᚒᵹㅦ
———
A lofty wind swashes the Starry River; white dew blankets the chilly chrysanthemums. Below them, the katydid— lonely, bitter, hurried in its style. The flowery years of youth wait not; they go from me so swiftly flowing.
stele inscription by Lu Sidao ⋝ᕁ (535–86), tells us in the preface to the poem that his name is actually Su ⡶: “At that time he went under his cognomen and the historians overlooked the detail.” 28 ㇏㈚ᮝඡᦸ Evening Prospect from the Tower of Handan Commandery, 2.12515; 2.8a. 29 Zhong Zhenzhen, Bei Song ciren He Zhu yanjiu, 46. Zhong appears to be estimating the time of the move (he gives 1068 and 1069 as likely dates); he does not cite any evidence. We must keep in mind that Fanghui does not have to tell the correct date if a slight adjustment will produce a better line. Readers unfamiliar with binary enumerators in the sexagenary cycle are encouraged to see Cohen, Introduction, 422–24, or similar guides. 30 ╵᧡ખⷹ⊓ฌ⥑ነ Replying to Du Zhongguan’s Climbing the Clustered Estrade, Which He Sent to Me, 2.12515; 2.8b.
ANCIENT VERSE
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㇏㈚ฎㇺᦩ 㒸〔ᱞ㕆▽
25
… Handan, the ancient metropolis: a trace of the past, Wuling built it. …
Note: 058-14/ King Wuling of the state of Zhao ruled in the fourth century B.C.E. The “trace of the past” is probably the Clustered Estrade on which He Zhu’s correspondent had written his poem. Its remains are in Handan, the capital of Zhao.
We note that (in the original) the verb “go” in line 058-6 is the one that described the Goddess of Shamanka Mountain “leaving without a trace” (line 047-4). “Trace of the past” in line 058-14, though it concerns historical time, is a transform of “the traces are already old,” which indicates a sort of alienation from one’s own past, in Facing Brew (line 044-6). This cluster of Ancient Verses from 1080, then, presents a consistent concern with estrangement from both the personal and the historical past. Youth and spring, like the ancient goddess, leave the poet behind. An experience becomes a “trace,” a “track” that marks the absence of the experience because it is chen, “old,” “left-over.” Fishermen, peasants, and recluses turn their backs on the man who seeks to find some meaning in the human world, the world of politics and careers. The past is not completely mute to He Zhu, of course, for he is steeped in the sea of texts it has left, if not on stones, then in books. Thus, in some ways he has access to the ancients, and he can be “like the people of the past.” In the tenth month of the same year, his On Night Duty in Winter ౻ᄛኚ⋥ 31 begins with an archetypal situation in Chinese poetry: the sleepless traveler who gets up and goes
——— 31 2.12515; 2.9a. The version I quote here is from the “Cao Anthology,” as reflected in the variants cited by Li Zhiding. As given in Li Zhiding's edition and the Quan Song shi, the first line rhymes, using “window” instead of “room.” First-line rhyme is rare in pentametrical Ancient Verse (but see the discussion at the end of this chapter). Line 12 refers to “rushing about in audience regalia,” which might seem odd for a military official who served outside the court, but we shall see Fanghui wearing a formal hat and carrying a tabula when he visits a shrine privately while traveling in late 1087 (Poem 099) so this is not a problematic variant. Our line 14 is replaced by three lines, each of which rhymes: “Muscle and skeleton cannot force themselves; / Robust hair now shows an inch of frost; / Heroic gall worn down by an inch of steel.” It is my theory that these were three candidates for line 14; a reworked version of the second candidate, referring to frost in the hair, finally won out. A version that “tames” a poem and makes it follow the rules is not by those virtues the correct version, and may well be the work of a later editor. Nevertheless, I have chosen to present the “better” text, especially since the apparent draft text is readily available in the Quan Song shi. The “Cao Anthology” cited by Li Zhiding is the selection of He Zhu’s poetry that is part of the Song shi xuan ቡㆬ (Anthology of Song poetry) by Cao Xuequan ᦡቑ૱ (1574–1647); I inspected this anthology in 1978 in the Sonky bunko ዅ⛫ᢥᐶ in Tokyo, and it does indeed include this poem. (Cao’s preface to the Ancient Verse section in the anthology is dated 1631.) Another Cao, Cao Tingdong ᦡᐸ(1699–1784), is responsible for an anthology called Song baijia shicun ቡ⊖ኅሽ (Surviving poems by a hundred Song poets, published 1740–41). One might think Li was citing this work (which, having been reprinted in the Siku quanshu, is more accessible to us today, though not to him in 1916), but Cao Tingdong's anthology does not include this poem.
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outside to look at the sky. Well- known precedents would include the first poem in Ruan Ji’s 㒍☋ (210–263) eighty-two poem collection, Singing My Feelings. 32 To be sure, Fanghui is not here directly imitating or quoting Ruan, as he will in 1086 (see p. 58) and as Mei Yaochen had done. 33 This poem is rather more specific about the cares that weigh on the speaker’s mind. 059
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⪭ඨଚደ ⱁ⡪ኙᐥ ⟞ੱਇႊᱝ ᄞᓟᄛ㐳 ⚿ᐸ֪ ᴡṽᱜ⫷ᶭ ᶋ㒶ᥭ྾㊁ ૼ㓵ਇ⍮ⴕ 㒸‛ᖤ▵ ⇊ㅜᙿၢ චᐕᵆṗ⾭ 㚓㛧ᣋ ⼼ਇᔒഞ 㝔Ძᡮᦺ㔮 ⚛ዏ┧⺕⸵ ⴕㅊᬩ⁅
A dropping moon half invades the room; Crickets’ voices, chilly, reach the bed. A traveler cannot endure this; after his dream the night is still so long. Tying my clothes, I go out the courtyard door: the Sky River just now is so distant and chill. Floating darkness obscures the land on all sides; approaching geese do not know their ranks. Leftover nature mourns the closing season; fearful of the road, I think on my old homeland. Ten years as humble as mud and muck, I gallop about, sick of the roadsides. Have I no will to accomplish something? the hair at my temples upgathers morning frost. Purity and loftiness, what are they, after all? walking and singing, I follow after the Madman of Chu.
Notes: 059-9/ Chen wu means ‘to lay out things on display,’ ‘things left out,’ or even ‘leftover food.’ The expression is rare if not otherwise unknown in poetry. In the first of Three Autumn Musings at Jiangxia, Fanghui uses chen wu again, apparently referring to the things of the season that are arrayed before him. (Poem 534; we translate the second and third poems in our chapter on heptametrical Regulated Verse.) 059-12/ The roadside may be where the poet has to sleep, where farewells are said, or where bandits and other hazards lurk; cf. line 080-11, p. 51.
One way to overcome alienation from the past is by “following after” an ancient personage. This is what Fanghui does in the last line of Night Duty. The Madman of Chu is originally the recluse who confronted Confucius with a little song that warned him against the perils of remaining involved in politics. In the Wen xuan, each of three times the phrase “walking and singing” is used, it is in connection with the Madman of Chu. It is true that by He Zhu’s time both the Madman and ‘waking and singing’ were associated also with drinking. In a youthful poem, Han Yu 㖧ᗡ (768–824) had written ⧎೨㉎ୟ⠪⺕㧘ᬩ⁅ዊሶ㖧ㅌਯ “Who is
——— 32 33
Donald Holzman, Poetry and Politics, p. 229. Chaves, Mei Yao-ch’en and the Development of Early Sung Poetry, 102–4.
ANCIENT VERSE
27
that singing, fallen over drunk, in front of the flowers? / a young disciple [of?] the Madman of Chu, Han Tuizhi.” Su Shi most often uses the phrase ‘walking and singing’ to refer to just that—walking and singing; however, in late 1082 and again in 1085 he specifically links this phrase with being drunk.” 34 Nevertheless, this association with drink is not so strong as to limit He Zhu’s meaning, and we can take this conclusion as a declaration of intention to follow in the recluse tradition.
1080: ANIMALS AND THE QUESTION OF ALLEGORY While in Fuyang, Fanghui takes up a theme that had been pioneered in the Tang by several poets and revived in the Song period by Mei Yaochen and Ouyang Xiu ᱏ㓁ୃ (1002–72): creatures that are “unpoetic” and often odious. Some poets, such as Han Yu and Bo Juyi ⊕ዬᤃ (772–846), gave these creatures an explicit symbolic value. For example, Han Yu, in the first of four Miscellaneous Poems 㔈, speaks of how flies and mosquitoes are everywhere and impossible to get rid of, but eventually the autumn wind will blow them away. From this we are clearly to understand and take comfort in the fact that petty and vexatious people in society will eventually come to a natural end. 35 Bo Juyi writes of a mosquito-like diurnal insect whose bite leaves a long-lasting welt: the key to combating it, he says, is to get it when it “sprouts.” Bo explicitly states that the point of writing a poem on the insect is to tell us something about human nature. 36 Mei Yaochen’s Swarming Mosquitoes ⡝Ⰶ (1034) resembles Han Yu’s poem insofar as it seems to present an allegory with a full cast: the ineffective spider, mantis, and bat, the scorpion who presents his own kind of threat, and the cicada, who seems to be an indifferent bystander. 37 Ouyang Xiu harmonized with this poem, but his emphasis is on describing Mei’s misery, cataloging six other insects and the environments that spawn them,
——— 34 For the Madman of Chu, see Legge, Analects, p. 332–33. For the Wen Xuan references to “walking and singing,” see Yoshikawa Kjir, To Ho, 1:13, notes to line eighteen of Du Fu’s ᄺ⿅ 㖡Ꮐਂੑචੑ㖿. In Han Yu’s poem, the poet calls himself by his cognomen, Tuizhi. The authenticity of this poem (⦲⮯) has long been in question; those who think it may be by Han see in it marks of youthful weakness. See Han Yu quanji jiaozhu, 5:3027. Su Shi’s 1082 poem is from his Huangzhou exile period: ႓ᵆ㒋⹖, SSSJ, 8:48.2643. For the date, see Kong Fanli, Su Shi nianpu, 2:21.555. The 1085 poem is ㅍᚬ⫥ᚑㇺ₹ⷹዂ⠧Ὣ, SSSJ, 5:26.1409. In this case, it is Du Fu, not Su himself, who is portrayed as “drunk with brew, walking and singing.” 35 The poem set (QTS, 10:342.3834) is variously ascribed to 805 or 816, though not on any concrete evidence. See Kan Taishi shi sh 2:7.132-33, and Han Yu quanji jiaozhu, 1:184-85. Von Zach, VII.16. 36 Ⰶⲿ, QTS, 13:434, 4805. Similarly explicit is Bo’s ⑯ⳗචੑ┨, QTS, 14:460.5245, a series of pentametric quatrains prefaced by remarks linking the series to Zhuangzi’s parables and with explanatory notes at the end of most. 37 Mei Yaochen ji biannian jiaozhu, 1:4.61; translation in Chaves, Mei Yao-ch’en, 188. Chaves discusses Mei’s “moralizing poems on living creatures” on pp. 178-99.
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and reminding Mei that he is about to leave for the south, where his poetic feelings will be stirred by the autumn landscape. As Ronald Egan has pointed out, Ouyang Xiu seems to simply enjoy writing poems on the mundane and unwanted creatures to show his “genius for description, narrative, and dramatization.” 38 Another poem by Ouyang has fun with the topic. His 1046 Hating Mosquitoes ᘾ Ⰶ both contemplates the larger issues entailed with the existence of these and other hateful little creatures (in a world the sages had supposedly made safe for human habitation) and describes his own efforts to deal with them in Chuzhou Ṉ Ꮊ, where he was in exile from the court. By sustaining a single staccato entering-tone rhyme (~k) throughout the poem (thirty-seven rhymes) and juxtaposing early mythologies with details of daily coping, the poet makes his poem an entertaining tour de force. Some poets, such as Meng Jiao ቃ ㇠ (751–814) and Pi Rixiu ⊹ ᣣ ભ (834?–883?), used their poems about insect pests to lament the fact that poor people have no way to shield themselves from these animals. 39 Mei Yaochen’s Swarming Mosquitoes mentions this point. However, Fanghui’s ⹓Ⰶ Cursing Mosquitoes, written in the fifth month of 1080, distinguishes itself from Mei’s poem of a quarter-century before by focusing narrowly on the discomfort of himself and his family when attacked by mosquitoes in their government-provided residence. That is, rather than bemoaning the plight of all poor people who lack gauzy mosquito nets, he speaks only of his own inability to afford this protection. Mei Yaochen had gone so far as to wish the insects would assault the high and mighty and leave the poor alone. Though Fanghui does note that these “hungry-hearted” beasts depend on “factions” or “coalitions” and sheer number to win, that is as close as he comes to implying a parallel with human society. Against this background, we present Fanghui’s poem. 40 048
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⥡〵㒶Ḵ ⛽Ⰶᓧᚲ ᦺᤅṌ⡪〔 ᦏ⋧ᦼᦩ ᝋᤚ㤳⥜❥ ⼼⾗ゖജᄢ 㘫ᔃㆊ⁖⽽ Ქ༏↟ⱎⳤ ᯡᒛᏁਛੱ
Our quarters crouch in a shady ditch, and lo, the mosquitoes have found their place! In the pre-dawn, they cover their tracks; in the twilight, they make ready to rendezvous. They prevail by coalition and sheer number, surely not by virtue of each body’s strength! Insatiable, surpassing wolves in avarice, with poison beaks more terrible than bee or scorpion. By bluff and betrayal they skillfully hit their mark;
——— 38 The Literary Works of Ou-yang Hsiu (1007–1072), 112. Ouyang’s 1034 poem to Mei is in Ouyang Xiu quanji, Jushi waiji, 2.354–55, and its title is ᪢⡛⡝ⳗ. 39 Pi’s Ⰶሶ is in QTS, 9.18:608.7022. For Meng’s poem, see references given in connection with our discussion below. 40 2.12512; 2.4a
ANCIENT VERSE
ാᖉዂᄹ ⽺ή⛡⪾ ᜕⸘Ά⭤⦨ ᓤ⥄ขᾤ⫳ ⥞ኅᦝྐຕ ᾍ㌟ዏ㥏▕ ᄛਭ⋉ᙤ မ⣻ᕭ ᾘ⊁ᅤ៏∈ ∋ᓳᄞᖪ ዋਇኈᷡᔟ ᅤㅧ‛Ꮏ ⒳ᱝ↢᳃ኂ ᓧ㐳㘑㛧 ᛩ⻉྾⨹ᄖ ᣆਯྥ㔮 ૬ਇน⾉ ㉛㘃ప৻ㆮ 㙍ቔⴕ⇧ౣ
12
16
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24
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The bravest and fierce can do nothing about it. Poor, we’ve no bed curtain of fine silk or kudzu. so as a clumsy measure I burn southernwort and mugwort. We merely smoke and steam ourselves: the household is all sneezes and coughs. The haze melts away; I’m still beating the air with a fan, and as night deepens resistance flags. I lie with belly exposed, letting them attack, tormented by itching, like scratching scabies. Spirit worn, I’m then jumpy in my dreams; freshful comfort is utterly denied. How is it that the Craftsman Who Created the World has sown this bane of the people? Where can we find a long-blowing wind to cast them beyond the surrounding wilderness? I condemn them to execution by frost severe: they’ll give up their lives, no pardons allowed! Should even one of this odious tribe be spared, the evil that escapes will come back again.
Fanghui’s ῒⱌ Candle Moth, also written in the fifth month of Yuanfeng 3 (1080), 41 is different from his poem on mosquitoes insofar as it finds an obvious moral: ↢ή᰼ “Preserving life depends on having no desires.” The poem ends with the cicada as a counter-example to the moth incinerated by the flame that attracts it so strongly: 㘶㘑⡙⥄⿷ “Imbibing the breeze, it just takes care of itself.” The cicada’s significance here is much easier to grasp than it is in Mei Yaochen’s 1034 Swarming Mosquitoes, and one wonders whether Fanghui meant to improve on Mei. More suggestive is the fact that Meng Jiao’s poem on mosquitoes is also followed in his collection by one on “candle moths.” Since the individual who put together the first edition of Meng’s poetry, Song Minqiu ቡᢅ᳞ (1019–79), died the year before Fanghui wrote his poems, we can assume that this edition was circulating in 1080; and since Song’s arrangement was preserved in subsequent and modern editions, we know that the sequence we see today is the same as what Fanghui would have seen. The fact that he wrote on the same topics in the same month and in the same order suggests that he was reading Meng’s “poems on objects” at the time. 42 Fanghui must have felt inspired or challenged to do his
——— 41
Poem 049. 2.12512; 2.4b That Song Minqiu’s edition is the ancestor of all later editions of Meng Jiao’s poems is asserted by Han Quanxin in the preface to Meng Jiao ji jiaozhu, 23. The mosquito and moth poems are on p. 367 in that edition and 12:380.4260 in QTS. 42
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own works in that subgenre. When we read in He Zhu’s poem that the moth “takes upon itself” ⥄ข getting burned and recall that in Cursing Mosquitoes, it is Fanghui and his family who “take on ourselves” the fumes of herbs burned to repel the insects, we might be curious whether the poet intended or spied the irony in the identical choice of words. Perhaps the idea that one is often one’s own worst enemy was simply “in the air” at the time. (Su Shi had arrived in Huangzhou two months earlier to begin an exile caused in part by his inability to keep silent about the unintended consequences of the New Policies.) The following poem, which I find somewhat peculiar, could be voicing the same theme. It is titled ὣ㔊ᱎ Lament for Boiled Chickens. 43 In the Seventh Month of Gengshen (1080), a traveler passed by Fuyang. As his way drew close, there were people watching a cook kill three chickens. One male had been tied, but he crowed without stop. And so [the traveler] sighed and said, ‘The bird is about to die, [yet] it recognizes the time and cries out; how can I go about silent and seek acceptance in this world?’ And so he ranted and raved but suddenly ran into a trapfall and was nearly unable to escape. I was moved and wrote this poem: 054
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16
⤝ᄦ❈ੑ㔊 ੑ㓽వዞὣ ৻㓶⟎ ਇᑜ⍮ᤨ㡆 ቴਯ㔍 ᔃᖱ₈‛ᖱ ካ⸒හᱫ ླྀญೢ↢ ᗱ⡞ᱝቴ⸒ ㅌᕁ࿃┘⹏ 㔊ኪ㥊ର⾗ Ვり㕖⟋⡪ ੱᔓᮥᯏ⺉ 㥏⥠ὑ⪚ ቱᔨජ㊄ゖ ⥜㔊㊀デ
The cook binds up three chickens; two hens go first to boil. One cock placed upon the table has not given up crowing to tell the hour. A traveler saw this and lamented: human feelings are like the feelings of things. Boldly he announced he’d rather die; why shut the mouth to undeservedly live? Humbly I listened to this traveler’s words, retired to think, and venture to critique: A chicken is really material for the pot; taking its life is not a crime. The man forgets the warning of the snare; drumming the tongue is the sprouting of disaster. It were well to think of his own precious body— weighed against the chicken, which is important?
If this is an allegory, arguing against some foolhardy exercise of the freedom of prattle, or ridiculing someone who gets himself into trouble while trying to stand
——— 43
2.12514; 2.6b.
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up for someone else, it is so topical, so specific in its reference, that we despair of deciphering it. We might wonder if Fanghui was thinking of someone who endangered himself by protesting Su Shi’s 1079 arrest and threatened execution. 44 Yet Fanghui himself openly expresses his admiration for Su when it is dangerous to do so, as we shall see. Surely there were other things going on around He Zhu at either the local or the national level that would lead him to “retire to think,” even “venture to critique.” It may be that the events happened as described and do not represent other events allegorically. Indeed, the poem seems to be anti-allegory: it ridicules a man who sees moral lessons where none exists. He subscribes to the belief that “human feelings are like the feelings of things” (line 054-6) and does not understand the difference between men and animals. The poem thus calls into question the possibility of allegory (despite the poet’s own readiness to draw a moral lesson from the moth and the candle two months earlier). I would like to suggest tentatively that Fanghui was not alone in being skeptical of easy parallels between “human feelings and the feelings of things.” One could point to a number of poems by Su Shi that present themselves as allegories but defy neat allegorical interpretations. Michael Fuller discusses one of these quite thoroughly in his Road to East Slope. Occasioned by Su’s discovery in Huangzhou of a lovely crab apple tree, the poem suggests a comparison between the exile and the tree but also maintains the distinction between them. As Fuller points out, “The tree is, in the end, a plant. The crab apple and the gentleman have correlative fates according to their own kind, but they are fundamentally distinct.” 45 An enigmatic long heptametrical poem by Huang Tingjian entitled Elaborations on the [Er]ya Ṷ㓷, possibly written about this time, also defies easy allegorical interpretation. 46 The Er-ya Ὼ㓷 is the most ancient Chinese dictionary and
——— 44 Su Shi himself expressed regret at the suffering others had incurred because of him in letters to Wang Gong ₺㕸, who was himself on his way into exile, in 1080. He urged Wang to look after himself and conserve his energy. See Su Shi wenji, 4:52.1512–16. 45 Fuller, 259. His translation is on pp. 256-57. The poem, probably written in the spring of 1080, is ኚዬቯ㒮ਯ᧲…, SSSJ, 4:20.1036. 46 CSJC, 2243:nei.1.10–13; Huang Tingjian quanji, 1:5.103; Kurata Junnosuke, K Zankoku, 42–47; Arai Ken, K Teiken, 52–60. The poem is generally dated to 1083 without convincing evidence, but I find this a reasonable date if we see the poem as a satire on Lu Dian’s 㒽ૈPi ya ၢ㓷 (Supplement to the Erya), in which some of the same animal lore appears. A preface to Lu’s book says only that it was prepared in the Yuanfeng period, or 1078–85, but the Pi ya quotes Wang Anshi’s Zi shuo ሼᎅ, presented to the throne in 1080 or 1082 (see below), and shares its methodology of analyzing the graphic components of characters to discover the etymologies of the words the characters represent and the moral meanings derivable from them. As far back as 1075, Huang scorned students who looked for the easy way to get through their studies and blindly applied Wang’s approach: ᐲᦠᎅ ற㧘⎕⟵ᨆฬ⽎ “They copy books to explain the graphic components, / smashing meaning to take apart terms and images.” (ㅍܦ৯ᱩ⇟㓁, line 7-8, CSJC, 2247:wai.2.40; Huang Tiangjian quanji, 2:883.) Thus, while we may tie Huang’s poem to Lu Dian’s Pi ya and the latter to Wang’s Zi shuo in order to date the poem to the early 1080s, the methodology and the controversy it excited had been around for quite a few years before Fanghui’s Chicken poem.
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contains sections on insects, fish, and birds. Huang’s depictions of animals in Elaborations are usually based on lore scattered throughout Chinese literature with readily recognizable morals in their original contexts, but there is no consistent theme running through the poem. There are serious problems of text and interpretation in the last line, too, making the ending anticlimactic. Little wonder that readers of this poem have come to radically different understandings of its meaning. David Palumbo-Liu, for example, thinks Huang is telling us that “Things are not simply themselves but allegorical indexes of human behavior.” 47 Arai Ken, on the other hand, feels that Huang is identifying with the two score creatures and that this identification can be associated with an idea advocated by the philosopher Shao Yong ㇕㓾 (1011–77), that one should look at the outside world free of any interference from the ego, objectively, from the viewpoint of the objects themselves. If Huang makes apparent allusions to traditional sources, it is simply because they provide the most succinct characterizations and embody the coherence or the universal within all things that it was the aim of Shao’s method to uncover. 48 In 1982, no Shsaku proposed a different rationale for a similarly non-allegorical reading, seeing Elaborations as a parallel to the absorption in objects that a painter tries to achieve so that he can depict their essence. 49 In Fanghui’s poem on the chicken, in Su Shi’s poem on the crab apple, and in Huang’s poem on the forty birds and insects plus a gull the “thing-ness” of the objects threatens to complicate their ability to function allegorically, as a sign of something else. The allegory seems like a “natural” form in literature all around the world, and yet poets around 1080 in China appear to implicitly question its ability to produce meaning. It may be fruitful to relate this questioning, at least provisionally, to the uneasiness many Song thinkers felt as observations of natural phenomena became increasingly exact and they became more and more aware of the natural world’s multiplicity. Zhang Zai ᒛタ (1020–77) had written that “in
——— Several documents concerning the presentation of Zi shuo are dated to 1080 in Cai Shangxiang’s 1804 chronology of Wang’s works, Wang Jinggong nianpu kaolue, 21.298–99. Because one of these documents is called “Preface to the Xining Explanation of Characters,” there must have been at least one version of the book produced during the Xining reign period, which ended in January 1078 (in the Western calendar; see James Hargett, “Chronology,” 33). Mark Chung Kuai’s Chronological Table, citing a late thirteenth source, has the Explanation presented in 1082 (128). 47 The Poetics of Appropriation, 254. See also my review of this book, HJAS 55:2 (December 1995), esp. 579–80. 48 It is for this reason that we must read the last line, “…white gull, more at leisure than myself,” adopting a reading of the word si ૃ that is attested in lyrics. (Caveat: this meaning of si appears always in the context of temporal change, which is not the case in Elaborations). If instead we see the white gull “at leisure like me” and thus as an image of the poet, the other creatures would be allegorized as the opposite, as “petty men” caught in the web of life; the self-less identification with them a la Shao Yong would be lost. See Arai Ken, K Zankoku no ‘Enga’ no shi,” published in 1969. Arai’s 1963 volume of Huang’s poetry offers a different text and interpretation. 49 “K Teiken ni okeru ‘mono’ ni yoru shik shi,” 30. no also uses the “more at leisure than me” reading of the last line.
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that which the Creation Process accomplishes, there is nothing that resembles anything else” ㅧൻᚲᚑ৻‛⋧⡿⠪. More as a pious hope than a logical conclusion, Zhang asserts that this very multiplicity proves that everything can be reduced to yin and yang (or to qi): “Thus we know that, although the myriad objects are indeed numerous, in fact not a single object lacks yin and yang. Thus we know that the changes in Heaven and Earth entail nothing beyond these two poles” એ ᤚ⍮⪦‛㔃ᄙኪ৻‛ήή㒶㓁⠪㧘એᤚ⍮ᄤ⼠ൻੑ┵⠰Ꮗ. 50 Much of Zhang’s philosophy is driven by the need to answer in “Confucian” terms the questions that Buddhism had raised for Chinese intellectuals, but I would submit that his insistence on the existence of yin and yang as forces immanent in all phenomena also provides a way to transcend the bewildering complexity that exact and frequent measurements of the natural world had revealed in the tenth and eleventh centuries. Perhaps the most meticulous observer of the world around him in his time, Shen Gua ᴉ (1031–95) wrote, “Men only know those facts that are within the human realm. Outside the human realm, what limit is there to facts! Should one wish to exhaustively plumb their principles, using petty worldly intelligence and sentient cognition, would it not be impossible?!” ੱૉ⍮ ੱႺਛ⡊ੱޕႺᄖ㒢ޕ᰼એඟඟᥓᖱ⼂┆᷹⥋ℂਇ㔍. 51 He Zhu’s traveler, who tries to use his “sentient cognition” to draw a parallel between the behavior of a chicken and human morality, is doing something Shen Gua would have found impossible, at least at some level. (It is hard to imagine him giving up analogical reasoning entirely.) Surely He Zhu’s critique of the traveler should not be reduced to a mere illustration of the vanity of human desires to impose pattern on nature’s multiplicity, but perhaps his poem is more intelligible when we remind ourselves that this multiplicity was a contemporary issue.
1080: VARIATIONS ON THE POETIC HERITAGE There is a famous line by Du Fu that describes the swift charge of a soldier: りデ ৻㠽ㆊ “His body light: a single bird passing.” What made the line famous was a story told by Ouyang Xiu in his “Poetry Talks.” In the early Sung, before Du Fu had attracted much attention, an edition of his poetry with many errors and lacunae had come into the possession of a Chen Congyi 㒸ᓬᤃ. The final word in this line, guo, “to pass by,” was missing, so Chen and his friends tried to guess what it should be: “swift,” “drops,” “descends,” and so forth. Naturally, none of them could come up with the right word, and when they finally checked it in a better
———
ᄥ 19. Quoted in Oshima Akira, “Ch kyo no ‘Taikyo sunawachi ki’ ron ni tsuite.” Mengxi bitan ᄞḺ╩⺣ 20. Quoted in Teraji Jun, “Shin Katsu no shizen kenky to sono haikei.” 50 51
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edition, Chen was deeply moved by the fact that, even in the choice of a single word, no one could touch Du Fu. 52 In a 1078 heptametrical Ancient Verse, Su Shi alluded to the restoration of Du Fu’s poem as a comparison for how hard it had been to restore an old painting to its original condition. 53 Very early in 1079, Du Fu’s line came up again: the words in Du Fu’s couplet were used to set ten rhymes for the composition of new poems by Su Shi and his companions. 54 In lines 25–26 of his poem, Su adopts the passing bird comparison to characterize the speed of time: 㕍ᤐㆶ৻ᄞ㧘㙍ᐕ⌀ㆊ㠽 “The springtime of youth is but one dream; / the remaining years, truly a passing bird.” The dream and one passing bird are further conflated in a regulated couplet written by Su Shi in the fourth month of 1079: ⥟⌀ᚑ৻ᄞㆊ㧘 㜞⼄ὑᵞ ᐕᔔ “Truly, the affairs of the past have become one passing dream; / for me, your lofty talk washes away five years of bustle.” 55 In the ninth month of 1080, Fanghui offers his own transformation of the Du Fu expression in line 057-6 of Evening Prospect from the Tower of Handan Commandery. (Lines 7 and 8 were quoted on p. 24.) 057
8
⊖ⳗีേ ৻㠽ᱩᕁデ ඡᓞ㚵ᓖ᥊ ⟟ᙿᔨ൏↢
The many insects, with evening, hum and stir; one bird, thoughts-of-return light. The notes of the late season drive on the departing light; with a traveler’s yearnings, I ponder the burdens on my life.
Since Su Shi’s allusions to Du Fu’s line come in the two years prior to He Zhu’s, I think we are justified in suspecting that the younger poet was aware of what Su was doing. What is even more interesting is the creativity Fanghui shows in his own experiment with the quotation. A “normal” comparison would liken homeward-bound thought to a light, swift bird, giving us a concrete image for the intangible. However, Fanghui reverses the tenor and vehicle: he likens the swiftness of the bird to his flying thoughts. So far, we have focused on poems from 1080 that respond to prior poetry. Let us now go back to the fourth month of the year to take note a pair of poems featuring motifs that are particularly common in Fanghui’s lyrics, 㑄ᖱੑ㚂 Languorous Feelings: Two Poems. 56 No one would mistake these for lyrics, but it is interesting to see Fanghui extend the range of the Ancient Verse form to approach the mood, motifs, and situations typical of what was by this time a dis-
———
52 Du's poem is ㅍ⬰Ꮧ㞉ㇺዄㆶ㓬ฝ࿃ነ㜞ਃචᦠ⸥ (Du shi xiangzhu, 1:3.238). Ouyang is quoted on p. 240. 53 ᦖᣈ㐳㒸ṽኅܦሶ⇠…, SSSJ, 3:16.829. 54 ੱᣣ₫ၔධᦩ⠪චੱએりデଢ৻㠽ㆊ᭶ᕆ⪦ੱὑ㖿ᓧ㠽ሼ On the Day of Man [seventh day of the Year], Ten of Us Who Were Hunting South of the City Used ‘Body light, one bird passing; / halberd swift, 10,000 men shout' to Make Our Rhymes. I Got the word ‘Bird’, SSSJ, 3:18.917. 55 ㊄ጊᐕ⠰ᓳ⥋ᰴ⥟ᤨ㖿⿅ⷵ㐳⠧, SSSJ, 3:18.942. 56 2.12512; 2.3b.
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tinctly different genre. These poems were written with Adjutant Tian Zhiming ↰ ⥋ (1059–?) who seems to have shared our poet’s fondness for such motifs. 57 The first poem ends with a reference to Yang Terrace, site of the same Shamanka Mountain legend seen in He’s inscription written in the same month (see p. 23) on a painting of the goddess of that peak. 045
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㕍⓽㓩ᄕᦏ ₹↑⚡⧡ᤐ ૫ੱਭਇ ⠑ⵍ㌟ᯝ⮒ 㐳Ꮠᜀ⛵✊ ਃᐕႲ ⡙ᒩῆᑲ ነ⻢㓁⥑㔕
A green window dims in the sunset glow; On jade well-casing purple mosses turn to springtime. That splendid one I’ve long not seen; the kingfisher coverlet has lost its sandalwood scent. With long cloth I wipe the Green Marquisette; on it lie three years’ dust. I’ll just pluck ‘Farewell to the Swallows’ and send it to tell the clouds over Yang Terrace.
Note 045-5/ Green Marquisette: Literary name for a qin (floor-zither); Sima Xiangru ม㚍⋧ᅤ (179–117 B.C.E.) owned a zither by this name. See the commentary on the use of the same name in In Imitation of Four Sorrows, by Zhang Zai ᒛタ (late third cent.), Wen Xuan 30.
The second poem includes a motif seen often in He Zhu’s lyrics: the writing of strong emotions on paper, combined with the notion that this does not necessarily result in communication. 046
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⑺㘑േᧇ▗ ᵹႲۆ㡗✊ ᔨᤄวᱚੱ ౌᔃ⪦㉿ ౽㔮⼠᧻┻ ᴫᓳᅤ᩶᧘ ᰼ኚ⋧ᕁᢥ ήᄙฝァ⚕
An autumn wind stirs the red blinds; flowing dust stains the lovebird marquisette. I think on the one with whom I once united in joy; two hearts now ten thousand miles apart. Ice and frost change even pines and bamboo; how much more so one like peach or plum! I would convey a writing of my longing— there is not that much of the General’s paper.
Note 046-8/ The “General’s paper” is literally the “paper of the General of the Right”; Wang Xizhi ₺⟺ ਯ (303–61), who held this title, used an enormous amount of paper for his calligraphy.
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57 See, for further evidence, ↰ᙕᣂῆ Harmonizing with Office Manager Tian’s New Swallows, Poem 239, 6.12559; 6.2b. This poem is dated the third month of 1080; it and the previous poem, dated the eleventh month of 1079, are two examples of “first poems” to an individual being heptametrical Regulated Verses, a phenomenon we shall discuss in Chapter Four. Although Tian’s office appears to be different from the one given in the headnote to Languorous Feelings, this is the same person. The previous poem gives Tian’s cognomen and a headnote to a 1091 poem gives both the Fuyang period name and cognomen and the new name and cognomen Tian had adopted in the interim. The 1091 poem (020) is ⇐↰᤺ Left in Parting from Tian Zhou, 1.12503; 1.9b. Tian, now in his early twenties, went on to become a well-regarded administrator. See Chang Bide, Songren zhuanji ziliao suoyin, 1:457 for further references.
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The gender of the speakers of these two poems is not clear, as is often the case in lyrics. The speaker in the first one appears to be a man, since he sends his song to where a goddess dwells. The speaker in the second poem may be a woman, if the “[one who is] like peach and plum” is the speaker. In a recent study of the issue of poetic voice in the lyric, Maija Bell Samei argues persuasively that gender ambiguity—or better, layers of different gender identities—is intrinsic to the early lyric, partly because lyrics were performed by women, regardless of the gender of the poetic voice. 58 To the degree that the poetic voice is ambiguous or multiple in the two poems under discussion here, Fanghui has gone beyond reviving the romantic style of palace poetry and abandoned-woman complaints and has invested shi with important characteristics of the ci. We should also note that the reference to autumn in the second poem reminds us that, since these poems were written in the fourth month, they are not occasional poems with specific reference to events in the life of the poet; they are set pieces, just as most lyrics would be. It is significant that the experiments with the lyric mode we have just examined should be conducted in pentametrical poetry. As we shall note in Chapter Six, heptametrical Quatrains were often sung on occasions when lyrics could also serve, and it may have been this fact that encouraged He Zhu to keep a clear boundary between the two. Pentametrical Ancient Verse, perhaps, was less susceptible to genre confusion, giving the poet the freedom to cross the boundary.
1081: A TRANSITIONAL YEAR Fanghui left Fuyang early in Yuanfeng 4 (1081–82), moved about from place to place in areas being flooded by the Yellow River, and eventually reached the capital in the tenth month. He leaves only four Ancient Verses from the year. We shall look briefly at the last one. 㒰ᄛᱎ Last Night of the Year Lament (written on a date corresponding to 31 January 1082) was to be shown to one of Fanghui’s brothers-in-law, Zhou Hang ᴇ, who lived on the outskirts of Kaifeng. 59 It is remarkable for being one of
——— 58 Gendered Voice and Poetic Voice. I should like to point out that certain jazz songs and pop “standards” are often performed by singers who assume the voice of the opposite gender. Carmen McRae’s rendition of “Veronica My Butterfly” is an example of a female vocalist speaking a male’s words. “Fever,” with music and words by John Davenport and Eddie Cooley (men), includes “quotations” from Romeo (a man) and Pocahontas (a woman), and then states, “Now you’ve listened to my story, / Here's the point that I have made: / Chicks were born to give you fever, / Be it Fahrenheit or Centigrade.” That could be a male lament or a female challenge. Although Peggy Lee’s performance of the song is probably the best known, men (as well as other women) have also covered it with enough commercial success to be listed on the charts. See http://www.webfitz. com/lyrics/Lyrics/1958/891958.html, accessed 14 July 2006. 59 2:12517; 2.10b. Zhou Hang was the husband of one of He Zhu’s sisters and lived in or near the capital. (See Poem 062, 2.12516; 2.10a.) There is an individual by the same name who was active
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the few poems in the history of Chinese literature that exposes a serious disagreement with the person to whom the poem is addressed. We do not know what post, if any, Fanghui held at this time, but he begins the poem with complaints about being in the dust of the capital again, ill and poor. He lives, he goes on to say, in an obscure corner of the capital where no one important enough to ride a horse or carriage comes to visit: 063 8
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㑄ဌ࿔⠧ደ ゞ㚍ήૼぢ ᣣ➞⊖㍦ 㣭㥴₈ਇଏ ᄛ᭪ⷒ㦖ౕ ᥄Ἲᾤ㚍ㅢ 㐷᰼⾉਼ ⟮᳨㔍ὑኈ ᓧ৻ᚳ⥱ ᶋኅ⥝᧲ ᳯጊᱝᷓ㓩 ⚳⠧ὑ↰⠃ ᤐ⒍ੑ㗃⧣ ⑺ⓠᦼ⊖㎠ ⒩ሶ⺖᮴᳹ ჾᆄ❱⥙ ⴕṋᶉᷡ ⥁ᔟᩊ᪀㘑 㙃փⷹ ᘷᖚήᣋ ቴ⡞ᱝ⸒ ⺅ਇⴲ ⨡ⴕᨐാ ⺕ᡮ㡨 ⍮⑊☋㑆 ዞᅤᮗ☜ ᓸዏ⦟⥄ା ᚲᖤำਇห
In a quiet ward I rent an old room; carts and horses—no trace of their coming here. My daily stipend is but a hundred cash; salted vegetables are not even provided. Our nighttime couch is covered with “dragon gear,” morning cooking perfumed with “what goes through horses.” Going out, I would borrow or beg, but sweating in shame, I cannot put on the face. Where can I get a small boat to float my family, riding east on an impulse? Rivers and mountains—now I’ll hide deeply away for the rest of my old age as an aged peasant. Spring seedlings: two acres of sprouts; autumn harvest: hope for a hundred piculs. My young sons will be tasked to fetch firewood and water; my stalwart wife will handle weaving and husking. I’ll walk and sing “the Canglang is clear,” recline and delight in the Chaisang breeze. For the numinous and bright I’ll nourish inward contemplation; no cares and worries can assail my flank. There was a guest who heard these words and chided me for being insincere. This journey to be sure is a bold decision, but who can hold back the extramundane goose? How could he know that within the rolls of emolument one’s comings and goings are as in a cage. In my modest aims I truly have faith; what I regret is that you do not share them.
——— as an official already by the time Fanghui was born and who merited a biography in the Song shi, but because of the difference in generation and the fact that the cognomen Fanghui gives for his brother-in-law (Wenqing ᢥᷡ) is not known to have been used by the more prominent Zhou Hang, we must conclude that they are not the same individual.
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Note: 063-11–12/ “Dragon-gear” is a rain blanket for oxen. “What passes through horses” comes out as manure (here, dried for fuel). 063-13–14/ This is another allusion to the man who pretended to be dining with high society when he was actually begging by the tombs. See the note to line 042-13, p. 20. 063-19–20/ Two qing of land are a conventional size for the retiring official’s farm, especially in Song Dynasty poetry. 60 Zhong, the term translated “picul,” was an archaic measure long out of use, but we may understand that Fanghui hopes for a modest but good harvest. “Ten thousand zhong” is a conventional term for a very rich stipend. 063-24/ Chaisang (“brushwood and mulberry”) is the name of Tao Yuanming’s native district. This line thus alludes to him while referring to a literal breeze in the trees. 063-27/ “Guest” is sometimes a polite term of address. Here, it must refer to Zhou Hang.
Most of the poem is fairly transparent and entertaining, with no difficult allusions. It is a good outline of the ideal life to which Fanghui professed to aspire. If Zhou Hang has the temerity to question our poet’s most cherished dream, it is because he does not understand how restricted an official feels in his “cage.” The terms for the ox blanket and horse manure (lines 063-11–12) are one reason this poem is memorable. Looking these terms up in any suitable dictionary, one discovers that they are both first used in biographies in the Later Han Documents. We are reminded that it was considered optimal for allusions or unusual diction brought together in a couplet to be derived from the same text—Su Shi does it often—and clearly Fanghui has the skill to do this. 61
1082–85: XUZHOU 1082: TANG ECHOES; SU SHI In the eighth month of 1082, Fanghui arrived in Xuzhou ᓢᎺ to take up his duties as a cash official; he would remain there until early Yuanyou 1 (1086). The Baofeng Industrial Prefecture ⽃⋙ was to be established just east of Xuzhou a few months later, on 21 March 1083. The minting of copper coins would be its function. 62 Perhaps Fanghui was making preparations for the opening of this mint in late 1082. However, there was also an Inferior Industrial Prefecture (ਅ⋙) by the same name in Xuzhou, whose establishment we can date only imprecisely
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60 In Shi ji, 7:69.2261–62, Su Qin ⯃⒌ (d. 317 BCE) is at the height of his powers as chief minister to six states whom he has brought into alliance against the Qin state. However, he says the six seals are worthless to him since he wants to simply have his two acres of land against the wall of Loyang. 61 Ye Mengde ascribed this tenet to Wang Anshi, speaking not so much of allusions as the borrowing of diction or phrases. See Ye xiansheng shihua, B9a–b. 62 See Aoyama Sadao et al., Sdaishi nempy, 148; Changbian 10:334.1a (3440a); Song shi, 7:85.2110; Hino Kaisabur, “Hoku S jidai ni okeru d tetsu sen…,” 46; and Liu Sen, Bei Song tongqian jian shulue, 10.
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to sometime in the Yuanfeng period, i.e., in 1078 or later. In addition, we know that Fanghui visited a long-established mint at Liguo Industrial Prefecture ⋙ seventy li to the northeast in the twelfth month of Yuanfeng 7 (1084–85); perhaps his responsibilities entailed the supervision of more than one mint or the transportation of the cash they produced. 63 The first Ancient Style Verse preserved from 1082 isn’t about Xuzhou. In the preface to ነ᧡ખⷹ Sent to Du Zhongguan, 64 Fanghui recalls climbing the Clustered Estrade in Handan with Du Yan ᧡ఫ (?–1094?), a friend from at least 1080, after leaving Fuyang in the second month of the previous year. In that season it was too chilly to remain on top for long, but when they descended through a Buddhist shrine, they discovered a broken stele inscribed with a rhapsody by Yan Jun ྥᵾ (673–742). Fanghui notes the calligrapher’s name, Cai Youlin ⬰㈘, and says that he had Du erect the stele within a wall. Clearly, our poet was enough of a connoisseur to recognize a rare find. 65 Recapitulating all this in the poem, Fanghui offers another of his reflections on time: Yan Jun had written a meditation on ancient times at this place, and yet, to those who now come after him to this place, Yan is himself part of an ancient age, and they feel mournful (lines 064-13–14). Let us note, however, that this time the stele speaks; it is not mute. Moreover, the locals can now be coaxed into communicating and they provide a bridge to the past. Fanghui and Du Yan had gone from the shrine to the garden of a Mr. Wang where, according to the preface, they encountered some entertainers who were about to perform a religious sacrifice (si shen ␢). They hired them to perform, and one of the pieces the girls sang was the Tang Dynasty song Golden Thread (lines 064-25–26): 064
᳓⺞໒㊄❞ 㔕➴ᶋ₹㉋
Water tune: singing Golden Thread; Cloud jug: floating jade brew.
——— 63 Liu Sen, in a table of information (p. 6) that Hino had not made use of, indicates that Liguo Industrial Prefecture was created by the elevation of Diqiu Foundry ⁇ਐಃോ to the status of industrial prefecture in 979. From Fanghui’s poem ㇱਯ⁇ਐਛᙿነᓄၔ␠ Commanding troops and going to Diqiu, I miss my [Poetry] Society friends in Pengcheng and send them this on the road (Poem 076, 2.12521; 2.17b), we know he took soldiers to the location of that mint in the twelfth month of Yuanfeng 7, although he makes no mention of the facility itself. (The poem is striking for its Du Fu-like depiction of the families of the militia bewailing their deployment.) As for the Inferior Baofeng Industrial Prefecture, its establishment is noted by Liu in a chart on p. 9; his source is Song shi 13:180.4383, where it is specified that this mint’s output was iron coins for transport to the troops in the northwest. Whatever Fanghui’s post, we are told in a preface to a 1086 poem set that he was actually standing in for a Li Yixing ᧘ᄱⴕ, who had another appointment at the same time. ㅍ᧘ਥ★ᄱⴕਯቭᴡ㒶྾㚂 (Poems 086–089), 3.12525; 3.4a. 64 Poem 064; 2.12517; 2.11a-12a. It was written in the eighth month for Du Yan. The headnote tell us that Du was now a “ship officer” in Nankang ධᐽ, in southern Jiangnan West Circuit. 65 Ouyang Xiu collected many rubbings of inscribed calligraphy by Cai Youlin but emphasized that they were extremely hard to come by. See his notes on three inscriptions (none is the one Fanghui saw) in Ouyang Xiu quanji. v. 2, Jigu lu bawei 6.1169.
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Golden Thread is a heptametrical song made famous by a Tang woman named Du Qiu: 66 I beseech you not to cherish your robe of gold threads; I beseech you to cherish the time when [we] are young. When the flower opens and can be picked, pick it straightaway; don’t wait until there is no flower and you pick a [bare] branch in vain.
Apparently this song or something like it was still popular in the Northern Song. Mei Yaochen and Su Shi refer to it three times each; Qin Guan refers to it once. Moreover, the “Water tune,” here probably referring to the mode or key, was also likely to have been extant. Originally, this was a song composed by Emperor Yang of the Sui when he had caused the Bian Canal to be dug, and it remained popular for the next four or five centuries. Liu Chang ഏᢐ (1019–68) had heard it in Yangzhou, a city made prosperous by the Grand Canal with which the Bian connected, and he saw it as a survival of Sui culture. 67 Thus, even though he is looking back on the same areas in north China where history had seemed unrecoverable to him just a few years earlier, Fanghui now acknowledges several ways in which present artifacts and present performance do keep the culture of the past alive. There is another link to the past in the conclusion of Fanghui’s poem, where he anticipates leading the life of a humble hermit (lines 064-41–42). 064
⇣ᣣప⋧ㆊ ⴧ㐷⫺⪘
On another day if by chance you should visit me, at my rude gate I’ll be cutting away the wild grasses.
The conditional structure of the penultimate line and the diction of the last line strongly recall the conclusion of a pentametrical Ancient Verse by Cen Shen ጙ෴ (716–770): ⧯⸰ᒛખ⬬㧘ⴧ㐷ᙥ⫺⪘. “If [you] visit Zhang Zhongwei— / [his] rustic gate will be filled with wild grass.” If Fanghui has this precedent in mind, he may be comparing himself (as did Cen) to the Western Han hermit Zhang Zhongwei, whose dwelling was engulfed in wild grass; but he makes an antithetical revision to show that he is cutting the grass to make it possible for his friend to visit him! Another connection between the two poems is Fanghui’s line 064-30, ⥟ㆆ “Where is our former excursion!” which recalls Cen’s “Where is the King of Qin!” ⒌₺. Taken together, these coincidences in structure and phrasing suggest at least that Fanghui had been reading Cen Shen. The final couplet does not constitute an allusion to Cen’s allusion to Zhang Zhongwei in the sense that the allusion to Cen has to be recognized for the line to be intelligible or understood correctly; nevertheless, one feels the Song poet re-
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66 The text of the poem is given in a note to Du Mu’s poem ᧡⑺ᆷ, Fanchuan shiji zhu, 1.35–46; specifically p. 38, the eighth line of the poem itself. 67 For an excellent collocation of the evidence on the “Water tune” and its permutations and evolution, see Wang Zhaopeng et al., Shuidiao getou, Introduction, 1–4.
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vising the Tang precedent, if only half consciously. 68 We shall see many poems in the Xuzhou period that explicitly refer to Tang models. Perhaps the most noteworthy new theme in He Zhu’s poetry during his time in Xuzhou is Su Shi. During his tenure in Xuzhou in 1077–79, Su had left behind poems, paintings, commemorative inscriptions, and the Yellow Tower he had erected in 1078 to commemorate the successful efforts he and the people of Xuzhou had made to ward off flood waters in the previous year. In the eighth month of 1082, Fanghui visited the tower and wrote ⊓႓ᮝᙿ⯃⋲ጊ Climbing the Yellow Tower and Having Thoughts of Su [of] Meishan. 69 (Meishan is Su Shi’s home district in Sichuan; Fanghui consistently refers to Su by this name.) Though it is only eight lines long, the work is ballad-like in its use of repeated words from line to line, an effect reinforced by the musical exploitation of similar sound patterns. Ghwang1-lou1 (Yellow Tower) and Ghwang1tsyou3b (Huangzhou) don’t rhyme, but they have similar endings and repeat the Ghwang1; lou1 (“tower”—more precisely, a storied building) appears again at the beginning of line 4; and lou3b (flow), the rhyme word in line 4, is repeated as an internal rhyme in line 5. Line 5 probably should not rhyme, and we can remove the rhyme of lou3b (stay) at the end of that line by reading the word with a falling tone: louH3b. Nevertheless, the similarity of the sound remains. The only lines that do not end with some kind of “~ou” sound are lines 3 and 7. Given the fact that the topic is a lou, the rhyme is not unexpected, but I think Fanghui has consciously made the sound pattern even more intense than could be expected from rhyme alone. 066
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⊓႓ᮝ ᦸ႓Ꮊ ႓Ꮊᦸਇ ᮝਅ᳓᧲ᵹ ᳓ᵹน⇐ ᶋ㔕ᦝᖘᖘ ்ᔃỈ⇎ቴ ᙃᖦᬩ⯗⑺
Climb Yellow Tower, Gaze to Huangzhou; To Huangzhou you gaze but cannot see. below the Tower water eastward flows. Water flows, how can it be stayed? Floating clouds, even more far reaching. Wounded at heart, a traveler by the marshes, haggard in a Chu eupatorium autumn.
Note: 066-8/ Xuzhou was the capital of a Han Dynasty fiefdom called Chu. Therefore, the “traveler by the marshes” is probably Fanghui himself in Xuzhou. In the eupatorium and the marshes, however, there are also faint echoes of the ancient poet and martyr of the ancient state of Chu that stretched along the Middle Yangzi, Qu Yuan. Su Shi is in exile in that region and could plausibly be compared
——— 68 For Cen’s poem, see Cen Shen ji bian nian jianzhu, 99. I follow the summary chronology of Cen’s life and works on p. 3 in assigning his birth to 716 and I also follow the editor, Liu Kaiyang, in interpreting Zhang Zhongwei as standing for the poet himself. Marie Chan, Cen Shen, translates, “If I visit Zhang Zhongwei — / His rustic gate must be filled with wild grass” (30), which reflects the text as given in the mid-eighth century anthology that included this poem, as she notes (29). 69 2.12518; 2.13a-b.
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to Qu Yuan. 70 Lan, sometimes meaning ‘orchid,’ is most likely to be here Eupatorium fortunei (Fujibakama in Japanese), a plant with medicinal uses and anciently used in its dried form to purify a site. ‘Eupatorium’ is sometimes translated ‘thoroughwort,’ and in fact I have used that term for years; however, ‘eupatorium’ is somewhat more euphonious. 71
The form of this poem is extremely unusual: if an Ancient Verse begins with two three-syllable lines, it is almost always a heptametrical poem or at least includes lines of seven syllables. The 3|3 rhythm of the opening seems to demand a flowing heptasyllabic 2|2|3 line after it to release the tension. This poem is pentametrical, however. The 3|3 / 2|3 / 2|3 / 2|3 rhythm we see here seems wound up, and perhaps the only way Fanghui gets away with it is through the repetition of sounds we mentioned above. The only precedent I can find for this form is a short poem by Han Yu—so short that Zeng Guofan (1811–72) considered it the remnant of a longer, lost composition. Its title is the first line, as in the Classic of Poetry, many ballads, and Fanghui’s poem (if we take everything after Climbing Yellow Tower as a subtitle): Mount Tiao is Grey. Han’s poem in its entirety is, ጊ⫷ޕᴡ᳓႓ޕᶉᵄᮌᮌ㧘᧻ᨰጊጟ “Mount Tiao is grey; / The River is yellow. / The waves churn and sweep away from here; / pines and cypress remain on hill and mount.” 72 We shall see evidence from time to time that Fanghui is rereading Han Yu in Xuzhou. Nevertheless, whether he knew about that short poem by the Tang master or was somehow inspired by it to try his own experiment is unanswerable. We can say something about the effect of the experiment, however. The rationale for the anomalous format might be that its refusal to release the energy of the opening into heptasyllabic lines reflects the “haggard” and “wounded at heart” mood of the poem. Perhaps it even reflects the tension that must have come with openly celebrating Su Shi at a time when many were suffering for their association with him. Another poem relating to Su Shi was occasioned by a visit to Zhang Tianji ᒛ ᄤ㛹 on the last day of the eighth month (24 September 1082): ㆆ㔕㦖ᒛ᳁ጊዬ Going on an Excursion to the Hill Dwelling of Mr. Zhang at Yunlong [Hill]. 73 Zhang Tianji owned land on Yunlong (Cloud Dragon) Hill just south of Xuzhou. Su had visited
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70 A similar phrase, “intoning by the marshes” Ỉ⇎ี, will be used by He Zhu in a pentametrical Regulated Verse in 1085 (still in Xuzhou; see Poem 175). The phrase is derived from a stock description of Qu Yuan in the Chu ci (The Fisherman and Encountering Troubles in the Nine Laments); David Hawkes, Songs of the South, 90.2 and 152.10. Clearly, it signifies the sad song of the loyal but unheeded servant of the state, but, similarly to the present case, in the 1085 poem it is difficult to know whether the phrase refers to the addressee of the poem, or to the poet—or to both. 71 There are many related plants that may be familiar to readers, such as Joe Pye weed, hemp agrimony, and so forth. Eupatorium fortunei is threatened by the loss of the wetlands in which it grows. See Okayama University of Science, http://had0.big.ous.ac.jp /~hada/plantsdic/angiospermae/ dicotyledoneae/sympetalae/compositae/fujibakama/fujibakama.htm (accessed 4 February 2006). 72 See Kan Taishi shi sh, 1:382–83. Chen Keming argues for accepting 786 as the date of composition, making it a youthful work. See his Han Yu nianpu ji shiwen xinian, 18. 73 Poem 065, 2.12518; 2.12a-13b.
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him several times and had named Zhang’s pavilion there the “Pavilion for Releasing Cranes.” Every morning, Zhang freed two pet cranes to do as they liked for the day; they always returned in the evening. A Commemorative Essay (ji) for the Pavilion, dated 1078, is found in Su’s works. 74 Fanghui mentions this essay in the preface to his poem, and also informs us that in a little house called the “Su Studio” below the Pavilion Su had left behind two poems and a painting of a large dead tree (“also in His Honor’s ‘drunken brushwork’”). Another notice by Su, thirty-some characters in length and commemorating a visit in the winter of Yuanfeng 1 (1078–79), had been engraved on a stone elsewhere in the precincts, he notes. 065
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ᤄ⡞ᒛㅺ᳃ ඵ▽㔕㦖ጊ ᧲ᦸ⚿ㆌᕁ ༑ᓧᓄၔቭ ৻⺆ቯⶸᄾ ተᅤᐔ↢ᱚ ᡣጅભᴍ ᛩᱝ⯟⮁㑆 ᅚ㐷Ꮛ 㕍ⶁ㔅⠑㝒 ⯃㥲イ֪ 㘿Ἣάᬅ⯗ ა㝩⼔ ᷡ౽₹ኙ ὼᜡ◿㔴 ᨞⍹ឃ℁₾ ᧲⿲㢬੪ ⏺ᛲ⨆⩲ ᜰ㘈⊖⪭ Ἲᾍᨋ⩭㑆 ᣣᆬἢᐔ㒽 ౌጊᅤᣆⅣ ᶼ㘑ᝄඡ⪲ ထᕎ༞ ᒁ㗔⚡㔞ᭂ 㘢㘢ᅤนᐓ
Long ago I heard Hermit Zhang had divined to build on Cloudy Dragon Hill. I gazed eastward with far-reaching longing, then was delighted to get a post in Peng City. At first conversation we became bosom friends with a joy that seemed had always been. Invitations to visit depended on leave to wash; and now I repair here among the fig leaves and rabbit floss. Female servants attend the gates and lanes with blue jackets and paired halcyon curls. At Su’s Studio, the windows brighten; his cooking fire roasts pepper and Eupatorium. His precious ink is protected by spirits; his fine poem like ice, like nephrite, in its chill. In stately manner eaves troughs enclose it; scaffolding stones, emerald bamboo stand in ranks. Eastward we hasten to the Pavilion for Releasing Cranes, brushing back the grasses as we climb the stairs. We peer around at a hundred villages, smoke from cooking fires among the jungle-bush . Radiant tresses of the sun splash the level land; two hills suggest a broken bracelet. A chilly wind shakes the evening leaves and I regret that my cloak is unlined. We crane our necks toward the infinite purple empyrean, floating lightly as if we could touch it.
——— 74
SSWJ, 2:11.360–61; Wang Shuizhao, Su Shi xuanji, 365–68.
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✰ᙿ⋲ጊ 㚍ૼㆆ⋚ ㈷⥝㘂╩ ⫷ፗහ㐨ೀ ඦᐕખ౻ 㔐㊁㔕ᒫẂ ⍹ထ⥥ཕ ᗆᴰὣ㡅 ⇧ᤨ⋓㓸 ජฎ㒞ㅷ ହઔ〔ㆀ㒸 ᣁੱਭᵆⳎ ᚒૼᓟජᣣ ㅺぴ↱ᡕ ㆄൎਇ⢻⾮ ୄႲ〝ㆶ ጊ⧷⒖ᧂ ᤨ᱅⊕㔕㑸
My thoughts stretch back to the Master of Meishan coming on five horses to wander about. With merry inspiration he raced his wild brush; the green cliff was engraved right away. In the wu year, midwinter month, snowy outland country: clouds spread all around. He brushed off a stone, sat, and gave a long whistle; spring water from Mt. Hui boiled for Phoenix Tablet. The times were amazed at this superlative assemblage: across a thousand ages it humbled Kui and An. In a glent, the tracks they left are stale; This Man has long been coiled in the mud. I came a thousand days late; how can I ascend to these remaining traces? Encountering these surpassing scenes, I cannot compose, but look down to trace the dusty road back. The spirit of the mountain has not engraved a proclamation; from time to time I’ll knock upon your white-cloud gate.
Notes: 065-4/ Peng City: Xuzhou. 065-7/ “Leave to wash [one’s hair]” is a periodic day off from official duties. 065-8/ “Fig leaves and rabbit floss” commonly represent the environment or even the clothing of the recluse. 75 065-12/ The cooking fire is literally the “fire for bing,” bing referring at different times to different things made with dough. Pepper and Eupatorium are fragrant plants often representing the virtue of a recluse. 065-16/ My translation assumes a bamboo retaining wall on the rocky slope, but the line could refer to bamboo supporting the stone on which Su Shi’s poem is engraved. Langgan designates various precious stones, mythological trees, and even icicles. My interpretation follows a 1088 poem by Su Shi that refers to encircling bamboo as “green langgan.” 76 065-21/ I convert “legs of the sun” into “tresses of the sun” to naturalize the metaphor in English. 065-22/ In his “Commemorative Essay for the Pavilion for Releasing Cranes,” Su Shi had mentioned that the ring of hills around Xuzhou is “twenty percent” incomplete. When Zhang releases the cranes in the morning, it is towards the break in the hills to the west. 065-28/ Five horses conventionally represent a prefect, the office of Su Shi (native of Meishan). 065-31/ The “wu year” is Yuanfeng 1 (1078), cyclical designation wuxu. 065-34/ Mt. Hui, near Wuxi ή㍯ and Lake Tai, was famous for its spring water. Tea expert Lu Yu 㒽⠀ (?–804) rated it the second best in the world for tea. Dragon Tablet and Phoenix Tablet tea
———
75 I take my translation from David Hawkes’ version of Mountain Spirit. The divinity of the mountain creature described there is seldom carried over into the usage of the phrase in later poetry. See Songs of the South, 115. 76 ㅍජਵජ⢻ౌᆡㆶၢ, SSSJ, 5:30.1604, line 30. See the translation of Ikkan Chik ৻㖧ᥓ ⠄ (1430–89) in Shikajikkai, 10:1082.
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were the most expensive teas. (Tea in this period was often compressed into bricks or tablets rather than kept loose.) 77 065-36/ When Dai Kui (?–396) made one of his rare visits to the capital, Xie An (320–385) called on him and discovered in the course of conversation that Dai was much more cultured than he had thought. Perhaps Zhang, the recluse, is being compared here to Dai and Su Shi to Xie An. 78 065-37–38/ “In a glent,” literally “look up, look down”: a very short time. This Man is, of course, Su Shi. 065-43/ This line alludes to a late fifth century satire against men who pretend to be recluses while awaiting an opportunity at court. That satire begins, “The Spirit of Bell Mountain … hasten[s] … to engrave this proclamation on the hillside ….” 79 Fanghui probably means that his desire to withdraw from the world is genuine.
When Fanghui says that Su Shi is “coiled in the mud” (line 065-38), he might mean he languishes in exile, but in fact the phrase is often applied to a “dragon,” a great man living in humble obscurity before he bursts upon the world. Perhaps Fanghui is anticipating Su’s comeback. Granting that a statement within a long poem that the author of the poem cannot write a poem (line 065-41) is clearly more rhetorical than logical, we might ask exactly why “these surpassing scenes” have such an effect on He Zhu. It reminds us that some Song poets declared that Du Fu had written all the poetry it was possible to write, that there was no room for further development. In this case, however, the emphasis is not on Su Shi as a universal poet who has exhausted all possibilities; rather, it is on the disjuncture between the present time and the recent past. Four years previously, Su Shi was the cultural leader in Xuzhou; now, “a thousand days too late,” the things he left behind serve merely to remind He Zhu of his absence. Dust, which symbolizes cities and politics, or arduous journeys, is something Fanghui usually tries to escape; it is a measure of his dejection that in this poem he actually turns his face downward and shuffles back to the city along a road of the hated stuff.
1083: MORE CELEBRATION OF SU SHI An important site in Xuzhou for the memory of Su Shi is the Delightful! Pavilion. The name of the pavilion comes from the Rhymeprose on the Wind 㘑⾮ , attributed to Song Yu ቡ₹ of the third century B.C.E. Song Yu has the King of Chu exclaim, as a gust of wind comes into the Magnolia Terrace where he is standing,
———
77 On Mt. Hui’s water as a standard for excellence, see Su Shi’s 1080 ᧡ᴄ᷿ᱞએ㉁㝼⧎⪄ ⮋ᴰ㙂ੑ㚂ਯੑ, SSSJ 4:20.1044–45. On the fine Phoenix Tablet tea from Fujian, see Ouyang Xiu quanji 2:Guitian lu, 2.1025–26. Su Shi mentioned this tea in his 1073 ㍦ነᗆᑪ⨥, 2:11.529., line 27. 78 Shishuo xinyu, 6.34. 79 ർጊ⒖ᢥ, Wen xuan 43; I use (with added italics) the translation of James Robert Hightower as “Proclamation on North Mountain” from John L. Bishop, ed., Studies in Chinese Literature, 108–39.
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“How delightful, this wind!” ᔟᱝ㘑. 80 According to He Zhu, the pavilion in Xuzhou was built by an imperial emissary named Li at the end of the Xining period and given its name by Su Shi. This Li must have been Li Qingchen ᧘ᷡ ⤿, who had come to Xuzhou in 1077 (the last year of the Xining period) as judicial intendant. 81 An interesting coincidence is that in the sixth month of Yuanfeng 6 (1083), the very month Fanghui wrote this poem, a pavilion to which Su Shi would give the same name was being built in Huangzhou. Su wrote a lyric about it and Su Zhe ⯃ン (1039–1112) was to write a commemorative essay for it five months later. 82 Fanghui’s ᔟ੪ Delightful! Pavilion 83 begins by placing Li Qingchen and Su Shi at the pavilion back in 1077, facing each other as heroic civil (or literary) figures. 070
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㘧੪ၔ㓈 ⓨ⼸ᑧ྾ᦸ ᄘᤄౌᢥ㓶 ⢫ᐥᱝ⋧ะ ጊᎹ⟤ ㈬㘑₺ ᒩც⸵ଘ 㓁ᤐᘚସ໒ 㤙ゞᔮධർ ᭢ㄗ↢⼘⻝ ৻ぺ㔕ㅷ㑆 ৻⪭ᳯḓ ᚒૼᓧ㒸ぴ ફ᯽ᓤᔱᖧ น⇊ᱝႲ☜ ᱩ㙃⨹ᶉ
A flying pavilion caps the citywall corner: empty and vast extend the views in four directions. Long ago two heroes in wen. on folding chairs faced each other here. Mountains, rivers: the weather was lovely; poetry, brew; the spirit was flourishing. They suppressed the Marquis of Xuchang; “Yangchun” was chagrined at the vulgar singing. Flag chariots suddenly split south and north; glory and shame were born of praise and slander. One treads upon the cloudy thoroughfares; one fell to rivers and lakes. I come and can witness the old traces, lean on the sill, saddened to no effect. Fearful is this dusty pannier— return! Nourish the unkempt and wild.
——— 80 Wen Xuan, juan 13. For one among several translations, see David Knechtges, Wen Xuan, vol. 3, 7–13. I follow Knechtges in translating Lan tai as ‘Magnolia Terrace,’ although, as he notes with regard to another structure by the same name (vol 1, 190, line 148n), there is no way to know whether ‘lan’ refers to the tree or the grass, eupatorium. 81 Su Shi nianpu, 1:16.360, 365. That Kong Fanli does not list Baofeng jian among the administrative units of Xuzhou on p. 360 is not an issue, since this is an entry for 1077 and in that year only Liguo jian existed in Xuzhou, seventy li to the northeast. It was founded (or reorganized) in 979. (See Liu Sen, 6.) When citing Fanghui’s preface on p. 365, Kong Fanli appears to say that Fanghui would be prefect of Xuzhou (“Zhu zhi Xu”) in 1082, but this must refer to Fanghui’s holding a chief administrative post in Xuzhou. 82 The lyric is to Shuidiao getou (⪭ᣣ❺☄ᝬ); see Xue Ruisheng, Dongpo ci biannian jianzheng, 2.399 –402. Su Zhe’s record is in Luancheng ji (SBCK), 24.251a–252a.; Su Zhe ji, 2:24.409–10. 83 2.12519; 2.14b–15a. ⢫ is given as in line 4 in the Quan Song shi edition; since neither of our texts mentions variants for that line, I assume this is simply a misprint.
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Notes: 070-3/ Wen means ‘culture,’ ‘literature,’ and ‘civil’ (as opposed to military), among other things. 070-4/ Folding chairs (literally “northern barbarian chairs”) are associated with sitting high on a city wall and having a cultivated conversation. The story from which this association comes will be told in more detail when we discuss the 1084 poems Taking in the Morning and Evening Views at the Delightful! Pavilion in Chapter 3. (See Poem 168, line5.) 070-7/ Tang poet Xue Neng ⮁⢻ (?–880) had the title Marquis of Xuchang. 070-8/ Xue Neng had a pavilion called Yangchun a short distance away from the Delightful! Pavilion. Yangchun was also the name of one of a pair of songs in ancient Chu that only a very few people could sing, because it was so sublimely beautiful. 84 070-15/ “Dusty pannier” is Fanghui’s term for the bureaucracy. 85
An interesting point comes with line 070-9, when Fanghui alludes to the fact that Li Qingchen rose higher in the bureaucracy while Su found himself in exile. (Li was to become assistant director of the right in the Department of State Affairs in the eighth month of 1083). 86 The line must be a military metaphor for factional splits; “flag chariots” were used by generals to direct their troops. Since both Li and Su were to recommend that Fanghui be promoted to the civil bureaucracy later, it would be hard to argue that our poet intends criticism of Li here, but in later years relations between Li and Su would be strained. 87 1084: ~ZAI, TANG PREDECESSORS Fanghui makes more outings to the Delightful! Pavilion in Yuanfeng 7 (1084–85). Ꮘᓟ৻ᣣ⊓ᔟ੪ Written One Day After the First Si Upon Climbing Delightful! Pavilion 88 is an early poem written on such an occasion. This time, there is no mention of Su Shi or Li Qingchen. The poem begins by saying what a fine festival the First Si Day is, when the old custom of floating winecups on little channels of
——— 84 Song Yu, Reply to the King of Chu's Question, Wen Xuan 45. Xue Neng wrote a poem on an outing to Yangchun Pavilion: QTS, 559.6486. 85 Fanghui uses the expression in his lyric to Liuzhou getou Ꮊ㗡 (1088). See Sargent, “Experiential Patterns,” 161, and Zhong Zhenzhen, Dongshan ci, 421. As Zhong points out (425, note 18), the expression refers to the “dusty” world in general and officialdom in particular. 86 Aoyama Sadao et al., Sdaishi nempy, 148. 87 In 1996, two versions of my preliminary research on this topic were published in China (one with several printing errors, most notably the regular substitution of the date Yuanfeng 1 [1078] for Yuanfeng 6 [1083]). In that paper, I pointed out that Li Qingchen was fined because of his association with Su Shi and that Li distanced himself from the more rabid enemies of Su; on the other hand, it is a fact that he also held a series of prestigious and important appointments while Su was in exile. Moreover, Su Zhe made dogged attacks on Li Qingchen over matters of ritual later in the century, which must have made relations between Su Shi and Li more difficult. See “Su Shi mingming de liangge ‘Kuaizai Ting’” and “Su Shi mingming de liangge ‘Kuaizai Ting’ ji qizhongde yige weimiao wenti.” Now, Li Qingchen and Su united to recommend He Zhu for promotion to civil status, as we shall see. Furthermore, Fanghui produced a lyric to Ye jinmen on the basis of one Li wrote (in a dream) in 1101; see Zhong Zhenzhen, Dongshan ci, 456–59. Thus, I hesitate to say the present poem expresses a negative view of Li; if it does, perhaps Fanghui made sure the poem stayed under wraps. 88 2.12520; 2.15b.
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water is maintained. (This festival is celebrated on the third day of the third month.) Unfortunately, Fanghui had business in the office that day and could not join the fun. The next day is clear, nature looks newly washed, and Fanghui climbs the high pavilion to console himself in his obscurity and solitude. The last couplet contains what will prove to be a favorite device of Fanghui’s this year, the “~zai” exclamation. Zai is the exclamatory particle that comes out as a “!” in my translation of the name of the pavilion, “Kuai-zai ting.” 072
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⚗⪇ਇ ⢫Ⲕ㘧ᐔ⛵ ୦┆ᄕᦏ ᖘᱝᔃ⋡
The splendor has been swept from sight; butterflies dance over level green. I stand rooted, leaning, exhausting the sunset glow— far reaching! the images in my mind.
Notes: 072-13/ The phrase translated “splendor” could refer literally to a profusion of flowers, but it is also used metaphorically. Here it could denote the gathering Fanghui missed or the blossoms of the season.
You-zai, which is rendered here “far reaching!,” appears earliest in the first poem of the Classic of Poetry, where it is the exclamation of a man thinking of a woman as he tosses and turns at night. You is variously glossed there as “longing” or “long” (i.e., long-lasting or far-reaching). In the context of Fanghui’s line, the expression implies both some nameless discontentment and the vastness the poet encounters in the sunset view from the Pavilion. The appearance of You-zai at the head of the last line of the poem recalls the use of Gui-zai (“return!”) in exactly the same position of Fanghui’s 1083 poem on the pavilion. Perhaps his inspiration comes from the name of the pavilion itself, but it seems that Fanghui, with his strong musical sense, was treating ~zai as a motif that he was inspired to use over and over again in various compositions. Of course, its exclamatory function is a good device to signal closure. In the summer, Fanghui moves his ~zai element from the final to the penultimate line, in Reading Li Yi’s Poems ⼛᧘⋉: 89 073 24
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ᣁੱਇ ᱜ⾶ᢞ⇟⚕ ༷㥵〾ჾ ᣣዞή⡞ᕯ ീ⺖⻥ี ⺧⥄↰ዬᆎ
This Man has not perished from the present, owing to a few sheets of paper. Alas, my age has passed its prime; daily I approach the time of “no reputation.” To exert myself! making songs and poems my task; allow me to begin with Dwelling in the Fields.
Notes: 073-23/ “This Man” is Li Yi (748-827?).
——— 89
2.12520; 2.16a.
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073-26/ In the Analects, Confucius avers that “If [a man] reach the age of forty or fifty and has not made himself heard of, then indeed he will not be worth being regarded with respect.” 90 This line means that Fanghui is aware of getting closer to forty every day. 073-28/ I suspect that “Dwelling in the Fields” is also a reference to age, through allusion to Tao Yuanming’s Returning to Dwell in the Fields. The first of four poems under that title contains a line that one Southern Sung scholar seems to have understood as meaning “Once I got out of the ‘dusty net’ of public service I was thirty years old.” 91 If Fanghui, who was just over thirty, read Tao Yuanming’s famous poem the same way, this line could mean, “Let me start from now.”
The exclamatory “exert!” in line 073-27 is used by Huang Tingjian about the same time this year in two poems, once in the penultimate line (as in Fanghui’s poem) and once in the final line. 92 Huang passed through the general area on his way north to a post at Dezhou ᓾᎺ in the summer of 1084 but is not known to have visited Xuzhou. If there were any contact between He Zhu and Huang, it might have been through the Chen brothers, since Chen Shidao had met Huang on his way north and his older brother Chen Shizhong 㒸Ꮷਛ was in their native Xuzhou. It is striking that these are the only poems in which Huang is known to have used “exert!” Unfortunately, there is no way to know whether Fanghui’s poem was known to Huang and inspired him to play with the phrase in his own works. The phrase does occur twice in poems by Han Yu, always in the penultimate line. 93 Again, this is suggestive though not conclusive evidence that Fanghui was reading Han Yu. (Mei Yaochen and Ouyang Xiu also use “exert!” and like the handful of other poets who do so, always in pentasyllabic lines.) In the ninth month, however, Fanghui gives us good evidence that he is reading Han Yu, with a touch of the characteristic Song contrariness toward great poets of the past. Han Yu’s This Day is worth Cherishing begins, “This day is worth cherishing; / this wine is not worth tasting. / I put the wine from me and go talk with you, / sharing together the light of this one day.” Fanghui, at a party held by his friend Kou Changzhao ናᦺ (?–1099), wrote his own poem called ᱝᣣ⿷นᗂ This Day is Worth Cherishing. 94 It begins with a playful reversal of Han Yu’s lament: 075
ᱝᣣ⿷นᗂ ᱝᮻนㄓ
This day is worth cherishing; This goblet—how can I refuse it!
——— 90
Legge, 223. Davis, T’ao Yüan-ming, 2:38. This reading is based on the text as Fanghui probably knew it; Davis accepts a later emendation that yields a reading more in line with his chronology of Tao's life. 92 ነ⡕ಟῳㆊᣂၴ㇁…… and ᣇ⸒ච㚂ਯ, Shangu shi zhu 2250:wai.14.329–30 and 332. On the date, see Hu Sheng, Huang Tingjian nianpu xinbian, 156–57. 93 ῆᴡධᐭ⑲ᚽᓧ↢ሼ (809) and ㅍഏᏧ (813), Han Yu quanji jaiozhu, 1:527 and 2:614, respectively. 94 Poem 75, 2.12521; 2.17a. In 1100, Chen Shidao would be going on outings in Xuzhou with Kou Guobao ና, Kou Changzhao’s nephew. See Chen Shidao, Houshan shi zhu bu jian, 2:10.363. As we shall see, He Zhu’s circle of friends included the older brother of Chen Shidao, Chen Shizhong. Xuzhou was their native place. 91
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The poets to whom we find Fanghui alluding in one way or another often have some connection with where he is located at the time. Han Yu’s This Day is worth Cherishing was written as he was on his way to join his family in Xuzhou. We should expect that poems having to do with a certain place were especially likely to be encountered by educated visitors to that place, perhaps because of efforts to preserve and celebrate an illustrious local heritage. Also, texts previously learned would be more likely to be recalled when one visited a place with which they were associated. Han Yu must have been among the predecessor poets discussed and imitated by the Xuzhou poetry society, too. In the preface to Reading Li Yi’s Poems, Fanghui tells us that the members of this poetry society (shishe ␠) divided up the various Tang poets and read them, then wrote poems about the poet they had chosen, using the poet’s surname to set the rhyme. This is one of the earliest mentions of poetry societies in China—in fact it is the earliest known to have called itself a shishe. (Earlier Song groups of this nature were known as hui ‘associations,’ usually of “elders,” and the names by which they are known do not use the word “poetry,” though poetry seems to have been an important activity of their gatherings.) Reading Li Yi’s Poems is the earliest of fourteen poems associated with the society that Fanghui preserved. 95
1085: THE IRONIC TRAVELER Shenzong died in Yuanfeng 8, on the fifth day of the third month (1 April 1085), and was succeeded by his son Zhao Xu (Zhezong). Because the new emperor was only ten years old, it was his grandmother, the Xuanren Empress, who actually took over the reigns of government. She had taken a dim view of the reforms initiated during her son’s nineteen years on the throne and the accession of her grandson gave her an opportunity to reverse the political trend; during Zhao Xu’s minority, she will recall many of the Old Policies partisans to court. In the fifth, ninth, or perhaps the tenth month, the minting of coins at the Baofeng mint was terminated, possibly because of a dearth of coal, possibly because the new government considered it too expensive to transport the coins produced there to the northwest frontier where they were to be used. 96 Fanghui is
——— 95 See Ouyang Guang, Song Yuan shishe yanjiu conggao. The Nan Tang shu (1105) by Ma Ling mentions a shishe formed by Sun Fang ቊ㞌 and others in the tenth century (CSJC, 3852:13.93). It is impossible to tell whether the term was used by Sun or is being applied anachronistically by the twelfth-century historian. 96 Changbian 10:356.15b (3624a), 359.18b (3651b), and 360.1b–2a (3653b–54a). The notes to the text indicate that the tenth month entry in the Veritable Records must be wrong, so it is changed to read that since the mint has already been abolished, the proper offices are to draw up a list of other unneeded industrial prefectures. The ninth month closing specifies the Inferior Baofeng Industrial
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apparently ill around the middle of the year, and then is sent north and west to various places in southwestern modern Shandong on an assignment whose exact nature is unclear to us, though I suspect it had to do with the collection of tax revenues. Not until 1086 does Fanghui proceed from Xuzhou to Kaifeng, the capital. The number of poems Fanghui saved from 1085 increases to 31 titles, six of them Ancient-Style verse. The following travel poem of the eighth month of 1085 may be compared with Huang Tiangjian’s poems of 1082. 97 Both poets are on the road in pursuit of government business, but where Huang highlights his conflict with powerful local economic interests, Fanghui is silent on the nature of his mission and very much wrapped up in his own moods. This poem is titled ᄛⴕ㈅❐ਛㆄ㔎 On Encountering Rain While Traveling by Night on the Roads of Zou Xian. 98 He appears to be crossing the mountains eastward, as he points to the eastern part of the ancient state of Lu as his destination. 080
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ᤓᣣ⑺ㆀಽ ᱖⑰㤠 ඨᄛኋ↰ੱ ⋧⻰ᷓ㒜㔎 㚼㚼㚍ቴ ᶅᛩᚲ ⊔㈅ሶၔ ᦺᦼ㘵᧲㞉 ᠻ㕷ᕁஇኘ 㘂ᘚਇᱞ ୄ⇊ᣋ⍹ ᙱὼᅤફ⯥ ㆙㛳⭋㤇⪇ ⊕᳓Ẃᵮᷪ ⢻ป๋㚎
Yesterday autumn reached the equinox: in every village they ingather paddy and millet. At midnight, people staying over in the fields curse together the rain on the deep tank. Pressing on, this traveler on horseback is weary of the wet: where will I put up? At dusk I left the Minor Wall of Zou, by morning set to dine in Eastern Lu. Clutching the saddle, I long for rest and sleep, toppling over, ashamed to be unmartial. Peering down, I dread the stones by the road that lie fallen like crouching tigers. In the distance, I am startled by buckwheat flowers: white waters flooding the sandbars and holms. How can I “curse my nag”?
——— Prefecture, however, so if the tenth month entry refers to the Baofeng mint itself, the original text might be correct. 97 See especially Huang’s Ꮖ ᧂ ㆊ ᄥ ḓ ௯ ኹ ᓧ ቬ ᳭ ὑ ᦠ ነ ጊ ⭦ ⊕ ᵜ 㐳 㖿 ነ ╵ , 2249:waiji.11.241; Huang Baohua, Huang Tingjian xuanji, 135–40. This poem is a powerful statement of Huang's predicament as a representative of the government. He is the fulcrum of the confrontation between harsh fiscal policies and the recalcitrant locals, rich and poor. The allusiveness of the poem represents, I think, more than a mere indexing of the vast sea of texts that provided the vocabulary of discourse for the Sung literatus, and more than a mere expression of the poet's learnedness. The poem symbolizes Huang's desire to bring all this culture to bear on the current issues in which he is embroiled as a force that would provide the energy and the values to shape the functioning of society. 98 3.12523; 3.2a.
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ⷫ㑨ነᬩ ᔨᤄ⥁⯃㐷 ᄘ⥝₈ඦ ⼼⻐ᓬ৻ቭ ⟟㔌ㆰᅤ⸵ ᱩ᱘ᗂㆧ ᐝᗼዂ⺕⺆ ⾶Ὼ⨲ᩮⳗ ഥᚒ㐳ี⧰
my parent’s conclave is in Western Chu. I think on how I once lay at Mt. Sumen, “arising early” in time for midday. Who’d have said that for an official post I’d be on the road, in “such a hurry!” Let me return! I’ll cherish the evening of my life; my deepest feelings—to whom can they be told? I rely on you insects among the grass roots to help me sing long of my bitter sorrow.
Notes 080-15/ The phrase “curse my nag” comes from an episode in the biography of Wang Zun ₺ዅ (fl. first century B.C.E.): When Wang came to a dangerous passage on his way to his post in the southwestern part of the Sichuan Basin, he recalled that a Wang Yang ₺㓁 had turned back at this spot rather than imperil the body he had received from his parents. Cursing his nag forward, he declared, “Wang Yang was a filial son; I, Wang Zun, am a loyal official,” and went on to his post. Coincidentally, Wang Zun had once been a Regional Inspector of Xuzhou, during which time he had essentially stared down a flood as it rose to within a few feet of the top of the dike on which he had built a shelter in which to stay as a gesture to calm the fears of the populace. 99 The parallel with Su Shi a thousand years later is noteworthy. 080-17/ Mt. Sumen: in Gongcheng ၔ, Weizhou ⴡᎺ, Hebei East Circuit, where Fanghui grew up. 100 080-18/ This line uses sarcasm in a way that is common in English but rare in Chinese: “rising early” normally connotes devotion to worthy pursuits; for the young Fanghui, getting up by midday is “rising early”! In fact, he congratulates himself on being “still in time” (you ji) for midday. Confucius said that he was “still in time” to see historians who would leave a blank in the text rather than substitute suppositions for facts. (Analects XV.xxv). Su Shi used the phrase four times (twice in poems before He Zhu’s poem), 101 always to say he was “still in time” to meet great men. Two Tang poets, Zhang Ji ᒛ☋(766?–830?) and Liu Yuxi ഏ⑬㍯ (772–842), used the phrase to indicate being “still in time for” a certain season. 102 Once we understand that the phrase always refers to being there for a moment that will soon slip away, we can see the full irony of He Zhu’s line. 080-20/ “Such a hurry” repeats Zuo Ci’s Ꮐᘏ taunt to Cao Cao’s agents. Zuo Ci was an early 3rd century magician who escaped from his pursuers by fading into a flock of sheep and assuming the form of a sheep. When Cao Cao saw no one could find Zuo among the sheep, he announced that he had not really intended to kill him, but had only wanted to test his art. An old ram then stood up like a man and replied, “Why so frantic?” But before Cao’s men could seize him, all the sheep turned into rams, stood up, and said “Why so frantic?” 103 When Su Shi uses this same phrase in a poem
——— 99 For the Sichuan episode, see Han shu, 10:76.3229. For the Xuzhou episode, see Han shu, 10:76.3236-37. 100 The mountain is more than a local landmark; it would have been well known to He’s readers as the place where Ruan Ji (210–63) thought he could impress Sun Deng with his whistle. See Donald Holzman, Poetry and Politics, 149–52. 101 ᰴ㖿ሶ↱ೋ㒸Ꮊੑ㚂ਯ৻, SSSJ, 1:6.255; ㅍᒛイ᳃ኹ⋭⹜, SSSJ, 2:8.397. Written in 1070 and 1072, respectively. 102 For Zhang Ji it was spring: ㅍᴺᏧ, QTS, 12:384.4326; for Liu Yuxi it was the end of spring: ⁍⋧ᤐᕁነ, QTS, 11:365.4123. 103 Hou Han shu, 10:82B.2747-48.
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written in 1078 at Xuzhou, it is in the context of the speed with which he has shown signs of age; the allusion in the phrase adds the connotation of a frantic and futile life. 104 I think Fanghui similarly means to mock the hectic pace of his life as an official. Another possibility: since his job in Hezhou is pursuing outlaws among the populace, he is comparing himself to the hapless Cao Cao trying to seize Zuo Ci among the sheep.
With an urgency parallel to that of the harvesters who stay in the fields overnight (the grain must be gathered quickly lest it be spoiled by the rain), the lone and silent traveler must persevere. Appropriately, the poem moves at a rapid pace. Four enjambed couplets have the subject in the first line and its verb in the second: lines 080-3–4; 5–6; 11–12; and 23–24. Similarly, in lines 17 and 19 “think on” and “who’d have said” govern both their own lines and their respective following lines. The dusk-to-dawn leap in lines 080-7–8 creates forward momentum in its own way. The penultimate couplet then slows our pace. The two lines are quite independent of each other and each is broken into two parts: “Let me return [sentence-final particle]—I’ll cherish the evening of my life; / my deepest feelings [this is a preposed object]—to whom can they be told?” Then, the continuous syntax of the final couplet restores the dominant pattern of the poem for closure; moreover, the song of the crickets in the grass returns us to the theme of a nocturnal journey and even suggests a cathartic transfer of feeling from the poet to the creatures he hears by the roadside. Although we characterized Fanghui as “wrapped up in his own moods” in contrast to Huang Tingjian, the result proves to be an exquisitely structured experience. The middle of the poem, lines 080-9–20, is full of wry humor: the exhausted poet’s “unmartial” failure to stay on his horse is ironic, and the lines in which rocks become tigers and gleaming white buckwheat flowers turn out to be flood waters mock the traveler’s confusion and fear (while impressing us with He Zhu’s power to evoke the nocturnal scene.) It may seem odd that the conflict between serving one’s parents and “cursing my nag” in service to the state (lines 080-15–16) should intervene between these mildly comic lines and the obvious humor in rising “early” at midday. We may gather from line 080-16 that He Zhu’s mother (he uses the kenning ‘parental inner chamber’) had moved to Xuzhou (‘Western Chu’) so he could support her. 105 Still, it is unusual to refer to one’s parents in a poem. There are other poets before He Zhu who use the allusion to Wang Zun,
———
104 See ᰴ㖿╵㗐ੑ㚂ਯੑ, SSSJ, 3:17.867. Fanghui himself uses a truncated version of the phrase, ju xu, in 1091 in talking about how fast the jujube in the courtyard goes through its seasonal cycle: see ᗵᐸ Moved by the Jujube in the Courtyard, Poem 132. A still later use of the phrase by Su (or Qin Guan—a version of the poem is found in his works) in connection with the yellow Mandarin orange may refer to the speed with which that fruit ripens or the urgency with which one tries to eat as many as one can. See 㔗Ꮊ㚂ਯੑ, SSSJ, 8:49.2707. 105 Fanghui’s father died when he was a child. See ੱ↢৾ච⒘ Rare It is to Live to Seventy, Poem 083 (1086), 3.12524; 3.3b.
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but I am aware of none who does so with the full implication of a conflict between filial piety and dedication to official duty. Perhaps, then, Fanghui simply meant for us to take his inability to be a “loyal official” and expose the body he had received from his parents to risk as another example of his utter lack of martial ardor. He wants to return alive to his mother.
1086: IN THE CAPITAL WORD GAMES The meaning of a word is in its use. Chinese poets were particularly conscious of the fact that a single character might represent different morphemes or shades of meaning in different environments, and indeed when a Chinese poet used another poet’s rhyme words (which Fanghui did, though he was atypical in that he almost never kept the poems that resulted) he knew it was preferable to use the same characters in new contexts and constructions that gave them different meaning. Thus it is not surprising that Huang Tingjian (and others) sometimes made the exploitation of polysemanticity the whole point behind a poem. One example is Huang’s ฎᗧ⿅㈕৯⢻㖸 With Ancient Intent, A Song of the Eight Sounds Presented to Zheng Yanneng, which is grouped with his 1086 poems, although it certainly was written earlier. 106 The eight musical sounds are those produced by instruments of metal, stone, silk, bamboo, gourd, earth (clay), leather, and wood. Huang writes eight couplets, each beginning with the word for these materials and making allusions to earlier texts. However, none of the allusions has to do with music: this is a formal, linguistic framework based on one set of meanings (eight materials that can make music) that provides a site from which one may foray into the lore that radiates from other meanings of the characters that represent the words in the set. That lore and those meanings do not form a parallel set of meanings that stands in any allegorical relationship to the original set. The same principle underlies a pair of poems by He Zhu dated the fourth
——— 106 CSJC, 2250:wai15.353; Huang Tingjian quanji 2:993 (with a different title). The former edition quotes a postface by Huang (dated 1086) to another poem but explicitly states that the present poem is arbitrarily assigned to 1086; the latter source quotes the same postface as if it were for the present poem. Hu Sheng’s Huang Tingjian nianpu xinbian, 180, makes no effort to sort out the mess. Another “eight sounds” poem is given the date 1079 in Huang Tingjian quanji 2:992. Now, we know that in 1078 the Zheng Yanneng mentioned in the title went from Xuzhou to Daming, where Huang was from 1072–80. (Kong Fanli, Su Shi nianpu, 1:17.389.) 1078–79 would thus be a plausible date for this poem. Moreover, it seems to me that the repetitive allegorizing we see in Huang’s poem is typical of this early period. Zheng’s name is Jin ; his dates are 1047–1113, and he is a native of Xuzhou. If the “eight sounds” poem were written in 1078–79, Fanghui could have learned about it when he was in the Daming area in 1081 or when he was in Xuzhou in 1082–86 (though Huang’s poems must have circulated widely enough that no special explanation is necessary).
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month of Yuanyou 1 (1086). Fanghui and Du Yan each wrote a pair of Ancient Verses in which the character qing, representing the words for “green,” “blue,” “dark,” etc., appears in every line. Fanghui’s poems are titled ᧡ખⷹ㕍ሼੑ 㚂 Harmonizing with Du Zhongguan’s qing-character Poems: Two Poems. 107 They present romantic situations that had for the most part already been appropriated by the lyric as its special province. Here is the first one, with the translations for qing in italics: 084
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㕍ⴽዋᐕሶ ₡㕍㐷ㆆ ㅩੱዋ㕍⌒ ಝ╉ᦸ㕍ᮝ ⓽ਛ㕍ⱌᅚ ᱜὑ㕍ᤐᗜ ᔃጅ㕍㠽 㕍㛦⢻ዋ⇐
A youthful lad in a blue gown goes out alone from the Bice Gate to roam. Meeting others, he seldom shows the dark of his eyes; with frozen smile he gazes to the Blue Bower. Within the window, a girl with bluish brows is just then pining over her verdant springtime. Matters of the heart she entrusts to the blue bird— can the grey piebald tarry a little?
Notes: 084-2/ The Bice Gate was one of the eastern gates of the Tang capital, Chang’an. 084-3/ This could also mean he seldom encountered others showing him the dark of their eyes. The notion of displaying one’s dark pupils to like-minded people and white eyes to vulgar intruders is a familiar one, coming from an anecdote about Ruan Ji. 108 084-4/ A “green bower” is a brothel. 084-5/ “Verdant springtime” is youth. 084-7/ The blue bird is the messenger of the Queen Mother of the West.
It is important to note that Du Yan had known Huang Tingjian since at least 1083. 109 Huang’s word games might have inspired the two younger men to do their “Qing-character poems.” While the results do not rival Huang’s poems in
——— 107
3.12525; 3.3b. See Donald Holzman, Poetry and Politics, 80. 109 Fanghui’s ╵᧡ખⷹ⊓ฌ⥑ነ Answering Du Zhongguan’s Climbing Clustered Estrade, Which He Sent to Me , 2.12515; 2.8b, dated the ninth month of 1080, is the earliest evidence for contact between him and Du. Huang’s acquaintanceship is attested in four poems, ᰴ㖿╵᧡ખⷹ ੑ and ౣᰴ㖿᧡ખⷹ, Shangu shizhu, CSJC, 2249:wai.12.280; Huang Tingjian quanji 2:1166–67. Huang’s poems are traditionally ascribed to 1083. However, the first poem alludes to Huang’s giving up alcohol “this year,” and we know he took such a vow in the third month of 1084 on his way north to Deping. (Hu Sheng, Huang Tingjian nianpu xinbian, 147.) Somewhat more ambiguously, the first poem in the second set says that Du Yan is ቭ㓒ᳯᐓ “holding office on the other side of the River bank.” If “River” refers to the Yangzi, the reference might be to Du Yan being a “boat official” in Nankang, down in Jiangnan West Circuit. We know Du was in Nankang in 1082 (see our note to Poem 064, Sent to Du Zhongguan), but that does not allow us to date Huang’s poem with precision. In the second poem of the first set, Huang makes an intriguing allusion to He Zhizhang ⾐⍮┨ (659–744), regretting that the “crazy stranger” is absent. In context, this should be a reference to the addressee of the poem, Du Yan, but it could plausibly refer to He Zhu, their mutual friend and self-styled heir to He Zhizhang’s image. 108
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complexity or allusiveness, the timing of the poems suggests the possibility that Du and Fanghui transduced the germ of character polysemanticity from their elder friend to playful poems in a different mode.
IMITATIONS Late in 1086, Fanghui wrote three imitations of earlier poems, all of the dolorous sleepless-night type. Two of them are modeled on the works of poets who have left little or no mark on the pages of literary history. For example: ᡆධᘢૹᴺ Ꮷ₡᧶ᠿ Imitating ‘A Lone Beater Pounding Clothes,’ by Dharma Master Huikan of the Southern Liang. 110 This poem begins naturally enough with the beater and fulling block with which the new clothes (conventionally assumed to be for an absent husband or son) have their seams flattened, but is unusual in specifying where the wood for the beater and the stone for the block come from: 090
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㓁᩿᧶㡆 ⬒ጪ⍹⎐ᐔ ᓙ⺕⋧ᙥ▵ ⷐ⥄ਇൎᖱ ็㘑⒡ᕆ ᒁᓇᓸ ᦩਇ⌁ቴ ⡱ᱝᣆ⣺⡪
The tong beater from Yiyang sounds; The stone fulling-block from Lianyue is flat. Waiting for someone to echo the beat, but lo, the emotion is unbearable. Blowing her clothes, the breeze a little higher— trailing shadows, the moon slightly brighter— By chance a sleepless traveler is listening to this innards-breaking sound.
Notes 090-1/ Yiyang, a mountain of uncertain identification, may be associated with wutong trees largely on the basis of a mention in the Book of Documents. 111 090-2/ Lianyue (Lotus Peak) is the sheer central peak of Mt. Hua.
The opening references to the pedigree of the beater and block are odd in this context. Song poets show great interest in the provenance of tea, inkstones, and the like; yet the beater and fulling-stone are not objects to be used by the literati. There are interesting precedents for listing objects with prestigious epithets, but these are found in heptametrical poems that comprise a special tradition. One example, from slightly earlier than Huikan, is an Imitation of ‘The Road is Hard’ by Bao Zhao 㞟ᾖ (412?–466). 112 Gu Kuang 㘈ᴫ in the eighth century took up the format with a list of four supernatural gifts in his Song of the Gold Earring and Jade
——— 110
3.12525; 3.4b, written in the tenth month. Legge 1865, 107; following one interpretation of the name, Legge translates “the south of [mount] Yih”. 112 See Wei Jin Nanbei chao wenxue shi cankao ziliao, 2:498. 111
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Pendant ㊄Ⅰ₹. 113 Ouyang Xiu, in 1060, expanded beyond the mere listing of gifts to a series of complete sentences for each object and further modified the format by adding two lines praising the qualities of the items. 114 In 1084 and sometime before 1087, Huang Tingjian and Chao Buzhi ᤧਯ (1053–1110), respectively, went back to Bao Zhao’s model, opening poems with a list of four gifts made of rare and precious materials. 115 Fanghui’s 1086 poem resembles none of these poems in form and does not pretend to be a poem that accompanies actual gifts. I cannot rule out the possibility that his use of toponymical epithets is mock-serious, but such a reading would be difficult to reconcile with the rest of the poem. Does he take his cue from a lost original by Huikan’s original? Perhaps, but our experience with He Zhu’s other imitations will suggest that Fanghui might not feel obliged to reproduce such a distinctive hallmark. This brings us to the larger question is how Fanghui goes about “imitating” a poem—and why he thinks the results are original or interesting enough to take their place among his other works. Fortunately, we do have a poem by Huikan that has a similar theme. While on the surface it is quite unlike what Fanghui wrote, the relationships between the two works support a model of imitation that we shall propose below. 㕖ᤚήੱഥ ᗧ᰼⥄㡆⎐ ᾖ᱖ቅᓇ 㘑ㅍㅂ㖸 ⸒ᠿ㔅⛕✵ ૃᄼ৻⚴ℙ ำ⡞₡᧶ ⍮ᆆዃᔃ
*
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It’s not that there’s no one to help; the intent is to make the block sing by myself. Shone on by the moon, I draw my lonely shadow in; availing of the breeze, I send this far-reaching sound. Beating paired strands of boiled silk is like playing on a single string of the zither— I’ll have you hear this solitary beater and know your lady has an unswerving heart. 116
In both poems, the identity of the speaker is unclear in the first six lines (despite my insertion of pronouns into the translation of Huikan’s poem). Whether lines 090-1–6 in Fanghui’s poem are what the traveler/poet imagines as he listens to the sound or whether they (perhaps even the entire poem) are from the point of view of the woman or an omniscient observer is unclear, as is typical in early lyrics. The same ambiguity obtains in Huikan’s poem up until the direct address to “you”
——— 113
QTS, 265.2945. ᄺㅍේ↭ᓙ⼛᳗⥝, Ou-yang Hsiu quanji, 1:jushi ji.8.58. 115 For Chao’s poem, ⴕ〝㔍㞲ᄢᄦሶ㛁, see Jibei Chao xiansheng Jile ji (SBCK), 10.59a; Huang’s poem is ㅍ₺㇢, Shangu shichu, 2243:nei.1.17–19. See also Zhang Bingquan, Huang Shangu di jiaoyou ji zuopin, 85, for a comparison of the two. We do not know when this poem was written, but it was surely before 1087 (when Xianyu Shen [Zijun] died) and probably after the 1070s, when Chao joined the circle around Su Shi; see Zhang Bingquan, 83; Peter Bol, “Culture and the Way,” 202. 116 Ding Fubao, ed., Quan Han Sanguo Jin Nanbeichao shi, 3:1577. Huikan is referred to there as a Sengzheng ௯ᱜ (‘Sangha supervisor’), not as a ‘Dharma master.’ 114
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in line 7; only then can we retroactively ascribe the previous six lines to the female persona. Noting that the seventh line in both poems is where a second person is introduced, a person who is potentially the audience for the sound of the cloth-beater, we begin to awaken to the structural parallels between the two poems. A perfectly regulated couplet appears in each poem, each containing the breeze and moon in corresponding positions (Huikan’s second couplet, an A1 B1 sequence; and Fanghui’s third couplet, C2 D2). Then we have that intrguing introduction of the real or potential auditor at the end of the poems, an auditor whose point of view is kept ambiguous. An intriguing possibility—always with the caveat that we cannot know for sure that this is the poem Fanghui imitated—is that the woman in He Zhu’s poem merges with the woman in the predecessor poem so that the “sleepless traveler” overhears—and finds himself addressed by—a persona who is five hundred years old. Such inter-textual relationships would make Fanghui’s poem much more than an “imitation” as we would ordinarily conceive it. Let us consider the second imitation, written in the tenth month of 1086. The model poet is an important figure in Chinese literary history and the model poem is well known. The poem is after Ruan Ji, to whom Fanghui had begun alluding in the beginning of the year, and to whom he would allude several more times. 117 While it could be said that it is the sleepless-night theme, rather than the original’s style, that is He Zhu’s starting point, his title announces that he is imitating a specific poet: ᡆ㒍ޡᄛਛਇ⢻ኘ Imitating Infantry Commander Ruan’s ‘In the Night I Cannot Sleep’: 118 091
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ᄛਭਇᚑᄞ ᒛ᾽㐿ᦠ ᷡ㔮ዳ㔕‛ ૼᐸ㒰 ⦟ᤨᖧ㔍ౣ ਇ⥜૫ੱଟ ព㐳ᄥᕷ ᦸሶၔਯ㓈
The night grows long and dreams do not come, turning up the lamp, I open that letter from the past. Clear frost screens off the cloud-hue; moonlight has come to the perron in the court. That good time, alas, impossible to repeat, I am not together with that fair person. Closing the scroll, I give a long sigh, gazing toward you at the corner of the citywall.
We note immediately that the profound and somewhat mysterious gloom of the
———
117 See Poem 263, ⇐ናቯ Left in Parting from Kou Ding, 6.12564; 6.8b (written in Xuzhou); and also Mooring at Yongcheng Together with Bi Shao. . ., Poem 267. Both allusions use pairs of illustrious figures of the past as comparisons for contemporary individuals who stand in similar relationships, a common technique in the Song that has no direct bearing on imitating past poetic models. 118 3.12526; 3.5a; tenth month. The last word in the first line is ኘ ‘sleep’ in the Li Zhiding text (Li notes ‘dream’ as a variant). Both phrases, “sleep does not come” and “dreams do not come,” are well-attested. We might expect Fanghui to avoid the former as too close to Ruan’s original wording, but in the end both are clichés.
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third century poet has in He Zhu’s imitation a readily understood cause: separation from a woman. “Fair person” (jiaren, 091-6) is conventionally gender-specific; line 091-8 evokes a love poem from the Classic of Poetry (no. 42) wherein a girl is supposed by the speaker of the poem to be waiting at “the corner of the citywall.” Despite this essential difference, we have here an acknowledged appropriation of the structure of a famous Ruan Ji poem—rising in the night, picking up an object (a musical instrument in the original, a letter here), gazing sadly into the distance—for a private, personal expression. Two of Ruan Ji’s lines may have contributed to the second couplet. One is 㕍 㔕⭁೨ᐸ “Grey clouds hide the front court.” Qing (grey, dull in color) is similar in sound to qing (clear) in line 091-3, and both adjectives are followed by words written with the same ‘precipitation’ signific: 㔕 and 㔮. The courtyard of Ruan’s line also appears in Fanghui’s line 091-4. That line might take its reference to the perron (stairway or stepped terrace) of the courtyard from Ruan Ji’s line ㅂ㔕⬺ ၴ 㒰 “Swirling clouds shade the hall perron.” However, Fanghui’s phrase “courtyard perron” is quite common; if he had wanted to make his diction more obviously derivative of Ruan’s he would have used the rarer “hall perron” (which is not found, to my knowledge, in Tang or Song poetry). 119 Let us turn now to an imitation of a Tang poet who is little known today but was a friend of Han Yu, Meng Jiao, and especially Li Yi: Bao Rong 㞟ṁ (jinshi 809). Bao Rong’s laments over the hardships of the road and the rise and fall of political powers over the ages seem remarkably familiar to the reader of He Zhu’s work. Fanghui’s ᡆ㞟ṁኙኄᱎ In Imitation of Bao Rong’s ‘Cold Night Lament’ raises questions, however, about what was being imitated and how. Bao Rong’s ኙᄛี Cold Night Song presents itself as the obvious candidate for He Zhu’s model. 120 Since titles are not necessarily stable as poems are handed down, the fact that the title Fanghui cites uses a different word for ‘night’ and speaks of ‘song’ rather than ‘lament’ does not necessarily invalidate this supposition. Another possibility is that the poem being imitated was ascribed to Bao Rong then and to another poet now—multiple ascriptions are common in both Tang and Song poetry. There is only one title in the Complete Tang Poems that contains the words ‘cold night (xiao)’: ⹗ኙኄ Singing of a Cold Night, by Wen Tingyun ᄵᐸ╹ (812–70). This poem more closely resembles Fanghui’s poem: it is pentametrical, it also concerns the plight of a lonely woman (though Wen
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119 For the two Ruan Ji lines quoted in this paragraph, see ⹗ᙿ Poems Singing My Feelings, numbers 27 and 40. In the 1978 Shanghai guji edition of Ruan Ji ji 㒍☋㓸, these are on pp. 99 and 107, respectively. My translation of chu as “perron” (accent on the first syllable; not a common word, but very close in meaning) fits the context. Knechtges (Wen Xuan, 1:128, l. 253n) citing mid-Qing research identifying chu (also written ᶓ) as a “plank passageway,” translates it as “vestibule”; elsewhere (1:267, l. 300), he reverts to “staircase.” 120 Fanghui’s imitation is Poem 092, 3.12526; 3.5a; eleventh month, in the capital. Bao’s poem is at QTS, 15:486.5525–26.
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situates her among the remains of a luxurious party that has no equivalent in He Zhu’s more austere poem), and it features wild geese (though Wen uses the word yan, not hong) and clouds. 121 Perhaps Fanghui thought, correctly or not, that this poem was by Bao Rong. Nevertheless, I am unaware of any alternate ascription for Wen’s poem. We shall heuristically take Bao’s Cold Night Song (translated below) as Fanghui’s model and carry out the same kind of analysis we proposed for the Huikan poem. Before delving into the poems themselves, I’d like to acknowledge that this concept of imitation was suggested to me by an early twentieth century Japanese handbook for the would-be writer of Chinese-language poetry. The handbook, Saku shi kaitei 㓏᪽ (Steps to writing poetry), edited by Tanabe Shha ↰ㆻ᧻ပ and Kamimura Baiken ⾬ഒ, includes a long section titled Z go oyobi z ku ㅧ⺆ ㅧฏ (Making phrases and lines). 122 In this section, the authors counsel the novice against making up original expressions, advising instead that diction be sought in actual Chinese texts. They quote examples that Wang Shizhen ₺჻ (1634–1711) cited of Tang poets reworking the couplets of Six Dynasties poets and examples in which Wang himself either took the structure of a couplet from an earlier writer or developed a quatrain out of the diction of an earlier couplet. Then we are given two very interesting examples of how a beginner might rework an earlier poem. The first is fairly elementary in technique: a pentasyllabic line is expanded into a heptasyllabic line. The famous quatrain by Meng Haoran, ᤐ⌁ਇⷵᦇ㧘⯪⯪⡞ 㠽ޕᄛૼ㘑㔎⡪㧘⧎⪭⍮ᄙዋ “Dozing in spring, unaware that dawn has come, / everywhere I hear the crying birds. / All night there’s been the sound of wind and rain; / flowers have fallen–-who knows how many?” is expanded to ᤐ ⌁ਇⷵᦝㆊ㧘⡱ᓧ㑸㑸㢩⺆ޕᣇ⼂ᤓኄ㘑㔎ᗇ㧘☣ㆻ⯪⯪⪭⧎ᄙ “Dozing in spring, unaware that the fifth watch has passed, / I hear—’guanguan’—the orioles’ talk in harmony. / I know now last night the wind and rain were bad; / by the hedge, everywhere, many flowers have fallen.” Many of the changes we observe in the poem could reward analysis, but the fact that the original is so apparent behind the “practice composition” makes it less relevant to our present inquiry. It is the second example that attracts my attention as a parallel to what Fanghui might have done with Bao Rong’s poem. Here is the original, by a fairly obscure Tang poet named Gao Pian 㜞㚰: ⛵᮸
——— 121
QTS, 17:582.6751. The poem has sixteen lines as opposed to Fanghui’s eight lines. Sakushi kaitei 13a–16b. Harvard University’s Hollis Catalog shows four works by Baiken; for one of those, Tanabe is listed as co-editor and in another case, Kamimura is Romanized as Uemura. None of the works is by the title Sakushi kaitei. My copy (purchased in Japan around 1970) actually contains several works within the same covers, including a translation of Sikong Tu’s Ershisi shipin, and all this is bound together one other work edited by Baiken and Tanabe that has its own cover: Sakushi mond ╵ (Q and A on the writing of poetry). The publisher is Seikysha, as with two of the Harvard holdings, one of which is dated (1919). The book I own has no date of publication. 122
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㒶Ớᄐᣣ㐳㧘ᮝ⥑ୟᓇᳰႤޕ᳓᥏☄േᓸ㘑㧘৻᨞⭼⭲ṩ㒮㚅“ޕGreen trees’ shade is thick, the summer day is long; / pavilions and terraces, overturned reflections, enter the pond. / A crystal curtain stirs, a slight breeze rises— / one trellis of roses, and the whole court is fragrant.” 123 The “practice composition” switches the season to autumn and shortens the lines: ⧐⧐ᷡ㔺ਅ㧘ᣧⷵ⑺ ᶭⵍ⮧⚃ޕ㘑േ㧘৻ᳰಽᄖ㚅“ ޕThickly, thickly, clean dew descends; / rising early, I feel the chill of autumn. / Pink lotus are stirred by the breeze: / the whole pond is fragrant beyond its measure.” At first glance, this seems to have little in common with Gao Pian’s original. Then we begin to notice that each poem ends with fragrance and that line 3 in both has movement caused by a breeze. Furthermore, the character yi ৻ occurs in both fourth lines, but with a clever twist: in the “practice composition” it means ‘the whole,’ while in the same line of Gao’s poem that idea is expressed by another word, man. Yi means ‘a single’ in Gao’s line. (The point, if I read the line correctly, is that a single trellis of roses is enough to perfume the entire courtyard.) Next, we might notice that the opening lines of both poems indicate the season, though the “practice composition” only implies the autumn season through the conventional association of dew. That autumn is explicitly named in the second line may be due to the fact that the word “summer” appears in Gao’s poem. Even this preliminary analysis shows that there would be a considerable amount of intellectual pleasure in the mixture of inspiration and intellect that would be necessary to do this kind of imitation. I believe Fanghui went through a similar process with Bao Rong’s poem. Because Bao uses a very unusual rhyme scheme that divides the poem into units of five, four, and three lines, I shall mark the rhymes: *
㊄๋ᄛⴕⴕ gheing2a ች₹ṳ㆔ಽ meing3a 㔮㘤㒶
4
ᣏ㡨ㅅ㔐ㆪᨉ⡪ syeing3b ㆙ੱᱩᄞᣢਇᚑ dzyeing3b ⇐ኅᗂᄛᱚᔃ⊔ pat3a
———
Watchmen in the Nine Boulevards walk and walk by night; In the upper palace, a nephrite clepsydra drips, far away but clear. A frosty whirlwind rides on darkness, rises to scour the ground; vagabond geese confused by snow circle my pillow with sound. The faraway person’s dream of return is not realized. When [I?] stayed home we cherished the night and our joy blossomed:
123 ጊ੪ᄐᣣ, QTS, 18:598.6921. Sakushi kaitei reverses the characters for ‘rose’; I have followed QTS. In the “practice poem,” ⧐⧐ is misprinted ḸḸ; I have made the correction to conform with both the pronunciation indicated in the Japanese gloss (tan tan) and the fact that only ⧐⧐ is used as a reduplicative; ever since Ode 94 of the Classic of Poetry, it has been associated with dew.
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⟜᐀⇠ၴᷓ⊣ẖ kat4 8
⯗ᾍወ㈬ቴᐞੱ ₭Ἣ឴శੑਃ ngwat3a ⚦⣶ᬩୣ⛕┻㑆 kan2b ⊕⚪㐳ⴿ㑄㑄 ghan2b
12
⼼⼂⧰ኙ៊ᧇ㗷 ngan2a
Gauzy curtains and painted halls were deep and glittering; ‘mid eupatorium smoke we faced the brew— so many guests— and fire from beast[-shaped charcoal] lifted its light through the second and third months. Tiny waists and ladies from Chu, amid the strings and pipes: White ramie, long sleeves, songs dreamily lingering— How could they know the suffering and cold that waste the ruddy face [of youth]?
Since this poem has such a distinctive rhyme scheme, one would expect an imitation to follow suit; but He Zhu’s poem does not. Even if Fanghui were simply imitating Bao’s general style rather than this specific poem, one would think that he would have written something besides a pentametrical Ancient Verse in eight lines, which is Bao’s least favorite form—he leaves only two such poems. In truth, however, the very fact that Fanghui’s poem is formally unlike what Bao Rong would have written supports our adoption of the concept of imitation used by Wang Shizhen and Kamimura Baiken insofar as it was based on a change of line length. 092
4
8
ቅ➨ᾖᗜ⌁ Ṍ⍮ᄛਭ ᾥᾥ⪭ᐥ ⥼⥼㘑 ⟤ੱᖧ⸵ ከ⸒ਇ⋧ ᔃነධᓕ㡨 㔕ṽ㐳࿁㚂
A lone lamp shines on sorrowful sleep, now bright, now out: [she?] knows the night has lasted long. Glistening moonlight falls on the bed; soft sighing wind comes through the casement. How sad is the lovely one who awakens without her mate! My heart is entrusted to the southward forging goose that turns its head constantly by the Cloudy Han.
There are parallels between Fanghui’s In Imitation of Bao Rong’s ‘Cold Night Lament’ and Bao Rong’s Cold Night Song despite the differences in form. Both poems involve a shifting perspective. The first two lines of Bao’s poem describe the capital; the next three lines appear to shift to the wintry reality of a person who, we presume, is far away from the capital and may have been imagining that scene in the capital; the poem is given over next to memories in the mind of the faraway person that continue until he blurts out his bitter question, “How could they know the suffering and cold that waste the ruddy face?” 124 Fanghui’s first six lines
——— 124 “Faraway person” in Tang poems can mean either “the person who is far away from me here at home,” or “I, who am far away from home.”
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are somewhat more ambiguous. They seem to describe what the man who “entrusts his heart to the southward forging goose” in line 092-7 imagines his lover is experiencing on a sleepless night, but it is possible that it is only the third couplet that pictures the sadness of the “lovely one who awakens without her mate”; the lamp, the moonlight, and the wind could all be part of his sleepless night. In any case, both poems end with the perspective of a man in hardship. Fanghui’s last two lines are from the point of view of a man on the frontier—the goose to which the speaker entrusts his heart (the bird conventionally carries letters) is flying south. (It looks back forlornly as it crosses the Milky Way, the “Cloudy Han.”) This reminds us of the goose in Bao’s poem, encircling the pillow with sound. There are analogs of the sort we described in the Japanese poetry handbook. The water clock in Bao’s poem and the sputtering lamp in He Zhu’s poem both tell us that the night has grown long; furthermore, one is heard clearly (ming) while the other is bright (the same ming; 092-2); the sound of one and the light of the other are intermittent; and there is an implied perceiver to whom the clepsydra’s sound is distinct or who knows the night is long. Lines 3 and 4 in both poems concern things of the sky and of the bed. Fanghui’s In Imitation of Bao Rong’s ‘Cold Night Lament’ certainly goes beyond merely turning heptasyllabic lines into pentasyllabic lines. As with Wang Shizhen’s expansion of Tang couplets into a whole Quatrain, we might be discovering something analogous to what Burton Raffel calls “imitative translation.” The imitative translator produces a “hybrid form” that is “neither original poetry nor translation.” Practicing a “superior form of poetic cannibalism,” he writes a new poem that has a unique sort of value: because it is inspired by an original in another language, it enables him to expand his poetic range in ways that might otherwise be beyond his natural style. Fanghui’s imitations could conceivably be compared also to interpretive or appropriative translations (such as Ezra Pound practiced). 125 However, when imitation and original are in the same language, the goal of the imitation is clearly not to provide access to something the reader of the imitation cannot read for himself. Even demonstrating what the original poet could have or should have written (as Pound did with knowledge and genius in his appropriative translations from many languages) would be either a beginner’s exercise or a parody if no significant linguistic barriers were crossed. Song poets did revise predecessors, but they did so in witty play on particular lines or couplets (as in 075-1–2, “This day is worth cherishing; / this goblet—how can I refuse it?”; see p.
——— 125 See The Art of Translating Poetry, 115–28. Raffel has an intermediate category between interpretive and imitative translation: free translation. However, this category seems to exist to provide a classification for translators who are practicing imitative translation while pretending fidelity to the original.
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49) or on well-known parables (as in Fanghui’s observation that a tree useless for timber can still be cut for firewood; see Poem 041, p. 19). To revise an entire poem this way would result in a weak derivative work of interest to no one. Therefore, a poem that calls itself an “imitation” is one that can stand alone but acknowledges that it was inspired on some level by an earlier work.
1088: FANGHUI’S VERSION OF THE ZHANG LIANG SAGA In the winter of Yuanyou 2 (1087–88), Fanghui left the capital for the south to take up a new post. He hadn’t gotten far from the capital before ice on the Bian Canal halted his progress at Chenliu, where he had time to visit a shrine near his moorage. Curiously, the shrine was dedicated to the Marquis of Liu, Zhang Liang ᒛ⦟ (?–189 BCE), despite the fact that this revered historical figure was not at all associated with the place. The poem is worth translating because it gives us an opportunity to compare poems on the same Zhang Liang by Li Bo and Wang Anshi. Furthermore, the always daunting task of understanding a composition whose historical background is obscure to the modern Western reader is made somewhat easier by the availability in English of excellent supporting materials in the form of Zhang Liang’s Shiji biography and a summary of the important points in that biography by Ronald Egan, who also gives us a translation of Su Shi’s 1057 essay on Zhang Liang. 126 In the interest of brevity, I shall ask the reader to refer to those materials for a more integrated picture of Zhang’s life. He Zhu’s preface begins by commenting on the title of the poem, ⇐ଘᑙਅ Composed below the temple to the Marquis of Liu: 127 ᜲ⇐ଘᧄኽᴗਯ⇐ၔ㧘ฎሽὫޕ⟵ᾨਛ㧘ቡ㎌ᓢ㧘ཏਅ ᢎୃ❲㧘ਛ⍹ೞ㔃⎕ⵚ₈น⼂ޕቭᓄၔᣣ㧘᰼⾮৻൯൯ਇ ᥜޕৼව౻㧘ᴪᵡ᧲ਅ㧘㒖౽ᣈ㒸⇐⥱ޕᰴ㧘․ྥㆵ㧘 ᭙ᦚṽ⇐ଘᑙ⬄ޕ㇁ੱ⺋⻐ଘኽ㒸⇐ޕᤨᛴ∛ᱶ࿎㧘࿃㤨⑨ Ὣޕᄣ∔ᐔ㧘⾮ᱝ㧘㈬╈⻏㧘㜞ีထ೨㧘ఘኋᔒޕ I observe that [in 201 B.C.E.] the Marquis of Liu was enfeoffed in the walled town of Liu [45 km north of Xuzhou] in the fief of Pei. At present an ancient shrine still exists there. In the Yixi era [405–19] of the Jin Dynasty, the Lord of Song occupied Peng [Xuzhou] and sent down instructions to repair [the shrine]. 128 Although the
——— 126 See Burton Watson, Records of the Grand Historian: Han Dynasty I, 99–114, and Word, Image and Deed in the Life of Su Shi, 17–26 127 3.12527–28; 3.7a–8a. 128 In early 417, Liu Yu ഏ (363-422), founder of the (Liu) Song Dynasty but then nominally serving the Jin, left one of his sons to hold Pengcheng and marched westward. He stopped at the temple and decreed its repair. (Song shu, 1:2.41.) The decree was composed by Fu Liang ம੫ (374–426). (Wen xuan 36.) The notice on Fu Liang in Cao and Shen, Zhongguo wenxuejia da cidian, dates the event to 416, differing from the history and the Wen xuan title note.
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stone carvings in the shrine are smashed and cracked, one can still make them out. When I had a post in Peng City [1082–85], I wanted to write a poem but was harried and had no leisure to do so. In the winter of the dingmao year [1087] I followed the Luo down [from the capital] eastward and was held up by ice at Chenliu. 129 At the station there was a particularly holy shrine to a god; the placard said, “Temple of the Marquis of Liu of the Han.” It must be that the local people mistakenly thought the Marquis was enfoeffed at Chenliu. At the time, I was ill and in quite a bit of distress, and thus I silently made a prayer there. At the end of the year, my sickness had settled down. I composed this poem and called upon [the shrine] with my official cap and tabula to intone it loudly before the seat of the god. This was to satisfy my longstanding intention.
This is a very Confucian attitude toward spiritual phenomena: the existence or nonexistence of the deity is unimportant as long as one is afforded an opportunity to express appropriate reverence. For He Zhu, not only did the deity of the shrine appear to grant him relief from his illness; the spurious shrine also gave him the chance to write the poem he had not been able to write for the real shrine. Few modern readers will find the poem intelligible without frequent explanatory comments, so notes are interspersed with the translation rather than being relegated to the end. The name of the Hán feudal state annexed by the emerging Qin Dynasty and the name of the Hàn Dynasty that followed the Qin—and to whose founding Zhang contributed so much—are pronounced and written differently in Chinese; tone marks are used here to distinguish them. 099
4
ᢥᚑᔨ㖧∩ ⎕ขુᒝ⒌ ජ㊄ஜ჻ ᬁᣆጅゞႲ
Civil Accomplishment pondered Hán in pain; liquidated the estate to spy on Qin. With thousands in gold he recruited stalwart men; the cudgel broke in the dust of the attending cars.
Notes: 099-1/ Civil Accomplishment is Zhang Liang’s posthumous title. The destruction of Hán, which took place before he was old enough to assume office, robbed him of his opportunity to serve that state as chief minister, as his father and grandfather had. 099-2–3/ Zhang liquidated his property to recruit men who could help him kill the emperor of Qin. 099-4/ One assassination attempt with a heavy iron cudgel failed when the hurled instrument of death struck the wrong carriage.
——— 129 The Bian River was a canal constructed in 605 and connected to the Yellow River some distance to the west of the Song capital at Kaifeng. In 1079, however, the Bian was joined instead to the Luo River. This took place on the twenty-first day of the third month, but it must have been just a preliminary link, for a canal connecting the two and called the Clear Bian was completed only on the seventeenth of the sixth month (Sdaishi nempy, 143). The purpose of the project was to reduce the effect of the Yellow River’s seasonal fluctuations on the Bian’s flow, and indeed a lengthening of the shipping season was achieved. See Aoyama Sadao, T -S jidai no kts to chishi chizu no kenky, 241 and 255n. Presumably, silting of the canal was also reduced. In any case, our poet’s reference to the Bian as the ‘Luo’ was not unusual after 1079. For example, Su Shi speaks of Sizhou, where the Bian meets the Huai River, as the “tail of the Pure Luo” in the third line of ㅍ⒟৾ᒉ⍮ᴼᎺ (1088), SSSJ, 5:30.1591.
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᧲⼠ᆓฬ ᶋ᷐᷿ᴼự ᔋᕯᄺㆮጁ ᓧᦠ⠧ੱ
He left for the east, changing his name and surname; floated and roamed on the shores of the Huai and Si. Enduring an insult, he presented the shoe thrown away, and obtained a book—from what old man?
Notes: 099-5–6/ Zhang Liang hid east of Xuzhou after the iron cudgel missed its mark. 099-7–8/ This is the pivotal episode in Zhang’s life, according to Su Shi’s essay. The stranger (“what old man?”) had thrown his shoe down from a bridge and curtly ordered Zhang to fetch it, which he did, kneeling down to put the shoe back on the old man’s foot. After Zhang had thus proven his ability to forbear, to put up with petty insults and concentrate on achieving major goals, the old stranger gave him a supposedly ancient text titled The Grand Duke’s Art of War and told him they would meet again thirteen years later, only then the stranger would be in the form of a yellow stone. (The yellow stone will appear in the last line of Fanghui’s poem.) Su Shi’s point is that it was nothing about The Grand Duke’s Art of War that led to Zhang’s subsequent success; rather, it was his newfound ability to endure and reflect calmly on the situation and all its implications.
12
චᐕ㘑㔕ᦩ ⿒Ꮲ⾗⛫✈ 㡨㐷┵⚿ ৻⸒හ⸃⚗
For ten years, a conjunction of wind and clouds; the Red Emperor he aided in weaving the fabric of government. At Hongmen, calamity began to take shape, but with a single word he settled the quarrel.
Notes: 099-9/ “Wind and clouds” refers to perfect accord between ruler and minister. The phrase comes ultimately from the Classic of Changes. 130 099-10/ The Red Emperor is Liu Bang, founder of the Hàn Dynasty. “Weaving the fabric of government” also comes from the Classic of Changes. 131 099/11–12/ Hongmen was the site of a banquet at which the lieutenants of Xiang Yu, who saw in Liu Bang a threat to their enterprise to snatch the spoils of the fallen Qin empire, attempted to persuade their leader to kill his rival and then tried to do it themselves when Xiang Yu hesitated. While Liu Bang and the rest of his party slipped away, Zhang Liang remained behind and presented the gifts Liu had brought; he hardly “settled the quarrel,” but he did buy precious time for Liu. 132
16
⧷ᓄᣢว❙ ᬩ㗄ឭቅァ உ୫▰⺣ ⽁ఌήᓳ㒸
Once Ying and Peng joined in alliance; Xiang of Chu led an isolated army. Grand it was! The chat over borrowed chopsticks: the idiot Ritualist said no more.
——— 130 The phrase is in a Commentary on the Words of the Text under the hexagram Qian: “Clouds follow the dragon; wind follows the tiger. The sage bestirs himself, and all creatures look to him.” (Richard John Lynn, The Classic of Changes, 137.) The connection with rulers and ministers is not readily apparent, but this sense of the phrase “wind and clouds” was well established long before He Zhu’s time. Su Shi used the phrase earlier in 1087 in ᒛ⸒༑㔎, SSSJ, 5:28.1500; however, it is common enough that there is no reason to think Fanghui must have taken his inspiration from Su. 131 The Commentary on the Images for the third hexagram, Zhun (Birth Throes), Lynn, 153. Su Shi had used this phrase also, back in 1074 in a poem on Wang Mang (45 B.C.E. – 23 C.E.), SSSJ, 2:12.599. 132 The Hongmen banquet story is told in detail in Xiang Yu’s biography. See Records of the Grand Historian: Han Dynasty I, 28–33.
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Notes: 099-13–14/ Ying and Chu were both ancient realms, but in this context Ying refers to a man who took the place name as his surname. One of the three critical allies of the Hàn side, he is usually known as Qing Bu 㤱Ꮣ. 133 “Peng” refers to Peng Yue ᓄ, whose army inflicted the ultimate defeat on Xiang Yu’s isolated forces. In this flurry of proper nouns, Fanghui has cleverly made “Peng [and Qing Bu of] Ying” match “Xiang [of] Chu.” The grammatical difference is also the strategic difference: an alliance against an “isolated army.” 099-15–16/ The incident referred to is the origin of the phrase ‘borrowing chopsticks,’ which down to the present day means to plan a strategy on someone’s behalf. Liu Bang was badly advised by an “idiot Confucian” to restore the pre-Qin system of independent states as a way of securing peace. Zhang Liang entered while Liu was eating after this conversation; when Zhang heard of the plan, he said, “Allow me to borrow the chopsticks (d’iag ) from before to plot (d’ig ) it.” This is usually interpreted to mean Zhang wanted to borrow the chopsticks with which Liu Bang had just been using, perhaps to count off the points he was about to make. I suspect that Zhang was making a pun of some sort and announcing his intention to borrow the plan that had just been proposed and refute the points one by one, which is exactly what he does. 134
20
ಽᒪ㙄ౌዂ ૼ⧯ᓬ㦖㔕 ㉾ᕉଘශ ⻎㌟Ⱜ⽇⟲ ቯㇺᄤᐭ ផഞᱩᄺᤐ
He divided his territory to hook two generals, who came like the clouds attending a dragon. He dispelled rancor with the seal of “being made a marquis,” and made plans to erase the mob of snakes and pigs. He set the capital amid the storehouse of nature; declining credit, he gave it to Fengchun.
Notes: 099-17–18/ In 202 BCE, Liu Bang advanced to a place called Guling, where he was to have been joined by Peng Yue (line 099-13) and Han Xin 㖧ା. Xiang Yu’s forces were pressing him hard. It was Zhang Liang who pointed out to Liu that neither Peng nor Han had been rewarded with any territory. When this oversight was corrected, they did indeed come like “clouds following a dragon” 135 and Xiang Yu was defeated. 099-19/ This probably refers to Zhang Liang’s recommendation that Liu Bang select his least reliable follower (Yong Chi 㓾㥵) and give him a title and land; this would give assurance to all of his restive officers that they, too, would be rewarded sooner or later. Fanghui rather awkwardly fits in the phrase ‘make a marquis’ from the Classic of Poetry. 136 099-20/ Snakes and pigs represent cruel and avaricious men, the followers who were wondering
——— 133 See the commentary to Qing Bu’s biography in Takigawa, Shiki kaich ksh, 91.2. When Ying Bu was young, someone read his physiognomy and predicted that he would be punished and be a king. Qing means ‘tattoo,’ and Ying Bu changed his name to Qing after he was tattooed for some offense as a young adult. Qing and Ying rhymed (then and now, though their vowel sound has changed), which probably made the new name something of a punning joke. 134 See Chou Fa-kao, entries 6604 and 6687. None of reconstructed pronunciations presented there makes these exact homophones; in fact Karlgren, 45j, does not even have the final voiced stop for the archaic form of ‘chopstick’ that he has for ‘plan’ (1090m). However: 1) Karlgren 45n’, o’, and p’ open up the possibility of a final voiceless stop; 2) puns do not always involve exact homophones; and 3) in whatever dialect Zhang Liang spoke the two words could have been closer or identical. 135 This part of the story is found in Xiang Yu’s biography, Shi ji 1:7.331–32. See Watson, 44. The reference to clouds following a dragon recalls the Classic of Changes reference in line 099-9. 136 Ode no. 300, second and third stanzas; in both cases the phrase is followed by the place of which the person is to be made a lord
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what spoils (or betrayals) they could expect from Liu Bang. 099-21–22/ The Lord of Fengchun (Liu Jing ഏᢘ) had advocated making Chang’an the capital of the future dynasty, rather than Loyang to the east. It took Zhang Liang’s persuasion to move Liu Bang, though he did not take credit for his strategy. The selling point was Chang’an’s large and defendable agricultural hinterland—it was ‘a veritable storehouse created by nature,’ to use Watson’s wording.
At this point the focus shifts to court intrigues after the Hàn Dynasty was more or less established. The emperor was considering replacing the heir presumptive with the son of his favorite consort. He was dissuaded only by the admonition of four elderly and distinguished men who had hitherto remained aloof from the court and indifferent to the emperor’s admiration for them. Needless to say, Zhang Liang was responsible for bringing them to court. ྾⠧⪭๋ⴚ ᜀᏐㄓ㓩ᷬ ᧲ᦺ⠀⠢ዞ ᬩ⺞ᓤᖤㄆ
24
The Four Elders fell to my art, dusted off their caps and gave up reclusion: In the court to the east, the “wings” had arrived; the melody from Chu was bitter and sad in vain.
Notes: 099-25/ The banquet at which the presence of the Four Elders was revealed to Liu Bang was hosted by the heir presumptive in the quarters of his mother, Empress Lü. These quarters were called “the court of the east.” Liu himself compared the Elders to “wings” that would lift the heir presumptive high aloft. 099-26/ Liu sang a song as his favorite consort danced to a melody from Chu.
⯪⢻⇙ ⥌ำ⚳਼り ⼼⌎⪦֪ኽ ⥜⭤㈣ဋ ᷐㒶ᢌඡ▵ 㘈੦㕖๋୶
28
32
Coming out or staying in seclusion, all situations were covered; having made his lord, he begged for a private life. Would he have craved a 10,000 household fief? he was just on a par with Xiao of Cuo. Huaiyin fell to his ruin in later times— but he was not my kind.
Notes: 099-27/ “All situations were covered” in line 27 comes from the Changes, where it is applied to the mathematical operations that form the hexagrams; 137 however, it also applies to capable ministers, of whom Zhang Liang is certainly one. 099-29/ Xiao He ⭤ was another meritorious advisor to Liu Bang; he was enfeoffed as Marquis of Cuo. 138 099-30/ “Huaiyin” is Han Xin, a native and later marquis of that place. He was one of the two generals who came to Liu Bang’s aid like ‘clouds following a dragon’ (line 099-17), but later, feeling he could not depend on the government’s good will, he allied with the Xiongnu forces in northeast China. He was eventually killed by the Hàn forces.
Zhang Liang was inclined neither to accepting a fief within the realm of the new
——— 137
Lynn, 62. Watson, p 93, reads Cuo as Zan, but that is a different place (whose name is written with the same character!). See Shi ji huizhu kaozheng, 53.5 and Hanyu da cidian, s.v. Cuo. 138
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dynasty like Xiao He nor seeking security beyond its territory, as Han Xin had. His interest turned to attaining long life and weightlessness:
36
㗿⸰⿒᧻ሶ ㅖ㆔㔕ṽᵤ ᒝ㘵␜⚳ᱮ Ό㕆ᣇ⾠ ྥ㎾ᎹḆ 㙍Ỉᣁ᳃
He wished to call on the Master of Red Pine and roam freely to the ford of the Cloudy Han. Forced to eat, he manifested his expiration; his bright numen finally Ascended as Guest. His stern shrine secures the shaggy margin of the river; his lingering influence extends to the People.
Notes: 099-35/ It was only at the urging of Empress Lü after Liu Bang’s death that Zhang Liang once again included grains in his diet. This did not lead immediately to his death, as the line implies; the Shi ji has him living eight more years.
Lines 099-35 and 36 offer an interesting combination of Buddhist and Daoist terminology of a sort rarely seen in poetry. Eminent monks “manifest” their death—shi ji ␜ or shi mie ␜Ṍ; in Buddhism, of course, such matters are mere appearances. 139 To “ascend as a guest” is to die or to become a Daoist immortal; this phrase is barely used in Song poetry, and is only somewhat more common in Tang poetry. In any case, whether in these unusual phrases Fanghui is calling upon a popular tradition about Zhang Liang or simply going along with Zhang’s own aspirations, the lines prepare for the transformation of Zhang into a deity: his shrine “secures” the area and his lingering moral force continues to nourish the people of the land. This return to the present brings us to the poet himself. Fanghui begins to sound a little like Du Fu, lamenting his own ability to affect the tide of history as Zhang had. 40
44
ቴሶ⠧ዂ⥋ ૐ࿁౬ᓬ⤿ ᘚήᙥᤨ╷ ⢄⤅ⓨベ࿓ นᢎ࿕ή㘃 ᘣὼツ᳞િ ᧂᙥ⚳⪦ฎ ႓⍹₡⢻
A traveler—age is almost upon me— wanders aimlessly, superfluous in the lower ranks. Ashamed I have no strategies to fit the times; my innermost heart is gnarled in vain. I am not in his class as one who “can be taught”; I “seek to stretch myself out,” though, deeply moved, It’s unlikely that in the countless ages Yellow Stone alone could be dæmonic.
Notes:
——— 139 Neither these two phrases nor Fanghui’s expressions appear in Tang poetry or, to my knowledge, other Song poetry. Even references to how Vimalakrti “manifested” his illness are rare (though references to the sage abound in the Northern Song.) Two of Su Shi’s references to “manifesting illness” precede Fanghui’s poem on the shrine to Zhang Liang: ㆆ⻉⥡৻ᦚ㘶㉹ ⨥৾⋕ᚪᦠൕᏧო (1073) and ⿅႓ጊੱ (1082), SSSJ, 2:10.508 and 4:21.1118.
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099-44/ When Du Fu was unexpectedly summoned by the emperor, he wrote that he was ᱃ὼ᰼ ᳞િ “Suddenly about to seek to stretch myself out.” 140 099-46/Yellow Stone is the “old man” in line 099-8.
The penultimate couplet could refer to Zhang Liang: “He ‘could be taught,’ nonpareil, indeed; / deeply moved, he ‘sought to stretch himself right then.’” However, since the poet has obviously turned from Zhang’s story to his own situation in line 099-39, I think he is talking about himself, albeit with a brief reference to Zhang: “Of course, Zhang Liang is without peer as someone worthy to be instructed by Yellow Stone, but I, having been so moved at this shrine, shall try to move forward (after ‘contracting’ during my illness?).” The last couplet proclaims that, whatever powers are present at this shrine, they are as numinous/daemonic as Yellow Stone. This stands in marked contrast to Li Bo’s poem. 141 Li Bo’s Zhang Liang (called Zifang in the first line) is a heroic failure. *
4
8
12
ሶᚱᧂ⯥ཕ ⎕ขਇὑኅ ṋᶏᓧჾ჻ ᬁ⒌ඳᶉᴕ ႎ㖧㔃ਇᚑ ᄤ⊝ᝄേ ẛඞㆆਅ㇓ ⼼ᦚ㕖ᥓാ ᚒૼᯅ ᙿฎ᱄⧷㘑 ᗅ⏉ᵹ᳓ ᦦή႓⍹ ᱎᕷᱝੱ ⭤ᓢᴼⓨ
Before Zifang had given a tiger-roar, he liquidated the estate: no household would he have. through the lord of Canghai he got a stalwart man to cudgel Qin at Bolangsha. Avenging Hán did not succeed; yet Heaven and Earth were shaken. Hiding himself, he traveled to Lower Pei, yet who would say he hadn’t been wise and brave? I’ve come up on the brudge, to yearn for ancient times and honor his heroic air. I see only the dark green flowing water; never do I find Sir Yellow Stone. I heave a sigh that this man should be gone; forlorn, empty is the Si at Xu.
At the very “brudge” (the original story and this poem use the local dialect word for ‘bridge’) where Zhang met Sir Yellow Stone, Li Bo does not celebrate that critical encounter but instead sighs over the valiant spirit of an obscure man who has not yet found the one who will appreciate his valor. Clearly, he recognizes this situation as his own. To honor Zhang Liang’s heroic air is to partake of that same quality; to emphasize the absence of Zhang Liang is to imply that only Li Bo has
———
140 Line 26 of Du’s ᤐ⿅㖡Ꮐੑචੑ㖿 ; see Yoshikawa Kjir, To Ho, 1:8. The core phrase comes from the Changes: “The contraction of the measuring worm is done in order to try to stretch itself out.” Translation from Lynn, Classic of Changes, 81. But see also the note to line 038-10. 141 ⛫ਅ㇓ᯅᙿሶᚱ (746). Zhan Ying, Li Bo quanji jiaozhu huishi jiping, 6:20.3181–86; no Jitsunosuke, Ri Haku shika zenkai, 465–67.
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the character to imagine his presence. Fanghui’s approach is personal in a different way: he has established a relationship with whatever power resides in the shrine. A second difference is that Fanghui also celebrates the impact Zhang Liang had on history and the benefits he still brings to the populace as a deity. Finally, like Du Fu, he achieves stature in recognizing his own insignificance in a way that Li Bo would never do. In the late Tang, there was a flourishing of heptametrical quatrains on history, among them Hu Zeng’s ⢫ᦦ series “On History” ⹗ผ. Hu took up a type of historical poem that had been pioneered by Du Mu ᧡’ (803-53) in previous decades, poems that posed alternative scenarios to historical events. Thus, in his quatrain on the earthen bridge, Hu Zeng asks how Zhang Liang would have gotten The Grand Duke’s Art of War if he hadn’t offered the old man his shoe. Hu’s quatrain on Bolangsha, the place where Zhang tried to assassinate the emperor of Qin, asks the intriguing question of why no one besides Zhang tried to take revenge on behalf of the exterminated feudal houses. His poem on the banquet at Hongmen speculates that if Xiang Yu had followed his advisors’ counsel he never would have met his end being hunted down by Liu Bang’s armies. 142 Whether these types of questions are simply a ninth-century fad, perhaps prompted by an increased interest in history, or whether there are more personal reasons to imagine that things could be other than as they are, this is not a mode that we see in He Zhu. 143 Nor do we see anything like the poem Xie Zhan ⻢⍗ (383?–421) wrote when Liu Yu decreed the repair of the shrine in 417. 144 Xie uses a highly elevated diction that draws even more on the pre-Qin classics than does Fanghui’s poem; fewer phrases are taken from the Shi ji biography of Zhang Liang. He also sandwiches his praise of Zhang between an introductory section emphasizing the cruelty of the Qin Dynasty and a concluding section (half of the poem, really) on Liu Yu’s greatness. Celebrating a critical figure in the founding of the Han Dynasty was clearly an occasion for anticipating the rise of what we know as the Southern Courts Song Dynasty. Fanghui has no need for the elevated diction or the flattery of Xie Zhang’s poem. Closer to He Zhu’s poem in time are Wang Anshi’s two heptametrical poems titled Zhang Liang, one a regulated quatrain and the other an Ancient Style poem. 145 The quatrain focuses on Zhang’s equilibrium:
——— 142
QTS, 10:647.7422, 7428, and 7435. On this type of poem in Du Mu and other poets, see Yamauchi Haruo, “To Boku no eishishi ni tsuite.” 144 The poem is in Wen xuan, 21. 145 Linchuan xiansheng wenji, 32.356 and 4.111, respectively. The poems have been ascribed to 1070. See Li Deshen, Wang Anshi shiwen xinian, 208 and 209. 143
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*
ṽᬺሽୄઔਛ ⇐ଘ⇧ᱝޢᓬኈ ࿕㒺ᆎ⼏㖧ᓄ
4
ⶄᣇ㓾㥵ኽ
The enterprise of Hàn could be saved or perish in an instant; The Marquis of Liu faced up to it, ever at his ease. At Guling: he discussed territory for Han and Peng; on the covered walkway: he planned Yong Chi’s enfeoffment.
The events behind lines 3 and 4 were covered in Fanghui’s poem, although we did not mention that the conversation about enfoeffing Liu Bang’s old enemy Yong Chi took place on a covered walkway between the palace buildings in Loyang. The poetic interest in these lines probably lies in two words that are not translated, but whose effect I have tried to reflect by using colons: shi and fang, both meaning ‘just then.’ Wang Anshi seems to be both suggesting the quickness with which Zhang Liang responded to situations (represented here by the places where they were dealt with) and the quickness with which we move from one critical moment to the next in the course of the founding of the Han Dynasty. Wang Anshi’s other poem on Zhang Liang is much closer to Fanghui’s insofar as it catalogues salient events in Zhang’s life. One difference is that he adopts more of the perspective of Sima Qian: in his remarks at the end of the biography, Sima avers that it must have been Heaven who guided Zhang, not some supernatural power from the mysterious old man; and he also mentions his surprise at discovering Zhang’s face appeared quite feminine. The first two couplets are set off by rhyme. *
⇐ଘ⟤ᅢᅤᇚੱ ⋧㖧㖧⒌ ኅὑਥวჾ჻
4
Ḹᶉᴕਛᠯ⒌Ꮲ ๅりਅ㇓ਇ⍮ ⥞ᄢ⚝⢻ὑ ⚛ᦠ৻ᄤ⥜ਯ
8
Ⓝၔ႓⍹㕖๋Ꮷ ࿕㒺⸃㕷⡙ญ
The Marquis of Liu was lovely just like a lady; Five generations, they were ministers to Hán and Hán merged into Qin. He overturned his household to be a leader, assembling stalwart men. There in Bolangsha they struck at the emperor of Qin. He got away to Lower Pei, unknown to the world; Throughout the country a great dragnet— what could he accomplish? A document on silk, a single roll: Heaven gave it to him! The Yellow Stone at Gucheng is not my teacher. At Guling [Liu] took off his saddle, [but Zhang] just spoke the word.
ANCIENT VERSE
ข㗄⠀ᅤሪా ᓬૼ྾⊥ਇᓧ 12
ὑᚒ┙᫈ጊ⦼ ᵡ㓁⾘⺜ᚽ⢻⭯ ᡓᡓⓨ⛖ἠ⇼
73
and they caught Xiang Yu like a baby. Never before could the Four White-headed Ones be summoned to the court; for me they gave up in a thrice the asphodel of Mt. Shang. Loyang’s Jia Yi was a thin talent— with fuss and bustle he just made Jiang and Guan suspicious.
All of the events in Zhang Liang’s life that Wang Anshi mentions are also covered in He Zhu’s poem. (Note, too, that both poets use first-person pronouns as if they were placing themselves in Zhang’s position) First we have Qin’s absorption of Hán, then Zhang’s conversion of his patrimony into liquid assets to finance his revenge. The attempted assassination at Boliangsha is followed by a life in hiding until Zhang receives the supposedly magic book. Mt. Gucheng is where Zhang was to find the Yellow Stone years later. Guling is where Zhang advised Liu Bang, under siege by Xiang Yu, that he’d better grant some territory to Han Xin and Peng Yue if he expected them to rescue him. Liu did so, and Xiang’s final defeat followed quickly. 146 Finally, the four old men’s intervention in the succession crisis is mentioned. The last couplet finishes off the poem with a typical Song Dynasty rebuttal of received texts or traditions. 147 Jia Yi ⾘⺜ (201–169 BCE), a native of Loyang, amazed the world with his quick intelligence and rose to be an important advisor to the emperor, just as Zhang Liang had been. However, his proposals to revise countless details of ritual and government soon after Emperor Wen had come to the throne met with the opposition of the Marquis of Jiang (Zhou Bo ഺ) and Guan Ying ἠሪ, among others, and Jia found himself isolated and soon shipped off to the miasmic south. 148 Jia’s intelligence was “thin” without the political skills to go with it, and this gives Wang Anshi a clever foil for Zhang Liang. Whether he
——— 146 Wang Anshi’s use of “take off the saddle” is puzzling. Over a year before the siege at Guling, when he was surrounded at a place called Xiayi ਅ㇁ (not so far from Guling), Liu Bang had thrown his saddle on the ground and squatted on it, wondering to whom he could entrust eastern China since he was having so much trouble pacifying it. Zhang Liang’s advice at that time led to the happy result referred to in He Zhu’s lines 099-13 and 14 (“Once Ying and Peng joined in alliance,/ Xiang of Chu led an isolated army”). Although Sima Qian observes that this was the critical decision that led to Liu Bang’s triumph, there were many ups and downs before the war was won. I conclude that, because Peng Yue and Han Xin figure in Zhang Liang’s advice at both Xiayi and Guling, Wang Anshi has conflated the incidents. Adding to the confusion, “take off the saddle” (a phrase not used in Sima Qian’s account of the siege at Xiayi) is associated with a totally different narrative. Several decades later, Li Guang ᧘ᑝ had his small patrol take off their horses’ saddles when a much larger invading army caught them by surprise; as expected, the invaders left them alone, thinking Li Guang had a defending army nearby waiting in ambush. (Shi ji, 9:109.2868–69; Watson, 2:119). 147 See my “Can Latecomers Get There First,” 177–82. 148 Shi ji, 8:84.2492; Watson, 1:444-45.
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means to demonstrate that Zhang possessed a different kind of intelligence or to say that Jia Yi lacked the support of Heaven is an interesting question that would require more discussion of Wang than space allows. In contrast to all the alternative treatments of the Zhang Liang saga we have reviewed, Fanghui’s is more objective, operative, and private. It is exhaustively objective in retelling the story of Zhang Liang; it is operative insofar as the declamation of the story with so much detail can be explained, I suggest, by Fanghui’s desire to “install” Zhang Liang in a place that had hitherto carried his name only spuriously; and it is private because the poet has been touched by a power whose real identity will always be a mystery.
1088–89: THE SOUTH GARDENS AND TEMPLES After being freed from the ice at Chenliu, Fanghui continued down the Bian and up the Yangzi, first to Jinling ㊄㒺 (modern Nanjing) and then to the seat of Hezhou Ꮊ at Liyang ᖵ㓁. Liyang is across the Yangzi from Jinling and about fifty kilometers to the southwest (in Huainan West Circuit). There Fanghui was to spend three years roaming the region patrolling for bandits and smugglers. 149 His Ancient Style verses in Yuanyou 3 (1088–89) largely celebrate the temples and gardens he visited in the south, where he found many beautiful scenes to describe. One example will be quoted in its entirety; although written in the second month, before he reached the south, it is of interest because it records Fanghui’s stop at a garden Su Shi had visited twice before: first in 1079 a few days after Su had left Xuzhou for Huzhou, and again in 1085 as he passed by in the opposite direction after his Huangzhou exile. In his commemorative essay of 1079, Su Shi had hinted that the Zhang family who owned the garden had strategically placed it on the northern bank of the Bian so that they could mingle with the important people of the day who would pass by. It certainly is the case that the garden was popular with several literary figures. 150 Among them was Fanghui’s
——— 149 As Border Patrol Supervisor, Fanghui would have been subordinate to local officials, who in any case knew their territory best. He might have commanded one hundred local soldiers (tubing ), if Southern Song records for two other localities may be taken as indicative. See Sogabe Shizuo, S dai seikei shi no kenky, 156-57, 165, and 167. Note that the Liyang dianlu compiled by Chen Tinggui cites a Hezhou zhi to the effect that Fanghui was vice-prefect of Hezhou: 2:12.9a (599). I know of no corroboration for this. 150 See SSWJ, 2:11.368; SSSJ, 4:25.1323; and Su Shi nianpu, 1:18.432 and 2:24.666. Poems by other figures include Liu Ban ഏ (1023–89), 㕆ოᒛ᳁੪ੑ㚂, QSS, 11:609.7224–25 (pentametrical Regulated Verse); Liu Zhi ഏ (1030–97), ኋᎺ㕆ოᒛ᳁੪⥱ㆊᆎ⍮ਯ, QSS, 12:683.7981 (heptametrical Regulated Verse); Wang Anli ₺⑥ (1034–95), 㕆ო⯗⊠ᒛ᳁੪, QSS, 13:746.8688 (heptametrical Regulated Verse); and Huang Shang ႓ (1044–1130), 㕆ოㆆᒛ
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friend Kou Changzhao, who, like many other visitors, had left an inscription—in his case, three or four poems. Fanghui tells us in his preface that he added his own poem and sent a copy to Kou. The poem he wrote is titled ㆆ㕆ო⯗⊠ An Excursion to Eupatorium Bottoms Garden at Lingbi. 151 100
4
8
12
16
20
24
㓸ᤄ᭢㙃 ඵ▽ᓴ⯗㒤 ᷓᓣ⪦ᩣว ᷡᳰ⊖⇔㐿 㘧⬺▀⪝ ᡧ〙ፕᎀ ᷐ᶏ㞥⚃⮯ Ἃḕ⒖⠑ᩱ ጨ᧻⯟⬵ ᶏ⍹♟⩕⧡ ゞ㚍㆙㛳⡚ 㝼㠽ᔓህ⁵ ∛ቴୱ⥱ᬸ ᤐᱝᓨᓝ 㑃ᐕ‛ㆧ ೨ᣣᏇ⡞㔗 ⭯᥊ᧂ᤻㔐 ᧲㘑ᣂ⎕᪢ ਥੱ੩ᵡ⥟ ᧟ጁኈ෴ ᜰᚒ⦞㓈 ᣇῌ⑺⥑ ⌒ო㑆ሼ ㉎ა㗴᧲⪘ ⍴ฏ㗓ᷡ ᣧផ⢻⾮ᚽ Გൕ⊕⧱
———
From the Assembled Immortals he supported his parents, divined to build along a eupatorium esplanade. Deep-secluded path: 10,000 trunks come together; pure-limpid pond: 100 acres spread out in front. Soaring rafters shade the leaning lotus; 152 crowding ridgepoles arch over, perilously poised. From between the Huai and the sea the pink herbs were dug, from the Xiao and Xiang halcyon seedlings transplanted. The pines from Dai are bedecked with mistletoe and usnea; rocks from the sea are stuck with moss. wagons and horses put their din far away; birds and fishes put their suspicions aside. This ailing traveler is weary of boats and oars; in search of springtime, he lingers here. In a long year, the cycle of seasons is slow; a day ago we already heard thunder. Thin light has not yet dried the snow; eastern breezes have just burst the plum buds. The owner is an old friend from the capital; with staff and espadrille, he allows me to attend him. He points out for me a spot in the Gen corner: they are just now building an autumn moon terrace. My eyes make out some writing on the wall: drunken ink inscribes “Donglai.” Short lines, unique in their purity; he was recommended early for his poetic talents. With care I roll up white ramie
ቑ჻, QSS, 16:942.11069 (heptametrical Regulated Verse). Tao Jinsheng mentions these poems in his Bei Song Shizu, 81. 151 3.1104.12528; 3.8a. According to Huang Shang’s note to his own poem (see previous note), Eupatorium Bottoms is the name of “an odd stone.” 152 The lotus are not ‘leaning’ in the original, but Fanghui uses a rhyming bisyllabic name for the lotus and I concocted an alliterative phrase to translate it—having purloined ‘perilously poised’ from David Knechtges’ Wen xuan to translate the rhyming compound in the next line.
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ὑῺᜀႲ၎ ᓧ৻ᡣᚻ ᦝᨋਅ᧰ ㈬㑬ᐔᤄ ⼼ᓳ㘈ᒻ㜈 ⴕᓎᶐ⋧㆙ ੱ↢ାᖘ ⭯㊀࿁㚂 㐳ຯᱩૼ
and brush away the dust and grime for him. Would that we might hold hands once again and tip a cup in the grove. We’d drink until late and talk of times gone by, and why would we look back on our bodily forms? We go on our assignments, ever farther apart— human life is truly full of longing! Toward sundown I turn my head again, and sing in drawn-out tones “The Return.”
Notes: 100-1/ This may be a reference to the father of Zhang Shuo ᒛ⏋, Fanghui’s host, who was an official in the Academy for Assembling Worthies. 100-2/ “Divining [to choose a place] to build [a house]” is a conventional term. 100-7–10/ Exotic plants from all parts of China are found in the garden. “Pink Herbs” are herbaceous peonies, whose parts were used for medicine. Apparently the plants came from the Huai River drainage near the sea. The unspecified “halcyon seedlings” come from the area of modern Hunan, far to the southwest. 153 Dai is the 1,545-meter Mt. Tai in Shandong. Usnea is a hanging moss. ‘Mistletoe’ (mis)translates Ribes ambiguum, an epiphytic shrub that grows in the moss on trees. 100-11–12/ This couplet could be translated “Wagons and horses: [the garden] makes their din far away; / fishes and birds: [the garden] makes them forget their wariness [of people].” The topic of a poem is often grammatically present in a line even when it is not lexically present. 100-15-16/ This year will have a second twelfth month, and the cycle of seasons is “late” in a year with an intercalary month. Fanghui must mean, “The cycle of seasons is slow in this long year; and yet we already heard thunder yesterday.” 154
——— 153 On the evolution of the term XiaoXiang from adjective-proper noun to two proper nouns, see Alfreda Murck, Poetry and Painting in Song China: The Subtle Art of Dissent (Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2000), 7. 154 For an excellent discussion of intercalary months, see Cohen, Introduction to Research in Chinese Source Materials, 414–15. We can use the vernal equinox as an index for the seasonal cycle; although Fanghui does not record what day of the second month he visited the garden at Lingbi, it would have been close to the vernal equinox. The following table shows that the vernal equinox (we’ll use March 21 in the Gregorian calendar, ignoring slight variations) will be “late” in a year with an intercalary month. It is vital to remember that the progress of the seasons is based on the solar year, so the vernal equinox will move in the lunar calendar and remain more or less the same in the solar calendar.
Year Yuanfeng 4 Yuanfeng 5 Yuanfeng 6 Yuanfeng 7 Yuanfeng 8 Yuanyou 1 Yuanyou 2 Yuanyou 3
Intercalary? Yes/No N N Y (extra 6th month) N N Y (extra 2nd month) N Y (extra 12th month)
Vernal Equinox in Lunar Calendar 2/9 2/19 3/1 2/13 2/24 Intercalary 2/4 2/13 2/26
Generally, the difference between years with and without intercalary months is at least a week. Now,
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100-19/ I am unaware of any prior friendship between Zhang Shuo and He Zhu, so my translation of jiu is tentative. 100-21/ Gen, one of the sixty-four hexagrams, represents the direction northeast. 100-24/ Donglai, a region covering most of the Shandong peninsula, was the home district of Kou Changzhao, whose poems are inscribed on the wall. 100-32/ The term for bodily form used here is not unusual, appearing in the Zhuangzi and many later works, but it is worth noting in passing that Su Shi uses it only four times in dated poems—all in 1083–85. In two of these, bodily form is something one leaves behind with the aid of alcohol. 155 100-36/ The last line refers, of course, to Tao Yuanming’s composition by that name, hints at the expected resolution to retire from the world, and provides satisfying closure to the poem.
The unparalleled, “absolute purity” that Fanghui finds in the calligraphy of Kou Changzhao foreshadows the ‘purity’ he will experience in the hills and temples of the South. In the following month, when he writes Making an Excursion to the Terrace of Raining Blossoms in Jinling ㆆ㊄㒺㔎⧎⥑ (third month), 156 the word qing (pure, clear, clean) occurs twice in the last ten lines: 102
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12
↢ᴺၴ ᷡᄛ⾂ ࿁ၔㇳㆆ ᤐ⪇ῥ᥍㔐 㐳ᾍേᳯ㓤 ᓸ㔕ᴱጊ⢿ ㅪᯱㆧ࿁ ⊕㠽ዾṌ ᳯጊାᷡ㤀 ੱ‛ਭ㌟᱉
Master Sheng’s Dharma Hall remains, in the pure night a reservoir of bright moon; Turning around, I make out our excursion at the wall: blossoms of spring out-dazzle sunny snow. Long smoke stirs at River’s cove; faint clouds moor by the mountain’s flank. Continuous masts depart and slowly return; white birds repeatedly flare and vanish. river and mountain are truly pure and lovely; the people and things have long melted away.
Some readers may have noticed semantically parallel lines in these poems, lines in which words in one line of a couplet correlate with their counterparts in the other line in terms of parts of speech, function in the sentence, and so forth. Examples would include the lines translated as “Wagons and horses put their din far away; / birds and fishes put their suspicions aside” (100-11–12) and “Long smoke stirs at River’s cove; / faint clouds moor by the mountain’s flank” (102-9–10). Although metrically these couplets are unmistakably Ancient, regulated sequences can be
——— let us arbitrarily say that thunder is always heard first on the vernal equinox. Then thunder would be heard on the ninth in Yuanfeng 4, the nineteenth in Yuanfeng 5, on the thirteenth in Yuanfeng 7 and Yuanyou 2, and the twenty-sixth in Yuanyou 3, the year of this poem. Therefore, if Fanghui already heard thunder at Lingbi, it must have been quite a bit earlier than the twenty-sixth (or whenever it was that thunder could normally be expected), despite the fact that this is a long year. 155 ᓢᄢᱜ㑄イ (1084), and ᰴ㖿⢫ቢᄦ (1085), SSSJ, 4:24.1283 and 5:26.1402. 156 3.12528; 3.9a. We quote only a few of the twenty-six lines. The terrace was the ruins of the lecture hall of the Liang Dynasty monk Daosheng ↢, who is mentioned in line 102-5. Liu Yuxi included this place in his ㊄㒺㗴, QTS, 11:365.4118.
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found—lines 100-3–10 are (A4) B1 (C4) D1 (A4) (B2) (C1) (D4) (A4) D2 (A3) (B1). Only three of these eight lines are tonally regulated in themselves, but the fact that the ABCD sequence of line types is followed contributes to the way these poems evoke calm and lovely scenes. Likewise, insofar as semantic parallelism provides a way of organizing experience that is “natural” to anyone trained in a certain rhetorical and poetic tradition, it is most fitting in these poems. Strict and consistent tonal parallelism, on the other hand, would be an inappropriately prominent display of skill and control in a long poem whose circumstances of composition call for informal grace. Other aspects of this relaxed mode will emerge in our discussion of the following poem. This poem was written on the equivalent of 4 August 1088, when Fanghui was obliged to put up at a temple northeast of Wujiang ὖᳯ, which was itself northeast of Hezhou. There he composed ኋᴰጊᘢᣣኹ Staying Overnight at the Huiri Temple at Baoquan Mountain. 157 105
4
8
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ᣣਇㆍᕷ 㛧ゞᦝਯ᧲ ࿁く⫥ኒ ⸃ⴺㄫ㐳㘑 㘑ᓬ⸵ૼ ᖵᖵᳯධ㏹ 㗐㒙⯗⧯ ဠᐸᱜਛ ᵹⲬㅟᷓ┻ ⊕㠽ൃ㕍᧻ ⪇᾽⡕⠑▗ ℵ⧎ᠾᤐฌ Ⴚ⟤ᷡᄛ ᴫ㕖Ⴒ⇇ㅩ ᗂή৻ᮻ㈬ ᐘ⥜ਯሶห ⊔හධർ ᶋ↢ౌ㘧⬑
The sun has gone in; I’ve no leisure to rest: driving my chariot on, I keep going east. The winding path emerges from smothering density; loosening my sleeves, I welcome the breeze from afar. From whence does this breeze arrive? clear and distinct, a bell from South of the River. I halt my reins at this aranya: an empty courtyard, moon straight in the middle. Flowing fireflies pause in deep bamboo; white birds nest on green pines. A flowery lamp brightens the halcyon awning; jasper blossoms jut from a springtime thicket. An isolated realm makes this pure night lovely; not at all like meeting in the dusty world. A pity I don’t have a goblet of brew to be privileged to enjoy with this person. Tomorrow we set off—south and north; in a floating life, two flying tumbleweeds.
Notes: 105-13–18/ In these lines, Fanghui addresses a traveler he met by chance at the temple, as described in the headnote (not translated).
In this Ancient Verse, Fanghui uses what we might call “notional correlation.” In
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157 3.12529–30; 3.10b. The first eight lines are translated by Kako Riichir ട࿕ℂ৻㇢ in Ganlan 9:62.
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line 105-9, we are given fireflies against a bamboo grove in the night, a simple image of dots of light against the dark. Line 105-10 uses words that make the same implied contrast explicit: “white” and “green.” Then, the light-against-dark pattern is continued subtly, without color words, in the following couplet, where the lamp and blossoms are the brightest objects in the scene. One does not feel these four lines are repetitious, despite the fact that they all have the same grammatical organization, Adj.–N–V–Adj.–N, each with basically the same subject–verb–complement structure. Our acquiescence in the repeated pattern—or better, the fact that our awareness of the pattern is almost subliminal—can be explained partly by the avoidance of lexical parallelism. “Deep” and “green” are in different semantic categories, as are “flowery” and “jasper,” “lamp” and “blossoms,” etc. It is also because the verbs seem perfectly chosen to convey the charm of the scene. One of these verbs, dou “pause,” is a fairly common one in poetry—it is found in sixty-one Tang poems, at least forty-three Song poems, and sixty-four lyrics of the Tang and Song. (This discussion should be read keeping in mind that the Hanyu da cidian distinguishes eighteen meanings for the character dou, thirteen of which are illustrated by poetry citations. Our statistics cover more than one word sailing under the flag of a single character.) Despite the moderate popularity of the word, some of the poets we cite most often avoid the word altogether. Su Shi and Huang Tingjian never use it. The only major Northern Song poet who provides a close precedent for He Zhu is Mei Yaochen. He uses the verb in three pentametrical poems (and one heptametrical Ancient Verse), always as the middle syllable, the third character in its line; Fanghui is the one poet who uses dou exclusively as the middle syllable in a pentasyllabic line. It appears that Fanghui and Mei also use the word with a similar meaning. This is one more piece of evidence that suggests Mei Yaochen’s influence on our poet in matters of diction and theme. Let us turn to Fanghui’s actual uses of dou. About a half a year prior to Staying Overnight in Huiri Temple at Baoquan Mountain, still back in Chenliu, he wrote, ⥱ੱ 㛳ᦺ㥏㧘᱖トㅟ㐳ᨋ “The boatmen, startled by the morning drum, / take in the hawser and push through (dou) the long grove.” 158 One day after leaving the temple at Baoquan Mt., he wrote, Ḻㅟ⛵◉㧘ℙ╳⡪ᵂᵂ “A milky stream pushes through (dou) green bamboos; / zither and harp, the sound fresh and cool.” 159 On his way back to the capital from Liyang in early 1091, he will write “A
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158 ᧲⇰⥱ዬ㒖㔐ᙿነੑਃ⍮⥟ Living on a Boat and Blocked by Snow in the Eastern Capital Region, I Think of and Send This to Two or Three Acquaintances and Old Friends, second of three poems, Poem 097, 3.12527; 3.6b. 159 ᦇᐲ႓⪲Ꭸ᧲⼱ᙿነ㊄㒺₺ዬ჻㑄ฉ In the morning I cross the East Valley of Yellow Leaf Hause: Thinking of and sent to kulapati Wang Xiansou of Jinling, Poem 106, 3.12530; 3.11a. The musical bamboo Fanghui purports to see here is a small kind that is prized for making the reeds of mouth-organs and is mentioned in the rhapsody on that instrument by Pan Yue ẘጪ (247–300).
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faint moon pauses on (dou) the edge of the eaves.” (126-5; see below, p. 87.) And in 1096, he will say ᓸᶭㅟዊ⓽ “slight chill penetrates (dou) the tiny window.” (See Poem 223.) It is clear that this word named a phenomenon (or two, depending on its meaning) that Fanghui liked to capture in his poetry. While it is possible that Fanghui was inspired by Mei Yaochen to find ways of incorporating this word into his own language, we can also point to the Tang poet Meng Jiao. We noted on p. 29 that Fanghui’s poems on creatures followed the sequence of similar poems in the works of Meng, suggesting that he read this predecessor with particular detail. In light of that supposition, it seems significant that both poems in which Meng Jiao uses dou are pentametrical Ancient Verses, and dou is the third syllable in the line. 160 It would be difficult to argue that Fanghui spent 1087–96 consciously working variations on Meng Jiao’s use of dou, but that is not what we are saying. The suggestion is simply that in Meng Jiao or in Mei Yaochen Fanghui had seen a use of language—a word, in this case—that stuck in his mind and from time to time emerged as the perfect piece with which to complete a poem. With a musician, it could be a certain progression of chords; with a painter, it could be a certain curve or a color; with a poet, it will be a phrase or a word that some people use and some people don’t. The musician, artist, and poet may not be conscious of where their little motives originated, but the historian and critic can use these details to reconstruct what the process might have been. ⣶−ጊᶋਅ Written Below the Stpa at Sorewaist Hill, dated the tenth month of Yuanyou 3 (1088), exhibits an interesting progression of modes. Readers familiar with Su Shi’s earlier fondness for undercutting the names of the very studios for which he has been asked to write a poem will recognize something very similar in the opening four lines; the spirit of adventure and the impulse to explore that make Su Shi so appealing to us are present here, too. Fanghui is not out to create a humorous persona, however; the rest of the poem treats the hill and his own spiritual needs with more seriousness. 161 107
⨡ጊ㕖ፋᭂ
This hill is not a towering one,
——— See Knechtges, Wen Xuan, 3:302. The Wang Xiansou mentioned in the title is Wang Zhuo, who will come up again in our chapter on the Song. 160 See the first of ⍹᷀ච㚂, line 5, and ᷿㖡৾ᵢᐸᬺ, line 6, Meng Jiao ji jiaozhu, 4.155 and 162. Both poems are ascribed to 793. 161 3.12530; 3.11b. The hill was fifty li northwest of Liyang, according to Fanghui’s headnote. Chen Tinggui’s Liyang dianlu, 1:4.177, cites Fanghui’s headnote as its only source for the existence of the hill. It also notes that on the north side of Rufang Mountain, which is likewise fifty li northwest of Liyang (see 3.20b [166]), there is a small hill the locals call Yaotou ⣶㗡 or Yatouਚ㗡, which it speculates could be a corruption of Yaoteng, “Sorewaist.” Perhaps it is Fanghui who has misunderstood the name. In any case, we know Fanghui did go to Rufang Mountain in the tenth month of 1088—the same month as this poem—from his heptametrical Quatrain ⊓ᅤᣇጊ Climbing Rufang Mountain (Poem 554, 10.12606; shiyi.17b). Moreover, there is a Sixth Patriarch Pagoda/Stupa on Rufang Mountain that could be the stupa of our poet’s title.
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ฬਇタ⼆ ᛩ╷৻ᡕへ ᧂⷵ∛⣶⤀ ⫷᧻Ꮿኙᣣ 㒶ጀ│႑ ఫὼ႓㕙Ꮷ ☳➀⦡Ꮗฎ ᚒ⽽☨ ⏶᛬ะా ᓳ⪺㕷㚍൏ ∋╭╎ᬩ ᱝり⇣㊄⍹ ⢻௫ᐞኙᥤ ⨆⚿ᑢ ኃထᱝᚲ ᷡᔃᣣά⺍ ᐼᜐᧂૼ⧰ ᦸႲᓐੱ ⎸⎸⿷ᢞ
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and its name is not carried in maps and tables. Throwing down my whip, I clamber up at once, never feeling “sore in waist” or backbone. Watchet pines enwrapped in cold sun mingle their shade with the storied st[pa]. Austere, that master with fulvous visage: a pigmented mural, colors already ancient. I coveted five pecks of rice and bent like a stone chime to lads and infants. Then I took on the toil of saddle and horse, tiring the muscles, more grievous than caning and thrashing. This body is different from metal or stone; how many hot and cold seasons can it undergo? I’ll mow down floss reeds to make a round hut: for sitting in peace, this is the place. To cleanse my mind, daily I’ll burn incense and chant; perhaps I can uproot sufferings yet to come. I gaze afar to the dust: what manner of men are they? plodding drudges not worth considering.
Notes: 107-6/ The truncated transcription of stpa Fanghui uses here is rare, though Wang Anshi employed it in two poems before this. 107-9/ “Five pecks of rice” is borrowed from Tao Yuanming, although the phrase is so common as to hardly constitute an allusion. This is the official salary for which Tao refused to toady to an uncultured visiting inspector. 162 107-10/ The bent shape of stone chimes suggests the profile of a person obsequiously inclining the upper body. The phrase I interpret as “lads and [infants suckling] milk” seems to be original with He Zhu. He seems to have felt that some local officials with whom he dealt were arrogant youngsters, notwithstanding that Fanghui himself is only thirty-seven sui in 1088.
Su Shi would have built a much longer poem on his witty questioning of the name of the place, but Fanghui moves quickly to a visual description of the mountain and the stpa, followed by six lines on his toilsome career. Though he does not make an explicit comparison, surely we are to get the point that the career has afflicted more punishment on his body than “Sorewaist” Hill. The last six lines go a bit beyond the conventional rhetoric one expects from an official who visits a temple in his spare time. The references to a “round hut” and “sufferings yet to come” are highly unusual and as such enhance the impression that the sentiments expressed here are anything but perfunctory.
——— 162
Davis, 2:171.
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The last line’s dismissal of “plodding drudges” is incongruous in a Buddhist setting insofar as Mahayana Buddhism extols the bodhisattva ideal of saving all beings. Perhaps we can excuse it by citing the necessity of poetic closure. To break off his vision of a future retreat without giving the impression that he simply ran out of things to say, the poet looks down from the hill in a final gesture of rejecting the world he has left. In truth, both he and we know that he will have to give up this poetic fiction and rejoin the “plodding drudges” in the dusty world. Gazing at Jinling (modern Nanjing) from across the Yangzi River inspired more than one poet in Chinese history. When Lu You 㒽᷿ (1125–1210) passed by Sanshan (Three Mountains/Islands) Rock on the eleventh day of the seventh month in 1170, he would recall that both Xie Tiao ⻢ᦲ (464–499) and Li Bo had written poems on looking back at Jinling from there. 163 Fanghui does his gazing from Cypress Hill, twenty li northeast of Wujiang. There he writes ᦇ⊓ᨰሶጟ ࿁ᦸ㊄㒺ᙿነ㎠ጊᴰ④Ꮷ In the morning I climbed Cypress Hill and gazed back toward Jinling; Thinking of, and sent to, Chan Master Quan of Mount Zhong. 164 After indicating that he was on official business, Fanghui quickly moves into scenic description and fond recollections of his earlier time in Jinling with the monk to whom he is sending the poem. I am quite sure that this monk, whom Fanghui calls Chan Master Quan in the title to his poem, is Faquan ᴺᴰ (Dharma Fount). Faquan appears to have delighted in entertaining visiting poets. 165 108
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᥄ᓕᔨ₺ 㚣㚧ᾘዾป ᣢ㒬ፕᎀ㜞 ⒡ㄓฌ⭯ኒ ὖ‐㔨ኋ㔺 ⊕㠽ೋᣣ ᷡᎹ⥼⦉ㆧ ⛵ጯᶋ
Dawn expedition: mindful of the King’s Affairs; worn-out mount: a nuisance to curse it often. We’ve climbed to the loftiness of stony crags; we bade farewell to the closeness of thicket and tangle. Black oxen are soaked in last night’s dew; white birds shine in the newly risen sun. On the fresh River, locust skiffs move slowly; from the verdant bank a stpa emerges.
——— 163 See Lu’s Ru Shu ji, 2.33–34, and Chang and Smythe’s translation, 74–75. Lu states that the Rock is 50-odd li west of Jinling. Fanghui, in the preface to his poem on Sanshan, says it is 100 li southwest of the city. Both Lu and Fanghui consider Sanshan an essential part of the view from Phoenix Estrade in Jinling but note that it is barely visible “beyond the sky,” in Fanghui’s words. Perhaps it is for that reason that Fanghui overestimates the distance, while Lu You is surprised to see that it is not so far away. See Sanshan ਃጊ, Poem 119, 4.1a–1b; 4.12533 (1088, sixth month). 164 3.12530; 3.11b. 165 Guo Xiangzheng ㇳᱜ (1053–1113) presented a poem to Chan Master Quan when he stayed at Mt. Zhong. (Since Guo was a native of the area in which Fanghui was serving and spent much of his time there between official posts, it is impossible to date the poem with any precision.) See Guo xiangzheng ji, 6.120. Su Shi had an exchange of letters, poems, and gatha with Faquan in 1094 on his way to exile in the far south; see SSSJ, 6:37.2031, ৾ᣣᴱ㊄㒺㒖㘑ᓧ㎠ጊᴰᦠነ ὑ⻢, and Su Shi nianpu, 3:33.1159. Fanghui reports that Faquan had passed away several months before he revisited Jinling in 1096. See the headnote to Poem 516, ⿅௯৯ Presented to Monk Yan, 10.12599; Shiyi.7b.
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✰ᙿ⒉㒺ㆆ ᦦ✄⒌᷐ト ᦜ╥⊕ਅ㐷 ଏ㚅㊄☿⓸ ᓧ⡞྾ฏஈ ᅤᄺਃዤᓞ ៊⋉㕖ᚲ⍮ ᇕᇾⴕ⇙ ᐼᐞㅊ⠧㦘 ⭯ᔁ⪦৻ ዂㆫᨛᩮ ᓙ⼠ᧄධᯌ
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My thoughts meander back to the outing in Moling: once I tied my hawser on the Qin-Huai. I shuffled my shoes to the gate of Baixia, offered incense in the room of Golden Grain. that I could hear your gatha in four lines— it was like receiving the law on three-foot slips. Loss and gain are beyond my ken, and the marriages will soon be over. I hoped to pursue Old Pang; in the twilight of my days I get a lucky chance. I pledge to move the roots of my citrus tree and wait as they turn into the orange of the South.
Notes 108-9–10/ Moling and Qin-Huai. The name Moling was used at a specific time for a specific place in the Jinling vicinity but is also used as an alternative name for Jinling in general. The Qin-Huai is a river in the city that was for centuries the site of sumptuous mansions and places for dining and entertainment. 108-11–12/ Baixia and Golden Grain. Baixia, like Moling, is a specific place as well as a poetic term for Jinling. The “room of Golden Grain” should be a specific site, to match Qin-Huai in line 10. Vimalakrti was a Golden Grain Tathgata in a previous incarnation. 166 If the room of a Tathgata—a Buddha—is a temple, perhaps Fanghui means the one on Mount Zhong where Faquan lived. If the room of a Vimalakrti is the home of a lay Buddhist, that brings to mind the most famous such place on Mount Zhong, the home of Wang Anshi, converted into a temple in 1084. 108-13/ In 1094, Faquan will answer Su Shi’s questions with two gatha; this must have been his preferred mode of communication with the literati. 108-14/ The law on three-foot slips. In ancient times, laws were supposedly written on three-foot bamboo or wooden slips; the phrase Fanghui uses is conventional for ‘law’ or ‘an order.’ However, one wonders if he is punning on lü, which refers to both laws in the secular sense and the Buddhist vinaya, the rules that govern the conduct of monks. 108-16/ The marriages of the poet’s children must be taken care of before he can renounce the world. 108-17/ Old Pang. In 1087 Su Shi and Huang Tingjian used this appellation to allude to Pang Degong, a recluse who lived at the end of the Han. 167 Before and after this time, Su Shi also used ‘Old Pang’ to refer to Pang Wen 㦘⯄, a lay Buddhist in the Tang dynasty. 168 Fanghui probably has Pang Wen in mind, given the Buddhist context. 108-19–20/ Several pre-Qin texts mention the belief that the orange tree, transplanted to the north, metamorphoses into a different kind of orange, outwardly very similar but with a different taste. Bad
——— 166 Vimalakrti was a wealthy townsman who “manifested illness,” causing the Buddha to send a series of disciples and bodhisattvas to inquire after him. His intellect and techniques for leading beings toward enlightenment are in no way inferior to the Buddha himself. See the translations of his teachings by Robert Thurman and Burton Watson. 167 Su Shi’s poem is ⿅ᬢቃኈ, SSSJ, 5:28.1479. Huang’s is ሶ⍗ฏᅱ৻……, Huang Baohua, Huang Tingjian xuanji, 209–212. 168 See ᧘ᠭㆊ㜞ㇷᣉᄢᄦ⥜ቊ⩙⠧……, SSSJ, 3:19.962 (1079), line 30; ㅍ᧡ᱩ឴ Ꮊ, SSSJ, 5:28.1496 (1087), line 6; and ᳯ৻㚂, SSSJ, 6:38.2050 (1094), line 6.
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changes in a person’s character that might come with a change of environment were sometimes compared to this metamorphosis. Fanghui uses the metaphor in reverse to express his intention of settling in the South and becoming a better person thereby.
There are several points about this poem that might have given He Zhu satisfaction. He describes the journey in constructions that have the solid feel of parallelism without the fastidious craftsmanship we would expect in Regulated Verse. Lines 108-5 and 6 are semantically parallel, but not tonally so. Lines 108-7 and 8 are tonally regulated (they are B1 and A1 lines) and parallel, but of course they are in the reverse of a regulated AB sequence. The order is required by the rhyme, but if we mentally reverse lines 7 and 8 we realize how much more effective it is, with the slow-moving boats first and the upward thrust of the stpa second; note that the sequence of subdued and eye-catching images repeats the order of the dark oxen and brilliant birds in the previous couplet. Lines 108-9 and 11 allude generally to the poet’s visit to Jinling and lines 10 and 12 to specific places he visited within the locale. This X Y X1 Y1 structure is another example of formal structure and dynamic flow in balance. The rest of the poem conveys the expected admiration for the monk and yearning for the religious life, while noting that there are still obligations that tie one to the world. Most cleverly, the last couplet elegantly resolves these conflicts by reversing the direction in the old belief about transplanting a southern tree to the north: Fanghui the northerner will now improve himself just by taking up residence near Jinling and letting the environment (including, by implication, Faquan’s influence) work its magic.
TEN HISTORICAL SITES IN LIYANG In the fifth month of Yuanyou 4 (1089), Fanghui wrote a series of ten poems on sites in Liyang at the urging of the local magistrate; his title is ᖵ㓁ච⹗ Ten Songs on Liyang. 169 In nearly all cases I have seen where the title format shi yong ච⹗ (“ten poems on ”) is chosen, the poems are pentametrical octaves and the topic is either a place or a conventional theme. The tradition of decades of pentametrical poems on the sights of a place had a local exemplar of some interest. Across the Yangzi in Dangtu, ⇧Ⴃ, Li Bo had written ᆑቍච⹗ Ten Songs on Gushu. Su Shi is said to have debated the authenticity of Li’s poems with Guo Xiangzheng in 1084, a story that might have given the poems extra prominence in local lore, spurring the Liyang magistrate to do a set and ask He Zhu to join him. 170 (It appears that it was quite common for people to write poems in sets of
——— 169
Poems 109–18, 3.12530–32; 3.12a–14b. Su Shi accuses Guo of having written the poems himself; I wonder whether he feigned his rejection of Li Bo’s authorship in order to make a joke that alluded to the fact that Guo Xiangzheng 170
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ten and then challenge other poets to respond.) 171 Another set of ten poems is potentially even more relevant. In the same month, a former chief minister under from the deposed New Policies faction, Cai Que ⬰ ⏕, was moved from his exile in Anzhou Ꮊ (in modern Hubei) to Xinzhou ᣂ Ꮊ in the far south (in modern Guangdong). He would die there in Yuanyou 8 (1093). Cai Que was the victim of the blatant misinterpretation (by an official who had a personal grudge against him) of five poems in a set of ten Quatrains he had written on the sights of Anzhou, a misinterpretation that caused the young emperor’s mother to believe that Cai was maligning her person and her administration. 172 Fanghui’s Ten Songs on Liyang belong to a different genre from Cai Que’s poems, insofar as Cai’s poems are heptametrical Quatrains. 173 Nevertheless, is it mere coincidence that Fanghui and the magistrate (to whom he seems to have been quite close) 174 wrote their decade of poems just when Cai Que was being persecuted for his own decade? Could the existence of these ten poems be early evidence for Fanghui’s emerging sensitivity to standards of truth in public life? It is plausible that Cai Que’s persecution would have upset He Zhu. Two and a half years earlier, Fanghui had sent off the young Zhao Lingzhi ⇚ (1061–1124) to work under Cai Que at Chenzhou 㒸Ꮊ. Presumably, he did not consider Cai Que a villain then, for he offered no warnings. Moreover, on the eleventh of the fifth month of 1089, Su Shi himself had urged the empress to pardon Cai Que, albeit unsuccessfully. 175 We don’t know what day of the same month Fanghui wrote his poems, but he would have been in good company if he saw injustice in Cai’s persecution. We should note that it probably took some time for Fanghui to obtain his information. He researched Liyang lore in the county office; each of the poems has an explanatory note that cites the xian pu ❐⼆, which must be equivalent to a local gazetteer. Fanghui arranged his poems by the type and chronology of the lore connected with them, beginning his set with semi-legendary events of the
——— had been pronounced by some to be the reincarnation of Li Bo, owing to his wild poetic style. See Kong, Su Shi nianpu, 2:23.634–35; Chang and Smythe, 78–79; and Lu You, Ru Shu ji, 36. Lu You shares Su’s opinion; see Chang and Smythe, 92; Ru Shu ji, 47. 171 All of Mei Yaochen’s decades, including those designated by the phrase shi ti ච㗴 (ten topics), are written to harmonize with others. 172 See Xiao Qingwei, Bei Song xin-jiu dang zheng yu wenxue, 50–56 and “Chegai ting shian pingyi” for a discussion of Cai Que’s case. On the fact that women successfully ran the government of China at various times in the Song Dynasty, see John Chaffee, “The Rise and Regency of Empress Liu.” 173 Also, Cai Que’s title uses the phrase shi shou ච㚂 (“ten poems”) in the title instead of shiyong. Decades whose titles are marked by the phrase shi shou are usually pentametrical octaves, too, but competing forms appear more often than in shiyong sets. Huang Tingjian wrote nine of these; in the Tang, Yuan Zhen was the most enthusiastic poet in this form, producing seven sets. 174 See Poem 284, ⥜ᒛᖵ㓁ㅊᙿᓬ⑯ਯᮔ࿃⾮ I was Reminiscing with Zhang of Liyang about the Joy of the Pursuit and So Wrote This (1088), 7.12568; 7.1b. 175 Kong Fanli, Su Shi nianpu, 2:28.866–67.
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later Han and ending it with three places linked to Tang poets. The location of the sites around the county seat was irrelevant. His topics are, in order, 1) Liyang Lake, which had been a populated district until an emperor flooded it in the first century CE; 2) Chicken Pannier Mountain, where a woman saved from a flood by a god’s warning put down her chicken basket, which changed to stone; 3) a fort where Sun Quan had repulsed Cao Cao’s army in the third century; 4) a wall built to halt the advance of a southern kingdom in the fourth century; 5) a harbor associated with a naval assault on the Wu capital in the late third century; 6) a mountain from which an emperor had viewed his navy in the mid fifth century; 7) a rocky stretch of the Yangzi where Li Bo had lived as a hermit; 8) a temple where Zhang Ji had once lived and where his portrait could still be seen; 9) a fort that had been the same poet’s villa and where he and Meng Jiao had had a drink together; and 10) a medicinal hot springs that Liu Yuxi had mentioned.
1091–93: JINSHAN AND THE CAPITAL TEASING MI FU AT JINSHAN Fanghui stayed in Hezhou until his three-year tour of duty ended near the end of 1090, then started toward the capital at a measured pace. We pick up his story in the second month of the following year (Yuanyou 6, 1091), when he was a hundred-some kilometers downstream at Jinshan. Jinshan was then an island near Zhenjiang, where the Grand Canal joined the Yangzi from the south. Because of its location, its height, and the reputation of the temples upon it, the promontory figured often in the poems and diaries of travelers. 176 Of the three Ancient Verses Fanghui wrote there, we shall translate a typical one that is slightly atypical insofar as it involves an extraordinarily important cultural figure: Mi Fu. Fanghui and his friends invited the great calligrapher to join them at Jinshan. 177
——— 176 Jinshan is now joined to the southern bank of the Yangzi because of silting and/or land reclamation. 177 The friends, listed with their full names and native places in Poem 124, ㊄ጊㆆ Excursion to Jinshan, are Huang Cai ႓᧚, Huang Shu ႓ᮥ (Cai’s brother), Chen Yu 㒸ᑀ, and Zhang Siyong ᒛ ᕁ᳗. If we knew more about these people, we might be able to gauge the level of importance Mi Fu would place on an invitation to join them. Zhang Siyong could well be the person who administered Yongchun xian ᳗ᤐ❐ sometime between 1111 and 1117, Quzhou Ꮊ during Gaozong’s reign, and Quanzhou ᴰᎺ also in Gaozong’s reign, sometime in 1127–1131. (See Zhejiang tongzhi, 2:1115.2049b; Fujian tongzhi, 4:93.1833b and 1839a.) He is probably not the person by the same name from Jian’an who passed the jinshi examination in 1134 (Fujian tongzhi, 5:147.2579a), since Fanghui says “his” Zhang Siyong is a native of Wuying, and I doubt that an important post such as Quanzhou would be assigned to someone who had not received his jinshi, even in the chaotic first four years of the Southern Song. People by the names Huang Cai and Huang Shu appear in some gazetteers, but they lived much too late to be identified with He Zhu’s companions, even if in 1091 they were mere “boys,” as he refers to them in line 126-7.
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Mi Fu had been moving around southern China in minor posts and was now in the process of adopting Runzhou ẢᎺ (as Zhenjiang was then known) as his home. 178 We cannot know whether Mi Fu intentionally snubbed He Zhu and company, but his failure to show up is conspicuously commemorated in the title of Fanghui’s poem: ㊄ጊᄛ㓸☨ర┨ਇ⥋ Written upon assembling at night at Jinshan and inviting Mi Yuanzhang, who did not arrive. 179 Lines 126-11–14 treat Mi’s absence with lighthearted wit. 126
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⧐Ꮊᡏ⯗ ᷡᄛᩘဌ ඡ㘑㚧㘧ứ ᩇ⍹័㐳ᑈ ᓸㅟ◿㓙 ഥᚒ᾽ῒశ ႓┬ᄤਅᚽ ੰੰ㒸⥜┨ ⁅㑆㓥⺆ ᝤ⣻ዾၴ ᗂή⋄ਛ‛ นએᑧᬩ⁅ ⥝㑬ඨ ᶉቑጊ㒶₺ ⊔๋ዂㆶ ṋᵄḁ⋧ᦸ ᅤᣇᄖᓤ Ẃᾘቭୖ ┵Ὼᶭ⑺▵ ⊕㔕ૼᏢၢ
On a scented isle we pick eupatorium pendants; in the clear night roost in Precious Precincts. The evening wind drives flying billows; stone plinths wave a long gallery. A faint moon pauses on the edge of the eaves to augment the light of our lamps and candles. The Huang boys are world-class talents; fountains of elegance are Chen and Zhang. Our wild songs are laced with startling language; we hold our bellies and shake the halls with laughter. A pity we don’t have “the thing in the cup” that might entice the Madman of Chu: Impulse waning, he turned off halfway here, wantonly imitating Wang of Shanyin. Leaving tomorrow, I’ll be returning; across the watchet waves I’ll gaze from afar. What if you fellows from beyond the mundane recklessly took a post, imposing on the government granary? Proper is your cool autumn integrity; come from your white clouds to the clime of the god!
Notes 126-2/ Precious Precincts: refers here to the temples on Jinshan. 126-7/ Huang lads: two of He Zhu’s companions, the other two being mentioned in line 8. The term ‘Huang boys’ recalls a figure of the Later Han, Huang Xiang ႓㚅, who was a poor but bright child from Jiangxia. In the capital he was called “Without peer in all the world, the Huang boy of Jiangxia.” 180
——— 178 On Mi’s first period in Runzhou, see Peter Charles Sturman, Mi Fu: Style and the Art of Calligraphy in Northern Song China, 93–96. Mi Fu was already a noted figure; Su Shi had written a pair of poems in 1087 to follow his rhymes: ᰴ㖿☨㥁ੑ₺ᦠ〆የੑ㚂, SSSJ, 5:29.1536 and 38. He had also called on Mi in the sixth month of 1089 on his way to Hangzhou. See Kong Fanli, Su Shi nianpu, 2:28.882 179 126, 4.12535; 4.3b. 180 Hou Han shu 9:80A.2614. In 1087, Su Shi spoke of many talented young people in Shu whose
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126-9/ risky language: poems with difficult rhymes to follow. 126-11–12/ The ‘thing in the cup” is brew; perhaps the party was “dry” because it was held in a temple. The Madman of Chu image, associated with drinking, is particularly apt here because (actively ignoring his Central Asian heritage) “Mi Fu fancied himself a man of Chu.” 181 126-13–14/ In this couplet Fanghui pivots on a common allusion to explain Mi Fu’s absence. While he was living in Shanyin (in or near modern Shaoxing, Zhejiang), Wang Huizhi ₺ᔂਯ (?–388) decided to go see a friend on a snowy night and traveled all night by boat to the friend’s gate. Upon reaching the gate, he turned around and went home, explaining that he had gone on an impulse and, when the impulse was spent, he simply returned. 182 Fanghui was probably aware that Wang Huizhi’s father, Wang Xizhi, was the calligrapher Mi Fu studied most assiduously. 126-15/ I presume this line refers to the poet’s return to the capital. 183 126-17/ This line could mean, “Who’d have expected a fellow from beyond the mundane,” referring to He Zhu himself. 126-19/ The translation of this line and the next remain tentative. Yao He ᆖว (755?–855?) provides a possible precedent for He Zhu’s usage in ⇺ᚒ㕖Ᏹᕈ㧘┵ፁῺቅ┙ “Fatuous is my unordinary nature; / proper and forbidding is your solitary stance.” 184 126-20/ “Clime of the god/thearch” probably refers to the capital. The white clouds seem to have some connection with the Huang brothers. The following poem in the collection, written to say farewell to them across the River in Yangzhou, assures them that out of sight does not mean out of mind and, 㖸ㇷή㒢㧘ൕ⸰⊕㔕ఱ “There is no restriction on news by post; / assiduously [I’ll] ask after my White Cloud elder brother(s).” 185
The uncertainties of interpretation in the final four lines detract from our enjoyment of this poem somewhat, but it does have its pleasures, not the least of which are the teasing remarks about Mi Fu. Lines 126-3 and 4 offer some vivid diction: references to the wind “driving” water are rare enough in Tang and Song poetry; to speak of stone plinths “waving” a long covered walkway is unprecedented, as far as I can tell. The poem exuberantly praises the Fanghui’s companions, but it does not allow us to forget that he is on his way to the capital. Is it possible that he knew that about six months later he would be promoted from the military bureaucracy to the civil bureaucracy? Or was he merely anticipating something better than the assignment he had just completed?
——— reputation was equal to that of the Huang lad, evidently meaning Huang Xiang. 181 Quoting Sturman, Mi Fu, 91; on Mi’s family background, see 57–58. 182 Richard Mather, Shih-shuo hsin-yü, 2nd edition, 419, item 47. Su Shi alluded obliquely to this story in 1071 when he claimed to have tired of seeing the sights at Jinshan with a group and decided to take a boat to Jiaoshan, another island to the east (and visible from Jinshan, according to the previous poem in He Zhu’s collection). See line 9 of ⥄㊄ጊ⥱⥋ὶጊ, SSSJ, 2:7.308. 183 The verb ‘return’ could be appropriate for the capital because that was the place from which Fanghui had been dispatched on his latest assignment, or because six generations previously his family had been registered residents of Kaifeng. See Zhong Zhenzhen, Bei Song ciren He Zhu yanjiu, 4. 184 ነ⾘ፉᶉ, QTS, 15:497.5645. 185 ᑝ㒺ጊశኹᄛ㓸⇐႓᧚ખ Assembling in Shanguang Temple in Guangling by Night; Left in Farewell to the Huang Cai brothers, Poem 127, 4.12535; 4.4a; still the second month. Guangling commandery was administered from Yangzhou, so Fanghui had crossed the Yangzi.
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1091: WIT IN THE SU SHI MODE In the capital in the sixth month of Yuanyou 6 (1091), Fanghui wrote a poem that is strongly reminiscent of several poems by Su Shi. Those poems typically question the conventional rationale behind the name of someone’s studio, often through an extensive consideration of the phrase in question from several angles, a hallmark of Su’s intellect. A good example is Su Shi’s 1084 pentametrical Ancient Verse Xu Dazheng’s ‘Studio of Idleness’ ᓢᄢᱜ㑄イ. 186 Characteristically, Su presents several arguments to undercut whole idea of naming a room or building “Idleness.” A truly idle person immersed in an idle place does not know the flavor of his own idleness: “an eye does not see itself.” Thus, Su Shi himself cannot talk about “idleness” using “idle” language. In any case, Xu is a vigorous man with martial skills, a man who will be called upon for important deeds and for whom “idleness” is out of place. Another example is the poem Su wrote for the studio of Zhou Dunyi ᢕ㗜(1017-73) in 1089, which will come up again later in this chapter (p. 95n.). Though Fanghui’s poem presents what appears to be only a simplified version of Su Shi’s approach, its brevity belies its sophistication. The title is 㗴ፏൎኹήᔃ⪋ Inscribed on the No-Mind Hut at Chongsheng Temple. 187 128
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⠧㢬ଐᨋ ቅ㔕ኚጊ㑆 ⚿⨆┆㉾ሶ ⪺りᅤ⸵㑄 ᔃහႲ⚗ ήᔃ₈⍹㗎 ήᔃ૬⟎ ᣣቴૼㆶ
An old crane would take refuge beyond the forest; a lone cloud lodges among the hills. Tying floss reeds, the poor disciple of Buddha enlodges here in such leisure. To have a mind is to be confused like dust. to have no-mind is to be as unyielding as stone. To have or not to have the mind may both be put aside: the sun has set and visitors come and go.
Note: 128-3/ Floss-reeds are tied to a roof as thatch.
The play on the name of the monk’s hut comes in the second half of the poem and extends beyond a single couplet, as we would expect if Fanghui is adopting Su Shi’s technique. “Having a mind” is interpreted here as the beginning of one’s troubles, since it means having intentionality, desire, a general involvement with the unstable and unreal world that confuses the mind, like dust. “Having
——— 186 SSSJ, 4:24.1283. Kong Fanli, Su Shi nianpu, 2:23.656, places the poem in the eleventh month of 1084. Xu Dazheng was leaving Su Shi’s party after having accompanied him from Huangzhou to the Huai River, and this poem must have been for him to take with him to Jian’an ᑪ (in the interior of modern Fujian). According to an undated record by Qin Guan, that was the site of the Studio of Idleness; see Huaihai ji, juan 38. Chen Shidao’s heptametrical Regulated Verse for the Studio comes later, in 1090: Houshan shi zhu bu jian, 1:2.87–88. 187 4.12535; 4.4b.
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no-mind” is interpreted rather perversely as being insentient, like a stone. I say “perversely” because Fanghui knew very well that the state of no-mind is usually understood as a state of being unattached to things, thus interacting with the world with utter spontaneity. In truth, however, he is probably pointing out that to name a hut “No-Mind” and make it one’s goal is to lose the spontaneity that it should designate. As a concept rather than a state of mind, it is as unyielding as stone. Line 128-7, with its advice to put the whole dichotomy aside, actually represents the way to true no-mind. The visitors to the temple coming and going represent the phenomena of the world that one is to observe with calmness and—yes, with no-mind. We have no record of contact between He Zhu and Su Shi in 1091 or any other time, but we know that Su played a role in the successful promotion of He Zhu from the military to the civil side of the bureaucracy, a change apparently finalized in the eighth month of 1091. 188 They must have met at some point. It seems to me that a poem such as this one would have been among those works that impressed Su with the younger man’s intellect.
1093: THE PAST RECOVERED Around the time of his promotion, Fanghui wrote two poems that remind us of the gap between present and past. The first is 㗴ᄤᷡኹੱർイ Inscribed on the Northern Studio of Master An in the Tianqing Temple. 189 The temple is on the Bo family terrace, originally part of the extensive gardens built by the Filial Prince, Liu Wu ഏᱞ (in the second century B.C.E.). Fanghui observes that the songs of old are now stilled; only the myriad rooms of the Buddhist temple remain. 190 The loss of the past is even more acute inᗵᐸ Moved by a Jujube in the Courtyard. Taking as its theme the rapid passage of time, the poem points out that that people in the past deceived themselves in hoping for fame after death: even if the myriad bamboos of the Southern Mountains were covered with writing, they are faint and
——— 188 Zhong Zhenzhen, Bei Song ciren He Zhu yanjiu, 50. He was recommended by Su Shi, Li Qingchen, and Fan Bolu ⨄⊖⑊ (1030–94). 189 Poem 131, 4.12536; 4.5a. 190 On the Bo pagoda, see Du Benli et al., Dongjing menghua, 141–46. Fanghui adds a note to his poem telling us that the name ❥ (Be1) is to be pronounced ᇎ (be1), which would be Po in Mandarin, but Dongjing menghua (142) gives the pronunciation as Bo. Although Fanghui does not seize the opportunity to compete head-on with earlier Song poems about climbing the pagoda at the temple, much of what he describes implies a commanding view of the region, making one wonder if the studio he visited was not in fact part of the pagoda. Mei Yaochen’s amusing poem ⡞ሶ⟤ᰴᏧ ෘ⊓ᄤᷡኹႡ is in Mei Yaochen ji biannian jiaozhu, 1:14.260 and Chaves, 127. Su Shunqin’s ⯃⥮᱄ (1008–48) poem on the occasion alluded to by Mei is ⊓❥Ⴁ and is quoted in Dongjing menghua, 142. Both are ten-line pentametrical works, shorter than Fanghui’s and more focused on the topic.
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dark and one knows nothing in the end. 191 As with the broken steles in earlier poems, information is all too easily lost. Still in the capital in 1093 (there are no Ancient Verses for 1092), Fanghui finally reverses his position on the accessibility of the past. The pivotal poem is ᄐ ᄛ㔎᥍㆜ᙿ Dispelling my Feelings on a Summer Night after the Rain Clears. 192 This poem is quite informative. First, in its preface, Fanghui gives us details of his residence in the capital east of Wangchun Gate (the northern gate on the eastern side of the inner wall of the city), where he has been lying sick. Although it has been raining up until the end of the fifth month, his home is not humid and hot, cooled as it is by trees. In fact, his home is the former “lofty studio” of a man I tentatively identify as Gao Huaide 㜞ᙿᓾ (926–82), an important military hero of the previous century. 193 Secondly, he tells us in the poem that he has been reading extensively during his illness: 134 8
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Ꮐฝผ ᛲᒛଧ৻ㅢ ᓬ༺₯⑂㝼 ⡙ቑⴆᦠⳗ ထᝇฎੱ⺆ ቍ๋┆
Left and right I lay out charts and histories, open them out and suddenly have an insight. Having always laughed at “the otter arraying fish,” I find myself taking after insects nibbling books. Here I am dipping up the language of the ancients; Who says “My Way is at an end?”
Notes 134-9/ The “otter arraying fish” is a poet who surrounds himself with books as he digs for allusions and precedents to use. (Otters were said to set out the fish they caught around them on all sides as if offering them in sacrifice.) The phrase seems to have been applied in the Northern Song especially to Li Shangyin ᧘㓩 (812[?]–58). 194 134-12/ When Confucius was shown a unicorn that was captured and injured in a hunt, he exclaimed that his way was at an end and brought his chronicles of the state of Lu to an abrupt close. 195
——— 191 Poem 132, 4.12536; 4.5b. Su Shi wants to smear all the hyperbolic “bamboos of the South Mountains” with his writing in a poem written in the ninth month in Yingzhou: ᱏ㓁ቄ㤨એᴤᾍ აੑਣ㙂ฦ㐳ኸ⸵ᚪዊ, SSSJ, 6:34:1809. He Zhu’s poem is dated the seventh month, but it is placed between poems from the eighth and tenth months in his collection and it speaks of the autumn wind, leading me to suspect that the correct date would be the ninth month. This raises the possibility that Su Shi’s poem had been circulated back to the capital, where it was seen by Fanghui and stimulated his recollection of the phrase “bamboos of the South Mountains.” 192 4.12536–37; 4.6a. 193 Fanghui calls him ᮥᷳᶏ, Master Bohai of the Bureau of Military Affairs. Gao was given the title of Prince of Bohai, and this is the basis of my tentative identification. Gao’s biography in the Song shi, 25:250.8821–23, notes that he composed fine music, though he had a military man’s dislike of reading and social niceties. The location of the Wangchun Gate comes from Du Benli et al., Dongjing menghua, 81. 194 See a poem by Wen Tong ᢥห, the fifth of ᧘ၷ↭᷋ዬ㔈㗴৻චਃ㚂, imagining Li in his studio surrounded by rare books, and a characterization by Wu Jiong ဴܦof the way Li composed, both passages quoted in Liu Xuekai et al, Li Shangyin ziliao huibian 1:14 and 27, respectively. 195 There are conflicting interpretations of the significance of the unicorn’s capture: did it stimulate or end the chronicling activities of the Master? I have selected the theory (narrated in Shi ji, 6:47.1942) that fits best with He Zhu’s rejection of Confucius’ lament. Either way, Fanghui’s line
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The situation here is the opposite of what Fanghui discovered in the broken steles and silent peasants of earlier years. The past does speak; the Way of Confucius is not exhausted. The “charts and histories” can be read and they do produce insight. The difference, we may interject, is that Fanghui is living in the print culture that had largely replaced the manuscript culture of China over the course of the previous century; multiple printed copies of a text have a permanence that even texts on stone could never have, as Fanghui knew at the site of the city of Ye in 1078. While in 1078 the difference between ‘wise’ and ‘foolish’ was unknowable because of the obliteration of the inscriptions that preserved the judgments of history, in 1093 the poet knows enough about history to make an assertion about what wise and foolish people have in common. Our floating life is like a dream, he says; we are as mortal as objects in their transformations and in this respect, ᤄ ⾫ᗱห “now and before, wise and foolish are alike” (line 134-16). To say that wise and foolish people share a common aspect of their humanity is not unusual; what was startling was the 1078 observation that we cannot know the character of the people whose history is recorded in fragmented inscriptions. Perhaps Fanghui’s residency in the capital from 1091 to 1093 has given him time and occasion to take full advantage of the information revolution, or perhaps, as we shall argue later, he thinks that history is the only forum in which human judgment can make sense of the deteriorating political situation. He believes in history because history is so badly needed. In the ninth month of Yuanyou 8 (1093), Fanghui was about to set off for the area of modern Shaoxing, where the southern branch of his family (whose most illustrious member was He Zhizhang ⾐⍮┨, 659–744) had remained after his own branch had moved north in the turbulent mid-eighth century. Before leaving the capital, he sent a forty-line poem off to be inscribed on a pavilion. Presumably there had been some negotiations over the length of the composition that had been requested, since it was designed for display in a specific architectural setting with which the poet was certainly unfamiliar—the site was far to the northwest, 25 km to the east of Chengzhou, Qinfeng Circuit ⒌㘑〝ᚑᎺ (about 380 km west of modern Xi’an). Forty lines push just beyond the upper limits of what we might expect for an inscription in verse. Aside from its length, the poem is interesting for the view it gives of Du Fu. In 759, Du Fu had gone from Qinzhou ⒌Ꮊ straight south to Tonggu ห⼱ (also known as Chengzhou), from which he would soon continue on over the mountains into the Sichuan Basin. Tonggu had been relatively untouched by warfare
——— asserts the continuity that Confucius had doubted and the meaning of the unicorn’s appearance can be set aside for our purposes. As Carl Crow prudently observes, “The appearance of the chi lin was set down in the historical records of the day by Master Kung himself in a manner to indicate that he looked on it as an event of supreme importance. . . . An intelligent examination of the event can record this fact and go no farther.” (Master Kung: The Story of Confucius, 337.)
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and seemed to offer an escape from the hardship Du and his family had experienced hitherto. In his poem ⊔⒌Ꮊ Going Forth from Qinzhou, Du Fu had said that the reputation of Liting was even finer (geng jia ᦝཅ) than Tonggu, so the pavilion for which Fanghui was asked to provide the inscription was named “Pavilion of Fine Reputation.” Fanghui’s poem, ነ㗴ᩙ੪❐ฬཅ੪ Sent as an Inscription for the Pavilion of Fine Reputation in Liting, will be broken into sections in our translation: 196 135
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ዋ㒺ᤄㆱ ᐝᩘ㡅⊞Ꮉ ᆎ㗿₪ᚲ ⾮ᱝ⚳Ὣ ⌦ᓐ⟤ᨋ㣽 ⬺⤉⣸↰ 㓁ပ㙷ု⃨ 㒶⼱❥₹ᑧ 㐳㐨ൕ㉻㞥 㘩ᡕ㘧
Shaoling once sought a place of refuge and shrouded by the river at Fenghuang. For once he would seize his proper place, and he wrote a poem: here I shall dwell to the end. “I yearn for those foothills of lovely groves shading the richest, most fertile fields; Sunny slopes are rife with pendant pearls; shady valleys team with nephrite elongate. With thrust-hoe I’ll diligently grub them; ingesting them, I’ll catch up to the flying immortals.”
Notes: 135-1/ Shaoling: Du Fu. He took the name from a district south of Chang’an in which he lived for a time. 135-2/ There is a Fenghuang Mt. just east of Tonggu. Du Fu mentions thinking back on “Fenghuang Village” as he leaves the area on his way south through the mountains. 197 A stream there empties into a river that flows southward into the Sichuan Basin, and this must be Fanghui’s “river at Fenghuang.” 135-4/ Going Forth from Qinzhou implies Du Fu’s confidence that the Tonggu area will afford him a stable living. This and the following lines could be based on the general optimism of that poem. On the other hand, in mentioning that “he wrote a poem,” Fanghui may have in mind the twenty-line poem that a visitor to the area in the mid-ninth century said Du Fu had written as an inscription, though it was lost by then. 198 135-7/ The “pendant pearls” could be fruit or some kind of melon. In the thirteenth of twenty poems on Qinzhou, Du Fu imagined planting melons on a “sunny slope.” 199 135-8/ “Nephrite elongate” is one name for a yam the color of milky-white nephrite. 200
The next six lines counter Du Fu’s optimism. 135 12
⑃ᅓ ജ⠹ήༀᐕ
The miasma of war snatched away the air of harmony; strenuous plowing—but no good year.
——— 196 4.12537; 4.7a. Fanghui gives the name of the magistrate and the relative through which the request was sent, but I have been unable to find any mention of them in other sources. Du Fu’s poem: Du shi xiangzhu, 2:8.672–75. 197 ᧁ⊹Ꭸ, Du shi xiangzhu, 2:9.706–7. The road he takes runs “west of Liting.” 198 See Zhao Hong 㡨, ᩙ੪, QTS, 18:607.7010. 199 ⒌Ꮊ㔈ੑච㚂ਯචਃ, Du shi xiangzhu, 2:7.583. 200 See the commentary to Su Shi’s 㒻㈽ഏᩊ᪀, line 7; SSSJ, 7:40.2216.
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ᨋဢ㐿౽㔐 ᣨᶑᣆᐪᾍ ὖ৾┨ ▵ධㆫ
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Over forest and outland spread ice and snow; for a full ten days kitchen fires ceased. “Alas!” He sang seven songs and in the last season of the year moved southwest.
Notes: 135-14/ Du Fu wrote seven mournful songs in Tonggu. The seventh line of each starts, “Alas, this is the Nth song . . .” In the second song, the poet talks to his thrust-hoe, telling the tool he depends on it for digging up the yellow yams that will keep his family from starving—but the yams lie buried under snow. 201
The next ten lines turn to the magistrate (“His worship”), who has evidently rebuilt and enlarged the pavilion. 135
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Ⅳ႑ਭ⭢ᴎ ᣁ੪ฬዏொ ⨃ቿᘀᙿฎ ፏᱶㆊ೨ 㔂↖༿㐳☄ ਅኈචቴ▉ ሑ፲㓒ᤐฌ ᷡ┻㡆ᄐ 㘑㜞⥝ ኮਯᱞၔᒏ
His encircling walls are long overgrown and lost; but in this pavilion the name is still handed down. His worship condoled himself for ancient times, and added to the honor, much exceeding precedent. Carved purlins hold high long blinds; below, ten guests have room to feast. A gentle mountain haze beyond a springtime copse— unsullied bamboo giving voice to summer cicadas— There is a lofty gusto in breeze and moonlight, and it is told on strings of Wucheng.
Notes: 135-17/ The walls are probably around the old pavilion site where Du Fu’s poem had been inscribed. See the note to line 135-4. 135-26/ This line allusively praises the magistrate. Wucheng is a city where Confucius heard stringed music indicating the civilizing influence of the local magistrate. Fanghui and Su Zhe appear to be the only Song poets who picked up this allusion from the handful of earlier poets who used it. 202
The last fourteen lines interject the poet into the poem. Since the magistrate valued He Zhu’s literary talent enough to request the inscription, this interjection of the author is not inappropriate; it adds to the poem’s value by personalizing it. In line 135-27, Fanghui refers to himself as the Crazy Stranger. This is an instance of his identification with his ancestor He Zhizhang, who called himself “The Crazy Stranger from Siming.” Siming was a range of mountains along the eastern border of Tang Yuezhou; He Zhizhang was born in the western tip of the prefecture (across the Qiantang River from Hangzhou) and was granted lands near Mirror Lake, an ancient manmade body of water near the prefectural seat at the
———
ੇరਛኚዬห⼱❐৾㚂, Du shi xiangzhu, 2:8.693–701. For the allusion: Analects; Legge, 319. Su’s poem is ㅍமብ⪺ᱩⷯᓙⷹၔ㑳, Su Zhe ji, 1:9.160. 201 202
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city of Yuezhou, modern Shaoxing. Thus, his identification with the area was very strong, and Fanghui copied this identification. It seems to have been his lifelong ambition to return to the ancestral homeland. There is no evidence that he succeeded, though when he wrote this poem in the ninth month of 1093 he was about to leave the capital with the apparent intention of achieving this goal. 203 135 28
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⁅ቴጅᬾᑜ 㚣╭㔍ᒝ㖊 ᥜ㆙⊓ⷷ ૉຯ㟗ᶏ✬ ዏ⧰ญ⚥ ଐ⒘หᦖ⾫ 㙍㦁ነᐛႺ ᧂᣆ᧲ᒴ ᳯ᷐☨௺ᐔ ৻⦀ᖘὼ ᐘᱝᄣ⽃ᮔ ᶋ๋᷿ᚲଢ ⇣ᤨ⸰㒸〔 ᓳᓟੱᘿ
This Crazy Stranger is rickety and useless; my wasted muscles cannot be forced. What leisure have I to climb and view? I can only mumble the whale-ocean poem. I still suffer from the burden of eight mouths, distantly like that worthy of the past. My remaining years are given to the realm of illusion; I’ve not severed the karma that shuttles me east and west. In the Jiang-Huai the price of rice is steady; in a single barque I go at my leisure. Luckily this is a rich and happy year; to float and wander is where my fancy takes me. Another time I’ll visit the old traces— and make latecomers think of me.
Notes: 135-30/ The reference to the “whale-ocean composition” is unclear. It may refer to the fourth of a series of heptametrical quatrains by Du Fu that praise various writers. It reads, “In talents it should be hard to surpass these masters. / At the present time who is the hero above the crowd? / The writings of some may be comparable to a kingfisher atop the epidendrum. / None of them can harness the giant whale in the deep blue sea.” Apparently alluding to this poem, Du Mu compared Du Fu himself to a “whale stirring in the sea.” Thus, Fanghui may mean “I can only mumble Du Fu’s poems.” 204 135-31/ Fanghui had two sons and two daughters of whose existence we know. The poet, his mother, his wife, and the three children still at home (the oldest daughter was already married) add up to only six mouths to feed. “Eight mouths” may include children who died young and were
——— 203 See He Zhichang’s biography in the Jiu Tang shu, 190.5034, or the discussion in Zhong Zhenzhen, Bei Song ciren He Zhu yanjiu, 12–14; Zhong covers the family’s division on pp. 4 and 14–15. One poet who frequently refers to He Zhizhang as “The Crazy Stranger” is Li Bo. See for example, ㅍ⾐⾠ቴᱩ, Zhan Ying, Li Bo quanji, 5:14.2394–97; no Jitsunosuke, Ri Haku shika zenkai, 252–53. On Mirror Lake, see Mark Elvin, The Retreat of the Elephants, 144–45 and 154–55. It is difficult to say how much of Mirror Lake was left in Fanghui’s time. The name of Fanghui’s collection, Poetry Collection of the Left-over Elder of Lake Qing, is based on one of the three versions of the name of the lake. Even within Fanghui’s own works and others who discussed him, the name is inconsistent. See Zhong, op. cit., 42. 204 Du Fu’s poem is ᚪὑฏਯ྾, Du shi xiangzhu, 2:900; translation by Shirleen Wong, “The Quatrains of Tu Fu,” 153–54. Du Mu’s poem is 㔐᥍⸰ཉⴝᚲዬਃ㖿, Fanchuan shiji zhu, 2.184–85.
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omitted from his biographical records, a married child and his or her family, or household staff. 205 135-32/ The “worthy” is presumably Du Fu. In line 82 of a poem written in late 755, Du Fu mentions the “ten mouths” of his household, then discovers that one of his young sons has just died of hunger. 206 135-35/ The Jiang-Huai is the territory between the Yangzi and the Huai Rivers, not the Yue region. As we shall see, Fanghui ends up two months later in Hailing ᶏ㒺, which is in the Jiang-Huai. Does this line anticipate that change of plans?
There are intriguing incongruities in these closing lines, if we understand them correctly. On the one hand, Fanghui will spend his remaining years in “the realm of illusion,” which, the few times it is used in poetry, appears to mean the world of officialdom; he will also continue his galloping east and west. On the other, he aims to wander on the waterways of the south, confident that food is cheap. If the latter plan is meant as an escape from the hopelessness of the former situation, the relationship is not spelled out by any means. It is interesting to see the continuities with the past and the future in these lines. Here, too, there is a certain inconsistency. On the one hand, the poet’s anxiety for his family replicates Du Fu’s concern. On the other hand, in this time of peace and prosperity, Fanghui can postpone his visit to Liting for “another time,” and when he goes, it will be not to find a place of refuge but to create an event that future generations will look back on, as the people of the eleventh century look back on Du Fu’s time in Liting. In both respects, Fanghui makes links between himself and Du Fu that are quite startling insofar as they imply that he is in some measure commensurate to the great Tang master.
1094: NO-MIND IN HAILING As he progresses southeast in the ensuing weeks, Fanghui stops in Xuyi ⋣⋻ (or Sizhou ᴼᎺ), in Huainan East Circuit, where he visits an expert in pharmacopoeia, Yang Jie ᬢ. 207 While in Xuyi, Fanghui also sees Du Yu ᧡ヨ, a student of Su Shi and Chao Buzhi. Du is away but sends a poem asking He Zhu to wait for him to return, perhaps not wanting to slight Su Shi’s recent protégé. In the headnote to the poem he writes for Du, Fanghui claims conditions on the Yangzi are reported to be unfavorable for crossing; giving up his goal of going to the
——— 205 See Zhong Zhenzhen, Bei Song ciren He Zhu yanjiu, 32–33. Other poems refer to “ten mouths,” which may or may not be a rounded-up number. 206 ⥄੩ᄺవ❐⹗ᙿ⊖ሼ, Du shi xiangzhu, 1:4.272 (the poem begins on p. 264); tr., Stephen Owen, Anthology of Chinese Literature, 419 (the poem begins on p. 417). 207 Poem 136, ㆆ⋣⋻ධጊ␜ᬢ Touring South Mountain in Xuyi; Shown to Yang Jie, 4.12537, 4.7b. In 1100, Huang Tingjian will look back on his friendship with Yang and regret that he didn’t study medicine with him, but he does not specify when he knew Yang. See his ᬢሶᑪㅢ⺰㤭ᐨ, Huang Tingjian quanji, 3:bie.2.1486–87.
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Shanyin area, he has decided to make Hailing his destination. 208 Fanghui stayed in Hailing visiting relatives until late in 1094. Despite the fact that in other genres he maintained a moderate to high output, he produced no extant pentametrical Ancient Style verse in Hailing, except for one in the fifth month of Shaosheng 1 (1094). This poem, 㗴ᶏ㒺㐿రኹ㔕⪋ Inscribed on the Cloud-Roosting Hut at Kaiyuan Temple in Hailing, was written at the behest of Zhou Bin ㇇, prefect of the commandery, who also wrote an inscription. 209 Zhou was a senior official whom Su Shi mentions in the titles of twenty poems between 1073 and 1085. Fanghui’s poem skillfully blends the clouds that figure in the name of the hut with language that is specifically Buddhist or carries Buddhist overtones, all the while examining the topic from many angles in a manner worthy of Su Shi. 139
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ੱ₈ᶋ㔕 ⊔ᓐ₺ደጙ ᦺ⤏ኸว ὑ྾ᶏ㔪 ㅧ‛৻ᚪ⡊ ᶋ㔕ᧄήᔃ ᳗⻢ᙥ㦖ถ ᷓᩘ㔅᮸ᨋ ⫷↢ᾲᗎ ජタઔᘏ㒶 ⊣␜ᒏ ᷡ㘑ฎ ⺕⥞↞㔺㗉 ὼᶏầ㖸 ᡰ㔌∛ዬ჻ એή⚴ℙ
The Man of the Way is like the floating clouds issuing from the Aiguilles of Wangwu. In the morning, fingers of cloud are seen to join to become by nightfall soaking rains on all within the seas. It’s a game played by the Fashioner of Things; floating clouds are by nature without intention. Forever they decline summons from Yinglong; hidden they perch in the grove of the Paired Trees. The myriad people, in a land of heat and woe, for a thousand years have looked to their merciful shade. The gleaming moon manifests itself as half or new; the clear breeze knows neither “ancient” nor “present.” Someone is raising a Sweet Dew ode; booming is the sound of the ocean’s tide. Crippled, the sick kulapati harmonizes on his stringless qin.
Notes 139-2/ The Wangwu mountain range in southern Shanxi Province just north of the Yellow River was a landmark in ancient times and a Daoist center often mentioned in Tang literature. However, according to He Zhu’s headnote, Wangwu was also the name of the ninth-century monk who founded the temple on whose grounds the Cloud-Roosting Hut stood. 210 139-3–4/ This couplet is a variation on several texts that describe rain clouds spreading in the course of the day from Mount Tai in Shandong.
———
208 Poem 137, ㈽⋣⋻᧡ヨ, 4.12538; 4.8a. In the ninth month of the previous year, Su Shi had passed visited Du Yu on his way to the capital after a half-year tenure as prefect of Yangzhou. See Kong Fanli, Su Shi Nianpu, 3:31.1059. 209 4.12538; 4.9a. Zhou was prefect there from sometime in 1092 to sometime in 1094; see Li Zhiliang, Song Liang-Huai da jun shouchen yiti kao, 146 210 The Taizhou zhi lists a temple built by this individual in 825, but calls it Kaihua Dhyana Temple 㐿ൻ④ኹ (2:769).
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139-7/ Yinglong is a winged dragon with the power to bring rain. He appears in many early texts. 139-8/ Pairs of la trees (Shorea robusta) sheltered the Buddha when he entered into nirvana; here, they are a kenning for a place of meditation; a Buddhist temple or retreat. 139-13/ Sweet Dew: this is not only a common kenning for the benefits of good government but also translates amta and stands for the nourishing and healing effects of the Buddhist teachings. 139-14/ The sound of the tide is a metaphor for the powerful voice of the Buddha or a bodhisattva. This couplet may be referring to the sound of chanting coming from the temple. 139-15–16/ The “sick kulapati” recalls Vimalakrti, the important model of the lay Buddhist. Here it probably refers to Zhou Bin, who asked He Zhu to join him in writing poems on the Cloud-Roosting Hut. “Crippled” or “rickety” may not seem complimentary, but perhaps Zhou was indeed suffering from some handicap, and handicaps are often said (in literature, at least) to be the way to avoid being useful to, and used up by, others. The stringless qin is the ultimate in refinement, as Tao Yuanming knew and many poets remind us. 211
Given the name of the Cloud-Roosting Hut, it is no surprise that the first ten lines of the poem are a meditation on clouds. The first four lines compare a Man of the Way, which I take to be Wangwu, the founder of the temple, with the clouds that come from the mountain range by that same name, spreading over the world and bringing steady, moderate rains that succor the people. This theme is repeated, apparently, in lines 139-9–10, but the intervening lines introduce other ideas that require some explanation. “No-intention” or “no-mind” as an attribute of the enlightened person is not at new concept for us; we touched on the spontaneity of “no-mind” in discussing the 1091 poem Inscribed on the No-Mind Hut at Chongsheng Temple (pp. 89ff). Five of Su’s poems written up through 1091 link clouds to the concept of “no-mind” and assert, explicitly or implicitly, that this is an ideal frame of mind for humans. 212 Both no-mind and the Fashioner of Things mentioned by He Zhu in line 139-5 figure in a poem written by Su in nearby Sizhou in 1071. 213 Su confesses that he does not have the “no-mind” of an enlightened man, for he cares where he is going. More pertinent to He Zhu’s poem, he is skeptical that the Fashioner of Things could answer the prayers for a favorable wind on the waterway without changing the direction of the wind “a thousand times a day,” simply because the supplicants are trying to go in opposite directions. Fanghui borrows the notion that the Fashioner of Things is not responding to any human need when it spreads the clouds over the land. Nor do the clouds themselves have any particular intention, which seems to suggest that Chan Master Wangwu ended up staying in Hailing by chance. We must admit that Fanghui’s language suggests a
——— 211
See Tao’s biography in the Jin shu, 8:94.2463. ᢥ⥜นᵗᎹᳰੑච㚂ਯᦸ㔕㓸ᮝ (1076), SSSJ, 3:14.670; ⻢ੱᗆ㔕Ꮠᣇ╥ੑ㚂 ਯੑ(1082), SSSJ, 4:21.1110; ⱍ௯ᠲᕁᱩᦠ㦖ਐሶო (1082), SSSJ, 4:21.1137; ㅪᣣ⥜₺ᔘ₹ ᒛో⠃᷿ḓ……(1090); SSSJ, 5:32.1681; and ㅍዊᧄᴺᏧᴺ㔕 (1091), SSSJ, 6:33.1757. See also the later poem ⿅ᦅ⑲ (1096), SSSJ, 7:40.2190 213 ᴼᎺ௯ૄႡ, SSSJ, 1:6.289. See Ronald Egan, Word, Image, and Deed in the Life of Su Shi, 179–80. 212
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darker side of the Fashioner of Things by reminding us of less cheerful poems by Su Shi. The complaint that the Fashioner of Things is wont to play games, with all the nuances that notion evokes, is a familiar one from Su Shi’s poems of 1082, 1084, 1086, and 1088. 214 The clouds in our poem, however, do not seem to suffer from the Fashioner’s whims. In fact, once they reach the temple in Hailing (it is implied), they stay there, ignoring the summons of the rain dragon and lingering above the hut on the temple grounds. This reminds us of He Zhu’s 1091 line (128-6), “to have no-mind is to be as unyielding as stone.” We can also cite Su Shi’s first Hundred Pace Rapids poem from Xuzhou, 1078: ૉᙥᱝᔃήᚲ㧘ㅧ ‛㔃㚫ᅤ๋“ޕBut it should be that this mind has no abiding; / though the Fashioner of Things may push, what can it do to me?” 215 These precedents give us the key to the reasoning behind lines 139-5–8. The idea is that if the clouds are in a sense selfless, they cannot be pressured to answer the dragon’s summons. Lines 139-11 and 12 in He Zhu’s poem are rich in meaning and, again, somewhat ambiguous. One interpretation would stress that the moon only appears to us as a half moon and a new moon, but it is still the same moon. Thus, the moon is unchanging, as is the clear breeze, and it is only an illusion to think that the passage of time makes any difference in them. Appropriately for the setting, there is a Buddhist sense in the use of the verb shi (manifest); as noted above (see p. 69). By stressing the illusory nature of change, this reading might imply that the vicissitudes of life are not to be taken to heart. A slightly modified reading of the couplet would be that although the phases of the moon tell us that time is (apparently) passing, the clear breeze or the unsullied atmosphere of this place remains unchanged. This keeps the focus of the poem on the timeless and holy atmosphere of the temple area where praises of the Sweet Dew of the Buddhist teachings can be heard right now. Perhaps we could see this as another solution to the problem of the unknowable past: the passage of time is illusory, at least on the level of the “clear breeze” and the stringless qin, whose music has no ending point.
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214 ᦡᣢᓳᰴ㖿, SSSJ, 4:21.1133, line 1—note that there is a variant version that uses the same xi (‘game’) character as He Zhu and the three following poems use; ⪲ứ⥌㆙ੑ⹖ᓳ ᰴ㖿ੑ㚂ਯ৻, SSSJ, 4:23.1240, line 6; ੱஇጊ, SSSJ, 5:27.1435, line 5; and ᰴ㖿₺㇢ሶ┙ 㘑㔎ᗵ, SSSJ, 5:30.1594, line 20. 215 ⊖ޡᵩੑ㚂ਯ৻, SSSJ, 3:17.891–92.
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1096: HANYANG THE INSCRIPTION FOR ZHOU DUNYI’S THATCHED HALL Apparently He Zhu’s elevation to the civil side of the government was not enough to keep him from being assigned to another mint. When he meets and becomes friends with the sons of the pioneering Neo-Confucian thinker Zhou Dunyi in the fifth month of Shaosheng 3 (1096), he is on the north side of the Yangzi in the military prefecture of Hanyang ṽ㓁 after a journey of six months or so down from the capital. He will fall ill and stay in Hanyang for three months before crossing the river to his post, which is the Baoquan copper coin mint at Ezhou ㇾ Ꮊᴰ⋙. 216 He Zhu’s interest in Ancient Verse revives considerably in 1096, a year from which we have seven works plus a set of ten twelve-line poems, making a total of seventeen poems. In the eleventh month, Fanghui will complete his first poetry collection, making him rather more aware of the necessity of taking care not to lose his manuscripts, one would suppose. If we take He Zhu at his word, one 1096 Ancient Verse is a restoration of a poem written in the seventies or eighties and rediscovered in tattered and incomplete form as the poet was drying papers used to wrap medicinal herbs! Let us begin with the poem for Zhou Dunyi’s “thatched hall,” which was some distance to the southeast, on a tributary to the Yangzi below Lotus Peak in the Mount Lu massif. 217 Su Shi and Huang Tingjian had also supplied poems at the request of Zhou Dunyi’s sons. Su Shi’s poem is ascribed to 1089, when Zhou Tao ứ, the second son, was an assistant to the fiscal commissioner in Hangzhou, where Su was Prefect. 218 Huang’s poem is plausibly dated to 1081, when he and the first son, Zhou Shou ᄈ, served in Taihe ᄥ, in Jiangnan West Circuit. 219
——— 216 The Baoquan mint, only two or three li east of Ezhou, had been established in 977, shut down at some point, and revived in 1075. See Liu Sen, Bei Song tongqian jian shulue, 7, 9, 12, 13. For a concise summary of Fanghui’s sightseeing in Hanyang in the fifth month, presumably before he fell ill (though he had not been well on the journey at the end of the previous year), see Wang Mengyin, “He Zhu nianpu,” 99. The fact that Hanyang was a commandery and not under the jurisdiction of Ezhou at this time (though it had been from 1071 to 1086; see Zhong Zhenzhen, Bei Song ci ren He Zhu yanjiu, 62–63) is important for understanding that Fanghui was waiting for his health to improve before entering Ezhou and reporting for duty. 217 The site was washed away by a flood in 1760, and its location has been something of a mystery ever since. Zhong Mingli provides evidence for the location in his article “Lianxi kaoxi.” 218 The poem is ⨃వ↢ộḺ, SSSJ, 5:31.1666; see Su Shi niampu, 2: 28.886 and 901–2. See also Matsukawa Kenji’s article on the poem. 219 Hu Sheng, Huang Tingjian nianpu xinbian, 114–15, accepts the 1081 date given in the Shangu shizhu edition for Huang’s Lian Stream ộḺ: CSJC, 2252:BieA.1. It is possible that Huang’s poem postdate’s He Zhu’s. The Huang Tingjian quanji 1:308 supplies the date of Chongning 1 (1102) under the title. The fact that the Zhou brothers had some kind of base in Hanyang is overlooked by all discussants. Admittedly, He Zhu’s 1096 Ancient Verse to Zhou Shou (Poem 141, ㅍᄈర⠃ Seeing off Zhou Shou, Yuanweng, going up the western route, 4.12539; 4.10a.) indicates that Zhou is leaving
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Huang’s poem uses an archaic format of varying line length and many kinds of line structures. The majority of lines have the old Chu ci particle xi in them, either in the middle or at the end. Both the preface and the poem borrow phrases liberally from the Confucian classics. Su Shi and Fanghui opt for pentametrical Ancient Verse. Fanghui is somewhat more consciously “ancient” in repeating a word (‘stream’) four times in the first eight lines, while Su Shi repeats the same word more subtly only in lines 5, 12, and 16 in a sixteen-line poem. Because of its length and allusiveness, we shall treat Fanghui’s ነ㗴Ẩ㓁᳁ộḺ⨲ၴ Sent as an Inscription for the Thatched Hall of Mr. Zhou of Xunyang 220 as we did his poem on Zhang Liang and intersperse comments, making comparisons with the poems by Su and Huang, though we do not have space to quote them here. 140
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ộḺਯ᳓ᷡ ᧂ⿷ữ➝ ᐔ↢ᛴ⧰▵ ᚑዞᱝḺฬ
The waters of Lian Stream are clean, But not enough to wash His Honor’s capstrings. All his life, he embraced bitter Control, and so accomplished this stream’s name.
Line 140-2 alludes to the Canglang Song, but only to say that even the clean waters of the Lian stream are not clear enough to match the purity of Zhou Dunyi. This directly contradicts Huang Tiangjian’s opening couplet, which merely declares the stream fit to wash one’s capstrings. Fanghui’s line 140-3 similarly has Zhou Dunyi exceeding the measured judgment of the Classic of Changes, which states that “bitter Control cannot be practiced with constancy.” 221 Zhou, in contrast, has been practicing it all his life. Line 140-4 alludes to a passage in the Li Ji that states, “When we speak of ‘bright water,’ it is because the purity of the host has created this water.” 222 Su Shi’s poem had asserted that it is only in the eyes of the common person that the stream is to be identified with Zhou’s virtues. (Lian means “shallow” but is also a homophone of a word meaning “sparing” or “without avarice”.) Zhou’s virtues are more all-inclusive, Su argues. 223 As is typical, Su Shi is finding a way to undercut the assumptions behind the name of a place or structure. Fanghui does not follow his lead this time.
——— for the capital. However, that leaves plenty of time for him to return to the area before 1102. Indeed, given the closeness of Zhou Shou and Huang, one could imagine Zhou making sure he returned to Hanyang when he learned Huang Tingjian was staying in Ezhou; Huang was there from the ninth month of Chongning 1 to the end of Chongning 2. It should also be noted that Huang visited Mt. Lu in the fifth month of Chongning 1 (Hu Sheng, 367), providing another opportunity to commemorate Zhou Dunyi’s site, though I have no information on whether the sons would have been there to host him and request the poem. 220 4.12539; 4.9b. 221 Tr. by Lynn, The Classic of Changes, 518. “Control” is the sixtieth hexagram. 222 Ruan Yuan, Shisan jing zhushu, vol 2, Li Ji zhengyi, 26.229b and 230c (1457b and 1458c). 223 My reading of Su’s poem is based on the discussion by Zhao Cigong ᎓ڻֆ (twelfth cent.) in So Shi itch , 1:199–200 and its elaboration in Shikajikkai, 4:1018–33.
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㐳ཕ⟎╓ொ ቅ㔕ᱩᕁデ Ḻ㗡྾ოዬ Ḻਅ⊖⇔⠹ ㊂᳹ᄺ᥄⋛ ⺖᮴ᄕὣ Ꮧㅩ᧟ጃㆆ ૉ⡱ᒏ⡪ ὑቴਃᓣ ொኅㅢ৻⛫
A long whistle—he set aside the passports; a lone cloud—thoughts of return so light. At the head of the stream, four walls in which to dwell; below the stream, a hundred mu to plow. They draw water in measure for His Honor’s early ablutions, are assigned woodcutting for the evening cookstove. Rarely do you meet him roaming with stick and sandals; one only hears the sound of string instruments and song. For his guests he has cut out three paths; to his family bequeathed understanding of one classic.
Notes: 140-5/ Setting aside letters of passport, Zhou Dunyi was able to put a stop to his peregrinations as an official. 224 140-6/ A variation on line 057-6 in the 1080 poem Evening Prospect from the Tower of Handan Commandery “one bird, thoughts-of-return light” (p. 34). 140-9–10/ Presumably, it is Zhou Shou and Zhou Tao who did these chores for their father. 140-12/ For a similar reference to the civilizing influence of music, see the note to line 135-26 on p. 94. An inscription in one of the academies associated with Zhou Dunyi refers to “customs honoring string instruments and song.” 225 140-13/ “Three paths” is a conventional reference to an hermitage. Jiang Xu ⬲⹘, who retired from office under Wang Mang’s oppressive regime near the beginning of the Common Era, had three paths around his retreat. 226 This Han period allusion is matched by another in the next line. 140-14/ Wei Xian 㖡⾫ (148–60 B.C.E.) passed his knowledge of the classics on to his youngest his son, who as a result rose to the highest executive offices in the Han. This led to the saying that “Leaving your sons one classic is better than a basket of gold.”227
The allusion in line 140-14 provides a transition from describing Zhou Dunyi’s retreat to praising his sons. I interpret the rest of the poem as addressed to the brothers. 140 16
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㔅⃨ᾖ ว⅜ㅪၔ ⵍⶊ㙍ᮔ ❄ή㓩ᖱ ᩵ᨋౌᨑ⑲ ୫Ὼଶ⌒᭢
This pair of pearls shines from the four-in-hand, conjoined jade disks worth more than cities in a string. Wearing rude cloaks, you have an excess of joy; asking about the silk, you have no hidden feelings. In the cassia forest, two branches are fine; on your account, these common eyes are honored.
——— 224 On the “long whistle,” see Donald Holzman’s remarks on the range of possible meanings in Poetry and Politics, 150–52. 225 Quoted in Zhou Jianhua, “Zhou Lianxi yu Gannan san da ‘Lianxi shuyuan’ kaoshi,” 49. Zhou Jianhua refers to this as an “original” duilian (inscription in parallel lines), but the meaning of that characterization is unclear. 226 See Li Fang et al., Taiping yulan, 3:510.2b (p. 2321b). 227 Han shu, 73.3107.
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ᤄઔฬῳሶ ផ㔍ఱᒉ
103
In the past I looked up to you as sons of a renowned father; now I praise you as brothers impossible to rank.
Notes: 140-15/ Two conventional expressions of praise are combined here. Paired pearls stand for brothers of distinction. Pearls shining from a four-in-hand represent treasure or, by extension, fine writings or talented people. 228 140-16/ The jade disk of Mr. He ᳁⅜ appraised as worth fifteen walled cities comes from another story in the Shi ji. A set (of two) disks may represent the sun and moon rising together (with the five planets as “pearls in a string”) at certain auspicious junctures, or two halves of disks brought together. 229 Here, the disks must represent the brotherss. 140-17/ The most likely precedent for this line is Tao Yuanming’s ⵍⶊᰵ⥄ᓧ—in Davis’ translation, “In coarse clothes I rejoiced at contentment.” 230 140-18/ I take “asking about the silk” to be equivalent to wen juan ⛚, simply using a different term for the silk bolt. The allusion is to a third century official and his son who were both loathe to spend money on themselves; when the father gave a bolt of silk to his son for travel expenses, the son would not accept it until he ascertained that it had been properly earned. 231 140-19/ A cassia branch symbolizes success in the examinations; here, it must be the success of Zhou Shou and Zhou Tao. 232 140-20/ The only precedent I find for “on your account” is the last line of Bo Juyi’s ᧲⩵. 233 140-21–22/ There are several precedents for the phrases “sons of a famous father” and “brothers impossible to rank,” but if Fanghui had particular ones in mind, they might have been ones in the Nan shi and Bei shi because of the symmetry of sources: a history of the southern courts and a history of the northern courts. 234
For the rest of the poem, Fanghui foresees a continuation of Zhou Dunyi’s values into the future, along with this poem. 140 24
ਇᙥᢥ▸ⵧ ㆰ⻐ᘚ
Of Wenfan’s descendants it cannot be said in haste that “the ministers are shamed by heralds.”
——— 228 See the letter by Kong Rong quoted in the commentary to the Wei shu in the Sanguo zhi, 2:10.312–13 and Shi ji, 6:46.1891. 229 For the disk and cities parity, see Shi ji, 8:81.2439. For the conjunction of sun and moon as jade disks, see the Han shu, 4:21A976. For the disks as half disks joined together, see the 㤀⦡⾮ by Jiang Yan ᳯᷛ (444–505). 230 ᆎ㎾ァ෴ァ⛫ᦛ㒙, Written when passing through Qu’e while beginning my service as aid to the general of the Stabilization Army, Davis, 1:79–81. 231 For the story, see Mather, Shih-shuo hsin-yü, 13–14. Gao Shi 㜞ㆡ (700?–765) uses He Zhu’s wording in ᧲ᐔᣏㆆᄺ⿅⮀ᄥੑච྾㖿, QTS, 6:214.2236.10. 232 The third-century figure Xi Shen ㇯, having obtained a position by offering up an outstanding policy statement, bragged to the emperor that his brilliance was like “a branch in a cassia forest, a slip of jade from Mount Kun[lun].”(Jinshu, 5:52.1443.) 233 QTS, 13:429.4731.8. 234 The fifth-century figure Liu Jingsu ഏ᥊⚛ was the “son of a famous father” (the phrase is at the end of his biography, Nan shi 2:14.402.7). Liu was not only filial but also frugal and uninterested in the luxuries to which his office entitled him. Du Zhengxuan ᧡ᱜ₵ and his younger brother Zhengcang ᱜ⮥ were unusually brilliant at composing complex rhapsodies on the spot, but their younger brothers were also very talented. Thus, the Bei shi historians’ appraisal of these early seventh-century siblings was that they were “impossible to rank as older brother or as younger brother” 㔍ఱ㔍ᒉ (3:26.963). But see also the next note.
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ᅤⷅᏯ␔ኽ Სὑᰨ ኪኧਐᲧ ജᓧᐗ 㜞ጯ⍹ ᢓ๔ᓟઍ↢
So if you are enfeoffed with oath of belt and whetstone, do not be swayed by power and profit. The place is truly like Deformity Hill; surely the powerful will never annex it. Carve the poem in stone on the high bank with due consideration to instruct those born in later ages.
Notes: 140-23/ Wenfan was the posthumous name of Chen Shi 㒸ኛ (104–87). Like Zhou Dunyi, he did not hold high office (in fact, he refused offers of high positions), he had two sons of prominence (but he also had four others), and he was highly respected. 235 140-24/ The full expression is “A minister is the shame of a herald, and a herald is the shame of a commandery chief.” This was coined to characterize a supposed decline of the virtue of the descendants of Chen Shi, though they rose in rank. 236 Fanghui rejects such a possibility for the Zhou family. 140-25/ Those who were enfeoffed by Liu Bang in the early years of the Han Dynasty took an oath to preserve their territories even if the Yellow River shrunk to the width of a belt and Mount Tai were reduced to the size of a whetstone. 237 140-27–28/ Deformity Hill was a place in the southern state of Chu that was so poor and blessed with such a name that no one would covet it. Thus, one who was enfeoffed there would be able to retain the territory indefinitely. 238 140-30/ This is a variation on ᢓ๔ᓟੱ, the final line in a section of the Jiu Tang shu (7:64.2438) that sums up the best and the worst of the sons of the first Tang emperor.
It is striking to see Fanghui give instructions on the use of his poem, though Su Shi commonly does this. Of course, he knows that an inscription will probably be carved on stone, but to mention this explicitly and, moreover, to present the poem as a message to the ages indicates the poet’s awareness of the work as an artifact that has impact beyond the immediate occasion. Fanghui assumes in this poem the power of the historian to communicate across the ages. He also adopts the function of the historian to praise and even to warn—the Zhou brothers are not to be seduced by the power and profit that should come their way if their merit is recognized (line 140-26).
——— 235 See the Shishuo xinyu for several anecdotes about Chen Shi. In one of these, 1.8, Chen says his older son is “impossible to [rank] as older brother” and his younger son is “impossible to [rank] as younger brother.” I take this as an earlier version of the Bei shi phrase cited in connection with line 140-22. 236 I use the translation of Roger Greatrex. See his annotated translation of the Bowuzhi ඳ‛ᔒ, attributed to Zhang Hua ᒛ⪇ (232-300), 104. 237 Shi ji, 3:18.877. 238 I take my translation of ‘Deformity Hill’ from Knoblock and Riegel, The Annals of Lü Buwei, 234.
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THE REINTERPRETATION OF TAO YUANMING It may seem unremarkable that Fanghui collated a copy of the works of Tao Yuanming in Hanyang. Tao is in the pantheon of great Chinese poets, and Fanghui was a bibliophile of intense dedication. That Fanghui should collate a copy of the works of Tao Yuanming in the year 1096, however, raises the possibility that he is participating in an elevation of Tao Yuanming and a modification of his image that was going on at the time, a cultural movement that, as we shall suggest, reflected a general disenchantment with Song politics. It is sometimes stated that it was only when Su Shi “discovered” Tao Yuanming that Tao rose to the top ranks of poets in the tradition. On the surface, this seems an absurdity, but it is true that although Tang poets often alluded to Tao Yuanming’s life, his poetry was not considered particularly important in literary history. 239 Su Shi, on the other hand, clearly engaged with Tao’s poetry with unprecedented intensity over the years, following Tao’s rhymes and/or writing imitations of his entire oeuvre. He had a pivotal role in changing the meaning of Tao Yuanming as a person, a change that he seems to have effected in 1096. Xiao Qingwei, in his recent work on the relationship between Song literature and the evolving factional struggles of the Northern Song, builds from an observation made by Hu Zi ⢫ (1082–1143) that Su Shi’s 1096 poem using the rhymes of Tao’s ⹗ਃ⦟ Singing of the Three Good Men presents a view that is actually opposite to his 1061 poem on the same theme. It should be explained that the Three Good Men were retainers of a Duke Mu who were buried alive in his tomb when he died in the late seventh century B.C.E. In the 1061 poem, written at the site of the tomb, Su Shi had argued that Duke Mu was not the bloodthirsty tyrant this incident would seem to make him, but rather that the three retainers had chosen death as an expression of their loyalty and their gratitude for his favor. In 1096, however, he emphasizes that blind loyalty is not to be prized; rather the cause for which one sacrifices one’s life must be a worthy one, and there is a responsibility to know when to make the sacrifice and when to withhold it. This applies also to the decision to serve or not to serve within the bureaucratic system, and of course Tao Yuanming is most famous for his decision to retire from public life. 240 Su Shi’s “discovery” of Tao Yuanming, however, is broader than what we see in his 1096 Harmonizing with Tao’s Singing of the Three Good Men. Throughout the
——— 239
See Qian Zhongshu, Tan yi lu, 88–93 (section 24). For Hu Zi’s observation, see Tiaoxi yuyin conghua houji (CSJC ed.), 2565:3.432. Su’s poems are ⒌ⓈჄ, SSSJ, 1:3.118, and 㒻⹗ਃ⦟, SSSJ, 7:40.2184. See Owen, Anthology of Chinese Literature, 26–27, for a translation of the Classic of Poetry poem (no. 131, “Yellow Bird”) and the Zuo Tradition passage on the incident. Davis gives the same material, Tao Yuanming’s poem, and precedents to Tao’s poem, in T’ao Yüan-ming, 1:145–48. 240
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1090s he had begun to argue that the significance of Tao Yuanming lies in the fact that his attitude toward serving and retiring was the same—he served when he felt like serving and he retired when he felt like retiring. Neither course was nobler by itself, just as following one’s lord in death or not doing so was a decision to be made according to the circumstances. Authenticity lay in acting according to these circumstances and one’s feelings. As Xiao Qingwei points out, the new Tao Yuanming model pretty much replaced the Du Fu model of anxious loyalty that had dominated for most of the century. Perhaps the clearest articulation of the new image of Tao is found in a colophon by Su dated Yuanyou 6/12/4 (15 January 1091), when the poet was in Yingzhou ⓎᎺ, on the upper reaches of the Huai River. It is worth quoting the relevant portion of this colophon because it anticipates details in He Zhu’s 1096 poem. …Tao Yuanming wished to serve and so he served; he did not consider it a shame to seek it [i.e., office]. He wanted to live in obscurity and so he lived in obscurity; he did not consider himself noble because he left it. When he was starving, he knocked on doors and begged for food; when he had plenty, he laid out “chicken and millet” and invited guests. If ancients and moderns consider him a worthy, it is because they prize his authenticity…. 241
It may not be coincidental that Fanghui should be collating a copy of Tao’s works in the mid 1090s. First of all, he may have heard of or seen the colophon we have just translated through friends of his close to Su Shi. He could have even been in correspondence with Su himself; after all, Su had helped accomplish Fanghui’s promotion to civil status only a few months before the date of the colophon. Though there is no documented contact between the two men, it is hard to imagine that Su Shi would undertake this exceptional mission without either an interview or an extensive perusal of Fanghui’s poems and other writings. Nevertheless, since there are no texts or anecdotes to support this, we shall explore the opportunities for information to flow through a third party. Zhao Lingzhi is one possible conduit. He had been a minor official in Yingzhou and participated in the lively literary exchanges among Su and other literary figures there. Zhao even compiled a collection (now lost) of the poems that were exchanged in Yingzhou. Zhao Lingzhi owned a copy of Tao Yuanming’s works with corrections and apparent ideas for a poem scribbled in by Su, who may have given the book to him in Yingzhou. On Yuanyou 7/2/5 (15 March 1092), before he left Yingzhou for Yangzhou, and again on Yuanyou 7/12/22 (21 January 1093), Su Shi recommended Zhao for a position at court. 242 Zhao is a possible conduit
———
241 ᦠሶ◲ᄦ㓸ᓟ, SSWJ 5:68.2148. Chicken and broomcorn millet appear in the Analects as food prepared by a recluse to show hospitality to one of the disciples. See Legge, XVIII.vii.3, p. 335. 242 See Su Shi nianpu, 3:31.1023 for the first recommendation to court; 31.1027 on the collection of Yingzhou poems; 31.1029 for evidence about the copy of Tao’s poems; and 31.1063–64 and 31.1071 for the second recommendation. The memorial (zhuang) referenced on 31.1063–64 is not
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to Fanghui because they had known each other since at least 1086, when Fanghui saw Zhao off from the capital to Chenzhou for an unspecified post under Cai Que (as noted above). Moreover, Fanghui was in the capital in 1092 at the same time Zhao was. When we consider the volume of correspondence that we can document among the Song literati, Fanghui included, and assume a far richer traffic that has left no trace, we are justified in suspecting that Zhao and Fanghui kept in touch at least occasionally. Another possible source of the latest “Su Shi lore” would be Mi Fu. We reported above that Mi Fu stood our poet up in 1091 in Zhenjiang. However, four pentametrical Regulated Verses in Fanghui’s collection tell us that Mi visited He Zhu in the capital in the eighth month of 1093, the two parted at Yongqiu 㓾ਐ just southeast of the capital two months later, and Fanghui sent a poem to Mi from Mi’s old studio in Zhenjiang in the ninth month of 1094. 243 We know that in late 1092, on the way back from Yangzhou to the capital, Su Shi corresponded with Mi at Yongqiu, and while he was in the capital, the two were in frequent contact. As he left for Dingzhou in 1093, Su sent Mi a letter with recent poems and prose works. 244 Yet another source would be Chen Shizhong. Fanghui and he were companions in Xuzhou in 1084 and 1085, and Fanghui wrote a pentametrical Ancient Verse to see Chen Shizhong off from the capital in 1087. 245 Chen joined his brother Chen Shidao and the active group of poets at Yingzhou in early 1092. Although Su Shi was to leave soon for Yangzhou, Chen Shidao had been one of Su’s close companions for the previous five months and would have had much to tell his brother. 246 If Su shared a copy of the colophon with one of these individuals, and if they passed on the text or the contents to He Zhu, it could explain why Fanghui’s 1096 poem refers to Tao’s decision to retire as an uncomplicated one and also mentions Tao’s begging for food. Note that neither notion is evident in Fanghui’s 1085 Inscribed on the Yuanming Studio for Chen Shizhong. That poem was a heptametrical Regulated Verse for a studio Chen had created by remodeling his quarters in Shuanggou. Since Chen had resigned his position as collector of merchant taxes
——— dated (SSWJ 3:37.1044) and I see nothing to indicate that it does not coincide with the dated one (a zhazi) referenced on 31.1071 (SSWJ 3:35.993), although Kong Fanli treats them as separate incidents. The first recommendation is at SSWJ 3:34.956; I follow Kong Fanli’s emendation of the date. 243 In the headnote to the pair of poems at Yongqiu, Fanghui says Mi is “wild in a pure sort of way and contrary” ᷡ⁅ᄙᔛ, using the same phrase “many antagonisms” that we will see in the Tao Yuanming poem. See also 㗴↞㔺ኹ᷋ฬ㥲ነ☨ర┨ Inscribed on the Pure Name Studio at the Sweet Dew Temple and Also Sent to Mi Yuanzhang, Poem 218 (10 November 1094), 5.12554; 5.12b. 244 See letters 12 and 15 to Mi Fu in SSWJ 4:58.1779 and 1780 and Su Shi nianpu, 3:32.1088 and 32.1072 245 ㅍ㒸ொਯቭਅ㇓ Seeing Chen Chuandao off to a Post at Lower Pei. Poem 095, 3.12526, 3.6a.2. 246 See the many entries about Su and Chen in the Su Shi nianpu from 3:30.997 to 31.1029–30 Chen Shizhong appears in the first entry for Yuanyou 7 at 31.1022.
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there about the time he asked He Zhu confer a name on the studio, Fanghui called it Yuanming Studio, after Tao Yuanming. 247 The new image of Tao Yuanming is not evident in 1085. A second factor that might explain why Fanghui is collating a copy of Tao Yuanming’s works in 1096 is that earlier in the year he had passed through Yangzhou. Yangzhou is where Su Shi had been prefect for a few months in 1092, at which time he had started matching the rhymes of Tao Yuanming. 248 Most significantly, one of Su Shi’s most famous pronouncements about Tao Yuanming is reported by Chao Buzhi to have been made in Yangzhou, presumably in 1092, when Chao was vice-prefect there. This pronouncement concerned the choice of verb in a line in the fifth of Tao’s Drinking Brew series. Down to the eleventh century, all versions use wang “to gaze at” in this famous line, which Stephen Owen translates “off in the distance gazed on south mountain.” Su Shi considered that an unscholarly variant and preferred jian “to see; to espy”; thus A. R. Davis translates, “I distantly see the southern mountains.” Wherever this version came from, Su insisted that it was the correct one, because wang, implying the intention to look at the mountain(s), destroys the spontaneity of the moment; that spontaneity, of course, is in Su’s view an essential part of the character of Tao, who supposedly served or retired almost on the whim of the moment. 249 Chao Buzhi was almost certainly not in Yangzhou when Fanghui passed through in 1096, but the story must have been circulating. 250 Here is Fanghui’s poem, 㗴㒻㕏▵㓸ᓟ Inscribed at the End of Tao Yuanming’s Collected Works: 251 142
ᷗਇᮔ ⸃⚵ᱩᩊ᪀
———
Yuanming was not happy in service; untying his seals of office, he returned to Chaisang.
247 㗴ᷗイ Inscribed on the Yuanming Studio, Poem 260, 6.12563, 6.8a. Zheng Qian observes that Chen Shizhong held his post for less than three months, based on evidence from He Zhu’s poems, but he also asserts that Chen returned to Xuzhou on resigning his position. Zheng cites no support for this assertion, but it probably lies in Fanghui’s penultimate line, which states that “from now on the windows will be broken and the eaves will teeter,” implying that Chen is leaving. See Zheng’s Chen Houshan nianpu, Part One, 172–73. 248 Su Shi nianpu, 3:31.1042. 249 Chao’s recollection, dated quite a bit later (the equivalent of 19 November 1104), is under the title ᦠ㒻ᷗᓟ in his Jile ji 33 (the Sibu congkan 1929 edition has no pagination). See the discussion in Xiao Qingwei, Bei Song xinjiudangzheng yu wenxue, 261–68, and the minor emendation to the text suggested on p. 267. Chao Buzhi’s recollection is also cited in Su Shi nianpu, 3:31.1056. Essentially the same pronouncement is made in Su’s 㗴ᷗ㘶㈬ᓟ, SSWJ 5:67.2092. For the translations cited, see Owen, Anthology of Chinese Literature, 316; and Davis, Tao Yüan-ming, 1:96. 250 In early 1095 Chao had been demoted from prefect of Qizhou to vice-prefect of the Southern Capital on account of his role with Su Shi in the construction of a “Star-Picking Loft.” Virtually nothing is known about the significance of the structure, but the consensus is that Su Shi’s enemies at court were looking for an excuse to punish an ally of Su Shi, Su himself already having been virtually sentenced to death in the malarial remote south. See Su Shi nianpu, 3:34.1186 and Liu Huanyang, “Chao Buzhi yu Su Shi jiaoyou kao,” 42. 251 4.12539; 4.10b.
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ḽ㘑ർ⓽ਅ မ⣻⟺⊞ ఢ☿ᣢዾⓨ ਼㘩ᗓᗓ りහᄢᖚ ᣁ⺆⡞ષ㓁 㘈ᚒ੦ᄙᔛ ਐᮗᕁㅌ⮥ ᘚήㄊ☸ⴚ ൧⠻ቭୖ
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Breasting the breeze below a north window, clothes open to the waist, he looked down on August Xi. Grain in storage having a way of disappearing, he begged for food, in such a fluster! To have a body is a catastrophe; these words I’ve heard from Boyang. As for me, I too have many antagonisms; to the hills and rude fences I long to retreat. Chagrinned that I lack the art of avoiding grains, In tiny measures I consume the government granary.
Notes 142-2/ Chaisang: Tao’s home village. 142-4/ August Xi is Fu Xi ફ⟺, the ancient sage credited with the invention of much of civilization. In his ⥜ሶఫ╬ᦠ, Tao Yuanming wrote, “I often say that in the fifth or sixth month, I lie below the north window and when the cool breeze comes suddenly, I make myself out to be a person who lived before August Xi.” 142-6/ Tao has a poem on begging for a meal. See Davis, 1:55–56. 142-7–8/ Boyang is one of the names of Laozi; the notion that it is a disaster to have a body appears in the Laozi. 252 Boyang is also, however, the name of one of the Seven Friends of the legendary sage emperor Shun—another of whom is Fanghui, whose name is our poet’s cognomen. 253 Could Fanghui be playing on this coincidence to say he “really” heard this truth from Boyang? 142-11/ Avoiding grains: As we have already seen with Zhang Liang, excluding grain from one’s diet was sometimes advocated as a means of prolonging life.
The first two lines of this poem are almost a précis of Su Shi’s 1095 lines ᷗೋ ੦㧘⚴ᧄ⺈⸒ޕਇᮔਫᓣᱩ㧘ⷞ⟮₡⾫“ޕYuanming at first was in service, too; / with ‘lute and song’ rooted in words of sincerity. / When he was not happy, he returned straightaway; / looking at the world and chagrined at his solitary toil [‘on the king’s business’].” 254 Su’s allusion to “lute and song” comes from Tao Yuanming himself, who was considering becoming a magistrate in order to provide resources for his eventual retirement. “He said to his relatives and friends: ‘I should like with lute and song to support a “three-path” existence.’… When the authorities heard of it, they appointed him Magistrate of P’eng-tse.” Tao’s statement alludes to a passage in the Analects in which Confucius heard one of his disciples, who was a local magistrate, instructing the populace
———
252 Su Shi refers to this idea at least twice late in his life. The first time is in his ᕁή㇎㥲㌏ Motto for the Studio of No Deviating Thoughts, which is likely to have been written in 1094. See SSWJ, 2:19.574–75; I date it on the basis of ᕁή㇎㥲ਤ⿇, SSWJ 2:21.606-7, which appears to have been written in the same place and is dated 30 November 1094. The second time is in a poem written, significantly enough, two days before Su’s death brought an end to several weeks of acute physical distress in 1101: ╵ᓣ ጊ℘㐳⠧, SSSJ, 7:45.2459; see Su Shi nianpu, 3:40.1418. 253 See Wang Yinglin (1223–96), Xiaoxue Ganzhu, CSJC, 177:5.181. 254 The final four lines of the second of seven 㒻⽺჻৾㚂, SSSJ, 7:39.2137–38. I add “on the king’s business” based on the Classic of Poetry, no. 205, the locus classicus of ‘solitary toil.’
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through “lute and song.” (See note to line 135-26, above.) Su Shi alludes to Tao’s allusion. 255 That Tao Yuanming should serve out of economic necessity vitiates Su’s new argument that he entered officialdom on an impulse, but Su glosses over that. The revised Tao Yuanming image offered a way to endure the exiles and restorations Su Shi and his followers were forced to endure in these decades: if these ups and downs could be translated into exercises of spontaneous impulses, they would not drive one mad. Fanghui does not forget that Tao entered service to earn enough to sustain himself in retirement to the “three paths.” In fact, he appears to allude to Su Shi’s new image of Tao Yuanming in order to show its weakness: Tao may have quit his post on an impulse, but he suffered from hunger as a result. That knowledge keeps He Zhu nibbling away at the government granary. Fanghui lacked the economic freedom to act on impulse and, since his life to date had seen no traumatizing fall from a position of power, he had little need to frame such a change within the new Tao Yuanming model.
OBFUSCATION Fanghui was supposedly below the political storms; yet one poem he wrote in Hanyang suggests that he had something to hide. It is obscure in the extreme. Our poet claims it is the restoration of an old poem from drafts that had been used to cover medicine bottles, drafts of a series of over ten poems he wrote in the Xining and Yuanfeng periods (which comprised the years 1068–85). That he or someone in his family should use old drafts of poems to wrap medicine is an amusing detail, but what is even more interesting is the nature of the poem itself. The title suggests that we might expect the poem to be a difficult allegory. It is ᗵኚ Restored Poem of Being Moved and Lodging the Feelings in Words. 256 Seeing ganyu2 ᗵኚ in the title, many readers will be reminded of numerous ganyu3 ᗵㆄ precedents in the Tang. (I use the numbers 2 and 3 to distinguish them in pinyin transcription, since the yu in the title Fanghui uses was the second, or rising, tone in the Tang and the other yu was the third, or departing, tone. In modern Mandarin, they are both in the departing tone.) There are altogether fifty-five poems in the Quan Tang shi with ganyu3 in the title as a phrase, all but five being pentametrical Ancient Verse. Ganyu3 is generally understood to mean “being moved by what one encounters or by how one is treated.” Poems that carry this title or incorporate this phrase into the title are generally topical allegories that avoid prettiness and strive to make morally serious points. As we have noted, the two ganyu phrases were pronounced differently in the Tang, but at some stage on
——— 255 For the “lute and song” allusion, I use Davis’ translation from Tao’s biography, T’ao Yüan-ming, 2:171. 256 4.12540; 4.11a.
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the road to modern Mandarin their pronunciation became identical; given the fact that tonal differences are often ignored in Chinese puns, the question then arises as to whether these two titles were seen as overlapping in meaning. In fact they did overlap in meaning, at least in the eyes of “some people.” The commentary to a ganyu3 series (twelve poems) by Zhang Jiuling ᒛ㦁 (678–740) states, “Some people say that ganyu3 means “being moved and ‘lodging’ [yu2] the emotion in words, but that is false.” 257 This “false” reading of ganyu3 gives us a good gloss on the meaning of ganyu2: “being moved and ‘lodging’ the emotion in words.” For our purposes, we can ignore the title that Fanghui did not use, assume that the title he did use carried some generic expectations for him, and look for the precedents that would signal those expectations. It turns out that there are very few ganyu2 poems. Seven poets use this phrase in their titles in the Tang. Four of these poems, pentametrical works that use the kind of nature imagery that Fanghui employs, might represent the tradition in which he placed his poem. 258 Of the major Song poets, only Fanghui, Chao Buzhi, and Lu You use this title. 259 Rather than attempt a full survey of the Tang precedents, we shall translate one of Chao’s poems after Fanghui’s to show that he and our poet shared a concept of the ganyu2 poem as an exercise in opacity. Fanghui’s poem is startlingly violent as well as difficult. It appears to be addressed to two animals, a tiger and a falcon. Presumably, they represent two different but equally treacherous types of political animals. It would be tempting to see in them the New Policies faction and the opposition factions, the former partisans aggressive tigers from the outset and the latter partisans relatively docile—until their ascension in the Yuanyou period raised the viciousness of Song politics to a new level, ensuring that they would be the targets of the neo-New Policies faction’s devastating revenge in the present Shaosheng period. 143
⁴⯥ᧂᨸ ᡓᅤ់㥘⽪ ⫷㣔ᣇ㖮
Before a fierce tiger comes out of the pen, it’s in a frenzy like a wild cat who has got a rat. When the grey falcon is still on the glove,
——— 257
Dai Kan-Wa jiten, 4:10953..39. These Tang poets title their poems ganyu2 or use that phrase in a title: Liang Deyu ᓾ: two pentametrical poems, one in eight lines, one in twelve (QTS, 6:203.2125); Quan Deyu ᰨᓾヨ, one pentametrical poem in sixteen lines (10:320.3606); Du Xunhe ᧡⨬㢬, one epigrammatic pentametrical quatrain (20:693.7977); Meng Jiao, one pentametrical six-line poem alternatively titled yonghuai or yongqing, “singing of my feelings” (11:374.4202); Wu Yuanheng ᱞరⴧ, one heptametrical quatrain on a battle site, ⑺ᣣ⛫ậ㑸ᗵኚ (10:317.3579); Liu Wei ഏᆭ, one heptametrical poem in eight lines (17:562.6524); and Zhang Hu ᒛ, one heptametrical poem in eight lines, ᵡ 㓁ᗵኚ (15:511.5826). 259 http://cls.admin.yzu.edu.tw/QTS/HOME.HTM writes Chao Buzhi’s title with ganyu3; in his works it is ganyu2. This appears to be an isolated case; when ganyu3 is returned in the titles of works by Ouyang Xiu Mei Yaochen, and Zhang Lei ᒛ⠶ (1054–1114 or 1052–1112), that is what I find in their printed works. 258
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↟ફෆ㓽 ᒕᚠએ㆑ ቍῺή⍮ ᐘㆣ❙㉾ੳ ⻐ੱน᱂ ⼼ᓳᔨ೨ㄗ ័የု⠅ᤨ ᠭ⡺ᢣఎ㘃 ᚖᔋ₈ᄤᆫ ๋ዂ⟋⯲⠪ ᄹ↢⥌ਯ ධጊ㊀㒖 ㈓ᨋήᮣᨑ ᯏ㒏⥜⟜ ዂᣉ
it is meeker than a nesting female. You slack off to avoid disaster; who would say you are obtuse? If you meet with kindness and are let go, you turn around and say people can be cheated. Apparently you [both] don’t think about your former shame, when you wagged your tail or drooped your wings. You pick your target and strike your fellows; brutality is still your natural character. I shall blame the foresters: what can we do when they deliver you alive? On the south mountains are layers of barriers; in the Forest of Deng there are no declining branches. Trapfalls and bird nets— where shall they be deployed now?
Notes: 143-5–8/ I suggest that lines 5–6 are addressed to the tiger and lines 7–8 to the falcon. 143-9–10/ These lines must be directed to both the tiger and the falcon; their “shame” is having been locked in a pen or tamed on the falconer’s glove, respectively. 143-13/ The term yuzhe clearly means “forester” in three biographies in the earlier dynastic histories, though other meanings are attested in later texts. 260 The phrase “I shall blame” wu jiang zui is found in Du Fu’s ഒ㑸, where the Tang poet castigates the Creator. 261 143-14/ Du Fu’s poem ౻⁚ⴕ speaks of “delivering alive” nine rhinoceroses. 262 143-15–16/ Du Fu speaks of his intention to move to the side of the southern mountains, where he will watch Li Guang shoot tigers—Li Guang being the Han general who withdrew to the southern mountains in Lantian ⮣↰, spent his time hunting, and buried an arrow in a boulder that he mistook for a tiger. 263 While Du Fu never refers to the vast primeval Deng Forest, in his Ballad of the Painted Eagle he speaks of magpies and crows who fill the declining branches (the term designates branches that twist and coil in a downward direction), fearing the raptor. 264
A paraphrase of the penultimate couplet that retains the dual focus on the tiger and the falcon and recognizes the precedents in Du Fu would be: “There are
——— 260 See the Jin shu, 8:92.2398; the Chen shu, 2:30.404; and the Sui shu, 5:57.1379 (where the yuzhe sets traps); the Forest of Deng, to which Fanghui refers in line 143-16, appears coincidentally in the Sui shu, 5:57.1401. 261 Du shi xiangzhu, 2:9.719–22. 262 Du shi xiangzhu, 3:12.1055–61.The only other precedent I know is Lu Lun’s ⋝✈ (d. ca. 799) ⤶ᣣⷹທካ₺ㇱᦛᆴᠶ⽝, QTS, 9:277.3150–51. 263 See Du Fu’s ᦛᳯਃ┨┨ฏਯਃ, Du shi xiangzhu, 1:2.139.Yoshikawa, To Ho 1:83–84, and the Shi ji, 9:109.2171–72. 264 ⇠㢱ⴕ, Du shi xiangzhu, 2:6.477–78. Cf. Knechtges’ perplexity over why a parrot should long for Deng Forest in Mi Heng’s Rhapsody on the Parrot: “I believe that Denglin does not refer to any specific geographical location, and simply designates the grove that is the parrot’s home somewhere in the remote northwest.” Wen Xuan, 3:56.
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many obstacles between us and the place where Li Guang shot the ‘tiger,’ / and in all of Deng Forest there is no place for little birds to hide from the falcon.” In the final couplet, Fanghui must be lamenting that once the beasts have escaped there is no way to capture them again. Chao Buzhi’s set of ganyu2 poems suggest that the obscurities in He Zhu’s poem might be characteristic of the ganyu2 tradition as the two men conceived it in the 1090s. The title of Chao’s set is ᗵኚච㚂ᰴ㖿咗⪺㞉⋥એዂ┆ጊ ᶏ〔ൎ⾨ᔃ᥀ὑ㖿. The poems follow the rhymes of a set of ten poems titled ነᤧరᔘච㚂, sent from Huang Tingjian to one Chao Yuanzhong ᤧరᔘ in 1082. 265 Because Huang Tingjian is identified as an assistant editorial director in Chao Buzhi’s title, we know that Chao’s series was written sometime after 1087. 266 (Chao Yuanzhong was related to Chao Buzhi in some way, which may account for the poems coming into Chao Buzhi’s hands.) 267 This temporal gap between the set of poems by Huang and the later set by Chao Buzhi is parallel to the (reported) gap between He Zhu’s original ganyu2 series and his 1096 reconstruction of one poem from that series. This and the fact that Fanghui’s poem was from an original set of ten are intriguing coincidences. Unfortunately, because Chao’s set can be dated no more precisely than “post-1087” we cannot presently posit a direct connection between the works of He and Chao. Here is the first poem in Chao Buzhi’s set: *
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㡄㡀⥝₡ዬ ⊖ౌ⺕⥜ዂ ᧂᘷᔙᔙ ᣢⷭὑ㦖శ ็┾ᴣ㥱Ꮢ 㔖㔎ᥧⓨ᪀ ኙ‐ウᐩ ỗὓᒫ
If the dove on an impulse had dwelt by herself, who would have escorted her with a hundred carts? Before I see her I’m sad and anxious, now that I’ve met her I appreciate her favor and kindness. They blow the mouth organ to stir up the market of Qi; drizzling rain darkens the Hollow Mulberry. A cold song below Ox Harness; fervent, the vital force swells with resolution.
——— 265 Huang’s poems are dated Yuanfeng 5 (1082) in the Congshu jicheng edition of his poems (2247: table of contents, 24; see 2249:wai.12.269–72 for the poems themselves) and Yuanfeng 6 (1083) in the Huang Tingjian quanji edition (2:933–35). Hu Sheng, Huang Tingjian nianpu xinbian, 130, argues for the 1082 date. 266 Quan Song shi, 19:12763–64. Huang Tingjian became an assistant editorial director in 1087 and left the position in 1091. Chao’s title also tells us the couplet whose words Huang had apparently used to set the rhymes for his group of poems: it is the final couplet from Xie Lingyun ⻢㕆ㆇ (385–433), ᳗ೋਃᐕචචᣣਯೋ⊔ㇺ (Wen Xuan 26): ዂ┆ጊᶏ〔㧘᳗⾨ᔃ᥀ާᖗި. (Frodsham [ 1:116] translates: “I shall walk the untrodden ways of mountains and sea, / Yet never more meet the one who delights my heart.”) Chao’s quotation of Xie’s couplet substitutes ൎ for ᳗. 267 In a letter to Chao Yuanzhong, Huang says that he knows of Chao’s writings through the latter’s brothers and he mentions Chao Duanren ᤧ┵ੳ (1035–1102) specifically as one intermediary. Chao Duanren was a cousin of Chao Buzhi’s father; see Osada Natsuki, “Ch Tanrei to Smon to kinshugaihen no shijintachi,” 44.
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Notes: 1–2/ The first couplet probably refers to the second stanza of Ode 152 in the Classic of Poetry, which reads, “The nest is the magpie’s; / The dove possesses it. / This young lady is going to her future husband; / A hundred carriages are escorting her.” 268 The dove in that poem is traditionally understood to represent the demure and proper bride—so demure that she cannot make her own nest. 3–4/ Lines 3 and 4 are a conflation of a stanza from Ode 14 in the Classic of Poetry—“While I do not see my lord, / my sorrowful heart is agitated; / Let me have seen him, / Let me have met him, / And my heart will then be stilled.” (Legge, 23)—and a line from Ode 173 (Legge, 274). Perhaps the “dove” is the person Chao Buzhi longs to see, “who lives alone” and is not “escorted by a hundred carts.” 5/ This recalls a passage in the writings of the third century B.C.E. philosopher Han Fei: a certain man in the state of Qi who couldn’t play the mouth-organ well was nevertheless able to earn a stipend because the duke’s mouth-organ music was always performed by an orchestra of 300 players and his own ineptitude couldn’t be noticed. When the duke’s successor announced that he preferred to hear each player one by one, the man fled. 269 “Blowing the mouth organ” can be a humble term for one’s own capabilities or accomplishments; moreover, the ‘market of Qi’ could be Qizhou, where Chao Buzhi served briefly as prefect in 1094. 270 I think, however, that in this context the phrase might refer to the crowd of people who get by with inferior talent in the capital—the market of the ancient state of Qi standing for the contemporary capital of Song China. This would contrast with Hollow Mulberry. 6/ Robert Henricks summarizes the early meanings of Hollow Mulberry: “It is the name of a mountain, a mountain that is in some cases at least is an axis mundi; it is the name of a city ruled by various [Di]; it is a city or mountain threatened by flood waters; it is literally an ‘empty mulberry tree’ used as a boat by a hero who survives a flood in a story where a ‘mortar’ plays a critical role; and it is the name of a zither, a musical instrument which like mortars and drums among southern minority peoples in China today may have been made by hollowing a log. It is also a place where heroes are born, heroes connected with ‘new beginnings’ (e.g. Yi Yin and Confucius).” 271 Finding no similar use of this term in Tang or Song poets, I can only speculate that Chao could be using it to refer to an exiled person who is worthy to be a Yi Yin or to a neglected person whose “zither” stands in contrast to the blare of the mouth organs.
Because we know Chao is following Huang Tingjian’s rhymes, perhaps the poem is about Huang. If Ox Harness (line 7) is a place name, on the other hand, the exile could be Su Shi. There is a place by this name on or near the route by which Su Shi passed on his way to Huizhou ᗆᎺ: a village near Qianzhou ⯩Ꮊ in southern Jiangnan West Circuit. There is another Ox Harness on or near the route by which he later went to Hainan Island: a range of hills one hundred li north of Yangchun 㓁ᤐ. This would be on Su Shi’s route from Xinhui ᣂᦩ to Tengzhou ⮮Ꮊ, where Su Shi would rendezvous with Su Zhe before proceeding south to the Leizhou Peninsula. Several things must be emphasized here. First, my sources for these place names are much later than the Song. 272 Second, I know of no text by
——— 268
Legge’s translation (20–21). Han Fei zi (SBCK) 9.49a. 270 See Li Zhiliang, Bei-Song jingshi ji dong-xi lu da jun shouchen kao, 296, and Su Shi nianpu, 3:34.1186. 271 Robert G. Henricks, “On the Whereabouts and Identity of a Place Called ‘K’ung Sang’ (Hollow Mulberry) in Early Chinese Mythology,” 83. 272 For the village near Qianzhou, I am using the China Historical GIS system, http://fas.har269
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Su Shi or any of his contemporaries that mentions these places. At the same time, however, if this is not a place name, I know of no allusion or precedent for “below the ox harness.” If we provisionally assume Chao knew that Su would be passing by “below Ox Harness Range” on his way to an exile from which no one expected him to return, the “cold song” makes sense: Li Bo uses the phrase to refer to the sad song that was sung when Jing Ke set off to assassinate the Qin ruler, at best a do-and-die mission. 273 Despite the gloomy association, the song is “fervent” (jilie generally characterizes speech or song) and Su Shi’s spirit remains strong. After struggling through these two ganyu2 poems, I think we can conclude that poems under this title were meant to conceal more than reveal what the poet felt about dangerous topics. The language of the poem is obscure because it points to no recognized parables or situations that can be recognized as precedents. Moreover, the diction does not recur in other works by the same poets. Fanghui’s animal allegory is somewhat more coherent, but although we surely feel that he is using the tiger and falcon to denounce specific people—this is not a moth-in-the-flame allegory about general human behavior—we don’t have enough information to say who the animals represent. Chao’s puzzling allusions to the Classic of Poetry do not illuminate each other, nor are they illuminated in the very different second half of his poem. Undoubtedly, either poet could tell his trusted friends what his allegory meant, but use of the title ganyu2 evidently means to signal that such information will be conveyed only orally.
1096–98: JIANGXIA 1096: THE CONNOISSEUR A set of poems written to Zhou Shou in the tenth month of 1096, ᙿነర⠃ ච㚂 Thinking of and Sent to Zhou Yuanweng, Ten Poems, returns us to the realm of poetry that is supposed to communicate. 274 These poems are relaxed in tone, written all at once in a single sitting (according to the last of the set). Each poem begins with the words “Master Zhou,” and He’s admiration for Zhou Shou is everywhere in evidence. The second poem tells us that Fanghui is sending some tea, since he knows that Zhou shares his fondness for the beverage; the tea is a treasure reserved for high officials in the secretariat, and ੱ⋌ᓧཏ㧘นએ㛰
——— vard.edu/~chgis/, accessed 7 January 2004. The time point is 1911. I found the village north of Yangchun in the Jiaqing chongxiu yitongzhi ཅᘮ㊀ୃ৻⛔ᔒ in the electronic version of the Sibu congkan. That source writes Niue as our poem has it; the CHGIS system gives it as ‐ා, pronounced the same. 273 ⊔⊕㚍, Zhan Ying, Li Bo quanji, 2:5.822–27; no Jitsunosuke, Ri Haku zenkai, 1231–33. 274 4.12541; 4.12b–14a.
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⪦㎠ “If a poet gets a taste, / he can lord it over the rich.” (147-9–10) He doesn’t say how he got the tea. The fourth poem humbly suggests that Fanghui’s poems are like “autumn insects” whose sad buzzing is likely to depress the older Zhou Shou needlessly. This may remind some readers of similar comparisons Su Shi made in 1078, though the comparison was by no means invented by Su. 275 Fanghui goes further in evoking those past decades when he adds, 㡆ੱᔅ┆㧘ᚒ┆⼼ᚲቱ. “Making cries in poetry, one must be poor; / I’m poor—how could I wish for that?” (149-9–10) This ingeniously conflates a statement that Ouyang Xiu had made to the effect that good poetry came out of poverty or hardship—a statement that was repeatedly reformulated and argued over in the ensuing decades—and Han Yu’s famous comparison of poetry to the sounds (“cries”) that things make when their equilibrium is disturbed. Su Shi provides precedents for the expression shi ming (poetic cries) and for continuing the conversation about poetry and poverty—he sometimes asserted that Heaven denied people success (“impoverished” them) in order to make them good poets. He Zhu’s accomplishment, in any case, is to bring the seminal formulations of Han Yu and Ouyang Xiu together in this couplet. 276 Perhaps the most interesting poem is the sixth, in which Fanghui compares Zhou Shou’s calligraphy with that of Huang Tingjian and Su Shi. 151
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㇢╉ᤨ ⇷ነౌವᦠ ᖱⷫ⺆ᙣ 㛽⡺ᚲਇᅤ
———
When Master Zhou smiled to the west, he folded and sent two cases of letters. The feelings were intimate, the language in earnest, even more than with flesh and blood.
275 ᰴ㖿╵ഏᶕ and ਛ⑺ነሶ↱ਃ㚂ਯ৻, SSSJ, 3:16.821 and 17.859, respectively. Translated in Fuller, 230–31 and 237–38. 276 For the expression shi ming, see Su’s ₺㕸ዾ⚂…… (1077; compliments a general who uses poetry to ming), SSSJ, 3:15.759; ᰴ㖿⥌㆙ (1084; an attribute of Meng Jiao), 4:24.1255; 㗴ᢥ⥜ น ა┻(1086; the term stands for Meng Jiao), 5:27.1439; and ㅪᣣ⥜₺ᔘ₹ᒛో⠃᷿ ḓ…… (1090; means ‘monks who express themselves through poetry’), 5:32.1681. To these may be added allusions to the upsetting of equilibrium that Han Yu had talked about: see ㅍ ෴ኩᏧ (1078), SSSJ, 3:17.905; Egan, Word, Image, and Deed, 198–99; ቯᗆ㒮㗹Ꮷὑ┻ਅ㐿ཕイ (1080), SSSJ, 4:20.1058. Su Shi had the most to say about poverty and poetry in seven poems up through 1080, and then in three poems in 1089, 1091, and 1092. See ∛ਛᄢ㔐ᢞᣣ(1062), SSSJ, 1:4.158; ᰴ㖿ᒛ 㚂⼛᧡ (1071),1:6.265; ௯ᷡ㗅ᣂု㔕㓸੪ (1073), 2:9.451; ௯ᗆൕ ೋ⟓௯⡯(1074, quoting Ouyang explicitly), 2:12.576; ᤧหᐕᣣነ(1076), 3:14.696; ᰴ㖿ሶ↱ㅍ⩑ᄔઍ Ꮊቑቭ (1077), 3:15.726; ⥜⒌ᄥဠ෴ኩᦩᣈ᧻ᳯ……(1079), 3:18.948; ๒ቯ (1089), 5:31.1639; ᒠዾᏱਇ㘶ਇᱚዾᏱ㘶(1091), 6:34.1799; and ᣣᰴ ቯ㖿 (1092), SSSJ, 6:35.1905. Fanghui himself alludes to the link between poetry and poverty in early 1091: he says that although poverty can make you poor, that doesn’t necessarily make your poetry good! See Poem 017, ⇐௯⸮ Left in Farewell to Monk Na (1091), 1.12503; 1.8b. See also ਭ∛ነੑਃⷫ, Ill for a Long Time: Sent to Two or Three Relations and Friends (Poem 212; 1092), translated in our chapter on pentametrical Regulated Verse. (For more on Meng Jiao as the epitome of the suffering poet, see Shang Wei, “Prisoner and Creator: The Self-Image of the Poet in Han Yu and Meng Jiao.”)
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ᅱ⠜㛂ㆎ ᛶ⓭咗⥜⯃ 咗⤻ᦜ⟽╭ ⯃ෘಝ⣵⤏ ᚒᣈቄቃ㑆 ዋ៊㙍 ኅ㔊ᢓᓳ ఢᱝᯇਛ⃨
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The marvelous brushwork was forthright, forceful, and free, pressing close to Huang and to Su Huang’s gauntness, dragging wasted sinews; Su’s richness, congealing fatty flesh. I’m between Ji and Meng: I add what’s lacking, discard what’s extra. But I dare not speak of my “household chicken,” and shall hoard these pearls in the satchel.
Notes 151-1/ Smiling to the west: This is a common expression meaning to hanker after life in the capital city (which was in the west in the Han, when the phrase was first reported, and the Tang, when it is used in several poems); however, the expression may simply indicate that Zhou is looking westward toward Jiangxia, where our poet is. In the tenth month Zhou has apparently returned to Lian Stream, down the Yangzi to the southeast. 277 151-9/ To be between Ji and Meng is, in general usage, to be neither the best nor the worst. Thus, Confucius was insulted when the Duke of Qi decided to treat him as halfway up the pecking order, between the head of the Ji clan at the top and that of the Meng at the bottom. See the Analects (Legge, 332). Fanghui, however, seems to be using the expression to say he avoids the aesthetic extremes of Huang’s gauntness and Su’s richness. 151-11/ The Jin Dynasty general Yu Yi ᑀ⠢ once compared his own calligraphy to a well-fed domestic chicken and that of more popular calligrapher Wang Xizhi to a wild duck. These phrases could thereafter stand for fleshier and leaner styles of calligraphy, but “household chicken” could also be a way to refer to one’s own calligraphy. Thus, in a 1074 poem, Su Shi advised someone who had calligraphic talent in the family but had nevertheless asked him for a specimen of his writing not to ask other people for calligraphy just because he was “tired of the household chicken.” 278
This poem typifies the set insofar as it expresses the value Fanghui places on the friendship Zhou Shou has shown to him while seeking to insert Fanghui’s own values and stature into the conversation. Just as the pedigree of his gift of tea in an earlier poem in the set asserted quietly but unmistakably his membership in a network through which such treasures might flow, Fanghui’s standing in elite society is demonstrated by his apparent personal knowledge of the calligraphic styles of Huang Tingjian and Su Shi.
1096 AND 1097: HISTORY This chapter began with the artifacts of history and the limits of the physical record in transmitting information from the past. In 1096 and 1097, Fanghui speaks of the power of writing or editing history. In the ninth poem to Zhou Shou,
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277 The first poem says Zhou is living in Pen City ḑၔ, which is in that area; the fifth poem indicates that there has been a drought since Master Zhou returned to Lian Stream. 278 ᩉ᳁ੑᄖ↧᳞╩〔ੑ㚂ਯ৻ , SSSJ, 2:11.542.
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he begins by saying Zhou has a talent for history and can even rank with the most famous historians of the past, Ban Gu and Sima Qian. Then he adds, ⚗⚗⼧⺟ ੱ㧘⇊ำᦠ “Those who slander others in a flurry; fear the punishment of your writing” (154-3–4). Since Zhou Shou was not in a position at this time to be writing official history, perhaps is it unofficial history that Fanghui has in mind. We must remember that Huang Tingjian had been living in exile in the upper Yangzi region since the previous year because he insisted that documentation from the reign of Shenzong that put the New Policies in a bad light remain part of the official record. If official history was to be censored, unofficial history would have to tell the story. In the same tenth month of 1096, history comes up in a poem for a pavilion in Wuchang. (Wuchang is in Ezhou but is not the modern sector of Wuhan by that name; it is downstream, opposite Huangzhou.) The pavilion’s name puns on the nodes of the straight bamboos that surround it, for “node” also means ‘integrity.’ 279 Thus, “straight [bamboo] nodes” means “honest integrity.” The poem, 㗴ᱞ㈕ ್ቭ⋥▵੪ Inscribed on the Straight Node Pavilion of Administrative Assistant Zheng in Wuchang, 280 suggests ways in which the bamboos might or might not be used, then ends by recommending that they be cut into strips to be cured and used for writing history: 156 24
28
㗿Ვ㕍◲ Άὼṭ⥜ਤ ⶋ⾇⚂㞉ผ ⚳ฎုਇೀ 㘈ᱝ⸤ᩮ ㄗਭᵆⳎ
I would make cured writing strips bright with lacquer-black and cinnabar-red. Praise and blame, condensed from the annals of Lu are handed down for all the ages, never to be erased. But when you look at this place where you’ve taken root, the shame! To forever coil in the mud.
Notes 156-24/ Black lacquer was used in government archives, or so Fanghui might have believed. A memorial by Wang Wei upon being appointed to such a unit politely expresses trepidation at having to put in order “lacquer slips” and approve the texts of classics to be carved into stone. 281 Cinnabar was used to record misdeeds, according to a few scattered references. 282 156-25/ Confucius condensed the historical records of his home state of Lu to produce the Spring and Autumn Annals, which were understood by pious readers in later times to reflect, through lexical
——— 279 Or the character for ‘node’ was borrowed to write the homophonous word for ‘integrity’; to have two unrelated but homophonous words written with the same sign is unusual only when both remain in the active lexicon. Cf. Alvin P. Cohen, Introduction to Research in Chinese Source Materials, 21. 280 4.12542; 4.14b. 281 ⻢㓸⾫ቑ჻, Quan Tang wen, 7:324.8b. Tsuen-hsuin Tsien discusses the evidence for and against lacquer as a writing medium and concludes that it could have had only a very minor role. See Written on Bamboo and Silk, 168–71. 282 See the Zuo Commentary B9.23.3 (Xiang 23); Legge, 501, translates “the red book (Book of Criminals).” Lu Ji (261–303) suggests that the people may be pacified if the red books are erased: see his ⻢ᐔේփผ, Wen Xuan 37. Finally, the term survives in the Daoist realm as a ledger of misdeeds, as in the phrase ਤ◲⟋★ in ⸵ㆄ⌀ੱொ, Yunji qi qian, 106.763b.
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subtleties, praise and blame for good and bad actions. For the use of Fanghui’s verb yue (condense) in this context, Dugu Ji ₡ቅ (725–77) provides a precedent and the Song shi, noting the importance Confucius placed on recording celestial and meteorological phenomena, provides a fourteenth-century example. 283
Despite the outburst in the last two lines of the poem about the obscurity in which Administrative Assistant Zheng and his bamboos must dwell, Fanghui has clearly placed some hope in history as a meaningful exercise. In fact, if we see the closing couplet as counterfactual (“the shame! [If you were] to coil forever in the mud”), it may be that the writing of history will prevent Zheng from disappearing from history. In the eighth month of Shaosheng 4 (1097), Fanghui wrote a poem in response to one from Pan Dalin, a longtime friend of both Huang Tingjian and Su Shi. Pan had written a work called the Zuo shi Ꮐผ, which probably means The Zuo [Tradition] history. It may have been an attempt to fashion biographies of some of the more than one thousand individuals mentioned in the Zuo Tradition, to judge from the following portion of Fanghui’s thirty-line poem, Inscribed on the East Studio of Pan Dalin 㗴ẘᄢ⥃᧲イ: 284 157
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⪺ᦠᨆ㞉ผ ⊖ொ㛿᭮ ⾚ਭㅔ ๋ᣇജ┆⸛ ਇᙥౌⷹਅ ₪ዋᱜව ထน㛰⚛⤿ ᷯ⌏ሶ⍎
You write a book to analyze the annals of Lu; a hundred biographies are drafted. the brigands on rampage have long escaped punishment; now we shall chastise them with all our might. Below the Twin Watchtowers we should capture not only shaozheng Mao. You can be proud before the Minister without Portfolio, and make his pupils brighten.
Notes 157-17–18/ Shaozheng is the name of an office of unknown function held by a person named Mao in a story of unlikely authenticity. This Mao was executed at the foot of two watchtowers by the order of Confucius himself, who justified this extreme action by saying that Mao embodied five evils that singly were each sufficient cause for punishment. 285 157-19/ The Minister without Portfolio is Zuo Qiuming, supposed author of the Zuo Tradition. Confucius is commonly called the Ruler Without a Throne (a deserving sage who never held political power). 286 Zuo Qiuming, as the interpreter of his Spring and Autumn Annals could be seen as
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283 Song shi 4:48.950 and Dugu’s 㒸⇐ᢥት₺ᑙၴ⎼, juan 7 in his 㒺㓸, Sibu congkan, electronic version, pagination unavailable. 284 4.12542; 4.15a. On the daunting task of fashioning geneologies and unified accounts of the people mentioned in the Zuo Tradition, see Barry B. Blakely, “Notes on the Reliability and Objectivity of the Tu Yu Commentary on the Tso Chuan.” 285 See Kongzi jiayu, 2.1, p. 205 in the translation by R. P. Kramers. 286 The preface to the Chunqiu Zuoshi zhuan ᤐ⑺ؐ᳁ொ by Du Yu ᧡㗍 (222-81) in the Wen Xuan, 45, refers to this view of Confucius, although Du thinks Confucius would have rejected this formulation because his aim was simply to restore the ways of the Zhou founders, not establish his own order. See Kamata Tadashi, Saden no seiritsu to sono tenkai, 765.
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the “Plain Minister” to the Ruler without a Throne. 157-20/ Zuo Qiuming would be delighted with Pan Dalin’s work.
It is clear that history writing and the suppression of disorder are associated in Fanghui’s mind. Recalling that fomenting factionalism was one of the talents for which Mao was executed by Confucius, and knowing that factional wars were paralyzing Song China, we can reasonably read into these lines Fanghui’s frustration and anger: there are many more like Mao who must be reigned in and punished.
1098: WATCHFUL EYES The last Ancient Verse we have for He Zhu, dated Yuanfu 1 (1098–99), is a much less serious composition, possibly concealing a private joke. The identities of the Great Wife and the girl she is watching are unclear; they could be wives in the same household, mother and daughter, or wife and potential rival. Their relationship is clear, however: the wife (like the historian) is keeping an eye out for misbehavior. The poem is ẘ⽙⠧ṽጅ⋡ Harmonizing with Pan Binlao’s ‘Watching on the Han River.’ Pan Binlao is Pan Dalin. 287 159
4
8
⊕㔕⫥ጊ㗡 ᷡᎹጊਅᵹ ⧐ᵮ㉻㚅ᅚ ⭯Ẏᱩ⥱ ਗ⫝̸㔅⩄⪲ ㅩㄫ৻㓚⟮ ᜬᖱਇᓧ⺆ ᄢᇚ㜞ᮝ
White clouds shroud the mountain top; A clear river below the mountain flows. On a fragrant isle, a girl picking sweet smells at dusk bobs along in her home-bound boat. Joined stems and paired lotus leaves— when she meets him, they screen her shyness. She holds her feelings inside and cannot speak them: the Great Wife is on the high tower.
Note: 159-5/ Conventional symbols of union between lovers.
This is one of the fourteen Ancient Verses by He Zhu in which the first line rhymes. The rhyme may give the poem a more “musical” tone, the lightness of a ballad. As such, it provides a bridge to our next chapter, on the poems Fanghui called Songs.
——— 287 4.12543; 4.16a, fourth month. Pan must have been close to leaving Hanyang; he had come to Hanyang with his father, Pan Geng 㞿, who was collecting Brew taxes in the last post he would hold before retiring to Huangzhou, where he would die in the tenth month of this year at age 63. See Zhang Lei, Zhang Lei ji, 2:60.894–96.
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FURTHER THOUGHTS ON IMITATION, INSCRIPTIONS, AND RHYME Let us pause first to consider whether Imitations and Inscriptions called for Ancient Verse preferentially and to suggest aspects of rhyme that need to be explored more fully. Five of the seven poems in He Zhu’s oeuvre whose titles or prefaces explicitly identify them as “imitations” are Ancient Verses. (The other two are also pentametrical and will be translated in later chapters.) A partial explanation for He Zhu’s preference in line length would be that if the poem being imitated is a pre-Tang work, it is likely to be pentametrical because most poetry that was meant to be taken seriously then was pentametrical. If the poem being imitated is a Tang work, evidently it was still the case that a pentametrical poem was seen as more timeless in its significance, in contrast to the casual heptametrical Song. Fanghui’s preference for Ancient Verse can be explained by the fact that, although Regulated Verse was fully developed in the Tang, if one followed the dynamics of semantic and tonal parallelism of a Regulated original too carefully, the imitation would seem like a forgery, too close to the original to be honest as a poem in itself. To ignore these aspects of the original, however, would be to ignore its most significant traits. Another way to put it is that, once one was beyond apprenticeship, the idea was to maintain a formal distance from the original while employing types of diction and situations typical to the target poet and a “plot” that reproduced the inner structure of the original poem using new but analogous imagery. Fanghui took the maintenance of formal distance to an extreme when he used an eight-line pentametrical Ancient Verse to imitate Bao Rong, who wrote almost no poems in that form (see Poem 092). Further research on other Northern Song poets is needed to see whether they practiced imitation in the same ways. It appears that among the major poets Mei Yaochen was most like He Zhu insofar as he imitated many single works. In contrast to Mei and He Zhu, most Tang imitations and many Song Dynasty imitations specify only a period, an anthology style, or even simply “the ancient” as the model. We shall see He Zhu do this in his heptametrical Songs, but he does not call those evocations of past models “imitations.” For inscriptions, Fanghui was equally likely to use either Ancient Verses or heptasyllabic Regulated Verses. The former account for fifteen poems, the latter for fourteen titles (or seventeen poems; poems 507–510 are a set under one title). Fanghui also wrote pentametrical Regulated Verses and Heptametrical Quatrains as inscriptions—seven each—but clearly Ancient Verses and heptasyllabic Regulated Verses were favored. The majority of inscriptions in all genres are meant to be displayed on structures or, as in the case of An Excursion to Eupatorium Bottoms Garden at Lingbi, (Poem 100, 1088) to be appended to other texts that are
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already on view in a garden or building. 288 Fanghui also wrote inscriptions in books (the Ancient Verse Inscribed at the End of Tao Yuanming’s Collected Works, Poem 142, 1096; and two heptametrical Regulated Verses) and on paintings (Inscribed on a Painting of Shamanka Mountain, Poem 047, 1080). These are included in our statistics (except for a small number of hexametrical painting inscriptions to be discussed in our chapter on heptametrical Quatrains). Although at first glance they would seem to be unlike the other inscriptions, they, too are expressly and physically attached to something whose primary purpose is independent of the poem’s existence. What factors would argue in favor of an Ancient Verse inscription as opposed to a heptametrical Regulated Verse? We can answer this better after we have looked more closely at the latter genre, but one obvious consideration is that Ancient Verse does not limit the poet to eight lines. In some cases, longer poems could be profitable. The poem sent to Liting (135) in 1093 must have been written on request, so perhaps it is no coincidence that it is Fanghui’s longest inscription: forty lines. Similarly, Zheng Shen “asked for” a poem in 1096 when he built a pavilion and planted bamboos near his office, we are told, so surely he rewarded He Zhu for Inscribed on the Straight Node Pavilion of Administrative Assistant Zheng in Wuchang (156), which stretched to thirty lines. Of course, we don’t know if the poet was literally paid by the word; and why would a long inscription necessarily be worth more to the person who commissioned it, anyway, except to convince his less literary guests that he had gotten his money’s worth? There are less materialistic considerations. Length was an advantage for an inscription that had to stand up to repeated exposure, that was always on display, not hidden away in a book or in a packet of letters to be rediscovered just often enough to keep its freshness. Length was one safeguard against the over-familiarity that could so easily threaten any text that was a daily companion. Moreover, length gave an inscription “weight,” the weight to compete with other inscriptions that might be at the site, the scale to command attention as an artifact that had obviously taken great effort to produce, that could not be read in a single glance, and therefore must have something to say. For the poet writing when no compensation was expected (as perhaps was the case with An Excursion to Eupatorium Bottoms Garden at Lingbi in 1088, Poem 100), depending on the circumstances under which the poem was likely to be on view, these factors could be decisive in determining the choice of genre. We can also posit that when tonal and/or semantic balance would distract us
——— 288 This poem and one other Ancient Verse are counted as inscriptions despite the fact that their titles do not use the verb ti, ‘inscribe,’ because the headnotes specify that the poems were inscribed. Naturally, many poems about which we have no such information would end up serving as inscriptions to no one’s surprise, but our purpose here is to try to understand the choices made by a poet when this was the express function of the poem.
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123
from an argument or create an unwanted impression of sophistication, Ancient Verse will be the choice for an inscription. A poem on an ancient stele, such as the 1080 Inscribed on the Back of the Stele of the Prince of Lanling (056) quoted briefly in this chapter, should be appropriately old-fashioned. In later chapters we shall discuss first-line rhyme as it relates to other genres, but let us mark it here as a topic in the pentametrical Ancient Verse that needs broader study. Length does not appear to be a factor in the decision to rhyme the first lines: while half of He Zhu’s fourteen Ancient Verses marked by this oddity are eight lines long, the rest are anywhere from twelve to forty lines in length. Rhyme change is present in only two of the fourteen poems; all others feature the same rhyme throughout. 289 Whether it is significant that the unchanging rhyme is almost always an even-tone rhyme is difficult to say. (The sole exception is one of a pair of octaves under the title Autumn Thoughts ⑺ᙿ; see below.) The most striking thing is that six of the poems in question were written in 1080, in the Fuyang period. Inscribed on a Painting of Shamanka Mountain, (047) and On Night Duty in Winter (059) are examples translated in this chapter. (Although we chose to translate a variant version of On Night Duty in Winter that does not rhyme the first line, it is certainly plausible that the version in QSS, where the line does rhyme, is an equally authentic draft.) The two poems from 1082 are somewhat problematic: Climbing the Yellow Tower and Having Thoughts of Su [of] Meishan (066) begins with two three-syllable rhyming lines, which we have already noted is very unusual in pentametrical Ancient Verse, and it might be best to remove this as an example of first-line rhyme. The second of the two octaves under the title Autumn Thoughts (067, 068) has an entering-tone rhyme, which is anomalous in our set of fourteen poems. 290 If we pass over these 1082 poems, then, we find two examples in 1085, then one each in 1086, 1091, 1096 (Sent as an Inscription for the Thatched Hall of Mr. Zhou of Xunyang, Poem 140), and 1098 (Harmonizing with Pan Binlao’s ‘Watching on the Han River, Poem 159). Looking only at the poems from 1085 to 1098, we could safely conclude that first-line rhyme was an occasional phenomenon of no overarching significance. Why the cluster of poems from Fuyang, then? Perhaps that early period was a time for experimentation. Some of the experiments worked and were kept for the poetry collection but they did not lead to further developments along the same line. Fanghui’s witty poems on a withered tree (041), mosquitoes (048), a moth (049), and a rooster destined for the cooking pot (054), for example, have no parallel in his post-Fuyang poetry.
——— 289 Coincidentally or not, both poems in question begin with rising tone rhymes. The poems are փ Asking my Wife (052, 1080), 2.12513; 2.5b; and ㅍናరᒠ₺ᢥ⥞ Seeing Off Kou Yuanbi and Wang Wenju (082, 1085), 3.12524; 3.2b. 290 The first line of Poem 067, ends with ㆙ ghwanQ3a, which looks like it “wants” to rhyme with the words at the end of the other couplets, kan2b, sran2b, phan2a, and ghwan2a, except that it is in the wrong tone. Su Shi sometimes put ghwanQ3a in similarly ambiguous positions; perhaps this is some sort of slant rhyme, but it is safest to exclude it as an example of first-line rhyme for now.
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We shall want to test such statements against He Zhu’s works in other genres, of course, alert to the possibility that a theme or mode will take a different form in another type of poetry. We don’t see later reportage on village life as in the 1079 Ancient Verses discussed above (040 and 041), but there will be glimpses of rural life and satirical Quatrains on the plight of the peasants, at least immediately after the Fuyang period. There will be different ways of being witty, of talking about historical time and personal history, of capturing a scene with precision, of admiring Su Shi and keeping one’s distance from factionalism.
CHAPTER TWO
THE SONGS OF HE ZHU, 1080–98 ‘Song’ (gexing ⴕ) is He Zhu’s term for heptametrical poems unrestrained by the rules of Regulated Verse. It was his least favorite genre, if numbers can be used to gauge such things: his thirty-eight surviving Songs amount to only seven percent of his total oeuvre. Yet it was also the genre in which he mourned his daughter, poked fun at friends, celebrated precious gifts given and received, and performed some odd experiments. Some of his most memorable works are Songs. As is usual with the form, he varies the line length to create exclamatory and other effects. (It is in only about a quarter of his Songs that the line length is uniformly heptasyllabic.) As is also usual with the form, he often (in thirty-one of the thirty-eight poems) breaks Songs into sections by changing the rhyme—even if there are only eight lines in the poem. In several ways, this genre requires more of a poet simply because there are more options, meaning more choices, from large to small. How long will the poem be? How many sections will there be, and how long or short does each need to be? How prosy should it be, or how musical? Because of the longer line and unpredictable line length, one is apt to use rhyme at the end of more lines in order to keep the structure from dissolving, and so there is a great deal of pressure to come up with rhymes. True, one can change rhymes freely, but changes driven solely by limitations in one’s creativity and bearing no relation to the content of the poem would be fatal. Fanghui had a great deal of fun with the Song, I sense, but this was not a form to be used lightly. Perhaps for that reason, we don’t get a Song from He Zhu until 1080, and it not until 1084 that he gives us a second one. An additional oddity is that while the first ten Songs are identified as “songs” in their titles, 1 after 1088 only a single heptametrical Ancient Verse (Poem 036, dated 1097) is called a “song.” We may wonder why the subgroup of poems with ‘song’ in the title dominates those first few years to the exclusion of all other heptametrical Ancient Verse and then nearly disappears. There seem to be no tendencies in meter, rhyme, or mixed line length that consistently distinguish those ‘songs’ from the other heptametrical Ancient Verses in He Zhu’s collection. After all, in his preface to his collection Fanghui expansively lumps together as ‘Songs’ all poems “that have mixed line-length [or] that change rhymes, regardless of whether [the meters of individual lines are]
——— 1 Five of the titles in 1080 and 1084 use the term ge; the remaining five in 1084, 1085, and 1088 use other terms.
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‘ancient’ or ‘regulated’.” However, in He Zhu’s collection a ‘song’ will tell us in its title that it is on a set topic—a place or an object—or is a performance of an old song type. If we understand a ‘song’ as a work on a topic rather than as the explicit outgrowth of an experience, it comes as no surprise that Poems 002 through 007 were written in Xuzhou in 1084 and 1085 as part of group exercises, with the topics distributed among the participants. This does not tell us why no earlier Songs were written on our poet’s own initiative as responses to events rather than to topics, but it does suggest that it was the prodding of others that eased He Zhu into this genre. The non-‘song’ heptametrical Ancient Verses start even later, in 1089; these poems indicate in their titles a use, an occasion, or a context: “presented to so-and-so,” “sent to so-and-so,” “seeing off so-and-so,” and so forth. This kind of poem accounts for the vast majority of He Zhu’s heptasyllabic Ancient Verse.
1080–85: HANDAN AND XUZHOU 1080: AN ANCIENT SITE IN HANDAN Song of the Clustered Estrade ฌ⥑ 2 is on the topic of an edifice originally constructed in the fourth century B.C. The location is Handan, at that time a populous and prosperous city on the western edge of the North China plain. Invasions and population flight seven centuries before Fanghui's time had spelled the end of the city's glory, but Handan and the Clustered Estrade were still celebrated in the works of such poets as Li Bo, Du Fu, and Bo Juyi. Apparently taking its name from the fact that it had been built as a complex or “cluster” of terraces and pavilions, the Estrade was but a ruin in the northeast corner of the city wall when Fanghui climbed it with his friend Du Yan in the seventh month of Yuanfeng 4 (1080). 3 001 ⚥ਃ⊖ዤ
ᵹἫੑජᐕ ੱ↢‛ᢞਇ⋧ᓙ ៹ᙱဇ⑺㘑೨
4
Piled-up earth for three hundred feet; declining Fire[-Star] for two thousand years. A In human life, the Numbers of the objective [world] do not wait for us; b shattered and ruined, an old relic faces the winds of autumn. A
——— 2
1.12497; 1.1a. Fanghui ascribes the poem to 1081, but Zhong Zhenzhen, “Du ‘He Fanghui nianpu’ zhaji,” 437–38, points out several reasons why this is an unlikely date. He proposes the seventh month of 1080 as much more plausible. Two months later, Fanghui will draw on his memory of the outing with Du Yan as he writes Replying to Du Zhongguan’s Climbing the Clustered Estrade, Which He Sent to Me¸ (058), from which we quoted in the previous chapter. 3
SONGS
ᱞ㕆⥟ჵ ⑱᮸ή㒶࿎᮴㉻ ₹◹㊄㏜ᧂ㌟ᴉ 8
ᐞ⠹ᄦၔ⾬
Wuling’s old barrow— where is it now? Bare trees cast no shade, beset by the harvest of woodcutters. The nephrite flutes and gold mirrors have not melted from sight; now and then I see the ploughmen go to the city to sell them.
127 B B
B
ำਇฌ⥑ో⋓ᤨ Do you not see—when the Clustered Estrade was in C ✊⟜ᚑᏒㆆᤐᥞ ৻ᓬ№フ㐽⨹⨲ 12
⭤ᢔⴕ㔕ήᓳᱩ 㝬ᗐ㘑ᵹ ᥍⪇㔺⬧₈ଐ⒘ ⋚⚄ㅝੱ
16
⑰㤠ඡᚑ⽤⽦⢈ ጀ◿⏉ⅽ⎺ᐔ ᄞ㡗㡝⋧㘧 ⊓⥃ᒀฎዂ⺆⺕
20
ၔㇳੱ᳃ᤚ㕖 ᜰำ⋴ขᤨ‛ ධᷡᵹ⠑ᓸ ᓌᓲ⪇ਇᔋ
24
⼼₡ㆯ᧲ৼᆭ
full glory, Marquisette gauzes formed a throng to sojourn in the spring sunlight. Once the carved Imperial Carriage was shut away in unkempt grasses, scattered—moving clouds— they never returned. Summoning his soul, I imagine the outflow of that style remains, in clear-day flowers and dewy creepers still vaguely discernible. Twisting and turning, the thorny path pulls at our clothes; Millet ripens late and badgers and raccoon dogs grow fat. Green tiles from serried roofs, broken on the level ground, dream they are mandarin ducks flying as companions. I climb to overlook, mourning for the ancient times; to whom can I tell my question: The citywalls, the people— are they the same or gone? I point out for you to see the things of former times: in the south there is a clear flow, in the west a mountain haze. We pace about the “Flowered Pillar,” cannot bear to leave; it is not only Liaodong’s Ding Lingwei who felt that way!
C
C b C C C
C C C
C
C
Notes: 001-1–2/ The Fire-Star declining in the west has been associated with the seventh month since the Classic of Poetry (Ode no. 154). Fanghui, viewing this site in the seventh month, reflects that the same month has come and gone there for two thousand years (give or take a few centuries). 001-3/ The phrase wushu, object and number, refers to the world of objects changing through time, in accord with its own teleology.
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001-5/ The “barrow” he cannot find is King Wuling's grave (see Poem 058, line14). 001-13/ “Summoning the soul” is “soul of Shao 㖻 [music]” in some editions. I am unable to determine what the “soul of Shao” might mean. 001-16/ The raccoon dog and the badger would clearly not make their homes at the Clustered Estrade if it had not become farmland. The raccoon dog (Nytereutes procynoides), now raised in North America for its fur (and eyed warily as a potentially invasive species), eats a wide variety of plants, animals, and carrion. 4 001-20; 23–24/ A Daoist adept from Liaodong went away to master the Way and returned to Liao one thousand years later in the form of a crane. Perching on a flower-carved pillar, he found himself the target of a youthful archer and had to fly away up into the heavens. The song he sang includes the line ၔㇳᅤੱ᳃㕖 “The citywalls are as before; the people are different.” 5 This language is clearly echoed in line 001-20.
As is customary in Songs, rhyme changes divide the poem into stanzas of four lines or a multiple of four lines. (Because, with rare exceptions, interlocking rhymes are not recognized in Chinese poetry, the rhymes in lines 001-3 and 13 are represented with a lower-case “b.”) More unusual, I think, is the single pentametrical couplet at the beginning of the poem. Huang Tingjian and Chao Yuezhi ᤧᎅਯ (1059–1129) write the only other two heptametrical ge I know that start with a single pentametrical couplet. 6 I have not tried to survey heptasyllabic Ancient Verse as a whole, but if we look only at He Zhu’s Songs that start with pentasyllabic lines, in no other case are these lines limited to a single couplet. In 1084 and 1085, he starts three poems with two pentametrical couplets, and in later years he starts another three poems with four pentametrical couplets (in 1089, 1092, and 1096). The 1084–85 poems are designated as some kind of ‘song’ in their titles; the later poems are not. Perhaps Fanghui associated the shorter pentametrical openings with ‘real’ songs and the longer ones with heptametrical Ancient Verse more broadly conceived. One would like to find corroboration in the works of other poets before drawing a conclusion on this point.
———
4 Both collections of Fanghui’s poetry regularly cited in this study have ᇴᇵ instead of ⡷ᇵ. The former two terms can refer to northern barbarians, but I have been unable to find them used together with this or any other sense. In fact, the characters can be alternative ways of writing the same word. I emend the text based on the version of the poem given in the Mirror of Writing for our August Court ཛ֮ᦸ, compiled in the Southern Song by Lü Zuqian ܨలᝐ (1137–81), as it appears in the electronic edition of the Sibu congkan. (Other variations in that version have little to recommend them, however.) The badger and racoon dog appear together in the Huainan zi (ICS 19/206/4), and although the context there is irrelevant to our poem, at least we know that 1) these terms could occur together and 2) they refer to animals. 5 See Zhong Zhenzhen, Dongshan ci, 170–71 for Fanghui’s use of this story in a lyric. 6 Huang’s poem, ኙዚֆᙩ, is ascribed to 1078, when Huang was in nearby Daming; CSJC, 2247:wai.3.53; Quanji, 2:1010. Lines 26 and 27 do briefly return to the five-syllable line. Chao Yuezhi’s poem is ՞ອՖዚ, QSS, 21:1208.13706. See also a Song by Wang Ling ( ח׆1032–59) that starts with one pentametrical couplet, switches to a heptametrical couplet, then back to two pentametrical couplets before concluding with three heptametrical couplets: 5, 5; 7, 7; 5, 5; 5, 5; 7, 7; 7, 7; 7, 7. Wang Ling’s Song is the first of a pair: ۫Ⴜִ࡙ᔨ܂ዚԲគ, QSS, 12:8135–36. (The second poem in the pair comprises six pentasyllabic lines followed by one heptametrical couplet.)
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Whatever the generic associations behind these first two lines, they are capable of holding their own in the spotlight. The relationship between “Piled-up earth for three hundred feet” and “declining Fire[-Start] for two thousand years” is multilayered. Most obvious is the semantic parallelism of the phrases “three hundred feet” and “two thousand years.” More subtly, “fire” correlates with the “earth”; they share equal status as two of the Five Phases (wu xing ⴕ) of early Chinese thought. Even more subtly, the first words in each line—“piled up” and “declining,” literally, “flowing”—are opposites (that which flows away is not piled up, and vice versa), yet both words start with the same initial l~: lwiQ3b, lou3b. Tonally, we have a saliently “ancient” configuration of (A1) D1 (٨٨٤ع٨ / ٤٨٨٤ ٤), but all the syllables in the two lines except for the second syllables are neatly antithetical. We are probably not expected to puzzle out the literal relevance of “two thousand years” to a landmark that is only seven hundred years old; rather, it is the emotional truth married to the formal correspondences we have just enumerated that make this a strong opening to the poem. Line 001-3’s “In human life, the Numbers of the object[ive world] do not wait for us” is both strange and familiar. In the philosophy of Shao Yong, who had died just a few years previously (in 1077), number was of paramount importance in the production of the universe and, because numbers can be calculated, they offered a way to interpret and predict history. 7 To speak of such things in poetry was unusual (even for Shao). I have found only one contemporary poet and one twelfth-century poet who use some variation of the phrase ‘object and number.’ Guo Xiangzheng wrote, ầ↢ầ⪭ᄛㆶᦇ㧘‛⥜ᢞᦩ⺕⢻┆ “Tides rise, tides drop; night reverts to dawn; / objects and numbers intersect; who can exhaust [the combinations]?” 8 Lü Benzhong ํᧄਛ (1084–1145) will write, ‛ᢞᭂਃ↲㧘 ᱝℂᧄᄤ “If the objects and numbers reach to the end of long life; / this is simply Heaven’s allotment.” 9 If in poetry “objects and numbers” are unusual, the notion that the world does not wait for us, that that time is running away, should be more familiar to the reader by now. This theme was a preoccupation three months earlier in Facing Brew (044) and also in other Ancient Verses from 1080. The second section of the poem (lines 001-5–8) establishes continuity, but only in an ironic sense: the trees at the site and the relics dug from beneath the earth are commodities for the woodcutters and peasants to sell. This sardonic humor, though its object is different, is reminiscent of Lament for Boiled Chickens (054), written in the same month.
——— 7
Wing-tsit Chan, Source book, 481–82, 490–91. ८՞۩, Guo Xiangzheng ji, 2.20. 9 QSSi, 28:1615.18136. The term translated “long life” is “three jia,” and it comes from the biography of Guan Lu ጥ⢗ in the Sanguo zhi, 3:29.826: Guan says that he will not live long because he does not have three jia on his back or three ren on his stomach. Giles does translate this sentence in his Gallery of Chinese Immortals, 88, but covers up the fact that no one seems to know what Guan Lu is referring to by calling them, based on context, “marks of longevity.” 8
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The standard ballad phrase “Do you not see” introduces a lengthy, rambling description of what is seen (and what no longer remains to be seen) on the present outing. Rhyme change no longer helps organize the presentation, nor is there any semantic parallelism within couplets, and thus at first glance there seems to be little pattern here—perhaps appropriately enough, given that the site is in ruins. On closer examination, however, we can see a careful division into three parts, each one led off by a rhyming couplet. Lines 001-9–14 (CC C C) present a double vision of elegance lost and elegance still felt. Then we have four lines (CC C) that describe the scene that has replaced lost elegance, lines 001-14–15 showing how wild and desolate the place is, lines 001-16–17 making the very ruins an object of our pity: how sad to imagine broken roof tiles scattered on the ground dreaming they have been returned to the air, alive now as the birds that symbolize lifelong companionship in love. Finally, the rhyme structure CC C C is revived for six lines that center on the speaker and his companion. The preceding lines were the observations and thoughts that resulted from the acts of looking, gesturing, and questioning that are now named. There is a reason why the poet brings himself and Du Yan into the poem only at the end. This enables him to close with the affecting thought that he and Du Yan are like Ding Lingwei insofar as they have come upon the remnants of a past to which neither they nor anyone else can return.
1084–85: SITES AND POETRY SESSIONS IN XUZHOU After the Song of the Clustered Estrade of 1080, Fanghui writes only in other genres until 1084 and 1085, when he is at the mint in Xuzhou. With one exception, all the Songs written at that time are part of a group activity. Strangely, there is no indication that the Xuzhou poetry society was interested in Songs. Although Fanghui almost always names his companions on Song-composing occasions; he does not identify them as members of a “poetry society,” and indeed perhaps it was a different set of people. In Yuanfeng 7 (1084–85), He Zhu, Zhang Zhonglian ᒛખㅪ, Kou Changzhao, Chen Shizhong, Wang Shi, and Wang Gong met and chose local sites as their topics. (Wang Shi ₺ㆡ [1055–89] had accompanied Su Shi on several occasions in Xuzhou and was an expert flute player.) 10 The topics Fanghui chose are all associated with the Qin-Han transition: the Horse-Sporting Estrade, built by Xiang Yu; the swamp where a drunken Liu Bang had cut in half a huge white snake lying across his path; and the estrade in Liu Bang’s hometown where he composed the famous Song of the Great Wind. It was rare for anyone up to this time to write
——— 10
See my “Music in the World of Su Shi,” 65–67.
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a Song of significant length about these sites, though they certainly were alluded to in passing; when they are the subject of a poem, the poem is likely to be a heptametrical Quatrain or a pentametrical Ancient Verse. I think this is because the stories surrounding the sites were so familiar that the most effective way to use them was to make a brief point about them and rely on the reader’s knowledge of the circumstances to fill in the blanks. Let us take the topic of the third Song as an example. Fanghui’s title is 㘑⥑ ⹖ Lyric of the Song of the Wind Estrade. 11 In his Song of the Great Wind, Liu Bang had both celebrated his sway over the empire and wondered whether he could attract the bold men he needed to help him govern it. I believe the only Tang poem that makes more than passing reference to the Estrade is one by Bao Rong, a sixteen-line pentametrical poem titled Thinking of the Past in Pei ᴗਛᙿฎ (Pei being the home district of Liu Bang, about sixty km north of the city of Xuzhou). 12 The 1874 gazetteer for Xuzhou Prefecture quotes only one poem on the Estrade prior to He Zhu’s. It is a heptametrical Quatrain by Zhang Fangping ᒛᣇᐔ (1007–91) that cleverly asks why Liu Bang needed to worry about attracting worthy men since he already had Peng Yue and Qing Bu. 13 The question virtually repeats an observation made by Hu Zeng in his ᴗች Palace at Pei, one of his heptametrical quatrains on history. 14 As we have noted, heptametrical Quatrains by Hu and others that questioned why history had happened as it did or that suggested alternative outcomes to critical moments were rife in the two centuries before He Zhu. The last four lines of our present poem follow Zhang Fangping’s lead in slyly critiquing Liu Bang’s discovery that he needs the goodwill of determined and heroic men. Preceding that critique, however, is a sketch of Liu Bang’s triumphant homecoming that is strangely at odds with the canonical historical accounts. 005 ṽ㜞㘑⊖ዤ⥑
ජᐕቴ↢⫺⪘ ┆ੱ᳓᧲ 4
ᅤᒻጊ྾ૼ
The Han progenitor’s high wind, a hundred-foot estrade: Thousand-year-old “soil from another place” sprouts weeds. What end is there to human affairs? the rivers flow ever eastward; as of yore, the terrain: mountains come on all sides.
——— 11 1.3b–4a; 1.12499. This is the only Song of the three that calls itself a ci (lyric) instead of a ge, possibly to avoid the repetition of ge in the title: “Song of the Song of the Wind Estrade.” See our discussion below of the 1088 set consisting of a yin, a ci, and a xing. 12 QTS, 15:486.5522. 13 For Peng and Qing, see the note to line 099-13–14. (Like Fanghui, Zhang refers to them as Ying and Peng.) For Zhang Fangping’s poem, see the Xuzhoufu zhi, 2:507. Slightly different versions appear in the Quan Song shi, 6:306.3838 and Qian Zhongshu’s Song shi jishi buzheng, 2:11.760. The titles are given in these three sources as ዚଅፕዚ, መުᠲዚଅፕ, and ᠲዚଅፕ, respectively. 14 QTS, 19:47.7420.
A A
A
132 ᳯ᷐₈ᴣ㟗㟒ⴊ ච৻ゞᨁᱩン ⊕ฉㅩㄫ⊝ੱ 8
‗㈬ᱚᗂዂ
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The River and the Huai still boiled with the blood of whales; Eighty-one chariots bent themselves to the ruts leading home. White-headed old men come out to greet him, all friends of yore; with animal sacrifices and brew, and happy shouts they regret the impending farewell.
፠ễㄴ㆔㕖ᚒၢ
B B
B
Xiao-Mian is far away and not my homeland. C In life or death, this place ᱫ↢ᱝ⢻ᔓ could never slip from mind. C The drinking stretches on: his singing harp ㈬㑬㡆╳േ㔕‛ stirs the cloud-hue, 12 㕍ⴷాᦡ㓣ᛥ឴ and lads in blue gowns swoop and rise as they follow along. C At that juncture, had there been no Ὼᤨนή⢆⢑⦟ “merus and brachium fine”? C Needlessly he longed for ┵ᕁ⁴჻྾ᣇ “fierce men to guard the four quarters”! C ำਇ⡞᷐㒶ዞ❈ᘣᘯ Have you not heard: When Huaiyin went to his shackles, how stirring it was? 16 ⸃㠽⋘⦟ᑿ⮥ he understood enough to say: when all the birds are gone the fine bow is put away. C Notes: 005-1/ “High wind” can also mean “lofty air.” The pun is probably intentional here. 005-2/ “Soil from another place” is dirt brought in to build up a mound. 15 005-5/ The word used for “whale” here is commonly a reference to rebels and troublemakers. The River and the Huai may refer to the Yangzi and Huai Rivers, which at one time defined the borders of Chu. 16 (Xiang Yu, Liu Bang’s rival for control of the collapsing Qin empire, was King of Chu.) 005-6/ Eighty-one chariots simply means “a lot of” chariots, such as might accompany an emperor, in this case Liu Bang as he returns home. 17 “Bending” to the ruts refers to this mighty entourage humbling itself to visit the simple village that was Liu’s home. 005-9/ This is a strategic area that leads into the old Qin heartland, now the location of Liu Bang’s capital. 005-11–12/ Liu Bang played the harp and danced, then taught his Great Wind song to the boys of Pei. 18 005-13/ “Merus and brachium” (thigh and upper arm) is an old and oft-used metaphor for close advisors to the ruler. The word translated “fine” is also the name of Zhang Liang, Liu Bang’s most important advisor. Fanghui may be punning: “Had there been no merus and brachium Liang.”
——— 15
Han shu, 1:10.320, note 6. Shi ji, 14.509. The term can also refer to the territory between those rivers. 17 See Bo Juyi’s ᨿ୰, which criticizes the emperor for maintaining palaces that he cannot visit without “eighty-one chariots, a myriad cavalry,” and other expenses. QTS, 13:427.4700. 18 Shi ji, 8.389. 16
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005-14/ Quoting from Liu Bang’s Song of the Great Wind. 005-15–16/ Han Xin (Lord of Huaiyin) is one of the generals who eventually came to the aid of Liu Bang. During one of his periods of estrangement from Liu, he was trussed up and put into a cart, whereupon he declared (in rhyme), “When the cunning hares have died, the good dog is cooked. When the lofty birds are gone, the good bow is put away. When the enemy is broken, the advisor perishes. The empire is pacified; I shall be cooked!” 19
The most striking aspect of this Song is that very little of its diction comes from the historical account of the story, or even from the Han Dynasty, in contrast to the 1087 Ancient Verse on Zhang Liang (099). Fanghui’s poem even alludes to events that are not found in the “standard” story of Liu Bang. First, I know of no significance to the hills or mountains surrounding the place. Second, the Jiang-Huai region as such is not mentioned in the accounts of the Han founding, though it was mentioned often later in the Han and from then on as a region of famine or unrest. Third, the term used for sacrificial meat and brew (005-8) does not appear in the histories (or in the Wen xuan or Tang and other Song poetry) until the history of He Zhu’s own dynasty, compiled in the fourteenth century. Fourth, the Xiao-Mian passage between east and west does not figure in Liu Bang’s story; it is nearly 100 km west of Loyang (where he initially wanted to locate his administration) and it is nowhere near Xianyang (modern Xi’an), where Zhang Liang convinced him to place his capital instead. These observations lead to a hypothesis, for which evidence is presented below, that Fanghui is drawing on a popular tradition for his language in this poem. One might ask skeptically whether he has to draw on any tradition to tell a story, but the question overlooks the fact that this is not a narrative poem. Lyric of the Song of the Wind Estrade does not tell a story but refers to a story or, better, evokes our memory of a story. A short poem may simply use its title or one or two key phrases to call up a story in our minds, in which case the bulk of the poem can be new language. In contrast, a long poem such as this one needs to refer again and again to shared knowledge in a fairly explicit way (unless it is truly a narrative poem, in which case far more context and plot is part of the poem). Otherwise, it risks being either a mere digest of unfamiliar information or a private and unintelligible soliloquy. A known background story gives the poem coherence; more importantly, it gives the reader the pleasure of recognizing the linguistic and cultural links. If objects and actions whose connotations are conventionally agreed upon are placed in relationships that are unintelligible—or unacceptable—to the culture, we are moving toward a different aesthetic, the aesthetic of surrealism. Whale blood boiling in the Jiang and Huai can be understood as referring to the death of scoundrels in a certain region, but if that image and that place have no previous connection with the Song of the Wind Estrade, we may wonder if the poet is
——— 19 Shi ji, 92.2627. Versions of this aphorism were quoted by several others in the histories, but obviously Han Xin’s is most relevant to a poem about Liu Bang.
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questioning the coherence of his culture, perhaps the coherence of human experience itself. We do not expect to find this in classical Chinese poetry. In genres where different cultural codes are brought together in a “dialogic” relationship, on the other hand, the injection of new images and events into an old plot line is to be expected. In the eleventh century, such a genre would be oral storytelling or drama. The apparent allusions to places or events that are not part of the Liu Bang story as we know it suggest that Fanghui is writing in the context of popular histories, song sequences, or plays. Such texts (not necessarily written) would naturally use more contemporary language, as well as elaborations and oral formulae absent from the officially sanctioned written versions. 20 The fifth line’s reference to the Jiang and Huai boiling with the blood of whales offers a link to the popular tradition. At the beginning of the Ballad of the Capture of Ji Bu ᝒቄᏓொᢥ, a long narrative in heptametrical lines from the Dunhuang caves in a version dated 978, we find the line ㅪᐕァᢌᳯᴡᴣ “For years on end the armies had been defeated; the Jiang and He [Yellow River] boiled.” 21 This suggests that boiling rivers are a formula in oral storytelling, useful for filling out a line and suggesting protracted military conflict. Moreover, Ji Bu’s story being part of the Liu Bang saga, this ballad shows that stories of the Han founding were recited in the early Song Dynasty. We can also document the existence in the tenth century of a recitation text on one of Liu Bang’s generals: the Transformation on the Han General, Wang Ling ṽዂ₺㒺⼠. One of the MSS extant is dated 939. 22 Given the inherent drama in so many of the episodes of the Qin-Han transition, it would be surprising indeed if they were not celebrated in non-elite literature in the tenth and eleventh centuries and indeed throughout Chinese history. More research may or may not uncover the contemporary popular origins of the four anomalies I listed above, but extrapolating from the evidence in the Ballad of the Capture of Ji Bu, I suggest that Fanghui made a non-canonical narrative version of the Liu Bang story his background text in this poem. Perhaps, when more eleventh-century poets receive the attention they deserve, we will be able to tell how unusual this was in the elite poetry of his time. The sudden shift to Han Xin (Lord of Huaiyin) in lines 005-15–16 of Lyric of the Song of the Wind Estrade does not necessarily reflect a plot detail in the popular
——— 20 It is a peculiarity of the set of poems of which this Song is a part that two poems contain the phrase “Do you not hear,” which is rare in Tang and Song poetry. One contains the more common—in ballads and Songs—“Do you not see?” These phrases may also point to an oral storytelling background, though such a case could not be built on these phrases alone. 21 Or.8210/S5441 (ff 1–12). See “Ji Bu, Ballad of” at the International Dunhuang Project website http://idp.bl.uk/ for this and two other versions. It is also found in Yan Tingliang, ed., Dunhuang wenxue, 308. See also Victor Mair, T’ang Transformation Texts, 28. 22 Or.8210/S.5437 (ff.1R). See Mair, T’ang Transformation Texts, 15, 19–20 et passim. See also Eugene Eoyang, “Word of Mouth,” 115–40 and, for a translation, 247–68.
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tradition. The introduction of Han Xin makes perfect sense after lines 005-13–14, where Fanghui took Liu Bang to task for whining that he might not have stalwart men to support his enterprise. “Look,” says the witty poet, “since Liu Bang failed to make proper use of people such as Han Xin, he has only himself to blame for this anxiety.” In the twelfth month of Yuanfeng 7 (note that all but the first two days of this lunar month fall in 1085 C.E.), Fanghui, Zhang Zhonglian, Chen Shizhong, and Wang Shi met again, and once again they allotted topics. The topics selected are unremarkable in themselves: the fisherman, the woodcutter, the farmer, and the herder. All four float on a tide of classical precedents and conventional associations in Tang and Song poetry. The fisherman and the woodcutter move freely on the outskirts of both the agrarian and urban society; the farmer is often a happy celebrant at village festivals, but can be the object of pity or exhortation; the herdboy (unlike the Western shepherd) does not stray far from home, but the lazy rhythm of his bovine charges gives him time to play his flute and dream. What is unusual about the topics chosen by He Zhu and his friends is that they should be conceived of as a set. James Crump, in a delightful survey of the pairing of fisherman and woodcutter in the Yuan Dynasty aria, does not report any expansion of their dialogue to include farmers and herdboys. 23 The closest thing I have found to a full set of poems on this quartet is Chu Guangxi’s ఢశ⟺ (706?–62?) poems on the fisherman, the woodcutter, the herdboy—plus the lotus picker and water chestnut picker. The farmer is not included. There is no way to know if these five poems were a set, though they appear together in Chu’s poems; but since the first three are identical in form (pentametrical, fourteen lines) and the last two are one couplet shorter or longer, it is possible that Chu treated the fisherman, woodcutter, and herdboy as a distinct trio. All have the same import: the simple life among the folk is the happy life. 24 Fanghui’s explanatory headnote uses the term nong for farmer, whereas references to “field families,” tian jia ↰ኅ, are more common in singing of the happiness of the simple folk. (Nong is such a general term that it must be hard to strip it of associations with the drudgery and uncertainty of the farming life.) Nevertheless, even adjusting for terminology, one does not find sets of poems including all four of the topics Fanghui and his friends allotted among themselves. Fanghui’s song is on the most common topic of the four, the fisherman, but his treatment is anything but commonplace. Rhyme changes divide the Song into
——— 23 Songs from Xanadu, 81–103. To supplement Crump’s survey of precedents, we might note that in the Tang, Lu Guimeng ຬᚋ፞ (d. 881?) composed a set of Ancient Verses (pentametrical) on the woodcutter to restore some parity with the fisherman, on which his friend Pi Rixiu ֲٖؼ (834?–83?) had composed a set. See QTS, 18:611.7043–49 and 620.7134–40 for the various sets that went back and forth. 24 QTS, 4:136.1373–74.
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three parts of four lines each, each with a separate subtopic, mood, and structure. Rather than depicting the happy, anonymous fisherman we might have expected, the poem begins with two famous recluses of the past who happened to fish. This portion is pentametrical and restrained. Next, the poem breaks into heptasyllabic lines that move more quickly: whereas line 006-1 had named one recluse and line 006-2 the other, all in matching syntax, in this section a fisherman of the southeast gets an entire couplet and the kitchens of the nobility the other couplet. The syntax here is relatively continuous, not parallel. Still, the fisherman and the kitchens are simply juxtaposed, leaving the relationship between them open to interpretation and preserving a measure of restraint. It is the last four lines, translated below, that startle the reader when the speaker of the poem steps forward as the fisherman—a fisherman of fantastic proportion and ambition—in a rush of language from which balance and symmetry are banished: 006
๋ዂ৻㋭ ජ‰ ╉୦ᛔ᪀ਇ⸘ᐕ 㟔㟗ᙿ㙄ๅ⋧ᓧ
12
ထ᧲ධ㘲㘩㞲
I’ll hold one hook and dangle ten steers down, Laughing as I lean on the Fusang Isle not reckoning the years. The kun and whale will take the bait in their breasts and be torn from their element so that everyone in the southeast may gorge themselves on fresh fish.
C C
C
Notes: 006-10/ Fusang is a mythical tree whence the sun rises in the east, or an island in the eastern sea where many of those trees grow. 006-11/ The kun is an enormous mythical fish. The phrase translated “their element” literally means ‘mutual getting.’ It sometimes is a kenning for a ruler and minister being in perfect harmony in their respective roles, like fish and water. For example, this couplet (late ninth or early tenth century) celebrates Liu Bei and his advisor Zhuge Liang, who established the state of Shu in Sichuan as the Han empire was breaking up: 㝼᳓ᓬ⋧ᓧ㧘ጊᴡㆀᱩ “When fish and water got each other, / the mountains and rivers [=the realm] then found the object of their allegiance.” 25 Whether He Zhu’s use of the phrase to refer to the literal relationship between fish and their element is creative or distracting may be a matter of taste. 26
This splashy fantasy is worthy of Li Bo in its exaggeration and of Du Fu in its ambition to succor the people. Though his lines lack Li’s wild variations in length, Fanghui’s structure of “escalation,” as described above, ensures that these last
———
25 Li Zhong ޕխ, ᦰᇋ ;ݳQTS, 21:748.8525. This poet, who served the Southern Tang court after the fall of the Tang, happens to provide an early example (ድ׀, 747.8507) of the chummy fisherman and woodcutter who reappear in the Yuan and Ming texts discussed by Crump. The earliest example Crump finds of the “idle talk” of these folk is from the eleventh century (Songs from Xanadu, 102). Li Zhong does not use the phrase “idle talk,” but the way the two meet for a drink after work (and ignore the anxious Qu Yuan lurking in the background!) fits the pattern perfectly. 26 Such judgments must always be tempered by an awareness of the limits of our knowledge of eleventh century Chinese as it existed in the texts we have not had time to read, texts that are lost, and discourse that was never frozen in print.
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four lines will be experienced as unfettered and wild. Truly we may say our poet has overleaped the weir of traditional expectations for the topic. The 1084 Song that was not composed as part of a group activity is Fanghui’s Song of the Yellow Tower ႓ᮝ, which might have been better titled “Song of Su Shi.” 27 It does more than celebrate the much-celebrated leadership of Su Shi in overcoming the Xuzhou flood of 1077; it also, according to the headnote, “gives voice to the longings of the people of Xu[zhou]” for the man who left them for Huzhou ḓᎺ in 1079, the year after the Yellow Tower was completed, was sentenced that same winter to exile in Huangzhou, and had been reassigned to Ruzhou ᳭Ꮊ five years later. (That reassignment had come in the third month of the present year. 28 Although Ruzhou, only 150 km southwest of the capital, represented a reduced degree of exile, in the eleventh month of 1084 it probably appeared that Su would continue to drift about the empire. Indeed, he would get another transitional assignment early the following year before ever arriving in Ruzhou. But the important thing for the people of Xuzhou was that he was not with them.) Every line but one rhymes, which gives the poem a fast pace. Changes in rhyme define changes in topic. Lines 002-1–7 are about the flood and the building of the Tower. (Line 002-1, ำਇᾨካৼᏈ⑺ “Do you not see, in the autumn of the ding-si year of Xining…” is a sort of ballad-cum-chronicle opening affixed to the poem. As a result, all subsequent couplets end on odd-numbered lines.) Lines 002-8–11 cite the fact that earth (whose yellow/brown color accounts for the name of the Tower) overcomes water in the progression of the Five Phases and describe the taming of the water creatures and the return of commerce to the now-placid waters. Lines 002-12–15 imagine the scene when Su Shi inaugurated the Tower, with sword dances and poems, geese descending over the mirror-like water, and fishermen’s songs echoing in the empty hills. Lines 002-16–19 turn to Su Shi’s departure and exile. Lines 002-20–25 close the poem with a lament that uses the ~zai exclamation. Su Shi has not returned to Xuzhou: thus, whether it was during his exile in Huangzhou or, now, as he is going to his transitional appointment to Ruzhou, one’s mind is filled with distant longing (႓ጟ᳭ᶏᔃᖘ) and the children of Xuzhou, riding on their bamboo horses, wait in vain to greet Su again. 29
———
27 1.12498; 1.1b. This was written in the eleventh month and in Fanghui’s collection is placed before the Songs just discussed. 28 Kong Fanli, Su Shi nianpu, 2:23.600. 29 Ruzhou was only a little over 150 km southwest of the capital; Su had received his appointment in the third month and was still on his way to the new post while hoping for other options. The allusion to the children on bamboo horses will be repeated by Su Shi himself when he passes through Mizhou യ ڠin 1085. See his ٦መ၌ྥፕᢤ֜ښᙥ, SSSJ, 5:26.1381. The allusion is to a very capable official named Guo Ji ພٟ (39 BCE–47 CE). Guo was once greeted by several hundred children on bamboo “horses” as he approached a town under his administration (just inside modern Inner Mongolia and up within the great bend of the Yellow River); when he left,
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The single line that does not even come close to rhyming is 002-18, in the fourth rhyme group, where the meter and mood change: 002 ᮝਅ᳜ᵮ㐳⧐⨲ Below the Tower on the isles 16 (C15) sweet-scented grasses grow;
٤٨٤٤٨٤٨ ৻㤙ධᓄ㐷 ٨٤٤٨٤٤٨ ᤓᣣᤐㆆ⹗⊕⯅ ٨٨٤٤٨٨٤ ᓟᄛ⑺㘑ᖤ㢅㠽 ٨٨٤٤٤٨٨
D
A2
With a wave of his banner he exited southward on the Peng Gate Road. D
B1
Just yesterday on a spring outing, he sang of white duckweed;
C2
on a subsequent night in autumn’s wind he sorrowed over the houlet.
D
Notes: 002-18/ Su Shi mentions white duckweed in three poems that were probably composed in Huzhou, where he was prefect in 1079 after leaving Xuzhou. 30 002-19/ Jia Yi composed the Rhapsody of the Houlet when he was in exile in Changsha in the second century B.C.E. 31 . Fanghui’s allusion here is to Su Shi’s exile to Huangzhou in 1080.
This is an excellent example of Fanghui’s skill in using form to reinforce his meaning. We indicate the meter to show the preponderance of regulated lines; except for line 002-16, the lines are also in the regulated sequence of ABC. This is not an embedded regulated Quatrain, of course. First, a Regulated Verse cannot (strictly speaking) rhyme in deflected tones. 32 Second, the B and C line types should be in adjoining couplets, not within a couplet. They “adhere” (which minimally requires that the second syllables be the same tone), whereas within couplets tonal antithesis between the lines (minimally in the second and final syllables) is called for. I don’t think the pairing of B and C lines is accidental. As we shall see in our chapters on heptametrical Regulated Verse, a similar degree of tonal identity is sometimes used within couplets (albeit only at the opening of the poem) to stress a contrast between two situations. The two lines in question here do precisely that insofar as they juxtapose Su’s last days of freedom in Huzhou, when he “sang of white duckweed,” and his exile in Huangzhou, when he “sorrowed over the houlet.”
——— the children escorted him beyond the outer walls and asked when he would return. Guo Ji gave them a date; later, when he found himself arriving back a day ahead of schedule, he put up for the night at a rustic posthouse rather than break his promise to the children. Hou Han shu, 4:31.1093. 30 The commentary to ಬ୪ထ܂……ৄە, SSSJ, 3:19.974–75, points out that there is a White Duckweed Isle in Huzhou. See also the next poem (details in Kong Fanli, Su Shi nianpu, 1:18.441) and ڻᣉີদଆఎᠲ, 19.986–87. 31 I follow Knechtges’ use of the dialectical “houlet” for the dialectical name for the owl whose intrusion gave rise to Jia Yi’s musings. See the translation and notes in Wen xuan,3:43–49. 32 There are cases in which a poem with deflected-tone rhymes has been classified as a Regulated Verse. Bo Juyi did so in one instance, and there are cases in which Quatrains by Du Fu that are part of a set in which they have the only deflected-tone rhymes are retained in the Regulated category along with the rest of the set. See Qi Gong, Shi wen shenglü lungao, 4n and 5n.
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Su Shi’s departure from Xuzhou in the spring of 1079 down the “Peng Gate Road,” (line 002-17) was one of the most moving episodes of his life. 33 The importance of that event and the poignancy of his subsequent catapulting from Huzhou to Huangzhou are acknowledged here in the formal uniqueness and careful balance. After pausing on this transition point, the Song turns to themes of absence, using unregulated meter and rushed rhyme again to give full reign to the emotions. The last Song from Xuzhou and the only one dated Yuanfeng 8 (1085–86) is like all the other Xuzhou compositions insofar as it is part of a group activity, though in this single case the parties are not named. Fanghui says that topics were allotted and he received “Song of the South” ᳯධᦛ, so other poets must have been present; and since this is an old ballad (yuefu) title, presumably other members of the implied group got other ballad themes. 34 Because the poetry society as we encountered it in our chapter on Ancient Verse was consistently involved in imitating Tang precedents, it is possible that this antiquarian interest in old ballads reveals the presence of the Xuzhou poetry society. 007 ㆆ୬១᧡⧯
4
8
٤٨٤ع٨ ᶆ㡗㡝⪭ ٨٨٤٤٨ ะඡ㟃㝼㘑 ٨٨٨٤٤ ቴᯱජ㉿ᴱ ٨٤٤٨٨ ⇧ᤨ᩶⪲ᤚᣂ⡪ ٤٤٤٨٨٤٤ ජタ㐳㙍㓒᳓ᖱ ٤٨٤٤٨٨٤ ὖᏋⵣੱ⺕ ٤٤٨٨٤٤٨ ⊕㣕ᵮㆻ⨲⥄↢ ٨٨٤٤٨٨٤
Wandering chanteuses pluck up pollia;
A
(A2) At the parting cove, mandarin ducks descend. A A1 Toward evening, the carp wind; D2 visiting masts from 1,000 miles are moored.
A
D4
Peach Leaf from those days is in a new tune;
B
B4
For a thousand years it will always remain: love across the waters.
B
A1
In Blackrobe Lane, who is still alive?
B1
Around White Egret Island wild plants grow of themselves.
C1
B
Notes: 007-1/ Duruo is generally identified as Pollia japonica Thumb.or yabumyga, but there are fifteen varieties in tropical and subtropical areas of Asia, Africa, and the Pacific, and the Japanese one is
——— 33 At a conference on Su Shi in Xuzhou in 1999, I witnessed the unveiling of a large stone engraved with this scene at Jinshan Park ८՞ֆႼ on the shore of Cloudy Dragon Lake at the southern end of Cloudy Dragon Hill. (The lake was created in 1958.) 34 1.4b; 1.12500.
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merely the northernmost. Nanjing University’s website of botanical information states that the plant flowers in May and June and bears its small dark berries August–October. Line 007-3 places the scene in the ninth lunar month or roughly October. The modern identification of the plant may be inaccurate. As Luo Yuan ⟜㗿 (1136–84) said when he noted that duruo is also called duheng ᧡ⴧ, “The reason herbaceous and woody plants are so hard to speak of is that name and reality are confused with each other. This happens all the time.” Luo tells us that duruo has “yellow-crimson” flowers and crimson berries (⧎႓⿒ሶ⿒⦡). Whatever color “yellow-crimson” is, it does not characterize the white flowers universally shown in pictures of Pollia japonica in modern sources. (The Nanjing University website states that the flowers are pink (⚃), but they look bright white in the photograph provided.) Luo Yuan’s description is important, regardless of the accuracy of his identification, because he asserts that duruo is not just another fragrant plant; it was supposed to prevent forgetfulness and so was given to a lover to express the hope that one would be remembered. He seems to draw this conclusion from the appearance of the plant in the Songs of Chu, and one of the verbs used there for “plucking” duruo is the same verb Fanghui uses. (Tang or other Song poets don’t refer to picking duruo, as far as I can tell, most of them being content to acknowledge its fragrance.) We may conclude that the young women are picking the plant in He Zhu’s Song to give to their lovers. 35 007-3/ The “carp wind” is a name for wind that blows in the ninth month (or autumn months). Early references to it come from the Southern Courts. 007-5/ Peach Leaf was a beauty much loved by Wang Xianzhi ₺₰ਯ (344–88). Her name also graces a mountain on the opposite side of the Yangzi River from Jinling, hence the reference to “love across the waters.” Fanghui makes use of this common allusion to her/it in six of his lyrics. 007-7/ Blackrobe Lane was a neighborhood of aristocrats, including the family of Wang Xianzhi, in Jinling. 007-8/ White Egret Island, in the Yangzi, was another Jinling landmark. In 1089, having actually been to Jinling, Fanghui will note that it is no longer an island. See line 011-12 below.
At eight lines, half of them pentasyllabic, this is Fanghui’s shortest Song, but it is not as simple as it might look. The first four lines keep the scene at a distance, so to speak; one cannot say the scene is static (there are three verbs, after all: ‘pluck,’ ‘descend,’ and ‘moor’), but each vignette stands in isolation from the others except insofar as they share the same general context. Each is presented without any reference to an observing poet, let alone a poet who is moved. It is in the last four lines that the speaker becomes involved with the scene. He identifies Peach Leaf in the new music (the verb shi marks predication, an affirmation by the poet), and asks a (rhetorical) question about the fourth-century residents of Blackrobe Lane. Implicitly, he finds poignancy in the contrast between the “love/feeling” embodied in Peach Leaf Mountain ever since those times (007-6) and the indifference of the grasses growing on White Egret Island (007-8); likewise between the mortality of the aristocrats of Blackrobe Lane and the perennial return of the vegetation on White Egret Island. In some Songs that begin with pentasyllabic lines, we shall speak of those lines
——— 35 See http://www.nju.edu.cn/cps/site/NJU/njuc/plantsweb/species/yazhicaoke/duruo.htm and http://www.ed.city.odawara.kanagawa.jp/odawara_sizen/syokubutu/robou/a_yabumyoga. html, both accessed 14 February 2006, and Luo Yuan’s Erya yi, CSJC, 1145:2.21, 23.
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as creating a pent-up force that is released in the heptasyllabic lines that follow. This poem is too short to work quite the same way, and whatever forward motion Fanghui establishes in the couplet devoted to Peach Leaf and the sorrow that lingers after her is arrested abruptly in the parallel couplet that ends the poem. Nevertheless, the eruption of feeling in the heptasyllabic lines does contrast with the objectivity of the pentasyllabic opening. All four heptasyllabic lines in this poem could be a regulated Quatrain with a rhyming first line (which is normal), except for the fact that the line-type sequence would properly have to be DBCD, not DBAB. Lines 007-2, 3, and 4 are also perfectly regulated and lines 2 and 3 adhere (the second syllables are the same tone), so here we have a pentametrical Quatrain that approaches regulated status but for the rhymes in a deflected tone. This Song is a good reminder that a non-regulated poem can be almost entirely composed of regulated lines. Presumably, the predominance of regulated lines in this Song is not accidental. My supposition is that Fanghui wanted the polish and smoothness associated with the Southern Courts, where the standards of Regulated Verse were gradually developed. It is possible that if Fanghui did not tell us in his headnote when and where he wrote the poem, we would assume that he was in Jinling in the autumn of some later year, responding to real scenes. However, two things might make us suspicious. Knowing that this is a ballad title, we should expect an expression of a theme rather than a reaction to experience. Also, once we become familiar with the rest of He Zhu’s Songs, we will be aware that they become more personal only after 1085 (with the exception of Poem 012 [1090], an odd experiment to be discussed below). Placed among the later Songs, Song of the South would be conspicuous for its absence of engagement. The suite of three 1088 Songs we shall discuss next also revisit old topics, but unlike Song of the South they are implicitly, and in some details explicitly, tied to the poet’s own situation.
1088–90: SENDING SONGS FROM LIYANG AND JINLING 1088: A SUITE EXPERIMENT All three Songs preserved from Yuanyou 3 (1088–89) are sent to friends in the capital, apparently as a suite: Songs of Three Birds ਃ㠽⹗ (Poems 008, 009, and 010). The three birds are the “Raise-the-jug,” the bamboo partridge, and the cuckoo. Fanghui had never heard these creatures before he went south to Hezhou and spent his days chasing bandits in the countryside. Naming creatures for the sounds they make is a practice not unique to China and may be presumed to be very ancient. It is especially common with birds,
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whose loquaciousness is often undiminished by the nearness of humans. 36 The “semantic content” of the birdcalls is most interesting when we hear phrases in the sound. These phrases might become alternative names for the birds or they can be understood as “messages” delivered wittingly or unwittingly by the birds, or they can cross back and forth from one function to the other. 37 Poems (in all forms, Regulated Verse, Ancient Verse, Ballads, and so forth) that make use of this conceit appear in great numbers from Bo Juyi and Yuan Zhen on, but it appears that building an entire poem around this idea begins with Mei Yaochen in the Song Dynasty. What distinguishes the Song Dynasty poems is that they are in essence “poems on objects,” yong wu shi ⹗‛ of a special kind; they take the call of the bird (rather than the bird itself) as a theme to be given extended treatment. Because the “words” of the bird have meaning, the poet usually reacts to that meaning in the context of his own situation or, in the case of some satirical verses, the context of the social situation. The poems may have a light, or almost folk flavor, as in a 1037 set by Mei Yaochen that includes one about the “granny’s cakes are fried” bird, or they may have a bit more of a bite to them, as in one of the five poems Su Shi wrote in imitation of the style (ti 㜚) of Mei’s four “bird words” poems: ᤓᄛධ ጊ㔎㧘ḺਇนᐲޕḺㆻᏓ᭖ా㧘ᚒๅ⎕ޕਇㄓๅḺ᳓ኙ㧘᳓ਛ ᾖ⒅≚“ޕLast night it rained upon South Mount. / Cross West Brook? you can’t! / By the brook the sow-the-grain boy / urges me to shed my tattered pants. / It’s OK to shed the pants, but the water’s cold / and will reflect the scars from being pressed for rent!” Su Shi wrote his poems in 1080 at Huangzhou, basing them on the local names for five different birds. The “standard” name for this bird is sow-the-grain; the local name is shed-tattered-pants. 38 (Huang Tingjian responded to this poem in the series by going one step further and saying there were no pants to put on because last year’s rent was so high. 39 ) For bird-speech topics, Song Dynasty poets seem to have favored heptametrical Ancient Style poems with varied line length. The freedom to use three syllable lines, especially, allowed for the bird itself call to be introduced and repeated.
——— 36 The wide-ranging essay of Zhang Gaoping on the subject in his Song shi zhi chuancheng yu kai tuo, esp. 140–212, offers numerous earlier examples of bird calls in poetry. 37 To cite a recent example from a relatively young language, cf. the alternative name of a species of goatsucker: whip-poor-will. According to the online OED, the earliest appearance of the word coincides with its explanation in 1709: “Whippoo-Will, so nam’d, because it makes those Words exactly.” William (“Will”?) Wordsworth exploits the “meaning” of the name, in the manner of the Chinese poets, in A Morning Exercise (1828): “A feathered task-master cries, ‘WORK AWAY!’ / And, in thy iteration, ‘WHIP POOR WILL!’ / Is heard the spirit of a toil-worn slave, / Lashed out of life, not quiet in the grave.” (http://www.bartleby.com/145/ww740.html consulted 2 February 2004.) 38 նᆅߢնଈհԲ, SSSJ, 4:20.1046; Wang Shuizhao, Su Shi xuan ji, 138. Mei Yaochen’s four-poem set by the same name is in Mei Yaochen ji biannian jiaozhu, 1:7.103–4. 39 ᚭࡉᆅ, CSJC, 2243:nei.1.13 ; Huang Tingjian quanji, 1:5.106. Ascribed to 1083 on no particular evidence. Kurata Junnosuke’s translation, K Zankoku, 47.
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Other variations could be used for a relaxed, humorous effect. Fanghui does not follow the format of any of the three poems just cited, which themselves are quite varied. Each of his Songs of Three Birds is three to four times the length of the poems by Mei, Su, and Huang. Beyond that, Fanghui’s announced format is, as far as I know, unique. What appears to be without precedent is the fact that each individually titled poem under the general title is identified as a different type of song or, as we shall suggest, each poem is titled in such a way as to identify its place in a sequence. Specifically, the titles are: Raise the Jug yin ឭᄅ ᒁ; Bamboo partridge ci ┻㔊⹖; and Cuckoo xing ሶⷙ. 40 Now, yin, ci, and xing are familiar enough in poem titles, but one usually translates them indiscriminately as “song” because they are presumed to reflect the poet’s vague imitation of ballad traditions whose musical distinctions are lost and no longer relevant. When Fanghui places these terms side by side in a set of songs, however, the implication is that there should be some distinction between them. A first step in discovering his intention is to compare their forms, as is done on Table 1. All three poems have four rhymes (designated A, B, C, D in the table) and are predominantly heptametrical. All three of them address the bird directly in a three-syllable line somewhere near the middle of the poem. Probing further, we see distinctions between the xing and the first two poems. It does not contain nearly as many descriptive bisyllabic compounds composed of reduplicatives or rhyming syllables. While the first two poems contain the ballad-marking phrase “Do you not see” jun bu jian at the beginning of a heptasyllabic line in the final rhyme group, the xing does not insert this phrase anywhere. Table 1
Form of Songs of Three Birds
Raise the Jug yin 7A reduplicated compound 7A 7 rhyming compound 7A rhyming compound 5B names bird 7B 7B 7B 7C 7C 7C 7C 3 address to bird 7D reduplicated compound
Bamboo Partridge ci 7A 7A 7 reduplicated compound 7A reduplicated compound 7B last word starts next line 7B 7B 7B 7B rhyming compound 7B 3 address to bird 7C 7C 7C
Cuckoo xing 7A rhyming compounds 41 7A 7 7A 7 rhyming compound 7A 7A 3B address to bird 5B 7 7B 7C 7C 7
——— 40
Poems 008–010, 1.12500–501; 1.4b–6a. There are two rhyming compounds in this line. There is a variant in the “Cao Anthology” that makes one a reduplicated compound: ᣇᣇ miQ3bx miQ3bx instead of ᣇ૱ miQ3bx yiQ3b . 41
144 Raise the Jug yin 10D (jun bu jian~) 7D 7D 7D 7D 7D 7D
CHAPTER TWO Bamboo Partridge ci 7C 10D (jun bu jian~), reduplicated compound 7D 7 7D 5D 5D 7D rhyming compound 7D 7D reduplicated compound 7D 7 7D
Cuckoo xing 7C 7D 7D 7D 7D 7D
The middle poem, the ci, distinguishes itself somewhat by its quicker rhythm or more “musical” sound, achieved by the greater number of reduplicatives and rhyming compounds, the somewhat longer runs of rhyming lines, and the single instance of the last word in a line being repeated as the first word of the next line (lines 009-5 and 6). It may or may not be the case that these distinctions could be detected in the works of other poets—that other xing are likewise less “ballad-like,” for example. However, to verify this would be a complex undertaking beyond the scope of the present project. 42 Moreover, a typology of these three song “forms” might be of limited use in explaining what He Zhu had in mind when he juxtaposed them with each other under one general heading, since no other poet apparently did this. It may be fruitful to ask whether the poems are a sequence of movements, a suite in which each type of poem has a formal function. Shi Decao ᣉᓾᠲ (active in the early Southern Song Dynasty) gives us a partial answer on two of the three terms by proposing a difference between a ge (song), a xing, and a yin. Shi suggested that the three types evolved out of song sequences or movements of a single composition, and he used the common meanings of the terms to explain their use in this context: ⴕᒁ㧘ᧄ৻ᦛῺᦛ৻ޕਯਛᱝਃ▵ޕᆎ⊔⡪⻐ਯᒁ㧘 ᒁ⠪㧘ዉᒁޕᣢᒁ⍬㧘⡪⒡㧘⻐ਯⴕⴕޕ⠪㧘⡪ⴕޕᣢⴕ
——— 42 Su Shi wrote one yin. It does not contain “Do you not see.” One of his xing does contain that phrase. That makes him opposite to He Zhu. On the other hand, Su’s six other xing, like He Zhu’s, do not contain the phrase. Also consistent with Fanghui’s xing is the fact that five out of seven of Su Shi’s xing also exhibit little interest in reduplicated or rhyming compounds. The two exceptions are ՞വ䰔㸠and 㗕Ҏ㸠, but they are anomalous for other reasons, too. The former is different from all Su’s other xing in much use of the filler particle xi and having extreme irregularities in line length. The latter is of uncertain attribution. See SSSJ, 8:48.2646 and 49.2713, especially note 1 on 2714. In sum, Su Shi offers confirmation of a hypothesis that xing are less ballad-like, but it is not strong confirmation. Tang Dynasty xing include many pentametrical poems, as do the xing of Mei Yaochen; most Northern Song Dynasty xing seem to be heptametrical poems. This sole xing by He and Su’s xing are longer than most. (Excluding the two exceptional poems just named, Su’s xing are 12, 20, 16, 20, and 36 lines in length.)
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⍬㧘ᣈᤚ⡪㖸ㆀ❙㧘ᚲ⻐. “Ge, xing, and yin were originally one tune. In a single tune there are these three ‘nodes’ [sections]. When the sound starts, it is called yin. Yin means to draw forth. Once it is drawn forth, the sound is let go somewhat, and so it is called xing. Xing means the sound moves. Once it is moving, the sound thereupon is released, and this is what is called song (ge).” 43 It seems to me that this presents a general way to understand what Fanghui had in mind, with the added bonus that Shi’s characterization of the yin fits our sequence quite well. The main differences are that Fanghui uses only Shi’s first two “movements,” he puts a ci between them, and his xing has closural properties not contemplated in Shi’s scheme. The yin moves smartly through three four-line rhyme groups; it names its bird early; and it also packs its rhyming/reduplicated compounds close to the beginning. It does “draw forth” the sequence. The fact that the ci is the longest of the three Songs, with more lines in each section (defined by rhyme), suggests that it may the centerpiece of Fanghui’s sequence, more complex and detailed. The closing xing dampens the phonic exuberance of the other two poems. It features the longest opening rhyme section of the sequence, it has fewer of the rhyming binomes and no reduplicatives, and it comes to a fast conclusion with just five rhyming lines, uniformly heptasyllabic. Thematically, the three poems seem unrelated; they certainly do not refer to each other or present a unified plot. On the other hand, they do use the birds to talk about the usual complaints of the poet, and their sequence seems “right.” The first poem, about the bird whose call urges people to drink, mentions that Fanghui has been assigned to the eastern part of the district for just a few days and that he is abashed at having to be stuck so long in the south, far from the capital and its wineshops. The second poem, about the bird whose call sounds like “mud slick-slick,” speaks of the mire through which the poet has to struggle on patrol and contrasts that with the splendor of the capital, where “the wind does not startle the dust, and the rain for its part is dry.” The cuckoo sings, “It’s best to go home.” Thus, the final poem, from the viewpoint of a tired traveler fighting sleep in his saddle, speaks not of the capital but of Sumen (the mountain in Weizhou that stands for home in He Zhu’s poetry) and of the vanity of his youthful hope of showing off golden seals of office and fine clothing in the lanes of his village. It closes with a vow to start looking for a plot of land and a farmhouse, which might offer a better way to feed the ten people in his household. The closural force of this theme and mood is obvious, but if one mentally reverses the order of the first two Songs, it confirms that they are also in the best order. The relatively witty and lighthearted yin works best at the beginning to draw us into the sequence and
———
43 Ye Jun, et al., Zhongguo shixue, 18, quoting the Chibei outan קۃೝᓫ (1691) quoting Shi Decao. See also Wang Kunwu, Sui Tang Wudai yanle zayan geci yanjiu, 333–34.
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the exploration of present misery in the ci provides a serious motivation for answering the cuckoo’s call to “go home” in the xing. It appears, based on the information available to me now, that what Fanghui has done here has no precedent and sets no precedent, at least if we hold to the details of his terminology. There are many examples of poem sequences from earlier times, and there are song sets in Yuan Dynasty arias, but to my knowledge none uses He Zhu’s terminology. The analysis presented here shows, I hope, that it is an interesting and not unsuccessful experiment.
LIYANG EXPERIMENTS IN 1089 AND 1090 Another unusual form occurs in another Song written to be sent away, ᧲⪇㚍 ᙿነᷡᶭ◲␠ਛ₺᜕ዬ჻ On Horseback in Donghua, Cherishing Master He of Qingliang Temple and Sending Him This, Also as a Letter to Kulapati Wang Zhuo of the Society. This was written in 1089 across the River from Jinling, where the Qingliang Temple was located. 44 The “Society” of the title can be understood by reference to line 011-16: it is surely a contemporary Buddhist society patterned after the White Lotus Society founded in 402 by several friends of Tao Yuanming, both lay and religious. 45 The unusual thing about the form of this poem is that it consists of eight pentasyllabic lines followed by ten heptasyllabic lines. 011 㔊㡆⚚㥏
4
8
㛧㚍᧲⪇〝 ⪭ầᤨ 㔕ᛲᣣ↢⯪ ័័Ṫ⦈ሶ ᜭᏨ᷌ᳯ ㅍ⋡ᕁᖘᖘ ᯖ᭳⡙৻⾮
Cocks crow: boom the fifth [watch] drum; I race my horse along the Donghua Road. The moon drops when the tide rises; clouds blanket where the sun emerges. Rocking, the fishermans’ bateaux hoist mat-sail and traverse the River. I see them off with my eyes, thoughts reaching far— and with halberd crossways I’ll just offer a poem:
A A A A A
——— 44 1.6a; 1.12501. Master He is probably the same monk to whom Su Shi will later present two poems: ᢤ堚ළࡉڝ९ृ (1094) and ៱ڻᣉᢤ堚ළ९( ۔1101), SSSJ, 6:37.2032 and 7:45.2456, respectively. (One may consult Grant’s translations in Mount Lu, 179 and 166, keeping in mind that her dating is faulty and that she omits the first line of the first poem.) He Zhu addresses a dozen poems to Master He between 1088 and 1096. Wang Zhuo was a Buddhist layman (translating jushi as kulapati is thus more appropriate than the alternative “retired scholar”) in Jinling. Fanghui addresses five poems to him over the same period. (Since Mei Yaochen, who died in 1060, also addressed a poem to Wang Zhuo—according to QSS, 18:11783, where Wang is represented by a single poem—he must have been much older than Fanghui. Wang Anshi wrote a heptametrical Quatrain for him titled 丠࣫ቅ䲅ሙ⥟ၳຕ, Linchuan xiansheng wenji, 31.346.) 45 See Davis, Tao Yüan-ming, 1:65 and 2:186 and references cited in the latter.
SONGS
㡨㓵ධ㘧ᳯർᵹ ੪੪㔅ႡᤚᎺ ೨ᦺ‛⦡ 12
⊕㣕ᐔᴕធ⍹㗡 ⍹㗡ၔᷡᶭ ਛᒫᄤᄢᲧਐ ฝァ㆙ቊᤨ⠪
16
Ꮠ➬ਭᓬ⬒␠ㆆ ๋੦ᐕⅶઍ ৻ᐻነᄖ᳞
Geese fly southward, the River flows north; Straight and tall, double pagodas: that’s Shengzhou. From former courts, how many fine scenes can be seen in the present day? White Egret’s level sand joins Stony Head; Atop Stony Head Enceinte, a Pure and Cool realm, in which you’ll find, filling the sky, a great bikshu. The distant grandchild of the Army of the Right is one who stands up to the times and with turban and begging bowl goes about with the Lotus Society. For my part next year I reach the ripe melon replacement; a single hut for lodging, what else could I ask for?
147 B B
B
B
B
B
Notes: 011-1/ The word translated “boom” does not occur in Tang poetry, where the abbreviation of the fifth watch drum to “fifth drum” is also very rare. On the other hand, this diction does occur in Song Dynasty poetry. 46 011-3–4/ Lines with shi (time) and chu (place) at the end are often challenging to parse. Fanghui may be inverting the normal order, placing the time-when clause and locative clause after the main verbs. Or, the lines may themselves be such phrases: “The time when the moon drops and the tide rises; / the place where clouds cover and the sun is born.” 47 011-8/ Holding a weapon crossways while composing a poem on horseback is a bit of stage business that does not appear in Tang poetry, although Yuan Zhen’s epitaph for Du Fu provides the locus classicus. Yuan refers to Cao Cao and his sons writing poems while clutching their saddles and holding their halberds athwart; this explains, he says, the strong spirit of their poetry. The phrase turns up now and then in Song Dynasty poetry (twice in Su Shi) in reference to a military official composing poetry.
——— 46 The diction echoes a ditty that the people of Wu Commandery had sung about their administrator, Deng You ᔥޑ, after he left: “Boom, the fifth watch drum. / Cocks crow and dawn’s about to come. / We tried to keep Deng You longer; / Magistrate Xie overstayed his welcome.” See the Jin shu, 8:90.2340. Ouyang Xiu has this line: “the fifth drum [when you] hear the cocks send off the traveler.” See ࡚ಬ࠸׀ຟࡴवڠة, Ouyang Xiu quanji, 1:jushi waiji.5.381. After staying overnight in a temple near Hangzhou in 1073, Su Shi wrote “Boom, the fifth watch drum, the sky is not yet bright.” Su Shi’s poem is മ௧ᄎڝ, SSSJ, 2:10.496. This is the only time he uses the word translated “boom.” 47 Su Shi uses “time” and “place” in similar configurations four times, but the lines are heptasyllabic and he does not “bend” the language as Fanghui does. See ஂՂזԳᢤܑԿଈհԿ (1073), SSSJ, 2:9.455 (Wang Shuichao, Su Shi xuan ji, 68, follows one of two variant texts that have ֲ in place of ) and ஊܩᅏனဲ (1083), SSSJ, 4.22.1181 for the words in adjacent lines. See ߤ (1084), SSSJ, 4:24.1271, and ಬຫᅬवᑧ( ڠ1086), SSSJ, 5:27.1427 for the words in the first lines of adjacent couplets.
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011-10/ Shengzhou appears as a name for different administrative levels in Jinling from 758 on into the Song Dynasty. 48 “Twin pagodas” are common in temples, and it is unclear if we are supposed to recognize a particular landmark here. 011-12/ The channels between White Egret Island and the shore had by this time been silted up, so that the island no longer existed as such. Stony Head is a hill northwest of Jinling that had once dropped off precipitously into the River until the shore moved away from it. 011-13/ Stony Head was fortified in 212 C.E. Qingliang Temple—the name means “Pure and Cool”—was built in the southern folds of Stony Head. 49 011-14/ The bhiksu, or monk, is Master He. (As is standard, he is referred to only by the first syllable of his religious name; in this case, we do not know the full name.) To say he fills the sky is to speak of his greatness, but it also alludes to Daoan’s amusing self-introduction as ᒫᄤ㉾ “kya Daoan, who fills the skies.” 50 011-16/ Wang Xizhi, a native of Jinling, reached the rank of General of the Army of the Right and is commonly referred to as “Army of the Right Wang.” Wang Zhuo may indeed be a descendant of the great calligrapher. 011-17/ “Melon replacement” is a conventional phrase for the end of one’s assignment. It comes from the Zuo Tradition, Zhuang 8. Tours of duty fluctuated between thirty months and three years at this time, depending on one’s position and whether an assignment was the first appointment or a reappointment. 51 011-18/ The term used for “hut” implies a religious retreat.
The Song effectively exploits the ranges of expression possible in pentasyllabic and heptasyllabic lines. By stretching the introduction of the song proper to eight lines, Fanghui makes the exuberance of the last ten lines that much more dramatic in contrast. Lines 011-1 and 2 catch our interest with the unusual (in poetry) “boom” of the bell and the image of a horse racing along the roadway at dawn; lines 011-3–4 slow us down abruptly as we ponder the ambiguous structure of the language. Then we have gently rocking boats and far-reaching thoughts. It is after the warrior on horseback “offers a poem” that the lines explode to seven syllables and things begin to happen: birds fly one way, the Yangzi flows the other way, and pagodas thrust skyward as the speaker declares the name of the district across the river. The excitement subsides somewhat as changes in the topography are noted, the poet’s friends are placed in their religious settings and flattered with suitable allusions, and we revert to Fanghui’s own situation. His conventional expression of intention to join his friends in the religious life may represent a genuine inclination. Su Shi used this construction of eight pentasyllabic lines plus ten heptametrical lines once, in 1073. However, when we take note of the rhymes, we see that it is
——— 48
Yang Zhishui et al., Nanjing, 295. Yang Zhishui et al., Nanjing, 49 and 52 (maps of the Southern Tang and Southern Song cities, showing the disappearance of White Egret Island); 20 (picture and description of Stony Head); 204–6 (history and pictures of Qingliang Temple). 50 In the Jinshu, 7:82.2153, Daoan (312–85) is the first to speak, and Xi Zuochi replies with “Xi Zuochi, who fills all within the four seas.” In the Gaoseng zhuan (T2059), 5.352.3, it is Daoan who gives the response to Xi’s pompous introduction. 51 Song huiyao, 3:zhiguan.15.7, 4:zhiguan.47.16, et passim. 49
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really not the same structure. Su Shi used five rhymes, not three, each change of rhyme marking a change of topic. 52 Two other poems by Su Shi also provide material for comparison. One comprises four pentasyllabic lines plus eight heptasyllabic lines; 53 the other, four pentasyllabic lines plus ten heptasyllabic lines. 54 Fanghui’s poem differs from these earlier works insofar as his initial segment sets a scene in more detail, lulling the reader into thinking this will be a leisurely description of a morning ride along the river. The only clue that this might not be one of Fanghui’s standard Ancient Verses is the fact that the first line rhymes, which is less common in pentametrical poems in general and especially rare in Fanghui’s pentametrical poems. It would be interesting to know whether Fanghui got his inspiration from Su Shi’s poems and reshaped the form to his own purposes and taste. Future work on other contemporary poets may help us measure the uniqueness of the structure we have described. Now we turn to what appears to be a truly unique experiment. In the seventh month of Yuanyou 5 (1090), still in Liyang, Fanghui “fills out” or “expands” someone else’s poem. In search of a precedent that will tell us what this means, we turn first to two poems in the Tang–Five Dynasties period. Liu Changqing ഏ㐳 (718?–90?) wrote songs to the tune ⻩ᕉ Resentment of the Banished Immortal. Because Liu apparently did not know that (by some accounts) the tune had been composed by Xuanzong after the death of Honored Consort Yang (Yang Guifei) at the hands of his soldiers, another poet wrote words to the tune and had musicians sing them “in order to fill out what he [Liu Changqing] was unaware of” ↪ᑝਇ⍮⠪. Then, a third poet, who didn’t think the correction had gone far enough, wrote his own “filling out.” 55 Fanghui’s title is ᑝ྾ᗜነ᧘ Filling out the Four Sorrows; Sent to Li Hui. 56 At first glance, this suggests that Fanghui differs from the earlier poets insofar as he
———
52 ऄ༡ڝᖩፇᎹ, SSSJ, 2:9.426. Michael Fuller has a complete English translation in Road to East Slope, 176–77. Fuller’s careful analysis breaks new ground, but on some points I recommend instead the Japanese translation and scholia by Uchiyama Seiya in Ganlan 7 (1998), 119–31. For other Japanese translations, see also Kond Mitsuo, So Tba, 110–11, and Ogawa, So Shoku 1:68–70. 53 טຟ՞ຼ, SSSJ, 1:1.19. 54 Su’s poem is ࡉၺ֟ஃബ᎓֟ஃڻᣉ (1072), SSSJ, 2:8.365. Ouyang Xiu’s poem is ᚵଷ෨ ۩ബ᎓֟ஃ, Ouyang Xiu quanji, 1:jushi waiji.4.375. The poem Ouyang is imitating is by Han Yu, but Han’s poem is not an exact precedent for the structure. His poem is in thirty-eight tetrasyllabic lines with one rhyme all the way through on even-numbered lines. (The rhyme categories are somewhat loose, I believe, and often involve what we could call slant rhyme, a nasal final preceded by slightly different vowels.) 55 See Liu Changqing ji biannian jiaozhu, 562–64, and QTS, 25:890.10057–58. The other two poets are Dou Hongyu ᤀؖ塒 and Kang Pian ൈᙺ. The poems are divided into two stanzas of four lines each, but whether they have crossed the line to become ci (lyrics) is unclear; the distinction might not have made sense to an eighth-century poet. 56 1.12501; 1.6b. The poem was sent some distance; Fanghui’s headnote tells us Li is an official in Baima ್ػ, on the south bank of the Yellow River due north of the capital.
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“fills out” a very ancient poem, not a composition by a contemporary. The Four Sorrows by Zhang Heng ᒛⴧ (78–139) is a well-known piece alluded to often in poetry before He Zhu. It has a very definite structure and theme: four seven-line stanzas repeat with slight variation “an allegory in which a beautiful woman reputedly represents the ruler, whom the persona seeks to win over with gifts of precious objects, but has his way blocked by high mountains, deep snow, and impassable rivers (petty men).” 57 The problem is that Zhang Heng’s structure is barely reflected in Fanghui’s poem. To appreciate the heterometrical formal structure of the poem, it helps to see the text arranged as below. (For reasons of space, we shall not translate the poem.) 012
4
8
12
16
20
ᄛᅤᄛᧂᄩ ᤊ῏㧘ᴡ⫷ᶭ ᓸ┍ᦛᚱ ⳗೝଦ㡆ᚒᐥ 㔌ఝ᱃ૼᾇੱ⣺ ᄛᅤᄛ㐳 ⛵ℙ⮈㧘ᡆᬩᄼਯᴉḕ ᧇ⚴ỡ㔺㧘⡪ࢫᜰ⠰ਇ឴ ዳℙᶈ㧘ድᶝᴼਯᶉᶉ ᚒᚲᕁ㧘ᴡਯ㓁 ⠰ਇ㧘ⴲ㔍ᒕᔓ 㛅㛹㛛べ㧘㡨㡿ᘄ⠍ Ⅰ₹᩺㧘Ὼਇᚒዂ ✠⺈⚿ᗆ㧘ਭ⩨᳭ఘ ᳗ᅤ‐ᅚ㧘ධർ⋧ᦸ ᤄῆ⯪㧘㕆⧓ਯၴ ⚇⯗ὑ㧘ႃ⧍ὑ 㘑ᶼ✕㧘᷌⊖⨲એ᱾႓ ⯗⪜⧍ⵚ㧘ᕟⵍਯਇ⧐ ᔨ᳭₹┙㧘⾭⚵❺ਯᢥ┨ ₵▵ᣣ෨㧘ᄹᘘᘋਯ౽㔮 ⢫ਇ⊕㔕㧘ᱩૼᏢၢ ዏᚲᓹ㧘⇙᳗ᄣ⠰ᓌᓜ
A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A
It is readily apparent that the seven-line stanza of the supposed model has been discarded. Moreover, whereas Zhang Heng used heptasyllabic lines (his poem is
——— 57
Knechtges, in Wen Xuan, 3:398. The poem itself is in juan 29.
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often cited as the first example of heptametrical poetry), only the first six lines here are heptasyllabic. The “refrain-word” xi is very noticeable (I add a comma after it). This word breaks the lines into distiches in the second line and from line 012-7 to the end of the poem. Zhang Heng does use the particle xi, but only in the first line of each stanza. Even in the single line where Fanghui imitates the rhythm of Zhang’s distich (3–xi–3), the syntactic structure is different: “The Dipper stars glitter, xi, the [Sky] River is distant and cold” (He Zhu, line 012-2) vs. “The one I long for, xi, is on Mount Tai” (Zhang Heng). Other Song Dynasty Songs that make liberal use of the xi particle tend to be very heterometrical. Fanghui’s poem stays with one line length for several lines more consistently than do most such poems, and for good reason: blocks of four different line types help us see some structure in his poem, there being no rhyme changes to guide us as in most of those other Songs. It appears that a given line length corresponds to a segment that is internally unified thematically. Lines 012-1 through 6 form a sleepless night poem; the next three lines center around the floor-zither, the qin, which the speaker eventually discards in favor of singing boldly to cover his weeping; lines 012-10–15 are about separated lovers, making them closest in content to Zhang Heng’s poem; lines 012-16 to the end are filled with diction and imagery reminiscent of the Chu ci (Songs of Chu, of the South) tradition. (Although line 012-17 is formally consistent with the previous section, the shift in diction starts with the short line 012-16.) The four-part division of the poem recalls in a distant way the division of Zhang Heng’s more homogeneous poem into four stanzas. Still, it would seem that, if one is going to “fill out” or supplement a prior composition that has a distinctive form, there should be a closer thematic and formal relationship between the new poem and the original than we see here. Some echoes of earlier texts that would have been immediately recognizable point away from Zhang Heng. Line 012-1 is a direct quotation of the first seven syllables of Ode 182 in the Classic of Poetry: “How is the night? It is not yet dawn!” More intriguingly, “Greensilk lute” (012-7) and “tears and snivel” (012-9) are shared with a third century imitation of the Four Sorrows by Zhang Zai. The word for “soaring” (012-12) and the reference to the cowherd and weaving maiden stars (012-15) are seen in another imitation, by Fu Xuan ம₵ (217–78). 58 However, there is still no formal similarity to suggest that the sharing of such common terms and allusions is anything more than coincidental. Perhaps we have misidentified the original. Perhaps Fanghui is imitating a different poem, most likely by Li Hui, the man to whom Fanghui is sending his
——— 58 Anne Birrell, New Songs from a Jade Terrace, 240–41 and 243–44; Xu Ling, Yutai xin yong, juan 9. Note that both Zhang Zai and Fu Xuan expand beyond the seven-line stanza. Fukuyama Yasuo argues that Zhang Heng’s work was originally intended as a love song and that the motive of political frustration was attributed to it only later. See his “Ch K ‘Shishshi’ o megutte.”
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composition. We have no way to verify this, unfortunately. Li Hui leaves no extant poetry, and even if he had left us something like this poem, we would still have to ask the same question of it that we are asking of He Zhu’s poem: what is the relationship between it and Zhang Heng’s poem? Another possibility is that “filling out” an original poem was a step or two beyond “imitation” insofar as the poet could write pretty much as he pleased on the basis of something in the original poem without any commitment to reflecting the structure of the original. This would be reminiscent of the “translations” in Robert Lowell’s in Imitations: as he himself tells the reader, Lowell “dropped lines, moved lines, moved stanzas, changed images and altered meter and intent.” 59 This model does not apply to the two poets who “corrected” Liu Changqing’s song, for they did not depart from the form of the original. However, there is another Song Dynasty poet who “fills out” someone else’s poem and explicitly states that he was stimulated by the original to come up with his own imagery. Coincidentally or not, the original is explicitly tied to Zhang Heng’s Four Sorrows. The poet is Wang Ling; his poem is Filling out the “Second Longing Poem” by Wang Chun (Zhengshu) ᑝ₺㉍ᱜੑᕁ. 60 Wang Ling’s poem begins with a double metaphor of tree leaves and water: tree leaves fall close to the tree from which they came and protect the tree roots, while water forgets its source and flows away forever. Before going on to apply this comparison to the conflict between standing by one’s parents and being pulled away by the lure of fame and advantage, Wang Ling explicitly states that Wang Chun’s poem stimulated the poet to speak in terms of these two things. This probably means that some metaphor in the original poem prompted the new metaphors, or that a similar theme in Wang Chun’s poem was the trigger. Either way, to add new elaborations on the original would be to “fill out” the theme. We don’t know whether Wang Ling’s pentasyllabic Ancient Verse is the same form as Wang Chun’s original, because the latter is not extant. What we do know is that Wang Chun’s poem probably has some affiliation with Zhang Heng’s Four Sorrows. The key is the term er si “Second Longing” in the title. If we go to Zhang Heng’s Four Sorrows in juan 29 of the Wen Xuan, we discover that each stanza is preceded by “The first longing says…,” “The second longing says…,” and so forth. (In modern anthologies I have seen, these tags are stripped away.) Appropriately, the first verb in each poem is “to long for”(si). My hypothesis is that Wang Chun wrote four poems using this same enumerative title, in imitation of Zhang Heng’s original. Under such conditions, it is plausible that he imitated Zhang Heng fairly closely in other aspects of form, too. If this is true, then the fact that
——— 59 Imitations, xii; see also again Burton Raffel, The Art of Translating Poetry, 126–28. Raffel calls this “imitative translation” and considers it less translation than a legitimate way of stimulating a poet to explore new potentialities. 60 QSS, 12:692.8081.
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Wang Ling’s response to the second of the four poems is in meter and structure very unlike Zhang Heng is significant for our understanding of He Zhu’s poem. My theory about Wang Ling’s example leads to the general hypothesis that in the Song Dynasty “filling out” a poem did not mean “rewriting” it “correctly,” as we might have thought from the earlier precedents. It means finding some starting point, some stimulus in the original from which one conceives a new poem. I cannot explain why Fanghui chose to write a four-part composition the seventh month of 1090 that is so heterogeneous in form and content, without parallel in his other extant works; perhaps what we have are notes for a project that was never completed. Nevertheless, I think we may have found the reason why his composition did not have to look like Zhang Heng’s.
1090–92: INNOVATIVE SONGS FROM JINLING Other poems from the period appear more conventional but can be made to betray their own innovative touches. The following poem (undated but placed between two poems written across the river in Jinling in the twelfth month of 1090) has an interesting rhyme scheme, dropping the first rhyme and then resuming it later. 61 The recipient is a Daoist who had known Su Shi in 1088 and would meet Su again just a few months later, in Runzhou not far downstream. The title of the Song is Presented to Daoist Jian Gongchen ⿅჻がᜡㄖ; Jian is also known as the Baoguang Dharma Master, and is addressed as Master Baoguang in the poem: 62
———
61 A similar, though somewhat more complicated rhyme reversion is seen in Su Shi’s 堚ۣխ ബౘ( ۔1094), SSSJ, 8:47.2557; Su Shi nianpu, 3:33.1174. I cannot say at this time how common such patterns are. Readers surprised to see line 014-13 marked as rhyming (b) should see line 10 of Su’s ׆ᕁ堚ဠഘ (1079), SSSJ, 3:19.964. However, in Fanghui’s poem one would not expect this line to rhyme, whereas in Su’s poem the line is required to rhyme. 62 1.12502; 1.7b. Baoguang means Shaded Light; the phrase is found in the Zhuangzi. “Dharma Master” was one rank of Daoist priests in the Tang Dynasty, surely reflecting an appropriation of Buddhist terminology in the competition for prestige. To judge by the shared syllable in their names, Jian Gongchen might have been related to Jian Xuchen ㅒ߭ݧ, who was active about this time and is mentioned several times in the dynastic history. Xuchen’s cognomen, Shouzhi հ(Instruct), shows a formal resemblance to Gongchen’s cognomen, Yizhi ⋑հ (Protect), but more tellingly, Xuchen’s father, Zhoufu ࡌ᎖, was from Sichuan, and we know from He Zhu’s poem and from Su Shi that Gongchen was from Sichuan. Gongchen and Xuchen could have been cousins, if not brothers. Su Shi copied a portion of the Sutra of the Yellow Court for Jian Gongchen in 1088; we have his postface to that specimen, recovered from a commentary to Huang Tingjian’s poem using the rhymes of the poem Su wrote on that occasion. See SSWJ 6:2571 or Shangu shizhu 2250:wai.17.385 for the postface. The poem Su wrote on this occasion is ႓அᆖփᆖݠ, SSSJ, 5:30.1596. He wrote another poem soon afterwards to see Jian off for Mount Lu: ಬㅒሐՓូᡔ՞, SSSJ, 5:30.1597; Grant, Mount Lu Revisited, 167–68. See also Su Shi nianpu, 2:27.838. The poem that seems to follow He Zhu’s is ఎܑㅒሐՓ߭, SSSJ, 6:33.1765; Su Shi nianpu, 3:30.969. Kong Fanli supposes that Su and Jian met in Runzhou, so when Fanghui wrote this poem in Jinling Jian would have been on his way downriver, apparently toward Tiantai Mountain (see line 014-7).
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014
ཏⷹᅱᚻᓮ㘑 ᗐᣁੱᚲή ⼂႓⪯శሶ Ό㘢㘞⇠ਇᅤ
4
ጮጾ᧲ૼජ㉿ ⌒㘻㜞ጊ⥜ᵹ᳓ ᤐᦝᡆ⸰ᄤ⥑ ᥄⡸⇧ᐕὼ⡊
8
⪯శሶ ⢫ὑ 㥊ਛ㦖⯥ᾃᚑ 12
╩ਅ㝩㛧ᅛ 㗇ำ⟎ᤚ╬ ਃᓳ₵ర⊞Ꮲᦠ
I once viewed, from a marvelous hand, a painting of someone riding the wind. And I imagined that such a man as this would not exist in the world. Now I know Master Baoguang with the Yellow Cap of a Daoist and a free-flowing spirit that soars aloft— the painting falls short. From the Emei and Min eastward you came nine thousand leagues, Eyes satiated with high mountains and flowing rivers, too. Taking advantage of the springtime, though, you plan to visit Tiantai: that year Chan and Zhao’s adventure was purely chance! Master Baoguang! What are you doing?. The Dragon and Tiger in the cauldron are smelted into the Treasure; beneath your brush wraiths and spirits are driven like slaves. You must needs set such things aside for the nonce: Read and reread the Book of the Emperor of Mystery Prime.
A A b A B B
B B A
A b A
Notes 014-5–6/ Mount Emei and Mount Min are partially joined in Sichuan and are often mentioned together to represent that region. Coming down from there, Jian Gongchen would indeed have seen his fill of mountains and rivers. 014-8/ Liu Chen ഏ᥄and Ruan Zhao 㒍⡸ got lost on Mount Tianti in 62 C.E. but ended up enjoying the favors of Undying maidens there. 63 014-11/ This line refers to alchemy, most likely involving amalgamation of mercury and lead. 64 014-14/ Emperor of Mystery Prime is one of the titles given to Laozi; Fanghui is probably referring to the text we know as the Laozi or the Dao De jing.
The poem begins on a lofty note, saying that Jian Gongchen in reality outdoes the iconographic Daoist riding the wind in a painting Fanghui had seen. The “inserted” section, set off by rhyme (lines 014-5–8, excluding line 9 as part of the apostrophe that governs the last section), then undercuts the noble image. Jian, considering his origins and the journey he has taken through the gorges down to the lower Yangzi area, can’t be going to Mt. Tiantai to see more mountains. He must
——— 63 64
Taiping yulan (SBCK), 41.2b–3a. Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, v. 5 pt. 3, 66.
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be lusting after the Undying maidens there! Fanghui does not say so directly, of course, but he insinuates it when he points out to Jian that Liu Chen and Ruan Zhao were just lucky. In other words, Jian cannot count on repeating their experience. After “lowering” his voice with the deflected-tone rhymes in this section to show he knows the “real” motives for Jian’s trip, the poet goes back to the clear, more “public” level tones. Now that we are in on the secret, however, we understand what Fanghui is referring to when he says Jian, the successful alchemist and writer, should set aside “such things” and keep up on his Laozi instead. That “such things” should re-insert the rhyme of lines 014-5–8 confirms our intuition that the pursuit of Undying maidens is what is meant. Jocular insinuations in poetry that one’s friend is a lusty old man are not unusual in Northern Song poetry. Prudish men were particularly susceptible to such treatment at the hands of their poet friends. It helps to know, therefore, that Jian Gongchen was reputedly a strict celibate who disapproved of the fact that Daoists in his native Sichuan routinely married and had children. 65 The two poems between which the preceding poem was placed deserve some attention because they are both eight-line poems of uniform line length, and Fanghui was just ending an extremely fertile period for heptametrical Regulated Verse. (From Hezhou in 1088–90, he kept twenty-four such poems.) There is no possibility of genre confusion, however. The rhymes schemes of these two poems show immediately that they are not Regulated Verses. The second poem, for example, rhymes AAXABBXB and starts with an entering-tone rhyme. Parallelism is studiously avoided. 66 The first poem, ⥱ᰴ㊄㒺ᙿነᖵ㓁₺អ⋧ My Boat Makes a Stop in Jinling: Sent to Clerk Wang Xiang, of Whom I Am Thinking, in Liyang, is worth studying more closely: it consists entirely of rhyming couplets. 67 While it does exhibit semantic parallelism in lines 013-1–4, it is a particular type of parallelism in which the first line of a couplet is parallel to the first line of the following couplet and the second line to the second line of the following couplet. This is sometimes called “folding fan” parallelism. 013 ᤓᤨᳯർᦸᳯධ
٨٤٤٨٨٤٤ ᛠ㈬㔌ᗜᏇਇႊ ٨٨٤٤٨٨٤
———
D2
In a past time from north of the River I gazed to south of the River;
A
B1
As I grasped my brew, the sorrow of parting was already unbearable.
A
See the commentary to Su Shi’s ಬㅒሐՓូᡔ՞, SSSJ, 5:30.1597. ㏊ۣຳխࠊࠡ❺ Mooring My Boat in the Qin-Huai, I Call on Shiqi Yu in the Snow, Poem 015, 1.12502; 1.8a. 67 1.12502, 1.7b. Wang’s cognomen is Yuanxu ցવ, but I have not been able to discover the cognomen of any of the other Wang Xiangs in the sources to make a positive identification. 65 66
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ᄛᳯධᦸᳯർ ٤٨٤٤غع٨ ᛶᷡ⺣นᓧ ٨٨٤٤٤٨٨ ᖵḓ⊕ਅ㕖๋ၢ ٨٤٨٨غ٤٤ ቭりଶ⌒ੱ⁅ ٤٤٨٨٨٤٤ ᓟᣣᚳ⥱ᦝ ٨٨٤٤غع٨ ᳯධᳯർౌ⯪ ٤٤٤٨ع٤٨
On this night south of the River, I gaze to north of the River;
B
Clapping excitedly in a “pure conversation”— where can I find that now?
B
(D7)
Neither Li Lake nor Baixia are my homeland;
C
D2
When you are an official, the eyes of the vulgar forbid you to be wild.
C
(C14)
On some future day, in a tiny boat, I’ll go on to the West;
D
(A7)
North of the River, south of the River— where will they be then?
D
(C15) C2
Notes: 013-3/ Li Lake is a lake in Liyang; Baixia is on the Jinling side of the Yangzi. 013-7–8/ Fanghui would sail west to cross the Yangzi to return to Liyang, but here he seems to imagine a journey further west, so that the time-honored boundary between the North and the South would cease to be relevant. Whether he has a particular destination or allusion in mind is unknowable from the context.
The play with north and south that occupies the first two couplets is resumed in the last couplet; one reason to break the poem into rhyming couplets might be to introduce a formal complication to balance the fact that this single conceit governs so much of the poem. Another distraction is the fact that it is only in the fourth line that the reader discovers this is not a Regulated Verse. Roughly half of Fanghui’s heptametrical Regulated Verses open with DB lines, as we shall see, and the D and B lines here are perfectly regulated. The third line is unregulated, but it is a C line following a B line, so we still think we are in a Regulated Verse. Then we come to line 013-4. It is regulated, but it does not rhyme with lines 1 and 2 as expected; it rhymes with the preceding line. On top of that, it ends in an entering tone, impossible for an even-numbered line in Regulated Verse. We have been catapulted out of Regulated Verse and into Ancient Verse. The semantic correlation between lines 013-1 and 3 should be apparent even without reference to the original; the translation obscures it in lines 2 and 4, but similar types of words in parallel relationships are there in the Chinese. Bo Juyi frequently employed “folding-fan parallelism” in both Ancient and Regulated Verse. For example, lines 1–4 and 13–16 in his “New Ballad” ᄥⴕ〝 Road in the Taihang Mountains use this structure. As in Fanghui’s poem, the lines are also in rhyming couplets. However, Bo’s poem is distinguished from He Zhu’s eight-line poem not only by its length but also by the varied line lengths (lines 13 and 15 are pentametrical parallel lines followed by heptametrical parallel lines 14 and 16) and the repetition of the same words in the same places in the parallel lines. More
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research may or may not confirm that He Zhu’s use of “folding-fan parallelism” with rhyming couplets in a uniformly heptametrical poem is an innovation. 68 It remains to mention a question that will arise from heptametrical poems in other genres written in this month and the first month of the following year (Regulated Verses 306, 307, 308; the heptametrical Quatrain 562). As will be seen, I sense in He Zhu at this time a feeling that the world is somehow less substantial than usual. Were it not for those other poems, I would say that it is simply a truism that Li Lake and Baixia are not the poet’s homeland (line 013-5) and I would never see in line 013-8’s suggestion that distinctions between North and South might disappear anything more than a witticism relating back to lines 013-1 and 3. However, reading the Song in the context of those other poems written in some cases at almost the same time, one has to ask whether there is more to these lines than the surface meaning—even if Fanghui himself not was conscious of a deeper significance. We shall, of course, return to this issue when discussing the poems that first raised it in my mind.
A GIFT ENHANCED BY RHYME (I) The last Song preserved from Yuanyou 5 (1090–91) is ነაઍᦠ⿅ᬢᤨ Sending Ink [and Poem] Instead of a Letter, Presented to Yang Shi. 69 It is worth mentioning for several reasons. First, it is written to accompany a gift, which is an important function of poetry in the Song Dynasty. 70 Secondly, the recipient is Yang Shi (1053–1135), one of the important thinkers of the Northern Song. Yang and Fanghui had known each other as officials in their late twenties in Xuzhou. (Fanghui believed Yang was now a penal administrator in Nankang, Jiangnan West Circuit. In fact, Yang’s father died about this time, so Yang may have left his post before the ink and the poem reached Nankang.) Third, this poem is a good example of the Boliang ᨰ form; more precisely, it exemplifies poems that miss by one line being a Boliang poem, which seems to happen fairly regularly. The Boliang poem has a long history that I have discussed elsewhere. 71 The basic characteristics of the form are that it is heptasyllabic, that it avoids parallelism, and that every line ends in the same rhyme, which must be an even-tone rhyme. It is
———
68 For Bo’s poem, see QTS, 13:426.4694. On this type of parallelism, see Ye Jun et at., Zhongguo shixue, 248–49. To judge by the examples cited there, most “folding-fan parallelism” is found in pentametrical poems. In an eight-line poem, it is most likely to occur in the first half, as it does here; in longer poems it can be placed anywhere. 69 1.12502–3; 1.8a. 70 See my “Huang Ting-chien’s ‘Incense of Awareness,’” 60. 71 “City of Lotuses.” When I wrote that article, reference works such as Wang Yonghao’s and Qi Gong’s were not available to me, so I was unaware of how prevalent the form was, nor did I know that some later literary historians saw the Boliang form as the basis for the development of heptametrical verse itself. See Ye Jun, et al., Zhongguo shixue, 94.
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generally fairly long (Su Shi has one eight-line Boliang poem, but the average length for him is around twenty-one lines). This enables the propelling rhythm to have full effect and shows off the prowess of the writer in coming up with so many rhymes. Because Regulated Verse also requires an even-tone rhyme, the poet who uses the Boliang form makes a special effort to avoid the euphony of Regulated Verse. Typically, this involves making sure the last three syllables of many lines are awkward combinations of even-even-even, or even-deflected-even; any string of four syllables of the same tone will have a similar effect. It may be said that the clumsiness of the tonal combinations is a counter-balance to the forward propulsion of the constant rhyme. Below we provide, with the text of the poem to Yang Shi, the prosody of each line in order to show that there is not a single regulated line. It may be readily seen that some lines are extreme in their “awkwardness”: line 016-2 is all even tones; lines 7 and 9 are deflected tones in all but the final syllable; and so forth. 016 ᓖᓭ㔐ც⫷᧻㘂
٤٤٨٨غ٤٤ ᷍⤉ᩮᨾⳎⱷⱝ ٤٤٤غغ٤٤ ᬁᢹᨆ⍹Ἣᾲ ٤٤٨٨عع٨ 4 ᦛ⓭⊖ޡಝ᪳ᾍ ٨٨غغعع٤ ⫱⪕⑺㗰➗➗ ٤٤٤٨غ٤٤ ᶏ⤔ᾃႊ➖⚴ ٨٤٨٨عغ٤ ജᠿ⪦᧶⥓᰼⓫ ٨٨عع٨٨٤ 8 ഓᚑ⅜㓣ᣇ ٨٤٤٨غ٤٤ 㤭ṭᲧ⦡⍹Ყၷ ٨٨عع٨٨٤ ထ᧘㖡⟮ዬ೨ ٨٨غعع٨٤ 㒸⥑ẘ⼱⠧⾫ ٤٤٤٨٨ع٤ 12 ໑⼂⠪ਇ⸘㍦ ٨٤٨٨٨ع٤
(D6)
On Culai Mountain snow oppresses, hoary pines topple to the ground;
A
(D24)
Soaked with sap, the roots twist and coil around.
A
(A13)
The woodsman’s ax cuts and splits, sparks from stone are hot;
(B29)
in the kiln a hundred paces long, twig-smoke congeals in a sooty surround:
A
(D8)
Grapes, the fruits of autumn, in hanging clusters do abound.
A
(D15)
Glue from the ocean refined nine times, fit for repairing strings to sound.
A
(B19)
Ten thousand pestles beat with force, nearly through the mortars pounding. A
(D5)
Then it’s molded into tablets and rings— as one pleases, square or round.
A
(B19)
A dot of lacquer is like unto its color, its stony hardness will dumbfound.
A
(B27)
It all would make Li and Wei upset they’re not still around.
A
(D4)
Pan Gu of the Chen Estrade was aged and with wisdom crowned.
A
(D3)
He gave to the cognoscenti only, figured neither pence nor pound.
A
SONGS
ᤚ⠃⸃ൻᅤⱉ ٨٤٨٨عغ٤ ᓟน➊ᱝή⡞Ὣ ٨٨غغعع٤ ઃำ৻᱅⼂ో ٨٤٨غ٨ع٤ 16 ⼔⻯ኒජᐕ ٨٨غغعع٤ ำኅᷡ㘑ቱொ ٤٤٤عغغ٤ ਇ․⺣₵㗇⨲₵ ٨٨٤٤غ٨٤
159
(D15)
That old gent, like a cicada from its pupa, is now from life unbound.
A
(B29)
Who can continue his work in future, I have not heard or found!
A
(D19)
I entrust to you one tablet, inscription intact and sound.
A
(B29)
It will last for thousands of years if protected and kept without renown. A
(D28)
Your family is of good and noble air, and for generations will hand it down. A
(B3)
Don’t just talk about the Mystery; you must draft a Mystery Profound!
A
Notes: 016-1/ Culai Mountain, in Shandong, is conventionally associated with pine trees because its pines are praised in Ode 300 of the Classic of Poetry. By Fanghui’s time, the pine forests there were much reduced, as they were in other parts of Shandong. 72 016-2/ Abundant resin in a pine tree with thick, large roots was a measure of suitability for the finest grades of ink. 73 016-4/ “Sparks from stone” often means “as brief as sparks from flint,” but here it may indicate that the pine wood is so hard that it throws off sparks when struck by the axes. 016-5/ The best soot congealed near the chimneys “shaped like pearls or tassels.” 74 Fanghui exaggerates the pearls into hanging grapes. 016-6/ Glue is mixed with soot to make ink sticks. Glue made from fish bladder is extremely strong. 75 016-10/ In all likelihood, Li is Li Tinggui ᧘ᐸ⃯ of the Southern Tang and Wei is Wei Zhongjiang 㖡ખዂ; both were experts on ink. 76 016-11/ Pan Gu was a contemporary purveyor of quality ink well-known among the literati for his eccentricity and his ability to judge ink. (See Su Shi’s poem to him, cited in the previous note.) Fanghui alludes to Pan’s habit of giving ink away to people who came by without bringing any money. 016-18/ Yang Shi’s interest in philosophy was in place when he and Fanghui first met; before he went to Xuzhou in 1081, he had already called on Cheng Hao ⒟㘆. Perhaps he was prone to
——— 72 Shen Gua reports the decline of the pine forests in “Qi and Lu” in his Mengxi bitan. See Herbert Franke’s discussion of the shift in pine production and his translation of Shen in Kulturgeschichtliches über die chinesische Tusche, 12 and 110–11. Chao Guanzhi’s հ Mo jing ᕠᆖ includes Culai as historically one of the best sources of pine but states that by his time (he is a contemporary of He Zhu) the pines in that region are no more than a few decades old and cannot be compared with the stock from other regions. See Franke, 54, for a translation and Li Shou-mei, Chinese Ink Making Techniques, for the text (in which see pp. 1–2). The Mo jing is also attributed to Chao Guanzhi’s brother, Chao Yuezhi. 73 See Chao Guanzhi’s Mojing, op. cit. and Franke, 54. 74 See Chao Guanzhi’s Mojing, 3, and Franke, 55. 75 Su Shi mentions this glue in his 1085 ୪๐۔ബᕠଈࠡԫ, SSSJ, 4:25.1319–20, line 5. 76 See the commentaries to Su Shi’s ᢤᑰߣ (1084), SSSJ, 4:24.1276 and the poem referenced in the previous note.
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engaging “taking about the mysteries” like the intellectuals of the Six Dynasties. Fanghui points out that with the ink he is giving him he can write it all down. He is also drawing on a common allusion to Yang Xiong’s absorption in his great work, the Tai Xuan jing: “drafting the Mystery” refers to devoting oneself to writing with little thought or time for playing the game of politics.
The joke in the final line is in keeping with the bravado style typical of the Boliang form. As to why a non-rhyming line is included (016-3), I have no explanation, but this is a fairly regular phenomenon. Out of twenty Boliang poems by Su Shi that I have identified so far, five include a non-rhyming line.
1094: HAILING LAMENTS During the year in Hailing when he wrote only one pentametrical Ancient Verse, Fanghui favored heptametrical forms, both the Song and Regulated Verse. A remarkable poem he wrote to mourn his daughter is the first Song from this period we have. His daughter, he tells us in the headnote, had married Yanxiu ৯ ୃ of the Zhu ㇙ family of Wenyang 㓁, which was east of the Liang-shan area notorious for its bandits; there is no way of knowing whether she and her husband resided there. 77 The Song, ᅚൎ⅌ຟㄓ Words of Mourning for Our Late Daughter Shengzhang is startling in both content and form: 78 023 ⊖∿ᴊ㗐ᒫౌᐕ
4
٨٤٤٨عغ٤ ჾᅚᱫᚒవ ٤٤٨٨٨ع٤ ᄬ⡪ᔋ⯳⓸ຜ ٨٤٨٨٨ع٤ ෝᅤ⛣❡᳹ᴰ ٨٤٤غ٨ع٤ ༳ዏᢓዕ⻉ᄤ ٤٤٨٨غ٤٤
(D13)
A hundred illnesses, sunken and tired, I endured a full two years;
A
(D2)
Who could foresee my healthy girl would die before me?
A
(D3)
I’ve lost my voice, I stifle my cries, my breath is blocked and choking.
A
(D19)
These tears are like well-ropes let down to draw from the Nine Springs.
A
(D6)
Woe and alas! I still dare to hold Heaven at fault.
A
——— 77 There are a few men named Zhu in the historical records whose first names begin with the syllable Yan and who thus might be cousins or brothers of Yanxiu, but their surnames are written with the more common ڹ. Fanghui might have “corrected” the writing of his son-in-law’s name in the belief that it was derived from ứ, the name of an ancient state in the Shandong area. 78 1.12504, 1.11a. I have not seen comparable formats for ai ci ( or ဲ); the only heptametrical examples I have found for the Song Dynasty are one regulated verse (Su Shi, ׆խ߉, 1084; SSSJ, 4:24.1280) and two poems in Sao couplets of 6 syllables + xi / six syllables (by Qin Guan). Wang Wei has a very irregular sao-meter poem, ݚၞ್ဲ; I see no other example from the Tang Dynasty.
SONGS
8
⸤㕖ੱᱫᄬᚲ ٨٤٤ععغ٨ ῳᲣྫྷ₈᳭᫈ ٨٤٨غ٤ع٨ ܟㄆᬩ↳⸵ ٤٤٨٨٤٤٨ ⪜⨸᱾⧷ᤐਇਥ ٤٤٨غ٤ع٨ ༳⪦ฎὑ ٤٤٨٨٤٤٨
161
(A26)
We entrusted you to the wrong person; you died without your proper place.
B
(A20)
Your father is a lout, your mother is stupid; we actually threw you away.
B
Swallowing sorrow, gnashing teeth in suffering, where could you tell your woes?
B
A withered sprout, a fallen blossom; spring washed its hands of you.
B
Woe and alas! For ten thousand ages you’ll be rancorous soil.
B
A1 (A17) A1
Notes: 023-4/ The Nine Springs are the realm of the dead beneath the earth.
With a poem of such bitter sorrow, it almost seems insensitive to study the structure, but upon doing so we realize how important the structure is in giving voice to the emotion. First of all, the Song is divided into two equal parts by the rhyme change that comes as the poet turns from his grief to his guilt and anger. (I add the second-person pronoun to the translation in the second part, though it exists only in line 023-7 in the original: “we threw you away.”) One purpose of having two five-line units is to upset the balance and elegance that comes with couplet-based poetry, but what is going on here is a bit more subtle. In fact, all but lines 023-5 and 6 fall into couplets, though tonally and semantically they avoid symmetry. Lines 023-1 and 2 treat the paradox of a sickly father being preceded in death by a child in her prime; line 023-3 and 4 are devoted to the ways his grief is felt. Lines 023-7 and 8 and 023-9 and 10 fall again into pairs because of implied causal relationships (we threw you away—so you have no place to come for solace; you are like a fallen blossom—and will become soil). Line 023-5, taking the father’s complaint to Heaven, stands alone, as does the indictment of the son-in-law in line 6: “We entrusted you to the wrong person.” The fact that the poem returns to thematically paired lines after these two solitary lines is undercut by the repetition of “Woe and alas!” in line 023-10. That is, echoing the same words in line 023-5, this refrain lament lays a conflicting pattern over the paired lines, dividing the poem into two outbursts of five lines each. The situation, the grief, cannot be contained within stable two-line units of thought. The fact that every line rhymes creates a compelling forward movement, but equally important is the fact that the second syllable in every line is in the level tone. The resulting strings of D-type and A-type lines are not only impossible in Regulated Verse; they are surely rare in Ancient Verse of any line length. The unchanging tone in the second syllable maintains a constancy that we did not see in the light-hearted poem to Yang Shi. We’ve said that repeated rhymes in a long poem create an impression of bravado; that’s not what is wanted here. He Zhu has
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found a different kind of intensity, a ruthless repetition appropriate to his theme. Note also that a level-tone second syllable in both the D and A line type requires a level-tone sixth syllable if full euphony (as codified in regulated meter) is desired. Fanghui relentlessly forces the sixth syllable into the deflected tone for the first four lines of this poem, and for three of the five lines after the exclamatory line 023-5. It is almost as if the wailing level tone in the second syllables is accompanied in the sixth by a fist-pounding deflected tone. Or, in view of the way the strings of four deflected tones in lines 023-2 and 3 mimic the “blocking and choking” of He Zhu’s breath, we may hear sobbing in those sixth-syllable deflected tones. The deflected–level–deflected–level tonal sequence of line 023-7 is particularly striking. Those syllables seethe with self-hatred as they castigate both Fanghui and his wife in jerky rhythms: “Your father is a lout, your mother is stupid.” After that angry line, we encounter the gentleness of a tonally regulated line in line 023-8, and again in the final line 10. It is almost as if the father, despite the continuing sadness and anger in all that he says, is struggling to soften his tone. The last words he addresses to his daughter must fall more gently on her ears, even as she turns to “rancorous earth” for the rest of time. Form does have meaning. These words in these rhythms make us weep again for He Zhu’s daughter a thousand years after she abandoned hope and life; and while we can never know what she was like, in our modern accents we can at least repeat her name as immortalized in the title of her father’s powerful poem: He Shengzhang. Later in 1094, Fanghui uses his skill to make a plea on behalf of a pair of cranes. During a summer drought, the pond that a Mr. Su in Hailing had dug dried up, but the negligent Mr. Su did nothing to succor the pair of cranes he kept there—presumably they depended on little fish or frogs in the pond for food. This is the opening of He Zhu’s ⠧㢬གྷ Lament of the Old Cranes; the words are those of the cranes: 79 024
⪇⪇ᱩૼ ήゞ 㘩ή㝼
Flowery pillar, flowery pillar, shall we homeward hie? There’s no chariot for us to ryde, No fish on which to dyne.
A A A
Anyone familiar with Harold Shadick’s textbook for Classical Chinese will recognize the echo of the complaint of Feng Xuan 㚏⻋, who tapped on the hilt of his sword and sang, “Long hylt, long hylt, let’s homeward hie, / There’s no chariot for me to ryde; / There’s no fish on which to dyne.” (This was one step in testing the degree to which his lord would invest in him, though there was no evidence
——— 79
1.12504–5; 1.11b.
SONGS
163
that he had any talent whatsoever; he later “bought” his lord “a reputation for justice” by forgiving the debts of those unable to pay them.) 80 Allusions to this song were common, and in fact Fanghui had more conventionally evoked it in 1091, in ⇐↰᤺ Left Behind in Farewell to Tian Zhou: 81 020
㔕ㅷ⓱⓱⻢ᮗへ 㐳㌳⥜ੱㆶ ⇣ᤨ⚿㚯ૼධ⇔
12
⠹⠪⠧ᄦ㍁⠪ᆄ
Cloudy thoroughfares recede into the vastness, and I decline to climb up to them; the long hylte and I will go back to our old perch. If in future time you harness your four-in-hand and come to the southern acres, the one plowing will be this old man; the one hoeing will be his wife.
A A
A
(This is an enjoyable poem that I omit from further study only as a gesture towards economy of discussion. Let us note in passing, however, that it is another example of a poem that leaves then resumes the opening rhyme. See p. 153.) In the 1094 lament for the cranes, Fanghui cleverly overlaps three allusions. The flowery pillar or column (024-1) the cranes address (echoing Feng Xuan’s address to his sword) is associated with cranes because Ding Lingwei perched on such a pillar in the form of a crane. (See the note to line 001-20 of the 1081 Song of the Clustered Estrade.) As for the chariot (024-2), of course Feng Xuan complained that he was not granted one, but mention of the vehicle take us to another allusion: in the Spring and Autumn Period, Duke Yi of Wei was inordinately fond of cranes and conveyed them about on the cross-rails of chariots. 82 So not only do these cranes not have the chariot Feng Xuan was eventually granted; they don’t have the chariot that Duke Yi provided his cranes. When the cranes complain they don’t have fish (024-3), they are once again repeating Feng Xuan’s grievance, but this time the secondary reference is not a textual allusion; it is to the fact that Mr. Su has allowed the pond to dry up. This is all so skillful that I once thought He Zhu cared less about the cranes than about his own cleverness. (The rest of the poem is also very allusive.) I think now that his aim was to amuse Mr. Su with his tour-de-force of allusions and rhymes (only three lines out of seventeen do not rhyme). Having gotten his ear, so to speak, he could then remind him of his responsibility to the captive birds. The progression of secondary references we have just noted in the first three lines embodies this strategy: after directing our attention to other texts in the first two
——— 80 In addition to your copy of Shadick, see the Zhanguo ce, Qi ce, juan 4. Or Crump, Chan-kuo Ts’e, 195–98. I purposely use an archaic spelling for hilt because the Chinese term is very rare; as far as I know, it occurs only in the context of this allusion. 81 1.12503–4; 1.9b. Tian Zhou is Tian Zhiming. Fanghui met him again and wrote this poem over a decade later in Gaoyou in the second month of 1091 as he was on his way up the Grand Canal to the capital. 82 Zuo zhuan, Min 2.
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lines, the poem turns in line 024-3 to point the finger at the real crisis at hand. One hopes that Fanghui was successful in getting fish for the feathered “Feng Xuans.”
FIRST FAREWELL SONGS Although Fanghui uses Songs as often as Ancient Verses to send people off (seven poems in each genre), it is not until 1094 in Hailing that Fanghui he employs one for this purpose. We can only suppose that this late start was governed by the same factors that retarded He Zhu’s general adoption of the genre. The first person who was sent off with a Song is a first cousin of Wang Anshi who is on his way south to be a district defender at Wukang, about 45 km north of Hangzhou. 83 Somewhat more interesting for the light it shows on the different uses of pentasyllabic and heptasyllabic lines is ㅍᶏ㒺ᄥ㇇ฃઍㆶᦺ Sending off Prefect of Hailing, Zhou Bin, who has Received His Replacement and is Returning to the Court. 84 026 ḡḡ᳓᧲ᵹ
ᄹタᱝⴕ⥱ ⚚ᅤ㥏㡆ၔ㗡
4
8
ำ⍬ਇน⇐ ೨ᣣำૼ ᄤሶᐘᱝᎺ ொ▤ၔ వ⡪⟲ೢ ਇ㑸ᄖ֪ᕷึ› ᖅᛠ㋭㍁⺕Ꮿ‐
㔎ᥨਇ㆑⑨ 12 ╥㣧ᢞᡴ ฮ්৻㍦⾔ ₐήᧁ ႓ၴထཕ㙍ᥜ
———
Mighty and strong the waters eastward flow. What can we do? They carry his westing boat. Boom, the fifth [watch] drums sound from the citywall top. The commissioner is leaving and we cannot keep him here. One day in the past the commissioner came: The Son of Heaven favored this district. Word was sent of his Guancheng administration: his reputation sent robber gangs fleeing. No one locked their outside doors, watchdogs ceased to bark. everyone grasped sickle and hoe; who wore an “ox”? Rain and sunshine came according to his prayers; barren land doubled its yield. Clerks wouldn’t take a single coin in bribes; the prison was empty of five-dice prisoners. In the Yellow Hall he sits and whistles, having plenty of leisure;
A A A A A A
A A A
83 ಬڜ׆ᆏࣳൈര Seeing off Wang Anjie going to his post as defender of Wukang, Poem 025, 1.12505; 1.12a. 84 1.12505; 1.12a. We have met Zhou Bin in connection with the Ancient Verse Inscribed on the Cloud-Roosting Hut at Kaiyuan Temple in Hailing, written in the previous month (Poem 139).
SONGS
16
⹗ᣂㅊ㓩ଘ
165
ᣁ᳃ᐘำ ⇙ὑ๋ભ
a new set of Eight Songs— patterned after the Reticent Marquis. A The People place their hopes in the commissioner; the rest of our lives we have relief. A
ଧⅶᤨઍ 20 ᧄᦺቭ㊀փ ⥟ㅢ㊄㐷☋ ⴕᄺ₹ኇወ
Suddenly he was at the melon season replacement. B In this court a post within is prized. B Before, you were on the roles of the Bronze Gate; now you will give answers in the Nephrite Palace. B
ำએᴦᶏ㒺 24
ૉ㒸⡛ਥਯᓾ⤿⢻ ⁅↢ᗧ᳓ⴧ
If he asks you by what method you ruled Hailing, C Just say, “It was the virtue of the sagely ruler; what abilities does your servant possess? C Crazy Sheng would like to be aide to the commissioner of waterways.” C
Notes: 026-3/ The allusion to Deng You is especially appropriate in the context of Zhou’s departure. See p. 147n. 026-7/ Fanghui tells us in his headnote that Zhou’s administration in Guancheng (modern Zhengzhou, sixty-some km west of the capital) was exemplary. 85 026-9/ An “ox” in this context is a sword. In a well-ordered society, people sold their swords and bought oxen; when they no longer felt safe, they would sell the oxen and buy swords; since a sword was thus convertible into an ox, to wear a sword was to wear an “ox.” 026-14/ The Indian game chaupar was played with five two-sided dice. 86 Clearly, the game was associated with activities that could land a person in jail. 026-15/ The Yellow Hall is the hall of a prefect. 87 Whistling in this context may be close to our notion of producing sound by blowing out through puckered lips, but for possible Daoist connotations see again Holzman, Poetry and Politics, 150–52. 026-16/ The Eight Songs alludes to another prefect, Shen Yue ᴉ⚂ (441-513), whose posthumous title was “Reticent Marquis.” See Mather, Shen Yüeh, 94–110. 026-17/ For similar uses of xing, see the following line from an indictment of an ancient god of drought by He Zhu’s friend Zhang Lei, ᳃ᐘᏢ⹎㔕Ꮷ “The people place their hopes in God, oh! and He issues orders to the cloudy troops,” and, from a poem by the slightly younger Li Zhi ᧘ᑊ (1059–1109), ᳃ᐘૼ㧘῭એవ᭢ “The people of the commandery place their hopes in his coming, / competing for the glory of catching sight of him first.” 88 026-18/ The translation of this line is tentative. Ouyang Xiu’s ᗅฮਯ⦟⠪⢻ὑ๋ભਯ “Only an officer who is good can give rest on my behalf to [the people who have been exhausted by warfare]” offers the only precedent of which I am aware. Yang Wanli ᬢ⪦㉿ (1127–1206) uses the expression wu xiu in two poems where it appears to mean “rest for me; my rest.” In Ouyang’s example xiu is a
——— 85 Zhou was magistrate of Guancheng xian in 1085. See the Xu Zizhi tongjian changbian, 10:361.2b (3665) and Su Shi nianpu, 2:24.699. 86 See Shishuo xinyu 31.4 for one mention of it; also, Mather’s glossary, p. 643. 87 See the biography of Guo Dan 䛁Ѝ, Hou Han shu, 4:27.941 88 Zhang’s poem is 䀈儗, and it is datable to 1080. See Zhang Lei ji, 1:5.55–56, and the nianpu therein, 2:980–81. Li Zhi’s poem is ϞྥϜ䮁Ϭ䗮⠻ᇥ॓, QSS, 20:1202.13581–82. In the latter case, xing could also be understood as “consider [something] a blessed event.”
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transitive verb because it has an object pronoun after it. I suspect that in both Yang Wanli and Fanghui the expression is derived from some such usage and has been abbreviated. The full connotation would be something like “the relief that has been granted me/the people by a good administration on behalf of the emperor.” 89 026-21/ The Bronze Horse Gate is a kenning for the bureaus of officials. 026-22/ It would appear that Zhou is being recalled for an examination before the emperor. 026-23B25/ This section alludes to a story of a much earlier prefect who was called to the capital. The prefect asked one of his underlings, a Wang Sheng, what he should say to the emperor’s questions. Wang told him, “When he asks by what method you ruled Bohai, it would be well to say, ‘It was all the virtue of the sage ruler, not the effort of your humble servant.’” The emperor asked the expected question and got the prepared answer. However, the prefect had to confess that he had been instructed by Wang Sheng. The emperor, amused, gave the aged prefect the largely honorary job of commissioner of waterways and made Wang his aide. 90 In our poem, Fanghui is playing the part of Wang Sheng.
Sending off Prefect of Hailing Zhou Bin who has Received His Replacement and is Returning to the Court is divided by rhyme into three sections. The first and longest (lines 026-1–18) tells why Hailing will be sorry to see Zhou Bin go; it uses a mixture of pentametrical and heptametrical sets of lines to vary the register in interesting ways. The second section (lines 19–22), all pentametrical, explains that this is not only a scheduled rotation but a shift to the more prestigious court official status; moreover, Zhou has been an official in the capital before and should have no problem being interviewed by the emperor. The likelihood of such an interview leads to the joke in the final section of three rhyming heptasyllabic lines (the second of which is prefixed by “Just say: …,” adding two extra syllables). There are several comparisons that can be made between the pentasyllabic and heptasyllabic lines. The pentasyllabic lines each contain a single idea, encouraging one to look to a matching line for context, cause, result, or amplification. The first two couplets of pentametrical lines imply relations of cause and result. That Zhou Bin came (line 026-5) to Hailing was the result of kindness on the part of the emperor (line 6); Zhou’s administration in Guancheng (line 7) has been reported, and this causes the thieves in Hailing to run away (line 8)—from which we may of course infer something about that administration. The second two couplets of pentametrical lines are driven by amplification: it is true that we could see timely rain and sunshine (line 026-11) as the cause for barren land doubling its yield (line 12) but I read both phenomena as coordinate indications that agriculture is flourishing, especially since the honesty of clerks and the cessation of gamblers’ brawls (lines 026-13–14) as signs of Zhou Bin’s good influence on local mores are clearly equal but independent. The heptasyllabic lines work differently. They are more likely to contain two
———
Ouyang Quanji, 1:waizhi ji.3.606, ᙕࠃ૨്ஃױاՕࠫنڝ. See the Han shu, 11:89.3640–41, in the biography of Gong Sui ሑ. Su Shi alluded to this story in 1091: ፖᆺෆঀ۔ཉ്֛ऺሐٵઌီᄅࣾऺሐڶᇣڻᣉԲଈࠡԲ, SSSJ, 6:33.1755–56, line 15. 89 90
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167
ideas and require less support from their mates. There is room to include two sentences: “The commissioner is leaving (exclamation); [we] cannot detain [him]” (line 026-4). An idea and its amplification can thus appear within the same line: “[People] don’t lock outside doors; put-to-rest barking dogs” (line 026-9). Actually, this line and the following one (derived from the old saying about “selling swords to buy oxen”) both give the result of the robber gangs’ flight from Hailing, reported in the pentasyllabic line 026-8. The structure of this sub-section from line 026-5 through line 10 gives the effect of a solemn, “classical” declaration at the measured pace 1 – 2 || 3 – 4 – 5 , followed by a commoner stepping forward, perhaps beating time with a pair of wooden sticks, and amplifying on what has been heard in a spirited, quick 1-2 3-4 || 5-6-7. This pattern repeats itself in the next six lines, where Zhou Bin’s effect on agriculture and morals is reported in pentametrical couplets, after which the result is reported in sprightly rhythms: the prefect who governs by moral example has nothing to do but whistle and write poetry (as opposed to hearing court cases and traipsing through the fields to exhort the farmers). The beginning of the poem has its own dynamic. The quiet and vaguely ancient-sounding “Mighty and strong the waters eastward flow” in five syllables releases a flurry of thoughts in rhyming heptasyllabic lines that refer directly to the occasion: these waters are taking him away from us! Listen to the morning drum urging him to leave! We cannot stop him! The fact that lines 026-1 through 4 all rhyme gives this introduction a quick rhythm that is damped by the pentasyllabic retrospective in the following lines, though the energy bursts out periodically in the heptametrical interjections we have already discussed. Though we have not marked them, there are regulated lines in Sending off Prefect of Hailing Zhou Bin. They never follow a regulated sequence, but they seem to evoke a momentary dignity or formality, especially in “One day in the past the commissioner came; / The Son of Heaven favored this district” (026-5–6) and “The people place their hopes in the commissioner” (026-17). Using regulated lines for “Suddenly he was at the melon season replacement; / In this court a post within is prized “(026-19–20) might underscore the shift in topic from Zhou Bin’s past to his immediate future at court. The only regulated heptasyllabic line in the entire poem is the last one: “Crazy Sheng would like to be aide to the commissioner of waterways.” Here, the meter may be designed to create mock-dignity. Moreover, this is the punch line to a joke that has just been set up in two very prosy lines; the poet wants it to roll off the tongue smoothly and stay in the listener’s mind to be savored, while ending the poem with an appealing, euphonious pattern of sound.
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1096–98: JIANGXIA TAO YUANMING OUTDONE In our chapter on Ancient Verses, we noted that Fanghui was collating Tao Yuanming’s works while in Hanyang in the seventh month of Shaosheng 3 (1096). One Song written in the fifth month of 1096 (as Fanghui was still on his way up the Yangzi to Hanyang) makes a great deal of Tao Yuanming. It also begins with eight pentasyllabic lines, like Song he wrote in 1089 across from Jinling (p. 146). This Song is a bit longer than the 1089 poem. Like the earlier one, it has one rhyme for the first eight lines and another rhyme for the ten following heptasyllabic lines. Unlike the earlier one, the first line does not rhyme—normal for pentametrical poetry—and there are eight more heptasyllabic lines in another rhyme at the end of the poem. The interlocking rhymes in the middle of the poem are highly unusual. 91 The title of the poem is ㅍ┨㇌வ⒖ኅ㙍᧮൮ኅጊ Seeing Off Zhang Bangjie Moving to Baojia Mountain at Yuhang. To understand several references in the Song, it is necessary to know that Zhang Bangjie (an “office friend” from Fanghui’s earliest posting as a wine tax collector in Lincheng ⥃ၔ) had quit his job as magistrate at Ruichang ᅗ࣑ in Jiangzhou ᳯᎺ, Liang Zhe Circuit, then remained in the city for thirteen years without participating in “the affairs of man,” i.e., politics or administration. The first section of the poem takes Tao Yuanming as Zhang’s predecessor. The second section of the poem, on the other hand, shows how Zhang Bangjie exceeds Tao Yuanming. (This section is from Zhang’s [and Fanghui’s?] point of view; the first-person pronoun, which can be singular or plural, is present in the original. Note that here the paired heptasyllabic lines do look to their mates for meaning; this languorous rhythm seems to support the drollery.) Finally, the third section builds on the fact that Zhang has been invited east to Baojia Mountain by “friends in the Way/Dao”; this accounts for the references to Daoism and alchemy. 92 030
ᳯ⾫ዣ ජタౌ⋧ᦸ
Wise magistrates of Jiujiang gaze at each other across a millennium.
A
——— 91 Rhymes were confirmed by using the Su Shi concordance; whether every one of these syllables was always considered to rhyme with the others or only when a liberal definition of rhyme was being applied is beside the point; they could be heard to rhyme in He Zhu’s time and when the pattern is clearly not random we must assume that they were meant to rhyme. For an example of interlocking rhyme in the Classic of Poetry, see Ode 133, though that structure is in no way ancestral to what we see in the present Song. 92 1.12506; 1.14a. Zhang came aboard He Zhu’s boat in Jiujiang ( ڠthe administrative seat of Jiangzhou).
SONGS
4
8
ᤄ㒻ᓄỈ ਯ┨ℰ ᜀ⟎ 㜞⥝ᝇ⟺⊞ ㆱଶ㒻ήᖎ ㆐↢๋⥜┨
Of old, Tao of Pengzi, and in the present, Zhang of Ruichang: Shaking out their clothes, laying aside the five pecks, in high spirits they salute August Xi. Avoiding the vulgar: Tao never regretted it; attaining true life: Zhang and I.
ᷗਃᓣ⨹᧻⩵
Yuanming’s three paths: overgrown pines and chrysanthemums; I bring along a gourd dipper and lodge in monkish rooms. Yuanming begged for food going in person to people’s doors; I sell pills of the gods and peddle vegetarian gruel. Yuanming for brew would receive Xiuyuan; I always send letters to put off the prefectural head. Yuanming with paper and pen taxed the youthful cohorts; My sons sing aloud the Purple Asphodel Song. At peace was my gate for thirteen years; And still I fear ties to the dust, that a place once new will become familiar.
ᚒᡣ৻ⅺኚ௯ደ ਼ᷗ㘩あੱ㐷 12
ᚒ⾬ਣㄐ⬹♄ ᷗὑ㈬ធભర ᚒޢ⒖ᦠ⻢Ꮊ’ ᷗ⚕╩⺖ాᦡ
16
ᚒሶ㐳⚡⦼ᦛ ⭤㑄㐷֪චਃᐕ ዏ⇊Ⴒᒴ↢⯪ᾫ ⴕዂඵ㓩൮ኅጊ
20
⥜⫷↢ᄢㆶ 㗿ำ㐷ᄖ᭘⩲ ૼ⠪൩ᜎኈへᮗ ㏜ḓㆮ⠧⠧
24
₈ႊ⼔㥊⸹ᆞ ഞᚑᜐቛ⥄ ໑㙍⥓⇐ੱ㑆
You are going off to hide away on Baojia Mountain. Vowing to smelt, for the myriad people, the Pill of Great Return. I hope that outside your door you’ll kill the thorns and weeds. Those who come, reject them not: allow them to climb up. The Leftover Old Man of Mirror Lake is both old and infirm. Still he can watch over the cauldron and scold away the goblins. Task accomplished, he’ll uproot his whole family and go off to the Undying just like that, leaving behind only the well and mortar in the human world.
169
A A A B B c B c B
B c B C C C C C C
C
Notes: 030-5–6/ Tao Yuanming refused to bow and scrape for his salary of five pecks of rice; he “shook out his robes” and returned to farming; Tao also said he sometimes felt as if he were living in the age
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of Fu Xi (“August Xi”). Fu Xi was not only one of the legendary founders of culture; he was part of the Daoist pantheon. 93 030-7–8/ I think these two lines mean Fanghui and Zhang share Tao’s values and accomplishments. Du Fu provides a precedent for pairing “avoiding the vulgar” and “attaining true life” (da sheng) as attributes of Tao Yuanming. Wu Yun ( ╹ܦd. 778) has a poem in which he praises Tao for attaining true life. 94 030-9/ Tao himself says his “three paths” were overgrown when he returned, though the pines and chrysanthemums were still there. 95 030-10/ The gourd dipper is probably for brew. Su Shi speaks of sharing the brew from a gourd dipper. 96 030-11/ Tao Yuanming wrote a poem called Begging for Food. 97 030-13/ One of Tao Yuanming’s drinking companions was a former fellow official and later (418–25) prefect at Jiangzhou, Wang Hong ₺ᒄ; on one Double Ninth festival when Tao Yuanming had no wine, Wang Hong dropped by with some and they got drunk together. 98 Fanghui uses Wang’s cognomen, Xiuyuan. 030-15–16/ Tao Yuanming complained that his sons all had “no liking for paper and brush.” The Song of the “Purple Asphodel” was attributed to the Four Elders Zhang Liang brought out of reclusion. The song mentions that the purple fungus wards off hunger. Su Shi sings this song as a mark of his transcendent air in the fifth of his six poems following the rhymes of Tao’s Returning to Field and Garden (1095). 99 030-18/ This line could also mean “You still fear becoming familiar with the place where dusty karma is born (or gathers),” or “You fear that what is unfamiliar about the world of dusty karma will become familiar.” 100
——— 93 “Shaking out the robes” comes from the nineteenth of his Drinking Wine poems; Davis 1:101. For Tao and Fu Xi, see Davis, 2:173 and Tao Yuanming ji, 187–91. The relevant passage is often understood to mean that Tao feels like someone who lives prior to Fu Xi, and the Tao Yuanming ji cites a lyric by Xin Qiji that rewrites the passage slightly to give it that meaning. However, in Fanghui’s poem, Tao seems to be greeting Fu Xi as a contemporary. Fu Xi appears in a fourteenth-century mural described briefly by Steven Little in his chapter “Daoist Art,” in Livia Kohn, ed., Daoism Handbook, 729. 94 Du Fu’s poem is the third of five ᘋ: ຯᑨᝩঋౖΔؘآ౨ሒሐΖᨠࠡထᇣႃΔᏅٍ ਯዉΖሒسಡਢߩΔᚈᢝ።լڰΖڶᔃፖჟΔ۶ࠡਘᡖࣄΖΓFanghui would have known this poem if for no other reason than that the next in the set is about his “ancestor” He Zhizhang. The poem is a bit shocking insofar as it says that that old man who avoided the vulgar could not necessarily attain the Way and that attaining true life is not enough. Some readers have said Du Fu is really talking about himself, but yane Bunjir explains Du Fu’s scorn by pointing out that the two men lived in very different ages and naturally had very different aspirations. See his T Enmei kenky, 320–21. Wu Yun’s poem is the last of his fifty Songs of Lofty Gentlemen Փူ, QTS, 24.853.9661. 95 See lines 17 and 18 of his famous Return Home! Davis, 1:193. 96 For example, Օ༃ࡕࣟ۟ޡᢤൃԿ (1083), SSSJ, 4:22.1159, lines 9 and 10. 97 Davis, 1:55–56. 98 Davis, 2:172. 99 For Tao’s Reproving My Sons, see Davis, 1:112. To translate a fungus with magical powers, I follow Stephen Owen in using a flower associated in English language poetry with Elysium; see his Anthology, 513. One version of the Song of Purple Asphodel is in the Gao shi zhuan by Huangfu Mi ߉ (215-282), CSJC, 3396.B.65; it is attributed to Cui Hong ാ( ݛd. 418) in Guo Maoqian, Yuefu shiji. Su Shi’s poem is at SSSJ, 7:39.2106. 100 Qian Qianyi ᙒᝐ墿 (1582–1664), albeit much later, uses the same phrase as Fanghui. Qian is talking about an ideal in studying the Dao that can be applied to poetry: “one should be familiar where it is unfamiliar and unfamiliar where it is familiar.” This is a bit over three hundred years before
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030-25/ Since ba zhai means to take one’s household with one upon ascending to the Undying, I translate zi not as “by (one)self” but “just like that, naturally.” 030-26/ The well and mortar stand for the hard labor of household life.
If we want to draw a parallel between this poem and the Ancient Verse Fanghui wrote later on his journey after collating the works of Tao Yuanming, it might be this: Tao is a source of images and diction for this culture, but there is a gap between Tao and the modern age—or between his simplified image and the details of his real life that we can glean from his works. The later poem will point out that Tao needed to work to support his family, just as Fanghui does. This poem suggests that Tao did not go far enough down the Daoist road. Either way, we cannot rest in the popular picture of Tao Yuanming as the happy gentleman farmer. Perhaps the occasion and Zhang Bangjie’s plans require the rhetorical pretense that one can exceed Tao Yuanming. Still, Fanghui clearly felt that he could question the reality of the Tao Yuanming image or the limits of its validity without being dismissed as a raving lunatic.
LEFTOVER ELDER OF MIRROR LAKE This is the first poem in which Fanghui refers to himself as the Leftover Elder of Mirror Lake. In a 1094 heptametrical Regulated Verse written at Hailing, he spoke of “yearning for Mirror Lake,” (Chapter Four; line 507-8) but naming himself after the lake appears to happen sometime on the route from the capital to the mint at Ezhou (Jiangxia). Having arrived at the mint in Jiangxia in the tenth month of 1096, Fanghui opens a Song with the same reference: ᘮḓ㆜⠧ထ┆㧘ᒝਯᐕ⊖∛ “The Leftover Elder of Mirror Lake is condemned to poverty for the crime of poetry. / In the years he forces himself to serve, a hundred ailments assail him.” This Song is titled Sent to Zhao Mian, Defender of Hanyang ነṽ㓁శዄᴐ, and we shall turn to it in a moment. 101 First let us note that in 1097 Fanghui will aver that the Crazy Old Man of Mirror Lake is tired of court accoutrements (see the Song introduced on p. 179, Poem 036), and in 1098 he will see the outgoing prefect of Wuchang off for the capital with the lament that ㏜ḓ㆜⠧ᗜ᰼ “The old man from Mirror Lake is sad to the point of breaking.” 102 The life of
——— the word “defamiliarize” entered the English language to convey similar concepts from Russian Formalism. See Qian’s letter ፖֱዿַ, Qian Muzhai quanji, 6:Youxueji.39.1356–57. 101 Poem 033, 1.12507; 1.16a. Fanghui tells us Zhao is a paternal first cousin of his friend Zhao Pang, and the Guangdong tongzhi, 1:15.298b tells us that he had an unspecified post in Guangzhou in 1104. Otherwise, I have no information on him. 102 The 1098 poem is তᑔዚಬ࣑ࣳშ֜ښᝫཛ Song of the Southern Loft: Seeing Off Prefect Shen of Wuchang Returning to Court, Poem 037, 1.12509; 1.18a. Li Zhiliang’s Song Liang-Huai da jun shouchen yiti kao lists no Ezhou prefect for 1097 or 1098 (p. 52). The prefect, Shen Zongjie შࡲໃ (Fanghui
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such a sobriquet, learned from a reference work or encountered in the name of a poet’s collected works, seems to us at a distance to be coterminous with the life of the poet—it is easy to forget that there was a time when he did not have that name and to overlook the fact that its use may be tied to specific circumstances. For example, Su Shi’s references to himself as “East Slope” start in 1084, immediately after his exile in Huangzhou, with five poems. Four references follow in 1085. In 1086–90, however, he makes only one reference per year to himself as East Slope. In 1091, when he escapes the capital to become prefect of Hangzhou, there is a momentary increase to three references. The next remarkable increases are in 1095 (five poems) and 1100 (six poems), when Su Shi is in his final exile. These are only poetic references, of course; letters and other prose works may show a different distribution. With that caveat, and with no claim to having analyzed differences in the phrasing of the appellations (Mr. East Slope, Old Man of East Slope, etc.), I theorize that Su Shi was most apt to call himself “East Slope” when he was in stressful positions—it was a way of anchoring a part of himself, albeit as a subsistence farmer, in a place where he had once been almost entirely free of conflicts with the people around him. Fanghui surely hated his job as director of the Ezhou mint, which exposed his family to the pollution around the facility. 103 It now seemed that he would never be allowed to have a job commensurate with his new civil status and education. Thus, perhaps it was only by giving himself a label that represented both his lineage and his dream of returning to a pure and clean ancestral land that he could endure his present existence. Perhaps not incidentally, Su Shi, Su Zhe, and He Zhu are the only Tang–Song individuals I know who called themselves the “Leftover Elder of Such-and-Such a Place.” Su Shi uses the term once (in poetry; I cannot speak to his prose works): ᔨ᧲ပਯㆮ⠧ “You thought of the leftover elder of East Slope.” This line comes from a Song written for Wang Shi, who was later a companion of He Zhu in Xuzhou (see p. 130) 104 Because he links East Slope and “Leftover Elder” with the connective particle zhi “of,” we cannot say for certain whether he considered
———
tells us his name and that he is from Wu—Suzhou?) does not appear in any source known to me. Calling him a prefect from Wuchang suggests that Fanghui is not referring to the xian of Wuchang in the eastern part of Ezhou and across the river from Huangzhou but to Ezhou/Jiangxia, which had the name Wuchang at previous times (and the present day, as part of Wuhan). 103 Zhong Zhenzhen, Bei Song ciren He Zhu yanjiu, 50, quoting from a 1091 letter protesting an assignment to a mint in what is modern Hunan. (Fanghui never took the assignment.) It must have been his hope and expectation that his subsequent promotion to the civil bureaucracy would save him from further assignments of this nature. 104 ូࠐ֧ಬ׆ូمᆐڠ, SSSJ, 8:48.2642, line 11. The poem’s title tells us that it was written when Wang Shi was returning to Yunzhou. In mid-1084, after leaving Huangzhou, Su Shi went to Yunzhou and saw Wang Shi, so we know Wang had been in Yunzhou during this period of time. He must have been one of several friends who went back and forth between Yunzhou (where Su Zhe had been since mid-1080) and Huangzhou, as this poem would seem to indicate. See Kong Fanli, Su Shi nianpu, 2:23.619.
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this a “name.” The situation is clearer in the case of his younger brother. When Su Zhe completed his autobiography in the ninth month of 1105, he called it Ẑựㆮ ⠧ொ A Biography of the Leftover Elder on the Shore of the Ying. 105 The term “leftover elder” is not rare; it denotes a seasoned veteran or, more commonly, a person who served or lived under a former court or dynasty. That suggests that these three individuals meant to imply that they were loyal to the ideals of one or more administrations of their younger years. Another possibility is that they were claiming to be the surviving embodiments of a particular tradition associated with the place named: for Su Shi, it would be Bo Juyi’s East Slope; for He Zhu, it would be his family’s association with the lake; and for Su Zhe, there was Tao Yuanming’s vow to escape to the “banks of the Ying.” 106 Whatever the connotations, it is striking that only Su Shi, then his admirer He Zhu (inspired by Su’s poem to their mutual friend Wang Shi?), and finally Su Zhe (following the examples of He and/or his own brother?) would use such a name.
TAO YUANMING OUT OF REACH Sent to Zhao Mian, Defender of Hanyang touches on some ideas and themes that we have seen in earlier poems. He Zhu’s 1081 Song of the Clustered Estrade presented us with the difficult line “In human life, the Numbers of the objective [world] do not wait for us.” (See discussion of line 001-3.) Now, in 1096, we have ੱ↢ᄸ㘃 ត☊㧘ㅧ‛⼼ኈੱᢞᢱ “The odd and the even of human life are like fortune tallies; / how could the Fashioner of Things allow the Numbers of man to be foreseen?” (Lines 033-11–12.) This must mean simply that one cannot tell what course his life will take. However one’s numbers were calculated (most likely by time of birth), “odd” numbers were considered unlucky. We know this much from the biography of Han general Li Guang ᧘ᑝ: before a crucial battle, the emperor instructed the leading general not to allow Li Guang to lead the main force against the enemy because his number(s) were odd. 107 More interesting in light of our earlier discussion of Tao Yuanming are the allusions to Tao in the third section (as marked by rhyme): 033 ᤄਇ㗿
ኅ⊖ᣣ⊓ਃม
In the past I never wanted—to leave home and in a hundred days ascend to the Three Offices. C
——— 105
Zeng Zaozhuang, Su Zhe nianpu, 199. For a good summary of the problematic relationship between the East Slopes of Su and Bo, see Michael Fuller, Road to East Slope, 271–72. For Tao Yuanming’s reference to the banks of the Ying, see ࡌقᥛհలٞནڎԿ, Tao Yuanming ji, 2.46–48. We shall refer to A. R. Davis’ translation of this poem below. Tao is in turn alluding to an earlier recluse who farmed by the Ying River, but “banks of the Ying” must have come to Su Zhe from Tao. 107 Han shu, 8:54.2448. 106
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In the present I don’t want—to go home ਇ㗿 with six seals of gold hanging in bunches. ㆶኅශ㊄➗➗ ૉ㗿ቭ♳ㄐⷫ㙃 All I want is my government ration
so I can provide for my parent, 16 ᱩૼዏ㙍ਃᓣ⾗ and return with enough left to maintain my “three paths.” ㈘ ᤲ⸰ุ Over the wall next door you’ll get up late and come to inquire after me; You’ll pour and I’ll sing Ὼ㈨ᚒႌ⥮ᤨ of the time of Yao and Shun.
༷ᱝ㗿⦟㔍ᔅ Ay me, this ambition
will be truly hard to secure. 20 ܟ⡪㘩⯍↞ᅤኒ I swallow my voice and eat cork— sweet as honey!
C
C
C D D
Notes: 033-13/ “Three Offices” refers to different high positions depending on the historical periods. Fanghui is saying he never expected to be like the Later Han scholar Xun Shuang ⨬Ό, who was called out of retirement and raised to the position of Minister of Works in ninety-five days. 108 033-14/ Six seals of office were worn by Su Qin, who was chief minister to six states allied against the Qin. 109 033-16/ The three paths is a kenning for an hermitage. See note 140-13 in Chapter One. 033-20/ For the bark of the amur cork tree as a symbol of suffering, see the note to line 15 of the 1079 Ancient Verse Calling on Administrator Chao Duanzhi, Poem 042. This line alludes to Bo Juyi’s contention that the sourness of the plum and the bitterness of the cork are “sweet as honey” in comparison to the sorrow of being separated from his family. 110 See also the discussion below.
There is a subtle borrowing from Tao Yuanming in lines 033-17 and 18. In his poem ␜➖ਯડ⻢᥊ᄱਃ㇢ To Zhou, Zu, and Xie, Tao expresses his desire to live next to his friends, saying, ᕁ⥜Ὼὑ㈘ “I long to be neighbors with you”; the pronoun ‘you’ (there are several in Chinese) and the word for ‘next-door’/‘neighbor’ are the first words in He’s lines. These lines are also reminiscent of the first of Tao’s Miscellaneous Poems 㔈, where he mentions assembling the next door neighbors when he gets some brew. 111 Finally, line 033-18 reminds us of Tao’s frequent yearnings for the ideal past, the ages of rulers such as Yao and Shun. The concluding rhymed couplet (033-19–20) is an effective but abrupt closing. Rejecting the idealistic vision of the future, it foresees nothing but suffering. Perhaps this skepticism about realizing the Tao Yuanming ideal is a by-product of
——— 108
Hou Han shu, 7:62.2057. The six seals of office of Su Qin stand in contrast to the two acres of land he wanted to farm by the wall of Loyang; see p. 39n. 110 سᠦܑ, QTS, 2:26.355–56. The title, Separated in Life, takes its meaning from the observation that separation while the parties are alive entails more sadness than separation by death; death is inevitable, but the living separation ought to be remediable. 111 See Davis, 1:54 and 129. 109
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the overall revision that ideal is undergoing at this time. In the previous month of 1096, Fanghui wrote a poem whose conclusion seems related to this revision, though there is no explicit allusion to Tao Yuanming. The Song is one of the few that is not written to be sent or presented to someone; thus, it has the appearance of being a private mediation occasioned by hearing the sound of a horn blown from a garrison. That was a sound that, as Su Shi had written in 1084, was sad and stirring at the same time, evoking the scene of an expedition going forth from the northern fortified passes. 112 It is often heard with the military drums and is “heroic” or as “cold as autumn.” 113 Fanghui’s poem is titled ᰮᳯၔ⡞ⷺ Going Out from the Jiang[xia] Citywall in the Evening and Hearing the Horn. 114 032
ฎủᴝᵯ⩄⪲ᨗ ⍟㐝⑱㢞ⴕṪ ጊ㌓ᣣᆬ᳓㑸ព
4
ቅᮝᒁⷺ็༞ ⢫㚍ཛྷ㘑⥝㕖ᷜ ჾ⥟〔㓣Ⴒ ⑺⋘ḓㆻ㓵ਇૼ
8
ᵹ⪭ᣇᖤੱ㆙ චਯᄛ㐳 ᴡᯖ⋥ᄤ⫷ᶭ ⯃㐷㉿ਅ
12
⼼ήષખൕ⋧ᦸ
———
The old moat is a morass ground, lotus leaves dried out. Hobbling about, an adjutant-stork fishes as he moves. Hills envelop the beams of the sun, the waters-gate is closed; on a lone tower they take up the horn and blow “The Khan.” A Turkic horse whinnies in the wind… the rapture so profound! The old traces of grand ambitions have been rolled away with the dust. Autumn is done, and by the lake geese come no more; drifted here, this is the time I grieve that I have gone so far away. At the juncture with the tenth month the five night-watches stretch long. The River lies athwart, the Dipper is straight up, the heavens are vast and cold. Sumen and my old village are below the handle: how could my brothers not be there unweary in their gazing?
A A
A B B
B C C
C
112 See Su’s መ࣑ࣳ۩࡙ۂ՞Ղፊ႓ڠቔߡ, SSSJ, 4:23.1202. The Wuchang to which Su Shi was crossing was, of course, unambiguously the one across the Yangzi from Huangzhou, not Jiangxia. 113 For the heroic, or manly, sound (xiong ႂ), see Su Shi’s ڻᣉནոఎܑ (1077), SSSJ, 3:15.720, line 12, and ׆ᔤڠனဲ (1089), 5:31.1637, line 2. The coldness is in line 6 of ִۂնଈհն (1095), 7:39.2142. 114 1.12507; 1.15b. Dated the equivalent of 18 October, 1096.
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ำਇ ⬑ὑ⍫ᒐᒏ᪀ ↵ా⪭ᔒ྾ᣇ ጁዴήᩮ⪺ኅᏋ 16
ㆡᬩ₈๋ၢ 㡙㍃ਇ〾Ủ ᯌ᷐ᷰὑᨛ ๋ᔃᴫ‛ᧂᙥὼ
20
㓣 ቭり⡙Ὼ⡊
Do you not see? Whittled rushes make the arrows, the bow is strung mulberry. When a male-child drops to earth, his determination fills the four quarters. My shoes have no roots to hold them to the lanes of home; Passing through Liang, going to Chu, these are like my homeland. Grackles do not cross the Ji. The orange crosses the Huai and becomes a citrange. If you compare my heart to such objects, it isn’t necessarily so: I’m an officer following my orders, and it’s but a diversion for me.
C C
C D D
D
Notes: 032-4/ Yin, translated “take up” may mean “play,” perhaps “stretching out” the notes. 115 “The Khan” is some kind of tune played on wind instruments. It is mentioned in lyrics, usually, not in poems. 032-10/ The River is the Milky Way. 032-13/ The Record of Rites states that when a noble son is born the archer shoots at heaven and earth and in four directions with a bow of mulberry wood and six arrows of “the wild rubus” to symbolize the fact that the ambition, or the will, of the child extends to the four quarters. 116 032-16/ Liang represents the Song Dynasty capital; Chu would be the South, perhaps the poet’s present location in Jiangxia. 032-17–18/ For the belief that the orange tree metamorphoses into an inferior kind of orange when transplanted to the north, see our note to lines 108-19–20 of In the Morning I Climbed Cypress Hill…(1089). In the Huainanzi, the orange lore is juxtaposed with the belief that the grackle dies if it crosses the Ji River. 117 20/ “It’s but a diversion” is used by several Northern Song Dynasty poets, but most especially by Su Shi, who uses the phrase six times. 118
The first two sections of the Song skillfully blend the autumn scene, the feelings
———
115 For another rare example of this verb used with a horn, see Chao Yuezhi, ᄣᑈଈհ ԫ, QSS, 21.1211.13780. 116 “Wild rubus” is Legge’s translation; see Li Ji, 472. Rubus is actually a genus of brambles and berries; peng is more likely to refer to a type of water grass straight enough to be used as an arrow, if only symbolically. The meaning “tumbleweed” is surely irrelevant here 117 Huainanzi 1.4.2. “Grackle” is Legge’s rendition in his version of the Spring and Autumn Annals (Zhao 25). A French translation of the Huainanzi makes it a “pigeon.” “Est-ce que les orangers doux, plantés au nord du Fleuve, / Ne se transforment pas en citronniers acides? / La grive et le pigeon ne peuvent pas dépasser la [rivière] Ji.” Claude Larre et al, Les grand traités du Huainan zi, 52. Eva Kraft does not attempt to translate the name of the bird: “Also, geht ein Orangenbaum auf die Nordseite des Stromes, dann wandelt er sich um sum Zitronenbaum [note: sie wüde sauer, bliebe aber Orange]. / Der Ch’ü-yü geht nicht über den Chi-Fluss.” “Zum Huai-nan-tzu,” 222. “Citrange” is as arbitrary as “grackle,” and I doubt that this hybrid fruit of the early twentieth century is “inferior” to the orange. 118 My translation is based on Ronald Egan’s rendering of line 13 of ڻᣉطࢢޕழࢬᏁ ៲ឌი್, Word, Image, and Deed, 290; SSSJ, 5:28.1502.
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evoked by the music, and the poet’s yearning for home. There are no geese (traditional carriers of messages north and south), yet the Dipper gives him a signpost by which to find the direction to his birthplace near Mount Sumen. Then, surprisingly, he chooses to reinterpret his situation. He was born a man, with a will and determination that stretches in all directions. His shoes do not “take root” in any one place, and he considers the great cities and regions of the empire to be his “homeland” now. After this, we have a strong closing with more surprises. Fanghui rejects the traditional metaphors that would have him dying or changing for the worse when away from his natural habitat. (Lines 032-17 and 18 can best be understood in light of the sense of regional cultural differences that was as strong in the Song Dynasty as in any other period.) He rises above his plight by declaring that his peripatetic life is “but a diversion.” This, I think, is an attitude that was fostered by the revision of the Tao Yuanming image to impute to him a spontaneity that governed his decision to serve as well as his decision to retreat from the world. Though we have seen He Zhu questioning that notion, it serves him well in the present context. A similar transcendence is seen in the twelfth month of Shaosheng 3 (1096–97). An otherwise unknown figure named Wu Xiang, a native of the Chang’an area, has come down to Jiangxia from Badong Ꮙ᧲ in the Yangzi Gorges and is asking He Zhu for a poem. Wu has decided to retire to the Zhongnan ⚳ධ Range south of Chang’an; he has taken the name Old Man Today is Right ᤚ⠃. This name comes from Tao Yuanming’s repudiation of his decision to enter public life in his rhapsody Return Home: “Today is right; yesterday was wrong.” What is significant is that Fanghui, very much in line with Su Shi’s revision of the Tao Yuanming model, questions the whole notion that “yesterday was wrong.” Here are lines 034-19 and 20 of ㅍᱞᐮᱩ㓩⚳ධ Seeing off Wu Xiang Going Back to Reclusion at Zhongnan: 119 ৻ቭ឵ᓧᤚ⠃㧘ᤄᚲ❈⺕⸃? “An official has been exchanged for an Old Man Today is Right; / what bound you in the past, and who has released you now?” The answer to the rhetorical question, “what bound you…” is, nothing. Wu Xiang was not forced to be an official; the ties from which he now has released himself really did not exist except insofar as they were self-imposed. The wit is worthy of an earlier Su Shi, undercutting a supposedly sacrosanct cultural concept; but it assumes adoption of the new Tao Yuanming model—serve when it feels right and withdraw when that feels right. It also ignores all the economic burdens that tied He Zhu to his position and any obligations that might have come from the Wu family’s evident tradition of service in the military side of the government. (Like He Zhu, Wu Xiang longed for a civil position and had held only low posts; see lines 034-5–6.)
——— 119
1.12508; 1.16b.
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HISTORY The concern with history that we noted in the Jiangxia period in our chapter on Ancient Verse is likewise evident in Fanghui’s Songs. The concluding lines of this Song to see Wu Xiang on his way pick up on an earlier reference to Wu Youxu ᱞᡶ✜ (651–723), a recluse of the Tang Dynasty. Wu Youxu was no ordinary recluse: the nephew of Empress Wu Zetian ᱞೣᄤ, he resolutely stayed in seclusion and was spared when all the other princes in the family were exterminated after her fall. 120 Having thus saved the lineage from extinction, Wu Youxu set an admirable precedent for reclusion: 034 ᘮ ⡧ᐞઍ
㔕ቊᐮ➊ㆆᣇᄖ ઁᤨ㊁ผㅺ᳃▻ 36
㐎⏴㋦ ⠰ᓙ
Congratulatory missives came in streams, for how many generations now? G Among the cloud of grandsons, Wu Xiang continues to roam beyond society. G At a future time in unofficial histories when they write of those who hid away, He Zhu will grind his lead and wait on tiptoe. G
Note: 034-36/ “Lead” probably refers to something like massicot or ceruse, used to paint over incorrect characters.
The last line probably means that Fanghui is eager to see an unofficial history published so that he can read it, the correction of wrong characters being a normal part of the reading process. In any case, it is significant that the history he looks forward to so eagerly is an unofficial history. I suppose that to look forward to an official history with an entry on Wu Xiang would be to hope for the end of the dynasty, since such histories are written only after the fall of a dynasty “closes the books,” so to speak; presumably not hoping for the disintegration of his nation, the only history of his own time he can reasonably hope to read is an unofficial history. Still, Fanghui is by implication calling for the recording of history now, not in some future age. These are the years, we recall, in which He Zhu furiously demanded historical judgment in his Ancient Verse. Note that it is in the “chapter on People Who Hid Away” that Fanghui will look for Wu Xiang, not a chapter on Lofty Scholars or Literary Figures. This term yimin is often used for survivors of a fallen dynasty, but though we resist ascribing such a cataclysmic vision to our poet, his choice of terms still indicates that these are troubled and troubling times. In a poem for a man he had seen off from Hailing to Ezhou three years previously and who now (in mid-1097) had resigned his office and was returning to Hailing, Fanghui again concludes with history writing. The poem is ㅍㇾᎺೃₐ
——— 120
See the Xin Tang shu, 18:196.5602–3 and Jiu Tang shu, 14:183.4740–41.
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អ₺ᙧరഞ⟓ቭㆶᶏ㒺◲㊄㒺ੱ Seeing off Ezhou Penal Administrator Wang Mao (Yuangong), Who is Quitting his Post and Returning to Hailing; Sent Also as a Letter to Master He in Jinling. 121 This is the concluding rhyme section: 035 ᅢዂήห⺆អ
Fare thee well, then; I’ll do without D the clerk who shared my conversation. I shall see in the spring breeze ⴕᤐ㘑⧎ṩ❐ D flowers filling the county seat. Obscure or prominent, in future years 㓩㘌ᐕਇᚒㆮ don’t leave me out; 16 ὑ➖⊕⬒␠ਛචொ do a continuation for us of the eighteen biographies of those in the White Lotus Society. D
Notes: 035-13/ Wang Mao’s position, yuan, can be translated administrator or clerk; in either case, it is a low-ranking post, so I have used “clerk” here. Tong yu generally means “talk with,” and sometimes it is used in the longer phrase “sharing conversation and silences,” showing the closeness of two individuals. 035-14/ The phrase “flowers fill the county seat” signals an allusion to Pan Yue’s planting many blossoming trees when he was magistrate of Heyang ᴡ㓁 in the late third century. The allusion is commonly used in poetry to express praise for a local administrator or for the beauty of a place. I assume Fanghui means to compliment Wang Mao’s record in Ezhou while simultaneously implying that next year he will be viewing the blossoms without Wang.
Wang Mao is apparently younger than He Zhu (line 035-9, not translated, tells us this). Thus, he has plenty of time to write a continuation of a book we know as Biographies of the Lofty Gentlemen of the Lotus Society ⬒␠㜞⾫ொ. This book covers the eighteen men who joined with Huiyuan in 402 to form the Buddhist White Lotus Society. 122 Fanghui means to assure his Buddhist friend(s) in Jinling that he still intends to join their Society there. (Cf. the 1089 Song On Horseback in Donghua… [Poem 011], p. 146.) At the same time, this conclusion reiterates He Zhu’s faith in unofficial histories as successful transmitters of traditions that lie outside the realm of official history.
A GIFT ENHANCED BY RHYME (II) In comparison with his contemporaries, poems associated with gifts are rare in He Zhu’s collection. The reader may recall the poem to Yang Shi (pp. 157ff) as one example. That 1090/1091 Boliang poem involved only the poet’s gift of ink to the other party; the following 1997 Song of the Jade Hook-and-Ring ₹㋭Ⅳ describes the both the gift received and the five objects Fanghui gives in return. 123
——— 121 122
1.12508; 1.17a. The Song shi bibliography, 15:205.5188, lists a ᓊषԼԶᔃ۩ण in one juan. No author is
given. 123
1.12508; 1.17b.
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The gift received (from a member of the royal clan) is a belt hook and a ring into which the hook is inserted; this is less commonly seen than the simple belt hook and may be considered a luxury item. 124 The poem must first show a proper appreciation of the origins and artistic quality of the article: 036
⦟Ꮏᓧ₹⮣Ḻ─ ⋧⅕ᒻᔃඅ ⲵⱗୡᒪ⇼㛽 㗪➁৻Ⅳ₈⩨ዮ
4
㏜ḓ⠧⁅ⴽ╈ ⚛➎㗇ᱝ‛ ௺Ყㅪၔਇኈ਼ ₺ቊバᅢੱᚲ㔍
8
એႎਯ⋚ ⮒ῡᵄ㕙ጊ㙙 ๋ၢ⟤╠卒㔊⠜ 12
㑗↊ీ⏀㔮Ძኙ Ⓐᤚ㗡⽸㔅㦖 ⡙ㅍ㥲౬㐳 ⍴☻น⹏⃟⾋
16
๋ᣇ㊁ㆆ 〤⤻ ޡ㗷ᦜ⮪᧟ ⭯ᓸีᳯṽ ᓐṪਂੱ⺋⋧⸰
A fine artisan got some nephrite from a cave at Indigo Creek. He read the block and endowed it with shape: the craftsman of the mind showed himself. The praying mantis, stubborn and proud, seems to have a backbone; Around his neck is fastened the ring and still he won’t submit! The old crazy one of Mirror Lake is tired of court robes and tabulæ. His plain white housecoat tied with pale pink sash needs this thing. Its value is like unto to a string of walled towns; it’s not something you could ask for. The Prince has given up what he is fond of, hard to do for most. With what shall I requite him? a bright moon tray; A censer with waves on its face and mountain poking high. From my homeland a fine aruwe with great fowl plume; Min pottery—a rabbit bowl, frosty hair cold— It matches the chief tribute item: a paired-dragon brick. I’ll just send these off to your studio to augment the surplus you have. This short song will roughly serve to appraise your precious largess. Right now I’m dressing in rustic weeds, devoted to wandering and doing as I please. I lumber along with gaunt face, dragging my goosefoot staff. In the gathering dusk I hum my poems softly on the Yangzi and Han. That fisher gentleman comes to visit me in error,
A A A A A A A B B B B B B C C C C C C
——— 124
For a picture of a Yuan Dynasty hook-and-ring, see Zhang Guangwen et al., Jadeware II, 145.
SONGS
20
⻐ૃਃ㑚ᄢᄦ᮪
Thinking I have the looks of the Lord of the Three Wards.
181 C
Notes: 036-1/ Indigo Creek is probably a creek that flows near Indigo Fields (Lantian), a locale famous for its jade. Although a Ming writer once asserted that Lantian’s jade production was a myth, a recent researcher has established that the greenish serpentine marble from there can be considered a kind of jade. 125 036-3–4/ The mantis literally “seems to have bone”; the phrase denotes a certain sturdiness of spirit, hence the translation “have a backbone.” A mantis stands with the front part of its body raised; on this carving it must be disposed in such a way as to form a hook, over which the ring part of the assembly fits. 036-5/ The “tabula” is a narrow flat object that officials would hold in front of them while attending an audience; notes could be taken on it (or on paper supported by it). 036-9/ The five gifts are enumerated in the headnote to the poem. This “bright moon tray” is the jade saucer that heads the list. 036-10/ The Boshan incense burner, made of metal or pottery, has a peforated top in the shape of a massif rising above the waves, suggestive of an isle of the Undying in the Eastern Sea. 036-11/ This line refers to an arrow made by the Cheng ᚑ family, according to the headnote. The poem uses an alternate and less common term for “arrow”; I follow suit with “aruwe.” 036-12/ The fourth object was a cup from the Jian ᑪ kiln (in Fujian, “Min”). The cup is decorated with “hare’s hair streaks,” fine lines of lighter colored glaze that run down from the rim; although the line seems to indicate that the streaks are a frosty white, they are typically ochre on extant Jian ware; perhaps “frosty hair” refers to the texture that characterizes a winter coat of rabbit hair rather than to the color. 126 036-13/ Into the cup, the recipient may pour tea brewed from a round tea brick that has a pair of dragons embossed on it. 036-17/ “Goosefoot,” the standard translation for this plant, may puzzle those who know the genus (Chenopodium) as made up of herbs or bushes that spread near the ground or grow less than a meter tall. However, the staff-goosefoot is Chenopodium giganteum. One of the larger species in the genus, it grows to 3 m. See http://flora.huh.harvard.edu/china/ (accessed 29 April 2004). The stems, when dried, are both light and strong. Poets who refer to the goosefoot staff most include Du Fu (20), Su Shi (8), He Zhu (8), Zhang Lei (10), and Wang Anshi (12). 036-18/ Jiangxia is at the confluence of the Han and Yangzi Rivers. 036-20/ The Lord of the Three Wards is what the fisherman calls Qu Yuan. (We referred to this encounter in a comment on line 23 of Poem 063, Last Night of the Year Lament.)
This song is impressive for the relentless rhymes, especially in the middle section, where the catalog of gifts must be made to fit the pattern. This quick rhythm creates the “short song” that is the sixth present Fanghui gives. Taking this Song and the Song that went with the present of ink to Yang Shi together, we can conclude that Fanghui found a poem with an audacious rhyme scheme the best enhancement to a gift.
——— 125
Zhou Nanquan, “Zhongguo gu yuliao dingyi he chandi kao,” 67. For pictures of typical Jian ware bowls and a technical description of the glaze, see Feng Xiaoqi et al., Porcelain of the Song Dynasty II, 221–24. 11–12 cm in diameter at the rim, these were probably tea bowls, and if I understand line 12 correctly Fanghui’s gift was for drinking tea. Note, however, that the word Fanghui uses in the headnote typically refers to wine cups. 126
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The entertaining nature of the form, however, cannot distract us for long from wondering how Fanghui can afford the luxury items he presents in return for the hook-and-ring. According to his epitaph, when Fanghui entered the civil bureaucracy in 1091, it was at the next-to-lowest rank of 9a; in 1101, however, when he was vice-prefect of Sizhou, he was only a little higher, at a rank of 8b. 127 There are known salaries that pertain to these ranks, to which we would have to add whatever salary, lands, and supplemental benefits pertained to his functional offices in order to arrive at a reasonably accurate estimate of his income during this period, not counting whatever private income he had from houses or land that he owned. Rather than trying to tabulate his income and then determine how adequate it was in the capital and in the provinces, or how much of it he would have to spend in order to buy the five gifts enumerated in this poem, I prefer to focus on the fact that, if Fanghui’s rank in 1091 was only one step lower than it would be when he held the important office of vice-prefect in 1101, he must have been able to live more comfortably during the 90s than he lets on. Compared to higher officials and powerful merchants, of course, he must have seemed quite impoverished. The fact remains, however, that he received and gave luxury items as presents. This poem is the proof. In this connection, the last couplet is intriguing. Normally, Fanghui identifies with Qu Yuan as a forlorn poet standing by the marshes, intoning his poems in an uncaring world. Here, he avers that the fisherman is wrong to confuse him with Qu Yuan, despite the relevance. He is an insider, not an outcast! One small caveat: Song literati often prided themselves on buying books or luxury items that were beyond their means. This showed their superiority to the common run of men who thought only of investment and profit. Mei Yaochen: “At home there isn’t half a cup of grain / And here I’m buying a vase for a hundred cash!” 128 To be sure, Fanghui’s poem conceals whatever imbalance there might be between his standard of living and his devotion to the finer things in life, but we must keep in mind that he might have lived frugally in order to buy what he needed to show his status as a connoisseur of the finer things in life—including, let us note, the finer things that his distant relatives within the imperial clan could afford.
EAST SLOPE The last surviving Song by He Zhu was written in 1098 for a studio that Pan Dalin and his brother built at Dongpo, Su Shi’s East Slope. The name of the studio
——— 127 128
His respective ranks were chengshilang ࢭࠃ (9a) and xuanyilang ᆠ (8b). Jonathan Chaves’ translation, Mei Yao-ch’en, 200.
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comes from the Fayan ᴺ⸒ by Yang Xiong, specifically a passage in the first chapter in which Yang says that people who look up to and model themselves after Yan Hui “are also Yan’s sort.” 129 Yan Hui is the disciple of Confucius who is most noted for his contentment in poverty. This phrase was quoted often enough that the Pan brothers could name their studio “Also Yan” in the confidence that others would understand the reference. The Song, written at the request of the Pan family, is 㗴咗ጟ᧲ပẘ᳁੦㗷㥲 Inscribed on the Pan Family ‘Also Yan Studio’ at East Slope in Huanggang. 130 One wonders whether it was displayed at the Studio without punctuation, because the extreme variation in line length makes it difficult to read in an unpunctuated text. In partial compensation, however, the first rhyme group is very regular and establishes a pattern of “rhyme, rhyme, no-rhyme, rhyme” that persists throughout the other rhyme groups. Additionally, as can be observed in historical gardens or buildings today, figuring out how to parse the inscriptions that grace the site is one of the chief pleasures for the Chinese visitor; the more challenging the inscription, the greater the gratification in solving the puzzle. 038 ᧲ပ↰⺕ᢱℂ
㤲㕙⫷Ძẘ᳁ሶ ⚿⨆㗴᭙੦㗷㥲 4
ㄘ㓗ᛠᦠ⡙⥄༑
There are fields at East Slope; who is taking care of them? With burnt sienna face and grey hair: the Pan family sons! They tied thatch on and inscribed a tablet: “Also Yan Studio”; at intervals in the farming work, they hold a book and just enjoy themselves.
ẘẘାᤚ㗷ਯᓤ Pan, Oh Pan! Truly you are
in a class with Yan Hui.
A A
A B
⚳ᣣᚲ⺰㔍⌀ᅤᗱ What do you talk about all day?
8
“It’s hard to truly be like that fool.” B In this world, friends in the four classes ήሹῳ྾⑼ of Father Kong exist no more; yet you manage to do ₈ㄐ the bamboo tray eating, the gourd drinking, B 㬛㘩ⅺ㘶㒞ᏋⅣ ዬ the humble lane and encircling walls.
——— 129 Here is von Zach’s translation of the relevant passage: “Das Studium is der Weg, um ein Edler zu werden. Dies erfolglos anzustreben, kommt vor: dagegen kommt es nicht vor, dass jemand nicht danach strebt, und doch ein Edler wird. Ein Pferd, das einem Renner nachstrebt, ist auch schon ein dem Renner ähnliches Pferd; ein Mensch, der Yen Hui bewundert und ihm nachstrebt, gehört auch schon sur Klasse der Yen Hui. . . . Wenn Du einem Anderen nicht nachstreben willst, so habe ich nichts mehr zu sagen. Wenn Du aber einem Anderen nachstreben willst, wer hindert Dich daran?” Yang Hsiung’s Fa-yen, 4. 130 1.12509; 1.19a. Huanggang is Huangzhou. Presumably, Fanghui gave this poem to the Pan brothers before they left the Jiangxia area.
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⊖⇔ਯᡴ☸นᢞ ᄤධᓙ᧲ပਥ ᦝャੲ৻ቭୖ 12
㙍൧ᐞଏ㓴㥘
The harvest from an hundred mou, well, you can count the grains. South of the sky, biding his time, the master of East Slope. On top of which you lose one tenth to fill out the government granary; how many scoops remain to take care of the sparrows and rats?
ᦩ㗇ਇᡷᮔᇪ⠰⠃ But you must not “alter your joy,”
16
for it pleases your old father. Labor in the fields: water or drought ജ↰᳓ᣫ↱ᄤ are taken care of by the Lord of Heaven. ᄢൎᔃ〔⋧㆑㒍ᩞዄ This vastly surpasses Adjutant Ruan, heart and deeds at odds, who, north south east west, ᧲ධർິㅜ┆ wept that the road gave out.
C C
C C C
C
Notes: 038-4/ “Intervals in husbandry” is a phrase used in the Zuo Tradition (Yin 5) and other early texts, but it is rare in poetry. 038-6/ Yan Hui is said to be “like a fool” in the Analects. This line should be understood as meaning “it is hard to achieve the genuineness that is fool-like.” 038-7/ The four categories are virtuous conduct; speech; administration, and cultural learning. Two disciples under each category were listed in a supplement, juan 9, to the collected works of Tao Yuanming. (This list does not include Yan Hui, although he and Zigong, Zilu, and Zizhang are designated, elsewhere in the same juan, as the Four Friends of Confucius. This may be what Fanghui was thinking of.) Juan 9 was most likely in the collection that Fanghui collated. 131 038-8/ These familiar marks of Yan Hui’s humble life are listed in the Analects. The phrase translated “encircling walls” should be taken as the equivalent of Ⅳ႑, common shorthand for the small abode of a poor scholar. 038-10/ This line must refer to Su Shi, who is in Hainan, so far south it is “south of the sky.” The phrase translated “biding his time” can probably be understood in light of its use in the Kongzi jiayu, where Confucius says, “In conducting himself, the gentleman places his expectation in inevitable success. Within himself, when he can bend, he bends; when he can stretch, he stretches. Thus, bending in accordance with integrity is how to bide one’s time. Seeking to stretch is how to seize the moment. Thus, though bending is imposed on one, he is not destroyed; though his ambition is successful, he does not violate the common good.” 132 038-13/ Yan Hui “did not alter his joy” despite his poverty. This comes from the same Analects passage as line 8. Su Zhe alluded to this cluster of motifs in a letter to Huang Tingjian. 133
——— 131 This supplement to Tao Yuanming’s works was in existence as early as the sixth century. Yang Xiuzhi (509–82), a Northern Qi person who edited Tao’s collection, notes its absence from the collection edited by Xiao Tong (501–31). Song Xiang, a Northern Song editor, also singles out this material for mention, saying that he suspects some items might have been added by someone other than Tao. (Xiaofei Tian Owen, email communication, 10 March 2004.) 132 Juan 8, section 37. ֳ֞Ζܩհ۩߫աΖཚؘ࣍ሒΖ࣍աࡹאױঞࡹΖۼאױঞ ۼΖਚࡹᆏृΖࢬڶאৱΖृۼޣΖࢬ֗אழΖਢאឈ࠹ࡹΖۖլᄤࠡᆏΖݳሒۖլح ࣍ᆠΖI use the 1915 edition of the Kambun taikei ed., Vol. 20. 133 ႓அഒ, Su Zhe ji 2:22.391–92. The letter, the first direct communication from Su Zhe to Huang, was probably written after the third month of 1084 (it alludes to Huang’s resolution to
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038-15/ It was Xie Lingyun who said his “heart and deeds” were never in synch, that, in Frodsham’s translation, “I…never did what I really wanted to do.” 134 038-16/ A well-known anecdote about Ruan Ji, in Holzman’s translation: “From time to time, as his fantasy led him, he would ride out alone, not following the by-paths. When the car tracks gave out, he would cry passionately and without restraint and then return.” 135
This Song does not attempt to undercut the concept behind the studio of the Pan family. It praises their success in modeling themselves after Yan Hui. Of course, the Yan Hui model can be summed up in one line if you make it long enough, and that is precisely what Fanghui does in line 038-8: eating from a simple bamboo tray, drinking from a rustic gourd, and living happily in a small house surrounded by walls in a humble lane. The creativity in this Song is to be found in what the poet does with the other fifteen lines. The opening segment asks who is taking care of East Slope (now that Su Shi is gone). The answer is, of course, Pan Dalin and Pan Daguan ẘᄢⷹ, humorously depicted has having the sunburnt faces and grey hair of aged farmers. We may safely take this as an exaggeration. (Pan Dalin died before he was fifty and was probably about the same age as He Zhu, who was forty-seven sui at this time.) 136 In any case, they are not peasants but gentlemen farmers who have the leisure and education to enjoy reading in their “Also Yan Studio” (line 038-4). The second segment affirms the Pan brothers in their pursuit of the Yan Hui ideal. Whether he means to or not, Fanghui reveals that this is somewhat of an intellectual exercise: they spend “the whole day” debating the difficulty of being authentically innocent (“foolish”) human beings. However, that is perfectly understandable, given that no one who embodies the different categories of Confucian virtues exists in the present generation (line 038-7). The third segment acknowledges that farming is usually not economically viable. The few (“countable”) grains that are harvested are consumed by taxes and rodents. “South of the sky, biding his time, the master of East Slope” is an odd intrusion in this segment. Does it imply that the crops will be better if Su Shi returns to East Slope? It might be possible to parse line 038-10 as a rearrangement of something like “[The farm] is waiting for Su Shi, who is south of the sky.” Still, the line strikes me as an eruption into the poem of hidden anxieties about Su Shi’s fate on Hainan Island; the need for a rhyme raised the option of zhu, master, which in the context naturally suggested “master of East Slope,” a title pretty much
——— give up meat and wine in that year) and before Su Zhe’s arrival in the capital in 1086, when the two would have surely met in person. Zhang Bingquan, however, dates the letter to which Su Zhe must be responding to 1081–83. See Huang Tingjian di jiaoyou ji zuopin, 43–44. The letter, ബᤕط, is found in Huang Tingjian quanji, 2:459–60. 134 Murmuring Stream 1:134; Wen Xuan, 26. 135 Poetry and Politics, 223. Holzman’s view that this story has significance beyond the traditional interpretation that it represents Ruan’s regret that he could not “travel far on the road to political success” has much to recommend it. 136 See the material in Xue Ruisheng, Dongpo ci biannian jianzhu, 405–6.
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“owned” by Su Shi, which then led to an acknowledgement of the “presence” of the absent one-time tiller of that piece of land. The concluding section returns from the reality of poverty to the virtues of the man who never allowed poverty to alter his conduct, Yan Hui. Fanghui notes the strength that such a model gives us. If we do not anguish over those things that only Heaven can control, we will not be perpetually distressed as Ruan Ji was. The enjambed final two lines triumphantly define the superiority of the Yan Hui by contrasting him to the despairing Ruan Ji. It should be noted in passing that there is one echo of a 1094 poem by Su Shi in this Song. The poem was sent to a man who may have left Hailing and gone south across the Yangzi about the same time as He Zhu made a similar journey. In it, Su says, ᄤධ⋴ข᧲ပฉ㧘นᤚᐔ↢ᑜ⼛ᦠ “Look at the old man from East Slope, south of the sky; in his whole life, could he have given up reading?” 137 Two lines earlier, Su mentions taking one’s copy of the classics into the fields to read while hoeing. Both the language (this is the only poem before 1101 in which Su uses “south of the sky,” though the phrase has ample precedents in the Tang) and the combination of reading and farming (see line 038-4) have analogs in He Zhu’s Song. I am not arguing that Fanghui alludes to the poem, simply that there is a possibility that it might have been in the back of his mind as he wrote the inscription for the studio at East Slope.
INNOVATIONS IN SONGS: A BRIEF REVIEW At the beginning of this chapter, we noted that Fanghui began writing Songs later than poems in other forms and that he wrote fewer of them. We attributed this to the difficulties of the genre. This chapter has shown, I hope, that when Fanghui did use the Song form, he was equal to its challenges. Perhaps it was these same challenges that stimulated him to make what I provisionally propose to be innovations. These would include the use of what I postulate to be “unofficial” diction and plot elements from popular storytelling in place of the usual allusions to canonical sources when singing of a well-known historical figure (005; 1084); the construction of a suite of poems whose titles appear to indicate that each poem has a distinct formal role in the suite (the yin, ci, and xing on the birds in Liyang, 008, 009, 010; 1088); “filling out” a prior poem by taking that poem simply as a point
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137 堚ۣխബౘ۔, SSSJ, 8:47.2557–58. Kong Fanli, Su Shi nianpu, 3:33.1174, dates this poem to the ninth month of 1094. In it, Su refers to the man specified in the title, Jia Shou ᇸگ, as the “kulapati of Hailing,” which suggest to me that Jia had lived in Hailing. Fanghui was in Runzhou in the ninth month of 1094 (Zhong Zhenzhen, Bei Song ciren He Zhu yanjiu, 51). That places him on the route to the Lake Tai area where Jia Shou is known to have settled, though there is no documentation suggesting that the two knew each other.
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of departure (012; 1090); and the use of interlocking rhymes, tentatively marked in line 001-3 but unmistakable sixteen years later in lines 030-9–18 of Seeing Off Zhang Bangjie… (1096). It may be that Fanghui was not the first to do these things and that more research will show other examples, both earlier and later, by which his innovativeness and influence can be measured. (We already know he was not the first to “fill out” a poem, but we don’t have enough data yet to say just what that practice involved in the eleventh century, as noted above. With this problem and the question of suites of poems, we have to be alert for alternative terminology, also.) More research may or may not also shed light on whether it is purely coincidental that Fanghui’s pentasyllabic opening lines increase in number from one to two to four between 1080 and 1096, as observed earlier in this chapter. (It is also only between 1090 and 1097 that Fanghui uses uniform line length and/or one rhyme throughout a poem, especially in 1090 and 1091. Is that coincidental?) Where the Songs break new ground is in their complex treatment of Tao Yuanming in 1096. Tao is both a model to be followed and something of a hypocrite whom a modern recluse can outdo (030); on the other hand, his life is a tantalizing ideal that cannot be attained by the poet himself (033-15–20). This latter view is closest to Fanghui’s practical criticism of Su Shi’s new image of Tao as the epitome of spontaneity that we saw in the Ancient Verse Inscribed at the End of Tao Yuanming’s Collected Works, written three months earlier (142). At the end of the year, though, Fanghui rejects Tao Yuanming’s own assertion that “yesterday I was wrong; today I’m right” as being inconsistent with a notion of spontaneity (034-12–20). This is a witty use of Su Shi’s idea together with Su’s older technique of undercutting someone’s inspiration for a studio name. Songs also add subtle humor to the irony we detected in Ancient Verses in or around 1080: see lines 001-5–8 and, ten years later, 014-5–8. Perhaps we can conclude that this genre that confronts the poet with so many formal decisions also opens up the flexibility to treat themes in new ways and with modified modes of expression.
CHAPTER THREE
THE PENTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE OF HE ZHU, 1076–98 The world of pentametrical Regulated Verse (wuyan lüshi or wulü ⸒ᓞ) is one in which the focus is on language. The poet explores and exploits tensions of sameness and difference between the words he places in corresponding positions within parallel couplets (usually, the two middle couplets of an eight-line poem). Sameness and difference include sound as well as meaning. The canonical tone patterns for the four types of lines are defined, it will be recalled, by level and deflected tones in the second and final syllables. Fanghui’s seventy-two dated pentametrical Regulated Verses always follow the ABCD sequence of line types. This does not condemn the poems to sameness, for there are four different ways of starting the sequence. Since the choice will determine the metrical limits for what one wants to say in each line in the rest of the poem, the four ways of starting a poem are not equally favored, nor do all poets share the same predilections. Within the overall framework of line types, the poet can create some tension by slightly violating the meter of an individual line. In certain places in pentametrical Regulated Verse this is actually the norm. Violations open up another choice for the poet: to compensate or not with another violation in the same or an adjacent line. Perhaps for these reasons, Fanghui’s pentametrical Regulated Verse is much more likely to be written in apparent solitude, either in contemplation of a scene or while stopping on a journey. Heptametrical Regulated Verse is always the first choice for a quick response to a social occasion that calls for poetry; it requires less exactitude and refinement. Pentametrical Regulated Verse is comparable quantitatively to pentametrical Ancient Verse for use in farewells and correspondence.
POEMS WRITTEN BEFORE XUZHOU The earliest pentametrical Regulated Verse Fanghui chose to preserve is the kind of quiet, apparently solitary meditation characteristic of this form in his hands. It describes an evening scene in the fifth month of Xining 9 (1076) in or near Lincheng ⥃ၔ. Although he entered the bureaucracy in 1071 at the age of twenty sui, Fanghui’s posting to Lincheng in 1075 is the first known assignment for our poet. His job was the collection of brew taxes, but he appears to have been an
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acting magistrate for a time. 1 The single poem in this genre from that period is 㔎㙍ᰮᦸ Evening Prospect in the Aftermath of Rain. 2 160
4
8
⋧ᙥሹ㡀㡆 ٤٨٨٤٤ ᪀㑆ᾖᐔ ٤٤٨٨٤ ᵤዊ⥷ᐲ ٤٤ع٨٨ 㜞㓬৻‐⠹ ٤٨٨٤٤ ᨋ⮳ᱩᔃஜ ٤٨٤٤٨ Ⴒ၎∛㛽デ ٤٤٨٨٤ ዮ㛟㝬Ό ٨٤٤٨٨ ᧂ⸵₡ำᷡ ٨٨٨٤٤
Answering one another, baby pigeons call. D1 Among the mulberries, sunlight comes back level. B1 Bright fordage: a small raft crosses; (C4) high slope: a single ox plows. D1 Grove and thicket: the homeward heart is hale; A2 dust and dirt: these sickly bones grow light. B1 The poet Qu’s spirit is still present: C1 it is not allowed that only you are pure. D2
Notes: 160-7/ “Qu sao” could refer to Qu Yuan’s Li Sao, Encountering Sorrow, but I have chosen to see sao as short for sao ren, or “poet [with the connotations associated with Qu Yuan’s lonely stance against his times].” The expression “Qu sao” is virtually unknown in other writers. In a Song from the year 1091, Fanghui repeats it, saying he pursues Qu sao.” 3
The scenic description in the first four lines is placid in the extreme, a classic example of a “scene” (jing) waiting to be completed by “feeling” (qing). The poet skillfully takes us from the sound of the birds to the horizontal rays of the setting sun, establishing the rural setting and time of day. Then he moves from the low-lying ford to the high, sloping field; most effectively, the raft and the ox each present a tiny point of activity in the midst of vastness—and, implicitly, a daily routine by which one might mark the flow of time. The middle couplets are of great interest in a Regulated Verse. It is there that the poet is expected to use semantic parallelism but to do so in a way that surprises us somewhat. Semantic parallelism is based on the correlation of the corre-
——— 1 Lincheng is about 130 km north of Fuyang, about halfway between modern Shijiazhuang and Handan on the western edge of the plains of Hebei Province. Both were in Hebei West Circuit. On He Zhu’s status, see Zhong Zhenzhen, Bei Song ciren He Zhu yanjiu, 47. 2 5.12544; 5.1a. 3 See Poem 017, Left in Farewell to Monk Na, referenced in connection with poverty and poetry in Chapter One, pp. 113–14n. “Monk Na” was Shouna ښ (1047–1122); see headnote to the 1090 poem ቖ, Answering Monk Na, Poem 494, 10.12595; Shiyi.2a.
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sponding parts of two lines in a couplet: nouns should match nouns, verbs, verbs, and so on, but the corresponding words should belong to the same semantic class, also. In the second couplet of this poem, for example, “fordage” and “slope” are not only nouns but nouns that name topographical features. The pleasure of parallelism comes when one has to find the rationale behind a less obvious correlation. Every other pair of words in the second couplet besides “fordage” and “slope” is brought into a correlation that would never be expected if one simply listed them at random and assigned them properties (animate, name of color, number, etc.). “Bright” and “high” relate to different categories of measurement, yet they correlate here as features that help define the vastness of the scene. Rafts and oxen are not intrinsically in the same category, but in the context of this couplet, the crossing raft and plowing ox share a visual similarity as small dots of movement in the landscape. Similarly, “small” should correlate with words denoting size and “one” should go with other numbers, but if they are matched with each other here it is because they both work to sharpen the quality of isolation or singularity that the ox and raft have in common. It must have been important to the poet to emphasize that isolation, because it came at the cost of the single tonal violation in the poem: the word “small,” in line 160-3. It is not a major violation, but it calls our attention to something the poet could not say any other way. The level-tone gu ‘lone,’ is sometimes correlated with ‘one,’ and it would have allowed He Zhu to avoid the violation; however, in this context a “lone raft” and “single ox” would have been too much a restatement of the same idea. “Small” gets the same quality without the redundancy. The third couplet offers echoes of famous precedents. In “Grove and thicket: the homeward heart is hale; / dust and dirt: these sickly bones grow light,” I cannot help but hear echoes of Du Fu, especially of his famous couplet ⪭ᣣᔃ ₈ჾ㧘⑺㘑∛᰼⯃ “Setting sun: my heart is still fit; / autumn wind: my illness about cured,” 4 and even the famous: “His body light: a single bird passing,” which four years later Fanghui would draw on for his Ancient Verse couplet “The many insects, with evening, hum and stir; / one bird, thoughts-of-return light” (057-5–6). The key words and concepts are splintered and redistributed in the present couplet, so they may seem to fall short of allusion. Nevertheless, when he says in line 160-5 that his homeward heart is “hale,” Fanghui reminds us of more typical recastings of Du Fu’s “heart is still fit” language. These would include these lines by Wang Yucheng ₺⑬ஂ (954–1001): ჾᔃ₈ “My robust heart is still here!” and ำᕲᧂႎੱ₈ᅤჾ “My lord’s kindness is not repaid, but my heart is still robust”; and this 1056 line by Wang Anshi: ᰼ொ⟵ᔃ₈ “I want to transmit the Way and the righteous, and my heart is still in it.” 5 It is crucial to note
——— 4
Du Fu’s couplet is from his ۂዧ, Du shi xiangzhu, 5:23.2029; translation in Owen’s Anthology,
439. 5
For Wang Yucheng: QSS, 2:64.725, ᠅ࡺ and 66.747, ኟၳܷնଈհԲ. For Wang Anshi:
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that all these lines are a protestation of continued vigor that argues against retirement. Fanghui cleverly adapts this language to voice the opposite sentiment: as he calls to mind the groves and bushes of home—or is reminded of home by the groves and bushes he sees this evening—it is his desire to retire from public life that is strengthened. In line 160-6, “dust and dirt: these sickly bones grow light,” the obvious meaning is that the poet feels frail because he is ill and trapped in the dusty world of officialdom. Before He Zhu’s time, however, bones growing light were a sign of transcendence, not illness. 6 Thus, Ouyang Xiu writes to a Daoist in 1068, ⛵㜰 ᣇ⍓≞㛽デ㧘㘢ὼ㢬็╌ “With green hair, square pupils, and skinny bones light, / airily you mount a crane and go off to play the mouth-organ.” 7 The normal connotation of “light bones” has been reversed by He Zhu, just as that of “hale heart” was inverted in the previous line. This sly teasing of our expectations veers into opacity in the closing couplet, and it must be admitted that Fanghui’s closing couplets are often difficult in this genre. When the speaker says “it is not allowed that only you are pure,” many readers will think of Qu Yuan, who declared to the (unimpressed) fisherman that he alone was pure in a turbid world, sober in a drunken milieu. Perhaps when Fanghui warns that Qu’s purity “has never been allowed,” there is a topical allusion, the key to which is lost to us. Had the young He Zhu been firmly advised to “go along to get along” in his Lincheng post? The second pentametrical Regulated Verse Fanghui preserved was written in Yuanfeng 1 (1078) at Fuyang. It is called ⥄⸩ Accusing Myself. 8 In this poem, semantic parallelism of greater or lesser degrees of exactitude runs through every one of the couplets, and the poet appears to use more tonal “violations” to offset this. Du Shenyan ᧡ክ⸒ (645?–708) gives us an early Tang example of four semantically parallel couplets in an eight-line poem; its tone pattern is similarly regulated overall with violations in the third lines of each half: A1 B1 (C6) (D3) A1 B1 (C4) D2. The poems of Du Shenyan and He Zhu are unrelated in content, but the precedent does show that parallelism all the way through was permitted in a very courtly poem. 9 Here is Fanghui’s poem, written in the sixth month:
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Linchuan xiansheng wenji, 22.264, ࡚ሟߠ࠸ةᢤ; dated in Cai Shangxiang, Wang Jinggong nianpu kaolue, 83. 6 I understand Du Fu’s couplet ณᢰྤঋढΔڍఐՈߪ᎘, despite the reference to illness, as also referring to the lightness of the body as a transcendent state: “Unto my eyes appear no vulgar things; / [even] with many illnesses, yet my body grows light.” The commentators interpret the poem as showing Du Fu’s ability to follow his own nature, and nothing in the poem suggests that it ends on a note of complaint. The poem is the first of two ደګ, Du shi xiangzhu, 2:10.797. 7 QSS, 6:295.3718, ԾബሐԳ (1068). Ouyang Xiu quanji, 1:Jushiji.14.105. 8 5.12544; 5.1a. I follow the variant noted in the Quan Song shi for the first line. 9 ೈ࡙ڶᡖ, QTS, 3:62.736.
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161 ᦺ⡱㡆㏹
4
8
٤٨٤٤٨ 㓣ⴟ㥏ᱩ ع٤غ٨٤ ᦺᦺᓳ ٤٤ع٨٨ ᤚᤚ⥜㕖㕖 ٨٨٨٤٤ 〔ነඥᴉ〝 ٨٨٤٤٨ ⸒ᛩᯏ ٤٤٨٨٤ ┆⊖ᐕ ٤٨غع٨ ┵৻ᔃ㆑ ٤٨٨٤٤
At dawn I obey the sounding bell and go out; A2 at dusk I follow the yamen drum and return. (B6) Dawn after dawn and then dusk after dusk; (C4) declaring right right and wrong wrong. D2 My deeds are entrusted to a road that rises and sinks; A1 my words are cast to the trigger of good and bad fortune. B1 What ending is there to the affairs of a lifetime, (C6) which needlessly make my mind go awry? D1
Notes: 161-4/ To affirm the right and reject the wrong is usually interpreted as showing clarity of judgment, but in this context I think Fanghui may be referring to disputes of some kind with which he is forced to deal. To the extent that these disputes have no absolute standards by which they may be settled, line 4 reminds us of these lines by Ouyang Xiu (written in 1032), “To praise what is right verges on obsequiousness, while to find fault with what is wrong verges on censoriousness. If one must err on either side it is better to be censorious than obsequious.”10 161-5/ To entrust one’s “deeds” (literally, ‘footprints’) to a realm of activity is to commit oneself to that realm of activity. 11 161-6/ Note that “words” are the medium by which one declares “right is right and wrong is wrong” (line 4); giving voice to judgments exposes one to unseen mechanisms of fortune—or voicing judgments is itself the spring from which good and bad fortune arise. 12
Let us say a little more about the tonal violations that, as we suggested, compensate for the degree to which semantic parallelism runs all through the poem. The manuals of meter will tell us that that these violations are quite standard. In line 161-2, for example, the level tone in the third position offsets the deflected tone in the first syllable. 13 I would submit that this is not just a random “failure”
——— 10 Ronald Egan’s translation, from Ouyang’s “Faultfinding Studio.” See The Literary Works of Ouyang Xiu, 204. Original text in Ouyang Xiu quanji, 1:jushi waiji.13.453. Su Shi repeated Ouyang’s language in a later poem, Ꮵ݇ᝨ९ࡴਢਢഘ, SSSJ, 7:45:2452 (1101). 11 A Tang example: Quan Deyu ᦞᐚᝨ (761–818) writes, ֨ඒΔᇾബᘃᕠ “My heart is led along by the worldly teachings; / my deeds are entrusted to the field of brush and ink.” ௯ ዚ, QTS, 10.320.3610. 12 The biography of Wang Chang ׆ᷞ in the Sanguo zhi, 27.745, as taken into the Zizhi tongjian by Sima Guang and translated by Achilles Fang, uses the same terms to state, “Now praise and blame are the sources of like and dislike, the springs of calamity and fortune.” (Fang, 508; emphasis mine.) 13 See Wang Li, Hanyu shilü xue, 96–99. This is a B-type line, the only one of the four types in which the first syllable is allowed only one value, the level tone.
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to come up with a B1 line where needed, however. First of all, that first syllable, “dusk,” is critical for its semantic contrast with “dawn” in line 161-1; the tonal contrast could be said to underscore the opposition in meaning. More importantly, I think, the “limping” or “broken” rhythm of tones in line 161-2 is an analog to the weariness the speaker feels as he returns to the city after another day of drudgery. A euphonious B1 line that responded cheerfully to the A line before it would destroy the whole point of the couplet. As for the violation in the penultimate line, since a disruption and resumption of regularity at the end of a series is a basic device for closure, the formal structure of the poem remains satisfying. Wang Li, a pioneer in modern linguistic research on traditional Chinese poetry, did a survey of the fifty pentametrical Regulated Verses in the Three Hundred Tang Poems and found that twenty-four of the poems had what in our terms would be a (C 6) structure in line 7 and one poem had a (C 5)—this amounts to half the corpus. 14 This indicates that Fanghui’s metrical violation is actually one standard option for closure. Let us observe that, as in Accusing Myself, five of the final couplets with (C 6) lines that Wang lists also are part of a rhetorical question in the final couplet. (None of the concluding couplets with regulated C 1 lines in his survey includes a rhetorical question.) Since rhetorical questions often are meant to express frustration or exasperation, the semantic content provides further justification for formal “breakdown” in this position. The entire first half of Accusing Myself expresses the feeling of cyclical and meaningless time we have noted in other poems of He Zhu’s early career. Line 161-3’s fu, ‘and then,’ ‘again,’ shows up three months later, in the Ancient Verse The Former City of Ye: ⊕㔺ᓳ㕍⭢㧘⨚⨚឵ᤨ▵ “White dew and then green overgrowth; / inexhaustible, the seasons change” (039-19–20); and again in the conclusion of a Xuzhou Regulated Verse of 1083: ⽶ᱩ⚂㧘Ⴒ၎ᐕᓳᐕ “To my homeland I’ve betrayed my pact to return; / dust and dirt, year after year.” 15 Fu is used to indicate one kind of repetition or another about twenty-five times in He Zhu’s poems and at least once every year in 1082–90, so it is not a rare word. 16 However, from its first use in 161-3 through early 1084 (see line 246-1 in the next chapter), fu is almost always associated with cycles of time. Sometimes units of time are named: “Dawn after dawn and then dusk after dusk”; or “a ji year has reverted to a geng,” (057-10, 1080; this poem also presents the pattern of time running away from the poet, as discussed in the first chapter). At other times, these cycles are realized in changes that happen in time, as in “White dew and then green overgrowth.” From 1085 until its last use by He Zhu in 1096, on the other hand, fu is more likely to relate to movement back and forth in space, usually east and west.
——— 14 Hanyu shilüxue, 823–25. The fully regulated C 1 line we saw in this position in the previous poem shows up in only twenty percent of the corpus he studied. 15 Poem 165, ਞ Springtime Jottings, 5.12545; 5.2a. 16 It occurs most in pentametrical poems, especially Ancient Verse, and usually in unregulated lines—note that neither line in the 1083 regulated couplet just cited is regulated. In Regulated Verse, these violations probably reflect the distress inherent in the content of the lines; in Ancient Verse the rhythm may have a similar effect, but violations as such are not an issue.
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The last couplet of a regulated octave is not supposed to be parallel semantically, but He Zhu’s conclusion flirts with parallelism in lines 161-7–8, though it is not apparent in our translation: “What ending is there to the affairs of a lifetime, / which needlessly make my mind go awry?” In the original, both lines begin with “empty words” (function words or modals: “what” and “needlessly”) and end with number-noun combinations (“hundred years” and “one heart”). The numbers are not to be taken literally in either line. “Hundred years” is a common kenning for the span of a human life. “One heart” is a bit more complicated. It could mean a settled, ‘unified mind’: “a unified mind eludes me.” 17 Or “one” could mean ‘whole,’ implying that the speaker feels alienated from his entire inner being. 18 The use of enjambment in this couplet and the fact that “affairs” and “go awry” that do not correlate with each other ensure that we will not mistake this for a “middle couplet.” Nevertheless, the striking correlations are there, and they might be intended to highlight the overtones in “one heart” going contrary to one’s wishes. It is a pity that from this linguistic and cultural distance we have difficulty hearing those overtones. Fanghui may be searching for a new way of exploring language through blurred or double meanings. In these early poems it seems that after he has expertly evoked a scene or a situation in the first half of the poem, he sets challenges for himself in the second half to complicate the way words and their usages work together. In the Tang Regulated Verse, these explorations of the limits of language took place in the middle couplets, where the full power of parallel constructions could be brought to play in bending the syntax of normal language. Perhaps our poet is experimenting with alternative frameworks for such explorations. XUZHOU 1084: IMITATION OF AN EXTENDED REGULATED VERSE In the seventh month of Yuanfeng 7 (1084), Fanghui writes ᡆ⑿㘧 Imitating Wen Feiqing. His headnote reveals that he is writing this as a proxy for Wang Gong, who was part of the group when Fanghui wrote Lyric of the Song of the Wind Estrade (Poem 005, translated in Chapter Two), also during 1084 but in an unspecified month. This poem is one of only three pailü or “extended Regulated Verse” that
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17 See the Zhuangzi 34/13/15, 16. A.C. Graham (260) translates “his unified heart”; Watson (144) renders the phrase “his single mind.” 18 A “whole heart” gone awry is an extreme situation. Another implication might be that of an undivided, steadfast mind. Yanzi, when criticized for serving three lords over the years in the state of Qi, responded: ԫ֨ܩۍࠃאױΔԿ֨լࠃאױԫ“ ܩWith one mind one can serve three hundred lords; with three minds one cannot serve even one lord.” ICS 4.29/39/17, 18. Alfred Forke: “Der Vorwurf scheint von Liang-tch’iu Tch’ü zu stammen, welcher erklärte, dass Yen-tse mehrere Herzen haben müsse. Yen-tse erwiderte, dass man mit einem Hersen hundert Fürsten, mit drei Herzen aber nicht einem einzigen dienen könne. ‘Konfuzius hörte davon und sagte: “Meine Kinder, merkt euch das. Yen-tse konnte mit einem Herzen hundert Fürsten dienen”.’ ” “Yen Ying, Staatsmann und Philosoph,” 124.
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Fanghui wrote, and it is the longest. As Paul Rouzer tells us, “Long pailü are among the most difficult Tang poems to appreciate today. There were often written as virtuoso showpieces—the form demands that a poet maintain tonal regulation and a single rhyme over dozens of lines. . . . Moreover, pailü are also structurally loose, despite their rigid metrical requirements: couplets often form a chain of vaguely connected units extending indefinitely through the poet’s ability to sustain a rhyme.” 19 166
4
8
12
㔺✂ᧇ↖ ٤٨٤٤٨ 㘑☄⠑㎮೨ ٤٤٨٨٤ ኋⴶᾤ⪝▀ ٨٤٤٨٨ ᦺ㏜ᜀẁṾ ٤٨٨٤٤ ᵤẢ㌟㊄╩ ٨٨٤٤٨ 㚅ଐᠡ☳✎ ٤٤٨٨٤ ᐲ㑄㔅㒽ሶ ٨٤٤٨٨ ᠘ᕱචਃ⚴ ٨٨٨٤٤ 㣢㢀Გൕ⺆ ٤٨٤٤٨ ᣍᯝᆔᦛᾍ ٤٤٨٨٤ 㞯⛡ੇ₹▰ ٨٤٤٨٨ 㝼㐧㒢㊄⬒ ٤٨٨٤٤ ᚸ㈽᩶⪲ ٤٨٤٤٨ ὖ⛕ઍ᧙ ٤٤٨٨٤
Dewy net, upon the crimson ridge-tiles; A2 breezy blind, before the halcyon lattice. B1 Quilts from the night fumed into lotus; C1 mirror for the morn stroked into ripples. D1 Moisture soaks the brush flecked with gold; A1 perfume cleaves to floss striking powder. B1 To pass the time, double-six pieces; C1 to dispel resentment, ten-and-three strings. D2 The parrot—solicitous words; A2 sandalwood—sinuous smoke. B1 Shark-people silk dried jade chopsticks; C1 fish-form locks circumscribe her gold lotuses. D1 The “Round Fan” requites “Peach Leaf”; A2 raven silk replaces apricot writing-paper. B1
——— 19
Writing Another’s Dream, 144–45.
196
16
20
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ᧇ㐷㐳⓱⓱ ٤٤٤٨٨ ⊕㚍⥄⠗⠗ ٨٨٨٤٤ 㔍㊒ਃ⃨᮸ ٤٨٤٤٨ ᓤᢟ৾㖊 ٤٤٨٨٤ ㈬㑬ᙥᓙ ٨٤٤٨٨ ᄞ⎕හή㎷ ٨٨٨٤٤ ା㢋ᣂ⑺ ٨٨٤٤٨ ቅⳟᓟᄛ ٤٤٨٨٤ ᶉ⸒ ᄖ ٨٤٤٨٨ ⊛ᤚᵢਛ ٨٨٨٤٤
The vermillion gate is always dimly distant, C2 his white horse already flying lightly. D2 Impossible to hook the three-pearl tree; A2 in vain he tosses the seven-jewel whip. B1 The drinking winds down; someone must be waiting; C1 the dream is shattered, for the karma is lacking. D2 The faithful magpies go off with the new autumn; A1 the lonely toad is full in the late night. B1 Vain to say the place outside the walls C1 is the Undying Ones within the Cavern. D2
Notes: 166-7/ Double-six, shuang lu, is a board game played with dice. Whatever lu originally meant in this term, Fanghui either thinks it means ‘six’ or he is exploiting the fact that the character is the fraud-proof form of ‘six’; lu matches the “three” in line 8. 20 166-8/ The zheng ▓ is a musical instrument with thirteen strings in the Tang and Song periods. 166-11/ Silk woven by “shark people” (See Knechtges, Wen Xuan, 1:392, ll. 288–90n) is a familiar image, as is “jade chopsticks” as an elegant kenning for the tears of a beautiful woman. 166-12/ “Golden lotuses” are dainty feet. 21 The fish-shaped locks of the palace appear to be locking the woman in, though by implication they also lock others out. 166-13/ Wang Xianzhi wrote two love songs for his concubine, Peach Leaf, and she answered with three poems built around a round fan. 22
——— 20 Lu is read liu in modern Chinese when it means ‘six,’ but in the Song its basic reading of luk3b covered both ‘six’ (ք luk3b) and its “regular” meanings of ‘dry ground,’ etc. For a table of fraud-proof numbers, see Cohen, Introduction to Research in Chinese Source Materials, 338. 21 A younger contemporary of Wen Tingyun, Wu Rong ܦᘜ (d. 903), juxtaposed jade chopsticks and golden lotuses in the second of three pai-lü using the same rhymes: دጭࡉ݉⡖Δ८ᓊ ດޡᄅ “Jade chopsticks beweep her makeup; / golden lotus renew with her steps.” See QTS, 20:685.7868–69, ࡉឌી٠ࠊྤᠲԿଈԼᣉ. Wu seems to be going back to the original context of the golden lotuses, which were affixed to the floor for a late fifth-century ruler’s consort to walk on so that he could exlaim, “a golden lotus in born with each step!” See the Nan shi, 1:5.154. 22 For these poems, see Xu Ling, Yutai xinyong, 2:10.536–37 and Anne Birrell, New Songs from a Jade Terrace, 266–67. The significance of the “Round Fan” derives from the story of a resentful Lady Ban, who felt she had been put aside like a fan at the end of the hot season. For her poem, see Yutai
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166-14/ “Raven silk” refers to silk material into which are woven black silk filaments to make demarcations of columns for writing. Although most accounts say the black lines are woven in at only the top and bottom, with vertical vermillion lines between them, perhaps the most famous extant specimen uses black silk threads for all the lines. This is Mi Fu’s Shu su tie ⱍ⚛Ꮭ (1088). 23 The significance of this material replacing the apricot-colored stationery is unclear; perhaps the two replace each other in succession as a woman and a man exchange letters. If the reader wonders how “raven” can correspond to “round” in the previous line, part of the answer may lie in the fact that the round fan is conventionally made of white silk. (Wen uses the phrase “white round fan” once.) 24 166-17/ The three-pearl tree is a mythological tree whose leaves were pearls (or three kinds of pearls?); Tao Yuanming referred to it in Reading the Classic of Mountains and Seas, poem 7, as one of the marvels that would appeal to the Queen Mother of the West. 25 Perhaps the man on the white horse of line 16 would like to obtain the tree for the woman who has been the center of the poem up until now. But see below for a different speculation. 166-18/ A seven-jewel riding whip is what the Jin emperor Sima Shao ม㚍⚫ (r. 323–25) gave an innkeeper to bribe her to deceive the rebel forces who followed him in pursuit. 26 Perhaps “in vain he tosses…” indicates the man’s lack of success despite his expenditure of effort and treasure. 166-20/ The karma that would unite the lovers does not exist. 166-21/ Since the next line mentions the toad that lives in the moon, these magpies must be the ones who form a bridge across the Milky Way on the Seventh Night of the Seventh Month so the stars known as the Oxherd and Weaving Maiden can have their annual “conjugal visit.” The seventh month is the first month of autumn and the moon would be full on the fifteenth day of a lunar month. 166-22/ Hou ye usually means the last half of the night, though in some of He Zhu’s poems it could be read as “tomorrow night.” (He uses the phrase six times, more than any other Tang or Song poet.) 166-24/ Caverns are Daoist heavens, or they stand for the heavens to which they lead. Because the famous Peach Blossom Spring was accessed through a cavern or tunnel, “Undying Ones within the Cavern” could also refer to the happy denizens of an idyllic paradise.
The first thing to emphasize about this imitation of Wen Tingyun is the degree to which it avoids the diction of Wen Tingyun. Like He Zhu, Wen Tingyun is most famous in literary history for his lyrics (ci), but Wen’s lyric diction is conspicuously absent here. Fanghui’s “halcyon” lattice (line 166-2) is never used by Wen, who prefers lattices of blue/grey/green (qing 㕍 ), nor does Wen ever mention ridge-tiles (line 1) of any color. In one lyric, Wen has a lady waiting for her lover to cense their quilt, 27 but Fanghui’s line 166-3 is about something else entirely, I think: it introduces “last night’s quilt” only as an image for lotus leaves covering
——— xinyong 1:1.24–25 and New Songs from a Jade Terrace, 43. Wen Tingyun apparently alludes to the “Round Fan” in խఐ܂. See the SBBY edition of Wen’s poems: 5.1b; in QTS: 17.579.6728. 23 See Lothar Ledderose, Mi Fu and the Classical Tradition of Chinese Calligraphy, 44, 103, and Plate 47. More detail can be seen in Nakata Yjir, Shodo geijutsu 6, plates 96–103. 24 Ꮽਞଅ. SBBY ed., 1.6b–7a; QTS, 17:575.6696. 25 Tao Yuanming ji 4.136. The tree can also refer to a family of talented brothers, but I see no support for such an interpretation in the context of the present poem. 26 See the Jin shu, 1:6.161 and Shishuo xinyu, 27.6 for versions of this story. 27 Wen’s lyric is ޓዥ (ઌߠ)ݦ, no. 018 in Aoyama’s concordance to the Huajian ji. (Most words or phrases mentioned in our discussion can be found readily enough in this concordance and specific lyrics will not be cited.)
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a pond. (The pond is the mirror that ripples when brushed, in the next line). In his lyrics, Wen never uses the terms for “lotus” or “ripple” seen in this couplet, though he does use handan for ‘lotus’ in his poetry once, in a line that supports the equivalence of “mirror” and “pond” in line166-4. 28 Wen refers to parrots (line 166-9) only once in a lyric (and only twice in his poems), preferring to let orioles do the talking. He likes smoke, but mostly as a figure for misty willows and the like; only once does Wen’s “smoke” refer to incense, and then it is a different type of incense. 29 He mentions “jade chopsticks” (line 166-11) once, but three other poets use this kenning in the lyric collection from which we take our data, so the term is hardly a style marker. The same is true of “vermillion gates.” Comparisons with Wen’s shi diction are a bit more complicated. The concordance (in the Quan Tang shih suoyin series) from which we take the following data does not distinguish between poems and lyrics; the approximately four hundred poems attributed to Wen in the Quan Tang shi include fifty-nine lyrics. Thus, there is some overlap with the data for lyrics we have just presented. With that caveat, the concordance tells us that Wen’s favorite word is chun, ‘springtime,’ and his second favorite is hua, ‘blossom.’ Neither is found in our Imitation. The following table shows that, with the exception of feng, ‘breeze,’ ‘wind,’ it could be argued that Fanghui uses some words in his Imitation that are of salient frequency in Wen’s corpus and comparatively less frequent in He Zhu’s own corpus. Table 2 Words in Poem 166 Typical of Wen Tingyun
Word
㘑 ㊄ 㚅 ᾍ ₹ 㐷 ᄞ 㔺 ☄
Meanings wind, breeze
Occurrences in Wen 186
He’s line 166-2
Occurrences in He 293
gold, metal
159
166-12
46
incense, scent
104
166-6
23
smoke, mist
99
166-10
24
nephrite, jade
95
166-11
40
gate, door
77
166-15
74
dream
62
166-20
62
dew
59
166-1
22
blind, shade
40
166-2
16
The imagistic connotations of these words change radically in context: there is a
———
28 Wen’s line is ญᢴֱჀ▀▇ટ “Brilliant mirror, square tank, lotus autumn.” ᠲᡖૣॼ៱ሏ, SBBY ed., 4.13b; QTS, 17:578.6723. Note that Fanghui’s word for “lotus,” danhan, is the reverse of the normal handan. All editions appear to agree on this wording, but I have found no other poet who uses danhan. Both syllables end in the same tone and the same sound, so neither meter nor rhyme is at issue. I think it is a simple scribal error that no one thought to correct. 29 ဆ៳᨟ (࡙ࠐ࿉ִᅝ֑), no. 012 in Aoyama’s concordance to the Huajian ji.
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big difference between a spring breeze and an autumn wind, between a vermilion gate before a mansion and the brushwood gate that opens to the garden at home. Still, we can draw some conclusions. On the one hand, this table shows that in his imitation of Wen Tingyun, Fanghui used words that he was ordinarily less inclined to use than Wen. “Smoke/mist” is much less likely to occur in a poem by He Zhu, for example, so the fact that it occurs in this poem can reasonably be supposed to reflect some awareness that Wen liked the word. Our notes to the poem, furthermore, have already pointed out a few precedents in Wen. In particular we should point out that the phrase “Vain to talk of …” that heads line 166-23 also heads a line in Wen Tingyun (in a pentametrical pailü) and in no other Tang poet. 30 On the other hand, comparisons with Wen Tingyun’s lyrics and poems show that Fanghui did not do what a less accomplished poet would do: base an imitation on lexicon first, counting on the target poet’s diction to evoke the desired world and mood. Clearly, Fanghui is beyond this. Furthermore, when there is an overlap in diction, it is not for the purpose of creating Wen’s typical events and relationships. Wen never juxtaposes “idleness” and “resentment” or mentions a thirteen-stringed instrument (lines 166-6 and 7); the silk woven by shark-people, the three times Wen mentions it, is always being cut, not used to dry tears (line 166-11); Wen never refers to “golden lotuses,” “Peach Leaf,” or “apricot writing-paper” (lines 166-12–14). Although dreams are often “broken” (line 166-20) in Chinese poetry, that doesn’t happen in Wen Tingyun, nor does he mention the karma that should bind lovers together. We may conclude that Fanghui had the subtlety to use Wen’s diction sparingly while finding images and juxtapositions that would have analogous impact through the bulk of the imitation. Let us turn to what I think may have been He Zhu’s model: a poem that Mou Huaichuan offers as “one of the most perplexing poems in the entirety of Chinese classic poetry, and one of the most enchanting.” The poem in question, as the title tells us, is nearly twice as long as He Zhu’s: Twenty-two Rhymes of the Arched Door ᵢ֪ ੑචੑ㖿. 31 Nevertheless, there are several reasons to single this poem out as the model. Among Wen’s extended Regulated Verse, this is the only poem that, like Fanghui’s poem, exhibits semantic parallelism in all couplets, including the opening and closing couplets—allowing for some looseness in the semantic fields of the final couplet. (On the level of tonal structure, both poems share an absolute fidelity to regulated lines in the same ABCD order; however, my impression is that
———
30 ၲګնڣટ……, SBBY ed. 6.7a.9 (line 187 of two hundred); QTS, 17:580.6734.1. Translated by Mou Huaichuan as “Don’t say that…” in couplet 94 on p. 236 of Rediscovering Wen Tingyun. The phrase also occurs at the end of a line in a long heptametrical poem by Sikong Tu ़ቹ (837–908), ᖇᗊዚ, QTS, 19:634.7282, but is otherwise unknown in Tang poetry. 31 SSBY edition, 6.16a–18a; QTS, 17:580.6736; Rediscovering Wen Tingyun, 123–137.
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Wen Tingyun’s other extended Regulated Verses exhibit the same regularity.) Moreover, it is the only one that is ostensibly about a deserted woman in luxurious surroundings; the others are meditations on the lessons of history or are written in the poet’s own voice to his friends. 32 Now, Mou Huaichuan reads Wen’s poem as a veiled account of the poet’s relationship with the ill-fated heir presumptive, Li Yong ᧘᳗ (827–38). Whether or not Fanghui understood the poem the same way is a question we might not be able to answer, even if we allowed ourselves a digression to explore the validity of Mou’s reading. The most we shall attempt here is a search for thematic and structural parallels of the kind we discovered between Bao Rong’s Cold Night Song and He Zhu’s Imitation of Bao Rong’s Cold Night Lament in the chapter on Ancient Verse (Poem 092). Because the length and complexity of Wen Tingyun’s Twenty-Two Rhymes precludes its quotation here, we can only refer the interested reader to Mou’s translation. x Fanghui’s Imitation begins with a “dewy net” left by spiders on crimson roof tiles and a lattice; Wen’s begins with a “pearl net” and a lattice window. (Note that ‘pearl’ and ‘crimson’ were both pronounced tsyuo3c, and of course the “pearl net” is also a dewy spider web. The terms translated “lattice” are different in the originals.) x Fanghui’s second couplet is quite opaque syntactically; the same is true of Wen’s lines 3 and 4, ῒ⋚ᾍῘ㧘☄ცㅢ㒶, which might be translated, “Candles revolve smoke [and] drop embers; / the blind crushes the moon [but] admits yin.” (Yin is shade, but here it seems to indicate the yin light of the moon—as opposed to the yang force of the sun.) An alternative that would respect the normal caesura of the pentasyllabic line would be “Candles revolve; smoke drops embers; / the blind oppresses; the moon sends through its yin.” 33 x Fanghui’s third couplet mentions powder, as does Wen’s. Wen also juxtaposes ‘white’ and ‘clear,’ which is a common trick for color parallelism: qing ᷡ ‘clear’ is homophonous with qing 㕍 ‘green, grey, blue.’ Wen’s color-puns (which are quite frequent in his works) can be seen as calling for some kind of indirect reference to color in the imitation. Perhaps Fanghui saw “gold” and “powder” (166-5–6) as implying juxtaposed colors, just as “round fan” would imply the color white to match “raven silk” in lines 166-13 and 14. Similarly, Fanghui’s juxtaposition of “double-(six) pieces” and “ten-and-three strings” in lines 166-7 and 8 and his “three-pear tree” and “seven-jewel whip” in lines 166-17 and 18 could be seen as a response to Wen’s “thousand autumns”/ “Seventh Night”
——— 32 See Rouzer, Writing Another’s Dream, 144–49, Mou, Rediscovering, “Hundred-Rhyme Poems,” 5 et passim; “Fifty-Rhyme Poem,” 12 et passim. 33 This second translation is probably preferable, though ya, ‘oppress,’ is usually followed by an object in Chinese poetry. Mou’s translation is “Into the candle-tray the wick-ash dropped scattered. / through lowered curtains moonlight filtered covertly in.” “Tray” is probably wrong, since pan has to be a verb to parallel ya (Mou’s “lowered”)—unless this is a case of parallelism-by-pun.
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(lines 13 and 14), “paired pillar”/ “single pole” (lines 23 and 24) and “lone indignation” / “nine admonitions” (lines 41 and 42). x Lines 166-11 and 12 of Fanghui’s Imitation focus abruptly on the physical features of a person; the same happens in lines 9 and 10 of Wen’s poem. x Wen refers to an old ballad in line 15, as does Fanghui in line 166-13; both couplets also involve colors—“White Ramie” and “yellow gold” in Wen’s case. x Fanghui’s line 166-16 suddenly expands our perspective to include a white horse “flying lightly,” which we take to be a reference to the lover of the secluded woman; but the hooking of the three-pearl tree and the tossing of the seven-jewel whip of the next couplet seem to suggest that a story more specific is being told in coded language. That, of course, is precisely the mode of discourse that Mou Huaichuan sees throughout Wen’s “perplexing” poem. Lines 29–30 in Wen’s poem seem to tell of a point at which worthy men were to be selected for important positions, and the “hooking” of the three-pearl tree in our poem may similarly allude to an attempt to secure talented men. x In Fanghui’s poem this is followed by the hope or expectation of return (lines 166-19–20); in Wen’s by a retreat behind curtains (lines 33–34). There are birds and painted beasts in Wen’s next couplet and then the Milky Way and hills in the couplet after that. Perhaps all of these correspond to the celestial magpies and toad of Fanghui’s penultimate couplet. 34 x Finally, Wen’s poem closes with an evident reference to his own flight to the south:⧯ὑධㅿቴ㧘₈⥁㦖ี “How can the traveler who has fled to the south / still sing a song like the Sleeping Dragon?” Zhuge Liang (dubbed the “Sleeping Dragon”) sang a folk song as he plowed his fields before assisting in the founding of Shu as one of the Three Kingdoms. Thus, we have an allusion here whose significance is far from clear, just as Fanghui’s possible allusion to the Peach Blossom Spring paradise (see the note to line 166-24 on p. 197) seems intentionally obscure. In the end we must be impressed with the audacity of He Zhu in essaying the imitation of such a difficult poem, and the skill with which he creates analogs for the structures and situations in Wen’s poem, rather than relying on a superficial scattering of Wen-like diction. Whether or not one agrees with Mou Huaichuan’s intricate readings of Wen Tingyun, it is clear that in some lines of the poem in question (particularly the closing couplet), the topic must be something other than love between a man and a woman; or if it is, its treatment is unconventional, private and particular in its details. It is unlikely that Fanghui is using his poem for
——— 34 Mou (136) thinks the River in Wen’s poem might be the Wei River, but the five other references in Tang poems to the river “dawning” specify that it is the Star or Silver River, i.e., the Milky Way. Admittedly, these examples include a Han Yu poem in which the Milky Way may be a trope for a moat in the capital. See Han Yu quanji jiaozhu, 2:681, n2; the poem is ࡉஂԶԼԲᣉ; von Zach, X.2. takes the “Milchstrasse” at face value.
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anything so serious or personal, especially since he is writing it for a companion in Xuzhou who is not up to the task (no wonder!). His achievement rather is in fashioning a simulacrum of Wen Tingyun’s personal and coded expression.
1084: TWIN VIEWS FROM THE DELIGHTFUL! PAVILION Among Fanghui’s 1084 Xuzhou poems, we find a pair on the view from the Delightful! Pavilion. They are not dated; perhaps this is because they treat the same view at two different times of the day and may have been written on different occasions or as synthetic recollections of various outings to the site. The title is ᔟ੪ᦺኚ⋡ Taking in the Morning and Evening Views at the Delightful! Pavilion, Two Poems. 35 Like the 1084 Ancient Verse Written One Day After the First Si Day Upon Climbing Delightful! Pavilion, these poems make no overt mention of Su Shi, although in the second poem of the pair the “foreign chairs” on which Li and Su sat reappear. These poems give us examples of ᜓ ao lines, “awkward lines,” which are essentially non-regulated lines in a regulated environment. It is quite common, when the first line of a couplet contains a violation, to insert a violation into the second line at the same position—this is generally called a “recovery,” ዞ jiu, though it could just as well be termed a “matching awkwardness.” 36 The first two lines in each of the following poems (and the second pair of lines in the second poem) exhibit this “awkwardness” and “recovery” in the third syllables, the typical site for violations in a pentasyllabic line. These violations are not a sign of carelessness; this becomes clear when we see that Fanghui used exactly the same tone pattern in the two poems, with the exception of the fourth lines. (The metrical identity foregrounds the fact that the poems describe the same view at different times of day.) 167
4
ᄘ༑⥥ᦓ ٨٨ع٤٨ ᓣ⿲ၔᮝ ٨٤غ٨٤ ೋ㓁േ⑰㤠 ٤٤ع٨٨ Ⓧ㔎ᄬ᳜ᵮ ٨٨٨٤٤
In the night I rise, joyful in my freedom; (A3) straightaway rush to the loft on the citywall. (B6) The first sunlight stirs the grain; (C4) longtime rain has obscured the isles. D2
——— 35 36
5.12545, 5.2b. Qi Gong, Shi wen shenglü lungao, 29.
PENTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE
8
᳓„⽶㡙匦 ٨٨٤٤٨ ጊᮥ ᩛ⬮ ٤٤غ٨٤ ထᘚ⌀㓩ሶ ٨٤٤٨٨ ‛ᚒౌᖘᖘ ٨٨٨٤٤
203
A water buffalo bears myna birds; A1 thorn-elms suspend snakegourd. (B2) Suddenly I’m ashamed before the true recluse; C1 both I and the world are insubstantial to me. D2
Notes: 167-6/ Trichosanthes kirilowii, usu. translated “Chinese cucumber,” is a vine whose fruit and roots are used in medicine. 37 167-7–8/ The “true recluse” could be Su Shi, but he had already left his exile at Huangzhou at this time. While it is fairly common to say that the self, り shen and the world, the human world, shi, are estranged or insubstantial, the terms Fanghui uses, “objects” and “ego” are a bit more philosophical in tenor.
The second poem of the pair: 168
4
8
Ⓧả㓙ෂႃ ٨٨ع٤٨ ⊓⥃ᾖਛ ٨٤غ٨٤ ⧡⟆⊕⠀ ٤٤ع٨٨ ᭸⬺ 㕍ⳗ ٤٨غ٤٤ ਇᷜ⢫ᐥ⥝ ٨٨٤٤٨ ήᄙᚸഞ ٤٤غ٨٤ ⋡┆₈⟴ ٨٤٤٨٨ ṶẎ৻Ṫ◖ ٨٨٨٤٤
Loughes of rain waters edge the towering parapet; (A3) I climb to overlook them in the westing rays. (B6) Mossy cloaks enwrap white feathers; (C4) pagoda tree shade suspends green bugs. (D3) By no means slight is the pleasure of the folding chairs; A1 little is left of the merit in a round fan. (B2) I look as far as I can see, yet envy stirs: C1 gently rocking, one fisherman’s sail. D2
Notes: 168-5/ Folding chairs, literally “chairs of the northern barbarians,” take their significance from the story of Yu Liang ᑀ੫ (289–340) appearing one autumn evening on the Southern Tower in the city where he was governor: “‘Gentlemen, stay awhile. [My] pleasure in this spot is by no means slight.’ So
——— 37 See Shen Liansheng, Colored Atlas of Compendium of Materia Medica, 153, and a web page by Subhuti Dharmananda, http://www.itmonline.org/arts/tricho.htm (accessed 25 June 2004)
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saying, he sat down on a folding chair and chanted poems and joked with the company.” 38 Allusions to this are found among the major Tang poets.
The challenge Fanghui sets for himself here is to present a pair of poems on the same site that somehow complement each other without repeating the same structure or idea. He does several things to make the task more difficult. First, he repeats words, and does so at identical positions in their respective lines. Ji, ‘accumulated,’ translated “longtime” in line 167-4, reappears (not translated) in the accumulated pools of rain waters that border the citywall in line 168-1. Xuan, ‘suspend,’ appears in the middle couplets of each poem in the context of things hanging from trees. In each case, xuan is also the point of tonal violation, which increases its prominence. Second, Fanghui uses the same overall structure in each poem: setting the occasion (“I went up on the citywall”); describing the scene in parallel couplets; and closing with a response to the experience. To be sure, this is the standard structure for a Regulated Verse, but the need to vary the formula increases when the poems are paired, as here. Let us see, then, how Fanghui meets this challenge. The morning poem begins with an emotion (the speaker is “joyful” in his feeling of space and leisure), the evening poem simply with the parapets towering over a watery landscape. The two poems end with the same conventional yearning to retire from the world, but the first poem expresses this through a more “abstract” mediation on the “I” and the “objects” of the world, while the second poem does so by reference to the conventionally idyllic fisherman in the landscape below the pavilion. In the first poem, the “first sunlight” is withheld until line 167-3, where it can enter into the complex relationships of meaning that we expect in the middle couplets of a Regulated Verse. (I say “withheld” because in the second poem the corresponding “westing rays” that help establish the time of day appear earlier.) The “first sunlight” is the condition that creates the vivid impression that the crops “move”; the “longtime rain” is the condition that has caused the isles to be “lost” (line 167-4). Together, these two lines present a broad vision that will be replaced by attention to smaller points in the landscape in the next couplet. Now, the second and third couplets of the morning poem appear to have the identical grammatical structure: Noun Phrase–Verb–Noun. Ordinarily, this would be a conspicuous fault. 39 However, a more careful reading shows that in the
——— 38 Translation from Mather, New Account of Tales of the World, 14.24; emphasis mine. See also Jin shu, 6:73.1924. 39 Hou Xiaoqiong, in her excellent Shaoling lüfa tonglun, 113, cites these middle couplets from Du Fu’s ڠԲԼଈհԼԮ (Du shi xiangzhu, 2:7.586) as an example of such a fault: ᛆॸ႖ැኡΔ՞ ႆ܅৫㠫Ζ㠉㖊ᗭմΔಊՂഘΖ However, the first two lines have two verbs each and the second two lines only one each. The other example she cites, one that we partially quoted earlier, is the magnificent ׂႆ֚٥Δࡰٵִ࡙ةΖᆵֲ֨ྫ݇Δટଅఐᤕ; this is much more appropriate as an example of repeated structures. Yet the ambiguity in the first couplet is absent in the second, and the paradoxes of the second couplet are absent in the first. Again, the poem is ۂ
PENTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE
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second couplet the verbs are causative: the sun makes the millet move and the rain makes the islands disappear. 40 The third couplet, on the other hand, is straight subject–transitive verb–object. The verbs within each couplet play against each other in different ways, too. The dynamic “stir” (dong) of line 167-3 is contrasted with the quieter “obscure” (shi) of line 4; in the next couplet, it is the upward bearing-on-the-back (fu) of the myna birds that balances the downward suspension (xuan) of the trichosanthes. In the evening poem, the attention to visual details within the larger landscape comes earlier, in lines 168-3 and 4, “Mossy cloaks enwrap white feathers; / pagoda tree shade suspends green bugs.” The distant view over the water from the pavilion will be reserved for the closing couplet. At first glance, these details might seem rather unpleasant: water plants ensnaring birds, and trees dripping with spiders. One can, however, recognize two allusions to lines by Du Fu in this couplet, allusions that not only make the lines more appealing but also point to non-literal readings. First, while “white feathers” can stand for birds, the expression also refers to fans made of white feathers, and Du Fu exploited this fact to suggest that lotus flowers waving in the breeze resembled such a fan: ᳯ⬒័⊕⠀ “River lotus wave white feathers.” 41 Fanghui must be depicting lotuses among the algae. The reference to the green bugs calls to mind Du Fu’s couplet, 㕍ⳗ ዞᣣ㧘ᧇᨐ⪭ኽᵆ “Green bugs hang down and touch the sun; / vermillion fruits fall and affix their seal in the mud.” As a description of spiders or insects visible against the setting sun, this would be a striking simple image to emulate. However, as such it provides a poor match to the image of substitution in Fanghui’s previous line, in which white feathers turned out to be, not birds, but lotus blossoms. In fact, we may begin to wonder whether Du Fu himself meant “bug” literally, or whether it was a part of the tree itself, correlating with the “vermillion fruit” in the next line. (The poem comes from a set about cleaning up an orchard.) Ouyang Xiu helps resolve the issue with a
———
ዧ, Du shi xiangzhu, 5:23.2029. Owen’s translation (Anthology, 439) adds “as I” to line 4 but otherwise leaves implicit these different relationships: “Wisp of cloud, the sky shares such distance, / endless night, the moon same as I in solitude. / Setting sun, the mind still has vigor; / autumn wind, sickness almost cured.” As Hou notes, the supposed fault has not prevented these from being famous lines that have lasted a thousand ages. 40 Another way to understand the structure is to say that this is an “inversion,” in which the action comes before the actor. I feel that “inversions” are often, if not always, explainable as a “discovery” structure, which is familiar enough in modern Chinese. In such a structure, when a new thing is perceived, the action of the thing is mentioned first. For example, Qian bian laile liangge xuesheng, “In front come (aspect marker) two (counter) student”: “Two students came up in front.” In English the introduction of a new “player” is signaled by the absence of a definite article (as above), with sometimes the additional use of “there” as a pseudo-subject: “There were two students approaching in front.” My explanation can still be applied to islands that are not perceived because they are under water. This is still the discovery of a new situation (the absence of something known to have existed in a certain place) rather than a comment on the islands. 41 գՂԳૄស, Du shi xiangzhu, 1:1.16; Yoshikawa, To Ho, 1:216.
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couplet in which “green bug” almost certainly is an image of substitution for small flower buds or leaf-buds: 㔮೨ᳯ᳓⏴⏉㌃㧘ጯ⢛⪉⪲⠟㕍ⳗ “Before the frost the River’s waters rub cyan copper; / behind the bank water-chestnut leaves raise aloft green bugs.” (The structure of Ouyang’s comparison, a SVO construction in which the Object metaphorically describes the appearance of the Subject, is identical to Du Fu’s “River lotus wave white feathers,” quoted above.) Fanghui’s pagoda tree is a plant with green seed-pods that look like beetles on stiff wires or hair-pins. (“Green-bug hairpins” are common in descriptions of lovely ladies and their costumes). It seems clear that line 168-4 refers to these seed pods. The ingenuity of this couplet is impressive, and one does not have to necessarily recognize the echoes of Du Fu to appreciate it.42 The third couplets in these two poems are every bit as ambitious as the second couplets, perhaps more so. In the morning poem, the reader may wonder why the poet chooses to mention buffalo and thorn-elms, myna birds and trichosanthes vines. The myna is a common bird in China. Trichosanthes, however, is virtually unknown in Chinese poetry of the Tang and Song. Perhaps Fanghui is consciously extending Mei Yaochen’s program of including objects and creatures that had hitherto been ignored by poets. In 1048 Mei Yaochen wrote a pentametrical Regulated Verse about a pair of myna birds riding on an ox. 43 Now Fanghui will add an “unpoetic” vine to the bird. As for the thorn-elm, a tree unknown in other Tang or Song poetry, the Chinese name is literally “mountain-pivot”; the morpheme ‘mountain,’ corresponds to the ‘water’ of “water buffalo” in line 167-5. (“Water” and “mountain” form a common compound “in which nature’s binary structure is manifest, and they are the general categories [that] classify the particularities of a given scene.”) 44 This little trick is enough to justify the first (and last?) walk-on part by the thorn-elm in a Chinese poem. In the evening poem, the round fan is a bit of a problem. It inevitably brings to mind stories and poems in which a discarded fan is a metaphor for the abandoned lover, hardly an appropriate match for the gusto of the foreign chairs. I think we can understand what Fanghui is doing if we put aside the habit of looking for paired allusions that are in some way commensurate. An alternative strategy is to look for a predecessor line that provides an association between the terms that allows us to justify their co-appearance in this couplet. (Cf. honkadori in Japanese poetics.) The line I propose is by Liu Yuxi: ⊕⠀⢫ᐥཕ⹗ਛ “White feathers and
———
42 Du Fu’s poem is ᓰ՛ᓻᔰਛॐ…קԿଈհԲ, Du shi xiangzhu, 4:20.1736. Ouyang Xiu’s is ಬܦᅃᔣᝫۂত, Ouyang Xiu quanji, 1:jushhi waiji.3.364. For pictures of the pagoda tree (also called scholar-tree), see http://www.canr.uconn.edu/plsci/mbrand/s/sopjap/sopjap1.html, accessed 15 January 2005. 43 ׄહᠨ。㍃, Mei Yaochen ji biannian jiaozhu, 2:18.470. 44 Stephen Owen, Traditional Chinese Poetry and Poetics, 93.
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folding chairs, within whistles and poem-chanting.” 45 Although Fanghui uses a different term for the fans, Liu’s line permits us to override the conventional sad associations of the “round fan.” At the same time, Fanghui revises his predecessor: he takes the chairs and transcends the feather fan because, in the cool of the evening, “there is little service left in a round fan.” We have to applaud Fanghui’s creativity in looking for ways to balance all the elements of these two poems to make variations on the several themes he saw entailed in the view from the Delightful! Pavilion. In addition, this pair of poems is significant as another clue that Fanghui was reading Han Yu during his time in Xuzhou, though it does not rise to the level of conclusive proof. Han Yu’s collection contains a pair of pentametrical Regulated Verses under the title 㑅ㆆ Idle Wanderings. These anticipate some characteristics of He Zhu’s Morning and Evening Views at the Delightful! Pavilion, Two Poems: they carry words over from one poem to the other; they have a similar structure; and they appear to have been written on different occasions. 46 Unlike He Zhu, however, Han makes no attempt to follow the same metrical patterns in the two poems. Two other candidates for inspiration are Xu Hun ⸵Ḅ (b. 791?) and Wen Tingyun. Xu has one pair of poems on a Brook Pavilion that repeat words and describe different times of the day (in the first poem the moon comes out to escort a monk home; the second begins with sleep but has only daytime scenes). Unlike Han Yu, Xu Hun uses only regulated lines and regulated sequences of line types (but he does not repeat the structure in both poems as He Zhu does). 47 Wen has a pair of poems sharing diction; his poems are nearly identical in the progression of line types (all but one line are fully regulated). 48 Paired verses of all genres are common in Tang and Song poetry, and a separate monograph could be written on all the possibilities that are opened up when one chooses to compose poems in pairs. We have mentioned possible Tang predecessors to He Zhu’s poems, not to suggest that Fanghui imitated any one of them, but to show that the poets we know he read had made some of the same choices.
RHYMED OPENING COUPLETS The years 1083–85 represent the first peak in pentametrical Regulated Verse
———
Liu’s poem is ሟᤀ؆ಷស୯ড়……, QTS, 11:361.4075. See the comments in Han Yu quanji jiaozhu, 2:10.731. Translation, von Zach, X.11–12. 47 QTS, 16.529.6053. The first poem is B 1 D 1, A 2 B 1, C 1 D 2, A 2 B 1. Note that the first line rhymes. The second is A 1 B 1, C 2 D 2, A 1 B 1, C 2 D 1. 48 ֜۫ۃ, SBBY edition, 3.13a. The first poem is B 1 D 1, A 1 B 1, C 2 D 1, A 1 B 1. The second poem is (B 2) D 1, A 1 B 1, C 1 D 1, A 1 B 1. Both poems rhyme the first line. Mou Huaichuan sees an important coded allusion at the end of the first poem, which, if valid, would add another feature distinguishing this pair from He Zhu’s project. See Rediscovering, 16. 45 46
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output (preserved) for He Zhu: seventeen poems. The second peak, twenty-one poems, will come in 1088–90, when Fanghui is in Liyang. En route to Jiangxia in 1095–96, he will write six pentametrical Regulated Verses, then four after arriving at Jiangxia in 1096–97; that is his third and last known peak of activity in the genre. In these three peak periods, but especially at Xuzhou in 1083–85, Fanghui shows an atypical interest in what we shall call a DB opening, that is, an opening line of the D type followed by a line of the B type. We shall also refer to such a poem as a “DB poem.” The D line, ending in a level tone, rhymes. It is unusual for pentametrical poetry to rhyme the first line. Rhyme in the first line is more necessary in heptametrical poems because, I believe, there is more complexity within the longer line, requiring a stronger “punctuation” to establish the line-unit at the beginning of the poem. Regardless of how subtle and variable the relationships among the parts of the pentasyllabic line may be, the standard 2 || 3 rhythm of the syllables limits the number of elements one must “juggle” within a line. If, for whatever reason, a poet decides to rhyme the first line, either a DB or a BD opening will do the job; whether the second syllable of the first line is deflected (D type) or level (B) would seem to matter little. Therefore, it comes as something of a surprise to discover that in pentametrical Regulated Verse the BD opening is unpopular with poets, including He Zhu. The key to the choice, as we shall see, is that the opening structure actually determines the metric structure of the poem as a whole. The four possible opening structures are not evenly or randomly distributed across the works of any poet, and different poets and different periods exhibit different preferences. As the pie charts below show, Tang poets, as represented by Wang Wei, Li Bo, Qian Qi ㍦ (710?–82?), Zhang Ji, and Han Yu, prefer the unrhymed openings AB and CD). 49 Han Yu, with a relatively small corpus of pentametrical Regulated Verse, is most like He Zhu in devoting one fourth of that corpus to poems with rhymed opening lines (DB and BD). However, like the other Tang poets, his unrhymed openings are much more evenly split between AB and CD structures.
——— 49 These statistics are based on collections of poems that were readily available to me in a format that segregated pentametrical Regulated Verse: the Kyoto University concordance to Wang Wei, Tabei Fumio’s concordance to Qian Qi, Hiraoka Takeo’s concordance to Zhang Ji, Han Yu quanji jiaozhu, Guo Xiangzheng ji, Huang Tingjian quanji, and Zhang Lei ji. My statistics for Li Bo come from a paper presented in May 1997 at the Second International Conference on Tang and Song Poetry in Xiangtan, Hunan, by Wai Kam-moon of Hong Kong Baptist University. What appears to be a published version of the paper under a slightly different title is listed in the Bibliography. All the Tang poets, with the exception of Li Bo and Han Yu, have been considered good poets in the genre at issue. To eliminate one variable, I excluded extended Regulated Verse where they were interspersed with octaves, although the He Zhu statistics do include two pailü. Note that, faced with such a large universe of poems, I did not look beyond the opening lines for anomalies such as the extensive use of non-regulated lines or the ordering of regulated couplets in non-regulated sequences (“losing the adhesion”).
209
PENTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE
He Zhu N =72
Wa ng We i N =103
BD
BD
4%
DB
Li Bo N =112
DB
7%
DB
14 %
16%
22%
BD 3%
AB
AB
40%
44%
AB
CD
63%
11%
CD
CD
39%
37%
Qian Qi N = 13 9
DB 6%
Han Yu N = 3 5
Zha ng J i N =128
BD
BD DB
4%
BD
7%
11%
8% DB AB
CD
AB
35%
55%
AB
14 %
4 1%
47% CD 38% CD 34%
Fanghui, in contrast, uses CD openings far less often than AB forms. (In fact, they are less common than even his rhymed DB openings until mid-1091; from that point on, as CD structures rise to 22% of the remaining 23 poems in this corpus, AB openings are still favored, at 65 %.) This point sets the pre-1091 He Zhu apart from the Song poets analyzed here as well as from the Tang poets. Guo Xiang zheng N = 19 5
Huang Ting jian N = 117
Zhang Lei N = 3 2 6
BD
BD
2% DB BD CD
1%
DB
6 % 1%
DB
2%
16 %
3%
CD
CD
30%
27%
AB AB
66%
AB 69%
77%
Guo Xiangzheng, Huang Tingjian, and Zhang Lei are like He Zhu in that they greatly prefer AB openings over CD poems; however, they avoid rhymed DB and BD openings even more than their Tang counterparts, and in this they part company with He Zhu (and Han Yu). If we count all of Fanghui’s Xuzhou pentametrical Regulated Verses from 1083 through 1085, the numbers are: AB, ten poems; CD, two poems; and DB, five
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poems. The absence of BD poems does not surprise us; they are the least popular option in all our poets and among He Zhu’s works appear only in 1089–91 (one per year). What is remarkable, again, is the excess of DB poems over CD poems. The fact that all five pentametrical Regulated Verses written in 1084 are AB poems is also interesting. Though it is favored by all the poets listed above, Fanghui had used this form only once previously, in the 1078 poem Accusing Myself (Poem 161). To summarize, then: Fanghui was more prone to consider rhymed first lines than some of his contemporaries and most Tang poets. What the statistics do not tell us is why, or to what effect. Unfortunately, for all the helpful material that has been published in recent decades about meter in Chinese poetry, almost nothing is said about the aesthetic effects of metrical choices. To some extent, this is natural: meter is only one of a host of factors that create poetic effects, and surely it has different effects in different environments. Nevertheless, when we see Fanghui markedly altering his metric predilections, we have to believe that he did so consciously and for some reason. Let us offer the following speculations about Fanghui’s penchant for AB and DB poems. As mentioned above, the opening of a poem has consequences for the sequence of line types. A poem that begins with a deflected tone in the second syllable, whether the first line rhymes (D-type) or not (A-type), will continue with line types BCDABCD. The D lines, lines 4 and 8, look like this (with the caesura marked): 䂾䃂㩷㫓㩷䃂䂾䂾. This is the only line type that ends with two level tones. I suggest that, especially at the end of a poem, these two final syllables can be drawn out for a more sonorous ending. In contrast, a poem whose second syllable is a level tone must end with a B line. The last three syllables of the poem will then be somewhat choppier than in a D line: 䂾䂾㩷㫓㩷٨٨٤. Perhaps equally significant is the fact that a B line has only one regulated form; unlike the A, C, and D lines, changing the tone category of the first syllable will cause the line to become unregulated. As a result, a poem that begins with a level tone in the second syllable (B or C lines) can only end in one immutable sequence of tones, the line we label B 1 on our diagrams of the poems. This may be one key to the relative paucity of BD poems: as the only poem type that generates a poem with three B lines (BDABCDAB), the BD opening is thus the most restrictive. The alternate type that opens with a rhyming line, the DB form, has three D lines: DBCDABCD. Perhaps most poets preferred the non-rhyming openings because they resulted in two lines of each type, a more balanced form: ABCDABCD or CDABCDAB. If my theory that Fanghui, as a poet who loved the music of language, favored the D-type line because it ended in two level tones is correct, it may explain why his favorite form after the AB one was the DB form: only it gave him three sonorous D-type lines. Perhaps the three lines ending in two even tones made it particularly well suited for singing or chanting at a farewell party. This would explain why all but one of
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211
He Zhu’s poems to see someone off use the DB opening. 50 Unfortunately, the very little information we have about the singing of poems applies to heptametrical compositions. 51 The two poems under the title ੱㆆ⊕㔕⩑ੑ㚂 Harmonizing with Someone’s Two Poems on an Excursion to the White Cloud Villa use the DB opening. 52 The fact that this pair of 1085 poems “harmonizes” with someone else’s compositions raises the question of whether Fanghui’s rhyme structure, including the rhymed first lines, owes anything to the original poems. 53 That is an unanswerable question. “Harmonizing,” by Song times, usually involved using the rhymes of the original poem, but that could mean anything from simply using the same rhyme category, to using the same rhyme words, to using the same rhyme words in the same order—and even at the latter extreme, my observations have been that the harmonizing poet could still dispose of the potential rhyme in the first line in any way he pleased. Without access to the original poem, we cannot tell how much influence it has on the form of the “harmonizing” poem. The headnote tells us the poems were dashed off with a “running brush,” but the poems are by no means unimaginative. Having discussed the overall meter above, we shall look now at other details of craftsmanship. 171 ේ㊁ᱜᤐ㘑
4
٤٨٨٤٤ ⊓⥃৻㉎ห ٤٤٨٨٤ 㒶᥍ᤨᧂቯ ٤٤٤٨٨ ฎᕁ┆ ٤٨٨٤٤ ጊ⪭ㆶ ٤٨ع٤٨ Ḻᵹᓳㅢ ٤٤٨٨٤
In the wilds on the plain: spring breeze. D1 Climbing up to look, we share our intoxication. B1 Overcast and clear, the season is still unsettled; C2 present and past, what end is there to longings? D1 The posture of the hills drops but rises again; (A4) the flow of the stream chokes, breaks through once more. B1
——— 50 The exception is Poem 229 (1097). The DB poems sending people off are 163, 164 (1083), the two poems we are about to translate (1085), 175 (1085), 190 (1089), 197 (1090), and 230 (1098). 51 See Yang Xiaoai, “Zhuo qiangzi chang haoshi.” 52 5.12546; 5.3a. It is the headnote, not the title, that tells us this is a farewell poem. Fanghui and his friends visited Zhang Zhonglian at his White Cloud Villa, which they had reached by boat after going out one of the city gates; perhaps he had seen them back to the city and was returning to his lodge. 53 The original poems were assembled out of lines from various ancient poets by a man from his native place, Duan Xun ᇬ on the equivalent of 26 February. Duan died suddenly about a fortnight later. It seems that in his grief Fanghui cannot bear to name Duan in the title.
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㓩ำᣇ⥄ᓧ ٨٤٤٨٨ น⟴Ὼ㡨 ٨٨٨٤٤
The hermit gentleman is now at his ease; C1 to be envied, this wild extramundane goose. D2
Notes: 171-7/ The phrase translated “now at his ease” denotes a feeling of satisfaction with one’s life. 171-8/ The wild goose flying high in obscurity and safe from the hunter is often an image for the person who has escaped the tribulations of society, in this case Zhang Zhonglian. Envy for the goose is a conventional way to close a poem—Ouyang Xiu and Su Shi do it, but there are several Tang precedents, also. 54
Semantic parallelism within the second couplet of this first poem is particularly complex. Meteorological contrasts are correlated with the time words “present” and “past.” We could explain that as a matter of “internal parallelism.” That is a well-known practice in which the correlation between A and B in one line matches the correlation between X and Y in the next line, but there is no semantic correlation between A and X or B and Y. In this case, “overcast and clear” are opposites, as are “present” and “past”; “overcast” and “present” need have nothing else in common. Certainly it is best to see “season yet unsettled” and “longings what end?” as cases of internal parallelism. Note that rather than finding a negative verb to match “yet unsettled,” Fanghui uses the rhetorical question “what end?” to imply a negative (the question is a way of stating that there is no exhausting of thoughts). Beyond the mechanics of parallelism, we must stress that lines 171-3 and 4 work together to create an evocative indeterminacy. Let us also note that the alternation of cloudy and clear weather can take place only in time. On this level, “clear and cloudy weather” have temporal significance to parallel “present and past” in the next line and in fact it appears to be the changes in weather that provoke the speaker to muse on the passing of the ages on a larger scale. If the second couplet is built on contemplation of the temporal dimensions of the scene, the third describes spatial movements. Naturally, movement requires time; indeed, the words huan and fu, translated “again” and “once more” basically indicate repetition in time. (On some level this is another expression of the cyclical time we talked about earlier in this chapter, but I think that is very peripheral here.) Note that the word in line 171-5 translated “posture” designates what we might call a constant state of incipiency, while the matching “flow” of a stream in the next line names an unchanging motion. Hills and streams are paradigmatic complementary opposites (the mountain-water cliché is softened here by the use of a more specific word, “stream,” for one of the terms), yet insofar as hills can seem
———
54 Ouyang’s poem is Հऴ۩ٵܧԿֆ, Ouyang Xiu quanji, 1: jushiji 13.99. It is a pentametrical Regulated Verse in sixteen lines. In five poems by Su Shi, hong ‘wild goose’ is the last word in the poem. One of these ends with “extramundane goose” that the speaker “envies,” but the poem’s ascription to Su Shi is uncertain: ᠲ࠸ةᄎ۔ഘ, SSSJ, 8:47.2523.
PENTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE
213
to move and streams persist in the same course, each component of the scene participates in the nature of the other. One metrical detail: the single tonal violation, in line 171-5, produces a deflected–level–deflected pattern that mimics the drop–rise–drop of the hills. The second poem of the pair expresses a conventional intention to join in the idyllic life of the White Cloud Villa: 172 นᗲ⊕㔕⠃
4
8
٨٨٨٤٤ ೨Ḻ᯲㊒◖ ٤٤٨٨٤ ⠹᮴৻ᓣਅ ٤٤ع٨٨ ⥓྾㈘ห ٨٨٨٤٤ ୱቸ⚳ᓧ ٨٨٤٤٨ 㙍↢ነᱝਛ ٤٤٨٨٤ 㗍ᾘᄙ⒳⒐ ٨٤٤٨٨ Ს㈬⋄ⓨ ٨٨٨٤٤
To be treasured, this Old Gent of the White Clouds: D2 On the brook in front he moors a tented fishing boat. B1 Tiller and woodcutter come with him down one path; (C4) he draws water and pounds grain like the neighbors on four sides. D2 A weary officer, what have I to show for it in the end? A1 my remaining life will be spent in this place. B1 First I’ll trouble him to plant more sorghum C1 to keep our brew-cups from standing empty. D2
Note: 172-7–8/ Sorghum is one grain fermented to make brew.
Perhaps because of the relatively straightforward semantic parallelism of the second couplet, Fanghui makes no attempt to establish similar lexical correlations in the last three syllables of lines 172-5 and 6, except on the level of meter. The antithetical tonal pattern in those two lines is perfect. “In this place” (172-6) refers to Zhang Zhonglian’s White Cloud Villa, but I think the phrase has special resonances. It reminds us of Tao Yuanming’s famous line “In this (ci zhong) there is some true significance; / I want to expound it but have lost the words.” 55 Ouyang Xiu clearly alludes to Tao in the last couplet of a heptametrical Regulated Verse: ᱝਛ⥄ᔓ⸒⿰㧘∛ቴ₈ႊᄺ৻ᮻ “In this (ci zhong) there is a flavor for which the words are lost; / but this ill traveler can still accept one goblet.” 56 The term translated “flavor” can overlap in meaning with
——— 55 The conclusion of Tao’s Drinking Wine, number five, adapted from Stephen Owen’s translation in Anthology, 316. 56 ࡉ( ᦰࠊܨ1071), Ouyang Xiu quanji, 1: Jushi ji 14.109. The antecedent for “this” is the scene of chrysanthemums along a pathway and white gulls over a lake in the preceding couplet.
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Tao’s “significance.” Thus, in the third couplet of a Regulated Verse by Mei Yaochen on a monk’s studio, the evocation of Tao Yuanming is similar: ৻ᖗᱝ ਛ⿰㧘⪦㎷⊝น㥱 “Once one is awakened to the flavor of this (ci zhong); / the myriad karmas are made equal, every one.” “Flavor” can also be a gusto that overlaps with “pleasure.” “In this” is linked with “pleasure” in the concluding couplets of two of Mei’s Ancient Verses: ⡙ᖗᱝਛᮔ㧘₈ⷹủ㝼 “You are awakened to the pleasure in this (ci zhong), / and still view the fish on the Hao River”; and ૉะᱝਛᮔ㧘↪ᝥਫ➁ᤨ “Just attend to the pleasure in this (ci zhong); / whether [the court] uses you or not is tied to the times.”57 While ci zhong “in this” can be used without these connotations, I think Fanghui’s line gains desired overtones when we are aware of the phrase’s association with unnamable meaning, flavor, and pleasure. Perhaps these overtones compensate for the weak semantic parallelism in the third couplet. Chen Shizhong left Xuzhou in the sixth month of Yuanfeng 8 (1085), occasioning another DB poem, ㅍ㒸ொᡤቭ㔅Ḵ Seeing off Chen Chuandao for a substitute post at Shuanggou. 58 175 ᒕᬸᗐ⊓⥃
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٨٨٨٤٤ 㑅㔕⼔ᣣ㒶 ٤٤٨٨٤ 㕍⫱ᴼ᳓㑪 ٤٤ع٨٨ ฎᧁṽᷓ ٨٨٨٤٤ ᙥ㉎⋄ਛ‛ ٤٨٤٤٨ ⺕⡞Ỉ⇎ี ٤٤٨٨٤ ④ဌ㙃∿ቴ ٤٤غع٨ デ⧯ὑᔃ ٤٨٨٤٤
You slow the oars; I think of you climbing to overlook. D2 Idle clouds screen off the sun and make a heavy day. B1 Green rushes—the Si River so vast; (C4) ancient trees—the Han Shrine so deep. D2 You should be getting drunk on the Thing in the Cup; A2 who hearkens to intoning by the marsh? B1 In the precinct of meditation, a traveler nurses his illness; (C6) to part lightly—how can he bear it? D1
Notes: 175-3/ The Si River flows through Xuzhou.
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57 The poems are ቖց༚ೃࣞੌನ, Mei Yaochen ji biannian jiaozhu, 1:14.230 (1044), ᦓՂԳጰ ឆഘ, 2:15.298 (1045), and ಬలᖗհఽࢭ௧ڠ, 2:18.445 (1048). For Zhuangzi’s excursion on the Hao River, see Watson’s translation, 188–89 or Graham’s, 123. 58 5.12547, 5.4a. Shuanggou may not have been very far from Xuzhou; I provisionally identify it with the town by that name at the southeast corner of Xu Prefecture in Shandong West Circuit under the Jin in the twelfth century. That town is no more than 40 km away by water.
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175-5/ The Thing in the Cup is brew. The term comes from Tao Yuanming’s Reproving my Sons, in Burton Watson’s translation, “If this is the luck Heaven sends me, / then pour me the ‘thing in the cup’!” 59 175-6/ The one “intoning by the marsh” is Qu Yuan. His model of loyalty and anguish is rejected here in favor of Tao Yuanming’s escape from care. 175-7/ Fanghui is probably lodging in a Buddhist temple to convalesce.
The tonal violation in line 175-3 is relatively trivial, but it calls our attention to an apparent mismatch between the name of a river (Si) and the corresponding name in the next line, which is the name of a dynasty (Han, in line 4). The seeming discrepancy gets more interesting when we remember that there is a Han River, the river that gives its name to the region where Liu Bang began the struggles that would lead to the founding of the dynasty. Thus, when Fanghui refers to the dynasty, he is using what in context is the secondary or inapplicable meaning of the name to match the Si River in the previous line. This is a type of parallelism-by-pun, which we discuss in more detail below. The tonal violation line 175-7 is unexceptional and supports poetic closure (see p. 193). Beyond purely formal considerations, however, the departure from meter works with the rhetorical question in line 175-8 to manifest frustration and regret. Returning to the question of the DB format, we can also propose several things in this poem that would have been lost or altered without it. The middle couplets would come in a different order in the CD or BD format: instead of the CDAB lines we see, ABCD would have been mandated. Assuming the poet liked the couplets individually as he wrote them, he could have simply reversed their order. However, that would have destroyed the overall progression of the poem from scene to feeling, from imagistic language to direct address to Chen Shizhong. One gets the impression that middle couplets are where the poet’s creativity is exercised most, and surely they are not discarded easily; to the extent that these lines in this order achieved what Fanghui wanted, he had to use an AB or DB format. Another argument in favor of the AB or DB format is that these are the only environments in which one can end with the D line. The expression ruo wei xin “how can [the traveler] bear it?” and its much more common equivalent ruo wei qing ⧯ὑᖱ, require those final two level tones when they come at the end of a line. These expressions always do come at the end of lines, but more importantly, they have strong closural force at the end of a poem: seven of the twelve instances of ruo wei qing in Tang poems come in the concluding line. 60 Although is difficult to
——— 59
Mair, Columbia Anthology of Traditional Chinese Literature, 183. The other five cases place the expression in the second line—the same is true of the single Tang example of ruo wei xin—so it can be used to set the mood in the opening couplet also. (A closural device can be used elsewhere to different effect, but not all phrases can be moved to the end of a poem and support closure.) In the Song, Wang Yucheng and Li Zhi use ruo wei qing in the last line and Chao Yuezhi uses it in the second line. Lu You and Yang Wanli, both coming after He Zhu, are the only poets I know of who deploy the expression in other positions as well. 60
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judge whether the ending of this poem is particularly “musical” or plaintive because of the final two level tones, we should note that wei xin or wei qing are read as a single expression (ruo is the question word, ‘how is it possible’); therefore, those two syllables could easily be prolonged in recitation to enhance the closure and the feeling. 61 We mentioned above that Fanghui does not limit himself to the middle couplets in exploring linguistic subtleties. Line 175-2 has a structure that we might typically find in the middle couplets of Tang poetry: SUBJECT–VERB– OBJECT–VERB. In prose, the particle er would coordinate the verbs: ⼔ᣣ⠰㒶 “screening the sun, they make overcast.” Without the particle, and particularly when there is no habitual link between the two verbs, the concision of this structure can be very effective; it seems to express something just beyond the ability of language to encompass it. Perhaps the finest example is Du Fu’s magnificent heptametrical couplet ᳯ㑆ᵄᶉᄤḝ㧘Ⴇ㘑㔕ធ㒶 “Within the River rushing waves encompass the sky [and] churn; / on the pass wind-blown clouds, touching the earth, make shade.” 62 Another thing to note about Fanghui’s second line is that the phrase translated “screen off the sun” is probably without direct precedent in poetry. It is not seen in Tang poetry; in the Song, it occurs once in a poem, whose date I do not know, by Zhang Lei. It does occur four times in lyrics, but only one of these lyrics, by Yuan Jiang ర⛖ (1008–83), could have been written during or before He Zhu’s lifetime. (The agent screening the sun in Yuan’s lyric is not clouds but a gauzy curtain.) If we look for references to “screening off the moon,” however, we find at least one interesting precedent: this couplet by Bo Juyi: 㔺┻ً᾽ᓇ㧘ᾍ᧻⼔ “Dewy bamboo steals the shadows of the lamp; / smoky pines screen the brightness of the moon.” 63 It is possible that Fanghui’s line 175-2 was written with this couplet in mind. One reason for picking out Bo Juyi’s couplet as a likely inspiration for Fanghui’s line is that “screening the moon” is nearly as rare a phrase as “screening the sun”; there are few other precedents for using this verb with such celestial objects. Metrical conformity between Fanghui’s line 2 and Bo’s “screening the moon” line (line 6 in his poem)—both are B1 lines—may have contributed to the recollection of the precedent. There is more: the final word in each of Bo’s lines can be a verb, so one could read the couplet “Dewy bamboo steals the lamp to cast its image; / smoky pines screen the moon and are brightened. Ming (brightness/bright/brighten) is commonly a verb, but ying (image/cast an
——— 61 See Zhang Xiang, Shi ci qu yuci huishi, 96–97. Zhang asserts the existence of a slight pause between ruo and what follows it, offering as an example the poem under discussion. 62 Stephen Owen’s translation, “Between river’s margins the waves churn level with the sky, / wind-driven clouds over passes cast shadows touching earth,” captures the power of the couplet without attempting the impossible task of reflecting the syntax. Anthology, 434. Du shi xiangzhu, 4:17.1484. 63 ሟኄટՔլ༆ߠബ, QTS, 14:449.5070.
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image) is usually a noun, so such a reading of the first line seems a bit forced. However, tension between two lines that seem at first glance to have the same structure but whose corresponding words don’t have exactly the same range of usage is common in Tang poetry; it constitutes one of the points of fascination in parallel couplets. Fanghui’s line 175-2 and Bo’s line 6, identical in meter and sharing a rare use of the verb “screen off,” also stand in a relationship of opposition. The obvious oppositions are between moon and sun, and brightness and shade. This leads to a more interesting observation about perception. Pines in the night grow bright from moonlight filtering through their branches, but clouds over the sun do the opposite, if they are more than diaphanous stratus. Clouds that cover the sun darken relative to what is behind them. If Fanghui turned “smoky pines screen the moon [and] brighten” into “Idle clouds screen the sun [and] darken,” he has achieved a subtle antithetical revision of a line by one of the most commonly read poets of his time. Perhaps this is a typical Song Dynasty response to the “anxiety of influence.” But Jonathan Chaves’ words are also applicable here: “Sung poets were more concerned than any of their predecessors to find precisely the right language for the accurate evocation of a particular phenomenon or event, so that it could not possibly be confused with another one.” 64 Although this is only a scene Fanghui imagined someone else was seeing as he paused in his journey away from Xuzhou, he found the right words to bring it to life. This mixed motivation that involves both exceeding a predecessor (even if the precedent is only deep in one’s memory and not consciously before one) and capturing the particularity of a scene in words can arguably be found in an AB poem from the eighth month of 1085: ⥄㈁ㆶᓢਛ On the Road Returning from Yun to Xu. (Yunzhou was about 200 km north-northwest of Xuzhou.)65 177
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ㆊᣂ㔎 ٨٨٤٤٨ ⴕ㔕ᑲᰮᶭ ٤٤٨٨٤ ጊᎹਰ ٤٤غع٨ ⑰㤠ඨ㕍႓ ٤٨٨٤٤
Eighth month: there is a fresh rain passing; A1 moving clouds tease out the evening cool. B1 Mountains and rivers, now bright now dark; (C6) millet and broomcorn millet, half green half yellow. D1
——— 64 “‘Not the Way of Poetry’,” 199, emphasis in the original. As Chaves points out on p. 212 in the same article, “experiential and literary modes of inspiration” can play “complementary and interpenetrating roles.” His essay should be read in conjunction with my “Can Latecomers Get There First?” in the same issue of C.L.E.A.R., where the focus is on the complexities of literary modes of inspiration. 65 5.12547; 5.4b.
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⌀ ٤٨٤٤٨ ᧲ㆶ㕖䛝 ٤٤غ٨٤ ᖘᖘႲⵣ ٤٤٤٨٨ ή〝ਇ⟠ ٤٨٨٤٤
Going west, what was it all about? A2 returning east, it is not my homeland. (B2) Amid the dust and dirt, vast and unending, C2 no road where sheep are not being lost. D1
Note: 177-8/ The losing of sheep signifies, in at least two ancient parables, the slipping away of some truth that would have enabled one to make sense of contradictions or find the secret to life. The mention of “roads” suggests that we look first to the Liezi, in which the tale is told of a man who sends out hordes of people to search for his lost sheep. The sheep is not found; its owner reports to his neighbor, Yang Zhu, that there were too many forks in the road, so they did not know which to take. Yang Zhu appears to find this depressing, but his disciples cannot get him to tell them why. Later, a man who understands Yang Zhu explains: where there are divergences, one should return to the point before the differences appear: “go back to where they are the same, restore the missing and find the lost.” 66 Another tale occasionally alluded to by Song poets is found in the Zhuangzi: two boys lose their sheep, one because he was studying, the other because he was playing a game—the point is that although we may value one pursuit over another, they are equally injurious to the Way. 67 Fanghui appears to generalize from these stories a general despair over ever finding his way in life; the reference to roads is especially appropriate for a journey poem.
The tonal violations in line 177-3 alert us to the possibility that these seemingly simple descriptions of a landscape might conceal more complexity. When we read this line together with the next one, we might notice that ming (meing3a) and qing (tsheing4) rhyme 68 and that hui (hwei; dark) and huang (ghwang; yellow) begin with dorsal spirants (one aspirated, one voiced). Perhaps the pairs ming-hui and qing-huang have some significance. These two lines portray the movement of dark and bright across the landscape and the green and yellow of crops in different fields. The movement of dark and bright is an embodiment of the cycles of change we have already noted as important to He Zhu. The different states of the crops signify a transitional point in time (between summer and autumn, growth and harvest), a favorite place for He Zhu to situate a poem. Beyond that, however, there are other reasons why Fanghui might want to stress his observation of the “half green, half yellow” crops, reasons related to our
——— 66 A. C. Graham, tr., The Book of Lieh-tz, 175–76. The story is a double parable; I have related only the part pertaining to the sheep. 67 A. C. Graham, Chuang Tz, 201–2; Watson, The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu, 101–2. 68 The numbers in subscript suggest that these syllables are merely slant rhyme; Su Shi’s collection contains three poems in which they do appear to rhyme: ࡉ֞യڠննଈհԿ (1077), ڻᣉᏥ (1078), and one titleless poem: SSSJ, 3:15.720; 3:16.821; and 8:addendum.2784, respectively.
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speculations on the rewriting of the Bo Juyi line in the previous poem. Despite the seeming botanical precision of the translation, I have not found any poem prior to He Zhu that treated “millet and broomcorn millet” as anything but a single term for millet or for crops in general. Thus, he would be truly unique if he were distinguishing between them and saying that one kind of millet is still green while the other is yellow and ready for harvest. It is more likely that he is saying different fields are at different stages of growth or, perhaps, that they appear now yellow, now grey/green/dark (qing has all these meanings), as the scattered clouds pass over and cast their shadows. Whatever he is observing, Fanghui is finding precise and unprecedented language to describe it; poets almost never talk about the color of “millet and broomcorn millet.” In the one case I have found where a poet does mention their color, he says that north and south of the village through which he is passing these crops are yellow. That case is a 1079 poem by Huang Tingjian, whose work Fanghui must have been aware of at this time, if not earlier. The poem was written on a journey, expressing homesickness and lamenting how long the “forking roads” are—note that Huang’s commentator is prompted to mention the Liezi parable of the lost sheep cited in our note to Fanghui’s line 177-8. 69 These coincidences open up the possibility that Fanghui, in his journey, remembered this poem and wished either to capture the difference in the view he saw or show off his more precise power of observation. The third couplet, marked by the non-regulated line 177-6, presents an extraordinarily complex case of parallelism-by-pun. “Going west” and “returning east” stand in obvious antithesis. In fact, the antithesis is so strong that it may have seemed wise to complicate the parallelism of the last three syllables of the two lines. A “literal” translation of these last syllables will help us see the difficulty of finding how the words correlate: “… truly what matter / …isn’t old homeland.” “Truly,” insofar as it marks an affirmative judgment, is relatively easy to grasp as corresponding to the negation, “isn’t.” 70 More subtle is the match between he shi (‘what matter,’ or ‘why’) and gu xiang (old homeland). Out of the hundreds of instances of he shi in Tang and Song poetry, three or four (all Tang) occur in parallel couplets and may illuminate Fanghui’s strategy.71
———
ᜯࣾሐխ, Shangu shi zhu, CSJC, 2252:bie.A.10–11. One precedent would be this third couplet in a pentametrical Regulated Verse by Wen Tingyun: ழढॾࠋᆏΔᄣဎॺਚၢ “Things of the season—to be sure, a fine festival; / the flowers of the year—not my old garden.” ബ՞խ֖Գ, QTS, 17:581.6742. Xin ‘to be sure’ in the first line is more or less equivalent to Fanghui’s zhen ‘truly.’ (In the context of the next line it also functions as a concessive particle.) 71 To get a manageable amount of data, I got a rough impression of which words typically fill the slot before the phrase he shi (like zhen in He Zhu’s line) and then searched for strings of each of those words plus he shi. This had the advantage of giving me mostly lines that were like Fanghui’s line in structure. 69 70
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This third couplet in a banquet song by Liu Changqing ഏ㐳 is a good place to start: ㉎⟓⍮㧘ᕲᷓᔓᱝりΓ”Drunken utterly—[I don’t] know what matter; / [your] grace is profound—[I have] forgotten this body,” paraphrasable as “It is of no consequence that I am drunk; / because of my host’s favor, I have been freed from my worldly cares.” 72 The correlation of “what” and “this” could be based on three features of the words: 1) they are both function words (not verbs or substantives); 2) both could, in different contexts, function alone as pronouns; and 3) “this” could be the answer to “what/which.” Let us now look at another example, from Liu Zongyuan ᩉቬర (773–819). It is again the third couplet in an octave: ᷓี੦㧘ኣ࿕ᚲ᰼ “Deep intoning [of poetry], what’s it matter, anyway? / Silence is what I want, for certain.” 73 The fact that the interrogative pronoun he and the relative objective pronoun suo can both be translated “what” is coincidental, but their shared general classification as function words is the key. In this example, we should also point out that shi can, in other contexts, be a verb (‘to serve’). It is likely that this justifies its being used to match the verb yu ‘to want’ in the next line. In fact, it may explain why this word frequently functions as a noun in its own line but correlates with verbs, even in regulated poems. This, as we shall see, is parallelism-by-pun. With these precedents in mind, let us return to He Zhu’s juxtaposition of he shi and gu xiang in “Going west, truly what matter? / returning east, isn’t old homeland.” Gu means not only ‘past,’ ‘former,’ ‘old,’ but also ‘therefore,’ ‘for this reason.’ Using that meaning (though it is irrelevant in the context of the phrase “old homeland”) allows us to match “empty word” against “empty word.” This is what I call parallelism-by-pun. 74 Since xiang and shi are both nouns, no such adjustment would seem to be necessary to justify their pairing in this poem. However, they don’t really belong to the same class of objects, unless one considers “affairs” and “home” to be antithetical on a scale of contentment. It may be significant that the character xiang (pronounced with a different tone) can represent the verb ‘to face.’ As noted above, shi also can be a verb, so these two characters share a potential versatility. Although I think Li Pin and Liu Zongyuan’s precedents by themselves could have stimulated He Zhu’s creative elaboration of their strategies, the following heptametrical couplet by Du Fu might have helped him develop his sense of borrowed parallelism: ₡㢬ਇ⍮⥰㧘㙶ὖૃ᰼ะੱ. A somewhat literal
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ຩ߬Օ֛۫ॼ୯ᨠݒ, QTS, 5:148.1507. ॣॸ৵༈ჟᄻ, QTS, 11:352.3947. 74 The phenomenon of parallelism-by-pun has long been recognized. For examples (including but not limited to the common color-word puns), see Wang Li, Shici gelü, 43 and Ye Jun et al., Zhongguo shixue, 249–50. The practice is called jie dui ଗኙ in Chinese and involves either 1) a pun based on sound or 2) a pun based on two meanings of a character (one of which is relevant in context and the other of which correlates with the corresponding character in the other line of the couplet, as in the examples we have just discussed). 72 73
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translation would run “A lone crane—I know not why—dances; / a starving crow—seemingly about to face me—cries”; a freer version that captures the normal grammar of the second line better would read “A lone crane dances for reasons unknown; / a starving crow seems to want to cry at me.” 75 “(For) what matter” and “facing/at person” both modify the verb that follows them (or, in English, precedes them: the crane dances for a reason; the crow cries towards someone). Moreover, these phrases both indicate that the birds may be interacting with the speaker in some way, though he cannot read the signs of conscious intention they seem to present to him. This overall similarity in the function of the phrases could be enough to override any breakdown in grammatical parallelism. There is another justification, however. The verb xiang ‘to face’ is probably grammaticalized in Du Fu’s line to function more like our prepositions ‘toward’ or ‘at,’ as in “cries at me.” As such, it falls into the vague category of “empty words” and matches he. Grammaticalization is not relevant to He Zhu’s line, but there is undoubtedly an etymological relationship between gu ‘former’ and gu ‘because’—cf. gushi, a ‘precedent,’ a former case that gives a reason for acting a certain way in the present—just as there is an etymological relationship between xiang ‘to face’ in order to cry ‘at.’ Contemplation of such relationships between the two meanings of a punning word, whether in Du Fu’s couplet or similar examples, could have provided a further impetus for He Zhu to experiment. The marvelous thing about this kind of parallel couplet is that the language makes perfect sense as it stands, but when you start demanding that it follow the rules of parallelism, the component characters obligingly reveal that they could run off in all directions of signification. Perhaps it is the mere fact that those characters have that trait that justifies their pairing through parallelism. In the next pentasyllabic Regulated Verse in his collection, written in the same eighth month of 1085, Fanghui uses the reduplicative youyou (translated “vast and unending” in line 177-7 above) at the head of the last line. This requires that he end the poem with a B line—the second syllable must be level in order to accommodate youyou, and of course the line must end in a level-tone rhyme. If he wants to end the poem this way but does not want to rhyme the first line of the poem, he must use a CD opening. This is would be unremarkable if he were not so much less inclined to use the CD configuration than the other Tang and Song poets surveyed above. Here it is, then, in his travel poem Leaving from Wang Village Early; On the Road, Sent to Li ZhifuΓᣧ⊔₺ਛነᥓῳ. 76 178 㔊㡆ᚓᓤᓮ
٤٤غع٨
———
The cock crows, sending forth the footmen and drivers; (C6)
ມඨ, Du shi xiangzhu, 2:11.944. 5.12547; 5.4b. Li Zhifu is Li Hui, to whom Fanghui would later send his “Expanding on the Four Sorrows,” Poem 012. 75 76
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㛧㚍ᐲ೨㒜 ٤٨٨٤٤ ᓧ㔎ੱ⠹ᣧ ٨٨٤٤٨ ㆻጊᣣㆧ ٤٤٨٨٤ ⟓ભᓳ ٨٤٤٨٨ ᦩวㆹήᦼ ٨٨٨٤٤ ⾶ૼ᳓ ٨٨٤٤٨ ᖘᖘᘨᚒᕁ ٤٤٨٨٤
driving our horses, we cross the bank in front. D1 Getting their rain, people plow early; A1 bordering the hills, the sun rises late. B1 How can we talk about stopping to rest? C1 out of reach, all hope that we may rendezvous. D2 I depend on the waters coming from the west, A1 vast and unending, to console my longings. B1
Notes: 178-2/ Pi, like the English word ‘bank,’ can mean either embankment or pond, but the few times “bank in front” is used in Tang and Song poetry, water is explicitly or implicitly in the picture. This may be a pond in front of the compound where Fanghui has spent the night. 178-5/ “Stopping to rest” can be taken literally in the context of the journey, or it can be understood figuratively, in the sense of giving up striving or giving up one’s post. 178-7/ This line must refer to one of the two canals that flow east from the capital. The Guangji Canal ᑝỦᴡ runs eastward into Liangshan Marsh ጊỷ. That is the area from which Fanghui was returning when he wrote On the Road Returning from Yun to Xu (Poem 177, above). The other canal is the Bian, flowing by south of Xuzhou. I think the Bian is the most likely referent for this line because it is named in the title of a heptametrical Regulated Verse Fanghui wrote for the same man in the same month of 1085. It would seem that in the space of a single month Fanghui went down from Yun to somewhere on the Bian (perhaps near the capital), said good-bye to Li Hui with the heptametrical poem, and then sent the present poem back to him. 77
The first couplet starts the poem awkwardly with a “lone level tone” in the fourth position of line 178-1 and no compensating violations in line 2; it as if the poet hasn’t “gotten the kinks out” as his party sets out in the early morning. The rest of the poem is tonally correct all the way through. In the second couplet, Fanghui describes the early-morning view. Semantically, the parallelism is a bit loose (only “early” and “late” belong to the same semantic field) but not problematic. More interesting is the reversal in logical relationships: getting rain is a cause for the peasants to plow early, but the sun’s still bordering the hills is the result of its rising slowly. Discovering this difference in how the ele-
——— 77 Although we will show in the next chapter that the majority of the poems that give us our initial glimpse of an acquaintance of He Zhu are heptametrical Regulated Verses, there is no certain way to know that the sequence of poems is as we have postulated. The heptametrical poem is Poem 255, Ղఎܑޕཕ ׀Left in Parting from Li Zhifu on the Bian, 6.12562; 6.6b.
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ments of each line are related to each other is part of the pleasure of reading the parallel couplets of Regulated Verse. There is a seeming breakdown of parallelism in the last three syllables of lines 178-5 and 6, “what further talking” and “distant, without hoping.” The key to reconciliation is that the two strings actually say the same thing: there is no use talking about X, and there is no hope for Y. On the level of meaning, then, correlation is maintained. Euphonious tonal regulation in the couplet also keeps us moving along. Still, the seeming looseness of the lexical correspondences reflects the speaker’s stress as he contemplates his predicaments vis-à-vis his career and his distant friend, Li Hui. This stress receives the consolation of the canal waters flowing from the direction of Li Hui in the last couplet, the only two lines in the poem that lack a staccato entering-tone syllable—in fact, no syllable in the last line has even a final consonant, making one suspect that the sound pattern has at least a subliminal onomatopoeic effect. Insofar as these particular syllables come in a particular tonal sequence comprising an AB couplet, the poet had to use a CD or BD opening to put this sequence where he wanted it at the end of the poem. A BD opening would have diluted the uniqueness of the conclusion slightly by adding one more rhyme to the poem; this could be another reason why Fanghui overcame his aversion to the CD opening in this case.
1087: IN THE CAPITAL Fanghui leaves only two pentametrical Regulated Verses from Yuanyou 1 (1086), both written on the way from Xuzhou to the capital (one AB, one DB); he leaves only three from 1087, all written in the capital (and all AB). All are solitary musings, even one poem written to show to a companion (in Yongcheng en route). One poem stands out because it is the only one of these five that does not use the phrases gu yuan ‘old garden [at home]’ or xiang xin 䛝ᔃ ‘mindfulness of home’; instead, the nostalgia is for a former sojourn in the capital. In the seventh month of 1087, we are told in the headnote, Fanghui was visiting two of the imperial parks every day because he was attached to the Directorate of Palace Buildings and had to inspect construction projects there. We know from a heptametrical Regulated Verse dated 1075 (Poem 232) that when he had lived in the capital as a young man eighteen to twenty years old he had enjoyed the romantic lustration festival in one of the imperial parks. Now, frequenting the same landscape, he is overcome by a feeling of loss and writes ၔᙿ⥟ㆆ Thinking Back on Old Excursions at the Western City. 78
——— 78
5.12548; 5.6a. For Fanghui’s early residence in the capital, see Zhong Zhenzhen, Bei Song ciren
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ㇳᄤᴰ㉿ ٤٨٤٤٨ ଐଐᓧ⥟ㆆ ٤٤٨٨٤ ✊⟜⚃⧍ᦇ ٨٤٤٨٨ ⛕▤⪦㷀⑺ ٤٨٨٤٤ ᩉ␊㖆㖜㒟 ٨٨٤٤٨ ⪛ᨉ⥱ ٤٤٨٨٤ ⪇ᐕ൩ᓳ ٤٤ع٨٨ ⺕ὑ㚢᧲ᵹ ٤٨٨٤٤
The western suburb, borough of a heavenly fount: A2 as in a mist, I regain my old wanderings. B1 Marquisette and gauzes—pink caltrop dawn; C1 strings and pipes—myriad cicada autumn. D1 Willows block the paths to the swings; A1 duckweed bogs down the lustration barges. B1 Speak no more of the flowery years of youth; (C4) who will halt for us the eastward flowing waters? D1
Notes: 184-1/ Heavenly is often an epithet for things associated with the capital. The heavenly fount is Jinming Lake ㊄ᳰ, excavated in 978 and used for naval exercises. The emperor would observe these at various times, so bridges and palaces were added over the years. 79 184-5/ Swings were used by upper class ladies for recreation. 184-6/ ᨉ in this line must be read in a level tone; otherwise this could not be a B line and the poem would not be fully regulated. A commentary to the Book of Changes makes it a borrowing for the level-tone chen ᴉ ‘to sink.’ Another commentator, Lu Deming 㒽ᓾ (556–627), uses the word ai (‘to block’) in glossing chen; perhaps Fanghui’s use of ai in the corresponding position of line 5 is a hint that he was drawing on these glosses on the Changes. 80 184-8/ Flowing rivers represent the inexorable passage of time; they flow east because that is the direction in which most rivers in China flow.
The nearly perfect regulation of this poem probably reflects the fact that it celebrates an imperial site, though it is a personal reflection, not an offering to the court. The single unregulated line (line 184-7) is actually very traditional: of seven instances of “speak no more” in Tang poetry, only one does not occur in the penultimate line of the poem. The phrase produces a string of three deflected tones at the end of the line: met buk dauQ (or met bouH dauQ). This is a strong interruption to the flow of regulated lines. Resumption of regulated meter in line
——— He Zhu yanjiu, 46–47. 79 Song shi, 1:4.58 notes the edict for excavating the lake; 2:17.326 records the cessation of building or repairing bridges and palaces there on March 2 1088. This halt was called out of pity for the workers in cold weather, so it might have been temporary. See Changbian, 12:408.8b (4199a). 80 See Lynn, Classic of Changes, 320, from which I take my translation of “bog down,” and Ruan Yuan, Shisan jing zhushu, 1:42c and 101a.
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184-8 supports poetic closure. Beyond that, in the context of this poem, the sound pattern adds force to the speaker’s resolution to not get mired down in the thoughts or emotions that have threatened to overwhelm him. The middle couplets are suitably elegant, but powerful: the pink caltrop blossoms remind the poet of the fine clothing worn by women during outings at the park, just the buzzing of cicadas recalls the music played there. The power lies in the order of presentation: what is absent (the marquisette gauzes and musical instruments) dissolves into what is present in their stead (flowers and singing insects). The third couplet restates the theme of discontinuity: the paths to the ladies’ swings are now blocked by overgrown willows, and the boats used during the gay lustration festivals lie unused among the duckweed. Nostalgia requires the creation of discontinuities. The fuxi festival, translated as “lustration” in line 184-6, plays an important role in Fanghui’s lyrics; out of eleven uses of this term in Tang and Song lyrics, five occur in his works; two out of twelve references to “splashing skirts” (jian qun Ḓ ) in the same festival are in his lyrics. The fuxi ablutions were an occasion for women to perform dances and for partygoers to float wine cups to each other on little channels of water. This is the erotic heritage celebrated by He Zhu.81 Whether the poet had been allowed to participate in the most exclusive gatherings at the park in the past is unknowable. We also cannot tell whether things had really fallen into such disrepair in 1087. Undoubtedly the death of Shenzong on 1 April 1085 had put an end to officially sponsored celebrations for a while; perhaps it was this hiatus that had permitted the construction or restorations in which Fanghui was involved.
1088–90: THE LIYANG AND JINLING AREA Between the fourth month of 1088 and the twelfth month of 1090 (Yuanyou 3 to 5), as he was working with local militia in Hezhou on the west side of the Yangzi
——— 81 See Wolfram Eberhard, Local Cultures, 33–35, James Liu, The Poetry of Li Shyang-yin, 138–39, and Yao Peiqian, Leiye, 4.7b–9a. The festival was supposed to take place on the third day of the third month. Imperial visits to the parks, however, were by no means tied to this date. A perusal of the Song shi Annals reveals that imperial visits to Jinming Lake took place most commonly in the fifth and sixth months—the express purpose usually being to view naval exercises. Recorded third-month imperial visits to the lake do not take place on the third day. We find one on the seventeenth in 983 and another on the twelfth in 991. After this, they are scheduled for even later in the month, but at a consistent time. There is a visit on the twenty-sixth in 992; then imperial visits were cancelled on the twenty-sixth of the third month in 1089, the twenty-seventh in 1090, and the twenty-eighth in 1091. The last visit recorded in the Annals is on the 20th in 1097. (The visits exhibit even less of a pattern on the solar calendar, the dates ranging from 19 April to 9 May. They are also not tied to the day of the month whose cyclical designation ends in si, so there was no attempt to restore the ancient schedule.)
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and keeping in touch with monks and other friends on the east side in Jinling, Fanghui wrote twenty-one pentametrical Regulated Verses that are preserved in his collection. This is comparable to the seventeen poems in this genre he kept from his three years in Xuzhou. In both Hezhou and Xuzhou, the largest number is kept from the final year of his stay: nine from 1085 (Xuzhou) and eleven from 1090 (Hezhou). This may reflect an increase in the number of friends with whom he could exchange poems locally, or a more relaxed attitude toward his official duties as he gained experience—and anticipated being reassigned after the customary three-year term. The first poem we have from Liyang establishes in the first couplet that the poet is now in the south: it leads off with the “marshland of Chu” and the “calid wind.” It is titled ⧰┻ධ㚍 On Horseback at Bitter Bamboo Village and was composed twenty li west of the prefectural seat on the last day of the fourth month of Yuanyou 3 (22 May 1088). 82 185
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ᬩỈ⮒㘑ᓟ ٨٨٤٤٨ ᨋ⊠ᄕᾖ㑆 ٤٤٨٨٤ Ṫ⦁ᴪ⛵ጯ ٤٤٤٨٨ 㠽ヱ⨹ጊ ٨٨٨٤٤ ਭ⽶⋄ਛᮔ ٨٨٤٤٨ 㐳ً㚍㑄 ٤٤٨٨٤ ᖘᖘ⊕㐷〝 ٤٤غع٨ ᣣ᧟⮪ㆶ ٤٨٨٤٤
In a marshland of Chu, after a calid wind, A1 groves and bottom-land, within the sunset rays. B1 The boat of a fisherman works along the green bank; C2 the routes of birds curve around a desolate hill. D2 Too long have I neglected the pleasure in the cup; A1 always do I steal leisure on my horse. B1 Far, far away, the road to Whitegate; (C6) when will be the day I return with goosefoot staff? D1
Notes: 185-1/ The south wind is calid (warm), according to a song composed by the sage-emperor Shun. 83 185-2/ I suspect that “groves and bottom-land” has a southern flavor to it. Gao, translated “bottom-land” here, occurs nine times in the Chu ci. The single lyric by He Zhu that uses the phrase
——— 82 5.12548–49; 5.6a. For the location of the village, see Chen Tinggui, Liyang dianlu, 2:7.362. Chen also quotes two other Song Dynasty poems on the temple at the village. Fanghui will write a heptametrical Quatrain there in the fifth month (perhaps a day or two after this poem; Poem 485). See Liyang dianlu 2:8.453. 83 Kongzi jiayu, CSJC, 508:8.205.
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“groves and bottom-land” also mentions the Yangzi River (prompting Zhong Zhenzhen to date its composition to this period in Liyang or later). 84 The phrase is rare in poetry. The only other poems in which I find it are two works by Huang Tingjian; the fact that they were composed in 1083 in Taihe, 360km south of the Yangzi River in Jiangnan West Circuit, supports my speculation that “groves and bottom-land” evokes a southern landscape. 85 185-7/ Whitegate was an historical site about 75 km ESE of Xuzhou. The road to Whitegate went by the retreat of Zhang Tianji, a friend of both He Zhu and Su Shi. 86 185-8/. The one poet who refers to returning with goosefoot staff (like He Zhu) is Liu Changqing, mentioned above in connection with On the Road Returning from Yun to Xu. 87
On Horseback at Bitter Bamboo Village begins with a parallel couplet. “Marshland of Chu” may seem a poor correlation to “groves and bottom-lands,” but because the proper noun ‘Chu’ is also a common noun meaning ‘thorny trees or thickets,’ “marshland of Chu” in line 185-1 could be re-read as “thorn-trees and marshland,” a good parallel to “groves and bottom-lands” in line 2. Fanghui is still enthralled by the way parallelism-by-pun can produce multiple readings of a line. Parallelism in the opening couplet has the potential danger of slowing the poem down before it really gets started. Fanghui gets away with parallelism in these two lines because each one is a temporal or locative phrase that creates the expectation of a main clause after it. We must continue reading to find out what happens “after” the wind and “among” the shining of the setting sun. A series of three parallel couplets that moves along so smoothly must be interrupted so the poem can end. Fanghui achieves this interruption in line 185-7. The mild metrical violation there constitutes a “braking” on the formal level; it also underscores the unexpectedness of He Zhu’s reference to Whitegate Road, which belongs to another time and place in the poet’s life. One wonders whether the average reader would have known where Whitegate Road was, other than “far, far away” from Liyang. Given the fact that Su Shi had surely made Zhang Tianji and the Whitegate Road that led to his retreat on Yunlong Hill famous, we should have some confidence that Fanghui’s reference would have been recognized. On the other hand, is the audience for this poem the “average reader”? Though he does not say so, we can guess that Fanghui sent a copy to Zhang Tianji; but the poem presents itself first and foremost as the poet’s experience and thoughts recorded for no one but himself (and us). He (and we who care about him) will
——— 84
Dongshan ci, 328–29. ڻᣉ۔ٳሏॹലូ, Shangu shi zhu, 2250:wai.13.299; and ኂڝቖ՛ನᄕᘕᦠΓΓ 2251:waibu2.47–48. In both poems Huang clearly has in mind a passage in the Zhuangzi that speaks of the pleasures of groves and bottom-lands; that does not mean he was unaware of the phrase’s regional overtones (if our supposition is correct), and the fact remains that he never used it elsewhere. 86 See Su Shi’s መႆᚊ՞Գ്֚ᨰ (1077), SSSJ, 3:15.748, in which he tells us he is taking a sedan chair along Whitegate Road to visit Zhang. 87 See his ಬᔤԼԲᝫᡔ՞ܑᄐ, QTS, 5:147.1527–28. Liu places this phrase in the middle of a twelve-line poem, and in context it has none of the closural effect that Fanghui achieves. 85
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know about Whitegate Road. A sudden departure near the end of a poem risks misleading us into thinking the poem might go on to other themes. If it has curtailed the forward motion of the poem, it too must be contained. The following and final line—“when will be the day I return with goosefoot staff?”—still refers to Zhang’s faraway retreat, but it uses reliable devices to signal closure: the word “return,” with its implication of retirement, and the unanswerable but evocative question. Often the third couplet is where the poet introduces a little “twist” to the progress of the poem, or where particularly interesting language is used. On Horseback at Bitter Bamboo Village does not follow that pattern—or rather, the effect of the shift from the landscape to musings on the “pleasure in the cup” and stolen “leisure on my horse” in the third couplet is muted significantly by the surprise introduction of Whitegate Road into line 185-7. The third couplet of the next poem from Hezhou (written in the northern end of the prefecture) is in exactly the same meter as the third couplet in On Horseback at Bitter Bamboo Village, but in its overall context it has more prominence. The couplet’s Tang-style ambiguity of syntax invites our careful appreciation. The poem is titled 㗴⻉⪾⡱↰ኅო Inscribed on the Wall of a Peasant’s House in Zhuge Vale. 88 186
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ᰮᐲሹ䈐 ٨٨٨٤٤ ᨋ㑆⸰⠧ㄘ ٤٤٨٨٤ ⴕⴣ⪭⪲ᓣ ٤٤ع٨٨ ထ⡱㓒ᳯ㏹ ٨٨٨٤٤ ᓟ⥡᾽₈❱ ٨٨٤٤٨ ೨Ḻ᳓⥄⥙ ٤٤٨٨٤ ήᄙㆆቸ⥝ ٤٤٤٨٨ ඵ㓩ᐘ⋧ኈ ٨٨٨٤٤
By evening I cross Kongming Vale, D2 And in a grove call on the old farmers. B1 I walk, brunting a path of fallen leaves, (C4) and sit, hearing a bell across the River. D2 The cottage in back—a lamp—weaving still; A1 the beck in front—a stream—hulling away. B1 No more interest in this errant service; C2 I’ll settle in seclusion here, if you’ll kindly allow it. D2
——— 88 5.12549, 5.6a. The headnote explains that the full name of the valley is Zhuge Liang Vale and that it is eighty li north of Wujiang ۂ, opposite Stony Head, the landmark hill northwest of Jinling. This poem is in Qian Zhongshu’s Song shi xuanzhu, 102 and is translated with extensive notes by Kako Riichir in Ganlan 9:61–66.
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Note: 186-1/ Kongming is the cognomen of Zhuge Liang, for whom the valley is named.
The third couplet is more complicated than it looks. One could see the lamp in line 186-5 as the evidence that someone in the cottage is still working at the loom. The corresponding “water/ stream,” however, is not evidence that rice is being hulled. Perhaps we infer the presence of a stream in the gully from the sound of a tilt-hammer hulling rice. The lamp in one line is visible evidence for weaving, just as the pounding in the next line is evidence for water; but the corresponding terms are in the reverse order. This is not without precedent. Consider Du Fu’s line 㘑 ᤐ᾽㧘ᳯ㡆ᄛ㔎 “A wind rises: spring lanterns are in disarray; / the River sings: night rain hangs down.” 89 The rising wind is the cause of the lanterns’ disarray, but the sound coming from the river is the effect of the rain suspended from above. There are critical differences between Fanghui’s couplet and Du Fu’s. Du Fu names two actions in each line; we have to figure out the relationship between the actions. 90 Fanghui names only one action per line–weaving or hulling; what we have to figure out it the relationship between the action and the noun—lamp or water, respectively—that seems associated with it. If we encountered Fanghui’s line 186-6 in isolation we would surely see the water as the agent of the action: “the water hulls [grain] by itself.” We even have the precedent of this unambiguous line by Bo Juyi: 㔕⎽ήੱ᳓⥄⥙ “At the ‘Cloud-tilt-hammer,’ no person; the water pounds by itself.” 91 Yet the lamp in Fanghui’s line 186-5 cannot weave. Is the syntax of the two lines irreconcilable? The solution, I think, is to see the lamp and the water as enabling means, with the agents of the action implied: “[By means of a] lamp, [a woman] is still weaving; / [powered by] water, [a tilt-hammer] is pounding by itself.” (The associations between female labor and weaving and between tilt-hammers and pounding or hulling are so strong that we are confident in supplying specific nouns as the agents.) Note that our analysis does not stifle Bo Juyi’s precedent. Fanghui may think “I shall use his words in the same order but make them work differently,” but Bo’s words still whisper their alternative structure. This, though, is the way parallel lines within a poem often work, and why this type of language always seems to express
———
ํՀ᥅ڠພമॸ᧩լՂࡾ……, Du shi xiangzhu, 3:15.1266. Admittedly, Du Fu’s couplet may contain a more complex scrambling of elements: perhaps it is the wind in the first line that causes the River in the second line to make its sounds, and the rain in the second line that destroys the lanterns in the first line. This is only a secondary level of meaning, however. The couplet makes sense without such deep exploration. 91 ༈ພሐՓլሖ, QTS, 13:440.4899. Bo explains in a note that Mt. Lu has a great deal of mica and that a water-driven pestle is used to pound it. “Cloud,” then, comes from yunmu, ‘cloud-mother,’ or mica. Mica was pulverized for use in medicine. In 1094 Su Shi will take Bo’s line and shorten it to five syllables by removing wu ren ‘there are no persons.’ See his ՞ڝ, SSSJ, 6:38.2063. 89 90
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something just beyond definition. When, in the context of a corresponding term that has a different grammatical range of possibilities, a word is forced to function in a new way, the tension between its contingent function and its normal usage never disappears. The water that runs through the evening gloom of Zhuge Vale is eternally pulled between the role of agency it had in the verbatim “water pounds by itself” by Bo Juyi and the role of enabling means forced upon it here by the corresponding placement of the lamp in line 186-5. Surely it is clear that this couplet could not have come in any other position in the poem. If it and the second couplet were reversed, the quiet simplicity of “I walk, brunting a path …” would have seemed anticlimactic. Furthermore, any metrical change within the couplet would necessitate a disastrous change in the wording. Therefore, the poem could only have this sequence of lines: X, B, C, D, A, B, C, D. The choice to rhyme the first line was probably driven by a desire to use the name of the valley. That is not only appropriate for setting the scene; it gives He Zhu the chance to use a word, hong ‘vale,’ that almost never appears in poetry. (It is likely that once he decided to use this name, the rhyme category was derived from it.) The fun does not end there, however. The name Zhuge Vale would force a non-regulated meter: ٨ ٨عغ٤ (D6). Therefore, Fanghui playfully renames the place Kongming Vale (see the note to line 186-1). The Liyang–Jinling period gives us two of the three BD pentametrical Regulated Verses in Fanghui’s corpus. While it may seem a little perverse to give special attention to a form our poet obviously didn’t like, doing so gives us some insights into the considerations that attended the selection of a form. One poem was written for an otherwise obscure individual named Pan Xiaoben ẘቁᧄ, who was serving in the Guangnan Circuit in the remote south: ⊓ႎὖᳯᨰሶጟᙿነẘ ᥊ੳ Climbing Bozi Hill in Wujiang and Thinking of Pan Jingren. 92 To judge by the last line of the poem, Pan and Fanghui may have been from the same hometown in the north, or, if not Gongcheng specifically, at least Weizhou, on the northern bank of the Yellow River near the southern end of Hebei West Circuit. 192
㛧ゞᨰሶጟ ٤٤٨٨٤ ᒁ㚂᧲ධᦸ ٨٨غ٤٤ ቅᚏᏯኙᣣ ٤٨ع٤٨
Driving my chariot on Bozi Hill, B1 I crane my neck to gaze southeast. (D4) The lone sconce wears cold sunlight; (A4)
——— 92 5.12550; 5.7b. Fanghui had seen Pan off from Jinling with a heptametrical Regulated Verse in the third month of 1088 (see Poem 279, 6.12566; 6.12b), and he had sent a poem to him in the first month of 1089 (Poem 189, 5.12549; 5.7a).
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㐳ᳯᵹᄢ⨹ ٤٤غ٨٤ ੱᎨ ٨٤ع٨٨ ᣏ㓵⇐ਃḕ ٨٨غ٤٤ ᅢᓙᤐ㘑ᥦ ٨٨٤٤٨ ⋧㓣ㆶർၢ ٤٤غ٨٤
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the Long River flows in a great wasteland. (B2) My old friend has crossed the Five Hauses; (C3) a far-faring goose tarries in the Three Xiang. (D4) Await the spring wind’s warmth A1 and we’ll return to that northland. (B2)
Notes: 192-5/ The Five Hauses are part of the mountain divide that stretches across southern Jiangxi and Hunan and northern Guangdong and Guangxi. One generally crosses one of these crests to pass between the Middle Yangzi and Lingnan Basins. 192-6/ The Three Xiang are three areas in the middle and lower Xiang River drainage area in southern Hunan, but the term also refers generally to the Xiang River–Dongting Lake region.
Earlier, we suggested that one reason to avoid the BD form was that it required three B lines, the B line being the most restrictive single line type insofar as the first syllable must be a specific tone (level). In this poem, however, Fanghui is not cowed by three B lines; he simply violates the meter in two of them. In fact there are only two lines in the entire poem that are regulated. However, all the violations are in the middle syllable, after the caesura, and all the violations in the middle couplets can be said to compensate for each other; they do not upset the overall structure of the poem. I think the violations in the poem do have important emotional effects and are well-considered. The strings of three level syllables in lines 192-2 (“gaze southeast”) and 192-6 (“tarries in the Three Xiang”) are associated with anxious thoughts about a faraway friend. The string of three deflected syllables in line 192-5 (“crossed the Five Hauses”) reflects the seriousness of entering the malarial south. The “lone” level and deflected tones in lines 192-3 and 4, respectively, suggest a certain agitation. In the final line, I believe the placement of the violation on the word huan ‘return’ accentuates that word as the one of greatest import: they must not despair, but hold onto the conviction that Pan will return healthy and that they can both go home with the springtime breezes. The third couplet, “My old friend has crossed the Five Hauses; / a far-faring goose tarries in the Three Xiang,” must be comparing Pan Xiaoben to a migrating goose who will return north as sure as the seasons turn. Neither Pan nor Fanghui is literally in the Xiang River area, but that region can be considered to represent the general phenomenon of exile. 93 The commiseration and encouragement
——— 93 For the region’s unhappy fame as a region of exile, see “A Millenium of XiaoXiang Laments” in Alfreda Murk, Poetry and Painting in Song China, 6–27.
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implied in the poem would not have been ambiguous to Pan, if this poem reached him. The other BD poem of the period originated in a journey to a temple with a poet-monk whose poetry Su Shi would praise eleven years later. His religious name was Daotong ㅢ. Fanghui says that Daotong enjoyed making poems and had been going about with him for a very long time ᓬ๋↟ਭ. That Fanghui would have a poetry “groupie” following him around seems odd only because of his relatively humble status as an official; as a poet we cannot doubt that he would attract a fellow lover of verse. If this Daotong is the Daotong to whom Su Shi presented a poem in 1101, he was a fine poet. 94 This may explain the fastidiousness with which Fanghui made his lines regulated. The poem is หㅢᏧਯ㚅ᨋኹ㚍 Going to an Incense Grove [Buddhist Temple] with Master Daotong, On Horseback. 95 195
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౽㔮▵ㆧ ٤٤٨٨٤ ᷐ᬩᣧᤐᤨ ٤٨٨٤٤ ⊕⨲㘑㗡ᕆ ٨٨٤٤٨ 咗㔕ᣣ㝇ု ٤٤٨٨٤ 㠽⡪ᛩฎᚏ ٨٤٤٨٨ 㚍ജୱ㐳㒜 ٨٨٨٤٤ ๋ቭ▭⇊ ٤٨٤٤٨ ൏↢Ὼᶉὑ ٤٤٨٨٤
Ice and frost: the climate of the solar node lags B1 When it is early spring in Huai-Chu. D1 Whitened grass: urgent is the bluster of the wind; A1 yellowish clouds: dangling are the beams of the sun. B1 Sound of birds thrown to an ancient sconce; C1 strength of horse wearied on long slopes. D2 I have that terror of Exhortations to the Official; A2 overtaxing your life—you do that recklessly. B1
Notes: 195-1/ The first lunar month of Yuanyou 5, when this poems was written, corresponds to 3 February–3 March 1090. The solar node Fanghui refers to must therefore be yushui 㔎᳓ ‘rain and water’ (around 19 February). 96 Fanghui is probably saying, “Here in Hezhou, we have ice and frost when we should have ‘rain and water,’ so the seasons are behind schedule.”
———
See Su’s ᢤᇣቖሐຏ, SSSJ, 7:45.2451 and Kong, Su Shi nianpu, 3:40.1392–93. 5.12550; 5.8a. 96 Lichun مਞ ‘inception of spring’ falls in the first month of Yuanyou 5, too, but only a couple of days away from New Year’s. It is unlikely that Fanghui would be away from his family then. See the convenient chart in Cohen, Introduction to Research in Chinese Source Materials, 412, and the associated discussion of the importance of the twenty-four solar nodes as the only practical agricultural calendar, on p. 415. 94 95
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195-2/ Huai-Chu is the area around the juncture of the Huai River and the Grand Canal near Song Chuzhou. This couplet must be contrasting the wintry weather in Liyang to the “early spring” weather in Chuzhou (where the poet and Daotong had been together at some time previously?). 97 195-3–4/ The parallelism of “wind-head” (the force or blast of wind) and “sun-legs” (the rays of the sun) is impossible to maintain in translation. 195-5–6/ Wang Anshi, writing about a spring on a mountain, describes its sound as being “thrown to” a forest. 98 Earlier, Ma Dai 㚍タ (jinshi 844) referred to sound being “thrown to” the clouds. 99 These are the only linkages of this verb with sound that I have been able to find prior to He Zhu. Either or both poems could have been known to our poet. A common meaning of tou would yield “[Amid] the sound of birds, [we] put up at a sconce” for line 5, but syntactical parallelism with line 6 would be impossible. 195-7/ In 1037, Mei Yaochen wrote that the Exhortations to the Official terrified him (he uses the same verb, wei) more than tigers. 100
If we understand lines 195-1 and 2 correctly (see notes), they make a clever opening couplet, one that has the important function of marking the friendship of the poet and Daotong: they share past knowledge of the spring weather in Huai-Chu, and so they both understand how behind schedule the weather in Hezhou is by comparison. This alone might justify the rare BD opening. Another justification is the preservation of the ABCD middle couplets in their given order. (The use of a CD opening would have the same effect, but the first-line rhyme that highlights the climate comparison would be lost.) Although the second couplet is so striking that we might think it would work just as well as a third couplet—where we have often seen Fanghui place his most interesting language—it needs to be where it is in order to set the scene, which really has not been done yet. As the middle couplets stand, they give us a satisfying progression from vastness down to the scale of man and beast, from the things seen in the distance (grass and clouds) to things heard nearby and felt in the body (bird songs and the weariness of horse). The third couplet is by no means something to pass over lightly, as our note to lines 195-6–7 shows. In fact, the Wang Anshi couplet mentioned there may be more than just a precedent for “throwing” sound; it could be the starting point for an allusive twist by He Zhu. Wang’s couplet is 㙍⡪ᛩᨋ᰼㘑㔎㧘ᧃ₈ Ḻ㒌 “Its lingering sound is thrown to the forest, on the verge of wind and rain;
——— 97 The weather in the region of the Huai and Yellow Rivers was drier and warmer than usual from the mid tenth century to the beginning of the twelfth century. See Qu Yilin, Huang Huai Hai pinyuan lishi dili, 28–36. I have no comparable data on the Liyang area. 98 See մ, Linchuan xiansheng wenji, 12.182. This poem was probably written around the time of He Zhu’s birth, to judge by the fact that the Nine Wells of the title is in the western part of Shu Prefecture ငڠ, where Wang was vice-prefect then. See Shen Qinhan, Wang Jinggong shiwen Shenshi zhu, 38–39. 99 This quatrain is titled ፊៃؒ٧މ. QTS, 17:556.6453. Ma Dai was known as a master of the pentametrical Regulated Verse. 100 ሐເॡᇾ۩, Mei Yaochen ji biannian jiaozhu, 1:7.100. Guanzhen can also be exhortations from officials to the throne, but that meaning is not relevant to Mei’s poem or Fanghui’s.
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/ its waning force rolls up the soil, like a runoff channel.” The character used to write the word “roll up” represents several different words whose pronunciations (gwan3bx/gwanQ3a /kwanQ3by/kwanH3bx) are close to “tired” (gwanH3bx). The correlation of “throw” and “roll up” in Wang’s couplet might have suggested the correlation of “throw” and “tired” in He’s. If Fanghui had Wang’s poem in the back of his mind, the reduction of a thundering waterfall and what seems to be debris flow through a small gorge to bird twitters and a tired horse would have been an insider’s joke that increased the pleasure of the poem. The last couplet seems to chide Daotong for coming along on this journey when he has no obligation to strain himself in service to the state. This gesture to Daotong must have pleased the monk, though we might feel let down after the three complex and expressive couplets that precede this one. A farewell poem of the fourth month of the same Yuanyou 5 (1090) is much more relaxed. Written at Wujiang for a man on his way upriver to Jiangxia, it omits the usual laments over the poet’s career and his poverty. Despite the fact that Fanghui will dread going to Jiangxia and its mint six years hence, ㅍᏀ⑬ᳯᄐ ዄ Seeing Zuo Yu off for Jiangxia as Commandant seems designed to cheer the traveler. 101 197
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᳢᳢㕍⠜⥱ ٨٨غ٤٤ ੪੪咗㢬ᮝ ٤٤غ٨٤ ᳯጊାᷡἢ ٤٤غع٨ ੱ‛ᗐ㘑ᵹ ٤٨٨٤٤ ⟤㈬㆜ᱩᕁ ٨٨٤٤٨ ᣂ㗴⥟ㆆ ٤٤غ٨٤ 㝼⍮ਇ㘩 ٨٤٤٨٨ ┵⟎ᦠㇷ ٤٨٨٤٤
Bobbing lightly, a Greyquill Boat, (D3) Standing erect, Brown Crane Tower. (B2) The landscape there is truly noble and clean; (C6) the people call to mind a dashing elegance. D1 Fine brew will dispel your longing for home; A1 new poems will be inscribed on haunts of the past. (B2) If there is fish, I know you won’t dine on it C1 but make of it a courier for letters. D1
Notes: 197-1/ The Greyquill Boat (a boat with carved and painted pelican designs on it) is associated with Jiangxia through the story of the Lord of E (Jiangxia), who was riding in such a boat when he heard his boatwoman singing a song in her native language of the southeast. Upon having it translated into
——— 101
5.12551; 5.8b.
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the Chu language, he discovered that she had amorous feelings for him, which he thereupon reciprocated. 102 197-2/ The Yellow/Brown Crane Tower is still a famous landmarks in the city we know as Wuhan. 197-4/ The “people” are personages associated with the history and culture of Ezhou. 197-6/ The reference to “old haunts” suggests either that Zuo had been to Jiangxia before or that new places for excursions will seem old and familiar after Zuo has been there for a time. 197-7–8/ The convention that fish can carry letters is an old poetic conceit. Line 7 may contain a joking reference to the song of Feng Xuan, mentioned in our chapter on Songs: “Long hylte, long hylte, let’s homeward hie, / There’s no chariot for me to ryde; / There’s no fish on which to dyne.”
The Greyquill Boat shows both Fanghui’s careful attention to the specifics of the occasion—Zuo Yu is going to Jiangxia—and his impulse to “be himself.” The Greyquill Boat is seen in Fanghui’s poetry far more often than in other writers. “Greyquill Boat” appears in two of He Zhu’s lyrics 103 and two of his poems (in addition to the present one). One of these poems was written in Jiangxia, showing again that Fanghui associates the allusion with Ezhou. 104 Other writers are not always so fastidious (or perhaps some version of the Greyquill Boat had spread up and down the Yangzi over the centuries); for example, a poem by Ouyang Xiu refers to “riding on a Greyquill” in the Suzhou area (a long way downstream from Jiangxia). 105 The expression qingsa, translated “noble and clean” in line 197-3, is without precedent in either poetry or lyric so far as I can determine; before this time it appears only in prose, with the sense of ‘to cleanse.’ Nevertheless, it is not a difficult or obscure term in the context, and it aptly matches the multivalent fengliu, ‘dashing elegance’ in line 4. The tonal violations in the first three lines and the loose parallelism in the middle couplets contribute to the easy tone of the poem. Laxity in parallelism compensates for the fact that the first couplet is semantically parallel; strict parallelism in all of the first three couplets could easily be an overload. Perhaps the fact that four out of the five violations in the poem substitute a level tone for a deflected tone also lightens the mood somehow. Since in the Xuzhou period we raised the special problems of writing poems in
——— 102 The story is imbedded in an exemplary tale of admonition in Liu Xiang, ed., Shuo yuan, CSJC, 527:11.109–11. (In what strikes me as an unusual attempt at verisimilitude, the song is first quoted in the original language—or at least a string that purports to mimic the language of the southeast.) A nearly complete edition of the Shuo yuan might have been restored and available to He Zhu in manuscript if he did not have a fragmentary copy in his library. See Loewe, Early Chinese Texts, 444. However, the story would also have been familiar through earlier poetic allusions, as in Han Hong ឌ₉ (eighth cent.), ಬড়वၠڠ, QTS, 8:245.2757. 103 Yulianhuan and Jianzi Wan xisha (no. 11), Dongshan ci 3.331–32 and 3.395. 104 The Jiangxia poem is the second of nine 1098 pentametrical Quatrains under the title Variations on Bamboo-Branch Lyrics: Nine Poems, Poem 424. When the boat appeared in the second of two 1086 works under the title Harmonizing with Du Zhongguan’s qing-character Poems: Two Poems, (Poem 085, 3.12525; 3.4a;), the need to use qing (‘green’/’grey’) was more important than geographical linkages. 105 ಬ⏨ޕ, Ouyang Xiu quanji, 1:jushi waiji 5.380.
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pairs (see pp. 204ff), we shall close our discussion of the Liyang period with the following pair of poems, AB and CD in format: ᯲⥱⇧ญᓙ㘑⚥ᣣᙿነၔ ਛㆆੑ㚂 Mooring the Boat at Dangli Port to Wait for the Wind for Several Days, during which I Thought of my Friends and Companions in the City: Two Poems. Dangli Port is the port for Liyang—the poet’s note locates the poem in Liyang.106 201
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৻⪲ነᵤญ ٨٨ع٤٨ ᔶứน ع٤غ٨٤ ᦺ㘑භ㈬ᣐ ٤٤٤٨٨ ᄛῩ਼Ṫ᾽ ٨٨٨٤٤ ‐ᷪㅩᣂ ٤٨٤٤٨ ⒌᷐ᗐ⚿౽ ٤٤٨٨٤ ੱᄕᄞ ٨٤٤٨٨ ็ṩ㊄㒺 ٤٨٨٤٤
A single bark puts up at the ferry; (A3) angry waves—how can one board? (B6) The morning’s wind is divined by the brew flag; C2 night’s cooking is begged from the fishers’ lamps. D2 Ox Holm greets the new moon; A2 the Qin-Huai I imagine forming ice. B1 Old friends are in dreams of other nights; C1 songs and music filled Jinling. D1
Notes: 201-3/ Taverns were marked by a flag. 201-5/ Ox Holm is a rocky promontory on the opposite side of the river. Because the Yangzi is relatively narrow between Liyang and Ox Holm, several armies crossed here at important junctures in Chinese history, including the army that subdued the Southern Tang in the tenth century. “But, if there is a slight wind, the waves rise and it is impossible to proceed.” 107 “New moon” in this line refers to the emerging moon at the beginning of the lunar month.
This first poem is very much tied to the specifics of the situation: the tedium of waiting for the chop to subside takes up the first half of the poem; then, in the third couplet, Ox Holm on the opposite side of the river and the Qin-Huai River fifty li downstream in Jinling lead his thoughts step-by-step to his past excursions to Jinling with his friends. The second poem shows the poet turning inward. Now he speaks only of parting, not of the crossing that links him to the future and to the past, as in the first poem.
——— 106 5.12551; 5.9b. Since Fanghui mentions choppy water in line 2 of the first poem, he must have been waiting for an upstream wind to die down as much as for a favorable wind to push him down to the Grand Canal. 107 Lu You, South China in the Twelfth Century, 75–76; Ru Shu ji, 2.34
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㔌ᘷਇน⸃ ٤٤ع٨٨ ⟓㈬₡⊓⥃ ٨٨٨٤٤ ầ⪭ᳯⓨ㑪 ٤٨٤٤٨ 㔕❥ⅆᤲ㒶 ٤٤٨٨٤ ᗜ㡛Ṫ⟈ ٤٤غع٨ ᔶ›⓭ᨋ ٨٨٨٤٤ ⸎⋡ᖭᣆ ٨٨٤٤٨ ⡙ὑỈ⇎ี ٤٤٨٨٤
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The sorrow of parting cannot be shaken off; (C4) putting down my brew, I climb up alone to overlook. D2 The tide drops: the River is empty and vast; A2 clouds in profusion: the year grows late and dim. B1 A mournful owl watches over the fisher’s baulk; (C6) An angry dog bolts from the god’s grove. D2 All that meets my eyes adds to sadness and despair; A1 I’ll just do my intoning by the marshes. B1
Notes: 202-5/ Chinese bird terminology is often inconsistent. The term Fanghui uses, chi, can designate other birds, although none of them eats fish, as far as I know. There are piscivorous owls in East Asia, so “owl” is surely the best we can do here. 202-6/ The god’s grove is apparently a shrine. I have not found “angry dogs” in any other Chinese poems. 202-7/ Qiduan, translated “sadness and despair,” is found in Tang poets only of the earlier years (Yu Shinan ⯲ධ [558–638], Liu Yizhi ഏਯ[613–87], Luo Binwang 㚸⾠₺ [622–84], and Chen Ziang 㒸ሶᣵ[659–700 or 661–702]), not in the usual predecessors for He Zhu. Qin Guan uses Fanghui’s entire phrase, and in the same final position of the line: ᩿᪳ᩉ⥼ᖭᣆ “The soft susurrus of tong tree tops adds to sadness and despair.” 108
The owl and the dog are points of concentrated interest in the vast landscape depicted in the second couplet—a landscape with none of the destination points we saw in the first poem. The owl and the dog seem to have no “poetic” significance, no inherited cultural import. The poet is surely reporting things he observed as he climbed up to view the River, things that stuck in his mind and carried a definite emotional meaning. The owl is mournful, but ready to kill; the dog is angry and bursting violently out of the grove. The second poem ends not with “songs and music filling Jinling,” uniting people in fellowship. Rather, Fanghui once again identifies himself with Qu Yuan, intoning by the marshes, unheard and unheeded. There is a significant metrical difference between the poems in this pair, also. The first poem uses the preferred
———
108 Qin Guan’s poem is ִԶֲ࡙Օॸബࡳ׆ഏ, Huaihai ji, 9.8a–b (36b). We cannot tell whether Qin’s poem precedes He Zhu’s or not.
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AB opening; the second the shunned CD opening. We already know that Fanghui’s avoidance of CD openings is unusual; during the Liyang/Hezhou period his employment of this form drops to five percent. (His use of the AB opening rises at the same time to sixty-six percent, versus fifty-nine percent in Xuzhou.) We could imagine several reasons for choosing to make line 202-1 an (unregulated) C line, ٤٤ع٨٨. The three deflected tones after the caesura fit a mood “cannot be shaken off” (and there are three more deflected tones heading the next line); the poet wanted to highlight the “sorrow of parting” li3b ou3b and “climb to overlook” teng1 lem3 (202-2) as the most essential elements of the poem’s situation by isolating them with six deflected tones between them; and only a line sequence of XDABCDAB will enable the poet to end the eighth line with “intoning by the marshes,” and if the first line is not to rhyme (there seems to be no good reason why it should), it will be a C line. Surely Fanghui was not conscious of some of these reasons, and surely he had others. I propose them simply as suggestions to explain what we might have felt if he had been able to hear him chant his poem in eleventh-century Chinese.
THE CAPITAL Fanghui’s production of pentametrical Regulated Verses drops after he leaves Liyang. He writes three in Jinling in the first month of Yuanyou 6 (1091), and then we have no pentametrical regulated Verses until the ninth month, after his promotion to the civil side of the bureaucracy, when he writes one remarkable poem in celebration. Then, on the emperor’s birthday in the last month of the year, he writes a poem to a Wang Xiang ₺⋧ back in Liyang. 109 For Yuanyou 7 (1092), there are only two poems relevant to this chapter. We shall want to look at both, since they are different from what we have seen so far: one ignores parallelism in the third couplet; the other is a pailü, or extended Regulated Verse. 110
——— 109 There are several Song people named Wang Xiang, but not enough is known about them to identify any of them as Fanghui’s friend. Fanghui had addressed four pentametrical Regulated Verses to this individual as he was leaving Liyang and Jinling the previous year, along with one heptametrical Regulated Verse and a Song. The birthday of Zhezong was on the seventh of the twelfth month, actually, but it was celebrated on the eighth as the Rising Dragon Festival ᚊᘋᆏ, which is what Fanghui calls it. See James Hargett, “A Chonrology of the Reigns and Reign-Periods,” 28, for Zhezong’s birthdate and the Song huiyao, Li 57.18 (2:1601a) for the establishment of this festival in 1085, after the eight-year-old emperor’s accession. 110 Out of these seven poems, three have the AB structure, two have the DB structure, and the other two are BD and CD.
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1091: CIVIL CLASSIFICATION As we already know, Su Shi, Fan Bolu, and Li Qingchen supported He Zhu’s promotion to the civil side of the bureaucracy around the eighth month. In the ninth month, Fanghui wrote ᤃቭᓟ๒⥟ After Changing Official Classification: Proffered to Acquaintances and Old Friends. 111 209 ⇧ᐕ╩Ẃᛩ
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٤٤٨٨٤ 䁾ഒᯖ⑺ ٨٨٨٤٤ ⥄⽶⯥㗡⋧ ٨٨ع٤٨ ⺕ኽ㦖㗵ଘ ٤٤غ٨٤ ⡙ㄓྂ╬ ٤٤ع٨٨ Ửኅᵹ ٨٨غ٤٤ ዋᓙ㜞Ᏹଂ ٨٨٤٤٨ ഞฬᰮᄣᡴ ٤٤٨٨٤
That year, needlessly I threw away my brush. B1 On swordsmanship did I expound, spirit spanning the autumn. D2 I arrogated to myself the physiognomy of Tiger Head; (A3) who would enfeoff me as Duke of Dragon Forehead? (B2) I somehow left the ranks of Kuai and the rest; (C4) brazenly joined the circles of poets. (D4) Wait a little, and Policy Advisor Gao A1 will receive due merit and reputation in his late years. B1
Notes: 209-1/ To “throw away the writing brush” is to free oneself from shuffling documents on the civil side of government and serve one’s country through military exploits. 112 209-2/ “Expounding on swords” often means to vigorously express one’s wisdom on military matters. See this line from a 1084 poem by Qin Guan: ⺰䁾ഒḓᶏ “Discoursing on soldiers, expounding on swords, he rushed about the lakes and seas.” 113 209-3/ In the Ban Chao saga (alluded to in line 1), a physiognomist tells Ban that he has the chin of a swallow and the head of a tiger. 114
——— 111
5.12553; 5.11a. See Zhong Zhenzhen, Bei Song ci ren He Zhu yanjiu, 50 and 61n. The expression “throw away the writing brush” is usually traced to the biography of Ban Chao ఄ၌ (33–103), Hou Han shu, 6:47.1571. Ban achieved great success against threats to Han power from Central Asia. 113 ஊհၳನ, Huaihai ji, 6.4b (25a). As Nakata Yjir points out (“Shin Ikai shibun nempo,” 414), this poem may be by Canliao, but would still have been written on the same visit to Xu’s studio with Su Shi in 1084. 114 Su Shi alludes to this in his 1076 poem ፊ֜໑…, SSSJ, 3:14.682. A Southern Song commentary on the line purports to quote the Hou Han shu biography referenced above, but the present text of that work has “tiger’s neck” instead of “tiger’s head.” The main source for the Hou Han shu, the Dongguan Han ji by Liu Zhen et al., has “tiger’s head” in the corresponding passage. (CSJC, 3732:16.132.) However, this work was probably unavailable in its original complete state(s) during the Song. (See Loewe, Early Chinese Texts, 472). Whatever the textual source of the allusion, 112
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209-4/ Dragon Forehead is a literal translation of Longe, a place whose 1,300 households formed the fief awarded to Han Yue 㖧ᎅ for his part in capturing Xiongnu leaders. 115 209-5/ Kuai and the rest: The Han period general Han Xin, as mentioned in our chapter on Fanghui’s Songs, was sometimes distrusted by Liu Bang. Shortly after he learned the truth of the saying that “When the cunning hares have died, the good dog is cooked . . . ,” he visited a mediocre general named Fan Kuai and reflected ruefully that “I am now the same rank as Kuai and the rest.” 116 209-7/ Gao Shi 㜞ㆡ (700?–765), famous for his frontier poetry, attained the office of policy advisor the year before his death. 117 Fanghui is comparing himself to Gao.
This is not a humble poem. The first half of the poem covers the poet’s military career, into which he entered somewhat recklessly (line 209-1), though he certainly had strategies and vigor enough to impress the times (line 2). He compares himself to two Han generals (lines 209-3 and 4), though he recognizes that, even if he himself thinks he has capacity of a Ban Chao, that does not mean that anyone will reward him as Han Yue was rewarded. Line 209-5 has him “somehow” or “just for a while” leaving the undistinguished fellowship of military officers and joining the poets—the civil side of the bureaucracy. Finally, he anticipates that he will be in attendance on the emperor himself as policy advisor, following in the footsteps of the Tang frontier poet Gao Shi. Mutually compensating tonal violations in the middle couplets highlight the paired allusions. These allusions are not common, but they do show up in several contemporary poems. “Tiger Head” Ban Chao is mentioned twice before He Zhu’s poem. In 1076, Su Shi avers that even Ban Chao is inferior to a friend of Su’s in Mizhou who has transferred from the civil side of the government to a military office. 118 Zhang Lei, in a poem seeing a Liu Jisun ഏቄቊ (d. 1092) off to Hangzhou around 1089, declares that although Liu is a military official, he has not imitated Ban Chao’s example in rejecting the civil arts, especially poetry. 119 After Fanghui’s poem, in late 1091 or early 1092, Zhang Lei brings up the allusion again in a poem for the same Liu Jisun. This time, he does find Liu comparable to Ban Chao insofar as Liu is headed out to command a border region. 120
——— the Song poets clearly knew the story with “tiger’s head.” 115 Watson, tr., Records of the Grand Historian, rev. ed., 2:167. 116 Burton Watson, tr., Records of the Grand Historian of China, 1:229. 117 Zhou Xunchu, ed., Tang shi da cidian, 391. 118 This poem is referenced in our note to line 209-3. Yamamoto notes that the transfer of the Mr. Qiao mentioned in the title does not strictly follow the categories set out in the Song history; see So Tǀba shi shu, 4:79. The treasury to which he was transferring was staffed by both civil and military officials, and prefects could be military officials, too. See Gong Yanming, Song dai guanzhi cidian, 449 and 531. However, the allusion in Su’s poem makes it clear that Qiao was moving to the military as Ban Chao had. (Fanghui’s earliest known rank, at age twenty, was a military classification: see Zhong Zhenzhen, Bei Song ci ren He Zhu yanjiu, 47, and Gong Yanming, 591, sv youban dianzhi.) 119 ಬᏥࡱ୪ߨ௨ࣟ, Zhang Lei ji 1:15.258. Liu Jisun was in Hangzhou when Su Shi arrived as prefect in 1089, so I assume Zhang Lei had seen him off from the capital a little earlier in the year. 120 ಬᏥࡱ୪ښㆈڠ, Zhang Lei ji 1:14.244, line 5. We can date the poem approximately because we know that Liu went from Hangzhou to Yingzhou (250 km SSE of the capital) to see Su Shi early
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The Marquis of Longe (“Dragon Forehead”) figures in a poem, possibly by Su Shi, that could be ascribed to the third month of 1091. It may provide a precedent for He Zhu, but questions of dating and authorship make it the least substantial evidence for establishing our cluster of related poems. 121 Far more useful are Su Shi’s allusions to “the ranks of Kuai and the rest” in a poem to Liu Jisun in the twelfth month of 1091 and also in a poem in response to Liu that was probably written a bit earlier. 122 It should be emphasized that allusions to Han Xin’s crestfallen “I am now the same rank as Kuai and the rest” in Song Dynasty poetry before He Zhu almost always come in historical poems about Han Xin himself. 123 In Tang times, Fan Kuai is mentioned in poetry, but not as a token of mediocrity. 124 The only Northern Song reference to Ban Chao and his “tiger head” that we have not mentioned is in a fragment of a poem attributed to Huang Tingjian and probably
——— in the eleventh month on his way to take up the position of prefect in Xizhou, the place mentioned in Zhang Lei’s title. See Su Shi nianpu, 3:30.1009. We also know Zhang Lei was in the capital (see the chronology in Zhang Lei ji 2:996); Liu must have passed through there later on his way northwest to Xizhou. (Xizhou is fifty km east of the Yellow River in Hedong Circuit.) 121 The poem in question is one for a Cao Fu ඦ᎖ attributed to different authors and given titles. In Su Shi’s collection, its title is ඦֱ༡ᄅಁ (SSSJ, 8:47.2545; see line 3). The addressee of the poem, Cao Fu, was with Su Shi at Deqing ᐚ堚 (halfway up the waterway from Hangzhou to Huzhou) in the third month of 1091 as Su was making his way to the capital: see Su Shi nianpu, 3:30.966–67. The content of the poem has nothing to do with the tea mentioned in the title; however, that could simply indicate that the title is garbled or incomplete. (Su could have been using the rhymes of a poem thanking Cao for tea to write a poem for another occasion.) The poem also appears in the collection of Liu Ban Ꮵᱺ (1023–89) as the second of a pair under the title ಬඦ᎖ ࡚ᤜ壂৬᠏ሎ ;ࡴܒsee Pengcheng ji, CSJC, 1908:14.185. The odd thing about the pair of poems in Liu’s collection is that they both use the same rhyme category but only some of the same rhyme words, and not in the same order. Glancing through his other paired heptametrical Regulated Verse, one finds no other pair of which this is true: the rhyme words either are exactly the same and in the same order or are from different categories altogether. This suggests that Liu Ban did not write these poems as a pair, or that one of them is by someone else. (His collection was essentially lost by the eighteenth century; the work we cite today was reconstituted from other sources. See Zhu Shangshu, Song ren bieji xulu, 1:389–90.) When Cao Fu went to Fujian in 1088, many poems were written to see him off; those we know about are mentioned in Su Shi nianpu, 2:27.837–38. Thus, one possibility is that this is a poem by Su Shi on that occasion or a poem by someone else on that occasion and then mistakenly paired with Liu’s poem in his collection. A second possibility is that it is a poem Su Shi wrote for Cao in 1091, using the rhyme category of Liu Ban’s poem. Either way, the poem predates Fanghui’s allusion. By the way, the third line in the poem by Su or Liu mentions “odd numbers” as the cause for a failure to be enfoeffed as the Marquis of Longe. Fanghui will mention odd and even numbers in his 1096 Sent to Zhao Mian, Defender of Hanyang, Poem 033. 122 ֲسᏥན֮ᦊ࣪ײאኂ……, SSSJ, 6:34.1838 is the datable poem; see Su Shi nianpu, 3:30.1016. The other poem, ࡉᏥན֮ߠᢤ, SSSJ, 6:34.1820, is placed among other poems written on Liu’s visit to Su Shi in Yingzhou in the eleventh month, on which see Su Shi nianpu, 30.1009. If it had been written on the outing in Deqing in the third month, for which Liu Jisun was present (Ibid., 30.967), it would predate He Zhu’s use of the allusion in the ninth month, but we have no evidence to compel revising the sequence of poems. 123 The single exception of which I am aware uses slightly different language and has nothing to do with a military man. Wang Ling, who died in 1059, praises someone for not joining the ranks of Kuai; that person is a ru, a “Confucian.” The poem is ᢤᏥ֮ګ. 124 For a very different picture of Fan Kuai, see, Li Han, Meng Ch’iu, 61–62.
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undatable. 125 Therefore, it is clear that in the small group of poems we have introduced here, something is stimulating a unique interest in the allusions Fanghui uses in lines 209-3 and 5. Let us review their order: 1076 ca. 1089 1091, 9th month 1091, 10th month 1091, 12th month late 1091 or early 1092
Ban Chao allusion Ban Chao allusion Ban Chao and Fan Kuai allusions Fan Kuai allusion Fan Kuai allusion Ban Chao allusion
Su Shi Zhang Lei to Liu Jisun He Zhu Su Shi to Liu Jisun Su Shi to Liu Jisun Zhang Lei to Liu Jisun
One reading of this sequence would give He Zhu a pivotal role in keeping the Ban Chao “Tiger Head” allusion current and stimulating allusions to the mediocre Fan Kuai. Given the fact that Zhang Lei is in the capital all this time and that Fanghui is writing in the capital to celebrate his promotion with the support of Su Shi, it is likely that his poem was read by Zhang and Su. An alternative explanation for this clustering of allusions is that 1091 was a time when 1) an unusual number of military personnel were being promoted to civilian posts, and 2) the military milieu they were leaving was widely recognized to be populated by men of little or no talent. The fact that all the poems mentioned (excepting the one of questionable authorship) are connected with Liu Jisun is significant, for in important ways Liu’s career paralleled that of He Zhu. First, he came from a military family, though one of rather more distinction. (His father, Liu Ping ഏᐔ, had perished as a prisoner of war in 1040 after a heroic defense of the northwestern frontier.) 126 Second, Liu Jisun had literary talents. Su Shi came to appreciate these talents in Hangzhou, where Liu was a vice commissioner in the Left Storehouse with a provisional appointment as military director-in-chief and concurrently third general for the Southeast. Su recommended that Liu, who was approaching sixty, be given a high-level assignment. “Even among civil officials, such a person would be hard to find,” writes Su in his petition. 127 This recommendation from Su Shi is the third parallel with He Zhu. Whether or not the resulting appointment of Liu to the position of prefect meant a transfer to the civil bureaucracy (in a border region, he might well have maintained his military classification), both he and Fanghui possessed such cultural accomplishments that Su Shi felt compelled to petition for their promotion out of mundane military assignments. In the end, we cannot tell without more evidence whether He Zhu’s After
——— 125
QSS, 17:1027.11745. See his biography in the Song shi, 30:325.10499–504, and Sdaishi nempy, 102. 127 See Su Shi’s petitions, one (dated late 1090) for the promotion of Liu Jisun and the other (dated 1092) for assistance to his widow, SSWJ, 3:31.900–901 and 35.988–89. 126
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Changing Official Classification: Proffered to Acquaintances and Old Friends was read by Zhang Lei and Su Shi and stimulated their recollections of “Tiger Head” Ban Chao and the mediocre Fan Kuai. If military-civil comparisons and transfers were simply a timely issue in late 1091, that would by itself be stimulus enough for this cluster of allusions. By 1096, when Fanghui edited his poetry collection, he had not culled this poem, although by that time he must have wondered whether the optimism expressed in it had been excessive. True, he was only forty-five sui in 1096; he could still aspire to “receive merit and reputation in the late years,” as he says in line 209-8. More importantly, we underestimate our poet if we expect him to censor himself: he intended his poetry collection to preserve all the complexity of his life and evoke painful memories along with happy ones. He wrote, “On other occasions when I open this book, I shall think back on relics of the past: I might fetch a deep sigh, or give a smile, for [these poems] are still enough to provoke my craziness.” 128
1092: STRETCHING FORM Moving on to Yuanyou 7 (1092), we find that whatever Fanghui was doing during this year in the capital, he was not writing many poems he considered worth keeping. He saved only two pentametrical Regulated Verses. Perhaps the formal anomalies in these two poems appealed to him. The first poem, composed in the second month on 1092 and titled On Horseback East of Broadford Gate ᑝᵤ㐷᧲㚍, is striking for the absence of semantic parallelism in the middle couplets, even though it is in those very same lines that the tonal patterns are most correct. (Broadford Gate is one of the portals from the capital giving on to the Bian Canal.) 129 211
ᵤ㗡⪭Ꮤ㥏 ٤٤غع٨ ⭯ዏ⬑㥑 ٨٨٨٤٤ ⇼ᤚ⒌᷐ญ ٤٨٤٤٨
At the ford: a drum for the dropping of sails (C6) with approach of dusk still rolls its booming on. D2 I wonder if it could be the mouth of the Qin-Huai: A2
——— 128 This passage is near the end of Fanghui’s preface to his Qinghu yilao shiji. Quoted in Zhong Zhenzhen, Dongshan ci, 519–21. 129 5.12553; 5.11a. The second (starting from the southernmost) of five gates on the eastern side of Bianjing was renamed Broadford in 1023 but in 1077 its original name of Passford ຏ੍ was restored. See the Song shi, 7:85.2102 and the Song huiyao, 8:Fangyu 1.2a (7319b). Our poem is evidence that the Broadford name continued to be used.
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ᚳ⥱㉎ᄞਛ ٤٤٨٨٤ ਇႊ㓍ጯ ٨٤٤٨٨ Ⴒ৻㖊㘑 ٤٨٨٤٤ ொ⺆┵⢻ุ ٤٨٤٤٨ ષ൏㘧⥄᧲ ع٤غ٨٤
a single boat, a drunken dream. B1 I cannot bear on the banks made by Sui C1 the dust and dirt in a slash of wind. D1 Pass my question along: is it really possible, A2 that the shrike fly from the east? (B6)
Notes: 211-1/ The “dropping-sail-drum” must be the drum that tells the hour at the time when boats are, or are supposed to be, stopping for the night. 211-5/ The Grand Canal was constructed under Emperor Yang of the Sui Dynasty, hence the reference to “[canal] banks made by Sui.” 130 211-6/ “One slash,” literally “one whip,” is used (especially in the lyric) as a “measure word” for something long and narrow like a path, but more commonly for a springtime or dawn vista. I have seen only one case in which “one whip” was used in association with wind: a line by Xu Zhongya ᓢખ㓷 (922–?) characterizing the “strange” language of the poet-monk Qiji 㥱Ꮖ (864–943?): ৻ 㖊㘑㔎⪦ጊ㘧 “One slash of wind and rain: 10,000 mountains fly.” 131 211-8/ A folk-song in the New Songs from a Jade Terrace that treats the age-old theme of the deserted woman begins, “Eastward flies the shrike, westward flies the swallow. / Herdboy and Weaver never meet.” 132 Fanghui seems to be the only Northern Song poet to allude to this song, but it was used by Tang poets in farewell poems. 133
Lines 211-3 and 5 hint at “folding-pan parallelism,” but this is not carried through in lines 211-4 and 6. There are Tang examples of Regulated Verse (by Li Bo, Meng Haoran, and Jiaoran) with no parallel lines. 134 I do not feel Fanghui had any
——— 130 By 611, the emperor was able to travel by boat from Yangzhou in the south to the southern outskirts of modern Beijing in the north. See Qu Yilin, Huang-Huai-Hai pingyuan lishi dili, 153. 131 ᢤᏘա, QTS, 22:762.8650. Bian, ‘whip,’ can also refer to an iron chapping-stick with ribs or even to bamboo rhizomes, so the nature of the metaphor embedded in the measure word is open to speculation. I chose the word “slash” hoping that its meaning of an area that has been cut open would preserve the visual and spatial dimensions of the word’s use in the lyric while at the same time suggesting the cutting force of the wind, which might well be the sense that both Xu Zhongya and Fanghui had in mind. 132 Anne Birrell’s translation, 230. Original text, Xu Ling, Yutai xinyong, 2:9.436. 133 A good example is the closing couplet of Cen Shen’s ॹ॰ዚಬࣟፕ്( ࡴܒCen Jiazhou shi, SBBY ed., 2.1): ଗംࠌ۶ழូΔ๕ࣟ܂ଆ܄໎۫ଆᗊ “I ask the commissioner, when are you coming back? / Don’t do a ‘eastward flies the shrike, westward flies the swallow.’” Clearly, the shrike and the swallow represent two people who never meet again. 134 Qi Gong, Shi wen shenglü lungao, 5–6 cites Li Bo’s മݥ՞Հ and ࡙ऒׄෛᡖײ. The latter is in the Three Hundred Tang Poems as a Regulated Verse; the former is perfectly regulated tonally. Huo Songlin (“Jianlun jintishi gelü de zheng yu bian,” 63) cites, in addition to the latter Li Bo poem, Meng’s Հಬଡ଼ԿᝫཆڠΓ(Meng Haoran ji, SBBY ed, 3.2b) and ඡऒᑲၺඨᡔ՞ (1.10, with a slightly different title), and Jiaoran’s ༈ຬពዬլሖ. Jiaoran’s poem, like Li Bo’s, is in the Three Hundred Tang Poems as a Regulated Verse. The second Meng Haoran poem is classified as an Ancient
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precedent in mind, however. He wants to give us the impression that he is driven by spontaneous reactions to a complex experience that cannot be brought under the control of formal patterning. That he chooses to write a tonally regulated poem suggests that his agitated thoughts on horseback can be expressed only by relying on the rhythm of a ready-made matrix, or that the classical calm of the meter represents the emotional restraints he feels in the capital and against which his feelings rebel. In any case, his aesthetic choice gives the poem a depth it might not otherwise be able to claim. The anomaly of the enjambed third couplet is anticipated in the similar use of continuous syntax in the first couplet, “At the ford: a drum for the dropping of the sails / with the approach of dusk still rolls its booming on.” Such enjambment is usually seen only in a closing couplet. There are other innovations. First, I have not seen other cases where “dropping sails” characterizes “drum.” Second, the onomatopoeic bung1b-dung1c of line 211-2 is unprecedented, so far as I know. The reduplicatives bung1b- bung1b and dung1c-dung1c are common representations of a booming sound, but Fanghui is the only poet who combines the two sounds into a single rhyming compound. It may be that the choice of the CD opening was driven by these considerations. A BD opening still would have allowed this onomatopoeic level-tone rhyming compound to come at the end of the second line, but the rest of the opening would have been radically altered. A rhyming first line could not have accommodated the deflected-tone word “drum” at the end of the line, a position that enables it to be modified by “dropping sails” and serve as the subject for the verb in line 211-2; in fact the presence of rhyme would surely have end-stopped the line, preventing this experiment with first-couplet enjambment altogether. The last couplet, “Pass my question along: is it really possible, / that the shrike fly from the east?” is also rather startling. That is, maybe the “Eastward flies the shrike” song and the Tang farewell poems that allude to it are all wrong? Though the poet is silent on whether he is on horseback at Broadford Gate to bid farewell to someone or is simply witnessing other people sending off their friends, he is really asking whether good-byes are inevitable. Sadly, however, the implied answer is probably, “Yes, this is the way it is: the shrike and the swallow never fly in the same direction”; the anguish of separation will always be with us. The other 1092 pentametrical Regulated Verse stretches an extra four lines. Except for the mutually compensating tonal violations in the third position of the
——— Verse in the collection we cite and as a Regulated Verse by others such as Gao Buying, Tang Song shi juyao, 440–41. The problem stems from the fact that it is a half-Ancient half-Regulated poem: the first half, (C5) (B2) (C1) (D4), has major faults of adhesion and tonal parallelism. The second half is well within the norm for Regulated Verse: (A4) (B6) C2 D2. Now, Wang Li would not classify a poem without at least one parallel couplet as a Regulated Verse. See Hanyu shilü xue, 142. Since Fanghui classified his poem for us, we can ignore Wang Li’s stricter standard.
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first two lines, the poem is a perfectly regulated AB poem. The poem is ਭ∛ነ ੑਃⷫ, Ill for a Long Time: Sent to Two or Three Relations and Friends, and it was written in the capital in the eighth month: 135 212 ᣧᤒᡤ↢ℂ
٨٨ع٤٨ ⊖൏ᚖ⥋⌀ ع٤غ٨٤ ⮯㕆⠡∛ ٨٤٤٨٨ 4 ᒺ┧┆ੱ ٨٨٨٤٤ ⚳⽶咗ჱᕱ ٤٨٤٤٨ 㐳㆑⊕㚂ⷫ ٤٤٨٨٤ ৻ྱนᓧ ٨٤٤٨٨ 8 ྾ოᧂᙥ⽺ ٨٨٨٤٤ ᾽ਅႲ✬⎮ ٤٨٤٤٨ 㘑೨Ⴤ⨲ᤐ ٤٤٨٨٤ పᔓ㔊㈬⸳ ٨٤٤٨٨ 12 ⣻∩൩ᄙ༰ ٨٨٨٤٤
Early on I was in the dark about nourishing life; (A3) countless toils have quelled my true authenticity. (B6) The power of the medicine supports my illness, it turns out; C1 obsession with poetry makes me poor, sure enough. D2 Always I bear the regrets of Brown’s winehouse; A2 long have I neglected my white-haired relations. B1 A single wallet?—where can I get one? C1 four walls!—that can’t be poverty! D2 Below the lamp, tears on dusty tomes; A2 before the breeze, spring in tomb grasses. B1 If you forget to set out chicken and brew C1 and your stomach hurts, don’t scold me too much! D2
Notes: 212-3–4/ “power of the medicine” and “obsession with poetry”: ling is always a verb (‘to be efficacious’) when following “medicine” in Tang and Song poetry; on the other hand, the corresponding pi “obsession” in line 4 is always a noun when following “poetry.” I have chosen to translate ling as “power,” but one could leave it as a verb and change “obsession” to a verb to match it: “My medicine works but only to support the illness, it turns out”; / as for poetry, I am obsessed, and it has made me poor, sure enough.” Either choice suppresses the grammatical tension of correlating words that are normally different parts of speech. 212-5/ The surname Huang means ‘yellow’ or ‘brown,’ and I have purposely used the English surname Brown in the translation to reflect the correspondence with “white” in line 6. Huang’s wineshop was a haunt of Wang Rong ₺ᚐ (234–305), Ji Kang ጛᐽ (223–62), and Ruan Ji. Decades
——— 135
5.12553; 5.11b.
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after the latter two had died, Wang Rong passed by Huang’s wineshop and remarked on how distant those good old days seemed. 136 Presumably Fanghui’s friends are separated by distance and time rather than by death, but the allusion here still expresses his feeling of loss. 212-7/ The sense is that even a single wallet (in the sense of pouch) would be welcome. Dongfang Shuo ᧲ᣇᦳ once amused the Han emperor by complaining that a salary of a single wallet of grain and two-hundred forty cash was enough for the court dwarf to gorge himself on, but that on the same salary he, Dongfang, was starving to death. 137 212-8/ Again, this line reverses the normal import of a common allusion. 138 Rather than complain that he has only the four walls to shelter his family, Fanghui says that as long as he has the four walls he isn’t poor. 212-11–12/ The wording here evokes a conversation that Cao Cao recalled in a 202 sacrificial prayer to a widely respected man, Qiao Xuan, who had recognized his talent early on: “I was favored with this casual promise: ‘After I pass on, if your road takes you by me and you do not make an offering of a dipper of brew and a chicken, when your chariot goes three more paces and your stomach hurts, don’t blame me!’ Although it was a joke at the time, if we had not been so close, how could you have spoken thus?” 139
The purpose for extending a Regulated Verse beyond eight lines is to clear more space for the display of parallel couplets, but those couplets do not come in a random order in He Zhu’s poem. The references to medicine and obsessions in the second couplet develop naturally from the concern in the opening couplet over “nourishing life” and “true authenticity.” That medicine could produce undesirable effects was well understood; that poetry and poverty were somehow linked had been thoroughly discussed in the Northern Song; and obsession with poetry, a late Tang affectation, resurfaced occasionally. 140 The third couplet reaches out to the neglected relations and friends for whom the poem was written and features a clever correlation of “Huang” (Brown/Yellow) and “white”; however, this couplet is not strong enough to be the critical couplet in an eight-line poem. That climax of wit comes in the next couplet, where a standard-length Regulated Verse would normally end: lines 212-7 and 8 give us the delicious ironies that conventional marks of extreme poverty would, for He Zhu, represent a step up in the world. What, then, of the next two couplets? The fifth couplet uses unusual terms (“dusty tomes” and “tomb grasses” are rare expressions and are never used as modifiers, as they seem to be here), but the wit of the previous two couplets disappears with the somber hint that the scholar weeping over his books will soon be lying under the grasses of spring. This brings us back
——— 136
Shishuo xinyu, 17.2. Han shu, 9:65.2843. Burton Watson, Courtier and Commoner in Ancient China, 81. 138 As expected, this comes from another Han anecdote, this time about Sima Xiangru, who eloped with his bride to Chengdu and lived with only the four walls around them. Shi ji, 9:117.3000; Burton Watson, Records of the Grand Historian (rev. ed.), 2:261 139 Ծࢭൕ୲પᎃհߢΚḗຓհ৵ΔሁڶᆖطΔլ֯אೋᠪመઌ⬇Δ߫መԿޡΔ ᆮ࿀֎ࢡΖឈᜯழᚭూհߢΔॺ۟ᘣᗱړΔ्ڼΖFrom सਚ֜രᖯ֮خ, Cao Cao ji yizhu, 81. 140 Mei Yaochen wrote a poem in 1059 on being obsessed with poetry. ᇣ⸕, Mei Yaochen ji biannian jiaozhu, 3:29.1085–86. 137
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to the health-threatening imbalances that underlie the first four lines of the poem. Death, of course, implies closure. Better yet, though, the reference to grasses on the poet’s tomb prepares us for the joke in the final couplet, which in turn justifies the fact of his having brought up such an inauspicious subject. Fanghui’s promise to give his friends stomach aches if they forget to pay their respects at his grave is an allusive expression of fondness for his friends and relations. As Cao Cao said in 202, only a someone with whom one is very close could make such a threat. The extension of the poem to twelve lines naturally allows the poet to say what has to be said. However, another way to look at this poem is to take note of the couplet by couplet progression that we have described and recognize that the shifts in tone and degrees of salience are perfectly orchestrated to fit the length of the poem—one could say that it is this rhetorical structure more than any abundance of content that dictated the expansion of the poem. (Simple abundance of content can be dealt with by writing two or more poems.) We cannot reconstruct the dialectic between content and form that led to this inner structure, of course. What we can do is acknowledge that Fanghui did far more with this poem than simply “clear space” to show off his skill at writing parallel couplets.
1093–94: LEAVING THE CAPITAL We shall consider only three of the eight pentametrical Regulated Verses Fanghui preserves between the eighth month of 1093, when he is about to leave for the south, and 1096, when he arrives in Hanyang. As we know, he ended up staying with relatives in Hailing in 1093, returning to the capital in 1095. The Hailing period was one of peak activity in heptametrical Regulated Verse, but relatively low productivity in the pentametrical form. Those pentametrical Regulated Verses that Fanghui did keep from the 1093–96 period do not advance our appreciation of his art a great deal over the poems we have already analyzed, in my opinion. However, there is one poem written shortly before He Zhu’s departure in 1093 that attracts me because it has the quirkiness of the poems we have just discussed. In addition, we shall want to look at two of the four pentametrical Regulated Verses that Fanghui writes to Mi Fu in 1093 and 1094. Between Ill for a Long Time: Sent to Two or Three Relations and Friends and the next pentametrical Regulated Verse in the collection there is a one-year gap. Fanghui evidently found little to say in the genre until he was about to leave the capital in the eighth month of Yuanyou 8 (1093). The poem he leaves us bears the odd title ⑺⡞㔎᥄⥝ᦠ Autumn clothing; heard rain; got up at dawn; wrote at random. 141 One
——— 141 5.12553; 5.11b. The eighth month corresponds in Yuanyou 8 to the days from 25 August to 23 September.
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could smooth this out to “Wearing autumn clothing, I heard rainfall, whereupon I got out of bed early and wrote this at random,” but the oddity is in the combination of four topics and the regular 2-2-2-2 rhythm of the title. Any one of those two-syllable units can be and has been used as a title by itself. However, I have found no titles in Tang or Song poetry that use any of these four phrases, are eight syllables long, and have this choppy rhythm. As to whether and why the poet was wearing his autumn clothes in bed, as the title seems to suggest, let us merely note that Fanghui (according to his headnote) was about to go eastward down from the capital while still sick. 213
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ᔃ㚓ർ ٨٨٤٤٨ ᚳ⥱⸘Ẃ᧲ ٤٤٨٨٤ ኙ↢৻ᄛ㔎 ٤٤ع٨٨ ∛⍝ౌ⑺㘑 ٨٨٨٤٤ ⪭ᴱ☣ᩮ⪲ ٨٨٤٤٨ ᐝᘷደⷺⳗ ٤٤٨٨٤ ᖱᖤ▵‛ ٤٤٤٨٨ ⡙⥄ᴫ⠃ ٤٨٨٤٤
The homeland: my heart races north; A1 a single boat: plans take me foolishly east. B1 Chill arises from one whole night of rain; (C4) illness crosses two autumns of wind. D2 Desolate, drearisome, leaves at hedge’s foot; A1 solitary, loneful, insect at house’s corner. B1 What is he feeling, as he mourns the season C2 and compares himself to this withered old man? D1
Note 213-7–8/ There are ambiguities in the parsing of these lines. Line 7 could be either “the thing (creature) that mourns the season” or “mourning the things of the season.” Line 8 could be “just represents himself to the withered old man” (as Tao Yuanming, for example, wrote the “Biography of Mr. Five Willows” to “represent himself,” zi kuang 142 ) or “just (liao zi) compares (kuang) himself to the withered old man.”
If we work through this poem, we can see how once again Fanghui adds complexity and intriguing ambiguity to the expected structure of a Regulated Verse. The opening lines are seemingly parallel, emphasizing the contradiction between the poet’s desire to go north and his plan to go east. “Heart,” xin, also means intention or mind-set, so it correlates with “plan” in line 213-2. (Su Shi provides a precedent for doing this in a parallel line.) 143 The rest of the lines are
——— 142 143
Song shu, 93.2286, and Tao Yuanming ji, 6.175–76. ڻᣉطಬՏհ (1086), SSSJ, 5:27.1438, lines 5 and 6.
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more complicated in their correlations. The verb “race” connotes speed, while man, interpreted “foolishly” here, also means “slow,” the opposite of speed. This would be antithetical parallelism-by-pun. “North” and “east” appear at first glance to correspond easily, but the latter, in the context of its line, can only be a verb, ‘to go east’; “north” could also be a verb—“my heart, galloping, goes north”—but I think it is best to see it as a complement to the verb and to see the correspondence with “east” as another case of parallelism-by-pun. In the second couplet, “Chill arises [from or in] one night’s rain; / illness crosses two autumns’ wind,” we might point out that the syntax is not parallel, as the brackets added here show. Imperfect parallelism in a second couplet to offset real or apparent parallelism in the first couplet is not unprecedented. More interesting is the single tonal violation in the poem, which comes with the number “one” (meaning ‘whole’ here) in that line. The facts have forced Fanghui into a conflict with one of the peculiarities of Chinese numbers: the only numbers that carry a level tone are san ‘three’ and qian ‘thousand.’ This means that where contrasting tones are required in corresponding positions, only one of these two numbers can correlate with another number. Thus, if Fanghui has been sick for two (deflected tone) autumns, he would have to match this span of time with three (even tone) days of rain or, if it rained one (deflected tone) whole night, he would have to stretch his illness out to three (even tone) autumns! (For this reason, at least one scholar has argued that “three” in Regulated Verse lines cannot always be taken literally.) 144 Our poet refuses to bow to meter in line 213-3, but because the resulting tonal violation comes in the third syllable, it is actually a minor one. Still, the violation puts a desired stress on the numbers, for a rain that lasts a “whole” night and an illness that stretches out to “two” autumns are worth special attention. In the third couplet, the rhyming compounds at the beginning of the lines are conspicuous. Lak bak “desolate, drearisome” is used of people in obscurity and poverty in three pre-Tang dynastic histories. In Tang Dynasty poetry, it is used only twice. 145 In the Song Dynasty, all seven occurrences that I am aware of are Northern Song. Fanghui accounts for two of these, his friend Zhang Lei for three. 146 The corresponding ou ou “solitary, loneful” is somewhat more common
——— 144
Matsuura Tomohisa, “Feng huo lian san yue’: guanyu shuci de shengdiao.” The Tang poets who use the phrase lak bak are Han Yu (ඡટၣৄ࡙ᄎᜤ, QTS, 22:791.8911, of crows) and Bo Juyi (ല࿇խࣩࡰחઌֆ֫……ؤ, QTS, 13.448.5047, of calligraphy compared to flying clouds and rain). 146 In order, as best as I can determine: Ouyang Xiu, ࡉමᚊቹֆᏚ㝇 (1057), Ouyang Xiu quanji, 2:jushi ji.6.44, used of a bird’s wings; Zhang Lei, ટᘋԿଈհԲ, Zhang Lei ji 1:10.144, used of crows, ࡴኂڜऑԲଈհԲ (1078), 1:23.413, used of clouds, and ඨ՞┕ڝفղؔڣመ ڼվԼሉߎ, 1:26.468, used of himself; Su Zhe, ᝫᗩ՟ (3 February 1104), Su Zhe ji, 3:Luancheng hou ji.3.919–20, used of himself;. Fanghui’s other use of lak bak is in a 1087 heptametrical Quatrain, ૹ ᓿࠇࡺᑈਞტᘋ Writing Again of Dwelling in the Capital in Late Spring and Feeling Stirred, no 481, 9.12593; 9.8a; it describes willow floss fallen in the shade of a wall. 145
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in Tang poetry (eight occurrences) and much more common in Northern Song poetry (twenty-five uses). (Like lak bak, it is absent from the works of major Southern Song poets.) Through an allusion to the Zhuangzi, 147 uses of ou ou often refer to illness, and the fact that the Zhuangzi gave so much vocabulary to Chinese literature may account for the slightly greater prevalence of the phrase. Because these phrases are fairly rare and (for reasons we can only guess at) most appealing to the sensibilities of Fanghui’s contemporaries, they attract our notice. Then we may enjoy the fact that their constituent morphemes (or, more accurately, the words usually represented by the characters that represent the sounds of these two rhyming binomials) contribute in appropriate ways to the meaning. Leaves “fall” (lak) and “moor” (bak) themselves at the bottom of a hedge; an insect in the corner of a room is “hidden” (ou) and sounds “mournful” (ou). Beyond that, we may notice that the phonetic contrast between the staccato lak bak and ou ou is only the beginning of the play of sound in this couplet. Every one of the deflected tones in this couplet is an entering tone. Line 5, lak1 bak1 li3b ken1 yap3b, ends with an abrupt final ~p, and the ~k finals of lak bak are resumed in line 6: ou3c ou3b uk1b lok1b drung3b. The effectiveness of the imagery in this couplet is reinforced by the complex interplay of sound, sense, and balance. Finally, though it is not related to these questions of meter and syntax, we should note the highly unusual anthropomorphization of the mournful insect in the final couplet.
MI FU Mi Fu called on He Zhu in the same month of 1093 in the capital. This prompted a lighthearted but flattering poem from He. We shall take space here only to describe the witty comparison that takes up the first half of the poem. Playing on the shared second syllable of the two place names, Fanghui finds Mi Fu as the magistrate of nearby Yongqiu comparable to the magistrate of second-century Taiqiu ᄥਐ, Chen Shi. He notes that Chen Shi was acclaimed in his time for his honesty and Mi Fu is known for his stylish elegance (fengliu). 148 Though these are rather different qualities, I think that simply bringing “the two wondrous magistrates of modern and ancient times” (ฎౌᅱ, line 214-1) together this way was complimentary.
——— 147 Two anecdotes (obviously variations on the same story) have a sage-emperor trying to give the empire to a man who declines the offer because he has a “deep-seated and worrisome” illness and knows enough to devote himself to getting well before spending time on ordering the world. See Watson, 307; cf. Graham, 224. 148 Mi Fu was magistrate at Yongqiu from 1092 to 1094. He Zhu’s poem (no. 214) is ۏሸ ցີߠመ, 5.12554; 5.12a.
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Two months later, Fanghui stopped to see Mi Fu in Yongqiu a day or two into his journey from the capital down the Bian canal. He wrote a pair of poems as he left. In the headnote to the two poems, he writes, “Mi is broadly learned and talented; he has written several tens of juan under the title ‘Mountain Grove Collection.’ He is known to others only for his obsession with washing and his study of calligraphy. He has an innocent madness and suffers many antagonisms. He once sent up a document supporting my request for a shrine post. There was no response and he left it at that. So I am needling him with these poems.”149 The two poems (CD and AB in form) are under the title ⇐☨㓾ਐੑ㚂 Left in Farewell to Mi of Yongqiu: Two Poems. 150 215
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㊚ㅢᄛ⺆ ٤٤٤٨٨ ⚥႙ኮ⢷ਛ ٨٨٨٤٤ ᳓≻ផഏ ٨٨٤٤٨ ᦠฬᶒ㞉 ٤٤٨٨٤ ᔊ⁵ᖤᑠ㥘 ٨٤٤٨٨ ㅙᾲ⾭㔕㡨 ٨٨٨٤٤ ਇਲ૫ጊ᳓ ٨٨٤٤٨ ᧲ධ⪺ౌ⠃ ٤٤٨٨٤
Bright lamp: talking all night through; C2 rough and rugged terrain: getting it all off our chests. D2 It’s for water mania that Magistrate Liu is pushed out; A1 for calligraphy fame, the Duke of Lu is besmirched. B1 Jealousy and suspicion aggrieve the rat in the granary; C1 pursuing the “hot,” they scorn the goose in the clouds. D2 There is no lack of fine hills and waters; A1 in the southeast two old men will come to rest. B1
Notes: 215-2/ “Rough and rugged terrain” within the breast—I use Richard Mather’s translation from an anecdote about Ruan Ji—is frustration or unresolved feelings. 151 Huang Tingjian is the poet who
———
149 ۏᙃ໑ڶթࠠΖထπ՞ࣥႃρᑇԼ࠴ΖԳवृֽෞΔᖂۖբΔ堚߆ڍ᭝Ζ ቫՂີག܇రհᓮΔլ᎗բΔאڂᖿհΖThe “Mountain Grove Collection” did not survive the fall of the Northern Song, but Mi’s works were later re-collected in two editions that have come down to us; see Zhu Shangshu, Song ren bieji xulu 1:12.573. It seems that Fanghui did succeed in becoming an inspector of the Northern Marchmount Shrine, though this entitled him to a temple salary without requiring him to actually go to the shrine. See Gong Yanming , Song dai guanzhi cidian, 614, s.v. jian yue miao. (Su Shi would offer prayers at the Northern Marchmount Shrine in Dingzhou in early 1094, when he was prefect there. See Su Shi nianpu, 3:33.1141, 1144, and 1147. Dingzhou, now Dingxian, is halfway between Shijiazhuang and Baoding, a few hours south of Beijing.) 150 5.12554; 5.12a–12b. 151 See Shishuo xinyu, 23.51; Mather (2002 rev. ed.), 421. As written in Fanghui’s poem, the expression usually refers to a rude house of piled up clods of earth or sod. However, the homophonous compound ឤჇ is clearly intended.
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uses this expression most—six times. 215-3/ Liu Cheng ഏẴ (fifth century) was obsessed with cleaning up debris and weeds in the district under his charge, but Fanghui seems to have confused him with a contemporary who was an ablutomaniac. See below. 215-4/ The Duke of Lu is Yan Zhenqing 㗷⌀ (709–85), one of the most famous and studied calligraphers in Chinese history. As Amy McNair has pointed out, it is his reputation for loyalty and bravery that caused his calligraphy to be made a model in the Northern Song. 152 This line asserts that Yan’s character (like that of Mi Fu) is in effect diminished by the emphasis placed on his artistic skill. 215-5–6/ This couplet appears to refer to a situation beyond our ken; the translation is tentative. The Li Zhiding edition has ᔓ wang ‘forget’ in place of ji ‘be jealous of’ in line 5, but adopting that version does not clarify anything. I suggest that the “rat in the granary” is Fanghui, “stealing” his salary from the public storehouse, and that the “wild goose in the clouds” is Mi Fu, a man of vision and ambition. 215-8/ The southeast is presumably the Shanyin area to which Fanghui always longs to retire; the two old men must be he and Mi Fu.
This poem is perfectly regulated, perhaps reflecting Mi Fu’s preference for Regulated Verse. 153 The middle couplets, however, present difficulties. The allusion to Liu Cheng in line 215-3 is obscure (I know of no other poet who has made this allusion) and apparently careless. Although he was cashiered for pushing the people under his charge too hard in cleaning up the district, it was not Liu Cheng who was compulsive about washing himself but the individual in whose biography he is mentioned. 154 The third couplet must allude to political or social barriers standing in the path of He Zhu and Mi Fu. However, its precise reference is obscure to us, and there are no discernable allusions or textual precedents that would suggest why the rat should be aggrieved by jealousy and suspicion, or who it is that “pursues the ‘hot’.” Mi Fu presumably had more context than we do for understanding these lines. The second poem in the pair switches to the AB structure, but modified with minor tonal violations in the A and B lines. This poem is somewhat less arcane in its middle couplets. The supplied pronouns in the translation of lines 216-3–4 disguise the fact that we don’t know whether the poet is referring to himself, to Mi Fu, to both, or to first one and then the other; however, the allusions in the third couplet are to well-known figures, so we have enough information to see
——— 152 Mi Fu disparaged some aspects of Yan’s style but hailed him as both an upright official and an exemplar of “Daoist” naturalism. See McNair, The Upright Brush, 87–95. 153 In his Bao Jin yingguang ji (CSJC, v. 1932), I count fifty-one Ancient Verses and one hundred five Regulated Verses. 154 See Nan shi, 6:71.1734. The phrase “water obsession” (the term used in Fanghui’s headnote) occurs a paragraph earlier in the Nan shi, applied to He Tongzhi ۶ԳП (449–503). Liu Cheng is simply mentioned in He’s biography as another example of someone making cleanliness a fetish, although in his case it was not bathing that became a mania, but forcing the people of the county to clean up weeds in the roads and filth in the waterways. “However,” writes the historian, “he was extremely righteous and excellent in medical skill.”
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how one allusion applies to Mi Fu and one to He Zhu. 216
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ᅢᬩሶ ٨٨ع٤٨ ጊᨋ⯪ㅩ ٤٤غ٨٤ ቭり㗇⥄਼ ٤٤٤٨٨ ଶ⌒น⋧ኈ ٨٨٨٤٤ ᄛᙾ₈㎋ ٨٨ع٤٨ ષ㣦ெ⥙ ع٤غ٨٤ ᄙᘚᣇ⑊㓩 ٤٤٤٨٨ Ὼ᳭ ܦఀ ٨٨٨٤٤
Take care of yourself, Scion of Chu; (A3) in the mountain groves, where shall we meet? (B2) As officers, we must crave leave to retire; C2 how could vulgar eyes ever tolerate us? D2 Shuye is lazy but keeps on forging; (A3) Boluan is a menial and goes on pounding. (B6) How embarrassing that I’m still a salaried recluse; C2 you jus’ go an’ lord it over me! D2
Notes 216-1/ Hao zhu “take care of yourself” was in Tang and Song times a polite farewell expressed by the person leaving to the person staying. 216-5/ Shuye is the cognomen of Ji Kang. Ji Kang depicted himself as lazy and slovenly in a letter breaking off his friendship with someone who wished to recommend him as his successor in a government post. However, as Fanghui points out, Ji Kang actually worked hard forging iron at home as a hobby. 155 Shuye probably stands for Mi Fu, who had Daoist interests. 216-6/ Boluan is Liang Hong 㡨 (Later Han), who was bright and learned but pursued humble occupations. Leaving the capital region, he went to the southeast (Wu) and worked pounding grain for a man who soon recognized his moral worth by the extreme respect with which Liang was treated by his wife, despite his low status. 156 Boluan probably stands for Fanghui, who is on his way to the southeast from the capital. 216-7/ “Salaried recluse” refers here to a person who draws the salary of an official but does not conscientiously pursue his duties. 216-8/ Er ru is an intimate second-person pronoun. Wu nong is a dialectical first-person pronoun of the Wu area, the lower Yangzi delta. Both are known in earlier poetry. English, even before ‘thou’ fell out of use in ordinary speech, has long been poor in pronouns and uses other means to express intimacy or assert hierarchical equality. The translation thus relies on an informal English verbal expression to convey the tone of familiarity in the Chinese pronouns.
This is a more lighthearted poem. The tonal violations in the third syllables of line 216-1, 2, 5, and 6 not only suggest a relaxed attitude but also hint at the intonation
——— 155 See Shishuo xinyu, 18.3 and 24.3 and the letter translated by James Robert Hightower in Cyril Birch, Anthology of Chinese Literature, 1:162–64. 156 Hou Han shu, 10:83.2765–68.
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curve of joke-telling. (Though a bit more numerous than what we see in most of Fanghui’s pentametrical Regulated Verse, the violations are of the most common type and in each pair of lines the violations “compensate” for each other.) “Scion of Chu” chides Mi Fu for inventing a Chu ancestry for himself. (See our note to the 1091 Ancient Verse line 126-11–12 in Chapter One.) “Mountain groves” might be a sly allusion to the fact that Mi’s collected writings were titled “Mountain Grove Collected Works.” (We don’t know which came first, however, the poem or the collection.) The Shuye and Boluan allusions are clever ways to make fun of the poet and his friend while suggesting that they are on a level with much-admired men of the past. These unregulated lines, then, are really the parts of the poem that are most tailored to the particularities of the two friends. There are signs that Fanghui is developing a distinct vocabulary and style at this point in his life. Perhaps this is because he is now in his forties and feels confident in establishing a unique voice; perhaps he is reacting to contemporary poetry heard in the capital rather than to the Tang models that stimulated him in Xuzhou; or perhaps the twists of contemporary politics or his own career have worked in subtle ways to push him toward new forms of expression. Lu yin “salaried recluse” is not a particularly common expression in poetry, but outside of this poem, Fanghui will use it in a Song and pentametrical Regulated Verse from 1096. 157 In the first poem of this pair to Mi Fu, the word mei in line 215-4, translated “besmirch,” is similarly unusual, yet it appears in six other poems by He Zhu. With the exception of one 1079 Ancient Verse (where we translated it “befouled” in Poem 040, line3), all of He Zhu’s instances come in the 1090s: there are three heptametrical Regulated Verses from 1093 and 1098, and two Songs from 1095 and 1098. 158 Diction is of interest in the next poem we shall examine, too.
——— 157 The Song is Poem 033, partially translated earlier. In line 033-3, the term “elder salaried recluse” could be a proper noun. The Regulated Verse is Poem 225, ᠲᣪੈࡴॐᕻ Inscribed on the Wall of the Official Quarters at Baoquan, 5.12556; 5.14b. In the relevant line, we could read “I’ll steal my emolument and be a recluse” or “I’ll stealthily be a salaried recluse.” The ambiguity may be intentional, as there are more significant puns in the poem, one playing on the poet’s name, which means ‘to smelt,’ the other on the fact that the mint is on the north side (yin) of a hill (shan) and so the poet is pleased to be living in “Shanyin,” which, as we have noted, he considers a sort of ancestral home southeast of Hangzhou. 158 The heptametrical Regulated Verses are ᢤ്հթ Presented to Zhang Zhicai (Poem 323, 1093; 7.12575; 7.9b); ࿆႓ᦊᑔଫബᑰ ࣒٘۔Climbing Yellow Crane Tower and Sent Also to the Pan Binlao Brothers (Poem 550, 1098; 10.12605; Shiyi.16a); and ബֱ࣑ࣳחᜯޕരགଫ១႓ࡽԲᑰ࣒٘ Sent to Magistrate Fang Lin and Defender Li Yuan of Wuchang and also as a Letter to the Two Pan Brothers of Huanggang (Poem 551,1098;10.12605; shiyi.16b). The Songs are ནॽ In Answer to Xu Jingliang (Poem 028, 1095; 1.12505–6; 1.13a) and তᑔዚಬ࣑ࣳშ֜ښᝫཛ Song of the Southern Loft: Seeing Prefect Shen of Wuchang off to Return to the Court (Poem 037, 1098, third month;1.12509; 1.18a). Mei does appear in some other Tang poems with a different meaning.
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1096–98: ON TO JIANGXIA GOING UPRIVER: DICTION FROM THE PAST Fanghui saves only one pentametrical Regulated Verse from his journey back from Hailing to the capital in early 1095 and none from his stay in the capital. His output continues to be meager as he creeps south again late in 1095, in bad health and destined for the mint at Jiangxia. Near Dangtu, about 60 km SW and upstream from Jinling, opposite Hezhou and Liyang, Fanghui writes a poem that takes us back to the solitary musings we are familiar with from earlier pentametrical Regulated Verses in his collection. It is worth remembering that our poet still indulged in this kind of poem after the more allusive works we have been looking at. The poem is ᳯⴕኮᦸ Moving on the River: Depicting the View. 159 It is dated the fourth month of Shaosheng 3 (1096). 223
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ᢳᾖଚ⇺▗ ٤٨٤٤٨ ᓸᶭㅟዊ⓽ ٤٤٨٨٤ 㕍⫱ଐᷪ ٤٤ع٨٨ ⊕㠽ዾᯖᳯ ٨٨٨٤٤ ㆜⥝ਃ⊖ ٨٨٤٤٨ ᾇᗜ⦖৻㔅 ٤٤٨٨٤ ೨⥱ቯᧂ㆙ ٤٤ع٨٨ ⇷㥏⡱ㅩㅩ ٨٨٨٤٤
Slanting rays invade sparse blinds; A2 slight chill penetrates the tiny window. B1 Green rushes still cleave to the isles; (C4) white birds repeatedly reach over the River. D2 To let out feelings, Three Hundred Poems; A1 simmering sorrow, one pair of sweeps. B1 The forward boat must still be near: (C4) repeated drums are heard, boom, boom. D2
Notes 223-3/ I assign yi (“cleave to”) a deflected tone in accordance with the meter, ignoring the difference in meanings associated with the character’s readings. 160 223-5/ “Three Hundred Poems” normally refers to the Classic of Poetry. The line echoes Du Fu’s remark that nothing is better than poetry for “letting out feelings” (in the same phrase, qian xing). 161
——— 159
5.12555; 5.13b. For a list of characters that have more than one pronunciation but whose different pronunciations are commonly “unhitched” (in poetry) from their normal meaning distinctions, see Wang Li, Hanyu shilüxue, 133–42. (Yi is not on this list.) 161 ױ൦, Du shi xiangzhu, 2:10.803, line 6. 160
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The verb dou, translated “penetrates” in line two, was discussed in our chapter on Ancient Verse, where we noted that three out of four times Mei Yaochen used this verb it was in a pentasyllabic line. Whether or not Mei provided a precedent for He Zhu we could only speculate, but there is one more coincidence we can add to the record: only one of Mei’s poems is a Regulated Verse, and it was written in Jinling, through which Fanghui has just passed. The relevant couplet of Mei Yaochen’s poem is ㊄㒺ㅩᦇ㔐㧘ㅟ㔕ૼ “In Jinling I meet a morning snowfall: / tumbling it comes penetrating the clouds.” 162 One possibility, then, is that Fanghui saw, remembered, or reread this poem while passing by Jinling. Another possibility is that he was rereading his own poetry from the last time he had been in the area. Dou appears in two 1088 poems from Yellow Leaf Hause and Jinling. Our present poem’s “White birds repeatedly reach over the River” could be a revival of “white birds repeatedly flaring and vanishing” in the 1088 poem Making an Excursion to the Estrade of Falling Blossoms in Jinling (line 102-12). As far as I can tell, this particular vision of white birds in flight is unique to He Zhu. Going back to the third line, the phrase translated “still cleave to the isles” presents, I believe, both a gloss on one Tang poet and a refusal to follow the crowd in borrowing from another Tang poet. This requires explanation. First, Du Fu is the only poet I know who uses yi zhu “cleave to the isles”: ₡㢬రଐᷪ㧘 ⩄ᤋⓨ “A lone crane already cleaves to the isle; / withered lotuses just stand against the sky.” The word yuan “already” in the first line of the couplet may have been somewhat problematic; there is a version of the line in which xian వ replaces yuan. However, both wordings convey the sense that the crane has been standing by the islet. 163 I believe that gu “still” in Fanghui’s line has a similar force, making his “still cleave to the isles” a paraphrase of Du Fu. Fanghui’s use of gu here may owe something to Han Yu’s 823 line ㉿㑚ଐ ὼ “the village gate will still (gu) be the same.” 164 At the same time, Fanghui’s line keeps its distance from Han’s. We should explain that the character yi in Han Yu’s line is the same one that represents the word “cleave to/cling to” in Du Fu and He Zhu, but in the compound yiran it means “the same as before.” Fanghui never uses Han Yu’s gu yiran, but in 223-3 he uses the gu and the yi without the ran—and he is the only Song poet who does so, to my present knowledge. In never using gu yiran “is still the same” (unique to Han Yu in Tang poetry by the way), Fanghui is refusing to go along with no fewer than six other Northern Song poets who did adopt the phrase: Wang Anshi, Su Shi, Su Zhe, Qin Guan, Chen Shidao, and Zhang Lei. In using gu yi zhu “still cleaves to the isle,” which takes its rather unusual use of gu from Han Yu but substitutes zhu ‘isle’ for the suffix ran, Fanghui is
———
८ສԿଈհԲ, Mei Yaochen ji biannian jiaozhu, 2:23.709–710. ຩᔤֆટඡۃקᜯถ, Du shi xiangzhu, 3:14.1177, lines 3–4. 164 ق෯, Han Yu quanji jiaozhu, 2:903. Cf. Von Zach’s translation: “. . . . wirst Du die Gegend wo wir einst gewohnt haben vielleicht änlich wie früher finden.” Von Zach, 159–60. 162 163
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1) consciously constructing an alternative phrase and 2) using it to act as a paraphrase of Du Fu’s yuan yi zhu, “still cleaves to the isle.” 165 Whether he thought it out in this manner is debatable, but I think he must have been aware of the lines by Han Yu and Du Fu and he might have been aware that he was using Han Yu’s gu to gloss the “already” in Du Fu’s line. The tonal violations in line 223-3 might be his signal to us that something complex is going on beneath the surface. The reader may have noticed that both of the couplets we have just discussed, so precise in capturing the scene while so rich in echoes of earlier diction, are parallel. I think there is a special purpose in making the first three couplets parallel (and not complicating them with too many tonal violations or first-line rhyme, as we saw in Seeing Zuo Yu off for Jiangxia as Commandant, Poem 197). The repeated parallelism evokes the routine rhythm of travel on the river. The same effect is achieved in a different way by the repetition of the nearly identical sequences of A B (C) D line types; one could even imagine that the unregulated (C4) lines are analogous to a noisy shipping of oars every evening, followed by the stable “mooring” of the D2 pattern in lines 223-4 and 8.166
HANYANG: RESPONSE TO ASSAULTS ON HISTORY Although seven of the eleven pentametrical Regulated Verses from 1096–98 have AB openings, we shall be content to let the poem we have just discussed represent that majority and turn now to two CD poems (out of the three written in this period) and the sole DB poem in the set. (There are no BD poems after 1091.) The first poem is actually an extended Regulated Verse, but its content is more notable than its form. In our chapter on Ancient Verse, we discovered that in Jiangxia Fanghui expresses a new view of history as something that can be recovered, something that must be rectified and passed on. This impulse shows itself already in the fifth month of Shaosheng 3 (1096), after our poet arrives in Hanyang, opposite Jiangxia. There he discovers that the lake Li Bo named Court Gentleman’s Lake in 758 is gone and the body of water that now bears the name is too small and in the wrong place. We shall translate Fanghui’s preface to his poem, which in turn quotes or paraphrases part of the preface to Li Bo’s poem on the lake.
——— 165 In a heptametrical Quatrain dated 1087 Fanghui had made a different substitution, resulting in yet another meaning. He speaks of willow floss blowing in through the blinds and purposely (gu) clinging to (yi) a person. See ࡉԳ႞ਞ Harmonizing with Someone’s Pained by Spring, Poem 480, 9.12593; 9.8a. There is no relationship with Du Fu’s line here. Still, this comes after two of Su Shi’s gu yiran poems, after all three of Wang Anshi’s poems, and after Qin Guan’s poem, which is ᝫ۞ᐖສ ଈհԲ, Huaihai ji (SBCK), 10.3b, dated by Nakata Yjir to 1080. No other poet uses gu with yi ren “clings to someone,” so Fanghui still may be “refusing” Han Yu’s gu yiran phrase. 166 This is why I exercised the option to make the third syllable in line 223-8 a deflected tone.
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I observe that the preface to Li Bo’s poem states, “In the [first] year of the Qianyuan Era I was exiled to Yelang. It happened that my old friend Secretarial Court Gentleman Zhang Wei, who was on assignment to Mianzhou [Hanyang], Prefect Du of Mianyang, and Magistrate Wang of Hanyang were having a drinking party at the South Lake of the riverside city. Mr. Zhang looked around in all directions with an air of transcendence and asked me to give [the lake] an auspicious name. And so I named it Court Gentleman’s Lake. Assistant and literary man Cen Jing, who was at the banquet, thought my words were on the mark.” At present the so-called Court Gentleman’s Lake is situated north of the commandery wall and is hemmed in between two mountains; it is a hundred paces or so across, unworthy of anyone “looking around in all directions with an air of transcendence.” It is already plain that this is not the place. Moreover, the people from the edge of the River south of the commandery brought a Tang period map and pointed out that the Court Gentleman’s Lake was next to them. It must be that the Lake was merged with the River; a li or more from the wall are indistinct sandbars and isles that have not yet been submerged, and these must be the former banks of the Lake. In the fifth month of bingzi [1096–97] my boat stopped at Mianyang. I sought out the elders left over from another era and only then obtained the details, upon which I composed this poem to record them. 167 224
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⇧ᐕ⾫ ٤٤٤٨٨ タ㈬ᴐධㆆ ٨٨٨٤٤ ᶭ๒ᣂ㔿 ٤٨٤٤٨ ḓᶩ⚛⑺ ٤٤٨٨٤ ㇢ቭᄐญ ٤٤ع٨٨ ቴᄛ㇢ ٤٨٨٤٤ ଦ⤒㕍ⲱ⥷ ٨٨٤٤٨ ㅪ⸌⚡✊ ٤٤٨٨٤ 㜞㛺㓣㔎ᢔ ٤٤٤٨٨ 㙍ぴᗐ㘑ᵹ ٤٨٨٤٤
———
That year a wise prefect and magistrate C2 took brew for an excursion south of Mian. D2 A cool moon displayed the newly cleared skies; A2 the bright lake glistened with pale autumn. B1 The court gentleman was emissary to Xiakou; (C4) the immortal guest was prisoner in Yelang. D1 Knees touching: green dragon boat; A1 goblets continually: purple damask coat. B1 High spirits scattered with the rain; C2 relict traces remind us of carefree elegance. D1
167 Fanghui’s poem is titled simply ࡴྋ Court Gentleman’s Lake. 5.12555–56; 5.14a. For Li Bo’s poem and preface, one may see Zhan Ying, Li Bo quanji, 6:18.2884–88, or no Jitsunosuke, Ri Taihaku shika zenkai, 976–78.
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⧐⨲ᄬ㕍ጁ ٤٨ع٤٨ ṋᵄᶋ⊕㣁 ٤٤غ٨٤ ᳯ⊖ܟ㗃⋘ ٤٤٨٨٨ ⍹ೞ৻▻⇐ ٨٨٨٤٤ ቱᴉ⎼⠪ ٤٨٤٤٨ ೨ᙿ㒺⼱ᘷ ٤٤غ٨٤
Fragrant grasses hide [pearl] slippers; (A4) watchet waves float white birds. (B2) The River swallowed—a hundred acres gone; (C4) on stone was engraved—one work remaining. D2 It were well to have someone sink the stele, A2 anticipating the sorrow of “ridges and valleys.” (B2)
Notes: 224-4/ I posit a rising tone reading for han, the third character, to retain this line as a regulated B 1 type. 168 Autumn is “pale” because it is traditionally linked to the color white. 169 However, su “pale” also means “all along, in the past.” This meaning correlates with “newly” in line 3. For another example of parallelism-by-pun, see the note to line 224-11. 224-6/ The “immortal guest” is Li Bo, who encouraged the image of himself as an immortal temporarily banished from Heaven to earth. Yelang, in the rugged uplands of the southeastern Sichuan Basin, is the place of exile to which he was en route. 224-7/ When people’s knees meet in poetry, it is not because their space is cramped but because they are engaged in earnest and friendly conversation. The dragon boat has a “hornless dragon” chi carved on the bow. 224-8/ In one of his poems, Li Bo trades a green damask coat for wine to keep the party going. 170 224-11/ I have kept the Chinese text as it is, but I am sure it is corrupt; the translation reflects my hypothesis that qing ‘green, blue, grey’ should be replaced by zhu ⃨ ‘pearl,’ a pun (well attested in Tang poetry) on ᧇ, ‘red, crimson.’ Li Bo refers twice to “pearly slippers” of guests. “Green/ blue/grey” shoes have no such precedent and thus no resonance. 171 Qing already appears in the poem, and in a Regulated Verse the repetition of a character is generally not preferred.
——— 168 David Branner, Cuyun: a handbook of Chinese character readings, and Morohashi 7:17595 report the rising tone based on the Guangyun rhyming dictionary of 1011. The Hanyu da cidian lists several compounds in which han is supposed to mean ‘reflect.’ I think the frequent use of the verb with bodies of water reflecting the sky stems from a conceit that the water “soaks” or “takes in” (another meaning of han) the sky or reflected image. I hope the translation “glistens with pale autumn” suggests, however faintly, both the moisture and the reflection. 169 I borrow “pale autumn” from Stephen Owen’s translation of the sixth of Du Fu’s Autumn Stirrings, Anthology 437. 170 ८ສۂՂሖᓒۃឆᓈृ. Zhan Ying, 6:21.3302–5; no Jitsunosuke, 660–62. 171 Li Bo’s poems are ۂՂᢤᤀ९ and ബଁতສ٧ۂ܇Ղଊᘋհ, Zhan Ying, 4:10.1713 and 12.1971; no Jitsunosuke, 1068 and 1070. Both poems are ascribed by no to 760, when Li Bo was on his way back down the river after being pardoned before he reached Yelang. I find eleven cases in Tang poetry in which “pearl slippers” is correlated with a phrase containing a color word: “green (lü ) coins,” “blue (qing) lapel,” “white/plain (su) cart,” “yellow (huang) oriole,” “black (dai) brows,” “red (hong) dust,” and “kingfisher (cui) quill-feathers,” one case each; plus four correlations each with white (bai) clouds, turban, clothes, and hair. Du Mu, Du Fu, Wen Tingyun, Xu Hun, Luo Yin, Lu Guimeng, and Li Shangyin are represented, as well as less familiar poets.
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The last two couplets truly are a reversal—a defiance, even—of the muteness of the historical record that we saw in the early Ancient Verse. First of all, the engraved text of Li Bo’s preface and poem (line 224-14) survives, even though the lake is sinking into the Yangzi River. Secondly, the last couplet proposes an audacious way to make sure the text speaks to generations far in the future. It is quite common to speak of ridges and valleys changing places across eons of time, or to use this as an image for changes on a human scale; we saw one example in Fanghui’s 1080 Ancient Verse Inscribed on the Back of the Stele of the Prince of Lanling (line 056-12). Such changes are disorienting; they cause “sorrow.” Therefore, Fanghui, having discovered how much the landscape at Court Gentleman’s Lake has changed in only three centuries, decides that rather than wait for the stele to sink out of sight as high ground becomes low, someone should throw it into the water first. That way, during the same geological reversal that would otherwise cause us to mourn its loss, the stele will resurface, to the delight of all! There may be something more to this than a witty way to close the extended series of parallel couplets. In brief, Fanghui may be commenting on the recent fate of one or more steles inscribed with the calligraphy or words of Su Shi—or he may be being prescient about those steles. (Song Dynasty commentators who were fond of discovering “predictive poems” would have seized on this one.) The two steles in question are 1) Su Zhe’s 1078 Rhapsody on the Yellow Tower, written in Su Shi’s hand and once inscribed on a stele in Xuzhou, and 2) Su Shi’s ᷡఢች ⎼ Stele for the Palace of Upper Purity and Stored-up Auspiciousness (ca. 1091). The former was dropped into the moat at Xuzhou by a prefect who could not bear to destroy it as ordered during the suppression of Su Shi’s writings. The text on the latter stele was ground off and re-inscribed with a work by Cai Jing ⬰੩ (1046–1126). Whether Fanghui was reacting to one or both of these events or “anticipating” them depends on their dates, which are problematic. The Xuzhou stele was submerged for its own protection sometime in the period while Su Shi was exiled to the south, which would be from 1094 to 1100. (It was recovered around 1125, used to make rubbings at immense profit, and then destroyed in order to increase the value of the rubbings.) 172 If the Xuzhou incident happened during the same proscription as the erasure of the Stele for the Palace of Upper Purity and Stored-up Auspiciousness, knowing the date of the latter would help us date the former. We do have a date for the imperial mandate to replace the destroyed inscription with one to be composed by Cai Jing: Shaosheng 4/Intercalary2/22, or 7 April 1097. That tells us that the order to obliterate steles associated with Su Shi was given earlier than the intercalary second month of 1097,
——— 172 Lin Yutang, The Gay Genius, 182–83, says the stele was dropped into the moat while Su was in exile and recovered was about ten years later, which could not have been later than 1110. The 1125 date comes from Xu Du ஊ৫, Quesao bian থൿᒳ (ca. 1130), CSJC, 2791:C.147–48, quoted in Tanoue Keiichi, Krfu kokuseki k, 263–64.
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though it still does not provide an exact date. 173 There’s more. The destruction of the stele in the Upper Clarity Stored-up Auspiciousness Palace has been linked with two Quatrains that appeared “during the Shaosheng era” (1094–98) and may or may not have been written by Su Shi. The first Quatrain mentions a stele inscription by Han Yu that was obliterated and replaced by one by someone else—the poem points out that history remembers only Han Yu’s work, not the replacement. The second concerns Li Bo’s exile to Yelang despite the efforts of a friend to redeem him. 174 Both poems are clearly relevant to both Su Shi’s exile and the survival of texts. Could it be that Fanghui also saw a parallel between Li Bo’s exile and that of Su Shi? If the proscription was taking effect by the fifth month of Shaosheng 3 (1096), when Fanghui was arriving in Hanyang, the final couplet of Court Gentleman’s Lake must obliquely refer to the contemporary hazards faced by steles that remained on dry land. This may also explain the fervid interest in the writing of history that Fanghui showed in the Ancient Verse of his Hanyang–Ezhou years. If primary texts are being destroyed, the historian must get to work.
1096–97: THIS IS NOT LI SHANGYIN The next poem we shall look at is the second of a pair: ᳯᄐኚ⥝ੑ㚂 Betaking my Stirrings at Jiangxia: Two Poems. 175 Several things make this poem instructive. First, like Taking in the Morning and Evening Views at the Delightful! Pavilion, Two Poems (see pp. 202ff), the two poems in the set were not composed at the same time; in fact, they were composed several months apart. This is probably often the case with pairs or sets of poems, but other poets rarely tell us this. Fanghui’s systematic notation of the time and circumstance of each poem is unique. In any case, the first poem was written in the twelfth month of Shaosheng 3 (i.e., sometime in the period 18 December 1096–15 January 1097), the second poem in the fifth month of Shaosheng 4.
——— 173 Kong Fanli, in Su Shi nianpu, 3:36.1246–48, states that the order to destroy the inscription was given on the twenty-second of the second month. However, his source—Zizhi tongjian changbian shibu 14:14.11a (4933a)—is only the imperial mandate to replace Su’s text with one composed and written by Cai Jing. It sets the context for this order by noting that the obliteration has already been ordered. For the text of Su’s inscription, see SSWJ 2:17.502–5. The inscription is in part an interesting attempt to steer the court away from Daoist superstition to the roots of Daoism, which turn out to be reconcilable with passages in the Changes and the Analects, and most definitely at odds with the activist New Policies. I date the inscription “ca. 1091” because the date mentioned in the inscription is the date Su Shi received the order to compose it (Yuanyou 6/6/22); on the same day, he sent up a request for information on the dates, financing, and other matters, detailed information that might have been forthcoming in a matter of weeks, but that it could have taken months to produce. See SSWJ 3:32.915. It would be interesting to know how efficiently such data was retrieved. 174 ऎੌ塢խԲ, SSSJ, 8:48.2630–31; see also the nianpu entry cited above. 175 5.12556; 5.15a–b.
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Second, the second couplet of the poem we shall translate makes use of yet another kind of parallelism, one that might be called “visual parallelism.” This involves correlating terms not by their semantic fields (plants with plants, verbs with verbs, etc.) but by the semantic components of the characters. The two characters translated “oozy sump” in line 227-3 have the “water” classifier; the corresponding two in line 4 translated “clear sunshine” have the “sun” classifier. There are less obvious correspondences later in the lines. “Citywall” (227-3) has the earth classifier; tile, which is made from earth, is correlated with it in line 227-4. The fifth characters are harder to link, unless the “mouth” on the lower right side in the phonetic element of dian (“toes the edge,” line 3) matches the “mouth” classifier of ming in the next line. This has the feel of Wang Anshi’s technique for analyzing characters by treating all elements as semantically significant and ignoring the phonetic nature of writing. However, it is impossible to know whether Fanghui had such a link in mind, or whether he simply ran out of visual links based on classifiers. Finally, the poem is interesting for the descriptive passages in the first half and the acceptance expressed in the second half: 227
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㒜ḓじဌᏒ ٤٤غع٨ ᳯṽᓳ❙ᯖ ٤٨٨ع٤ ᴝᵯ⩓ၔ㒘 ٨٨٤٤٨ ᥍ᥨ┻ⅽ㡆 ٤٤٨٨٤ ᣂᢥᷝ㢅⾮ ٤٤٤٨٨ ⇣⼂㥄⟾ ٨٨٨٤٤ ⼼ᓳᖤᵹ⪭ ٨٨٤٤٨ ቭ♳ኚᱝ↢ ٤٤٨٨٤
Ponds and lakes press close on ward markets; C2 the Jiang and Han join from north and west. D2 Oozy sump: a nutgrass citywall toes the edge; A2 clear sunshine: bamboo tiles make their sounds. B1 A new text: I add another Houlet Rhapsody; (C4) unusual flavors: I connoisseur turtle soup. D1 Why should I grieve that I’ve fallen into obscurity? A1 I’ve betaken my self to government provisions. B1
Notes: 227-2/ “Jiang and Han vertical [then] horizontal.” Li Bo has the similar line ᄤṽᓳ❙ᯖ “The Heavenly Han vertical [then] horizontal,” referring to the revolving of Milky Way with the passage of the night. 176 Fanghui has simply changed “Heavenly” to “Jiang” (the Yangzi River); the phrase
———
176 ፊ֜ޕരՕᜰۍᆄࣟנত……, Zhan Ying, 4:13.2226–34; no Jistunosuke, 1115–1118, line 34.
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“vertical-horizontal” now refers to the meeting of the two major rivers at Hanyang-Jiangxia. 227-3/ Suocheng probably refers to a wall with nutgrass growing along the top; it appears to be associated with the south. 177 227-4/ Su Shi mentions rooftiles made from bamboo on the low cabins of boat-people. Presumably these are large bamboos that are split into thirds or halves and laid to form a pantile roof. 178 In our poem they seem to be making a cracking sound as they heat up in the sun; ming is a general verb that leaves us to imagine what the sound must be. 227-5/ Jia Yi’s Rhapsody of the Houlet is an exploration of an ideal acceptance of change and misfortune. See the note to line 002-19. 227-6/ Turtle soup must have been a local delicacy. Indeed, in the Zuo Tradition when a turtle is presented to Duke Ling of Zheng, it comes from Chu. The duke is fond of “unusual flavors.” 179
We could take at face value Fanghui’s relaxed acceptance of a steady salary and local delicacies to compensate for life in what is essentially exile. However, since we know he hates the mint at Ezhou, and since the first poem in the pair reveals that he feels cut off from distant friends, perhaps he is not being straight with us. We might, therefore, supply what is left unsaid: if our poet has reason to express contentment with his lot, it is because he is better off than Su Shi and many of his close associates, who are the targets of active persecution. One question we should ask is whether “betaking my stirrings” as a title indicates filiations from a pre-existing subgenre. We have to look mostly to the Tang Dynasty for other poems “betaking stirrings.” This title came into use among poets born after the mid-eighth century. Most of the titles—fifteen to six—are used for pentametrical poems. Chao Yuezhi, the only other Northern Song poet known by me to have used this title, also applies it to a pentasyllabic Ancient Verse. 180 Both Fanghui and Chao Yuezhi are following a majority pentametrical tradition, then. Beyond this, it is difficult to generalize about the tone and themes of the Tang poems found with this phrase in the title. The poem that comes closest to Fanghui’s style is the one by Li Shangyin. 181 ⭯ቸᄙ∛㧘ᓬ⍮┧㆙ㆆޕ䁾ഀ ⺽ฒቴ⑥㧘ભệធ៓ޕ᮸ᅢ㗫⒖᭪㧘㔕ᄸਇਅᮝ⼼ޕ㑸ή᥊‛㧘⥄ᤚ 䛝ᗜ“ ޕA petty functionary, usually ill, / I followed the one who understands
——— 177 I don’t think this weed is practical for thatching roofs, and one Tang poet speaks of a green nutgrass cheng facing the mountains, indicating live grass. See Li Xianyong ޕভش, ሟᔤၞՓۂ ᄅࡺߠബ, QTS, 19:645.7395, line 6. Zhang Ji, in a “Song of the South” ۂতڴ, offers this line: 堚๎ৄՒৢ “Clean nutgrass covers the cheng, bamboo forms houses.” Zhang Ji shi ji, 1.11, line 7. I purposely leave cheng untranslated here because of the uncertainty over whether it means a town or a wall around a town. 178 “Pantile” is used here in the sense of curved tiles laid with their concave sides up with the junction of their edges then covered with curved tiles laid concave side downward. I own a bamboo arm-rest (to support the arm for writing small characters) that appears to be a third of a bamboo cane 10 cm in diameter. It seems to be roughly the width and contour of a serviceable roof tile. Su Shi’s poem is ድ᨟ SSSJ, 4:21.1124; Wang Shuizhao, Su Shi xuan ji, 146. 179 Xuan 4; See Legge, 296, for translation. 180 ༅ᘋ, QSS, 21:1.13688–89. 181 Li Shangyin shige jijie, 3:1254–55.
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me and ended up far away. / We chat cordially and I am honored as a guest; / Days off follow plumbing for poems. / The trees are fine; often we move our couches; / the clouds are unusual; never do we come downstairs; / It can’t be because there is no scenery—; / but homesickness will happen.” Ye Mengde, in his biography of He Zhu, quotes our poet as saying “I drive Li Shangyin and Wen Tingyun at my brushtip, giving them no rest as they run for their lives!” 182 If, in naming his two poems in Jiangxia Betaking Stirrings, Fanghui was mindful of Li Shangyin’s precedent, he certainly was also aware of the distance that separated them. Broader in the scope of his landscape, more interested in recording the sights and sounds of his locale, and (for once) transcending his poverty and his desire for home, Fanghui exceeded Li in many ways. The comparison of the two poems reminds us, too, that they lived in different societies. Li Shangyin’s poem is clearly written to please the regional governor he served in the Sichuan Basin from 851 to 855; 183 it makes sure to state that he was treated kindly (lines 3 and 4 describe his days as spent in conversation and poetry writing, followed by days off!) and the scenery was all one could ask for, save that it was not the scenery of home. Though the Song regime is undergoing its own turmoil in 1097, Fanghui is secure in the “government provisions” that come from a functional central bureaucracy; he is not dependent on the goodwill of a military governor.
1098: FAREWELL TO A BUDDHIST MAGISTRATE After 1091, Fanghui leaves us only two farewell poems in the pentametrical Regulated Verse form. It happens that they are the last pentametrical Regulated Verses we have from his hand. One was written in the third month of 1098 for a man we are told (in the headnote) was young, of few desires, and a devout Buddhist. Thus, the themes of this poem are a little different and we shall use it to close this chapter. The poem is titled ㅍ㊄სᘕⅵ Sending Off Magistrate Shen Huan of Jintan. 184 230
ᷡ⚛ᓳᄙ⡞ ٤٨٨٤٤
Pure and plain, yet well informed— D1
——— 182
Quoted in Zhong Zhenzhen, Dongshan ci, 523–24. Li Shangyin shige jijie, 5:2080–83. 184 5.12557; 5.15b. Jintan was in Runzhou, Liang Zhe Circuit. It is possible that the “ling” in the title does not mean “magistrate” but is part of Shen’s name: Shen Linghuan. However, line seven strongly suggests that, whatever his name, he is a magistrate. I have not been able to identify him by either name; in the two other poems whose titles or headnotes mention Shen (547 and 548, 10.12604; shiyi.13b), Fanghui simply uses his cognomen, Xianyu ( دcleverly constructed from the two elements of Huan). 183
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ᄤᶦᰮᓧำ ٤٤٨٨٤ ⋧ᑧ⫱Ⴇ㙲 ٤٤٤٨٨ ⚦Ṷ⽴ᄙᢥ ٨٨٨٤٤ ᷆ᅤ᳓ ٨٨٤٤٨ り⻎ᢔൎ㔕 ٤٤٨٨٤ ⻱ὑ⧎❐⚂ ٨٤٤٨٨ ⡙ᘨᱝ⥃ಽ ٤٨٨٤٤
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On the far horizon I gain your friendship late. B1 You invite me for the meal of an upsaka, C2 and expound in detail the texts on pattra. D2 The flavor of the world is bland as water; A1 plans for life more scattered than clouds. B1 We’ll just make a date for the “county of blossoms” C1 to comfort us at this moment of parting. D1
Notes: 230-2/ To be “on the horizon” is to be far from where one would like to be (home, the capital). The rest of the line is a common way of saying one regrets he didn’t get to know someone sooner. 230-3/ An upsaka is a male who observes various religious restrictions but lives at home as a layman. Shen is offering He Zhu a vegetarian repast. 230-4/ The large leaves, or pattra, of the palmyra palm were used for writing sacred texts. 230-5/ The third syllable is given a level tone here to make the line regulated. Although the meaning “bland” or “thin” normally carries the falling tone, the level tone reading is defined in one dictionary as “like the manner of water.” 185 230-7/ Fanghui and Shen have agreed to meet in Jintan, where he will be magistrate. When Pan Yue was magistrate of Heyang, he planted a great many flowering trees, so that Heyang became known as the “county of blossoms.” Allusion to the “county of blossoms” thus became a flattering way to refer to a magistrate’s district and, since Pan Yue was a handsome, talented writer known for his capable administration, to infer that the magistrate was similarly gifted.
To send off people, Fanghui wrote nearly twice as many heptametrical Regulated Verses (seventeen) as pentametrical (nine); as we shall see in the next chapter, the heptametrical form was the preferred form for social exchange. Perhaps the diction of this poem tells us why Fanghui used the pentametrical meter for Shen Huan: like the recipient, it is “pure and plain,” yet it shows the poet to be “well informed” and an appreciative recipient of Shen’s Buddhist repast and exposition. The perfectly regulated lines embody the calm of one to whom “the flavor of the world is bland as water.” Still, there is that decorously regretful conclusion, the D-line finish allowing the prolongation of lin fen, “verge of parting.”
——— 185
Again, Morohashi is a better for historical readings than the Hanyu da cidian. See 7:17660.
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PLEASURES AND PRECEDENTS IN REGULATED VERSE This, then, is the world of the pentametrical Regulated Verse: outwardly plain, proceeding in a defined sequence of metrical patterns, but surprising us often with the discovery of new connections between words, relations of sameness and difference that might never occur to us if the words were not put into the matrix of parallel lines. To enumerate and explain these relations can be tedious, but I hope that the reader will have taken the time to go back and reexamine the poems after reading the explanations and speculations I have offered. Though semantic parallelism seems to be a fairly simple concept, accomplished poets in the form tried to create correlations that are not obvious. Much of the pleasure of Regulated Verse is found in asking how these correlations work, and to find the answers we may have to consider everything from puns to precedents to how we perceive the world. Semantic parallelism will be old news to many readers, even some who read Chinese poetry only in translation, since some translators do an excellent job of reflecting this feature in their renditions. Less familiar to some will be the importance of meter. Asking whether there are metrical violations within lines and which lines those are is an important first step toward attending to other layers of meaning, whether that level be the overall degree of “perfection” appropriate to the occasion or the audience, or the places where wit or strong emotion have shaped the prosody. Similarly, considering why a poet might prefer to open his poem with certain metrical patterns and what might cause him to go against his personal preferences in those openings leads us directly to examine why the parts of the poem are presented in a certain order and not in another. As we have seen, some sequences of lines seem to be driven by an opening couplet that was perfect for the occasion; others by the best sequence of content in the middle couplets; and still others by the sound pattern the poet wanted to end on. There is great potential for further research on the different preferences of Tang and Song poets in AB, CD, DB, and BD openings. We have always attempted to answer the implicit question, why did the poet keep this poem when he discarded hundreds of others? At times, that is a hard question to deal with, especially when Fanghui’s pentametrical Regulated Verses fail to speak to us because we don’t understand the meaning or significance of the concluding couplet. In some cases, it is clear “you had to be there” to get the message; in other cases, I suppose, something else in the poem was too good to throw away, so even if Fanghui himself could not get the ending right he preserved the whole thing. Often this something else was the discovery of the right word to capture a view or a feeling that no one else had been able to catch—or occasionally the discovery of the right view or feeling for a word that no one else had been able to use or use as well. The same could be said of a poem in any of the genres
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covered in the present study, but the self-contained structure of pentametrical Regulated Verse makes details of diction more likely to gain our attention. We have seen one poem in this chapter that confirms the model of imitation we have been developing. That, of course, is the imitation of Wen Tingyun (Poem 166). Fanghui does not tell us whether he was imitating a particular poem or what it was, but we were able to show that his extended Regulated Verse progresses through a series of images and levels of opacity that is analogous to at least one of Wen’s poems. We were also able to show that Fanghui clearly did not build his poem around Wen’s characteristic diction, as a lesser poet might. Whether the same can be said of all his imitations is difficult to say at this point, and indeed this will impossible to determine in cases where the imitated writer’s works have largely disappeared by now. Imitation is one kind of relationship with precedents, but several other kinds have emerged in this chapter, though not because they are unique to pentametrical Regulated Verse. We have suggested that Fanghui may have been aware of the choices made by predecessor poets when they wrote, for example, pairs of poems. Whether or not his awareness is provable, precedents help us appreciate what the issues might have been. More intriguing, I think, are the cases in which Fanghui seems to have transformed a distinctive bit of parallelism in an earlier poet and made his own version of the same relationship. Finally, pentametrical Regulated Verses are not hermetically sealed off from the outside world. Naturally, they document friendships, such as Fanghui’s relationship with Mi Fu. Of larger historical importance, we found that the precedent of Li Bo’s stele and the Court Gentleman’s Lake in Hanyang was relevant to the fate of texts in the mid-1090s (see Poem 224, 1096). This is a concern we have noted in other chapters. Just as research on contemporary poems by other authors may uncover a shared anxiety over historiography at that juncture, it would be interesting to see whether the cluster of allusions to Ban Chao and Fan Kuai by He Zhu and others in and around 1091 is related to a new permeability in the border between the military and civil sides of the administration. (See again After Changing Official Classification: Proffered to Acquaintances and Old Friends, Poem 209; 1091.)
CHAPTER FOUR
THE HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE OF HE ZHU, 1075–1098 One hundred sixty dated “Recent Style Verse with Long Lines” (jin ti shi chang ju २᧯ᇣ९ )are found in the sixth, seventh, and tenth juan of Fanghui’s collected poems. 1 This constitutes about twenty-seven percent of his extant corpus, making it his favorite genre. That percentage is very close to what we see in the corpus of Li Zhiyi ޕհᏚ (1048–after 1118), a friend with a slightly larger corpus. 2 In contrast, Huang Tingjian’s 1,878 poems only include three hundred (sixteen percent) in this genre, and Guo Xiangzheng’s 1,415 poems only thirteen percent. Both of those poets preferred pentametrical Ancient Verses and heptametrical Quatrains. ISSUES OF FORM Rhymed first lines are typical for this genre. (We shall discuss the reason for this later.) Thus, all but three of Fanghui’s heptametrical Regulated Verses open with
——— 1 The tenth juan in Quan Song shi is called the shiyi, “collected remnants,” in other editions. It is not the first juan of the lost second half of He Zhu’s poetry collection, as suggested in Song ren bieji xulu 1:581. Rather, it is a collection of three distinct types of heptametrical “remnants.” First, there is a 1090 Song at the head of the section that might have been lost in the shuffle of papers and discovered too late to add to juan 1. More critical for the present chapter are the fifty-seven heptametrical Regulated Verses that come next. They cover the period from 1094 to 1098. Since juan 7 stops in 1093, these poems are clearly a third juan of Regulated Verses that was lost and recovered. (It would have been the original juan 8, juan 8 would have been juan 9, and juan 9 would have been juan 10.) Note that juan 6 and 7 contain fifty Regulated Verses each, so this group of fifty-seven in the shiyi is the right size for an independent juan. Finally, the shiyi contains twenty heptametrical Quatrains dated from 1088 (ninth month) to 1095. They perfectly fill a gap in juan 9, which breaks off in the ninth month of 1088 and resumes in 1096, between which there are no poems. There are exactly five poems after the resumption in juan 9: I speculate that one sheet of paper had five poems on it and that the twenty recovered poems in the shiyi were on four pieces of paper. This was near the end of the collection and therefore more exposed to physical damage; in fact, since Fanghui finished his editing and wrote his preface in 1096, these four pages might have been the very last pages until more poems were added in 1097 and 1098, after which the lost hou ji (later collection) was begun. Sometime between the writing of the preface and the addition of the last five heptametrical Quatrains, the last four pages were mislaid. 2 Li Zhiyi’s corpus is 699 poems. The two met in the capital in 1093—see the heptametrical Regulated Verse ޕܧհᏚ Presented to Li Zhiyi, Poem 322, 7.12575; 7.9b—and in 1102 the two of them and Guo Xiangzheng wrote lyrics together in Dangtu. See Wang Mengyin, “He Zhu nianpu,” 101.
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DB or BD couplets. The distribution of these two openings is roughly equal, though one or the other may predominate in a given year. This overall balance of DB and BD poems contrasts with He Zhu’s pentametrical Regulated Verse, where BD poems were conspicuously avoided. It may be recalled that starting with a B line in a pentametrical Regulated Verse requires the poet to use two more B lines in the poem and that the B lines are the most restrictive insofar as there is only a single regulated matrix: B1, ϤϤϥ ϥϤ. The disadvantage of starting with the B line is greatly reduced in heptametrical verse. This is because the heptasyllabic line allows for two regulated B lines: B1, ϥϥϤϤϥϥϤ, and B4, ϤϥϤϤϥϥϤ. Heptasyllabic B lines still offer fewer regulated options than the other line types (whose regulated configurations double to four each). Perhaps for that reason, BD poems are more likely to start with an unregulated line. Twenty-one out of the seventy-six BD poems start with an unregulated (B) line, whereas only eight out of the seventy-two DB poems start with an unregulated (D) line. (In general, a reasonably regulated opening will be followed by lines that are for the most part also regulated, and in the proper order.) Two of the criteria for Regulated Verse are the degree to which the lines of a poem are regulated, and the degree to which the line types are in the sequence allowed in Regulated Verse. It appears that heptametrical verse has more latitude than pentametrical verse in both criteria before a poem is considered to have crossed the line into Ancient Verse. Even when they consist of largely unregulated lines in atypical order, they are considered regulated as long as certain other criteria are met. We shall return to this point at the end of this section. Let us first review the canonical orders. For poems whose second syllable is a level tone and whose first line rhymes, the order is DBCDABCD. For poems whose second syllable is a deflected tone and whose first line rhymes, the order is BDABCDAB. Heptametrical Regulated Verses that do not rhyme the first lines should have the pattern ABCDABCD or CDABCDAB.
Nineteen of Fanghui’s “Recent Style Verse with Long Lines” depart from the canonical regulated sequence of line types. In chronological order, they are as follows: Table 3
Anomalous Regulated Verses
Year
No
Type
Detail
Occasion
1084 1085 1085 1089 1089
246 256 258 288 292
ABAB XBXB BB ABAB ABABAB
(D)(B)(C)(D)(A)(B)(A)(B) (D)(B)(A) B C D A B (B)(B) (C) D A (B) C D D B C D (A)(B)(A)(B) A B A (B) A B C D
Spring feelings Answering friend in jest Inviting A and showing to B On horseback Missing friends
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Year
No
Type
Detail
Occasion
1090 1090 1090 1090 1091 1092 1092 1094 1094 1096 1096 1096 1096 1097
295 303 306 311 315 316 321 504 507 517 524 526 537 544
ABABAB ABABAB ABAB ABAB DDABABAB DD DD DD XDXDXD DDAXAXAX ABAB ABAB DD DD
(B)(D)(A)(B)(A)(B)(A)(B) (B) D (A)(B)(A)(B)(A)(B) (A)(B)(C) D (A)(B)A(B) B D (A)(B) A B C D (D)(D) (A)(B)(A)(B)(A)(B) (D)(D) A (B) C D A (B) (D)(D)(A)(B)(C)(D)(A)(B) (D)(D)(A)(B)(C)(D)(A)(B) (B) D (A)(D)(C)(D) A B (D)(D) (A)(B)(A)(D)(A)(B) D B (C)(D)(A)(B)(A)(B) D (B)(C)(D)(A)(B)(A)(B) (D) D (C)(D)(A)(B)(C)(D) (D)(D)(A)(B)(C)(D)(A)(B)
Farewell visit to friend On moored boat Farewell visit to friend On moored boat, missing friends Presentation at banquet Missing friends (could be 1093) Sent to friend Happy over rain Inscription in lodging On willow trees Moored boat, missing, sending On moored boat Inscribed after a text Sent to friend
It will be noticed that these anomalous Regulated Verses either start with a pair of identical line types or contain at least two couplets in which either the odd- or the even-numbered lines are of the same type. (Most commonly this results in at least one pair of contiguous AB couplets.) Two poems (315 and 517) meet both criteria. We must emphasize that Fanghui’s heptametrical Regulated Verses are not unique in including poems with these features, although to my knowledge these variations in the genre have not been studied as such. The importance of these poems for us lies in the fact that their noticeable departure from canonical form challenges us to come up with an explanation. A blanket rationale that has governed all our remarks on meter in this study is that violations of prosodic rules have a rhetorical function insofar as they emphasize something that is being said or implied in the poem. Fanghui’s BB and DD openings, as well as the even rarer AB openings, must have had an immediate impact on the poem’s audience. ABAB sequences later in the poem are both more subtle and more complicated. One way of looking at them is to say they start with a tone change in a single syllable. If the second syllable in the C line of an ABCD sequence is changed from level to deflected, the line becomes an A line; because an A line must be followed by a B line, there is then pressure for the resultant ABAD sequence to become an ABAB sequence. It only takes one crucial change of tone in the right place to trigger this chain of violation and adjustment. Still, the fact that the violation and adjustment had taken place could not have escaped the notice of the experienced reader of Regulated Verse. Whenever we see these anomalies (and thanks to Qi Gong’s notation system, we can see them more easily), we must find something in the content or the context of the poem to account for them.
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It may seem peculiar for poems that partially or wholly violate the rules of tonal parallelism and couplet adhesion to be classified as “regulated verse.” Let us remember that these poems are always heptametrical octaves; moreover, they always rhyme in the level tone, and only in the even-numbered lines (with the first-line option). After reading a few of the poems in this chapter, the reader is invited to turn back to our discussion of two eight-line Songs from 1090 (Poem 013, My Boat Makes a Stop in Jinling: Sent to Clerk Wang Xiang, of Whom I Am Thinking, in Liyang, and the untranslated Poem 015, Mooring My Boat in the QinHuai, I Call on Shiqi Yu in the Snow) to see how unmistakable the division between Ancient and Regulated poems is in He Zhu’s corpus.
SITUATIONS IN WHICH THE HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE WAS USED In contrast to Ancient Verses and Songs, heptametrical Regulated Verses are never written by He Zhu in the context of a group poetry session (or as an explicit imitation of a predecessor). On the other hand, for most poets, Fanghui included, this is the form of choice for social purposes: as a poem to be sent to someone (thirty-two poems), to be composed when seeing off someone (seventeen poems), to be left behind when leaving someone (seven poems), and so on. This general impression of the functions of the genre is reinforced if we take note of a cross-section of poems that I shall characterize as “first poems.” If one keeps track of the people for whom Fanghui wrote his poems, it becomes apparent that often it is a heptametrical Regulated Verse that started the poetic relationship. There are about forty-five people for whom the first poem preserved is a heptametrical Regulated Verse. In contrast, only eight people unequivocally make their first appearance in He Zhu’s works through pentametrical Regulated Verses. While twenty or so Songs introduce us to a new person, this happens almost exclusively in the 1090s, whereas “first poem” heptametrical Regulated Verses are distributed fairly evenly across time. Quatrains are insignificant as “first poems.” The heptametrical Regulated Verse seems to have had the balance of preordained form and flexibility that made it relatively easy to write, whether for social purposes or private observations. We have already adumbrated some extremes of flexibility that we shall find. To get a feel for the other factors, such as ordinary first-line rhyme and the dynamics of the heptasyllabic line, let us consider the poems themselves.
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HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE IN THE NORTH, BEFORE XUZHOU 1075: FIRST-LINE RHYME In any given year from 1075 through 1081, Fanghui wrote no more than two heptametrical Regulated Verses that he later felt compelled to preserve. The earliest one was written in Lincheng: Ղգڶᡖ८ࣔཾۃᓾ On the First Si Day, Thinking of Excursions at Jinming Lake. 3 The date referred to in the title is probably equivalent to 22 March 1075. (For centuries the festival had been fixed on the third day of the third month, regardless of whether the cyclical designation of that date ended in si or not. For example, the First Si Holiday in 1071, which very well could be the festival at Jinming Lake that Fanghui recalls in this poem, took place on the day wuzi. 4 The cyclical designation for the day this poem was probably written—Xining 8/3/3—is yiwei.) I translate the first six lines as if they are a reminiscence, but they could just as well be the poet’s imagination of what his friends are enjoying this day in the capital. 232
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۫ৄ՛ॸമቺ ϤϤϥϥϥϤϤ ਞֽᄫᄫࣁᖯ ϤϥϤϤϥϥϤ ਕፇػثᤔ࿇ ϥϥϤϤϮϭϥ ࢶଉ୰ᄥႆ ϤϤϤϥϥϤϤ ፀֲۣඡጽᢅᔨ ϥϤϥϥϮϤϥ ईኟଅ墾ጥྡྷ ϤϥϤϤϭϥϤ ং֟ࣛሏᚨ࢚ݺ ϤϥϤϤϤϥϥ ԫࠋڣᓾվཛ ϥϤϤϥϥϤϤ
D2
In the Western City, slight rain: overnight dust dissolved.
B4
Spring waters ample and broad slapped the painted bridges.
(C14)
They gathered kingfisher plumes on islands, as white duckweed bloomed;
D4
and wafted fragrances in palaces, as purple clouds soared.
(A8)
Colorful boats—the day growing late— damask and gauzes were drunk;
(B4)
Oiled tents—the breeze fine— silks and pipes were shrill.
C4
Knights errant and companions must be thinking of me;
D1
the finest pleasure in the whole year, and I prove false to this morn.
Notes: 232-3/ When Du Fu looked back on days of prosperity in the Tang capital, he recalled girls collecting kingfisher plumes. 5
——— 3
6.12558; 6.1a. Changbian, 7:221.2b (2337a). The wuzi is the third day of the third month in Xining 4 (4 April 1071). Serious policy debates are recorded for that date, so the court itself probably adjourned to the parks only later in the day. 5 See the last of his eight Autumn Stirrings; Owen, Anthology, 438. 4
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232-6/ In Tang times, tents made of oilcloth were set up to shelter the dandies if a shower threatened their spring outing. 6 “Breeze” correlates with “day” in line 5 because ri means both “day” and “sun”; the latter is a meteorological phenomenon qualified to match “breeze.” 7 232-8/ Cf. Luo Ye ᢅᙋ (831?–96?)’s line lamenting that he cannot go home to Sichuan in time to enjoy the blossoms: ԫڣਞۥូཚ “spring colors [that cap] the whole year, [and I] prove false to my time to return.” 8
The first line of this poem rhymes, which is typical of heptametrical poems, as we have already mentioned. Why is the norm different from pentametrical poetry, where first lines are usually unrhymed? Can two more syllables in a line make such a difference? First-line rhyme in heptametrical poetry is sometimes explained by the origins of the form in popular two-line ditties and in songs whose every line was rhymed; I myself have suggested that the repetition of rhyme in the popular, oral tradition facilitated memorization. 9 Such origins, however, do not account for the persistence and domination of first-line rhyme all through the development of heptametrical verse as a legitimate, written medium for serious poets. Nor do they explain why poets ignored the alternative model presented by pentametrical verse, which had been for centuries the only “real” poetry. The key, I believe, is that the heptasyllabic line is structurally more complex than the pentasyllabic line. Stronger devices are therefore necessary to establish the overall structure. By immediately producing the rhyme whose anticipation will then pull the auditor forward through the composition, the poet counterbalances the weight of the individual lines. In saying the seven-syllable string is structurally more complex, I by no means intend to imply that it is of greater aesthetic value or requires more of the audience. The converse is probably true, in general: reading the pentasyllabic line is sometimes compared to Zen meditation, for its implications often reveal themselves only after one has had time to turn the line over in the mind for a while. The “disruptive” complexity of the heptasyllabic line comes rather from the division of the line into three parts instead of two. Let us use the poem just translated to make a comparison. In the 1087 pentametrical Regulated Verse on Jinming Lake, Thinking Back on Old Excursions at the Western City (Poem 184), we had this line: ጽᢅદफ़ᖠ “Damask and gauzes || pink caltrop dawn.” The two segments of the line are not simple in themselves: the clothing implies something else (beautiful women of wealth), and we probably don’t know all the connotations of pink caltrop at dawn, though certainly a lovely water scene is
———
6 See Zhong Zhenzhen’s note to the lyric ೪ཛႆ by He Zhu in Dongshan ci, 28. The oil comes from the Chinese tallow tree; see the Hanyu da cidian, s.v. qingyou mu ॹईኟ. 7 There is a similar juxtaposition of “days and months” (sun and moon) with “frost and snow” in a poem attributed to Su Shi in some collections, ٦መऋՂԲଈհԲ, SSSJ, 8:49.2719. 8 क़, QTS, 19:654.7521. 9 See my “City of Lotuses,” 180–81.
HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE
275
imaginable. The relationship between the two parts, the first two syllables and the last three syllables, is not simple, either. In this case it is a juxtaposition of objects (or the people implied by the objects) and their context; because the relationship is not explicit, the process of reading engages us in the reconstruction of the relationship between the two parts and the meaning or emotion generated by that relationship. However, the point is that no matter how rich in implications the constituent strings in the line are, no matter how ambiguous their relationship, there is nothing else in the pentasyllabic line to distract from that single juxtaposition. There are additional relationships with adjoining lines (in fact, one looks to the other line in the couplet for a completion or complication of the pentasyllabic line’s theme), but within the single semantic unit of that line, there are only the first two syllables, the pause, and the last three syllables. Compare line 232-5: ፀֲۣඡጽᢅᔨ “Colorful boats | the day growing late || damask and gauzes were drunk.” Either “colorful boats” or “the day growing late” could be eliminated to create a pentasyllabic line, but it is significant that the resulting lines would be less interesting, except in correlation with a good matching line. What gives this line its energy is the fact that the colorful boats and the day growing late constitute two strings that already generate some meaning between them: there is a place, there is a time, and the juxtaposition of the two implies contiguity. On another level there are objects and there is process, and so we have the static and the dynamic forming a mutual context. In recitation, these pairs of syllables can be drawn out somewhat, with a slight pause between them, and then followed by a stronger caesura before the last three syllables. Those last three syllables are held in suspense and thus gain a kind of prominence independent of what has gone before. (An equally strong pause in a pentametrical line would give the impression that the reader had lost his place or forgotten what comes next. The focus of suspense is the matching line in the couplet, instead.) Our present poem may serve as a partial exemplar of the possibilities that are held in suspension by the strong caesura. The final three syllables can announce the result of something in the first four (line 232-1: “West city | slight rain || overnight dust dissolved); they can complete a sentence begun at the beginning of the line but interrupted by an additional thought (line 2: “Spring waters | ample and broad || slap painted bridges”); they can add a new action (line 3: “[They] gather kingfisher | [on] islands || white duckweed blooms”); they can describe an event whose context was established by the first four syllables (line 5: “Colorful boats | day late || damask gauze drunk”); they can complete a sentence that, unlike line 2, is not interrupted but flows across the whole line (line 7: “Knights errant | companions || must think of me”); or they can express an ironic reversal (line 8: “whole year | fine pleasure || [yet I] betray this morning”). Only some of these dynamics are different in kind from those of the typical
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pentasyllabic line, the “interruption” observed in line 232-2 being perhaps the best example. Nevertheless, there are always more rhythmic units that need to be parsed in order for the heptasyllabic line to be understood. The function of the early introduction of rhyme, we conclude, is to establish a strong “punctuation” to frame this complexity in the first two lines. Note that once that higher-level coherence is established, the poem can then afford to let the parallelism of the middle couplets take over the job of providing cohesion above the level of the rhythmic units within the line; rhyme is pared back to the even-numbered lines. (Because tight semantic and tonal patterning is less evident or less predictable in heptametrical Songs, more frequent rhymes are needed in that genre to compensate.)
1077, 1079: ORDER IN LANDSCAPE, ORDER IN COUPLETS In our chapter on pentametrical Ancient Verse, we saw that rural scenes interested He Zhu in his early years. The following heptametrical poem from Xining 10 (1077), ॸ墾۫༅ ؾRain Clears: Taking in the View in the Western Suburb, similarly finds its theme in a peaceful farm scene. 10 234
4
8
ৄխቧॸመ堚ࡉ ϤϤϥϥϥϤϤ ೝ۫נມრڍ ϥϥϤϤϥϥϤ ᨀᜀ၍墾ॣኴᢁ ϤϥϥϤϤϥϥ ຽᆖᑮسᇌ ϥϤϤϥϥϤϤ ᛜൃ႓຺໖ᖫ ϤϤϤϥϤϤϥ ֧ᡫॹׄ堬ᑈࣾ ϥϥϤϤϥϥϤ ࢚۔Գఎ۱Ն ϥϥϥϤϤϥϥ ང۪ࣿᣋઌመ ϥϤϤϥϥϤϤ
D2
Within the city, sick of rain, I passed the “Clear and Mild.”
B1
By chance I go out to the western suburbs, where the rustic sense is great.
C1
Silkworm mats: seizing on clear weather, they begin to pluck for cocoons;
D1
Wheat yards: after such dampness, they are about to sprout moths.
A3
Devising nests, yellow birds call from deep trees;
B1
leading calves, grey buffalo drink from the evening river.
C4
An old gardener thinking of someone remains and bides so long—
D1
Changing my clothes and buying brew, I’ll pay him a visit.
Notes: 234-1/ “Clear and Mild” was a term for the fourth month. This poem was written in the fifth
——— 10 Poem 234, 6.12558; 6.1b. Composed in Zhao Commandary, modern Zhaoxian, forty-some km northeast of Lincheng and an equal distance southeast of modern Shijiazhuang.
HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE
277
month. 234-3/ Silkworms ready to spin their cocoons are plucked from the feeding trays and placed on openwork mats or other frameworks. 234-4/ Reference here is to a courtyard or open patch of ground where grain is dried.
In our chapter on pentametrical Regulated Verse we speculated that one reason to chose a certain sequence of opening line types was to control the sequence of the middle couplets. The same principle applies to heptametrical Regulated Verse. Since, for example, Fanghui evidently liked lines 234-5 and 6 (A and B type lines as he worded them) and wanted them to be the third couplet, he had to use a DB opening. With a BD opening those two lines would have to be the second couplet. To see why that option was not chosen, let us see what the effect of reversing the middle couplets would be. (For our purposes, we can ignore the metrical problem this creates for the final couplet.) *
4
8
ೝ۫נມრڍ ϥϥϤϤϥϥϤ ৄխቧॸመ堚ࡉ ϤϤϥϥϥϤϤ ᛜൃ႓຺໖ᖫ ϤϤϤϥϤϤϥ ֧ᡫॹׄ堬ᑈࣾ ϥϥϤϤϥϥϤ ᨀᜀ၍墾ॣኴᢁ ϤϥϥϤϤϥϥ ຽᆖᑮسᇌ ϥϤϤϥϥϤϤ ࢚۔Գఎ۱Ն ϥϥϥϤϤϥϥ ང۪ࣿᣋઌመ ϥϤϤϥϥϤϤ
B1
By chance I go out to the western suburbs, where the rustic sense is great.
D2
Within the city, sick of rain, I passed the “Clear and Mild.”
A3
Devising nests, yellow birds call from deep trees;
B1
leading calves, grey buffalo drink from the evening river.
C1
Silkworm mats: seizing on clear weather, they begin to pluck for cocoons;
D1
wheat yards: after such dampness, they are about to sprout moths.
C4
An old gardener thinking of someone remains and bides so long—
D1
Changing my clothes and buying brew, I’ll pay him a visit.
The basic problem with the rearranged lines is lack of logical progression. If we focus only on the middle couplets, we note that the silkworm frames and drying yards in lines *-5–6 suggest hard work and daylight, but hard work and daylight have been foreclosed by moving the references to birds settling in for the night and oxen drinking from the evening river further forward in the poem. Fanghui’s original placement of the third couplet not only avoids that problem but, perhaps more importantly, also takes us momentarily away from the workaday world to the natural rhythms of the orioles and the oxen: when we return to the “old gardener” and the speaker in the final couplet, that quiet mood imbues the scene with idyllic peace and prepares us for closure.
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The preface of a poem written after Fanghui had moved 150 km south to the Chief Manufactory in Cizhou reveals an editorial policy of our poet that separates him from most of his more famous contemporaries. Here is the preface to ࡉᔤխߠബ Harmonizing with a Poem Sent to Me from Director Zheng. 11 Zheng is a native of Lincheng. His name is Yuan; his cognomen is Linji. He attained ranking as a Presented Scholar and rose to be director of the Bureau of Operations. As he approached seventy, he resigned from his duties and dwelt near the Zhi River [that flows by Lincheng]. He termed himself “The Retired Old Man of the Zhi River.” By nature he was addicted to poetry, which he did not give up even as he grew old. He and I exchanged several tens of poems, up to a hundred or so. Having come to Fuyang, I still receive poems from him, with which I harmonize and answer. In my poems, I never select those that use the rhymes of others; if I record this one alone, it is just because I want to see [mention of] this gentleman in my collection. Yuanfeng era, yiwei year, Double Yang [Yuanfeng 2/9/9; 6 October 1079].
This note presents us with a problem. We know that Fanghui “harmonizes” often, in all forms except pentametrical Regulated Verse. The term appears in twenty-two titles. If we were to believe this note, we would have to understand all those other titles as harking back to an earlier and broader meaning of “harmonize,” indicating that the poems simply follow the original compositions’ theme or mood. However, after the ninth century, “harmonizing” almost always refers to matters of rhyme. 12 Moreover, Fanghui himself sometimes tells us what word has been used to set the rhyme when he is “harmonizing.” We need to reconcile what Fanghui does with what he says in this note. The key is that in the titles or prefaces of his poems Fanghui never uses the phrase ci yun, “following the rhymes of….” That phrase indicates using for one’s rhymes the characters that come in the rhyme positions in the original poem. When he says he never keeps poems that use other people’s rhymes, Fanghui must be referring to that practice. That does not rule out merely using the same rhyme category as an original poem, and perhaps even some of the characters. The exceptional thing in the present poem seems to be that he did use all the rhyme-characters of Director Zheng’s poem, maybe even in the same order. It is fascinating that our poet simply discards his “following-the-rhyme” poems when such works make up such a large proportion of most of his contemporaries’ collected poems. The meanings of rhyme characters—the words or morphemes they represent—change in different contexts, and the skillful poet will try to give a different meaning every time the character is used. For example, feng might mean ‘breeze’ in the original poem and ‘air/style’ in the answering poem; or dong might mean ‘east of’ in one poem, ‘to go east’ in the next, and ‘the
——— 11 12
Poem 237, 6.12559; 6.2a. Ye Jun, Zhongguo shixue, 165–66.
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direction east’ in a third poem. There is no reason to think Fanghui was incapable of playing this linguistic game; we have noted the sophistication of his “borrowed parallelism,” or “parallelism by pun,” which exploits the same features of the Chinese language and orthography. My interpretation of his refusal to save anything he wrote following someone else’s rhymes is that they did not and could not express what his “ear” told him was right. If he were a composer, perhaps he would happily accept an assignment to compose in a certain key, and he might even be willing to start from a stipulated chord or two. But if he were forced to put his changes in a certain place or repeat a theme at pre-determined intervals, it was no longer his poem. He had to go where the music led him, not where some outside framework dictated. The poem that follows that preface, quiet and competent, is like the majority of He Zhu’s early heptametrical Regulated Verses insofar as it is a gesture of friendship as well as a statement of self-definition. Seven of the ten pre-Xuzhou heptametrical Regulated Verses are presented to or sent to friends; the rest are solitary musings like the first two poems we translated. 237
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ড়ࠐطᡖਚၢ ϥϥϤϤϭϥϤ ᤕ॰ܐᆵػႆல ϤϤϥϥϥϤϤ ኄᙟִ࡙ᤪছឰ ϥϤϥϥϤϤϥ ᇣԵટଅ౻٥ ϤϥϤϤϥϥϤ ᖙࣨ⛞ቁሏቧ ϤϥϤϤϤϥϥ ၲᖥཀ〈៱ᦟ९ ϤϤϤϥϥϤϤ क՟ၝ۔ᚨઌ࢚ ϤϤϥϥϤϤϥ ଘឃե۞Քၺ ϥϥϤϤϥϥϤ
(B3)
The traveler, in all times, has yearned for his old home.
D2
Sumen is fallen into desolation beside the white clouds.
A4
My dreams follow the nighttime moon, break off before the bell;
B2
poems enter the autumn wind, turn sere in concert with the grass.
C3
Holding the tabula, buffing my buskins— wandering service wearies me;
D4
putting out goblets, waving the chowry— the old pleasures last longer.
A1
The old man of Zhi River must be thinking of me;
B1
and so he leans on a balustrade, facing the setting sun.
Notes: 237-2/ Sumen, as we have seen, represents Fanghui’s home district near the mountain by that name. White clouds are emblematic of retreat from the world. Sumen was associated with white clouds in at least one other poem. (After all, it had been the retreat of Sun Deng in the third century.) Chao Buzhi begins one quatrain with this line: ۰२ᤕ॰ػڶႆ “[You] live close to Sumen; there are white clouds.” 13
——— 13
ࡉჳԮଈհ, QSS, 19:18.12867.
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237-3/ Reference is to the dawn bell. 237-5/ The word translated “buffing” is wrong in both source texts but is correct in the “Cao Anthology.” It should be Morohashi vol. 5 character 13404. (Hanyu da cidian 5:519 s.v. lian gives a better definition. For reasons of technical expediency, we substitute a character that is sometimes a variant form of the correct one.) The acts of holding a narrow wooden or bamboo tablet as a backing for note-paper and brushing one’s boots off represent rushing about in attendance on superior officials.
For us, I think, it is the second couplet that stands out for its imagery and language. Dreams following the moon and poems entering the autumn wind have the literal impossibility and emotional truth that make for strongly evocative poetry. We recognize that dreams ending before dawn are bound to disappoint; a fresh notion is that poems can share the withering of autumn grasses. Actually, whether the poems wither with the grasses (following the “dreams…break off” parsing of line 237-3) or whether the grasses wither with the poems (following what I think would be normal syntax) is ambiguous. The ambiguity and use of gong (“with”) remind us of Du Fu’s ׂႆ֚٥ “A slip of cloud, the sky in concert distant.” 14 However, line 237-4 is not a pale echo of Du Fu’s line (as I think some other Northern Song lines by Wang Anshi and Ouyang Xiu are); the way Fanghui’s ambiguity works to contain both poems and grasses in shared autumnal dryness shows that he thoroughly understood what Du Fu was doing and was able to transfer it to a different situation and new imagery. In addition, he added additional grammatical ambiguity in the first four words of the line “poem enter autumn wind”: “enter” can, in such poetic lines, mean “admit,” so either poems enter the wind or autumn winds enter the poem. As with the poetry and the grasses, or Du Fu’s cloud, sky, and observer, both possibilities are forever in play, and the emotional meaning is abstracted from the unknowable “true” real-world situation.
1082–86: XUZHOU CELEBRATION OF PLACE AND COMPLEXITY If Ancient Verse was the appropriate medium for Fanghui to record his visits to the ancient cities of Ye or Handan, heptametrical Regulated Verse joins the toolkit for celebrating Xuzhou. The famous sites of Xuzhou for He Zhu are those associated with Tang and Song literati. (There is a Han presence, too, in places and stories connected with Liu Bang and Xiang Yu.) The layers of Tang-Song accretions are exemplified by the first Xuzhou heptametrical Regulated Verse we have from our poet, written
——— 14
ۂዧ, Du shi xiangzhu, 5:23.2029; translation in Owen’s Anthology, 439.
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in the ninth month of Yuanfeng 5 (1082), about a month after he arrived. It celebrates the Releasing the Cranes Pavilion that we know already from Going on an Excursion to the Hill Dwelling of Mr. Zhang at Yunlong [Hill], an Ancient Verse (Poem 065). The stele with a thirty-character inscription by Su Shi that was mentioned in the headnote to that poem provides the starting point for this poem. Although he had been in Xuzhou only a few weeks, Fanghui had apparently gazed up at it. Zhang Tianji’s retreat was just a little south of Xuzhou, the Delightful! Pavilion was on the southeast corner of the city wall, and just east of that was the site of the Yangchun Pavilion at which Xue Neng had written a heptametrical Regulated Verse in the ninth century. 15 As in Going on an Excursion, Fanghui seems compelled to declare that the present moment exceeds the past; in this case, Xue Neng wasted his effort on a pavilion that cannot match the Pavilion for Releasing Cranes. The title is ᠲ༙ৄ്ּ࣋ᦊॼ Inscribed on the Pavilion for Releasing Cranes of Mr. Zhang of Pengcheng. 16 242
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མߠܩ୮ॼՂᅾ ϤϥϤϤϭϥϤ ࣟඨଅִ೯ၳ৸ ϤϤϤϥϥϤϤ ࣏ྤԽᗰڕઌৱ ϥϤϥϥϤϤϥ վሑ⡲ᜯਢլཚ ϤϥϤϤϥϥϤ ᆄຸػႆ՞ ϥϥϤϤϤϥϥ ԫஅ႓ᆺॸࠐழ ϥϤϤϥϥϤϤ ࣑ᚨૹੈ ϥϤϤϥϤϤϥ ᅝֲၺਞࣩᓿᇣ ϤϥϤϤϭϥϤ
(B4)
I once saw your household’s stele in the pavilion;
D4
gazing eastward in breeze and moonlight stirred my thoughts of quiet sadness.
A4
Before, I had not divined to build— it seemed to wait for me;
B4
today, I climb to overlook— I hadn’t hoped for this.
C2
Ten thousand acres of white clouds: where the mountains leave a gap;
D1
one whole courtyard of yellow leaves: when the rain comes.
A2
Xuchang must be bearing a load of resentment in the Many-folded Springs;
(B4)
that day, at Yangchun, he wrote a poem in vain.
Notes: 242-2/ Su Shi uses xian si with the sense of “quiet sadness” in a song of mourning. 17 Fanghui’s feelings arise from the fact that the author of the text on the stele is now in exile in Huangzhou. 242-3/ This line must refer to Fanghui, since Zhang Tianji had already moved to the hill back in
———
15 ዧᐔઙॸڃၺਞॼڶᡖ, QTS, 17:559.6486. Fanghui mentions in his headnote that this poem appears in Xue’s collection. This suggests that Fanghui owned or had access to Xue Neng’s collected works. 16 6.12560; 6.3b. Pengcheng is Xuzhou. 17 ᤕᑨᆣனဲ (1079), SSSJ, 3:14.696. I follow the interpretation of Yamamoto Kazuyoshi in Ogawa and Yamamoto, So Tba shish, 4:139–42.
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1078, after a flood had half-submerged his house from fall to spring. The implication seems to be that our poet feels the stele is inviting him to do the conventional divination to select a spot and construct a residence nearby. 242-5/ Su Shi’s inscription tells us that Zhang releases his cranes towards a gap in the mountains around Xuzhou. 242-7/ Xue Neng assembled his writings as the “Xuchang Collection,” named for the region in which he was a military commissioner. Calling a person by a place in which he holds an administrative office is a common practice. The Many-folded Springs are the realm of the dead.
Fanghui is working on making his language more complex in ways that we came to expect in his pentametrical Regulated Verses. In the second couplet, he makes a counterintuitive correlation between xiang, an adverb that indicates its verb has an unspecified but inferable object (“waits [for me]”), and bu, a negative. The rationale might be that 1) both words must precede verbs (we could also say xiang is taking up a slot that could be occupied by a negative) and 2) the two phrases are antithetical insofar as “wait for me” is an action that seemingly occurred and “hope for” is an action that did not occur. In the third couplet, locative and temporal phrases (“mountain gap place; rain come time”) are displaced to the ends of the lines. (Since such phrases are moveable in English, the translation cannot duplicate the effect of this inversion, though the colons in our rendition try to hint at it). Moreover, there are no verbs, only noun phrases: “…clouds || …place; / …leaves || …time.” These devices create a paratactic isolation of the imagery. Neither of these phenomena is revolutionary. There are over a dozen couplets in the poems of Su Shi in which xiang and bu are parallel. Su Shi and Wang Wei place “time” and “place” at the ends of lines, too. (Su and Wang make them the objects of verbs, though, which entails complexities that Fanghui avoids.) Fanghui is not trying to be outrageous, but he is developing the techniques of detail that exploit the possibilities in parallel lines. 18 On the ninth day of the ninth month, Fanghui climbed a small hill to one of Xuzhou’s famous spots, the Horse-Sporting Estrade. On that same day centu-
——— 18 My count of xiang and bu in corresponding positions within Su Shi’s couplets excludes final couplets and one or two other cases in which the xiang and the bu are the only two terms that seem to correlate. Wang Wei’s famous ۩ֽࠩᒡΔ݄ႆದழ “Walk and reach the place where waters end; / sit and watch the time when the clouds arise” (ึতܑᄐ) is equaled by Su Shi’s ຳ ৵ᗑࠐ்Δێၴ۩༚७ಁழ “After the snow I come alone to where we planted willows; / amid the bamboo I will return to the time we picked tea.” In neither case do the verbs and objects in the second lines match up normally. You cannot literally watch a time, nor can you return to a time. Thus, Ikkan Chikk ԫឌཕ₉ (1430–89) translates Su Shi’s second line into Japanese that may be retranslated, “Among the bamboo, where we picked tea together in a former year, the season is gradually coming.” The poem is ஊܩᅏனဲ (1083). See Shikajikkai, 12:119 and SSSJ, 4:22.1181. Note that Su’s first line nicely joins time (“after”) and space (“where”); the second joins space (“amid”) and “time.” Wang Li asserts that shi ‘time’ is one of a few words commonly used at the end of lines for the sake of rhyme without adding anything to the poem. See Hanyu shilüxue, 285–86. It seems to me, however, that the word’s use in a temporal clause at the end of a unit of meaning does have an effect, if only to emphasize parataxis, as in He Zhu’s poem.
HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE
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ries before (24 October 418), Emperor Wu of the Liu-Song Dynasty had held a great banquet there after expanding his borders to include Xuzhou. (Emperor Wu was also known in legend for shooting a supernatural snake when he was young; this story figures in line 243-4.) 19 Su Shi had written a pair of heptametrical Regulated Verses on an outing to Horse-Sporting Estrade and the place appears incidentally in three of his other poems. 20 Fanghui’s poem, ֲ⡲ᚭ್ ፕ Climbing Horse-Sporting Estrade on the Ninth, makes no discernable acknowledgement of Su’s precedent. He is interested in the wider sweep of time, perhaps in a bid to generalize the sadness one feels on the Double Ninth when he climbs to a high place and misses the family members who are not there. 21 243
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ᅝழᆏढڼ՞՟ ϤϤϥϥϥϤϤ ଐড়࿆ᜯᗑ൨ྥ ϥϥϤϤϥϥϤ ᚭ್ፕ۞ڣՆ ϥϥϤϤϤϥϥ ୴ֆ़ࠃװႚ ϥϤϤϥϥϤϤ ႓ဎ۔ת堚ញ৵ ϤϤϥϥϤϤϥ ࡰ຺ػଆᆵᅃছ ϥϥϤϤϥϥϤ լፖᘋՋৄՀֽ ϥϥϤϤϤϥϥ ௬ድᆲԵ֚ ϥϤϤϥϥϤϤ
D2
The season’s prospect from that past time: this same hill and river.
B1
A tired traveler climbs to overlook, alone and in a daze.
C2
Horse-Sporting Estrade has gone wild, the years have run their course;
D1
the snake-shooting lord has left, the story has come down in vain.
A1
Of yellow flowers half are old after the clean frost;
B1
a white bird alone is flying in front of the setting rays.
C2
Having nothing to do with greatness and decline, water below the citywall
D1
steadfastly floats a fishing bateau into the Huai River sky.
The second couplet is where Fanghui acknowledges the specificity of the site, and he does so in a manner that is far from perfunctory. Lines 243-3 and 4 create interest because they override the default 2 | 2 || 3 rhythm of the heptasyllabic line. “Horse-sporting Estrade” (hiH maQ dei) and “snake-shooting lord” (zyaH zya kung) are three-syllable units: 3 | 1 || 3. This tension between form and sense enables “Horse-Sporting Estrade” and “snake-shooting lord” to leap
——— 19 See Wen xuan 21 for Xie Lingyun’s poem at the banquet in 418. The Estrade reportedly had been built by Xiang Yu for displays of horsemanship. See Li Jifu (758–814), Yuanhe junxian tuzhi, CSJC, 3086:9.243. On shooting the snake, see Liu Jingshu, Yiyuan, CSJC (1991 ed.), 2723:4.79–80. 20 See ፖငඒ്՞Գናஃٵሏᚭ್ፕ…… (1078); ၺᣂ⡩Կଈհԫ (1077); ಬᔤ֪ ຝ (1078), and ֲৄ༙ڇፖࡳഏֲ႓ᑔհᄎ…… (1092), SSSJ, 3:17.887; 15.751; 16.833; and 6:35.1904, respectively. 21 6.12560; 6.3b.
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out boldly at the head of their lines. Still, the lines retain the basic 4 || 3 structure of the heptasyllabic line. In 1084, Fanghui will produce a far more drastic couplet in which three-syllable proper names in the middle of the lines override the major caesura: 2 | 5. 22 248
ዚឃᗊᑔছִ ϤϤϥϥϤϤϥ ᏒឰᏕՂᤪ ϤϥϥϤϭϥϤ
A1
Songs fade away—Swallow Tower moon;
(B18)
spirit is broken—Phoenix Plain bell.
Notes: 248-5/ Swallow Tower is where for ten years a ninth-century woman named Panpan lived alone after her lover died. 23 248-6/ Phoenix Plain is where the eleventh-century Panpan was buried. 24c`
The third couplet of Climbing Horse-Sporting Estrade on the Ninth brings up the play between space and time that we noted in lines 242-5–6. The poet exploits the fact that “after” and “before” can be either spatial or temporal: “Of yellow flowers half are old after the clean frost; / a white bird alone is flying in front of the setting rays.” This correlation of time and space adds interest but remains well within the bounds of common practice. Lines 243-7–8 strike me as me as more innovative. To show the unusual length of the modifiers in line 7, we can re-translate the line: “The water that is below the wall and does not participate in the rise and fall [of human institutions], / floats a fishing boat safely downstream to the Huai.” Enjambment itself is not unusual in this position, but here we have a single noun phrase filling all of the first line, and it is a long line. When Wang Li gives examples of enjambment in Hanyu shilü xue, all his couplets are pentametrical. The two closest to our couplet in structure are Wang Wei’s ۫៱ඞᆏΔൕࣾٻڼᄭ “The former ensign [under which they] marched west / from here will face Heyuan” and Bo Juyi’s ֟ጕڍღ
———
22 ࡉ༙ৄس׆൧ዚԳઐઐ Harmonizing with Mr. Wang of Pengcheng’s ‘Mourning the Singer Panpan’, 6.12561; 6.5a. 23 See Bo Juyi’s three quatrains and preface on the topic, QTS, 13:438.4869–70. 24 This according to Fanghui’s headnote, which adds that Phoenix Plain is also called South Estrade. South Estrade is the site of a temple south of the city mentioned in some of Fanghui’s other poems and in a poem by Chen Shidao (তፕ, Houshan shi zhu bujian, 2:575). Ogawa and Yamamoto identify this place with the Horse-Sporting Estrade (So Tba shish 4:290, 342, 347). The Horse-Sporting Estrade was also south of city and Fanghui mentions a temple at the foot of it in the headnote to another 1083 poem, Poem 071, ଆពॼ Flying Goose Pavilion, 2:12519; 2.15a. However, neither here nor anywhere else does Fanghui connect South Estrade with the HorseSporting Estrade, so I think their identification is questionable. There is a Phoenix Mountain a kilometer or two further south of the supposed Horse-Sporting Estrade, forming the backdrop to a memorial to the soldiers who fell in the fierce Huaihai Campaign against the Nationalists at the end of 1948. Perhaps the elevated but relatively flat part of that memorial, where a large museum and outdoor galleries of steles are situated, could be the Phoenix Plain/South Estrade. In a city that has been ravaged by floods and wars so often, it is difficult to know today how many historical sites actually are where they should be; place-names don’t always stay in one place.
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ড়Δխୱದඨၢ “The traveler who sleeps little and sorrows much / rises in the middle of the night to gaze toward home.” 25 The modifiers (italicized) are complex but they are more compressed than He Zhu’s modifiers. We note that Wang Li did not offer heptametrical examples of enjambment. They are rare in the Tang (from which period he takes most of his data), perhaps because a sentence that is syntactically fairly simple seems “flabby” if it is stretched over fourteen syllables of classical Chinese. If, for example, I rewrite Bo Juyi’s couplet as ֟ጕڍღۂՂড় / խୱದඨሶ՞ၢ “The traveler on the River who sleeps little and sorrows much / rises in the middle of the night to gaze to home across the mountains,” the noun phrase in the first line is not bad, but the second line is too wordy. It can be improved somewhat by creating more separation between the verbs, complicating the action, as it were: խୱִޡᠦၢ “in the middle of the night he paces the moonlight, regretting he left his home.” This tells us too much about the traveler, too many things that should be implied and that were implied in Bo’s pentasyllabic original. One solution to this problem is to tighten the last line by using a pivot construction, which is precisely what Fanghui does: “…floats a bateau [that] enters the Huai River sky.” Another is to make the enjambed sentence an embedded sentence, as Lu You will do in the Southern Song: ๕ࢡ༄ਞۂՂড়Δԫسլቧድ “Don’t wonder that the traveler on the Fuchun River / never tired of his fishing ledge all his life.” 26 Does this mean that Fanghui and other Song poets were better than Tang poets at enjambment in heptasyllabic lines? Given the relatively late adoption of heptametrical poetry as a vehicle for serious (or at least elite) poetry, the question is not as ridiculous as it might appear at first sight. Nevertheless, my own knowledge is too limited to verify, let alone explain, systematic differences in enjambment in the Tang and Song. Let us for now take note of He Zhu’s skill for its own sake and move on.
PRECEDENTS TO BE OVERTURNED OR CELEBRATED Although we have pointed out several places where Fanghui seems to have rewritten a predecessor’s language, one thing we don’t see a great deal of in Fanghui is the antithetical revision of a predecessor’s ideas, often called fan an ூ, “overturning the case” in Chinese. ֲ ׀ګޕܧPresented to Li Chengfu on the Ninth, has four “overturned cases.” 27
——— 25
Wang Li’s examples are on p. 281. The second half of a Quatrain, ᦰ. 27 6.12560; 6.4a. Written 22 October 1083. Li Chengfu is Li Zhaoqi ޕਟ㦯, whose cognomen is given in the Song shi (31:347.10998) as Chengji ࡱګ. Fanghui gives his names in the headnote to Poem 071, ଆពॼ Flying Goose Pavilion, 2:12519; 2.15a. Since Fanghui consistently uses Chengfu, 26
286 244
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ৄխᣆॸᖠଭଭ ϤϤϥϥϥϤϤ ݄؈ৄᙰॼ֡ۍ ϥϥϤϤϥϥϤ ۩ᑗࡐवॺࠃݺ ϤϥϥϤϤϥϥ ેܷྫᦫܩڶ ϥϤϤϥϥϤϤ آᚨػᕓ墌ᄅ၆ ϥϤϥϥϤϤϥ ٚࠌ႓ဎూᗑᙌ ϥϥϤϤϥϥϤ ฆ्ֲ༈ᠪ႔પ ϥϥϥϤϤϥϥ ֜۩९⾌ਚႼॹ ϥϤϤϥϥϤϤ
D2
In the city, fog and rain: the dawn is dim and murky.
B1
Suddenly we lose, atop the citywall, the hundred-foot pavilion.
C1
Having fun—I truly know that is not what I do;
D1
bitter intonings—I still have you to listen to them.
A4
It’s never been right that white hair should spare the newly ennobled;
B1
but let the yellow flowers laugh at he who alone is sober.
C4
Another day you will come for our a chicken-and-millet date;
D1
The Taihangs always enwrap my old garden, green.
Notes: 244-7/ Chicken and broomcorn millet were conventionally the meal a recluse would prepare for guests. 244-8/ The Taihang Mountains run through Fanghui’s home district.
The first precedent that Fanghui “overturns” is a statement by Liu Yuxi that ۩ ᑗట ࠃܠΔ ༈॑ᗑݺ٣ “Having fun is truly my thing; / looking for fragrant [plants] I am alone in the vanguard.” 28 Fanghui asserts the direct opposite in line 244-3: “having fun is not my thing.” A possible second precedent to be overturned in line 244-4 is a concluding line by Jia Dao ᇸ (779–843): ેܷᓴ ፊ “Bitter intonings: who is happy to hear them?” 29 Fanghui’s answer to that rhetorical question is: I have a friend, Li Zhaoqi, who listens to the poems I write with such suffering. The third and fourth precedents lead to revisions that are more nuanced and more apt to be recognized as revisions. Du Mu claimed that white hair is the only impartial thing in the world because it comes to the elite just as to everyone else. On the contrary, says Fanghui in line 244-5, the elite have unfairly been spared the stress that brings white hair. By calling them “newly ennobled,” he is making it clear that his target is the New Policies faction that has seized power. (Su Shi and Qin Guan refuted Du Mu in a different way, pointing out that op-
——— Chengji is probably a later cognomen. 28 This couplet is one of Liu’s contributions to a linked-verse session: ᄎ࣑ਞ୯ࠃܛ, QTS, 22.790.8900. 29 ટᑈ, QTS, 17:572.6638.
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ponents of the New Policies faction had more than their share of white hair.) 30 Line 244-6 matches the correction of Du Mu by rejecting Bo Juyi. Pretending to ridicule Qu Yuan for being “sober alone” in a drunken world, Bo opened a poem by asserting, “[For being] sober alone—since ancient times they have laughed at Divine Balance.” Since Bo Juyi’s poem is about his home brew, his mockery of sobriety need not be taken seriously, but Fanghui, who identifies with Qu Yuan’s “sobriety,” can play against Bo’s line and claim he doesn’t care— “let them laugh”! His laughing yellow flowers might come from the Double Ninth poem in which Li Bo wrote that “Yellow flowers laugh at the routed official,” probably hinting at a comparison between himself and Qu Yuan as exiles. 31 Fanghui exceeds Li Bo not only in sobriety (Li claims to be both drinking and drunk) but also in explicitly averring that it is fine to be laughed at. (Perhaps it is even an honor, for it shows one has not joined the muddy world of the “newly ennobled.”) The aggressiveness of Fanghui’s wishing white hair on the new elite and brushing off those who would scorn him for his sobriety in a drunken milieu is matched by the bravado of inserting four “overturned cases” into one poem. It seems that if he is going to “overturn cases” as conspicuously as his contemporaries are wont to do, he will do it with extra panache. Up until late Yuanfeng 6 (1083), all poems that make explicit reference to Su Shi are Ancient Verses written at structures in Xuzhou made famous by him. The first and only heptametrical Regulated Verse Fanghui writes at Xuzhou in open celebration of the great man is an inscription to be displayed with Su’s poetry. “In the tenth month of 1083,” Fanghui writes in its headnote, “a runner from Xuzhou returned from the capital with an erroneous report that Su of Huangzhou had been recalled to court. At the temple at South Estrade there were several poems [Su Shi] had inscribed before. First I engraved them in stone, then I wrote this at the left [i.e., the end].” “This” is ᠲ༙ৄতፕڝᤕઍ ՞ᇣࠥ৵ Inscribed after the Engraved Poems of Su of Meishan at the South Estrade Temple in Pengcheng. 32 245 ટଅ༓৫ۂ۔㜈
ϤϤϥϥϥϤϤ ቓֽઍሶኄ৸ ϥϥϤϤϥϥϤ
D2
How many times has the autumn wind turned the river rushes old?
B1
The Tripod Stream and Brow Peak are on the other side of dreams.
——— 30 For references, see my “Can Latecomers Get There First?” 181–82. That article also cites Chen Shidao (in 1086) saying the high and the mighty invariably have white hair (from their cares). This is a different approach to rebutting Du Mu and directly contradicts He Zhu. 31 Li Bo’s line is ႓क़ూດ ;the poem is ֲᚊ՞堬, QTS, 5:179.1832, Zhan Ying, Li Bo quanji, 6:18.2932–34. Bo Juyi’s line is ᗑ ᙌ ൕ ײూ ᨋ ݁ ; the poem is ူ ୮ Լ ᣉ , QTS, 14:449.5066. Bo uses one of Qu Yuan’s names, often translated Divine Balance. 32 6.12560; 6.4a. Meishan was Su Shi’s native place.
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Հߨᎄႚ״ ϥϥϥϤϤϥϥ Ղছᓴၞဠ ϥϤϤϥϥϤϤ ࣟࡕមຼٵԿஉ ϤϤϥϥϤϤϥ ۫൵㑼ᩂԫࣤ ϤϥϤϤϥϥϤ ᗑڶມቖሔԫঋ ϥϥϥϤϤϥϥ ፇ㭬ᄅ೬៱ᠲᇣ ϥϤϤϥϥϤϤ
4
8
C4
Descending at a run, he erred in transmitting the summons to the Proclamation Chamber;
D1
ascending to appear, who will submit the words of Sir Fantasy?
A1
At East Slope elaphures share the three paths;
B4
In the Western Wicket-door phoenixes claim a single branch.
C4
Alone there is a rustic monk shunning all vulgar opinion:
D1
In halcyon marble he newly incises poems inscribed of old.
Notes: 245-1/ Qu Yuan mentions river rush in the Li Sao; Su Shi once alluded to that “traveler in Chu . . . singing of the river rush in the autumn wind.” 33 245-2/ Tripod Stream is the Si River that flows by Xuzhou; to my knowledge this is not a common name for it, but Su Shi himself refers in two poems to the legend that nine tripods were sunk into the river there in ancient times. 34 “Brow Peak” translates the characters in the name Meishan. 245-3/ “Descend” designates movement away from the capital. Jia Yi was summoned from exile in Changsha to the Proclamation Chamber for an audience with the emperor in ca. 172 BCE. Su Shi will allude to this in 1084, when he is actually recalled from Huangzhou. 35 245-4/ The talented rhapsody writer Sima Xiangru came to the attention of Emperor Wu because of his composition Sir Fantasy. Su Shi once alluded to this, too. 36 245-5/ Su Shi spoke of elaphures often (seventeen times in his poems), usually as a figure for his own shy nature. In one 1070 poem, he says he is a dweller in the mountains who has long been side-by-side with these shy deer, a situation similar to the one Fanghui asserts here. 37 The three paths, as we have seen, are a kenning for the hermitage. 245-6/ The Western Wicket-door is a common kenning for the Secretariat. The phoenixes represent the powerful elite jockeying for position. Su Shi uses these birds in five poems; in view of Fanghui’s couplet, we should note that in 1097, Su Shi will say that he has been next to the phoenixes at court, but it is time for him to return to the wilderness with his elaphure mien. 38
Perhaps the choice of genre for this inscription has something to do with a need
———
ࡉطಖႼխ౻ֵԼԫଈհԼԫ (1064), SSSJ, 1:5.208, line 10. ᏕԶᨠԶଈհԫ (1061), SSSJ, 1:3.99, line 51, Fuller, Road to East Slope, 99–104, and Wang Shuizhao, Su Shi xuanji, 9–15; and ( ڝز1071), SSSJ, 2:7.310, line 29. 35 ۟టڠ٦ࡉԲଈհԲ, SSSJ, 4:24.1261, line 17. This is not a rare allusion. 36 See Burton Watson, Records of the Grand Historian: Han Dynasty (rev. ed.), 2:259 and 260–61. Su Shi’s poem is ޕֆᖗመၡߠਜ֛Օፖ୪๐۔ᓾक़ᇣ…… (1079), SSSJ, 3:19.962, line 48. 37 ಬ߉۩ܨ॰Ỷࣾၺ, SSSJ, 5:28.1499, lines 11–12. This is placed with the 1087 poems, but Kong Fanli has demonstrated that should be ascribed to 1070. See his Gudian wenxue lunji, 202–3. 38 ڻᣉ࡚ࡉᙒᗪ׀ᓏᗩ࠸լ٘۟ᇣଈհԲ, SSSJ, 6:36.1935. Su’s pairing of elaphures and phoenixes is also placed in the third couplet of a heptametrical Regulated Verse. 33 34
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to either follow the form of Su’s poems or differentiate the inscription from the poems; we cannot tell, but we can note that Fanghui’s skillful use of allusions and diction from Su Shi’s poetry makes this a model colophon for its purpose. The poem encapsulates Su’s life as a balance, tension, or alternation between the highest honors and the humblest obscurity. Surely a Regulated Verse with its parallelism and metrical equilibrium is best to embody these qualities, and perhaps the longer heptasyllabic line accommodates the quotations and allusions better. By placing Tripod Stream on a level with Brow Peak (Meishan) as an object of Su’s supposed nostalgia (line 245-2), Fanghui makes Xuzhou a “second home” presumed to be in the dreams of the exile. Most likely, this reflects the feeling of the local people that there was a special bond between them and Su Shi.
ANOMALOUS FORM Four months later, in his third year at Xuzhou, Fanghui gives the first of our nineteen “anomalous poems.” It is titled simply ਞᡖ Spring Feelings. 39 246
4
8
ࣟଅܬຳອ༚墾 ϤϤϥϥϭϮϤ ֲ۫ࣥללၴࣔ ϤϥϮϮϤϤϤ ထֽ۪ዬොጸ ϥϥϤϤϮϭϥ ٻၺێᠮॣ֧န ϥϤϥϭϭϮϤ ࡴ២堷լߩ ϤϤϥϥϮϮϥ ਞढڶრԳྤൣ ϤϥϮϮϭϭϤ ቍઌնສং ϥϤϤϥϮϤϥ ࣨۀቺቁվسת ϥϥϤϤϭϥϤ
(D14)
An eastern wind blows the snow, cloudy then clear again.
(B30)
The westing sun glitters and fades: brightness amid the trees.
(C14)
Clothing the water, mossy robes gradually fill with green;
(D27)
facing the Yang, bamboo whips begin to send out shoots.
(A13)
Provisions for the official fill me up— the brew is not enough;
(B30)
nature in spring has intent— people lack feeling.
(A7)
I send a letter racing to confess to the heroes of the Five Tumuli;
(B3)
a sweaty tabula and dusky buskins have been half my life now.
Notes: 246-2/ Ranran has a host of meanings, including to gradually fade away and to glitter as light does on the water.
——— 39
6.12560–61; 6.4b. Dated the second month of Yuanfeng 7 (1084).
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246-3–4/ “Mossy cloak” is algae. “Whip” can refer to rhizomes of bamboo. The Yang is the sun, prime exemplar of the Yang force. 246-6/ The poet ascribes intention, will, or significance to the objects (wu) of spring that he observes, but finds the people around him lacking in feeling. 246-7/ The most prestigious neighborhoods in the Tang capital were around five of the Han emperors’ tombs. 40 246-8/ This line reminds us of the tabula and buskin collocation in Harmonizing with a Poem Sent to Me from Director Zheng (Poem 237, p. 279). 41
Not a single line in this poem is regulated. The second half of the poem is an impossible sequence in Regulated Verse: ABAB lines. Despite all this, the poem does not give the impression of being heptasyllabic Ancient Verse misclassified as Regulated Verse. Semantic parallelism in the middle couplets is skillful and includes within-line antithesis (fill/not enough; has intent/lack feeling). Tonally, all of the violations in the last three syllables of the lines are compensated for: ϮϤϥ in lines 246-3 and 7 by ϭϥϤ in lines 4 and 8; ϭϥϤ in line 1 by three level tones in line 2; and three deflected tones by three level tones in lines 5 and 6. All of these are common “twists” and “compensations”, and we shall not routinely point them out in this study. 42 One other rule that is violated, though the rule is by no means a rigid one, holds that the non-rhyming lines should not all end in the same tone. In this poem, all non-rhyming lines end in entering tones, either ~k or ~p. Perhaps Fanghui gets away with this by framing these non-rhyming line endings in words with nasal endings (~n, ~m, and ~ng), which one could see as the antithesis of abrupt entering tones. Luk (green) in line 3 is preceded by two ~n syllables and further balanced by three ~ng and two ~n syllables in the next line; pet tsuk (not enough) in line 5 is balanced by nyen muo dzeing (people lack feeling) in line 6; and ghap (knight-errant, “hero”) in line 7 is balanced by six nasal endings in the last line. Using the same principle, the salient string of nasal endings in line 246-2 (nyam nyam lem kan meing), helps to release the tension in the choppy rhythm of tshywi swat em buk dzeing (blow snow cloudy again clear) in line 1. In sum, the many violations in this poem most emphatically do not indicate any intention to make the poem “ancient” or spontaneous. Balance is everywhere. Why, then, end with AB lines? Let me propose a structural consideration. The poem, despite all the twists and compensations, is a normal DBCDAB up until the final couplet, which should be CD. That suggests that Fanghui wanted to set the final couplet off from the rest of the poem. It is evident that the last couplet introduces memory into a poem that has heretofore been about
——— 40
See Zhong Zhenzhen, Dongshan ci, 110, note to line 8 of lyric on 108. The 1906 Li Zhiding edition has “bamboo slip” instead of “tabula.” “Sweated slips” as a kenning for documents (referring to the process of curing them by heat) seems out of place in this poem, however. We follow QSS (and the “Cao Anthology”). 42 See Qi Gong, Shiwen shenglü lungao, 31–32. 41
HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE
291
the present scene and current ennui. I think, however, the violation of form requires a stronger justification. That justification is found in the emotions we may surmise to have been aroused by the dimension of memory. Note that the first time the reader or auditor realizes that the order of line types will be violated is when the second syllable in line 246-7 turns out to be a level-tone syllable. The single syllable that derails the poem thematically and tonally is shu, letter: “I send a letter racing to confess to the heroes of the Five Tumuli.” It is at this point that the poet turns to address, as it were, the heretofore-unannounced audience for the poem, the dashing, aristocratic men with whom he shared dreams of heroic greatness when they were young. The letter contains his apology for “selling out” and becoming a bureaucrat. By seemingly losing control of meter here, the poet suggests, without using emotive language, the disappointment and self-disgust he feels. A year and a half later, in the ninth month of Yuanfeng 8 (1085), it is the first couplet that is severed from the poem. The line-type pattern, with the loss of “adhesion” underlined, is DBABCDAB. Given that the line order would be perfectly regulated if the DB opening were a BD opening, and given the humorous nature of the poem, I think the formal irregularity is not too radical and is easily justified by the content. The poem is ຫႚሐ Answering Chen Chuandao. 43 In his headnote, Fanghui explains that Chen Shizhong is always calling him “Director He,” punning on jian, which means both ‘industrial prefecture’ (as in Baofeng jian) and ‘director’ (as in the high post held by Fanghui’s spiritual forbear from the southern branch of the family, He Zhizhang). The poem is written to tease Chen back. 256
4
ܠ୮ࡱట࿆Օᓒ ϤϤϥϭϭϮϤ ݺ֯⟍ࠐᣪ᠆ ϤϥϮϤϭϥϤ ֆழאࡅݺ ϤϤϤϥϤϤϥ ۞ూٵټኔլٵ ϥϥϤϤϥϥϤ ᖥઌඨվִ࡙ ϤϥϤϤϤϥϥ ᨹູԾԫટଅ ϤϤϥϥϥϤϤ
(D6)
My family’s Jizhen mounted to the Great Peng;
(B17)
And I for the sake of a trifling peck came to Baofeng.
A3
You, sir! Always with the appellation Director do you address me;
B1
I laugh that the name is the same, the reality is not.
C3
Goblets of brew: we gaze toward each other under the moon of this night;
D2
sliced perch: again I have betrayed the breeze of an entire autumn.
——— 43
6.12562; 6.7a. Chuandao is Chen Shizhong.
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֟ႊദצצฅ ϥϤϤϥϤϤϥ ᄎ၇ೣۣՀ௨ࣟ ϥϥϤϤϥϥϤ
8
A2
Wait a bit for the marriages to be rushed to completion,
B1
and I can buy a single boat to go down to Zhedong.
Notes: 256-1/ Jizhen is He Zhizhang. The Great Peng (probably through reference to Penglai, one of the isles of the undying in the eastern sea) was an informal name for the Palace Library in Song times. 44 He Zhizhang was the director of the Palace Library in the second quarter of the eighth century. 256-2/ Baofeng, again, is the mint in Xuzhou. The “trifling peck” is He Zhu’s pitiful salary. 256-5/ The poet and Chen Shizhong gaze toward each other from afar because Chen is still a few weeks away from quitting his position collecting brew taxes in Shuanggou. 45 256-6/ Zhang Han ്ᘃ served in Loyang in 301 but with the approach of autumn decided he would much rather be at home in the Suzhou area eating sliced perch and other local delicacies. He left forthwith. 46 256-7/ The marriages of his children (two boys, two girls) must have been a few years off still, since our poet is only thirty-four sui at this time. We know from the poem on her death that his daughter Shengzhang was married in 1091 or 1092. 256-8/ Zhedong would be the Shaoxing area, where He Zhizhang retired shortly before his death in 744.
Lines 256-1 and 2 are tonally very awkward; more importantly, they are tonally identical except for the second syllables. The similarity frames the contrast between He Zhizhang and He Zhu, especially the difference between climbing to the “Great Peng” and coming to Baofeng. With this joke out of the way, the poet “starts” the poem. That is, after line 256-2, which is a B line, instead of continuing in the normal way with a CDBDAB sequence, he switches to the ABCDAB sequence. In form, the DB opening thus stands apart from the poem. The banter does not disappear yet, however, but continues in the second couplet. There, we find that line 256-3 is prosy and line 256-4 does not even pretend to be semantically parallel with it. On the other hand, insofar as the second couplet is tonally regulated and parallel, a pattern that continues for the rest of the poem, it forms a transition back into the world of Regulated Verse. If Fanghui had wanted to sustain the “directorship paradox” through the en-
——— 44
Gong Yanming, Song dai guanzhi cidian, 239. The pentametrical Regulated Verse Seeing off Chen Chuandao for a substitute post at Shuanggou (Poem 175) was written about three months earlier. The headnote to Poem 260, ᠲෘࣔನ Inscription for Yuanming Studio, from the tenth month, tells us that Chen had built a studio in Shuanggou and then resigned his position as soon as Fanghui named the studio for him. (He must have been inspired by the Tao Yuanming model). We don’t know whether he abandoned his studio and returned to Xuzhou. If, as I think, Shuanggou was no more than 40 km away, Chen had not really left his home district. The present poem could have been written when Chen was visiting Xuzhou, but xiang wang implies some distance between the two. 46 Shishuo xinyu, 7.10. Allusions to Zhang Han’s return for the sake of his regional delicacies are common. 45
HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE
293
tire poem, he might not have chosen to write a Regulated Verse to respond to Chen Shizhong. An Ouyang Xiu or a Su Shi might have looked at such a paradox from several angles, using the freedom from parallelism available in an Ancient Verse form to fully indulge their genius for dissecting an issue at length according to the natural and seemingly spontaneous contours of discursive thought. Fanghui has chosen rather to frame the teasing and the response within the context of friendship: this is your little joke, and I respond with a laughing protest; we look toward each other from afar, we understand the absurdity of being away from home; and let me tell you what I plan to do once I have taken care of my family obligations. The return to semantic balance and order in the third couplet, together with the euphonic tonal regulation of couplets two through four, gives the proper tone. This is not a demonstration of intellectual adroitness; it is a poem of fellowship. A similar technique of beginning a poem with a joke that defies regulated form gives us Fanghui’s only BB opening. Written in the same autumn month of 1085, the poem is titled ࢵപց༘ଫػܧႆ๗്ឆࡺ Inviting Kou Yuanbi; Shown also to Recluse Zhang of the White Cloud Villa. The hermit, Zhang Zhonglian, we have already met in connection with some pentametrical Regulated Verses. Kou Yuanbi, whose name was Changzhao, is at the Jingshan Sconce at Fuli ฤ ᠦհ౸՞ڪ, about seventy km south of Xuzhou and near the Eupatorium Bottoms Garden at Lingbi. 47 The poem begins with a direct quotation from the song of Feng Xuan: “Long hylt, long hylt, let’s homeward hie, / There’s no chariot for me to ryde; / There’s no fish on which to dyne.” 258
4
———
९ⵯ९ⵯូࠐ ϤϥϤϮϭϭϤ ԼՑუቧতູ ϥϥϮϮϭϭϤ ሏॺቹ堷ۖբ ϤϥϤϤϮϭϥ ௬سംᑗ۶ڕ ϤϤϥϥϥϤϤ ࡳྤࠋড়堚ᖥ ϥϤϤϥϤϤϥ
(B22)
Long hylte, long hylte, let’s homeward hie;
(B29)
Ten mouths, I imagine, are sick of Huainan fish.
(C15)
Wandering as an officer is not for the goal of a stomach barely satisfied;
D2
in this floating life, I’ll pose the question, what is happiness?
A2
In the end I’m without a fine guest— brew in fine goblets;
47 6.12563; 6.7b. For Kou’s whereabouts, see the headnotes to Poem 82, ಬപց༘֮׆ᜰ Seeing Off Kou Yuanbi and Wang Wenju, 3.12524, dated the eighth month of 1085, and Poem 257, ᡖ ബപց༘ Missing and Sent to Kou Yuanbi, dated the ninth month and appearing just before the poem we are about to translate. Although I have not found mention of Jingshan Sconce, Fuli will be the site of an ignominious defeat of the Song forces in 1163; see Song shi, 33:371.11530, 34:383.11804, etc.
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ᘸײڶԳ႓࠴ ϥϥϥϤϭϥϤ ٍݺቺୗٵఐृ ϥϥϤϤϤϥϥ ፖܩ९ხػႆࡺ ϥϤϤϥϥϤϤ
8
(B17)
and rely on having the ancients— books in yellow scrolls.
C2
I, too, in the dust and grit, a fellow in suffering,
D1
like you always am abashed at the recluse in White Clouds.
Notes: 258-2/ “Ten mouths” appears to be a conventional reference to dependents in a household; in this case, it must be Kou Changzhao’s family. Kou is in the Huainan area. 258-6/ It is commonplace to speak of the sages and worthies of the past being accessible through “yellow scrolls.” 48 Yellow is parallel to qing “fine, pure” in a common correlation by pun.
The BB opening is calculated to emphasize the phrases “let’s homeward hie” and “Huainan fish,” and highlight the fact that Fanghui is using the rhymes of Feng Xuan’s original song (the exclamatory hu and yu, ‘fish’). It is the metrical equivalent of a knowing wink and a nudge with the elbow. After the parodic quotation from Feng Xuan in the first couplet, the second couplet continues the humor by the liberal use of prose particles: er yi “[full] and that’s all” and he ru “[happiness] what like.” Unfortunately, Fanghui is reaching so hard for effect here that the sense of the lines and even their very parsing are open to debate. More experiments with prose and sound come in the last Xuzhou heptametrical Regulated Verse we shall consider, ఎ്ܑػႆᘩ ׀Left as a Farewell to Zhang ‘White Clouds’ Moufu. This poem was written in the first month of Yuanyou 1 (1086), when Fanghui was leaving Xuzhou for the capital and saying goodbye to Zhang Zhonglian, whose White Cloud Villa he and his friends were so fond of visiting. 49 262
4
Կڕܐݝࡴڣ٧ ϤϤϤϥϥϤϤ ज֫ᦞ॰آݺ౨ ϥϥϤϤϥϥϤ ᘸፖػႆհឆृ ϥϥϥϤϤϥϥ լᓫ႓࠴ܛ༈ቖ ϥϤϤϥϥϤϤ
———
D4
Three years in a government office colder than ice.
B1
Gates of the powerful that will burn your hand— I’ve never been up to it.
C4
Luckily, with the White Cloud recluse,
D1
if we didn’t talk about yellow scrolls we went to visit monks.
48 An early instance of this can be seen in the biography of Chu Tao ፻ຯ (fl. late third cent.), where he is quoted as saying, “The sages and worthies are completely there for you in the yellow scrolls; if you choose not to avail yourselves of these, where else would you look?” Jin shu, 8:92.2381. Juice made from the bark of the amur cork tree was used for treating paper to discourage pests that would consume it. This accounts for the yellow color. 49 12563–64; 6.8b.
HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE
8
ᘕᘕጫଅࢶێ ϤϤϤϥϤϤϥ ౻౻ࣦᒌຳḥᗉ ϥϥϤϤϥϥϤ ቺՒ௬ሏ௦ઌ ϤϥϤϤϮϭϥ ູܦᗊႀࠟᣄᖇ ϤϤϥϥϥϤϤ
A3
Sighing, soughing, the slatted blind— wind bursts through bamboo;
B1
rough and rude the cups and plates— snow spatters on the lamp.
(C15)
Through dust and dirt I float and drift, going pointlessly far away;
D2
295
fish from Wu and geese from Yan will both be unreliable.
Notes: 262-2/ Saying that the rich and powerful could burn you if you touched them was common in the Tang. Du Fu voiced this notion, so it was not forgotten. Ouyang Xiu refers to being burnt on the hand by the vermilion gates of the rich; in 1103 Huang Tingjian will use Fanghui’s phrase “Gates of the powerful that will burn your hand” to open a heptametrical Regulated Verse. 50
As in the last two poems we have discussed, the second couplet stands out for its prosy language. It exhibits continuous syntax across the boundaries of the caesura in line 262-3 (because of the connective particle zhi) and enjambment between the two lines (insofar as the verbs for the implied subject “I” in line 3 come in line 4). Line 262-4 also strikes me as colloquial in its construction: “If we don’t do X, we do Y” is a common way of saying in modern Chinese that “we are always doing either X or Y.” 51 Passing over the vivid and wintry third couplet, let us look at the last line. From pre-Tang times on down it has been conventional in poetry to expect fish and geese to carry letters, but why make such an old fashioned allusion here— especially if they are “impossible to depend on”? I think it was pure sound play that suggested “fish from Wu and geese from Yan,” a phrase that in Chinese luxuriates in shared initials and finals: nguo1 nguo3b anH4 nganH2a. The phrase “Yan geese” is not too rare in poetry, but “Wu fish” appears just once in the Tang. In that case, the sentiment and sound are quite similar: ູܦᚢႀྤஒ “No news from Wu fish or geese over the Hawses.” This line luxuriates in the ng sound in a somewhat different manner: Nguo1 nguo3b leingQ3b nganH2a (“Wu fish Hawses geese”); the initial ng of the fourth word is attracted to the final ng of the preceding word. It is difficult to know whether Fanghui was “improving” on the Tang line or came up with the sound pattern by himself. 52 Either way, I
———
50 See Du Fu’s ᣝԳ۩, Du shi xiangzhu, 1:2.156, line 25. Ouyang’s poem is ტࠃଈհ, Ouyang Xiu quanji, 1:Jushi ji.9.62–63. Huang’s poem is ᠲᄘሐԳᚈನ, CSJC, 2251:waijibu.3.59–60. 51 I am unable to find this or any analogous construction in Su Shi, though he can be prosey. Without the capability to search for non-adjacent characters in the same line in other databases, I cannot at this time efficiently look for this construction in other poets. 52 The poet, Han Cong ឌ⓫ (jinshi 824) is included in the thirteenth-century Tang shi ji shi; in fact, this poem, ਞღᒧ, is the first one quoted in the section devoted to him. Although he is obscure to us, he may very well have been known to He Zhu. See Ji Yougong, Tang shi ji shi, 2:58.883.
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suggest that line 262-8 revives old clichés largely for the sake of a striking sound pattern. 1086: YONGCHENG PLAYING WITH THE RHYTHM OF THE LINE On his way to the capital in early 1086, Fanghui stopped in Yongcheng ৄة, on the Bian Canal about 250 km southeast of his goal. This layover of a couple of weeks produced one pentametrical Regulated Verse, two heptametrical Quatrains, and six heptametrical Regulated Verses. Every one of these poems has an explicit social function. The fact that Fanghui broke his journey here and wrote so many poems, sometimes at the request of local people, might be explained by the fact that in the summer of 1083 he had passed through Yongcheng going to his home district of Weizhou on the north bank of the Yellow River, and again on the route back to Xuzhou. 53 He must have made friends here. Perhaps, also, other travelers had carried his poetic reputation in Xuzhou along this same route. The function of these poems confirms what critics have said about the heptametrical Regulated Verse: because of its flowing rhythm and the balance of its parallel couplets, it is a good medium for the exchange of poems on social occasions, yet because it is relatively easy to write, it carries the danger of facile sentiments and tired diction. 54 Surely it was this danger that had made Fanghui work so hard in Xuzhou to complicate the meter and the parallelism of his heptametrical Regulated Verse. We see signs of continuing efforts in the second couplet of the poem he writes for Zhou Jianzhong ࡌ৬խ, a man he had sent off (with a heptametrical Regulated Verse) in the seventh month of 1085 for Huangxian ႓ᗼ. Huangxian, where Zhou was to be assistant magistrate, is in Dengzhou on the northern side of the Shandong peninsula. One wonders why Zhou was taking so long to get there. In the headnote to the present poem, Fanghui tells us that Zhou is going to go by sea. When Su Shi served in Dengzhou briefly as prefect in late 1085, he also went around the peninsula by boat, but it took less than a month. 55 It may be that Zhou was dawdling, hoping for a
——— 53 Our evidence for this is the poet’s notes to four heptametrical quatrains from the fifth month in Yongcheng, the fifth month in Weizhou itself (a pair of Willow-Branch songs), and the sixth month in Yongcheng on the way back. See Poems 461–464, starting with ᠲࢭ֚ێڝನ Inscribed on the Bamboo Studio at Chengtian Temple, 9.12591; 9.5a–b. The purpose of the trip home is unknown. 54 See Matsuura Tomohisa, “Chgoku koten shi ni okeru shikei to hygen kin,” 15. 55 See Kong Fanli, Su Shi nianpu, 2:24.688–89. Lin Yutang specifically states (257) that Su went around the penninsula, and in a short essay Su does mention going to Wendeng, which is the area at the end of the penninsula. (See SSWJ, 5:67.2108–9, দᇣ.) However, Wendeng could simply be a poetic reference to Dengzhou (of which it is a part), and I wonder if it would not have been safer to go down the river valley that runs north from Mizhou (we know he went through
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better assignment; or perhaps he had been ill. Here is the poem, ৄةࡌցຏ٦ᇣᢤܑ At Yongcheng I Ran Into Zhou Yuantong, [who] Repeatedly Sought a Poem: Presented in Parting. 56 264
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ੌۉۉဉዞዞᓒ ϥϥϤϤϥϥϤ ೝྥতקೝྥນ ϥϤϤϥϥϤϤ ԫᖥຏᛎᖯᢰ ϥϤϤϥϤϤϥ ࡙ࠟᜯ⺂᧬؆ᤪ ϥϥϤϤϥϥϤ ۩ߎଅंࡵࡸშ ϤϥϤϤϤϥϥ ូবቺՒլઌ୲ ϤϤϤϥϥϤϤ ࠃمڰפႊवಯ ϥϤϥϥϤϤϥ ᖂᒛ،ڣ۔ል ϥϥϤϤϥϥϤ
B1
Bobbing lightly, flowing duckweed: tumbleweed tossing and rolling:
D1
By chance they’re off to north or south, by chance they meet.
A2
One goblet of by-the-TongjiBridge brew;
B1
two nights of beyond-the-LinsuiStation bell.
C3
Go! Wind and waves it were well to take cautiously;
D4
return! Dust and dirt will not accept you.
A4
Establish your merit early then know enough to withdraw;
B1
study farming: some other year, call on the old peasant.
Notes: 264-3/ Tongji (“Linking and Succoring”) was the seventh century canal whose section east of Kaifeng was to become the Bian Canal. 57 264-4/ The Sui River was just a few kilometers east of Yongcheng, flowing parallel to the Bian Canal. The name seems to be written both with and without the water radical. 264-6/ The line could mean that Zhou and the dusty, dirty world will not accept each other. 264-8/ I suspect that Fanghui is the “old peasant” inviting Zhou to call on him after he has retired to farm.
The second couplet consists of two long noun phrases. Proper nouns are already in tension with the strong caesurae that seek to split them—”Tongji || Bridge” and “Linsui || Post-station”—but since the words “by” and “beyond” (which come after their objects in Chinese) are tightly bound to the words preceding them, the three-syllable place names actually expand to four-syllable locative phrases. The result is a syntactic parsing of 2 |4 |1 superimposed on a nor-
——— Mizhou) into the Bohai and go along the north shore east to Dengzhou. For Zhou Jianzhong, on the other hand, from Yongcheng it would make sense to go down the canal to Chuzhou and cut east 75 km to the coast. 56 Poem 264, 6.12564; 6.9a. Zhou’s father Zhou Wei ྍ was eminent enough to warrant a biography in the Song shi, 29:304.10055–56. He was a decisive official who would execute a corrupt clerk or troublesome bandits without hesitation. 57 Zou Yilin, Huang-Huai-Hai pingyuan lishi dili, 153.
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mal 2 |2 || 3 rhythm. Those four-syllable phrases (naming the place where the brew is consumed and from which the bell sound originates) are conspicuously odd as modifiers, too. The effect is similar to “one bag of inside-YankeeStadium popcorn,” which says that the popcorn is intrinsically defined by where it is purchased or consumed. To normalize both the grammar and the rhythm, we could rewrite line 264-3, for example, to read ຏᛎᖯᢰԫᖥ “By the Tongji Bridge, one goblet of brew.” This would be an unregulated C line instead of the A line required after line 2 (a D line), but that is beside the point here. I don’t think tonal restrictions were what Fanghui had in mind when he arranged the elements of the line. What he wanted, within this perfectly regulated poem, was to confound our expectations and show his skill. There is also a desirable semantic effect: by putting the locative phrases next to the nouns, he suggests that the brew cannot be separated from the Tongji Bridge and the bell is unique to the Linsui post-station. Fanghui is creating nostalgia for the place where he and his friend have met again. The structure of these lines has one partial precedent in Su Shi’s line ᓴᐧร նᖯᢰֽΔᗑᅃ۔ڠᔤಇ “Who is moved by the next-to-Bridge-No.-Five waters, / reflecting alone Taizhou’s old Zheng Qian?” 58 The effect of the 2 | 4 | 1 syntactic parsing in the first line of the couplet is somewhat muted because of the enjambment of the two lines, but it is at least comparable to Fanghui’s lines 264-3–4. Su’s poem was written in 1083, three years before At Yongcheng I Ran into Zhou Yuantong. There is no way of knowing whether Fanghui consciously intended to best it. Nevertheless, a comparison with this “precedent” shows that by using the structure in a parallel middle couplet and getting rid of verbs, Fanghui did make an even more spectacular conflict between rhythm and meaning. Another poem shows Fanghui’s skill at a conceit often used by Su Shi and Huang Tingjian, namely, using outstanding persons of the past as substitutes for the people for whom the poem is written. They are “substitutes” because the “tenor,” the person in the present, is not mentioned explicitly, only the “vehicle,” the person to whom he is being compared. The title of the poem reveals that the poet and three other people are involved: ٵฅฯ༅ऒޕࢵৄة࣒ ٘ Mooring at Yongcheng Together with Bi Shao, I Invite Li Shen and His Brother. 59 In line 267-5 of this poem, Xi Kang and Ruan Ji stand in for He Zhu and Bi Shao because Xi Kang admired Ruan Ji and the two became fast friends. 60 In line 267-6, Lu Ji and Lu Yun are the vehicle because they were talented brothers, and the poem is written partly for Li Shen and his brother. (In 1087, Su Shi will use
———
ࡳ׆ഏូקรնᖯ, SSSJ, 4:22.1180–81, lines 7 and 8. 6.12564; 6.9b. 60 “Hsi K’ang …went to visit Juan Ji with a present of wine and his zither under his arm. They thereupon became good friends.” Donald Holzman’s translation, Poetry and Politics, 80. 58 59
HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE
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the same Lu brothers in a heptametrical Regulated Verse to refer to himself and his brother, Su Zhe. 61) Perhaps the fact that Lu Ji and Lu Yun served together at the Jin court in Loyang in the late third century suggests Fanghui’s polite hope that Li Shen and his brother will enjoy similar success. 267
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የৄᄘإ႓ ϥϤϤϥϥϤϤ ༓ᠭᨍנূ ϥϥϤϤϥϥϤ ᆖॸࣾੌ؈堚 ϤϥϤϤϮϭϥ ႆਞۥ༃ ϥϤϤϥϥϤϤ ൕࠐ།ྶ ϤϤϤϥϤϤϥ उᖲႆ࣒כړ ϥϥϤϤϥϥϤ স੍֡ॼඨស塢 ϥϥϤϤϮϭϥ ޚ㏛ઌመ๕ᅀ ϥϤϤϥϥϤϤ
D1
Filling the city, willow trees are in yellow profusion.
B1
From so many places swings emerge from low enclosures.
(C15)
Receiving rain, the flow of the canal has lost its limpid shoalness
D1
wreathed with clouds, the aspect of spring is suddenly cold then warm.
A3
Always have Xi and Ruan been fond of the zither and drink;
B1
so much the better to have Ji and Yun, fine brothers elder and second.
(C14)
Just feet away, the fordage pavilion faces the hall of abstinence;
D1
if with goosefoot staff I come to call, don’t refuse the intrusion.
Note: 267-7/ The hall of abstinence is where officials retire for a period of purification. It can be an elevated expression for the dwelling of an official. 62 “Feet away” is not always used literally, and closeness is a relative thing; Fanghui may be saying that the distance between the pavilion at the ford in Yongcheng where they will part now is not so very far from Bi Shao’s residence in the capital, where the poet will call upon Bi in the near future.
Keeping our focus on the third couplet, I want to suggest that line 267-6 uses rhyme in what we might call a gestural way, a momentary glance in the direction of the Li brothers. This is the only line that ends with a ~wen sound: kwen, “second brother.” Lines 1, 2, 4, and 8 end with words in the ngwan ց rhyme group: kan, ghwan, hwan, and ban respectively. Kwen is in the ghwen Ꮢ group. Now, there is no question that these different sounds were close enough that they were considered valid rhymes. Su Shi uses kwen six times in rhyming positions, and in each case there are ngwan group rhymes in the poem. On the other hand, those poems by Su are sixteen to forty lines in length, and whatever difference there
———
ڻᣉᏥಥ࠸׀൱ᕏ, SSSJ, 5:29.1549–50. Huang Tingjian refers to Su Shi’s residence as a hall of abstinence in a 1079 poem: ߠ៓ ⟖ڗᇣࡉԿԳ֘լܺۖყഹ࡛᎗ڻᣉബ༙॰Կଈհԫ. See Huang Baohua, Huang Tingjian xuanji, 60–68, n. 23. 61 62
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was in the vowels probably attracted little attention, especially when the alternation between rhyme groups happens more than once and in no discernable pattern. Fanghui’s poem is only eight lines in length. That gives the single change in sound—the single half-rhyme, if you will—more prominence. I would argue that this is the prosodic equivalent of a glance and a slight bow toward the two brothers to reinforce the special pleasure in their presence that is stated by the words of the line. It shows the finely tuned ear of the poet.
THE CAPITAL ZHAO LINGZHI, ZHAO LINGSHUAI Let us turn from matters of form to politics. In our chapter on Ancient Verse, we mentioned the 1089 persecution of Cai Que based on a distorted interpretation of a set of ten of poems he had written in Anzhou. The only place Fanghui mentions Cai Que in his extant writings is in the headnote to a poem he wrote in the capital on 22 January 1087 (Yuanyou 1/12/15). The occasion is the departure of Zhao Lingzhi to Chenzhou, where Cai is prefect. (Cai Que had been vice director of the right and de facto ruler of the country from 1082–85, roughly coinciding with He Zhu’s service at the Baofeng mint in Xuzhou. Cai was then mildly punished by being sent out to be prefect of the area where he probably grew up: Chenzhou, less than 150 km south of the capital on the Cai Canal. He lasted there from early 1086 until the following year, which means Zhao Lingzhi would serve under Cai in Chenzhou for only a few months.) 63 The title of the poem is ಬ᎓≷חհࡴຫڠଫ១ࡌ֮堚 Sending off Zhao Lingzhi for a Post in Chenzhou; Sent also as a Letter to Zhou Wenqing. Zhou Wenqing is Fanghui’s brother-in-law; nothing else is known about him, so the significance of sharing this poem with him can only be surmised. 64 271
׆ᦜ૿ػ۪ڹ୪ ϤϤϥϥϥϤϤ װړၺࠃઌܩ ϥϥϤϤϥϥϤ
D2
Vermilion robes, pale face: grandson of the Gracious Prince,
B1
Fare thee well to Huaiyang to serve the Minster Lord
——— 63 See Hugh R. Clark, “An Inquiry into the Xianyou Cai,” 83–87, for a capsule biography of Cai Que. On 18 March 1086, Su Shi asked the court why it was taking so long to approve Cai’s request to withdraw; on 19 March, Cai was assigned to Chenzhou. See Changbian, 11:368.1a–5b (3752b–54b). See also the Song shi, 39:471.13700. Sima Guang was made vice director of the left in his place. See Kong Fanli, Su Shi nianpu, 2:25.709. 64 Poem 271, 6.12565; 6.10b. Fanghui’s other poems to Zhou Wenqing (whose name is Hang ) come from 1077 and late 1081.
HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE
բ࣋ਇۣՀত ϥϥϤϤϮϭϥ 4
8
ޓᖥᔨ۫㈋ ϥϤϤϥϥϤϤ ॹႆૠ۞ࡨ۩ڼ ϥϥϤϤϮϤϥ ִࣔ൦ൕվ࡙։ ϤϥϤϤϭϥϤ ᚵוဪլ֗ ϥϥϤϤϤϥϥ ܀ႚᒡሒवፊ ϥϤϤϥϥϤϤ
D1
You’ve already released your little boat to go down from the southern cove; and now you grasp a goblet of brew, drunk in the now westerly glow.
(A5)
Blue clouds plans from this journey begin;
(B4)
the bright moon appreciations from tonight will be separate.
C2
I would rely on a short letter but can’t craft it soon enough;
D1
I just send word of failure and success, to report to my friends.
(C14)
301
Notes: 271-1/ Zhao Lingzhi was the fifth-generation grandson of a Gracious Prince, Zhao Dezhao ᎓ᐚ ਟ. Zhao Dezhao (d. 979) was the second son of Taizong (the founder of the dynasty), by a consort who was made an empress posthumously, in 962. This consort, who lived 929–58, was the oldest daughter of He Zhu’s sixth-generation grandfather. 65 Thus, Zhao Lingzhi and He Zhu are related, but Zhao is of royal blood. 271-2/ Huaiyang Commandery is an alternate name for Chenzhou. The Minister Lord is Cai Que. Fanghui takes care to mention in his headnote that Cai is prefect at Chenzhou. 271-3/ “Southern cove” is a kenning for a place of parting. 271-5/ “Blue clouds” are a kenning for lofty position. As such, they represent the career advancement that the poet foresees for Zhao under Cai Que. 271-6/ Hereafter, Zhao and Fanghui will appreciate or “cherish” the moon from different locales. 271-7/ I take He Zhu to be the subject of the verbs in this line, though in the absence of pronouns other interpretations might be possible. In the one other poem in which Fanghui uses the phrase ni zhang, “want to rely on” it is clear that he is the subject of the sentence. 66 271-8/ The last phrase could also mean “tell the news.” “Failure and success” might refer to the poet’s failure and Zhao’s success.
If Fanghui thought Cai Que was the villain history has made him out to be, he is too polite to say so. He probably expected Cai Que to make a comeback and Zhao Lingzhi to benefit from his association with Cai. Certainly he does not foresee that Cai will be transferred to ever more distant posts, never to return to power. Nor does he know that Zhao Lingzhi will in the future be a part of Su Shi’s circle. He will know these things a few years hence, when he is editing his
——— 65 See the Song shi, 244.8676 and Zhong Zhenzhen, Bei Song ciren He Zhu yanjiu, 15. Chaffee, Branches of Heaven, makes Zhao Defang the eldest son (AA in his notation), probably because the eldest son (Dexiu ᐚߐ) died young. 66 He “wants to rely on flying clouds” to send word to Chen Shizhong. Poem 465, a heptametrical Quatrain from Xuzhou, 1085: ஂՂ։ᣉബຫႚሐ Dividing Rhymes at a Banquet: Sent to Chen Chuandao, 9.12591; 9.5b.
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poetry collection. 67 At that time, evidently, he does not think this poem should be repressed as an embarrassment to himself or Zhao, for he does not excise it. (Or perhaps he too enamored with the third couplet’s anomalous syntactic rhythm—3 || 1 | 2 | 1—to get rid of it. 68) In fact, Fanghui will himself call on Cai Jing ᓐࠇ (Cai Que’s third cousin, 1047–1126) with Mi Fu in late 1100, probably in Sizhou on the Bian Canal. (On that occasion, our poet literally runs off with two freshly-written enormous characters by Cai Jing—done to demonstrate to an obnoxious local man that there was no trickery behind making them so large—and has them engraved at a local temple.) 69 The foregoing does not lead to the conclusion that Fanghui had joined the New Policies faction. Nor does it necessarily mean he was a hopeless sycophant. Rather, in the context of his continued good relations with the people in the orbit of Su Shi, I would like to think that Fanghui, like Su Shi and Huang Tingjian, was not ready to play the game of all-out defamation and persecutive politics that were to prove so ruinous to the Northern Song. To the extent that we can understand his thinking on the basis of admittedly limited evidence, Fanghui affords a glimpse of a more complicated and nuanced world than is visible through the filter of the Southern Song recollections of Yuanyou period politics. Those recollections are certainly colored by the fact that Cai Jing dominated the government in the critical years from 1102 to 1126, when the Northern Song court under Huizong grew so weak that Jurchen armies were able to sweep over North China and hold it for the next hundred years. Fine discriminations between the young Cai Jing and the mature Cai Jing or between him and Cai Que were of little interest to later historians who had to explain this cataclysm. To understand Fanghui’s expectations for Zhao Lingzhi’s future in association with Cai Que, however, we must both acknowledge his inability to see decades into the future and respect his determination to preserve the poetic record of his knowledge and feelings even after the passage of time had given him new perspectives when he edited his collection in the mid 1090s. In 1087, Fanghui received a gift of ink from Zhao Lingzhi’s brother, Lingshuai. His response gives us a chance to see a how an object and a gift are treated in Regulated Verse, especially in comparison with Fanghui’s late 1090 Song-with-ink to Yang Shi. The 1087 poem is ሟࡲח༡ᕠ Requiting a Gift
———
67 Su and Zhao become very close in Yingzhou Ⰷ ڠin 1091. See Kong Fanli, Su Shi nianpu, 3:30.997–98. 68 He Zhu is almost the only poet I know who places zi ‘from’ in the fourth position of a heptasyllabic line. There is, however, a precedent for his placement of the synonym cong in the same position of line 271-6: Liu Gui ெ (jinshi 851), ᄖ࠺ൕվֲ२, third line of ಬ๕٘ᆏणցូ ઊ, QTS, 17:566.6559–60. Du Fu and other poets use zi ci in the second and third positions of a pentasyllabic line occasionally, creating a similar tension with the major caesura. 69 Zhong Zhenzhen, Bei Song ciren He Zhu yanjiu, 63–64.
HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE
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of Ink from Lingshuai of the Imperial House. 70 Like the previous poem, it mentions a member of the Cai family and also exhibits an interesting parsing in the third couplet. 273
4
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ᦍᅁᄅᕪវۖഒ ϥϤϤϥϥϤϤ ᓴᘯଡ଼سऄլႚ ϤϥϤϤϥϥϤ ॾਢ֮ࢪזݦᣪ ϥϥϤϤϤϥϥ 墿वֆመԳᔃ ϥϤϤϥϥϤϤ ᓐխ۔ଆػ ϥϤϤϥϮϤϥ ཆച༰ᒡ౻خ ϤϥϥϤϭϥϤ ႁრ्ᡯ߇ ϥϥϥϤϤϥϥ ԼՄเܠܗאᣌ ϥϤϤϥϥϤϤ
D1
Musk-scented soot in new lozenges: pearly-grey and solid,
B4
Who could ever say the art of Xi has not been handed down?
C2
Truly it is for one’s study a treasure rare in any age;
D1
ever more one sees that royalty are wiser than other people.
(A6)
Adjutant Cai—when he got old— loved the flying white;
(B18)
Halberdier Yang—when he was poor— was caught up in drafting the Dark.
C4
Your estimable affect calls for obsidian in repayment;
D1
these ten cakes will serve to abet my wildness.
Notes: 273-2/ Mr. Xi is the master ink maker Li Tinggui of the Southern Tang, alluded to in the Song for Yang Shi; his original surname was Xi. 273-5/ Cai Xiang ᝊ (1012–67) is one of the four master calligraphers of the Song Dynasty and an ally of Ouyang Xiu and other reformers in the early 1040s. He is often referred to in poetry as Adjutant. Su Shi wrote a colophon on Cai’s “flying white” calligraphy (in which the brush is dry enough and fast enough to leave white spaces within a stroke). 71 273-6/ Reference here is to Yang Xiong and his Great Mystery, on which he labored without any thought of getting ahead in the political world. 273-7/ In Ode 64 of the Classic of Poetry we find the locus classicus for obsidian: “Throw me a plum / and I’ll repay you with obsidian. / Though not a worthy repayment, / long may you find pleasure in it.” 72
——— 70 6.12565–66; 6.11a. For Lingshuai’s position on the genealogical chart, see Song shi, 18.218.6058. He is the eldest of three brothers; Lingzhi, on p. 6063, is the youngest. 71 See Hugh R. Clark, “An Inquiry into the Xianyou Cai,” 78–83, and Amy McNair, “The Sung Calligrapher Ts’ai Hsiang.” His contemporary, Mei Yaochen, referred to him as “Adjutant” in, for example, ִإԲԼԲֲۂ࿇ሎ್ኘೃ…… (1052), Mei Yaochen ji biannian jiaozhu, 2:22.594. For Su’s colophon, see SSWJ, 5:69.2181. 72 Tr. Jeffrey Riegel in Victor Mair, ed., Columbia Anthology of Traditional Chinese Literature, 157. “Obsidian” may not be the best translation for a term that Han Yu used as an image for snow in tree branches and some early Song poets used for pink flowers. The term’s precise meaning (if it ever had one) is lost, and it might be best glossed as something like “a general term for a lovely gem, especially functioning in poetry as a conventional repayment for a gift.” For the poems by Han Yu and early Song poets, and the Shuowen definition as “crimson nephrite,” see Yuan Wen,
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273-8/ Dian, “wild” or “upside-down” was an epithet of the eight-century calligrapher Zhang Xu ്ڳ, who wrote crazy draft-style when he was drunk. 73
We said above that Fanghui’s apparent enthusiasm for Zhao Lingzhi’s appointment under Cao Que did not mean he was a hopeless sycophant. Perhaps we need to reconsider that judgment in view of line 273-4! I see no way to read sarcasm into “ever more one sees that royalty are wiser than other people.” The reference to Cai Que’s older cousin Cai Xiang in line 273-5 is innocuous, however, for the reform movement Cai Xiang supported in his generation was seen as a positive thing, though it was a precursor for the more extreme and controversial changes of He Zhu’s time. The third couplet offers “Flying white” and “drafting Dark” as clever counterparts, but what is most interesting about the third couplet is the 3 | 1 || 3 cadence. The surnames Cai and Yang with their two-syllable titles override the weak caesura or first “beat” of the lines; the single syllables “old” and “poor” are thus isolated before the strong caesura. (We discussed a similar parsing in lines 243-3 and 4.) Treating “old” and “poor” as temporal clauses in the translation—even with the dashes—softens the cadence deceptively. There are several reasons for this poem on ink to be a heptametrical Regulated Verse rather than a Song. This poem acknowledges a gift from someone else, someone who is a member of the imperial family. Fanghui must be politely deferent. He praises the ink and the giver, and gives some (poetic) estimate of what an equally valuable return gift would be. He can afford to claim to be a bit wild in line 273-8, but it is the “wildness” of a calligrapher, sanctified by allusion, not the wildness of a malcontent. If he deploys those odd rhythms in the third couplet to foreground two of his allusions, the displays of his erudition and his prosodic daring are both circumscribed. The exuberance of the Boliang Song for Yang Shi, with its overwhelming recitation of the lore of ink, would have been out of place. In fact, since Fanghui is giving the ink to his old office-mate, and especially if the ink was as special as it seems to have been, the fun and energy of the Song could have been intended to lighten the tone of the gift-giving act; this act represents friendship, not the bestowal of a favor on a dependant.
1088–91: THROUGH JINLING TO LIYANG AND BACK WANG ANSHI Having taken notice of Fanghui’s level of comfort with a friend working under
———
Wengyou xianping, CSJC, 286:3.23–24 and a different version (from the Siku quanshu edition) quoted in Zhonghua dadian, 1:527b. 73 See Chang and Miller, Four Thousand Years of Chinese Calligraphy, 258–261.
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Cai Que, we cannot pass over his poem on the estate of the late Wang Anshi, whom Cai had served before Wang retired to Jinling: ༅ऒ८ສ༈׆౸ֆຫᇾ Laying Over in Jinling, I Visit the Old Relics of Wang Jinggong. 74 This poem was written in the third month of Yuanyou 3 (1088), almost exactly two years after Wang’s death, as Fanghui was on his way to Liyang in Hezhou. 275
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ඡऒਇۣԫം੍ ϥϥϤϤϥϥϤ ࠉྥᆏढ৸᧿Գ ϤϤϥϥϥϤϤ ۂ՞ִᅃքཛኄ ϤϤϥϥϮϤϥ ޕଅܬԿִਞ ϤϥϤϤϭϥϤ ࣞڛֆՀሁ ϥϥϤϤϤϥϥ ᇣ༈ᘕڝᕻၴቺ ϤϤϤϥϥϤϤ ױႊᖥؓسપ ϥϤϤϥϤϤϥ ९ඨ۫ڠෝየդ ϤϥϤϤϥϥϤ
B1
Late I moor my little boat, insist on asking about the ford.
D2
Unchanged, the season’s prospect: I miss the journeyer.
(A5)
The moon over River and hills shines on a Six Dynasties dream;
(B4)
a breeze through peach and apricot blows on three months of spring.
C4
His cottage pillows on the road below Xie’s Knoll;
D4
for his poetry we look in the dust on the wall of Xiao Temple.
A2
What need to have, with goblets of brew, a lifelong understanding?
B4
long I gaze to the Western Province: tears fill my kerchief.
Notes: 275-1/ “Asking about the ford” can mean to seek learning, or to ask about the general situation. On the surface here it means simply to ask directions. 75 275-2/ The journeyer is taken to be Wang Anshi, who was not a native of Jinling. However, the term Fanghui uses generally implies travel not taken for pleasure and seems misapplied to Wang, who chose to settle here in retirement. “The unchanging objects of the season bring longings to [me], the journeyer” would make better sense, but I am unable to substantiate such an unusual causative use of si. 275-5/ There are two Xie’s Knolls in the area. The 1261 gazetteer for Jinling tells us that the one mentioned in this poem is within the grounds of the Banshan Temple (Wang Anshi’s former residence) and was once called Kangle Precinct. Xie Xuan ( خ343–88) was enfoeffed as Duke of Kangle, a title that was carried down as far as his grandson, Xie Lingyun. The other Xie’s Knoll was one climbed by Xie An ( ڜ320–85, Xie Xuan’s uncle) and Wang Xizhi. 76
——— 74
6.12566; 6.11b. The closest parallel I can find to the use of ԫ yi here is in Su Shi’s opening line to ஊࠌܩ ։ᄅ( ־1082), SSSJ, 4:21.113: ᜯఙॼխԫ݄ٲ. The Shikajikkai, 10:210 and 212, translates yi as hitori, “alone” or hitoeni, “stubbornly.” On the assumption that the word is not a mere filler, I use “insist on” to convey its possible meaning. 76 Zhou Yinghe, Jingding Jiankang zhi, 17.53b–54a (1582–83). The granting of the title to Xie Xuan is recorded in the Jin shu, 1:9.235. The other knoll is at the site of the Wu Kingdom Yecheng ৄ, which a map in Zhou Yinghe’s gazetteer shows to be on the west side of the thirteenth75
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275-6/ There is an Emperor Xiao Temple southeast of the thirteenth-century Jinling. Xiao is the surname of the Liang Dynasty that ruled from Jinling in the first half of the sixth century. Wang Anshi mentions the temple in one heptametrical Quatrain and one heptametrical Regulated Verse. 77 275-8/ The Western Province Gate was on the west side of Jinling. . When Xie An learned that he was scheduled to be carried through the gate on a palanquin, he recalled a prophetic dream and knew that he would not recover from his illness.
The closing lines explicitly mourn the loss of Wang Anshi. There did not have to be any understanding reached between He Zhu and Wang over drink (or an understanding that they would rendezvous for drinks in the future, to adopt another possible reading of line 275-7). Fanghui still mourns him as a great man who might have recognized his talents. The tears shed in line 275-8 allude to those shed here seven centuries earlier by Yang Tan ےᖣ. Yang, whose fine qualities Xie An had cherished, knew about Xie’s dread of the Western Province Gate and after his death refused to travel the road to Western Province City. One day, nevertheless, Yang somehow ended up at Western Province Gate after getting drunk at Stony Head. When his companions told him where he was, he beat on the gate with his riding crop, recited a couplet by Cao Zhi on death, wept bitterly, and left. 78 Fanghui’s feelings for the late Wang Anshi are analogous to Yang’s, even though he and Wang had never met. Clearly, Fanghui, like Su Shi, Huang Tingjian, and other leading figures of their generation, did not blame Wang Anshi for the viciousness of the neo-New Policies factions that had followed him to power.
“FIRST POEMS” In the Hezhou–Jinling area, we begin to get a relatively large volume of poems, large enough to substantiate our thesis that the first poems Fanghui writes for a
——— century city; see 5.3 (1376). Li Bo wrote a poem on climbing Yecheng and gazing northwest toward the Knoll: ࿆८ສৄ۫קڜ, Zhan Ying, 6:19.2990–99; no Jitsunosuke, Ri Haku shika zenkai, 837–40. One of Wang Anshi’s poems, ֆ, is clearly about the one near Yecheng. See Liu Naichang, Wang Anshi shiwen biannian xuanshi, 157. (This poem reminds us of Fanghui’s inability to pry the secrets of history out of the farmers on the North China Plain: Wang asks the woodsmen if this is Xie’s Knoll, but they don’t know; he asks the herdboys, but they don’t even answer.) The other two poems are about the Xie Knoll within the grounds of Wang’s house. The humor in one of them turns on sharing ground and name with Xie An. (Xie An’s cognomen, Anshi, is the same as Wang’s name.) See Linchuan xiansheng wenji, 28.317 and Shimizu Shigeru, Anseki, 53–54. 77 See Zhou Yinghe, Jingding Jiankang Zhi, 46.12b (2078). Other names of the temple are Deer Park Temple ຼ ڝand Dharma Light Temple ऄ٠ڝ. Wang Anshi wrote poems on both Xie’s Knolls: ڻᣉሟ࠸ ࣑ڹնଈհԿ and ;ڝײLinchuan xiansheng wenji, 17.554 and 34.372, respectively. 78 See the Jin shu, 7:79.2076–77. Fu Xinian et al., Chinese Architecture, 67, has a plan of the Eastern Jin Jinling and its environs. Our “Western Province” is no. 42 on the plan.
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new acquaintance will tend to be heptametrical Regulated Verses, to be followed up later perhaps by poems in other forms. The first poems we have for Master He of the Qingliang Temple on the outskirts of Jinling are a pair of heptametrical Regulated Verses, dated the third month of 1088. 79 They are under the title ୪ٖଫ១堚ළࡉՂԳ In answer to Sun Xiu and also Sent as a Letter to Master He of Qingliang Temple. The headnote tells us that Fanghui met Sun Xiu at the temple. Sun, a poet (shijia liu ᇣ୮ੌ), gave He Zhu two compositions, to which these poems are the reply. We shall translate the second, which is the more interesting one for what I take to be an admonition about style in politics. 277 ྍקԳሏᄑֽࣟ
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B1
A native from north of the Wei roams east of the waters of Chu.
ϥϥϤϤϥϥϤ He discusses the Odes, explains the Documents, ᓵᇣᎅೝൕ୲ (D11) by chance he mingles here. ϥϤϥϭϥϤϤ The gates of your homeland on this day— ၢᣂֲڼ༓ڍ (A5) how far away? ϤϤϥϥϮϤϥ brew of spring and melancholy— ਞፖღઌᖺ (B18) compete in heaviness. ϤϥϮϤϭϥϤ Just avoid, for the ox’s cloak, ۪ׄ܍ხࡠ (C14) shaming yourself in front of wife and children; ϥϥϤϤϮϭϥ and don’t use the goat curds ๕ലےሠᇟܠᏞ D1 to shock us southerners. ϥϤϤϥϥϤϤ To pity the young gentleman we rely on ׆୪ᘸᚦ֚ᤩ A3 kya who fills the sky; ϤϤϤϥϤϤϥ surely he wouldn’t imitate the Yangzhou ्ᖂཆڠ堩৵ᤪ B1 bell that rings after meals. ϥϥϤϤϥϥϤ Notes: 277-1/ According to He Zhu’s headnote, Sun Xiu is from Qishan ݡ՞, which is indeed ten km or so north of the Wei River in the eastern corner of Qinfeng Circuit. The “Chu waters” would be the Yangzi; and Jinling is east of the River, which flows northeast here. 277-2/ Presumably, the reference is to the classics, the Classic of Poetry and the Book of Documents. 277-5/ The ox’s cloak is a rude mat such as one might throw over livestock to keep them warm. The allusion here is to Wang Zhang ີ׆of the first century BCE When Wang was a poor student in the capital, he got sick and wrapped himself in such a mat because he had no quilt. When he wept in self-pity, his wife berated him for being so lacking in resolution. Later, when he was in office and prepared to express his opinion on a matter, his wife warned him not to overreach his station, but he ignored her advice. As a result, he was thrown into prison, where he died, and his
——— 79 6.12566; 6.12a. The Song On Horseback in Donghua, Cherishing Master He of Qingliang Temple and Sending Him This, (Poem 011), comes later in their relationship, the tenth month of 1089. Between the third month of 1088 and that Song will come three other heptametrical Regulated Verses and three pentametrical Quatrains.
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wife and children were bound and later sent away. 80 277-6/ Goat curd would be a northern food not at all appealing to southern tastes. 81 277-7/ The first three words of this line are taken from the biography of Han Xin. Before he became a great general who aided in the founding of the Han Dynasty, he lived in such poverty that he was fed for several weeks by an old woman who “took pity on the young gentleman.” 82 The last three words in the line are based on Daoan’s amusing self introduction, “kya Daoan, who fills the skies.” We cited this lore in connection with a 1089 Song for Master He, On Horseback in Donghua (see the note to line 011-14). kya (Syeik in Song Dynasty Chinese) is the “surname” adopted by monks when they leave lay life. It comes from the name of the Buddha’s clan. 277-8/ Fanghui alludes to the Tang story of a man who stayed in a monastery in Yangzhou because he was orphaned and poor. The monks got tired of his freeloading and would eat up all the food before they rang the bell to announce meals. 83
Fanghui indicates that Sun Xiu is a poor scholar living at the Qingliang Temple. Lines 277-5, 7, and 8 all involve allusions to men who started out poor and then went on to respectable careers; this makes for an appropriately encouraging message. The last couplet is particularly clever in its combination of allusions to urge Master He to take good care of Sun. This is a highly allusive poem that on first reading seems somewhat overwrought. In particular, the third couplet suffers from trying to do too many things at once. Lines 277-5 and 6 cleverly match “ox cloak” and “goat curd,” but what does the ox-cloak admonition mean, and what does it have to do with the cultural differences between north and south? The clue to this couplet lies, I think, in a line Su Shi wrote in prison in 1079 and in the very fact that he wrote it in prison: ߪ৵۪ׄხ“ ࡠ۔After I die, for the ox cloak I shall be ashamed before my old wife.” 84 Su’s meaning is that he should have been more prudent in his criticism of the administration; he should have remembered his humble beginnings. Perhaps Fanghui is advising Sun Xiu to exercise similar caution. What, then, does that have to do with goat curds? I suggest that he may be ignoring the fact that he himself is a northerner (after all, he sees his real roots in the south, as his allusions to He Zhizhang tell us) and warning Sun Xiu that as a northerner he had better watch his step. We must remember that Su Shi was at this time plagued with attacks from northern conservatives determined to undo all the reforms of the New Policies faction. Fanghui’s warning Sun Xiu not to “shock us southerners” should be read in the context of an administrative memorial Su Shi submitted in the same third month of 1088 as this poem was writ-
——— 80
See the Han shu, 10:76.3238–39. There has to be an allusion here to match the one in line 5, and one could point to the Shishuo xinyu 2.26, where Wang Ji challenges Lu Ji to name some southern dishes to equal goat curd. However, even if one does not recognize the allusion, common knowledge about southerner’s scorn for milk products or the animals on which northerners depend for food would make the line intelligible. 82 See Watson’s translation in Records of the Grand Historian of China, 1:208. 83 See Wang Dingbao, Tang zhiyan (mid-tenth century), CSJC, 2739:7.61. 84 ղࠃאᢀൗፕጂ……ԲଈհԲ, SSSJ, 3:19.999, line 6; Fuller, Road to East Slope, 247. 81
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ten. Su is asking for an assignment outside the capital or at a lower level of prominence because he is weary of the attacks on him by members of the censorate. All the people he names as slanderers, save one, are from the north: Zhu Guangting ڹ٠அ is from Yanshi ஃ, not far to the east of Loyang; Wang Yansou ׆ᣤ଼ is from Qingping 堚ؓ, northeast of Daming Superior Prefecture; Han Chuan ឌ՟ is from Shaanzhou ೇڠ, less than 100 km east of the great eastward bend of the Yellow River; and Zhao Tingzhi ᎓հ, the worst of the lot, is from Mizhou യڠ, in eastern Shandong. Among the people Su Shi mentions, only Jia Yi ᇸ࣐ is from the south: Wuwei ྤ, the military prefecture just west of Hezhou, to which Fanghui is headed. 85 From lines 277-5–6 we may extrapolate that Sun Xiu was opinionated and recklessly outspoken, perhaps against Su Shi; Fanghui admonishes him against regionalism or extreme factionalism with language that is diplomatically allusive and humorous, yet pointed. Whether it is for Sun Xiu’s sake or for the sake of the polity, these divisions must be ameliorated. Perhaps not incidentally, the tonal violation in line 277-5, which we have noted as very common in the seventh line of a poem, is especially rare in the fifth line of a Regulated Verse. 86 Having such a violation here calls attention to the couplet as possibly of special significance. I think it also alerts us to the quotation in line 5 that causes the violation. While Fanghui keeps the position of “ox cloak shame” in his line the same as in Su’s; he changes “old wife” to “wife and children” because he cannot end a non-rhyming line with a level tone. The result is the tonal violation. Note that, although I find twenty-three references to the “ox cloak” in Song poetry, none but Su Shi’s and He Zhu’s entails the wife’s warning. This supports the hypothesis that Fanghui’s meaning is related to Su’s situation and precedent. The following poem is serious in a different way, if we take it literally; at the same time, it gleefully violates the general rule that repetition of words is to be avoided in Regulated Verse. Again, it is sent across to Qingliang Temple, where there was a White Cloud Hut: ৫႓ᆺᚢᡖബ堚ළػႆတ Crossing Yellow Leaf Hause: Thinking of and Sent to the Master of the White Cloud Hut at Qingliang (ninth
———
85 See Su’s ՉᒽᖂՓೈॺၳኬ⩐, SSWJ, 2:28.816–17, and Ronald Egan, Word, Image, and Deed, 98–101. The native places of the figures named are taken from Chang Bide, Songren zhuanji ziliao suoyin. 86 See the Song Dynasty examples in Wang Li, Hanyu shilüxue, 103–7. The lines he cites are all C-type lines and, as in He Zhu’s poems, there seems to be no attempt to compensate with a tonal violation in the next line. The same 䃂䂾䃂 line ending can occur in unregulated A lines, of course. Just looking at the poems translated so far in this chapter, we discover, however, that every such A-type line is followed by a compensating violation in a B-type line, as is indeed the case in lines 277-3 and 4 of the present poem. This compensation may be why Wang Li does not consider such couplets to be a special metrical pattern.
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month of 1088). 87 283
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8
႓ᆺᚢᙰ႓ᆺଆ ϤϥϮϤϭϥϤ ػႆတఊػႆូ ϥϤϤϥϥϤϤ ᆺᙟሏึઌ؈ ϥϤϤϥϤϤϥ ႆ۴ౖࢬࠉ ϤϥϤϤϥϥϤ ᄎᇞᆨၴඛ್Ꮶ ϥϥϤϤϮϥϥ ्༈ۂՂູ ϥϤϤϥϥϤϤ ྡଉൿچᠨࣥՀ ϤϤϥϥϤϤϥ ᣋᦱվسጟጟॺ ϥϥϤϤϥϥϤ
(B18)
Atop Yellow Leaf Hause, yellow leaves fly.
D1
Next to White Cloud Hut, white clouds come home.
A2
These leaves follow a wandering lad and lose each other in the end;
B4
those clouds befriend the meditating elder and find their refuge.
(C6)
Let me untie from around my waist the sword that can sever a horse;
D1
and seek out on the River the ledge from which to angle for fish.
A1
I’ll burn incense and sweep the ground below the paired grove,
B1
wishing to redeem this present life’s many kinds of error.
Notes: 283-5/ A sword sharp enough to cut a horse in two is one that a hero uses to punish evil-doers. Zhu Yun ڹႆ in the first century BCE said he wanted to use such a weapon to cut down the worthless ministers of the emperor. As a learned and yet ferocious man who found it impossible to rise to the position he deserved at a court filled with jealousy and intrigue, Zhu must have seemed a kindred spirit to He Zhu. 88 283-6/ Reference to fishing from a rocky projection over a river evokes the story of Yan Guang ᣤ٠, who changed his name and fished in a marsh after his best friend became the Guangwu Emperor (r. 25–57). The idea was to avoid being dragged into the world of politics. 89 283-7/ “Paired grove” is an abbreviation of “grove of the Paired Trees” as a kenning for a Buddhist retreat. See line 139-8 of the 1094 Ancient Verse Inscribed on the Cloud-Roosting Hut at Kaiyuan Temple in Hailing.
Like the previous poem, this one is relaxed and expansive, while the tonal violations direct our attention to details that might have rich implications. The yellow leaves flying on Yellow Leaf Hause in line 283-1 surely represent the instability of the world of the rootless militia supervisor. Note that the contrast with the solidity and security of the monastery is emphasized by making that first couplet
——— 87 7.12568; 7.1a. Wang Anshi wrote a heptametrical Quatrain for this building and a pentametrical Regulated Verse for a Master Ran of the White Cloud: Linchuan xiansheng wenji, 28.317 (堚ළ ػႆോ) and 15.210 (ػႆྥஃ). Fanghui never gives us the name of the master of the White Cloud Hut to whom he is sending this poem. 88 See Burton Watson, Courtier and Commoner in Ancient China, 116. 89 Hou Han shu, 10:83.2763. See Huang Tingjian’s ᠧᇣ (ײଅᘕլߢូ) (1071), Shangu shi zhu, CSJC, 2248:7.157 for a specific linkage of Yan Guang and the fishing ledge.
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semantically parallel and carrying the comparison over into the second couplet. Line 283-5’s “sword that can sever a horse” may carry the righteous implications suggested in the note to that line, but we must also remember that during his tenure in Hezhou, Fanghui’s job was bandit suppression. Is he renouncing an ambition to punish evil ministers at court, or he is he tired of directing the militia against smugglers and desperate peasants? In view of the expression of repentance that closes the poem, perhaps it is the latter. That sense of redeeming one’s many errors resonates with the hope Fanghui expresses about six months later that he will change his very nature for the better by taking up residence in the south (see lines 108-19–20 in the Ancient Verse In the morning I climbed Cypress Hill and gazed back toward Jinling).
ABAB SEQUENCES Spring Feelings in 1084 was our first example of an ABAB sequence (Poem 246, p. 289). All lines in the poem were unregulated, and the ABAB lines constituted the last half of the poem. The seventh month of 1089 gives us another example, but in this case, 1) only the ABAB lines are unregulated, and 2) the poem is the first of a pair in which the second poem is perfectly regulated. The title is ۂ ࣟၢᝫ್Ղ܂Բଈ Two poems Written on Horseback Going to and from a District East of Wujiang. 90 We shall translate only one couplet from the first in the pair, confining ourselves to a few words about why the ABAB pattern might have been used to close the poem. The poem’s line sequence is D4 B1 C4 D1 (A8) (B18) (A5) (B18). The third couplet violations, (A8) (B18), are fairly innocuous: a ϥϤϥ at the end of line 288-5 is balanced by a ϤϥϤ ending in line 6. If the fourth couplet were a CD sequence (as in the second poem), the third couplet violation would attract minimal attention. The key to the violations in the fourth couplet is surely in the content. The violations are indicated in the translation by italicizing the corresponding words: 288 8
Գࠃࠃسլڕრ ϤϤϥϥϮϤϥ ึֲ࢚ូ۶ֲូ ϤϥϮϤϭϥϤ
(A5)
In human life every single thing goes not as you wish;
(B18)
all day I fix my mind on going home— what day will I go home?
The experienced listener expects line 288-7 to be a C line, “adhering” this couplet to the previous one with a deflected second syllable. When that syllable turns out to have a level tone, everything changes. The A line here is out of se-
——— 90 Poems 288 and 289, 7.12569; 7.2b. Wujiang is downstream from Liyang, a little less than half way back to the Jinling area.
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quence; we find ourselves in the midst of an outcry that bursts the boundaries of the poem. The feeling is expressed both in the unexpected sequence of line types and by the words in the “wrong” tones: things do not go as they should; I brood over going home; when will I go home? The repetition of words reinforces this intensity: “thing-thing” (“every single thing”) is all-inclusive; “all day” and “what day” echo each other in tone as well as meaning (Ϥϥ…Ϥϥ); “go home” comes at the strong caesura and again at the end of the line. In the ninth month of 1089, Fanghui writes the first of only two heptametrical Regulated Verses that start with an AB sequence. The reason why the second couplet is also AB will be readily understood from the content of the poem and the contrast Fanghui wishes to highlight. The title is ֲᡖࠇຟ៱ሏ Yearning for My Old Haunts in the Capital on the Ninth. 91 292
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࣏ڣֲ࿆ᜯ ϥϤϥϥϤϤϥ ނඩܬ៱׆ፕ ϥϥϤϤϥϥϤ վڣֲ࿆ᜯ ϤϤϥϥϤϤϥ ۂՂ႓ဎآၲ ϤϥϤϤϭϥϤ ԫ՟ᆵֲᙟᑪՀ ϥϤϥϥϤϤϥ ᆄߺ۫ଅಬႀࠐ ϥϥϤϤϥϥϤ ᆏढ᧫ױԳ۔ޓ ϥϥϥϤϤϥϥ ൣូૠࠟ൝ব ϥϤϤϥϥϤϤ
A4
In past years, on the ninth, where I climbed to overlook:
B1
hoisting my brew where the King of Liang once blew his flute on the estrade.
A1
This year, on the ninth, where I climb to overlook:
(B4)
along the River the yellow flowers have not even opened.
A4
A whole river of setting sun follows the tide and descends;
B1
ten thousand miles a west wind escorts the geese and comes.
C4
Things of the season are startling— one is even older now;
D1
inclinations to serve, plans to go home— both seem far away!
Notes: 292-2/ In the fourth century BCE, King Hui of Wei moved his capital to what is Kaifeng in He Zhu’s time. Because the city was called Great Liang, he became known as King Hui of Liang. 92 292-4/ The yellow flowers are chrysanthemums. In the south, one must wait longer in the fall for the days to shorten enough to trigger their blossoming.
The first half of this poem has been given over to the ABAB pattern to frame the “that was then; this is now” comparison. In order to convey the full force of
——— 91 7.12570; 7.3a. “Haunts” you could also mean “companions.” The poem is written at the same Stone-Gravel Sconce فᗦ ڪas were the Songs on the three birds in the third month of 1088. However, I have not identified the fort beyond the fact that it is in Liyang. 92 See Ouyang Min, attr., Yudi guangji (early eleventh-century), CSJC, 3104:5.47.
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the contrast, the locative phrases that form lines 292-1 and 3 are nearly identical. Each is a non-rhyming A line followed properly by a B line, and thus we have the ABAB pattern. The only remaining question is why Fanghui does not follow these first four lines with a CDAB sequence, since a B line would normally be followed by a C line. There are several considerations. Surely he wanted to set off the unusual structure of the first half of the poem; the second couplet had to stand with the first couplet, not be dragged into its expected role as one of the two “middle couplets.” Moreover, by making line 292-5 an A line, effectively “restarting” the poem, Fanghui achieves a more dramatic shift of vision to the vast landscape before him in the third couplet. Finally, there is that evocative line that ends the poem, “inclinations to serve, plans to go home—both seem far away!” The season and the vast landscape before the poet overwhelm not only his interest in his job but even the plans he should be making to return home! To make this somewhat unusual statement and to end the poem with the words “both seem far away!” in the tone pattern ϥϤϤ, Fanghui needed a D line in that position. This alone dictated an ABCD sequence for the second half of the poem. In the first month of 1090, Fanghui went by boat a short distance down the Yangzi from Liyang to a place called Red Embankment; there (or in Liyang?) he wrote a poem for someone named Cao Jie. This is a “first poem”; it is also our first example of a poem that, after a BD opening, consists of ABABAB lines. Title: ۞ᖵၺ⅕ߧ۟ۂۉඦᇞ From Liyang I Floated on the River to Red Embankment; I Called on Cao Jie to Say Farewell. 93 295
4
ݺਚԳլৱࢵ ϥϥϮϤϥϥϤ ᄹۂᘯᐖ୲ᴇ ϤϤϥϥϭϤϤ ᠦৄնរ༃ޓ৺ ϤϤϥϥϤϤϥ ထࡾࠟઢ墾ֲ ϥϥϮϤϭϥϤ ܑࠐ݄֡إ㍥ ϥϤϤϥϮϮϥ װ۔ᔿ್۶໎ ϥϥϤϮϭϭϤ
(B7)
I call upon my old friend, not waiting to be invited.
(D6)
The watchet River is called broad, but it barely admits my batelle.
A1
I left the city at the fifth point; the chilly watch seemed urgent.
(B17)
I touched shore at two staffs; the clear-sky sun was high.
(A14)
Since we parted, letters— it’s just because I’m lazy;
(B21)
now that I am old, horse and saddle— how can I bear the effort?
——— 93 7.12570; 7.3b. According to Chen Tinggui, Liyang dianlu, 1:5.269, Red Embankment, fifteen tricents (li) or five miles northeast of Liyang, was built to check the ravages of the waves from the Yangzi and was named for the color of the earth of which it was made.
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ࣔڣՂޓ᥋֫ ϤϤϤϥϤϤϥ ᔨޡॎՏՁᖯ ϥϥϮϤϭϥϤ
8
A3 (B17)
Next year on the Huai we’ll be hand in hand again, tipsy as we stroll the Crouching Rainbow thousand-yard bridge.
Notes: 295-2/ To say the Yangzi is barely broad enough to allow passage for his little boat is probably to signify his spirit is expansive enough to fill the landscape. A couplet from a heptametrical Quatrain by Yan Shu ஶ (991–1055) may be considered the model: ᅝֲᔨณଘ़ខΔԿۂԮᖻ թ୲ᴇ “That day with drunken eyes we leaned on the empty vastness; / the Three Rivers and Seven Marshes would barely admit our batelle.” 94 295-3/ Just as our medieval hour was divided into five points, the five watches (geng) of the Chinese night were each divided into five dian, here translated “points.” Fanghui probably left Liyang at the fifth and last “point” of the fifth watch, when “the morning light comes forth and the myriad doors open.” 95 The watches were announced by drums, the points by bells. These sounds seemed urgent to our poet in the chilly February dawn. 295-4/ In the works of Su Shi and other poets, when the sun is three bamboo staff-lengths into the sky it is late morning: fog has burned off, one is sobering up, and so forth. Liu Yong measures a red sun at two staff-lengths when he sees it through sleepy eyes on the tips of blossomed branches. 96 The sun at two staffs can also be setting, but given the proximity of Red Embankment to Liyang, Fanghui is surely arriving at midmorning. 295-8/ I have not been able to identify this bridge. In discussing a pentametrical Regulated Verse, we speculated that Fanghui and the monk Daotong had spent time together in Chuzhou, which is on the Huai River. Perhaps Cao Jie had also known He Zhu there, and perhaps Chuzhou had an arching bridge over the Huai or the Grand Canal.
First, let us note that Fanghui’s opening sequence of BDAB is perfectly normal and would ordinarily lead to an AB final couplet. We have metrical violations in the first couplet, but they make sense. “Old friend” in 295-1 emphasizes Fanghui’s regard for Cao Jie; the next line uses a string of level tones to highlight the grand bravado in the assertion that the Yangzi is too narrow for the speaker’s boat. Thus, the only truly anomalous sequence in Fanghui’s poem is the third couplet. Rather than floating smoothly into the expected CD sequence, he repeats the AB structure as if forgetting that he just gave us an AB couplet. Then he resumes with AB lines in the fourth couplet as if nothing had happened. What is going on in lines 295-5 and 6? The key is that this is the point in the poem where Fanghui is obviously feeling guilty for neglecting his friend. His syntax verges on the inarticulate. We really don’t know whether he has been too lazy to write letters or has relied on letters because he has been too lazy to visit; we only have “letters” and “because I’m lazy.” The excuse is offered in three consecutive deflected tones, like a growl. In line 295-6, we get only some mumbling about saddles and horses and
——— 94 95 96
ᖋ။ڠ, QSS, 3:1(171).1941. See the Song shi, 5:70.1591. ִ۫ۂΰᏕᠰ៧࠴αQuan Song ci, 1:16.
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then “how can I bear the effort?” This comes in three plaintive and equally regulation-violating level tones. (Fanghui is pleading old age, but after all, at thirty-nine the case is hard to make.) In the context of both the joy of reunion and the apologies, a poem of smoothly competent regulated lines is not what is wanted. A careful reading suggests that a parallel argument can be made for the following poem, which has the same sequence of line-types. The work was written on the winter solstice (in 1090, that would be about the end of the eleventh month), as Fanghui was leaving Liyang. He was moored in the harbor for the city, where he would have to wait several days for a favorable wind to cross to Jinling. There seems to be no particular audience: the title is simply くۣᅝ ܂ཽܓWritten While Moored at Dangli Harbor. 97 303
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ംᄻᙰᑪ ϥϥϤϤϭϥϤ ׂڡ९֨ូק ϥϤϤϥϥϤϤ ࡙ଅܬຳᖠ֠৷ ϥϤϤϥϮϤϥ ֲ֑ధႆ༃༚ອ ϥϥϮϤϭϥϤ ۂ۩ݰآբ ϤϤϤϥϤϮϥ ࠇࣛሏࠃڜ༈ ϤϥϤϤϭϥϤ ۶ழ݄堷㠤堩 ϤϤϤϥϮϤϥ ቔᆮࣟఙልܷ׀ ϥϥϤϤϭϥϤ
(B3)
Please tell me, at the end of the stream, is the tide-way shallow or deep?
D1
The sheet of sail hangs always: my northward-homing heart.
(A6)
The nighttime wind blew snow, even more fierce with dawn;
(B17)
the midday sun breaks through clouds, overcast returns with the cold.
(A3)
Peregrine duties in Jiang and Huai are by no means over;
(B4)
fellow adventurers in capitals east and west— why should I look them up now?
(A5)
When shall I sit in a steady spot filled with simple fare,
(B3)
drumming my belly at Eastfen with a farmer’s song?
Notes: 303-5–6/ “Jiang and Huai” refers to the area between these two rivers. In Fanghui’s mind this must include the Hezhou region, and it is certainly the area through which he passed to come down here and that he will traverse again on his way to the capital. The phrase translated “capitals east and west” is literally “capital and Luo.” Loyang was the Eastern Capital when the Tang capital was in Chang’an and the Western capital when the Song capital was in Kaifeng. Since we have no knowledge of He Zhu ever visiting Loyang, this phrase doesn’t refer literally to two cities but rather to the Song capital where he and his “associates in roaming” enjoyed their youth. 303-8/ Eastfen is the name of a place in the home district of Tang poet Wang Ji ׆ᜎ (590–644), where he retired to farm after an undistinguished career. (In one of his poems, After Eating, he
——— 97 7.12571–72; 7.5b. Chen Tinggui says the harbor is twelve li south of the Qing prefectural seat; Fanghui says it is two li east of the county seat. See Liyang dianlu, 1:5.254.
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speaks of “drumming his belly.”) It is in the north, near where the Fen River meets the Yellow River, so this is an apt allusion for a poet with a northward-homing heart. 98
The second line is an excellent example of ambiguity: “Sheet sail | always hangs || north-return-heart” is obviously not meant to be taken literally. A suspended heart denotes anxiousness, 99 but what is the relationship between the sail and the sheet? Is it that the mood to return north is somehow provoked by the sail, or is the sail always hoisted because the speaker’s heart is always poised to return home? These and perhaps other possibilities are held in suspension, so that what is felt prevails over the narration of what happens. Our inability to pin a definite, real world transitive relationship what seem to be Subject, Verb, and Object is in the very best tradition of Tang poetic craftsmanship. Turning again to the sequence of line types, why is the third couplet AB instead of CD? Fanghui may be trying to match the effectiveness of the chaotic third couplet in his poem for Cao Jie at the beginning of the year, breaking with form to show his resentment. Perhaps the two terms Jiang-Huai and Jing-Luo are of special significance, for it is the second syllables of each that creates the loss of adhesion with the preceding and following couplets. As we mentioned in Chapter 2, the Jiang-Huai region was associated with famine and unrest; it was also vital to north-south transport. Jing-Luo, standing for the capital, represents a more elegant life and a period in the poet’s life when heroic bluster about defending the nation did not involve actual violence against outlaws within the nation. Is it these place names and the conflicting emotions they called up that overwhelmed the expected metrical progression? There is a second possibility. I wondered whether I could make line 303-6 a C line and line 303-5 a D line, reverse them, and restore the canonical sequence. Making a C line was easy: I substituted the non-rhyming ൶ for ༈ and I had a perfectly regulated C line. But rewriting line the end of 303-5 to rhyme in this poem proved to be beyond my ability. I wanted to preserve the two level tones required at the end of a regulated D line ( آբ became ࡸྤ__ ), but even if I had been willing to fall short of that standard, I found this rhyme group simply too limiting. In this poem, at least, one might be justified in arguing that the ABAB sequence resulted from the impossibility of saying what the third couplet says in any other way within the restrictions of rhyme. ABAB sequences can support emotions other than embarrassment and resentment. The second of Fanghui’s two poems that open with an AB sequence comes a few days later in Jinling. Instead of the ABCDABCD sequence that this rare opening leads us to expect, we get ABCDABAB; in traditional terms, the
———
98 Wang’s poem, ଇ৵, is in QTS, 2:37.485. . Su Shi paired an allusion to Eastfen and Wang Ji with one to Slanting Creek and Tao Yuanming. Su’s poem is ࡉຯូࡺضքଈհք (1095), SSSJ, 7:39.2106, lines 11–12. 99 See Chen Shidao, ᝫۂՂ , QSS, 19:1115.12668, line 2.
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last couplet does not adhere to the third couplet. These two couplets focus on the fact that Fanghui has called on Wang Zhuo and found him out, as the title tells us: ८ສ׆ၳ଼լሖఎܑ Calling on Wang Xiansou of Jinling and Not Meeting Him: Left for him in Parting. 100 306
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8
ዚګնᕮᇻ้ृ ϤϤϥϥϮϤϥ ᢐլԲᏝኆౖׄ ϥϥϮϮϥϭϤ ಐঋ۶व၆ֆ ϤϥϤϤϮϭϥ 堚ຆᏅ࣏ڶԳଅ ϤϤϥϥϤϤϤ ֱܩՂମྀװ ϤϤϥϥϮϮϥ ݺᔞଊۣދἓխ ϥϥϤϤϭϥϤ ۃઌ؈ૹڃଈ ϤϤϤϥϤϤϥ ړ۰௧ᧉݱႾព ϥϥϮϤϥϥϤ
(A5)
A song formed of five sighs, the spelter for hire;
(B25)
medicine with no second price, the old gent whose ox was seized.
(C15)
Decadent, how can [the world] recognize an aristocratic scion?
D2
pure and poor, [you] quite possess the air of the ancients.
(A13)
You’ve just gone up to the tombs, crossing the Mian;
(B3)
I happen to ride my boat, putting up in Shan.
A3
Things out of kilter, we missed each other— again I turn my head—
(B7)
take care of yourself, ocean gull, forget the barrier goose.
Notes: 306-1/ In a 1093 pentametrical Regulated Verse, Fanghui will compare himself to Liang Hong of the Later Han Dynasty, a man of integrity and education who nevertheless hired himself out to spelt grain (see the note to line 216-6). Liang Hong earlier had passed the capital (at Loyang then) and sung the Song of Five Sighs, in which he decried the state of the country and the exhaustion of the people. (There are five lines in the song, each ending with yi, a moan or a sigh.) 101 306-2/ This allusion is to another Later Han figure, Han Kang ឌൈ. Although he came from a prominent family, he sold medicinal herbs in the streets of Chang’an for thirty years. When a girl who was angry because he refused to bargain (“no second price”) revealed that she knew who he was, he hid away in the mountains. An envoy from the emperor forced Han to come out for an audience. Because he left in the early morning in his own rude cart before the envoy, he was taken for a peasant by a station head who was under orders to repair roads and bridges for Han’s passage. The station head ordered his ox seized for the repair work, but Han unhitched it and gave it to him freely. (The envoy caught up and was dissuaded from punishing the official, but before the party reached the capital, Han Kang absconded again and lived to old age in hiding.) 102 306-5/ One anecdote about the recluse Pang Degong involves his crossing the Mian River to visit some grave-mounds and thus being absent when a visitor comes to his house. 103
——— 100
7.12572; 7.6a. Again, see the Hou Han shu, 83.2766–67. See also Alan J. Berkowitz, Patterns of Disengagement, 106–10. 102 Hou Han shu, 83.26771. See also Alan J. Berkowitz, Patterns of Disengagement, 117. 103 See the note to the beginning of Pang Degong’s biography in the Hou Han shu, 83.2777, 101
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306-6/ If the previous line is an elegant way of saying Wang Zhuo is not home, this line draws on a more familiar allusion to say Fanghui has come on an impulse. The allusion is to the snowy night visit of Wang Huizhi to Dai Kui in Shan; Wang Huizhi “rode on an impulse”; He Zhu “rides on a boat” to avoid triteness, but since we know Wang traveled by boat, the implication is that He Zhu also went on impulse, which is why Wang Zhuo did not know he was coming.104 306-8/ Both high-flying wild geese and wary gulls are associated with aloofness from the world and its machinations. Fanghui must be the wild goose here, migrating north (a bit early). 105
From the start, this poem challenges the reader, though Wang Zhuo must have found it quite entertaining. It begins with a quiz, as it were. We are given two prompts per line in the form of noun phrases: “Song with five sighs; one who spelts for hire.” “Medicine with a fixed price; old gent with the confiscated ox.” We might realize, if we are quick, that each pair of phrases refers to one person and that each allusion—well, given the situation, we must assume that each allusion applies to one of the two parties to this poem, He Zhu or Wang Zhuo. We already know that a few years hence Fanghui will compare himself to Liang Hong (see note to line 306-1) as he is leaving the capital to go southeast. We also know enough about Fanghui’s ancestry to suppose he is the unappreciated “aristocratic scion.” (The term translated “decadent” in line 306-3 generally refers to a crumbling world, but might describe the poet himself in humble circumstances.) If lines 306-1 and 3 apply to He Zhu, do lines 306-2 and 4 refer to Wang Zhuo, then? Line 306-4 is obviously a compliment to Wang: “you quite possess the air of the ancients.” Line 306-2 is more of a challenge. Though it would be an honor to be compared to Han Kang, it takes some thought to realize that the basis of the comparison here is that Han Kang was constantly disappearing—first when he realized his identity was not a secret in the streets of the capital, then after the ox confiscation incident. Wang Zhuo, not at home when Fanghui calls, seems to have done the same. Now we can see the elegance of the first couplet: Fanghui remains within human society and therefore comparable to Liang Hong as a toiling menial, a “dropout” in full view; Wang Zhuo has simply disappeared, just as Han did. The third couplet adds the twist that we expect in this position, but the twist is actually a merciful moment of clarity. Pronouns appear—we are not caught off guard when the order of reference is reversed: first “you,” then “me”—and the allusions pertain to the specific occasion of the poem. The very rare allusion to Pang Degong crossing the Mian to visit tombs is helpfully balanced with the common allusion to Wang Huizhi’s snowy night impulsive visit to Dai Kui. The last line of the poem is unusual insofar as two birds with similar associa-
——— quoting from the Xiangyang ji. 104 Shishuo xinyu, 23.47. 105 The two birds are rarely juxtaposed. An exception is Wang Yucheng’s couplet ึႊឭๅԳ ၴࠃΔດଭពत௧ᧉ “In the end you must cast off affairs of the human world; / loftily pursue the wild extramundane goose and tame the ocean gull.” ִإጐೝᠲ, QSS, 2:12(70).792.
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tions (aloofness from the world) are juxtaposed as vehicles for two different tenors. The fact that the migration of geese is more obvious than that of gulls seems to inspire Fanghui to equate himself to the northward-faring goose, while Wang Zhuo is the gull. But why should the gull “forget” the goose? That must be Song Dynasty humor. The gnarly cadences of the six unregulated lines in this poem have the desirable effects of 1) blurring the potential monotony of having three semantically parallel couplets; 2) creating the impression that the poem was improvised by the poet when he discovered Wang was away; and 3) making the rarer allusions seem as if they have been “tamed” for poetry for the first time. The most noticeable tonal violations in the poem are the strings of five deflected tones in lines 306-2 and 5, precisely where the most unusual allusions appear. We still have to explain the fact that Fanghui’s poem ends with an ABAB sequence. I tentatively suggest that the substitution of the AB conclusion for the expected CD lines is the embodiment of “things out of kilter” (line 306-7); it may also be related to the unusual use of the gull and goose in line 306-8, a private joke that could not be accommodated in a D line.
1090–91: ABSENCE IN JINLING In the poem about not finding Wang Zhuo at home there is a note of disappointment that is entirely appropriate to the situation. However, a sense that something is missing, that the reality of the world is a fragile thing, can be felt in other poems from this trip through Jinling back toward the capital, too, as mentioned in earlier chapters. I get this sense from the following poem, but before attempting to articulate this impression, we need to consider a tantalizing mystery of pronunciation. The mystery involves the reading of the character at the end of the first line. If we read it by its normal, attested pronunciation, this poem has the only CD opening in all of Fanghui’s heptametrical Regulated Verse. If not, it has a BD opening, utterly unremarkable in the same corpus of texts. The poem isᠲ८ສ ९եڝჃ Inscribed on the Pagoda of Changgan Temple in Jinling, composed in the twelfth month of Yuanyou 5 (1090–91) as an inscription for a temple in the Changgan district south of Jinling: 106 307 তഏ९եײ۵ڝ
ϤϥϤϤϮϥϥ
———
(C7)
In the southern realm’s Changgan, an ancient Buddhist temple:
106 7.12572; 7.6b. On the temple, whose contemporary name was Tianxi Temple ֚ ڝsee Zhou Yinghe, Jingding Jiankang zhi, 46.10a–12b (2077–78).
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the stupa’s lovebird tiles, ௬ቹᚇرጘ D4 in cyan diversely disposed; ϤϤϤϥϥϤϤ I want to revive the poetry on the Three Galleries, ಳԿᎹ࿆܂ A2 a place of lofty climb, ϥϤϤϥϤϤϥ but find no return to the time when Six Dynasties ॺ༚քཛ٤ฐழ (B18) were in compleat flourish. ϤϥϮϤϭϥϤ At the corner of the eaves, in westerly wind ߡ۫ଅਣ֯ (C15) the starry Dipper hangs; ϤϥϤϤϮϤϥ within the shade of the wall, in chilly rain ᛥອ༃ॸधఁ D4 foxes call. ϤϤϤϥϥϤϤ Ashes of the kalpa in the end will turn ึۊܖངԳၴ A2 the world of humankind; ϥϤϤϥϤϤϥ may the stone-lined pit and metal casket ⨎ف८ཛྷړᥨ B1 protect and keep [this temple] well. ϥϥϤϤϥϥϤ
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Notes: 307-2/ The lovebird tiles are pairs of tiles. 307-3/ The Three Galleries were built in 584 to house the consorts of the Later Chen emperor in luxury. (The Chen was the last of the Six Dynasties that made Jinling their capital.) They were “several tens of zhang high”; a zhang at that time was nearly three meters. 107 I do not know what poetry (“work”) on this site Fanghui wishes to revive. Other poems I know of that speak of climbing at this site are referring to the pagoda here, not the Three Galleries. 307-7/ This line could be translated in the past tense to reflect the fact that ashes of burned buildings are sometimes said to be the ashes left over from the destruction of the last fire kalpa of destruction; Fanghui may have seen ruins in the temple precinct. But line 8 suggests the poet is anticipating future cataclysm. 307-8/ Relics would be buried in metal caskets protected by stone boxes. 108
If line 307-1 rhymed, it would be a regulated B4 line and we would have an ordinary BD opening. Did our poet really make this his sole CD opening, and if so, why? We cannot answer this question with certainty, but there is fascinating evidence that readings we would have to consider “fabricated” were used in contemporary poetry. Si (zi, ‘temple’) cannot rhyme in a Regulated Verse because it is not a level tone word and there is no alternative reading with a level tone. However, it is the phonetic element in the graphs for two of the rhyme words, shi (dzyi, ‘time,’ line 307-4) and chi (dri, ‘maintain,’ line 307-8). In fact, if we look at any reconstruction of the Ancient Chinese of Classic of Poetry vintage, these three words were at one time homophones. Now, down to He Zhu’s time and for several centuries afterwards, scholars had been perplexed by the fact that words in an-
——— 107
Nan shi, 2:12.347. See the note after line 50 of Su Shi’s 1071 poem on the Sweet Dew Temple in Runzhou ز ڝ, SSSJ, 2:7.313. 108
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cient texts that obviously were considered to rhyme by the authors of those texts didn’t rhyme anymore. Some scholars had proposed pronunciations that would “reconcile” this discrepancy, and in Song times these proposals were widely accepted. In contrast to the careful work of Qing Dynasty scholars, the incoherence of these “reconciled” rhyme tables seems born of desperation rather than philology. Nevertheless, Zhu Xi and other great scholars accepted them for reading ancient texts. More to the point, these readings actually show up occasionally in poems written in the Song. I have found two cases in Su Shi. Su Shi uses ত nan/nam as a rhyme word at least thirteen times. Twelve times it rhymes with other ~am words. In one single case, though, he startles us by rhyming it with words whose final is ~em. That nan/nam should be read to rhyme with ֨ xin/sem had been proposed in the sixth century and was repeated by Wu Yu ( ⑧ܦd. 1154) in the early Southern Song. The fact that Su’s poem is inspired by overhearing a neighbor child reciting the classics makes us wonder if this is a sly joke about the use of reconciled pronunciations for reading ancient texts! 109 The second case relates directly to our poem because si (ziH3d, ‘temple’) appears to be a rhyme word (in the second line of a pentametrical, six-line poem). However, it does not rhyme with the level-tone words in our poem but with ᚠ ju/kuoH3c in line 4 and װqu/khuoH3b in line 6. 110 This is bizarre. One wonders if there was a dialectical pronunciation that permitted this, or whether only lines 4 and 6 were supposed to rhyme, which would also be strange and is unsupported by any of Su Shi’s other six-line poems. Not knowing what to make of this case, and unable to find for si (ziH3d, ‘temple’) any precedent in a classical text “reconciliation” of the sort that exists for ত nan/nam, I am almost ready to concede that this is Fanghui’s only CD opening. We could point to the fact that the distinction between si/zi and the rhymes in lines 307-2, 4, 6, and 8 involves only the tonal aspect of the finals and note that it was possible in the Song to rhyme across tone boundaries, especially in the lyric. However, I still have not found a case even in the lyric where si does not rhyme with departing-tone words. In the end, this is another topic for continued research. Let us return to the feeling of loss or estrangement that I mentioned. Defining and justifying this impression are not simple. Frustration and absence are already familiar themes in He Zhu and, as we said, expectation and disappointment are the essence of the Wang Zhuo poem by the very nature of the occa-
———
109 The poem is ᔢࡺհՔፊᔣॐࣲࠝྥۖ( ܂1098), SSSJ, 7.42.2312. See Ye Jun et al., Zhongguo shixue, 202–3, for the history of this phenomenon, and Wu Yu’s Yunbu, CSJC, 1235:1.29 for the reiteration of the sixth-century reading. 110 Su Shi’s poem is ත֚ߠڝቖښᇭ՛ᇣ堚ഠױფڻᣉ (1072), SSSJ, 2:8.380. For Shouquan's original poem, see Li E and Ma Yueguan, Song shi jishi, 91.37a–b.
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sion. Perhaps what separates the Wang Zhuo poem from the archetypal situations of distance from friends, the hardships of travel, and longing for home is the fact that both parties to the situation are rootless, even ephemeral in a certain way. This is not a standard official-visits-recluse-and-finds-him-absent poem, in which at least the surroundings of the hermitage offer a stable correlative to the character of the recluse and a moment of peace for the official. Fanghui himself is on the margins of society (as Liang Hong), he comes and goes on an impulse (like Wang Huizhi), and he is a wild goose to be “forgotten”; but Wang Zhuo is the elusive Han Kang and Pang Degong, and he is as flighty as a gull. There is no sense of place in this poem, only of things being “out of kilter.” In some measure, this is reminiscent of the proposition that North of the River and South of the River might become meaningless distinctions, from the Song My Boat Makes a Stop in Jinling (013), which was written in the same month, perhaps within a day or two. In the Changgan Temple poem there is obviously a sense of place, but what kind of place? One wonders why Fanghui even visited such a run-down temple. He might have spent the night—he was there long enough for the clear sky to give way to rain—but the temple is not experienced as lodging. Instead, it is a place where revival of the past through the writing of poetry is proposed but then rejected as impossible, because “this is not the age/season/time of the Six Dynasties at their height” (line 307-4). 111 The Songs and Ancient Verses of the 1070s in the Handan area were different. In them, the vicissitudes of history had obliterated the past or its texts so completely as to leave nothing but ruined terraces or empty space accented with the dot of a plowing ox or a raft. Changgan Temple is a place that may survive (or has survived) the destruction of kalpa fires. It is a place where roof-tiles are “diversely disposed” overhead, not halfburied under foot, and walls still stand. And yet there is that cold constellation hanging at the eaves and the howling or barking of the foxes in the shadows of the walls. These and the very contemplation of the kalpas of destruction suggest that the world around the temple, the world in which the poet lives, is very insubstantial, indeed. This goes beyond the conventional “discovery” that the prosperous and cultured Six Dynasties have disappeared. The first heptametrical Regulated Verse we have from Yuanyou 6 (1091–92) offers some of the same impressions. This poem is titled ᠲ८ສ֚ᐜᨠॱನ Inscribed on the Jar Mote Studio of the Tianqing Observatory in Jinling. Tianqing Obser-
——— 111 Temples did function as hotels in traditional China, but knowing that it was the Qingliang Temple that hosted He Zhu on this sojourn in Jinling, at least part of the time, is not guesswork. See the title to a pentametrical Regulated Verse written on the last day of the year: ދമ堚ළڝ Putting up at Qingliang Temple. (Poem 204, 5.12552; 5.10a.) In that poem, Fanghui lets his horse take him out of Stony Enciente Gate with no destination in mind; he shows the same disorientation as we see in the heptametrical poems we are considering here.
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vatories were established throughout the empire by decree on 13 November 1009, signaling the spreading appeal of the Daoist religion. 112 Jar Mote is another name for Purple Gold Mountain near Jinling. 308
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ដዌႆ༱լထᣂ ϤϥϤϤϥϥϤ ᗙၲߠԳၴ ϤϤϤϥϥϤϤ ឰᛥᐒմຑࣟร ϥϤϥϥϤϤϥ ػჃॹ࣪ኙק՞ ϥϥϤϤϥϥϤ ਤ࡙ெ୧࡞ִװ ϥϥϥϤϤϥϥ ᆖટ॒።ൗଅᝫ ϤϤϤϥϥϤϤ دဠటᤄ୮ᜢڇ ϥϤϤϥϤϤϥ ٦ᑵ८ᣋԫᡙ ϥϥϤϤϥϥϤ
B4
Rose-mist structures and cloudy portals are not closed off.
D4
Where ridge-tiles and eaves open you can see the human world.
A4
Broken walls and an abandoned well lead to the Eastern Lodge;
B1
a white pagoda and green pines face the Northern Mountain.
C4
Last night the Cassia Girl fled away to the moon;
D4
after autumn the mushroom canopies went home riding the wind.
A2
In the True Texts of the Nephrite Void the voice of the school remains,
B1
when they ripen again—the golden peaches— I’d like to pick one.
Notes: 308-3/ Reference is probably to the luxurious lodge and its gardens built by one of the favorites of Sima Daozi ್ሐ (364–402) of the Jin court. 113 308-4/ Northern Mountain is yet another name for Zhongshan, or Purple Gold Mountain. 308-5–6/ The story of Chang’e, who steals the elixir of immortality and flees to the moon (where a cassia tree grows) will be familiar to most readers. The “mushroom canopies” must be on the carriages of various deities who are returning to Heaven. 114 (See also the discussion following.) 308-7/ The Nephrite (or “Jade”) Void “appears to be an aspect of the realm of Jade Clarity, on the verge of the empyrean.” At least one Tang poem has a Daoist figure locking himself up in the Nephrite Void to write a “document of Purple Tenuity” by night. 115 As for “voice of the school,”
——— 112 Poem 308, 7.12572; 7.6b. On the Tianqing observatories, see Li Tao, Changbian, 3:72.13b (700a). The suggestion was made and adopted that these observatories could be established where Daoist observatories already existed rather than built new ones on government-owned parcels, and indeed there may have been some tenth century Daoist buildings on the site, East and West Palaces of Purple Tenuity. The place was completely destroyed with the fall of the Northern Song. See Zhou Yinghe, Jingding Jiankang zhi, 45.1a–3a (2065a–66a). (“Observatories” are Daoist temples or monasteries, not astronomical observatories.) 113 See the Jin shu, 6:64.1734. 114 The “cassia” in the moon appears in poetry no earlier than the late fifth century, and the identity of the tree is no more certain botanically in that legend than it is in any other context. See Martin Kern, Zum Topos “Zimtbaum” in der chinesischen Literature, esp. 107–35. A “sylph’s chariot” that “carried a nine-petal mushroom canopy” appears in Zhang Heng’s Western Metropolis Rhapsody; see Knechtges, Wen Xuan, 1:233, ll. 720–22. 115 The quotation is from Edward Schafer, “Wu Yun’s ‘Cantos on Pacing the Void,’” 407. The
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I have found no case where jia sheng does not refer to the reputation of a family. The poem, its title, and its headnote do not mention any individual who might be carrying on a family Daoist tradition, however, encouraging us to interpret the phrase as “voice of the [Daoist] school.” But see also our discussion below. 308-8/ Golden peaches imported from Central Asia naturally came to be associated with the peaches of immortality of the Queen Mother of the West, and it is to those peaches that Fanghui alludes. 116
In some ways, this poem is about access, not absence. The grounds of the observatory are not closed off; the “voice of the school” remains; and the poet hopes to be permitted to pick a peach of immortality someday. However, from within the grounds there are constant points of “leakage.” One can see the mundane world through gaps in the buildings. Broken walls and an abandoned well “link” to the Eastern Lodge (or to the site where it used to stand?), and the pagoda and pines face outward, toward the Northern Mountain. Most strikingly, the immortals have all quit the area—recently, too: last night and during the past autumn. There is an insubstantiality about it all. A notable difference from the Changgan Temple poem of the previous month is that this is a perfectly regulated poem. Of course, the poet finds ways to work changes within the perfection. A rather tame example is the internal parallelism in lines 308-3 and 4 (“broken” is to “abandoned” as “white” is to “green”). More intriguing is the relationship between “E” (translated “Girl”) in line 308-5 and the corresponding syllable in line 6, gai (“canopy”). Both of these can be surnames, though they are rare surnames. E obviously stands for Chang’e here, so we can just see it as a “name.” Gai is a bit of a stretch, for as a surname this character is read He. This is therefore not parallelism by pun in the usual sense of two words with the same pronunciation, but parallelism by graphic pun, like correlating “silver polish” with “Black English” (which tries to force the reading “silver Polish” on the corresponding term). The surname He is not irrelevant to a Daoist observatory, by the way. There was a Mr. He who was an expert in Daoist texts in early Han times; moreover, Su Shi commemorated this Mr. He by the construction of a hall in the mid 1070s. Unfortunately, I know of no association between mushrooms and Mr. He to match the association of the moon-”cassia” and Chang’e, so if Fanghui really did intend us to see a “hidden” He as a correlate to E, that might have been as far as he wanted to go. 117 Another possibility is that this poem expresses regret over the fact that Wang
———
Tang poem mentioned is by Cao Tang ඦା (ninth cent.), one of his ninety-eight ՛ሏטᇣ, QTS, 19:641.7351; first line: ޥມ٣سຨدဠ. 116 The actual Sogdian golden peaches may never have been grown outside the imperial gardens of the seventh century. See Schafer, Golden Peaches of Samarkand, 117–18. On the peaches of the Queen Mother of the West, see Michael Loewe, Ways to Paradise, 116–17. 117 See Su Shi’s ።ֆഘಖ, SSWJ, 2:11.346–47. This commemorative essay is clearly an attack on the activist New Policies.
HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE
325
Anshi is no longer alive. Wang’s transcription of a text that had been recovered from the grave of the prominent Daoist master Tao Hongjing ຯؖན (452–536) was engraved in stone at the Tianqing Observatory. 118 I don’t see any unmistakable hint in this poem that Fanghui saw the inscription or that the canopies of the immortals or North Mountain are to be associated here with Wang Anshi, but further research on contemporary poets may uncover a coded reference. An interesting heptametrical Regulated Verse with ABAB middle couplets was written downstream from Jinling, at Changlu: ඡऒ९ᤓڶᡖ८ສᖵၺࣛ ړMooring in the Evening at Changlu and Thinking of Friends in Jinling and Liyang. 119 311
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ྪᅃॼᢰࠟ㏌ႝ ϤϥϤϤϥϥϤ ᏕᾫፕՀׂڡၲ ϥϤϤϥϥϤϤ ᚊᒌॡᔓ۩ߎ ϤϤϥϥϤϮϥ ׄෛᠪᦨڇڜব ϤϥϤϤϭϥϤ ྤጤᔿ್Կݰڣ ϤϤϤϥϤϤϥ ڶრⳇᨹฆֲࠐ ϥϥϤϤϥϥϤ ᖥਚԳᓴৱݺ ϤϥϥϤϤϥϥ ਚᚨଅ࡙ࡸൖ৲ ϥϤϤϥϥϤϤ
B4
From the Rhino Shining Pavilion, two oars raced on.
D1
At the Phoenix Perching Estrade, a sheet of sail unfurled.
(A1)
Dragon coiling, tiger crouching— from that I will be far!
(B4)
Ox Holm and Chicken Pannier— where are they now?
A3
For no reason, saddle and horse; a three-year tour of duty.
B1
so full of meaning, water-lily and perch; some other day arriving.
C1
A goblet of brew, old friends— who is waiting for me?
D1
inevitable, that on this windy night I tarry still.
Notes: 311-1/ Wen Qiao ᄵ⮙ (288–329) once held a burning rhinoceros horn over the Yangzi River, making visible strange creatures riding in carts and wearing crimson clothing. This event took place at Ox Holm, opposite Liyang (see Poem 201, line 5). 120 Assuming the pavilion marks the spot, this means Fanghui is remembering his departure from the Jinling area, not talking about a pavilion at Changlu. 311-2/ The Estrade must be the Fenghuang Estrade north of Jinling.
———
118 Huang Tingjian will later praise Wang’s holograph in ၐլ౸ֆຯឆࡺችխ֮, Huang Tingjian quanji, 2:647–48. 119 7.12573; 7.7a. The poem is dated the twelfth month of the previous year, but both its position in the collection and Changlu’s position between Jinling and the Grand Canal indicate a Yuanyou 6/1091 date, probably the second month. Lu You reports eighty years later that the area is prosperous and the site of a flourishing temple. See Chang and Smythe, South China in the Twelfth Century, 67. 120 See the Jin shu, 6:67.1795.
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311-3/ The topography of the Jinling area has been likened to a “dragon coiling and tiger crouching.” 121 311-4/ Chicken Pannier is a steep rock peak west of Liyang. 122 311-8/ The gu in this line does not duplicate the gu (“old; from before”) in line 7 because they have a different meaning. Guying means something like “of course” or “it is natural that one should …” 123
The first four lines are a tour de force of place-names from both Jinling and Liyang. That creates quite a bit of forward momentum. Moreover, as in Calling on Wang Xiansou of Jinling (Poem 306), the first couplet is semantically parallel, so we have a three-couplet string of parallel lines. This may be one reason the poet does not continue the poem with the expected CDAB sequence. He needs to diffuse the momentum, and he does so dramatically. The break between the second and third couplets is especially strong because all the even-numbered syllables, not just the critical second syllable, are tonally opposite in lines 311-4 and 5: ϤϥϤϤϭϥϤ, ϤϤϤϥϤϤϥ. Breaking the line-type sequence of Mooring in the Evening at Changlu in the middle is perfectly understandable as a means of setting off the flurry of placenames in the first two couplets and distracting us from the imbalance of having three consecutive parallel couplets. I want to raise another consideration, however. Note that lines 311-5 and 6 place yi “different/another” in correlation with a number: “for no reason, saddle and horse: a three-year tour of duty; / so full of meaning, water-lily and perch, some other day arriving.” Du Fu does the same in the fifth and sixth lines of a heptametrical poem: “For ten years army horses have darkened the southern realm; / in a different land a visiting stranger grows old in an isolated city.” 124 Note also that, like He Zhu’s poem, Du Fu’s has rhymed first lines and ABAB middle couplets. Although it must be admitted that six of He Zhu’s lines are fully regulated, whereas only Du Fu’s last line is, it is possible that Fanghui’s recollection of Du Fu’s poem had some influence on his choices in the present work.
——— 121
See the Song shu, 34:395.12054. See Cheng Tinggui, Liyang dianlu, 1:3.127 and Fanghui’s Poem 110, 3.12531; 3.12b. Chicken Pannier was also one of the seventy-two “lucky places” in Song Daoism. See Cheng Minsheng, Songdai diyu wenhua, 286. Fanghui’s poem simply mentions a shrine to the old woman whose chicken pannier became the peak. 123 See Zhang Xiang, Shi ci qu yuci huishi, 480. Gu ying had strong closural force for Su Shi; out of twenty-five poems in which he uses the phrase, it leads off the last line in ten, all heptametrical Quatrains and octaves. (The phrase seemed to work best in those forms, for whatever reason. Only four of the poems in which Su uses the phrase are not heptametrical Quatrains or octaves.) He Zhu uses the phrase just this single time. 124 Du Fu: ღ, Du shi xiangzhu, 4:18.1599. Du Fu says this is a Wu form ᧯ܦpoem, but no one knows what that is. My discussion of the Wu form is omitted here for reasons of space; in any case, I have concluded that Fanghui did not try to imitate this form. 122
HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE
327
1091: TWO CLEVER SOCIAL POEMS IN THE CAPITAL During his interlude in the capital after Liyang, Fanghui leaves twice as many heptametrical Regulated Verses as pentametrical: eleven versus six. They are mostly social poems: three are sent to friends; three are presented to people; two are farewell poems, and so forth. Two poems from the fourth month of Yuanyou 6 (1091) show He Zhu being clever for a man named Qian Dexun. The first contains an allusion to another person named Fanghui. The second appears to rhyme the fifth line, which should be impossible in Regulated Verse. Before getting into the poems, we need to clarify the identity of the person named by his cognomen in the titles of the poems: Qian Dexun. We are told in the headnote to a pair of Ancient Verses dated three months later that Qian’s name is Shi ᔞ. He lives next door to He Zhu in the capital. 125 That should tell us all we need to know. The problem is that the cognomen Dexun was also used by Qian Yu ᙒ ⾍ (1050–1121). Would two men whose names are graphically so similar (indicating they might be cousins, if not brothers) use the same cognomen? Qian Yu will be a very powerful censor ten years hence, so powerful that in 1102 he leads a movement that results in the removal of the Yuanyou Empress’s title and her relegation to a Daoist nunnery. 126 We might hypothesize that Fanghui regretted his association with this Qian Yu and altered the name, changing Yu to Shi. We could also posit simple error/emmendation by others in textual transmission. There is one side-benefit in accepting that Fanghui’s Qian Dexun really is Qian Shi. We can reasonably solve the mystery of the identity of a friend of Huang Tingjian known only as Qian Dexun. Huang follows the rhymes of a “Qian Dexun” in one poem (dated 1101) and mentions a Dexun or Qian Dexun in two letters. 127 Since neither Qian Shi nor Qian Yu appears in Huang’s works,
———
125 Poems 129–130, ࡉᙒᐚ༛༅ᡖԲଈ, 4.12535–36; 4.4b–5a. An edict permitting Qian Shi’s retirement appears in the Quan Song wen, 37:1621.597. Qian retired from a military rank, vicecommissioner of the Imperial Larder, which tells us only that the edict was written before this rank was renamed in 1112. 126 See Song shi 2:19.365 and Bi Yuan, Xu Zizhi tongjian, 2:88.110. History has seen Qian Yu’s role in this movement as part of Cai Jing’s machinations to purge his opponents. See Jia Yuying, Song dai jiancha zhidu, 193. The empress was reinstated in 1127 so a declaration in her name could be issued, asking the prince who was to become the first Southern Song ruler (temple name Gaozong) to assume the throne. His father (the retired emperor Huizong), his older brother Qinzong, and his mother had all been captured by the Jurchen; as the wife of Huizong’s deceased older brother Zhezong, the Yuanyou Empress was the only person with the authority to deal with the crisis. (There was later a brief revolt by generals who felt she should have ruled as regent while the three year old legitimate heir presumptive grew up.) See Teraji Jun, Nan S shoki seijishi kenky, 55– 56 and 81. See also Song shi, 24.441, 447, 462. 127 The poem is ڻᣉᙒᐚ༛ຼᦡ㏊ۣ܂ڶ, Huang Tingjian quanji, 3:1473; the letters are in ibid., 4:2184 and 2186.
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we hitherto have had no basis on which to identify Dexun with either one of these men—we could only say that Qian Yu is the least likely candidate because of his politics. Now that He Zhu’s notations have brought to light the existence of Qian Shi, a poet with the cognomen Dexun, it is reasonable to postulate that this is the man Huang Tingjian knew. Now we may turn to a strange poem of self-presentation, ࡉᙒᐚ༛ᡖ Harmonizing with Qian Dexun’s ‘Writing my Feelings’: 128 314
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ࡂႫፖݺઌง ϥϤϥϥϥϤϤ ᄣִංඈ݇ቹ ϥϥϤϤϥϥϤ ߆ড়Օᣄଫ؆ ϤϥϥϤϤϥϥ ֱڃ՛ൄ؉ ϤϤϥϥϥϤϤ խีჇٍ۶ڶ ϤϤϥϥϮϤϥ Ղᅮၡॺࢬႊ ϥϥϤϤϭϥϤ உ၇ԫۣូ۞ړ ϥϥϥϤϤϥϥ նႆᄻ൷ᅝ୮ྋ ϥϤϤϥϥϤϤ
D3
Ay me, the world and I have grown apart.
B1
The years and months press on, I’ve betrayed my stalwart plans.
C1
The Crazy Stranger—really hard— [he was] concurrently outer director;
D2
Fanghui—some success— [he] surpassed the common slave .
(A5)
In my breast, rough and rugged terrain— but how much do I have?
(B3)
On the diaphragm, a local inspector— this is not what I need.
C4
Straight away I’ll buy one boat and return to self satisfaction:
D1
Five-Cloud Stream adjoins the lake of my family.
Notes: 314-3/ He Zhizhang, as noted earlier, was a supervisor or director in the Tang Palace Library. He called himself “Crazy Stranger from Siming.” 129 (Siming is the name of a mountain near Mirror Lake in Yuezhou.) 314-4/ “Fanghui” was the cognomen of Chi Yin ␓ (313–84). When someone asked Wang Xizhi how Chi Yin’s slave, who “knew something about literature and had ideas on every subject,” compared with Chi, the reply was that the slave was a petty man who could not be successfully compared with Chi Yin. The questioner concluded that the slave was unremarkable after all. 130 In other words, Chi Yin/Fanghui represented a pretty low standard. 314-5/ “Rough and rugged terrain” within the breast is frustration or unresolved feelings. The rhetorical question probably means Fanghui has no “rough and rugged terrain.” The only other time Fanghui uses the last three words in this line, the object of the verb “have” also precedes the phrase: ۔ఐ֨ൣٍ۶“ ڶOld and sick, what feelings [or gusto] do I have?” 131
——— 128
7.12573–74; 7.8a. Jiu Tang shu, 15:190B.5034. 130 See Shi shuo xinyu, 9.29. Translation quoted from Mather (2002), 275. 131 Line 7 of Poem 330, dated the twelfth month of 1093, ᐖສ಄မඡऒ Mooring at Evening at Hot Pepper Bay in Guangling (7.12576; 7.11a). We should be open to the possibility of an alternate 129
HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE
329
314-6/ This line may indicate that our poet is giving up drinking. In the fourth century, a certain expert cleverly termed inferior brew “local inspector of Pingyuan.” Pingyuan Commandery included a county named Ge, which is homophonous with ge “diaphragm.” (The two words can be written with the same character.) His point was that bad brew stayed on or above the diaphragm—in “Ge.” 132 314-8/ Five Cloud Stream is another name for Ruoye ૉߵ Stream in Yuezhou, Liangzhe Circuit. 133 The lake to which Fanghui refers is Mirror Lake, his goal for retirement and connection with the He Zhizhang heritage.
The second couplet is difficult even to parse, but I believe it means our Crazy Stranger has found the other Crazy Stranger (He Zhizhang) very hard to emulate because he was an important official, while our Fanghui has in a small way been able to emulate the other Fanghui (Chi Yin) insofar as he is better than a common slave. There is an ancient recluse by the name of Fanghui, and it is generally assumed that our poet’s mother had that recluse in name when she bestowed the cognomen Fanghui on the young He Zhu. That recluse had skills for preserving life, so it would be an auspicious by-name. 134 On the other hand, of the many people who have shared the name Fanghui down to He Zhu’s time, Chi Yin is particularly appropriate for our poet to evoke (even if his mother would not have considered Chi a model for her son). Not only was Chi Yin as enamored of the Yuezhou area as He Zhu, he succeeded in spending many years there both as an administrator and as a retired resident. (This was well known; in three poems Su Shi alludes to Chi Yin that capacity. 135) Thus, even as he seems to denigrate himself by saying he has barely “come up to” Chi Yin’s level (superior to no more than a slave), our poet may also be expressing the hope that he will emulate Chi Yin in making his way to the Yuezhou area. The rest of the poem seems to bear this out. Fanghui is optimistic. He has no “rough and rugged terrain” in his breast and so he does not need to drink cheap brew to drown his sorrows; he is going to Five-Cloud Stream. It seems to me that Qian Shi might have needed He Zhu’s help in interpreting those middle couplets. The second poem would have required help just to
——— reading, something like “In my breast, full of rough and rugged terrain, what [center of gravity] do I have? (None! Nevertheless, rather than drinking away my frustrations [line 314-6], I need to connect with my roots in Shanyin [lines 314-7–8].)” This would be supported by Du Fu’s line ՚ٍ֨ ۶“ ڶWhat does my inch-square heart have?” which, in its context, indicates a loss of confidence and equilibrium as the poet fears for bad news in wartime. See Yoshikawa Kjir, To Ho, 2:114, note to line 28 of ૪ᡖ. 132 See Shi shuo xinyu, 20.9 133 See Du Mu, Fanchuan shi ji zhu, 273, commentary to line 1 of ബ௨ࣟឌᩄေࠃ. 134 We don’t really know who bestowed this name, but He Zhu had lost his father by the time he was old enough to receive a cognomen. See Zhong Zhenzhen, Bei Song ciren He Zhu yanjiu, 41– 42 and Hou Han shu, 4:39.1311. 135 ٦ࡉԲଈհԲ (1087), SSSJ, 5:28.1492; ಬᙒᗪښנ׀။ڠԲଈհԫ (1088), 5:30.1589; and ڻᣉᗪ׀ᄎ堬 (1092), 6:36.1928.
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read aloud correctly; Fanghui may have taken advantage of the fact that this poem was to be presented at a banquet where he could personally explain how to pronounce a very common character in line 315-5. The final word in line 315-5 is gui (level tone: ‘to return’). Everything about the meaning and the context of gui in this poem (including the fact that it is part of a direct quotation from Ode 36 of the Classic of Poetry) tells us that it must be read gui and mean ‘return’—except for the fact that it picks up the rhyme of the poem. In the fifth line, Regulated Verse permits no rhyme. Now, it happens that this character can also be read kui (departing tone) when it is a variant graph for two different words meaning ‘to be chagrinned,’ or ‘to give to.’ Keeping in mind that we cannot know for sure what the poet’s game is here, we shall provisionally read the character as kui and translate it “to be chagrinned.” Here, then, is ஂՂܧᙒᐚ༛ Presented to Qian Duxun at a Banquet. 136 315
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འဎᤊᤊௌᆺॅ ϥϤϥϥϭϮϤ ۔ᨀದఠᠩາଆ ϥϤϥϭϭϮϤ তᔣ၇ᣠ۩ᑗ ϤϤϥϥϮϤϥ ။ড়ᐒዚڤპ ϥϥϮϤϭϥϤ ڤპڤპլូ ϥϤϥϭϤϮϥ ֲࣔᄎवվֲॺ ϤϥϮϤϭϥϤ ៱ᄻ֫ጟֽᄘ ϥϤϥϥϮϤϥ ९ፖટଅൿ ϤϥϤϤϥϥϤ
(D15)
Jujube flowers lush and luxuriant, the mulberry leaves swell.
(D27)
Aging silkworms get up to sleep, fledgling sparrows fly.
(A5)
My neighbor to the south buys brew and enjoins us to have fun;
(B17)
the stranger from Yue throws down his books and sings, “O reduced!”
(A20)
O reduced, O impaired, why not be chagrinned;
(B18)
tomorrow you will know today was wrong.
(A8)
By the old stream, the willows I planted with my own hand
B4
have long joined with the autumn wind to sweep my fishing ledge.
Notes: 315-4/ I use Legge’s “reduced” but in the next line add the synonym “impaired.” In Ode 36 of the Classic of Poetry, this phrase expresses despair in reference to the weakened state of the nation. Over the ages it seems to simply evoke a general feeling of hopelessness; Fanghui is surely not
——— 136 7.12574; 7.8a. It has been suggested to me that this poem could be the equivalent of two Quatrains, which would make the fifth line the first line of the second Quatrain. In that event, a rhyme there would be unremarkable. However, if that line rhymed, the “quatrain” would have a DBAB line sequence, which is rare or nonexistent in Fanghui’s heptametrical Quatrains. Moreover, neither half of the poem seems to me able to stand on its own. A second possibility to consider is that this poem was meant to be sung to a lyric tune such as Rui zhegu ᅗᧈᚃ, which was often used to sing heptametrical Regulated Verses. However, I have found no case in which the fifth line rhymed in a lyric to this matrix.
HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE
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predicting the fall of the dynasty. 315-6/ Tao Yuanming, in his rhapsody Return Home, said that now he knows today (when he comes home) is right and yesterday (when he took office) was wrong. 315-7/ It is common, especially among Song poets, to refer nostalgically to the growth of trees or bamboo one planted with one’s own hand before leaving home. In line 315-4, Fanghui pretends to be from Yue (like He Zhizhang); now he pretends to have planted willows by a stream there, perhaps Five Cloud Stream (see note to 314-8).
As for the ABABAB configuration in the last six lines of the poem, the decision to override the expectation of a CD third couplet is easily explained by the bravado of the “mispronounced” quotation from the Book of Poetry and the altered quotation from Tao Yuanming in lines 315-5 and 6, respectively. The quotations are so easily recognized and their manipulation so blatant that we are likely to overlook the lack of semantic parallelism in this couplet. The poem in general is a tipsy, exuberant song that lurches from couplet to couplet until it settles peacefully into the final line, the only regulated line in the poem, looking forward to the fishing spot that awaits He Zhu in the south.
1093–94: HAILING AMBIGUITIES As we know already, Fanghui set off in the tenth month of Yuanyou 8 (1093– 94) for this fishing spot in the south but never arrived. The ostensible reason for going instead to Hailing to stay with relatives was a forecast of difficulty crossing the Yangzi, yet the following poem speaks of his desire to move to the southeast as having faded. This is unexpected. Dated the twelfth month of the year, the poem is titled ၡۣࡺኙຳ Living on the Boat in Gaoyou and Watching the Snow. 137 326
4
֚ෑඡᄣড়ྤᦟ ϤϤϥϥϥϤϤ ᖑᏗპܷ۩ሁᣄ ϥϥϤϤϥϥϤ Կᄑ௬࿓ं⒙⒙ ϤϥϤϤϤϥϥ նສូኄຳደደ ϥϤϤϥϥϤϤ ࠜႼ១֨ྫ݇ ϥϤϥϥϤϤϥ
D2
On heaven’s edge at year’s end, the traveler has no joy;
B1
With “hand cupped over the nose” I softly hum The Road is Hard.
C3
The watery course in the Three Regions of Chu— vast surgent waves;
D1
my dreamed return to the Five Tumuli— bleak and blinding snow.
A2
Garden of the Hare: give me bamboo strips; my heart is still hale;
——— 137 Poem 326, 7.12575–76; 7.10b. Gaoyou is sixty km NW of Hailing, on the Grand Canal over halfway down from Chuzhou to Yangzhou.
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ἓڴۣ᷇ᘋՆឃ ϥϥϤϤϥϥϤ ఐ֭ᠦսᆃ ϥϥϤϤϤϥϥ ድ፨ૹᒲৱਞ༃ ϤϤϥϥϥϤϤ
8
B1
Round of the Shan: to pole my boat the impulse is long spent.
C2
My sick bones are lame and lagging and brew is still forbidden;
D2
in straw fisher’s cloak double sewn, I await the spring, cold.
Notes: 326-2/ Owing to a nasal condition, Xie An chanted poetry with a sound that others could emulate only by cupping the hand over the nose. 138 “Intoning low with the hand cupped over the nose” became a kenning for “reciting poetry.” The Road is Hard is an old ballad. 326-3/ In poetry “the Three Chus” vaguely designates the middle and lower Yangzi regions. 326-4/ The Five Tumuli are the capital. See the note to line 246-7 on p. 290. 326-5/ In the pleasure park called Hare Garden, the King of Liang (r. 168–44 BCE) handed bamboo strips (for writing) to Sima Xiangru and bade him compose a rhapsody on snow. 139 326-6/ Once more, the allusion is to the snowy night visit of Wang Huizhi to Dai Kui in Shan, “riding on an impulse.” 140 “Round of the Shan” does not figure in that allusion in any other text that I know of. It must be a local expression; Lu You, who lived in Shanyin, uses it thirty-four times. Other than that, Yang Wanli uses it once and Fanghui twice. 326-7/ It is likely that Fanghui has given up drinking because of his illness. 141
The third couplet is hard to interpret. On one hand, it may not tell He Zhu’s real feelings, since its main business is surely to take up the snow theme in a skillful pair of allusions in which snow is implied but never mentioned explicitly. On the other hand, line 326-3 has spoken of “vast surgent waves” lying before him and line 326-4 of his dream of returning to the capital. If Fanghui’s “impulse is spent,” he may have already decided not to continue on to Yuezhou; if he is willing to write a composition about snow on “bamboo slips,” then he hopes for a prestigious appointment at court. The next poem we shall discuss reinforces our sense that Fanghui really may be thinking that this is a time of opportunity, not retirement. This comes in the second month of 1094 (that is, Yuanyou 9, renamed Shaosheng 1 later in the year). The context of the poem is that a Zeng Chen has just been “released” to return from Tongchuan ຏ՟, a remote town in the northeastern part of the Sichuan Basin. Zeng had once been a district defender
——— 138
See the notes to Shishuo xinyu, 6.29 and Zhong Zhenzhen, Dongshan ci, 6 (note 4) and 298–
300. 139 This fictional event is described in the Rhapsody on Snow, a prosopopoeia by Xie Huilian ༡ຑ (407–33). Translated in Knechtges, Wen xuan, 3:20–31. 140 Shishuo xinyu, 23.47. 141 Other hypotheses would include a prohibition on officials drinking wine for a period of time after the death of the Empress Gao in the ninth month or a prohibition on brewing to ensure adequate grain stocks for food. However, I have found no edict decreeing a mourning prohibition and prohibitions to preserve grain were rare in Song times because of increased agricultural production. See Li Huarui, Song dai jiu di shengchan he zhengque, 107–8.
HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE
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in Gongcheng which is in Fanghui’s native district of Weizhou. Although Fanghui had heard of him, they had never met. Why Zeng’s route takes him to Hailing is not mentioned, nor are we told why he had been exiled to Tongchuan in the first placed. He could have been guilty of a legal infraction. His “release” could have come as part of a general amnesty. Or, since we know that prominent members of the former reform movement were now being recalled to positions of power, his exile and recall might have been tied to the shifting fortunes of the reformers and the conservatives. This murky background deepens the mystery of the last couplet of ሟܑམ ݵRequiting and Parting from Zeng Chen. 142 496
࣏ڣ᠑ᑜԳሕ ϥϤϥϥϥϤϤ ֲ֟ઌນֲܑ᎑ ϥϥϤϤϥϥϤ เബូ֚֨קႀ ϤϥϤϤϤϥϥ ᄎଊᘋ֯ᢰ⦚ ϥϤϤϥϥϤϤ ሼ᧫ػචᚊದ ϤϤϥϥϤϤϥ ଅᘒॹਞ౻ֵဎ ϤϥϤϤϥϥϤ ᓴ྄ْ࢚ᗑᐭൠ ϤϥϤϤϮϭϥ ಡ୲ؓᓿᡖޥ ϥϤϤϥϥϤϤ
4
8
D3
In years past your chamber was nearhand; alas its owner was remote,
B1
Days too few we here forgather our days apart will be prolonged.
C3
I can only entrust my homeward heart to a goose from north of the sky;
D1
and you might ride your rising impulse to a raft beside the Dipper.
A1
Thunder alarms the bright daylight: dragons and snakes arise.
B4
wind roils the green springtime: plants and trees blossom.
(C15) D1
Who thinks of him one, solitary and haggard; how is it possible in an age of peace to sing Embracing Sand?
Notes: 496-3–4/ The pronouns added in the translation are quite certain for line 3, less so for line 4. Stories that are told about people riding rafts on long journeys that take them into the sky evoke thoughts of distant travel in general, rising to the realm of the Undying, or becoming a high official. 143 496-8/ Embracing Sand is said to be the song that Qu Yuan sang before he drowned himself in despair. 144
The first half of the poem derives from the situation we have been given in the headnote: the two men were once a day’s journey or less apart but never saw each other, now they have met, and now they say goodbye. Fanghui is thinking of his home district in the north (line 496-3); perhaps that is where Zeng is go-
——— 142 143 144
10.12595; shiyi 3a. See Edward Schafer, Pacing the Void, 263–69. David Hawkes, Songs of the South, 169–72.
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ing (toward the Dipper), or perhaps line 496-4 anticipates that he will rise to the empyreal court in Kaifeng. One could read political symbolism into the third couplet, particularly if we knew Zeng Chen was in favor of the new regime consolidating its power in the capital. Snakes and dragons usually stand for energetic, sinuous forms (as in vines, twisted pine trunks, or calligraphic lines) or for creatures who are not usually seen but can be stirred into action by thunder or righteousness. 145 Lines 496-5–6 could describe the changing weather of mid-spring or the rise and flourishing of new political forces; if the latter, the ambiguity of reference might be intentional. The final couplet is unambiguously concerned with the question of participation in the political world, though the identity of “him one” is not clear. Even the effect of using this dialectical pronoun is unknown. (For the translation I have settled on a sixteenth-century English construction that is still found in some Caribbean and American dialects, “he one.”) The pronoun is employed by He Zhu additionally in one other Hailing poem and by Huang Tingjian in one 1087 poem; it is not used in Tang poetry. Although in prose it is generally applied to a person who is disliked, I do not think that is the connotation here, for it must refer to either Fanghui or Zeng Chen. If it is Fanghui himself, he is in his familiar guise of Qu Yuan, solitary and worn out. However, in the first of two heptametrical Quatrains written after this poem, our poet refers to Zeng as a “sao person” (a term for ‘poet’ derived from Qu Yuan’s being the first major poet whose identity is known and from his authorship of Li sao, Encountering Sorrow). If Zeng is thus also comparable to Qu Yuan, the last line makes sense as both admonition and encouragement to him. Thus, the answers to the twin rhetorical questions in lines 496-7–8 are: no one pays attention to the haggard and self-pitying outsider (so you should not play that role); and you are not entitled, in this era of supposed peace, to play the role of the loyal minister who commits suicide because the ruler is deaf to his wise counsel. After all, you have been released from your exile. Continue on your way back to the center of society. Lest we give the mistaken impression that all the Hailing poems are this difficult, let us take a quick glance at ௧ສॸ Joyful over Rain at Hailing, written on the last day of the fourth month. In 1094 there was an intercalary fourth month that would start the next day, which explains the first line: 146 504
ၱڣִհઌٌ ϥϤϥϥϭϤϤ
———
(D7)
The intersection of the fourth months of an intercalary year:
See Du Fu’s ಬࢌ࿓ᙕࠃᝫၢ, Du shi xiangzhu, 1:5.343. 10.12597; shiyi 5a. The intercalary months were inserted every few years to keep the lunar calendar from departing too far from the seasons (which are tied to the solar cycle). 145 146
HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE
4
8
֚ޒႆढ۶ᘕᤵ ϥϤϤϥϭϤϤ 堚ଅ൴چངቺ ϤϤϥϥϮϤϥ ॸػԵࣥ௧ᛑ ϥϥϮϤϭϥϤ ልࠝᔏ߫ ϥϤϤϤϮϤϥ ֟ᐈఐ֛ཀ໎ ϥϤϥϭϭϮϤ ႊ墾உ၇ԫድᆲ ϤϤϥϥϮϤϥ უߠᖩჀתᗮ ϥϥϤϤϭϥϤ
(D5)
Parched sky and cloud-hue ever so dernful and drear.
(A5)
A fresh wind rolls up the ground and turns the dusty world;
(B17)
white rain penetrates the grove and tumbles ocean waves.
(D27)
By far it surpasses the vigor of a peasant boy on the treadwheel; somewhat it eases the labor of this sick man waving his fan.
(A5)
I must, when it clears, straightaway buy one fishing batteau,
(B3)
pre-imagining that Thorter Dykes is half a pole-length deep.
(C15)
335
Notes: 504-4/ Hailing was only about sixty km from the ocean in He Zhu’s time. 504-8/ Thorter translates heng, “athwart/transverse.” Thorter Dykes is a place name in the Scottish Borders region, and there seem to have been a great many places in China named Hengtang— including one in Suzhou that figures in Fanghui’s most famous lyric. 147
There are a number of things to enjoy in this poem. The prosy first line is one; the prose particle zhi is almost never used in the fifth position of a heptasyllabic line, especially in a Regulated Verse, because it cannot allow a caesura to stand between it and the preceding syllable; in line 508-1, it turns the last five syllables into one indivisible noun phrase: “Intercalary year | fourth months zhi intersection.” The third couplet, the way it expresses the notions that the rain delivers water better than a tread-wheel and that the fresh wind cools better than a fan, is another delight. This poem also revels in what we might call a systematic flouting of the rules. Every line is unregulated, but in all but two cases it is only the syllable after the major caesura, the fifth syllable, that has the “wrong” tone. The result is that the first two lines end in three level tones and every other line ends in equally jarring strings of level-deflected-level or deflected-level-deflected tones. One could say that these strings compensate for each other in couplets two through four (cf. p.
——— 147 See Zhong Zhenzhen, Dongshan ci, 154, which dates the lyric to 1101. As I pointed out in “Experiential Patterns,” 293–95, there are places with this name near Nanjing and Wujiang—and of course Hailing, too—although one never knows for sure whether Hengtang is a proper noun or a common noun. My study was done too early to take advantage of Zhong’s prodigious scholarship on He Zhu, so some of the solutions I suggested to problems in He’s chronology are in need of further revision. For translations of the lyric, see “Experiential Patterns” 109–10 and Renditions 5 (Autumn 1975), 106.
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290), but what is the overall effect of this jerky rhythm at the end of those lines? Tentatively, we might suggest that it mimics a countrified awkwardness that the poet might have thought fit the atmosphere of Hailing. An alternative explanation would simply stress the technical “fun” he is having with his consistency in rule-breaking; he will do much the same thing in a rare twelve-line Regulated Verse (Poem 530) in 1096. In this poem, we don’t see the hints of ambivalence about retirement that we thought we could detect in the last two poems we discussed. One thing that has changed since the second month is that Su Shi is being ordered south into exile. Although Fanghui shows no acknowledgement of this development until the fifth month (see below), it is likely that he was aware of the shifting balance of power that was leading to it. 148 ᠲ௧ສ༅ॐଈ Four Poems Inscribed on the Lodging in Hailing, is dated the intercalary fourth month, when the exile order was put into effect. 149 We shall translate the second and fourth poems to get a sense of the poet poised on the verge of unanticipated changes—which at this time appear not to include return to a welcoming situation in the capital. 507
4
२ᛘዚ㊍ ϥϥϤϤϭϥϤ ߡৢࣔٻጻ፰ဥ ϥϤϥϥϥϤϤ ႓ᆷॸ്׆ ϤϤϥϥϮϮϥ क़ಈػᢒଅᦀೈ ϤϤϥϥϭϤϤ ᝥ᠏ྫᐩ࡙Ն ϥϥϤϤϮϥϥ ֭ᠦ۶ਞఐ塒 ϤϤϤϭϭϮϤ
(B3)
Approaching dampness, at hedge’s foot sing the tettix;
D3
Facing brightness, in room’s corner webs the spider.
(A13)
Yellow hollyhocks and purple amaranth —rain—burst forth and burgeon;
(D6)
striped mosquitoes and white ants —wind—are flushed and routed.
(C6)
Tossing and turning, still I resent that summer nights are endless;
(D28)
lame and lagging, how can I bear that spring illness lingers?
——— 148 I would like to posit that Fanghui was getting news from Dingzhou, where Su Shi had been prefect since the tenth month of 1093, because Li Zhiyi had followed him there (see Kong Fanli, Su Shi nianpu, 3:32.1122 and 1129–30). Fanghui knew Li; he had presented a poem to him in the capital in the second month of 1093: Poem 322, ޕܧհᏚ, 7.12575; 7.9b. The fact that Fanghui’s fifth-month poem Written on Hearing that Su…has been Exiled to be Prefect of Yingzhou avers that our poet heard the news of the exile long after it should have been common knowledge suggests that he was trying to protect a secret channel of information. If Fanghui were getting news from faraway Dingzhou, the poem on the rain in Hailing we just translated might allude to the fact that on the sixteenth of the fourth month of 1094, Su, Li, and others had prayed from rain at the Northern Marchmount Temple. Unfortunately, we don’t know what day of the month Fanghui’s poem was written. Without more evidence, we must be content to take things at face value. 149 Poems 506–9, 10.12597–98; Shiyi 5b–6a. I follow the QSS edition for the second character of Poem 507.
HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE
8
ቃღᝫਢ៱ڣᓳ ϥϤϤϥϮϤϥ ࠟณࠇቺᡖᢴྋ ϥϥϤϤϭϥϤ
(A5)
Sadness in anticipation, still in the mood of former years:
(B3)
two eyes full of capital dust, yearning for Mirror Lake.
337
Note: 507-7/ Diao “mood” can also refer to an “assignment” or “transfer.” That would fit here: Fanghui has a bad feeling that he will end up again in a mint or chasing smugglers. However, it would not fit the only other use of “former year diao” that I know of, which appears in one of Fanghui’s 1097 poems on tea sent to him from Huang Tingjian (see p. 365, line 542-7).
Capital dust and the Yuezhou area (line 507-8) are the poles of He Zhu’s consciousness: he loathes the former and yearns for the latter. Presently in Hailing, he is almost at the midpoint between those poles, but they still define his thoughts. He speaks as if the dust of the capital were still in his two eyes— perhaps he has not rid himself of nostalgia for the power and the youthful hopes the capital represents. What is odd is the feeling of foreboding he has (line 507-7). When he refers to it as an old, familiar feeling, we get the idea that he must know he will return soon to his career. The relatives in Hailing will not put him up forever. While the rest of the poem seems to consist of simple descriptions of life in the Hailing lodgings, there are matters of craft that cannot be ignored. The sequence of line types in this poem is unique in the set; where the other three poems have a normal BDABCDAB progression, this poem is BDADCDAB. The second syllable of the fourth line is the critical one in breaking the “adhesion” with the following couplet and the tonal parallelism with line 507-3. The offending word is “mosquito”; if it were a deflected tone word, this would be a B line and the sequence would be canonical. I think this tells us that mosquitoes and termites were the scourges Fanghui most wanted “flushed and routed” by the wind. Their placement in the poem does not hint at any symbolic meaning— certainly mosquitoes don’t have to stand for something else to be hateful. 150 This couplet yields still more richness. The phrase translated “burst forth and burgeon” in line 507-3 is written with two characters that normally represent very common surnames, Zhang and Wang. So unusual is this binomial that poets or editors sometimes add a note to tell the reader the characters must be read differently (with departing tones), but of course in context they don’t make sense as names, anyway. The term is used by He Zhu, Su Shunqin (earlier), and
——— 150 In theory, we could make line 507-4 a B line by simply reversing the order of the insects. “White ants striped mosquitoes—wind—are flushed and routed” yields not only the needed B line but also a tone pattern that is the perfect antithesis of line 3: 䃂䃂䂾䂾䂔䂔䂾. Such lines exist— Qi Gong cites one by Li Bo for this matrix (B9). Nevertheless, a string of five level tones is not the simple antithesis of five deflected tones. Level tones are pretty similar, even if divided into yin and yang level tones, whereas five deflected tones in a row can comprise any combination of three different tones (rising, departing, and entering) for more variety.
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Su Shi (later), one time each; Su Zhe uses it three times, once correlated with a rhyming compound in the next line, as in this poem. 151 There are Tang precedents in Han Yu, Liu Yuxi, and Yuan Zhen (one each). The phrase presented difficulties that must have seemed distracting in poetry. Perhaps a single deployment of the phrase showed one’s erudite wit, but more frequent use would quickly wear thin. So much is going on in this couplet that I think one reason for the tonal violations in the next couplet—especially the string of level-tone syllables in line 507-6—is to balance the wildness of the second couplet. In addition, that string of level-tone syllables, though the effect is moderated by the caesuras that break it into segments, can be heard as the “lame and lagging” poet’s long and doleful cry. The fourth poem in the set starts with longing for home but finds contentment in Hailing. 509
4
8
Տߺ୮Ⴜڇڜব ϤϥϤϤϭϥϥ ᧿ᾫྫۃፕ ϤϤϤϥϥϤϤ ॺൕࠃឰܑڣ ϥϤϤϥϮϤϥ ଅਢਚԳᚦֲࠐ ϤϥϮϤϥϥϤ ႓຺ጿ᨟⛸ᑵ ϤϥϤϤϮϭϥ ᧉػ㓇㓄ጸဉၲ ϥϤϥϥϥϤϤ Ꮕव۔ᖲ֨ᐒ ϤϤϥϥϤϤϥ ఎ྄ْᘋጐڃ ϤϥϤϤϥϥϤ
(B4)
A thousand miles to my family garden: where is it, alas!
D4
Perched on a journey, I still am happy to claim a place in ponds and terraces.
(A6)
My brew is not “the retainer”: a whole year we’ve been apart;
(B8)
the breeze is my old friend: all day it comes to me.
(C15)
Yellow birds warble forth, the purple mulberries ripen;
D3
white gulls splash and leap green duckweed parts.
A1
Knowing this old guy must have thrown away his machinations
B4
they leave him one to go home only when the gusto is gone.
Note: 509-3/ “The retainer” is fine brew, the opposite of the “local inspector.” (See the note to line to line 314-6, page 329.)
Fanghui is a thousand miles from home, yet he “occupies/lays claim to” pleasant ponds and terraces on the estate of relatives in Hailing and does so “joyfully.” The breeze is treated as an “old friend.” Nature is not indifferent or hos-
———
151 See Su Zhe’s heptametrical Regulated Verse ఐ৵, Su Zhe ji, 1:263. Zeng Zaozhuang, Su Zhe nianpu, 102, places the poem in 1085.
HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE
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tile. The birds are part of a colorful and peaceful early summer scene, their activities painted vividly by the alliterative man3by-man2a (“warble forth”) and dzramQ2a-dzrok2 (splash and leap). 152 The unity of the scene is embodied in the way the gulls in line 509-6 continue to be present in the last couplet. Tradition ascribes to gulls the ability to tell when a human approaches with harmful intent. The gulls know that “this old guy” (the poet) is not a schemer, and they allow “him one” (see p. 334) to come and go on his impulse. Apparently, the material needs of Fanghui and his family were being taken care of by the Hailing relatives. (One wonders, from the hint in this and previous poems, whether he has been recovering from an addiction to alcohol, or perhaps from illnesses caused by overindulgence.) Some of his comparative tranquility can also be ascribed to his being outside the world of the bureaucrat. Ostensibly, it is not until the fifth month of 1094 that Fanghui hears that Su Shi has been assigned to Yingzhou ڠ, in Guangnan East Circuit (modern Yingde, about 120 km north of Guangzhou/Canton). The transfer of Su Shi, who had been in the northern border prefecture of Dingzhou, was first ordered on the eleventh of the fourth month. (Zhao Lingzhi, whom He Zhu had seen off to Chenzhou about eight and a half years previously, was fined at the same time for having associated with Su.) Su’s rank was further reduced on the thirteenth. The order relieving Su of his Dingzhou post and exiling him to Yingzhou was issued on the third day of the intercalary fourth month. Su Shi made his way south and entered Huainan East Circuit around the beginning of the fifth month. In Sizhou, he met his follower Du Yu ޙᝨ, who had invited He Zhu to stop there in the eleventh month of 1093, just at the time our poet decided to make Hailing his destination instead of crossing the Yangzi. Still in the fifth month, Su Shi passed through Gaoyou and Yangzhou. If Fanghui had not heard the news from Du Yu, the exile would have been general knowledge in the area by that time. 153 Here is ፊᤕઍ՞᠅ښ ܂ڠWritten on Hearing that Su of Meishan has been Exiled to be Prefect of Yingzhou. 154 510
ᚢଈ࿆ᜯᄑᆕ։ ϥϥϤϤϥϥϤ ࢶᢘ٣ত៷ ϤϤϤϥϥϤϤ
B1
Atop the hause as you climb to overlook, Chu and Yue divide.
D4
Open your lapel; it is first of all a joy to gain the southern warmth.
——— 152 The subscript numerals show that the syllables in man-man, though belonging to the same rhyme-group, have different rhymes. See explanation in Branner. 153 For Su Shi’s demotion, exile, and progress to Yangzhou, see Kong Fanli, Su Shi nianpu, 3:33.1143–55. See also He Zhu’s pentametrical Ancient Verse ሟܑᳯ‼ޙᝨ Requiting and Parting from Du Yu of Xuyi, Poem 137, 4.12537; 4.8a, and the headnote thereto. Xuyi is Sizhou. 154 Poem 510, 10.12598; shiyi.6a.
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ஆၻ㒌຺ཊᓿ ϥϤϥϥϮϤϥ ᄻՀᨸູव֮ ϤϥϮϤϭϥϤ ੑ႓ૄᗚழॸ ϥϥϤϤϮϭϥ ᦀጘᆵխႆ ϥϤϥϥϥϤϤ թ۶ۂ՞ܗ ϤϤϤϥϤϤϥ آᚵူնܩ ϥϥϤϤϥϥϤ
(A8)
The houlet on the edge of your mat dare not demand a rhapsody!
(B18)
the crocodiles in the stream will know enough to fear your entreaty.
(C14)
Brew will wash away the yellow straw miasma season’s rain;
D3
a whistle will drive forth Cyan Veiling Cavern’s clouds.
A3
A lofty talent—what need to borrow the aid of mountains and rivers?
B1
you’ll never imitate the niggling, nagging song of the “five gentlemen.”
Notes: 510-1/ Yue is the area of the Guangnan East and West Circuits, also known as South of the Hauses (Lingnan). 510-3/ For the houlet that appeared on the mat of the exiled Jia Yi, see note to line 002-19. 510-4/ In 819, Han Yu was exiled to Chaozhou, on the southeast coast. There he wrote an entreaty to the crocodiles of the area, threatening them with death if they did not leave. (History notes that they left.) 155 510-5/ “Yellow straw miasma” is the noxious vapor that rises South of the Hauses in the fall, when grasses have turned to yellow straw. Su Shi himself uses this term in two poems, including one to Master He of Qingliang Temple that will be written on the ninth day of the following month. 156 510-6/ The Cyan Veiling Cavern is near Yingzhou. Su Shi will write a poem on it about four months later. 157 510-7/ It was said of Zhang Yue ്ᎅ (667–731) that after he lived in Yuezhou ࢂ( ڠon Lake Dongting, SW of Ezhou and up the Yangzi) in 715 during a series of exile assignments, his writing improved due to the aid of the mountains and rivers. 158 510-8/ Yan Yanzhi ᠱհ (384–456), a close friend of Tao Yuanming, was exiled to Yongjia ة ቯon the southeastern coast in 434. Resentful, he wrote a set of five poems in praise of Ruan Ji, Xi Kang, and three other members of the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove to express his anger. Su Shi alludes to this in poems of 1087 and 1091. 159
——— 155 See David Pollard, The Chinese Essay, 33–35, for a translation and Charles Hartman, Han Yü and the Search for Unity, 91–93, for reasons to doubt Pollard’s assumption that this is a “burlesque.” 156 An earlier use is in ፊ֜໑ངؐ៲वཱུאڠᇣဲࢵ堬 (1076); the 1094 poem is ᢤ堚 ළࡉڝ९۔. See SSSJ, 3:4.682 and 6:37.2032, respectively, and Kong Fanli, Su Shi nianpu, 1159. Beata Grant, Mount Lu Revisited, 179, translates the poem but ascribes it without discussion to 1101 and omits the first line. 157 ጘᆵ, SSSJ, 6:38.2061; Su Shi nianpu, 3:33.1173. The translation Cyan Veiling I take from Paul Kroll, Dharma Bell and Dhrai Pillar, 23 and 24. This in turn refers us to Bokenkamp’s article on “Taoism and Literature: The Pi-lo Question.” 158 See the Xin Tang shu, 14:125.4410. 159 Song shu, 73.1893. For the songs, see Ding Fubao, Quan Han Sanguo Jin Nanbeichao shi, 2:786–88. Su’s poems: ਚޕᇨհৱࠫքՁனဲ, SSSJ, 5:29.1528, line 31; and ࠸༘ճᐌൄլ堬 ਚլ܂ᇣᣠᐌ堬, 6:34.1799, last two lines.
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Fanghui leads off with the magnificence of the journey: Su Shi will stand on the divide between one vast southern realm and another where, fresh from the chilly north, he can open his lapel to the “calid wind,” a warm southern wind that can connote prosperity and sagely order. Next, our poet rolls out an impressive series of allusions to exiles of the past—significantly, none of whom perished in the periods of banishment that he references. Su Shi will not have to transcend the fears that Jia Yi’s owl brought him and he will emulate Han Yu’s extension of imperial authority to the beasts of areas formerly outside the pale of Chinese civilization; imbibing will protect him from disease and he will use a Daoist “whistle” to control the clouds; as a writer, he is far beyond needing Zhang Yue’s landscape to improve his work, and as a person he is above using a “niggling, naggling song” like Yan Yanzhi’s to castigate the slanderers who have engineered his exile. I think it is in keeping with the brave tone of the poem that it should be heptametrical rather than pentametrical. The reader may try an interesting experiment to see why. The first two syllables can be omitted from the first four lines to make them pentasyllabic. In translation, “As you climb to overlook, Chu and Yue divide. / It is first of all a joy to gain the southern warmth. / The houlet dare not demand a rhapsody! / the crocodiles will know enough to fear your entreaty.” So far, it is an acceptable poem, dignified in its restraint. However, nothing can be eliminated from the following four lines without serious damage to both meaning and meter. The fifth and sixth syllables could be removed from lines 510-5 and 6 with perhaps minor loss of clarity, but the sequence of line types would become invalid. The long SVO constructions that take up the entire lines in this couplet are, in addition, an important gesture of courage and defiance in the face of a life-threatening exile. Compacted to five syllables, they would lose much of their impact. Line 510-7 would be unintelligible if pared back to five syllables; line 510-8 would, again, lose its elocutionary force without the “niggling, nagging,” and there is nothing else to prune.
1095–96: FROM THE CAPITAL TO JIANGXIA ANOTHER EXILE If Fanghui truly believed Prefect Zhou Bin would become an influential official at court, as he seemed to think when he saw him off from Hailing the month after the preceding poem (see Poem 026), he must have been disappointed when he arrived in the capital in Shaosheng 2 (1095) and discovered that Zhou was going to Poyang as prefect. Poyang was the seat of Raozhou 墌 ڠ, on the
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eastern side of Pengli Lake ༙ᥢྋ (Poyang Lake) in Jiangnan East Circuit. (This must have been a punishment of sorts, but it seems not to have satisfied Zhou’s enemies. The next we hear of him, in 1099, he is prefect of Jizhou ڠٳ, 300 km to the south in Jiangnan West Circuit. Whether he served the normal three-year tenure in Poyang and had just arrived in Jizhou or whether, like Su Shi, he received a more distant post even before he had begun the original assignment, we cannot know. We do know that in the second month of 1099 he will petition to have his name cleared and will be removed from his position in Jizhou.) 160 Thus, one year after bidding Zhou Bin farewell in Hailing, Fanghui had the occasion to write ಬࡌၲలښנᔦၺ Seeing Off Zhou Kaizu Going out as Prefect of Poyang. 161 515
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Կ֡ࠇቺխ ϤϥϤϤϥϥϤ ฃྤၳچဿ堚ଅ ϥϤϤϥϥϤϤ ᨹູဓလᆖܑڣ ϤϤϤϥϤϤϥ ߌ።ڹ㐠ԫֲࣟ ϤϥϤϤϥϥϤ ঋณൎ։ॹڇػ ϥϥϤϤϤϥϥ ॑ᖥآᤚᆣᔃ़ ϤϤϥϥϥϤϤ ᔦၺլۂ՞ܗ ϤϤϥϥϤϤϥ ᘋຟᗝ᥆ֆ ϤϥϤϤϥϥϤ
B4
Three feet of capital dust, amid the pomp and parade.
D1
There’s almost no place free to put a fresh breeze.
A3
Perch and wild rice: you’ve been away for years;
B4
your nigrous canopy and crimson raves in only one day go east.
C2
The common eyes—force a distinction between dark and whites—remain;
D2
fragrant goblets—ere I was aware of sage or worthy—are empty.
A1
Poyang will not stint on the aid of mountains and rivers;
B4
high spirits tee-totally belong to Master Xie.
Notes: 515-2/ Or: “to stand and wait for a fresh breeze.” 515-3/ Wild rice is included with the sliced perch and water-lily soup as one of the local delicacies at home that enticed Zhang Han out of the capital just in time to avoid being killed along with the prince he served in 302. 162 515-4/ A chariot with a black canopy and red side-panels conventionally represents a prefect or similar regional official. “One day” indicates the imminence of Zhou’s departure. He will go east from the capital down the Bian Canal before making his way south, then west up the Yangzi.
——— 160 See Changbian, 14:513.6a (5205a) and Su Shi nianpu, 2:24.699, which I think confuses the date on which this and other cases are discussed with the date of the case itself. 161 10.12599; Shiyi 7b. 162 Shishuo xinyu, 7.10.
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515-5/ This line seems to say that the vulgar eyes (who cannot judge the worth of Zhou Bin, for example) will always be with us, and it is no use trying to differentiate between friendly (those who show the darks of their eyes) and hostile (those who show the whites of their eyes). 163 515-6/ Clear brew is “the sage” and cloudy brew is “the worthy.” 164 515-7/ We’ve seen the allusion to Zhang Yue’s improved writing due to the aid of the mountains and rivers in the poem on Su Shi’s exile just translated. Su didn’t need any help; Zhou can take comfort in knowing he will get help. 515-8/ “Mister Xie” is probably Xie Huilian ༡ຑ (407–33). See discussion below. The word translated “tee-totally” is a fairly rare word, foreign in origin, meaning “altogether.”
This poem is nicely regulated in form, perhaps reflecting Zhou’s senior status. The docile submission to meter conceals other complexities, however, especially in the second half of the poem. The last line promises a conventional allusion to either Xie An the cultured recluse, Xie Lingyun the landscape poet, or a Xie associated with Poyang, but it turns out that no such allusion or association exists. The single link I have found between anyone named Xie and Poyang is a heptametrical Regulated Verse written by Fanghui himself later in 1095. Fanghui’s work is a banquet poem to see off two people, one a judge going home from Jiangxia to Poyang. The crucial line, which must be addressed to the judge, states that “Xie Huilian should tarry a while.” Now, Xie Huilian was not a native of Poyang, nor is he known to have visited there during his short life, so there seems little reason to mention him in either poem. However, he did suffer a setback in his career when he addressed poetry to one of his male lovers during a period of mourning. If the judge in that later poem and Zhou Bin in this one are being compared to Xie Huilian, could it be because they are homosexuals? 165 If there is a reference to homosexuality here, line 515-5’s reference to trying to distinguish friendly and unfriendly eyes may relate not to the shifting and expedient political alliances of the time but to the need to be on guard against those who might attack a person for his sexual orientation. 166 The interrupted
——— 163 The notion of displaying one’s dark pupils to like-minded people and white eyes to vulgar intruders is a familiar one, coming from an anecdote about Ruan Ji. See Holzman, Poetry and Politics, 80. 164 See the Sanguo zhi, Wei shu, 3:27.739. 165 Xie Huilian did write a ballad called “Song of Yuzhang,” and Yuzhang was a neigboring commandery, but a ballad’s title does not necessarily have anything to do with its content, let alone the life of the poet. See Ding Fubao, Quan Han Sanguo Jin Nanbei chao shi, 2:835. Since both the Tang and the Song histories list a five-juan collection of Xie’s works in their bibliographical monographs, while only seventeen prose works and thirty-some poems by him are extant today, Fanghui may have had a much more complete picture of Xie Lingyun’s life and poetry than we do. For a biographical sketch in English, see Knechtges, Wen Xuan, 3:392–93. Fanghui’s poem is no. 552, ԲִԲֲஂՂᓿ Written at a Banquet on the Second Day of the Second Month, 10.12605; Shiyi 17a. (The headnote tells us that Fanghui lost this poem but got it back in November 1100 when he met some others who had been at the party five years earlier.) 166 Qin Guan has a poem in which he compares Zhou Bin to Yuan Zhen and Lu Yu of the Tang. Yuan had many romantic interests, but I don’t know if they extended beyond women. Lu Yu was an odd and solitary man: Xin Tang shu, 196.5611. Qin’s poem is ڻᣉሟࡌၲలᆠ.
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syntax that engages us linguistically and the pairing of the line with an innocuous reference to drinking the farewell cups (515-6) camouflage Fanghui’s message, but not so completely as to obscure it.
1096: UP THE YANGZI We turn now to a pair of poems on the willow trees planted along the Qin-Huai Stream in Jinling; it is the fourth month of Shaosheng 3 (1096), and Fanghui is on his way up the Yangzi to the mint in Jiangxia. 167 None of the lines in the first poem is regulated; the second poem, in contrast, is a canonical DBCDABCD with an unremarkable violation of meter only in the penultimate line. First poem first: 517
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ࠟᑪ۫༚ࣟ ϤϤϥϭϭϮϤ ᢰᄘၤ៷ଅ ϤϤϤϥϭϤϤ ಬਞػक़װዣዣ ϥϤϥϭϮϮϥ ᝩֲ႓຺໖צצ ϥϥϤϮϭϭϤ ຯ༙ᖻڍଐࡴᑜ ϤϤϥϭϮϤϥ ߵվಐఐౖ ϤϥϤϤϭϮϤ ߪڼᄎ༚ڶֲ ϥϤϥϥϮϮϥ ᚵ༉ጸອᖩᜃ ϥϥϮϤϭϥϤ
(D26)
The two tides of the Qin-Huai go west and then go east.
(D8)
The willows bordering the Huai are sweet with calid breeze.
(A28)
Sending off spring, white blossoms in spreading profusion go;
(B21)
avoiding the sun, yellow birds all a-twitter-tweet.
(A21)
Tao of Pengze gives many tired-of-office sighs;
(B4)
Huan of Langye is now a worn-by-sickness old man.
(A16)
This body shall again see robust days;
(B17)
I shall repair to this green shade, in which my tented fishing boat will lie.
Notes: 517-2/ This is the Qin-Huai; The name of the dynasty during which a portion of the Huai stream was dug out as a canal normally prefaces the name of the river but is dropped here. 517-5/ Tao of Pengze is Tao Yuanming, who once served as magistrate of Pengze. His famous self-portrait is titled “A Biography of Mr. Five Willows,” the persona deriving his name from the willows planted in front of his house. 168 517-6/ Huan of Langye is Huan Wen ᄵ(312–73). He planted willows in Langye while serving there as governor in 341. When he passed by in 369 on an expedition to recover Chinese territory from foreign occupation, he wept copiously because the large girth of the willows showed how
——— 167 168
ࡴԲଈ Two Poems on the Government Willows on the Qinhuai, 10.12599; Shiyi.8a–8b. For one translation, see Owen, Anthology, 314–15.
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much of his life had passed in the interim. 169
The third couplet of the poem presents us with several puzzles. One puzzle arises from the fact that “tired-of-office sighs” and “worn-by-sickness old man” don’t apply very well to Tao Yuanming or Huan Wen. I think the solution might be to understand the couplet this way: “Like Tao Yuanming, I am surrounded by willows, but unlike Tao, who retired when he grew weary of office, I am still in service. Like Huan Wen, I am moved by how much the willows have grown since last I saw them, but unlike him I am old and sick.” Note that the 3|1 || 3 rhythm sets us up at the major caesura for these reversals. “Tao Pengze|many || tired office sighs; / Huan Langye|today || worn sick gent.” The strategy is one used by comedians: one starts a sentence innocuously, pauses (perhaps with a quick glance at the audience), and finishes rapidly with a surprise ending. We might also note that the words on which we pause, “many” and “now,” are the same tone, a violation that adds to their prominence. (The reader may wonder how “many” and “now” correlate semantically. First, both words can be seen as showing a change of state: “more than before, too many”; “no longer as before, but now.” Secondly, since duo “many” also has the meaning of “usually,” it could be seen as temporal in nature; “today” is of course intrinsically temporal. Thus, “usually” as a secondary meaning gives us another case of parallelism-by-pun.) 170 The fact that the third couplet should be a CD couplet serves to increase its prominence. If line 517-5 had a deflected tone in the second syllable, it would be a C line and the poem would have a normal sequence of line types (after the DD opening): ABCDAB. Unfortunately, all readings of peng are level tones, so the line must be an A line. That forces us, if we wish to preserve minimal tonal parallelism within the third couplet, to give lang in Langye a deflected tone (which the character can have in other contexts), converting a (D28) line (ϤϤ ϤϭϭϮϤ) into a (B4) line (ϤϥϤϤϭϥϤ). The resultant AB couplet lacks adherence with the neighboring couplets, but this helps call attention to its unusual semantic rhythm and clever comparisons between the poet and Tao Yuanming and Huan Wen. This is another poem rich in twisted and compensatory meters (cf. p. 290). Most metrical violations appear to have an identifiable rationale. In the second line of the poem, “willow” stands out as having the sole deflected tone. “Willow” is the stated topic of the poem, of course. Having begun the poem with the tides instead of the stated topic, perhaps Fanghui felt obligated to compensate by giving this word prominence in line 517-2. In the second couplet, “in
——— 169
See the Shishuo xinyu, 2.55. Su Shi correlates duo with wei ‘not yet’ in ڻᣉطԿଈհԲࣟᑔ (1097) and with jiu ‘former/old’ in ᄎᠨஂێՂ࡚ၲల९ࡴ, both in the second couplet of a heptametrical Regulated Verse. SSSJ, 7:41.2267 and 8:48.2611. The latter is one of Su’s poems to Zhou Bin in the 1080s. 170
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spreading confusion go” (khuoH mak mak, line 517-3) and “all a-twitter tweet” (dei tshung tshung, line 517-4) should be impermissible as strings of three identical tones, but each balances the other. (The willows, by the way, are still present in those lines through their white flowers and the yellow birds. The association may be conventional, it may be an example of Chinese honkadori such as we proposed in the previous chapter, or it may be a vague convention supported by a half-remembered predecessor poem. 171 ) As for the string of five deflected tones in line 517-7, this embodies the speaker’s obstinate adherence to the proposition that he will be healthy again someday. From many perspectives, the third couplet is the “star” of the poem. The rest of the poem, however, is a worthy setting for this multifaceted jewel. We must remember that by this time willows were loaded with clichés: their misty looks, various comparisons to feminine beauty, associations with farewells, and so forth. So far, Fanghui has avoided these. Let us see how Fanghui matches this poem with the second of the pair. 518
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۫ࠐሉఐԫਇۣ ϤϤϥϥϥϤϤ ৬ᄐۂ՞ሏ ϥϥϤϤϥϥϤ ᄘᆖఠֱ۞ ϤϥϥϤϤϥϥ ፠ڡᜯ༚ᙈఎ ϤϤϤϥϥϤϤ ९යۿፘছᄻڴ ϤϤϥϥϤϤϥ ࠴ᆺࡵנႾღ ϥϥϤϤϥϥϤ უߠতཛ៱Գढ ϥϥϤϤϮϭϥ ױᐧ౨ጮᑌଅੌ ϥϤϤϥϥϤϤ
D2
Westward I came carrying my illness— one small boat.
B1
Jianye’s mountains and rivers— I’ve failed to make a superlative outing.
C1
The willow trees, after sleep, are feeling good about themselves;
D4
my rush-woven sail, about to be hoisted, demurs to leave.
A1
The long withes seem to dance the roundel of the stream in front;
B1
curled leaves are ready to perform the sorrow of leaving the barriers.
(C14) D1
I see in my mind the great people of the old Southern Courts; Enviable are they for this style of dashing elegance.
Notes: 518-2/ Jianye is another of Jinling’s several names. 518-3/ The “sleeping” of the willows may refer to their wands (“withes” in our translation) hang-
———
171 As a predecessor poem (honka), I propose the މᄘ Breaking Willow Branches ascribed to several Tang poets, among them Shen Quanqi ާࠛཚ (656–715), which uses white flowers and yellow birds in correlated positions. See Guo Maoqian, Yuefu shiji, 2:22.330–31, or the QTS, 1:18.189. There may be other candidates; the more there are, the more conventional the association.
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ing low, or, more likely, to their catkins while covered by the bud scale. 172 518-5–6/ “Stream in Front” and “Going Beyond the Barriers” are ballad titles, the former specifically for dances. 173
The opening couplet sets the situation and the closing couplet offers the expected glance back in time to the Southern Courts that made Jinling their capital. Fanghui’s sickness and resulting “betrayal” of the scenery are what we expect from him; the last line uses language that seems a bit colloquial but is well attested in poetry of the Tang and Song. The interesting lines are in the middle couplets. The second couplet is charming in the images of transference by which the willows “feel good” and the sail dawdles. This same technique is carried into the third couplet, where it becomes more complicated. Because qu (“roundel”) can be either a bend in a river or a song, willow wands can “dance” in the wind at the bend of a river, or they can be imagined to “dance” to the tune named “Stream in Front.” Leaves can “fly/flip” in the breeze, but the verb also means “to perform,” as in “perform ‘Going Beyond the Barriers.’” Thus, in both lines the verbs have one meaning before the strong caesura but take on another meaning in the context of the last three syllables. These are not merely clever puns. “Going beyond the barriers” implies parting, leaving the familiar—leaving, indeed, civilization itself. As Fanghui’s boat moves to the bend of the stream in front, he is leaving his familiar Jinling for the unknown and decidedly less cultured Jiangxia. 174 The effect of having one poem that exuberantly ignores meter and one that includes only one minor metrical violation is one of completeness: when it comes to the willows along the Qin-Huai, all poetic possibilities within the genre have been covered. The situation is slightly different with the next two poems in the collection, still from the fourth month of 1096. The first poem is to harmonize with and bid farewell to Master He of the Qingliang Temple, who (the headnote tells us) has built a Western Hut and invited He Zhu to spend his old age there. The second is written to “bid farewell again” to Master He, who has actually wept to see He Zhu going up to Jiangxia when he is still sick. Fanghui leaves an old portrait of himself “to make the karmic tie to the Western Hut.” We shall not translate these poems, but merely note that, while both poems follow the canonical sequence of line types (DBCDABCD and BDABCDAB), the
——— 172 Ouyang Xiu has willows “sleeping all day keeping the silkworms of Wu company”; see Ouyang Xiu quanji, 1:Jushiwaiji.6.384, . Su Shi’s famous lyric on the willow (to Shuilongyin, ۿक़ᝫ ॺۿक़) speaks of charming eyes opening and closing again, most likely a reference to the emerging catkins. 173 Guo Maoqian, Yuefu shiji, 2:45.657–58. 174 The entire circuit was backward and the few schools it had were elsewhere than Jiangxia. Though humble Hanyang had a school, it was washed away by the Yangzi at some point and not rebuilt until 1190. See Cheng Minsheng, Songdai diyu wenhua, 199–200.
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former is replete with unregulated lines and the latter is almost completely metrical. The first poem is not quite as extreme as the first willow poem (there are no strings of deflected tones beyond four syllables or of level tones beyond three syllables). Nevertheless, it strikes one that Fanghui wanted to show off his daring in the first poem but was so moved in the second poem by the affection of the monk that he curtailed his bravado. 175 Further up the River, still in the fourth month of 1096, Fanghui continues to write metrically “awkward” poems, including くۣࡤᑵᄻ Mooring the Boat in Gushu Creek. 176 526
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ᑪࠐࡤᑵתᗮ ϤϤϤϥϥϤϤ ڡᆵᄻՑᛃࣥڕ ϤϥϤϮϭϭϤ ּॹ՞؈ਚմ ϥϥϤϤϮϥϥ ྤૂػᙊଃ ϤϤϥϥϭϤϤ ߜሏᨡ୷࿆ᥦ ϤϤϥϥϮϤϥ ಐఐֱٗࣞࡀܷ ϤϥϮϮϭϭϤ ጮխԲຸԱࠃܠ ϥϤϥϥϮϤϥ ᱛԼڣᡖ֨ڼ ϤϥϮϤϭϥϤ
D4
The tide comes to Gushu, half a pole deeper.
(B22)
Our sail drops at creek’s mouth; the masts are like a forest.
(C6)
At Mister Xie’s Green Mountain the old well is lost;
(D6)
of Master Huan’s white ramie, no echo is left.
(A5)
For a fine outing I’d put on my clogs but betray a climb to the view;
(B30)
worn and sick I sprawl on my pillow and moan instead.
(A8)
In this place, with a couple of acres I could finish out my affairs;
(B18)
in melancholy for ten years I’ve held to this idea.
Notes: 526-3/ Lu You visited the site of Xie Tiao’s residence on Green Mountain in 1170. “Well” by synecdoche stands for the residence. 177 526-4/ Huan Wen visited a mountain east of Dangtu with singing girls in the fourth century and made merry with the singing of White Ramie ballads. (The mountain was henceforth named White Ramie Mountain). 178 526-7/ “Finish out my affairs” probably means “spend the rest of my days.” 526-8/ “Ten years” may allude to Zhang Shizhi ്ᤩհ of the second century B.C.E. He gave up and decided to withdraw from service after holding the same insignificant position for ten years
———
Poems 519 and 520, ࡉܑ堚ළࡉՂԳ and ૹܑࡉՂԳ, 10.12599–600; Shiyi.8b. 10.12601; Shiyi.10a. Gushu Creek leads to Dangtu ᅝჁ, south of Liyang and upstream on the east side of the River. 177 Chang and Smythe, South China in the Twelfth Century, 85–86. 178 Lu You mentions only that Huan Wen’s tomb is near Dangtu (86), but Wang Anshi has a poem on the mountain. See Linchuan xiansheng wenji, 12.182. See also Li Bo’s ᡖᢤতສ ൄᢥࢌ, Zhan Ying, 4:11.1784–92; no Jitsunosuke, 703–6. 175
176
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without promotion. Cf. the couplet ԼڣլᓳຆᔀΔֲۍኚᔢᙟଘٗ “Ten years with no adjustment, poor and mean; / a hundred days of frequent demotion, following the vagaries of fortune,” by Luo Binwang. 179
Aside from the familiar plenitude of unregulated lines, we are confronted with an AB concluding couplet where there should be a CD couplet. More peculiar is the fact that parallelism in the third couplet is lax by the usual standards of lexical and syntactic correlations. Let us start with that. Overall, there is a basic correlation of structure in lines 526-5 and 6: Purpose | (V-O) || what speaker is not doing; / Reason | (V-O) || what speaker is doing. The logical relationships differ (one puts on clogs in order to have a fine outing but sprawls on the pillow because he is worn and sick), but this incongruity is familiar in parallel lines and attending to it yields one of the pleasures of reading Regulated Verse. The more difficult dissimilarities come in the first and last parts of the two lines. “Fine outing” and “worn and sick,” for example, correlate only as notional opposites, not as syntactically similar phrases. Fu “betray” and fang (“just now”) are parallel only in the sense that the first marks what the speaker is not doing (climbing) and the second marks what he is doing (moaning). Perhaps it is in compensation for this that the last couplet shows stronger parallelism than usual, on a level commonly seen in a strong opening couplet. The phrases “…two acres || finish my affairs” and “…ten years || hold this mindset” semantically correlate very well. (“Two” and “ten” are not opposite tonally, however, which slightly mutes the effect of their correlation.) There is precedent for this in a heptametrical Regulated Verse by Du Fu: ᠲ ઊխᕻ Inscribed on the Bureau Wall. 180 Parallelism in Du’s third couplet is quite weak, but the fourth couplet compensates by exhibiting more parallelism than is normal for closing lines: *
8
ፍᕢಐඡ᠄ຏᤄ ϥϤϤϥϮϤϥ ಯଇᙈಱሔ՚֨ ϥϥϮϮϭϭϤ ঔམྤԫڗᇖ ϥϥϤϤϮϥϥ ߪხֺᠨত८ ϥϤϥϥϭϤϤ
(A6)
A decrepit scholar, worn and slow, besmirching the matricular book.
(B29)
retire to eat? I hesitate, going against my heart.
(C6)
To the “royal robe” never have I given a single word’s mending;
(D7)
appreciating my worth, I’m ashamed to equate to paired billets of southern gold.
Notes: 5/ The phrase translated “matricular book” was a security list of the names of persons permitted
——— 179 Zhang’s threat to retire triggered a recommendation and promotion. See Shiji, 9:102.2751. Luo’s poem is titled ᡱ࣏ਇ, QTS, 3:77.835–37. 180 See Du shi xiangzhu, 2:6.441–43.
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to enter, posted at the entrance to government offices. Du Fu is saying humbly that he does not belong on it. 6/ “Retire to eat” here probably means to resign. 7/ A single word was sufficient to register praise or blame in the histories; though he has the office of reminder (shiyi ਕᙊ), however, Du Fu has never caught any errors or omissions.
This time, the corresponding numbers (“single” and “pair”) are tonally opposite. There is also a loose sort of correlation between grammatical relationships in the last five characters of lines 7 and 8: modifier-verb || number [ ] object. One hesitates to press the comparison of the poems by Du Fu and He Zhu too far, but there is reason to think our poet may have had this poem fresh in his mind about this time. The phrase “paired [billets of] southern gold” is used only eight times in Tang poetry and only one other time (to my knowledge) in Song poetry—in a 1096 poem by He Zhu that we shall translate below (line 530-6). (The phrase also occurs in Zhang Heng’s Four Sorrows, which figured indirectly in one of Fanghui’s 1090 songs, Poem 012). We shall see other hints that Fanghui is refreshing his recollection of Du Fu in these years, so it is not unreasonable to suppose that some of the formal challenges he set for himself, such as nearly doing away with parallelism in the third couplet, were inspired by examples from the Tang master. The last heptametrical Regulated Verse we have from the journey up to Hanyang shows our poet in fine spirits for a change, even “forgetting [the cares of having a] form.” 529
4
8 Notes:
ۂႨࣟতڃމ ϤϥϤϤϥϥϤ ࠟ՞چمڟፂၲ ϥϤϥϥϥϤϤ ᣌଅါفሼՀ ϤϤϥϥϤϤϥ ᙹᑫۣ࠴ຳࠐ ϥϥϤϤϥϥϤ ඁᓜ׆୪ॣᅳᅴ ϤϥϤϤϤϥϥ 堷ູ܀⒕✧ ϥϤϤϥϥϤϤ ढൣಡᢝݮݱᑗ ϥϤϥϥϤϤϥ ଘᛃեᗑݶব ϥϥϤϤϥϥϤ
B4
The posture of the River goes south and east; abruptly it breaks and turns.
D3
Two mountains confront each other soaring; the moorings of the earth are stretched.
A1
A crashing wind splits off stones, bellowing thunder down;
B1
stampeding waves slap the boat, rolling up snow as they come.
C3
Picking lice, the Princes at first eye me askance;
D1
full of fish, the Black Ghosts merely flab their wings.
A2
How can the hearts of others know this pleasure of forgetting form?
B1
I whistle and lean on the mast alone, delightful!
HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE
351
529-2/ Fanghui’s headnote tells us that Lesser Lone Mountain, where he is stopping, and Slapping Waves Shelf face each other. According to Lu You, “When one sees [Lesser Lone Mountain] from several tens of li away, with the cyan peak sheering up alone and striving into the clouds, it is already beyond comparison with other mountains, but the closer one comes the more impressive it is.” “Moorings of the earth” might also be translated the “corners of the earth” (where it is tied down); the sense of the line is that the earth seems to expand as one looks at the river and the rocks jutting up. 181 529-3/ “Princes” are a species of small primate. 182 Fanghui’s headnote tells us there are many monkeys on the rock. 529-6/ Fanghui’s headnote tells us there are many cormorants on the rock, and he uses a Sichuan dialect word for them in the poem. 529-7/ “Others” (wu, objects) must refer to the monkeys and cormorants.
The title of this poem is ඡऒ՛ࡰ՞ ܂Mooring Late at Lesser Lone Mountain. 183 The first half of the poem strives to equal the magnificence of the place. The stretching or opening of the “moorings of earth” (line 529-2) seems to be an original idea in poetry. Certainly the second couplet is a powerful one, too, though the inversion of the local place name Slapping Waves Shelf in the phrase “waves slap” (line 529-4) may strike some as too clever. The third couplet changes the tone and teases the reader with odd names for monkeys and cormorants. The attitude of the animals is comical and the wording clever, even visually: note the eye and feather components of the characters for the binomials at the ends of lines 529-5 and 6. All this is done within a perfectly regulated meter; in a way, the inconspicuousness of the prosody allows us to focus on the precision with which Fanghui has depicted the sights at Lesser Lone Mountain.
1096–98: HANYANG AND JIANGXIA Fanghui had a few important correspondents in poetry during this last period covered by our study, most notably the Zhou brothers and the Pan brothers, whom we have already met in earlier chapters. There are also significant heptametrical Regulated Verses showing how in touch Fanghui was with Huang Tingjian and other major exiles. Two extended heptametrical Regulated Verses of twelve lines show He Zhu’s continuing spirit of experimentation.
——— 181 In contrast, when it is hot and “circulation is blocked,” the “moorings of the earth” are “narrow.” See Han Wo, ՞ೃᝩཔ, QTS, 20:681.7803. For the Lu You passage, see Ru Shu ji 50 or, for a different translation, Chang and Smythe, South China in the Twelfth Century, 97. 182 Liu Zongyuan wrote a parable about factions at the Tang court called ᐩ׆୪֮ “Despising the Princes.” See Liu Hedong ji, 1:18.322–23. 183 10.12601; Shiyi.10b.
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AN EXTENDED REGULATED VERSE The first of these twelve-line poems happens to be the earliest heptametrical Regulated Verse we have after Fanghui’s arrival in Hanyang. (He had been writing other types of poems there for about three months.) Titled ࡌցౖ㔀ਞ ሐխ On Receiving a Letter from Zhou Yuanweng on the Road to Qichun, it is written for Zhou Shou in the eighth month. 184 (It was back in the fifth month that Zhou Shou and Zhou Tao had asked He Zhu to provide an inscription for the studio of their late father, Zhou Dunyi.) As the title indicates, Zhou is now en route to Qichun, seat of Qi Prefecture in Huainan West Circuit (and east of Huangzhou). 530 ᠦᠦߧའᛥࣟࣥ
(D6)
Hanging thickly, vermilion jujubes, a grove east of the wall:
ϤϤϥϥϭϤϤ I open the window, take down the bench, ၲ࿗Հዏࠉᛥອ (D6) and in the shadow of the wall I stay. ϤϤϥϥϭϤϤ With goosefoot staff, to pay me heed, ޚᕟઌᘸհ (A6) I relied on this fine man. ϥϤϤϥϮϤϥ We leaned on the armrest, forgetting words; 4 ឆԷߢݱव֨ݺ (B3) he understood my heart. ϥϥϤϤϭϥϤ Happy accordance late in life: for the first time I met ඡৈॣນԫࣟມ (C14) one Eastern Outlands. ϥϥϤϤϮϤϥ poems pure and lofty: often I tossed back 堚ᇣኚឪᠨত८ (D6) paired southern gold. ϤϤϥϥϭϤϤ Our officiary selves, for rice ࡴߪ۞ۏতק (A5) go south and north; ϤϤϥϥϮϤϥ on the roads of the world, lost sheep 8 ሁՋײྤےվ (B3) the same then and now. ϥϥϤϤϭϥϤ Dream Marsh grass withers ኄᖻ౻ࡰ᧬ C4 the lone post-station far; ϥϥϥϤϤϥϥ Dongting’s rain enters அॸԵᄹۂ (D7) the watchet River deep. ϥϤϥϥϭϤϤ Missing you, with what can I ઌ৸۶אఴᣉ (A7) congratulate your lofty demeanor? ϤϤϤϥϮϤϥ 12 ெᖫટଅܷྶد A cassia tree, autumn’s wind, (B3) intoning on a jade zither. ϥϥϤϤϭϥϤ Notes: 530-2/ One who entertains few guests keeps a bench hanging on the wall and takes it down only
——— 184
Poem 530, 10.12601; Shiyi.11a.
HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE
353
for a particularly cherished friend. 185 530-3/ The phrase translated “this [fine] man” is an archaic one from the Classic of Poetry occasionally revived in later poetry. It generally implies admiration or affection. 530-4/ “Leaning on the armrest (or writing table)” implies being “lost in contemplation.” 186 530-5/ “Eastern Outlands,” is a name, the cognomen of the Tang poet Meng Jiao. Meng was a good friend of Han Yu and was an exacting poet, so in the present poem he must represent Zhou Shou as friend and poet. 530-6/ “Paired southern gold” is one of the gifts to be given in requital to a gift from the “fair one” in Zhang Heng’s “Four Sorrows.” Fanghui probably means to say that only such a gift would be a worthy response to Zhou’s letter and poems. 530-8/ See the note to line 8 of On the Road Returning from Yun to Xu, Poem 177. 530-9–10/ Cloud-Dream Marsh covered a vast area west of Jiangxia in ancient times. Dongting Lake is a major lake 170 km southwest up the Yangzi.
Extended heptametrical Regulated Verses are rare. Du Fu seems to have been the first to write one; Bo Juyi and Yuan Zhen also produced a few. “Owing to the fact that these are long and enormous works, the difficulty in creating them is extreme; if the author’s talent is not up to it, he is likely to end up with repeated characters, expedient rhymes, or problems with the thread of thought.” 187 Fanghui announces at the beginning that he is not cowed by these dangers: he repeats the word “wall” in the first couplet. In fact, he audaciously repeats the exact same meter in lines 530-1 and 2. (In other DD openings, he comes close to this, but usually the first two lines differ by at least one syllable. See for example Poem 315, Presented to Qian Duxun at a Banquet; and Poem 504, Joyful Over Rain at Hailing.) Fanghui also decides that the heptametrical extended form, unlike its pentametrical equivalent, will not be a test of how many regulated couplets one can write: he makes eleven of his twelve lines unregulated, and he is not fastidious about semantic parallelism, either. His tonal violations are startlingly systematic, as if he is subjecting himself to a substitute challenge. In every line with a tonal violation, only the fifth syllable has the “wrong” tone. (Line 530-4 could be ϥϥϮϤϭϥϤ, but the third word is frequently read with a level tone in poetry, and I do so here for the sake of the consistent pattern.) The bravado inherent in the extended Regulated Verse, then, is simply restated in terms of being consistent in one’s violations and sustaining the consistency beyond the length of the normal Regulated Verse. It would be hard to point out a couplet that could be eliminated to tighten the poem. The first half of the poem treats of the friendship Fanghui and Zhou Shou enjoyed before Zhou went downriver. The time frame of the first couplet seems intentionally ambiguous; if Fanghui “takes down the bench” now, it cer-
——— 185
See the notes to Shishuo xinyu, 1.1, or Hou Han shu, 6:53.1745 and 8:66.2159. “Lost in contemplation” is in fact how Michael Fuller translates it in The Road to East Slope, 234–35, line 3 of Su Shi’s ࡉធՊទ◻ڠᄅഘִ࡙ԲଈհԲ (SSSJ, 3:16.845; 1078). 187 Ye Jun et. al, Zhongguo shixue, 112. 186
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tainly reminds him of the times he welcomed Zhou Shou to his lodging between the fifth and seventh months of 1096. The second couplet states their closeness directly; the third allusively compares their friendship with that of the poets Han Yu and Meng Jiao and their exchange of poems with the exchange of gifts between Zhang Heng’s two parties. The next two couplets give us a transition to the concluding couplet, though they are a little opaque. Because perpetual itinerancy for the sake of salary is a favorite complaint of He Zhu, we might render line 530-7 as “My officiary self for rice goes south and north.” but surely Zhou Shou is included in this situation. He is the one who left Hanyang in the seventh month to go upriver; now he is downriver, east of Huangzhou. Line 530-8, literally “world road, lose sheep, no ancient [or] present,” is surely more abstract. In light of the apparent allusion to Yang Zhu’s distress over people’s inability to trace roads back to where they have not yet split so that the lost sheep can be found, this line must mean that Zhou and Fanghui are adrift in a world of divergences, caught in a universal and timeless crisis of the loss of meaning. The next couplet’s references to Cloud-Dream Marsh and Lake Dongting interrupt these thoughts with apparently straight scenic description. Strictly speaking, the marsh and lake, lying to the southwest and west of Hanyang, are not visible to our poet; they are simply evoked to represent the atmosphere of the northern portion of the Middle Yangzi region, Jinghu North Circuit. Zhou Shou is quite some way to the east, but since he is still on the edge of this low and watery basin, the mood Fanghui is evoking with his withering grass and gloomy rain must also be imagined to envelop his friend. In any case, this shift to the evocation of scene gives the return to the theme of friendship in the following couplet the force of poetic closure. The last couplet—” Missing you, with what can I congratulate your lofty demeanor? / A cassia tree, autumn’s wind, intoning on a jade zither”—is worth exploring briefly. If, as its usual application would suggest, the word “congratulate” means that Zhou Shou is having a birthday, Fanghui makes an effort to avoid the triteness of extending congratulations on his lofty years. Instead, he congratulates him on his yun, his “resonance,” his demeanor. The reference to the nephrite-inlaid qin (floor zither) is interesting in a different way. A line by Du Fu raises the possibility that this line actually refers to the writing of poetry. Du Fu’s ۫ᎹԲଈհԫ West Gallery (first of two poems) contains the line ᄅᇣ २“ ྶدNew poems: I draw near the jade zither,” the idea being that the zither is the poet’s companion as he composes, perhaps chanting them as he plucks a few notes. 188 Fanghui’s use of the verb “intone,” which usually has “poetry” as its object, would fit this reading of Du Fu’s line. If Fanghui is borrowing that
——— 188
See Du shi xiangzhu, 4:17.1473–74.
HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE
355
idea from Du Fu, it is one more clue that he might have been rereading the master’s poetry.
EQUANIMITY IN JIANGXIA The notion that any phenomenon “has no ancient [or] present” (line 530-8) is indirectly contradicted in a set of three poems from the following month. Fanghui asserts that he is content in the present place and the present time. By this time he has crossed the Yangzi to Jiangxia; the set is titled ۂટᡖԿଈ Three Autumn Musings at Jiangxia. 189 535 Գढㆯ༈૰ᑈᙈ
B4
Men and objects creep on, pressed by the gradual waning of the light.
ϤϥϤϤϥϥϤ The autumn wind over ten thousand miles, ટଅᆄߺࠐڕཚ (D6) comes as on a schedule. ϤϤϥϥϭϤϤ The hidden insects chirr, chirr; ৩֊֊ຶ۶ሐ (A5) What are they saying, anyway? ϤϤϥϥϮϤϥ itinerant swallows all in a rush; ᧿ᗊצצലڜհ (B10) where will they go, then? ϤϥϤϤϭϭϤ In Luo they intone softly; ՀპܷเᖑᏗ C2 I just cup hand over nose; ϥϥϤϤϤϥϥ at the Western Hills the air is lively, ۫՞෯֭ᙲ D2 and I prop up my jaw. ϤϤϥϥϥϤϤ How could I wield brush and ink ्ലᘃᕠ༟ੌᆵ A4 to lament falling into obscurity? ϥϤϥϥϤϤϥ send word to the Three Wards: ബԿᔸԫழ B1 “that was then.” ϥϥϤϤϥϥϤ
4
8
Notes: 535-5/ Xie An’s unique voice for intoning poetry was alluded to in line 326-2 on p. 332). Xie was chanting in the manner of the scholars of Luo[yang]. 535-6/ This alludes to Wang Huizhi making a comment about the weather as a way of putting off a discussion of his official duties. 190 535-8/ The Lord of the Three Wards was Qu Yuan. “That was then,” literally, “that was one time,” is an abbreviation of the assertion that “That was one time; this is one time,” an argument sometimes made against using a precedent to settle a policy question. Such a statement is rare in
——— 189
Poems 534–36, 10.12603; Shiyi.12a–12b. Shishuo xinyu, 24.13. It can also be read as a threat to retire if pressed to perform those duties efficiently. See Mather’s note to the episode. 190
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poetry. 191
Given that Fanghui is usually so quick to identify with Qu Yuan, the fact that the last couplet states a refusal to emulate him is quite startling. In fact, the entire poem is filled with refusals. (We begin to sense that something might be different when the autumn wind “comes as on schedule” in line 535-2, as if there is some consolation in its regularity.) The poet declines to hear any dolorous messages in the chirring of the crickets and pretends not to know (or care?) where the swallows will go. He is content to write poetry as best he can in his own way, not worrying that he doesn’t have quite the capital intonation (line 535-5). (Notice that starting from this line, he settles into the confident ease of tonal regulation.) He’ll find excuses not to discuss his duties or his performance with his superiors (line 535-6). Thus, it is entirely consistent of him to “send word” to Qu Yuan saying, “I am not going to lament my fate by writing in the dolorous poetic tradition you started; I live in my own time.” In keeping with this notion, the third couplet of the third poem insists that only the present exists and, even more startlingly, the present place is as good as home. 536
4
8
ߪڼಡ༚ᢀ۫ࣟ ϥϤϥϥϥϤϤ ੌۂྋ۴Ⴞព ϤϥϤϤϥϥϤ ڴડॺቹԿᛤড় ϥϥϤϤϤϥϥ ऴራ۶ᆡքౖᨗ ϤϤϤϥϥϤϤ Տڣຫᇾચվֲ ϤϤϤϥϮϤϥ ᆄߺਚႼྫጮխ ϥϥϮϤϭϥϤ ևཋೝಲԳਐᑇ ϥϥϥϤϤϥϥ آᚨܷ݄ֆ ϥϤϤϥϥϤϤ
D3
How could this self of mine still be tied to going west and east,
B4
Roaming about on rivers and lakes, companion to the barrier geese?
C2
Bend the smoke hole—but I don’t aim to be a three-beaker guest.
D4
straighten the hook—what envy have I for the six-turtle gent?
(A7)
The leftover traces of a thousand years: only this day;
(B17)
my old garden ten thousand miles away, as if here.
C4
A supernumerary, I perchance escape people keeping track.
D1
I should not be intoning and whistling so it hinders public business.
Notes: 536-3/ Paraphrase: “Although I give good advice, I don’t aim to be rewarded in a way that exposes me to danger.” There is an ancient parable about the wisdom of listening to advice to bend
——— 191 See, for example, Dongfang Shuo’s use of the full phrase in the Hanshu, 9:65.2864. In poetry, only Fanghui’s slightly younger contemporary Li Zhi used the expression. Li’s undated poem titled ։ᠲײଉ, QSS, 20:1203.13616, may or may not have preceded He’s.
HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE
357
a straight chimney and move firewood away from it before a fire breaks out (as opposed to feeling proud about rewarding those who come to the rescue after the house catches fire.) For an early reference to three beakers, see the Zuo Tradition, Xuan 2. In that story, a retainer’s men rush him out of danger after learning that he is about to be murdered by the followers of the man who has invited him to dine and drink. They use a maxim about drinking as an excuse to cut short the drinking party: three beakers of brew are the most one can drink without losing a sense of propriety, so it’s time to go! 192 536-4/ Overlapping paraphrases: “Even if I hope that my advice will be sought, I don’t want to be so successful that I am punished,” and “Since I am using a straight hook, I obviously don’t want to catch turtles and be punished.” The elderly Lü Shang ࡸܨwas fishing in the Wei River when King Wen of Zhou discovered him and took him in as his teacher. At least by Tang times, it was said that Lü had been using a straight hook, because his aim was not to catch fish. The reference to the six-turtle gent comes from the Liezi: a giant hooked six of the fifteen turtles that God had caused to hold up the islands of the immortals in the eastern sea so they would be stable. Again, there is a price to be paid for success: God is angry that two of the five islands drift off to the north and sink, so he gradually reduces the size of the kingdom where the giant lives and shrinks its people. 193 536-8/ This line might mean “It is not right that I should be seen as hindering public business because I compose poems all the time.”
The second couplet is the most densely allusive in this poem, each line containing two literary allusions. Perhaps the poet is expressing frustration with his assignment at the mint: we might go so far as to speculate that he has tried to give good advice but has been accused of angling for favors. Now, not wanting to be the target of murderers, he has no ambition to achieve the kind of success that would anger someone powerful. The third couplet is startling in its own way. It asserts that history only exists in this moment and that the poet’s old home is equivalent to “this place.” This means that the poet cannot be emotionally pulled by things far away. The fourth couplet, though the second line seems a bit awkward (see note, above), appears to mean that he cannot be pushed by pressures close at hand. Taken together, these two poems represent an emotional centeredness, contentment with the here-and-now, that Su Shi was achieving in his own way. 194 The colloquial phrase translated “this place” connotes fondness for a location. It was first used by He Zhu in the first of the four poems inscribed on his
——— 192 For one version of the chimney parable, see the Han shu, 9:68.2958. For a translation of the Zuo Tradition, Xuan 2, see Legge, 290. 193 The Lü Shang story is in the Shi ji, 32.1477–78. For an example of the association of Lü with the straight hook, See Luo Yin, ᠲゞᄻিቹ, QTS, 19:665.7623. For the turtle story, see A. C. Graham, The Book of Lieh-tz, 97–98. 194 Cf. Ronald Egan’s reflections on Su’s poems of the time: “[W]e can almost hear the poet prepping himself, preparing to utter one of his famous claims that he is, after all, a native of this place, that he has never so enjoyed a trip, that in fact he has discovered a Penglai. In much of Su Shi’s exile poetry, hints of resentment and assertions of contentment appear side by side.… They may be understood as two aspects of the same determination not to allow the spirit to be crushed.” Word, Image, and Deed, 257.
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lodging in Hailing in 1094 (Poem 506, not translated in this study). Next, in his poem at Gushu Creek, Fanghui had said, “In this place, with a couple of acres I could finish out my affairs.” (See line 526-7.) It will be used again in 1097, referring to books as places in which one can find the ancients. 195 Now, this phrase is used a couple of times by Su Shi and by Hanshan (a shadowy Tang figure whose works, though widely translated, are now thought to have been composed by several hands into the Song Dynasty). It is not used in Tang poetry, and it is seldom used in the Southern Song. The one person who seems especially fond of it is Huang Tingjian. This poem may constitute an early piece of evidence that Huang and Fanghui were in contact. We might see the density of allusion in lines 536-3 and 4 as further evidence, since Huang is especially fond of using fragments of disparate and unrelated allusions to force us to intuit meanings beyond the text. Since Huang Tingjian will send some tea to He Zhu in 1097, it is by no means unreasonable to suppose some communication between them in 1096.
QIN GUAN, LÜ DAFANG, SU SHI, HUANG TINGJIAN In the tenth month of Shaosheng 3 (1096), Qin Guan passed down the Mian River on his way into exile in Chenzhou ⍣ڠ, at the bottom of Jinghu South Circuit. Although Qin did not come to the south bank of the Yangzi so he could visit He Zhu, our poet was aware that he was passing through and sent him the following poem, titled ബܑ֟ཾ Sent in Farewell to Qin Shaoyou. 196 538
4
ၺྋՂ՛ఎຑ ϥϤϤϥϥϤϤ ጊਢছழט᠅ޕ ϤϥϤϤϥϥϤ ੌת࡙ٻሐ ϤϥϥϤϤϥϥ உᝫۂᑗᅝڣ ϥϤϤϥϥϤϤ ጮᏞאسթี ϥϤϤϥϤϤϥ ॳങࡴՊڶ۔ᒴ ϤϥϤϤϥϥϤ
———
D1
North of the Mian, on the lake, you tarry a little;
B4
Perhaps you are, from a former time, the Banished Immortal Li.
C1
If you’re drifting off to Yelang, you’ve done only half the route.
D1
straightaway come back to Jiangxia to enjoy your fittest years.
A2
Him self with talent is burdened;
B4
officer of thilk, my destiny is to age.
195 Poem 545, ᑰא۔९ᒧޣܠא೫ءಬհ Pan Binlao Used a Long Poem to Ask to Borrow One of My Books; I Gave Him a Copy, 10.12604; Shiyi.15a. 196 Poem 538, 10.12603; Shiyi.13a.
HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE
8
ৱֆូٍܠᒽ ϥϥϤϤϤϥϥ ਞଅ٣ᙄࠟድํ ϤϤϤϥϥϤϤ
359
C2
I’ll wait for you to return, then I too shall quit.
D4
Before the spring wind I’ll make arrangements for two fishing boats.
Notes: 538-1–2/ See our discussion of the pentametrical Regulated Verse Court Gentleman’s Lake in the previous chapter. The “Banished Immortal” is Li Bo, who passed through on his way to exile in Yelang. 538-3/ Qin Guan was still at least 600 km away from Chenzhou, nearly as far Yelang (assuming an impossible more-or-less direct route for both). 538-4/ Dangnian can mean either ‘years of fitness and vigor’ or ‘that [past] year.’ If the latter meaning were intended, the invitation would be to recreate the enjoyment of Li Bo’s visit. 197 Fanghui is 45 sui in 1096; Qin Guan is three years older. 538-5–6/ Two dialectical demonstrative pronouns are used here, neither unknown in earlier poetry, but definitely not standard classical Chinese. Ge nong (“him self,” line 5) reappears in two of Fanghui’s heptametrical Regulated Verses and two of his lyrics. Fanghui jokingly calls himself an “officer of thilk” (line 6) because adu “thilk” by itself and adu wu “thilk thing” are euphemisms for cash, and Fanghui is supervisor of a mint where cash is made. 198
The third couplet is remarkable not only for its use of non-standard pronouns but also for the 3|4 parsing of the lines, overriding the normal 4|3 rhythm. But the most noteworthy thing about this poem is that it was written at all. Again Fanghui has chosen to declare his friendship with a man whom powerful people in the government hope will die in exile or on the long journey to exile. As Zhong Zhenzhen has pointed out, Fanghui did not write poems about these people when they were in high places; he wrote about them when the prudent thing would be to disavow even knowing them. 199 This is testament to his feisty independence and evidence that he had found again the derring-do spirit he claims to have had in his youth. We mentioned that Fanghui delayed his poem on Su Shi’s exile to Yingzhou
———
197 The only precedent I have found for the line is in Li He’s poem ඩፕײღ, in which I think the poet refers to the King of Liang enjoying his youth. See Chen Hongzhi, Li changji geshi jiaoshi, 4:294–96. 198 For ge nong, see Poem 316 (1092), ֙عՂցڶᡖ८ສ៱ሏ At Shangyuan in the Year Renshen I am thinking about Old Companions in Jinling, 7.12574; 7.8a, and Poem 546 (1097), ࣼ׆ق Shown to Wang Bi, 10.12604; Shiyi.15a. For the lyrics, see Zhong Zhenzhen, Dongshan ci, 47–48 (n. 2) and 227–30 (n. 14). For adu wu, see the Shishuo xinyu, 10.9. My translation uses an archaic/dialectical word meaning ‘this.’ 199 Bei Song ciren He Zhu yanjiu, 82–85. Fanghui’s policy of not keeping poems written to the rhymes of others may have resulted in the destruction of poems exchanged with or written in response to Su Shi or Huang Tingjian when they were in high positions. We might still hope for evidence in Su or Huang’s collections of such exchanges, but there is none. If Huang’s famous quatrain to He (praising him as a lyricist) was answered, we have no record of it. It is ascribed to 1103 when Huang was in the Jiangxia area, still being persecuted. ( See Hu Sheng, Huang Tingjian nianpu xinbian, 396.) Any reply from He Zhu would have been lost with the rest of his later collection.
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until Su was passing through the vicinity of Hailing. We don’t know if the delay can be blamed on Fanghui’s not getting the news until then, but in the fourth month of 1097 Fanghui is almost immediately aware that Su’s exile has been changed to Danzhou on the island of Hainan, and he reacts quickly. Pan Dalin had heard the news and had written a set of poems expressing his thoughts for Su. Fanghui chimes in with two of his own: ᑰנ۔Լᑇᇣઃڶᡖᤕ⭟ृڠ ڂᓿԲଈPan Binlao took out ten-some poems; all had thoughts of Su of Danzhou, so I wrote two poems. 200 539 Գᄿഭ॰ᣂ
4
8
ϤϤϥϥϥϤϤ ޓਐ⭟࣡ڠ๔ၴ ϥϥϤϤϥϥϤ Կִٌ֚ዥॸ ϤϥϥϤϤϥϥ ࣟতچጐֽ௬՞ ϤϤϥϥϥϤϤ ࠉಮਞ౻ᚆ؈ ϤϤϤϥϤϤϥ ቝટଅᦊ႒ᝫ ϥϥϤϤϥϥϤ ڃᆡࣾၺᔃ׀ ϤϥϤϤϤϥϥ ຳഘམ۴Լڣၳ ϥϤϤϥϥϤϤ
D2
Smoke of human habitation, sparse then gone: Ghost-Gate Pass.
B1
Point the way now to Danzhou, in the empty vastness.
C1
In the margin between the third month and the fourth, heaven leaking rain.
D2
at the end of land east and south, water floating mountains.
A3
wistful and uncertain in spring grasses, the wagtails on the plain are lost;
B1
vaguely visualized in autumn wind, the crane-caroche returns.
C3
[He] looks back and envies you at Heyang, wise father and sons:
D1
Snowy Hall was your companion for a decade of leisure.
Notes: 539-1/ There is a Ghost-Gate Pass north of the peninsula down which Su Shi would travel to cross to Hainan. Few Chinese who ventured south of it returned alive. Su Shi’s route from Tengzhou through Rongzhou ୲ ڠalmost certainly took him through that pass. 201 539-5/ “Wagtail [on the] plain” stems from Ode 164 of the Classic of Poetry and symbolizes brotherly affection because of the content of the song. Su Shi and his brother would meet up the following month and travel down to the point of embarkation together. When Fanghui wrote this poem he could already anticipate the pain of separation the two brothers, who were so close, would feel. 202
——— 200 10.12602; Shiyi.13a and 13b. In the sixth month of Shaosheng 1 (1094), before Su Shi reached Yingzhou (or even Jinling), his exile had been changed to Huizhou, slightly more distant. See Kong Fanli, Su Shi nianpu, 3:33.1158. 201 On the perils of the area, see Jiu Tang shu, 5:41.1743. I suspect that Su Shi took this route rather than going the shorter distance along the coast because it was a more established travel route for Han people and perhaps avoided territory controlled by pirates or unfriendly ethnic groups. On the basis of such considerations, Fanghui could have predicted that Su would go through Ghost Gate Pass weeks before he actually did so. 202 Kong Fanli, Su Shi nianpu, 3:36.1268–71.
HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE
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539-6/ The “crane caroche” returning to Heaven is probably a euphemistic reference to the death of Lü Dafang ܨՕ (1027–97) the sixteenth of the month. (The word translated “vaguely visualized” can also refer to the “sound and image” of the deceased.) In the recent wave of persecutions, Lü Dafang had been exiled to a prefecture northeast of Huizhou but died en route even before he made it over the mountains from southern Jiangnan West Circuit. 203 539-7–8/ Pan Dalin and his father and brother were not from Heyang but from the Fujian area. Here, they are likened to Pan Yue (once a magistrate at Heyang), who wrote a Rhapsody on Living in Idleness about his retirement in 295–97. 204 They had lived in Huangzhou since about the time of Su Shi’s exile there; when he left Huangzhou in 1084, he gave the Snow Hall that he had built early in 1082 over to them as a residence. 205
This poem is remarkable in several ways. As noted above, it openly sympathizes with Su Shi at a time when it must have been dangerous to do so; but it also notes the death of the former vice director of the Secretariat, Lü Dafang, in some ways even a more prominent victim of the purges. The poem also tells us how fast news spread from where events happened, rather than depending on official or unofficial channels centered on the capital. The transfer of Su Shi “beyond the land,” as Fanghui puts it, could have been leaked from the capital to reach Jiangxia about the same time Su himself got the bad news from the prefect of Huizhou on the seventeenth. 206 However, Lü died in a remote river valley on the north side of the Lingnan Range only one day earlier. Assuming my conjecture that line 539-6 refers to Lü’s death is correct, even if government messengers left at high speed for the capital on the sixteenth to report this event, it would seem that there would be barely enough time before the end of the month in which the poem was written for the news to be disseminated out again from the capital by normal channels. 207 For He Zhu to allude to Lü’s death in the fourth month, he must have gotten information directly from the south; thus, there is no reason why the shocking news about Su Shi could not have come the same way. It should be pointed out that the subject of line 539-7, “[He] looks back and envies you at Heyang, wise father and sons,” is not specified. I think it is Su Shi: he looks back with envy on Pan Dalin and his father and brother for being able to enjoy his Snow Hall for over ten years of “leisure.” Even if it is Fanghui himself who looks back in envy, the implied point does not change. The man who
——— 203 See the Song shi, 340.10844 and Aoyama et al., Sdaishi nempy, 164. Lin Yutang, The Gay Genius, passim, has a number of anecdotes involving Lü Dafang and Su Shi when Lü was at the highest levels of government. 204 Tr. David Knechtges, Wen Xuan, 3:145–57. The comparison to Pan Yue was also made by Su Shi in 1083, in a lyric to the matrix Dielianhua (ܑᣠܩܩԫᔨ). However, it is not clear which brother (or an uncle) is meant. See Xue Ruisheng, Dongpo ci biannian jianzheng, 404–9. 205 See Kong Fanli, Su Shi nianpu, 2:21.531–33 and 23.602. 206 Kong Fanli, Su Shi nianpu, 3:36.1261. 207 The fastest speed for document delivery, proposed in 1091 for the transmission of amnesties, was five hundred li per day. See Changbian, 13:457.3b (4621a) and (for the same text), the Song huiyao, 8:191.Fangyu 10.25 (7486a).
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built Snow Hall has risen to the upper levels of government and then fallen victim to even greater persecution; it is the friends who have been looking after the building for him since 1084 who have been the lucky ones. The second poem of the pair is one syllable short of being as perfectly regulated as the first poem. It concentrates on Su Shi and his absence from both Huangzhou and his original home in Sichuan. What interests me most about this poem is line 540-7: 540 8
լᚨޓᐖᒡღݳ ϥϤϥϥϤϤϥ ஔ࠷ؓࢍ݄سᒡ ϥϥϤϤϥϥϤ
A2
You shouldn’t expand on the Record of Exhaustion and Sorrow;
B1
realizing that a whole lifetime is just such exhaustion.
Notes: 540-7/ Li Deyu ޕᐚᇛ (787–850), a powerful official and poet, was exiled to Chaozhou on the southeast coast. Before he died, he penned a collection of writings called Record of Exhaustion and Sorrow, in which he severely castigated his enemies. 208 540-8/ The words zuo and di in this line have so many meanings that the translation of this line must remain tentative. 209
Fanghui comes close to writing Su Shi off in the first poem: whether it is Lü Dafang’s death that is indicated in line 539-6 or that of someone else, it is not a good omen for Su Shi’s future. In rejecting the precedent of Li Deyu’s rancor, however, the second poem implies that Su can avoid dying in exile as Li did. After all (to suggest an interpretation of line 540-8), if you know life is poverty/exhaustion/defeat, you cannot be defeated by it. 210 The cosmic cynic will live. This admonition to Su Shi not to be writing things that attack his opponents comes a little late. The same is true of “you’ll never imitate the niggling, nagging song of the ‘five gentlemen’” of 1094 (line 510-8), whether intended as praise for Su’s equanimity or as a recommendation to keep silent. By the 1090s Su’s enemies were twisting anything he had ever done or said in order to discredit him. Neither conciliatory gestures nor silence would have saved the day. In any case, line 540-7 reminds us of a famous remark that Huang Tingjian made about
——— 208
See the Jiu Tang shu, 172.4473 and 174.5528. An alternative rendering of the last three words would be: “those who sit are poor.” Zuodi in the discourses of the Southern Song philosopher Zhu Xi means “ones who sit.” This is the only place I have seen these words used together, however; I don’t think this use of di as a nominalizing suffix is attested in poetry. Since such a reading does not produce any breakthrough in interpreting Fanghui’s line, there is no point in adopting it. 210 The only other poetic reference to Li’s Record of Exhaustion and Sorrow of which I am aware is in a heptametrical Quatrain by Chao Buzhi. Chao says that when the autumn rains were interminable, Li would have been better off taking a nap than writing his Record. This flippant attitude works in that genre better than it would work in a Regulated Verse, I think. See the second of five poems, ࣪ဘഘᦰնଈ, QSS, 19:1139.12878. 209
HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE
363
this time. Huang had gone up the Yangzi to exile in the Sichuan Basin the year before Fanghui left the capital for Jiangxia, and in 1097 he was still in Qianzhou ᚉڠ, in the mountain valleys south of the Yangzi. His wife’s nephew, Hong Chu ੋ, had written a letter to which Huang responded, in part, “Before the Shaosheng era [began in 1094], I didn’t know the tools for writing, so when I take out my old writings and read them they are laughable. After the Shaosheng era [began], I started to understand writing, but I am already old, sick, and lazy, and cannot put brush to paper. You should work hard at writing, to erase my shame! Although [your essay] “Scolding the Dog” is bold and unusual, it would be all right if you had not written it. [Su] Dongpo’s writings are the marvel of the world, but their shortcoming is that they are prone to scolding. By all means, do not follow in his ruts.” 211 Whether this advice was to be taken at face value or was a bitter comment on censorship in the Shaosheng period, it shows that Su Shi’s greatest admirers could recognize his frankness as a liability. Fanghui might be voicing the same recognition in his poem of the fourth month of 1098. The best evidence that Fanghui was “in the loop” concerning news of Huang Tingjian is two poems under the long titleڶቖ۞խࠐ႓ᚉ֫ڠ፹ಁଫ౨ ሐࠡ೯ᙩፖᑰ۔ᓿԲଈ There Was a Monk Who Came from the Gorges. He was Carrying Tea Processed by the Hand of Huang of Qiangzhou and Could Tell of His Activities. With Pan Binlao I Wrote Two Poems. 212 The title is followed by an informative headnote: The people of Huang’s native place had collected over ten jin of silver (one jin averaged 633 grams in the Song) to send to Huang; they entrusted it to a young man. “In the end, it was hidden and not sent.” Whether this means the young man absconded with the silver or the donors lost their nerve is not clear. Fanghui says that his line about the yellow dog (541-5) is a reference to this, and it is likely (though not certain) that the line places the responsibility on the messenger. 541
4
آፊࣟᨠګ ϥϤϤϤϥϤϤ ߠ۫তᆄߺ۩ ϤϥϤϤϥϥϤ ൕ݄۶ᣂޕຟര ϤϥϤϤϮϭϥ ᇖՋྫৱ፻٣س ϥϤϤϥϥϤϤ ֨ᣬ႓ࠐާׅ ϤϤϤϥϤϤϥ
D1
Before we’ve heard from the Eastern Library that the memorial document is finished,
B4
Suddenly we see him off to the southwest on a ten-thousand mile journey.
(C14)
Guilt by association—what connection with Commandant Li?
D1
restoring the lost—we still await Master Chu.
A3
Your heart left hanging: Yellow Dog sunk the budget on the way;
——— 211 212
See Zheng Yongshao, Huang Tingjian nianpu xinbian, 290–91. 10.12603; Shiyi.13b and 14a.
364
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ۘክॹᕐవ៱Ꮣ ϥϥϤϤϥϥϤ ழᆏߏஅ۞ᐣ ϤϥϤϤϤϥϥ Ꮥലᠩװႀᙟכ ϥϤϤϥϥϤϤ
B1
your ears are used to it: the grey colt makes only the sound of yore.
C3
As the seasons pass, one’s own courtyard is the greatest consolation.
D1
the phoenix takes its chicks away; the goose follows older brother.
Notes: 541-1/ In the seventh month of 1093, on the recommendation of the soon-to-be-deposed Lü Dafang, Huang Tingjian was appointed assistant director of the Palace Library. (Fanghui uses the Han Dynasty appellation for the institution, as was common). Huang, who had been at home in mourning, was to resume his work on the Veritable Records of the reign of Shenzong. Zou shu here may refer to a memorial announcing the completion of the work, or perhaps to the work itself. 541-2/ Huang declined the appointment to the Palace Library but was summoned to approach the capital to be interrogated about his earlier work on the Veritable Records, which were seen as insufficiently laudatory toward the New Policies. He arrived in Chenliu in the eleventh month of 1094 and was exiled to Qianzhou after enduring several weeks of criticism for falsifying history. 213 541-3/ Commandant Li is Li Ling ޕສ, a young general captured alive in 99 BCE. By defending Li against his critics, the great historian Sima Qian earned himself a death sentence, commuted to castration. 214 541-4/ Master Chu is Chu Shaosun ፻֟୪ (fl. ca. 35 BCE), who is credited with filling in missing sections of Sima Qian’s Records of the Historian. 215 541-5/ Yellow Dog is another name for Yellow Ear, the dog that traveled back and forth from home to capital to bring letters to Lu Ji ຬᖲ (261–303). 216 “Budget” is chosen to translate hao because both words have meanings associated with both expenditures and news sent by letter. An alternative parsing of the line would yield, “Your heart was set on the Yellow Dog, but [the donors] sunk the budget that was on the way.” 541-6/ The young man in the Yellow Millet Dream story was riding a grey colt. In his dream, when he was on the point of suicide, he told his wife he wished he could go back to riding his grey colt on the roads of Handan. 541-8/ “The Phoenix Takes Its Chick Away” was the title of an old ballad associated with parental love. The reference to geese must reflect a belief that unmated male geese migrate with their unmated brothers born the previous year. 217
——— 213 Huang had been at work on the Veritable Records from the year after Shenzong’s death in 1085 until 1091, most of the Yuanyou period. For the events of 1093–94 mentioned, see Zheng Yongxiao, Huang Tingjian jianpu xinbian, 251–63. 214 See Stephen Durrant, The Cloudy Mirror, 8–9. 215 Although some scholars have seen Chu Shaosun’s contributions as forgeries, Fanghui clearly sees them in a positive light as completing an incomplete work. See Durrant, Cloudy Mirror, xx. 216 See the Jin shu, 5:54.1473. 217 For the “Phoenix,” see Su Shi’s poem to a man who has gotten a post where he can take care of his parents, ಬݚዌཛཋव༙ڠ०ࠊԲᘣ, SSSJ, 5:28.1508–9, line 12. For the geese, I have found only Liu Yuxi’s lines ߠႀᙟװכΔᦫᦉ֖ޣᜢ “I see geese follow their older brothers away / and hear the sound of orioles seeking friends,” from the linked verse ቜ୴ࠐق ڶԿਞٻඡृᣄڢհᎅ……, QTS, 22:790.8900–8901.
HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE
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This poem advances our understanding of Fanghui’s interest in historiography in his Jiangxia period. Guilt by association (line 541-3) was of course sending into exile anyone who could be accused of being part of the “Yuanyou faction.” The poem sees this as reminiscent of the humiliation of Sima Qian. If the modern-day Sima Qian (high praise for Huang!) were silenced, there will be gaps in the record that others must fill (541-4), if only by the writing of unofficial histories. The third couplet is a clever way of referring to the diversion of the silver and the waking of the fallen official from his Yellow Millet Dream. Allusion to the dream through the grey colt is highly unusual (I know of no other example), and indeed the dog as a carrier of silver rather than mere letters is fresh. The last line in the poem shows that the monk who had come down through the Yangzi Gorges had related the comings and goings of Huang’s family. References to the phoenix’s parental love and the goose that follows its older brother surely allude to the fact that one of Huang’s younger brothers, Shuda ࠸ ሒ, had come up to Qianzhou in the middle of 1096, bringing Huang’s son and the boy’s mother. From the letters he wrote at the time, we know this was a great comfort to Huang. 218 The second poem of the pair looks from several angles at the poverty of the honest official in exile, considers the hazards of living in the mountains of Sichuan, and concludes that none of this has prevented Huang Tingjian from enjoying the finest tea: 542
4
ؓسᆂႛዊᘣ ϤϤϥϥϥϤϤ ࢍ֚ෑறຆ ϤϥϤϤϥϥϤ ࡙֪լᣂྤ९ढ ϥϥϥϤϤϥϥ ඣछৱ־Չ壆ᔣ ϤϤϥϥϥϤϤ ՞メᏅ౨ࠐॡ ϤϤϥϥϤϤϥ ֽ۶वࣩխԳ ϥϥϤϤϥϥϤ ֟྇୮Ⴜ៱ڣᓳ ϥϥϤϤϮϭϥ
D2
All one’s life he gets an emolument, but it barely brings glory to the parents.
B4
You take it to the edge of the sky and arrangements get meager.
C4
The nighttime door you don’t secure, owning no grand treasure;
D2
for morning cooking you want for fire, beg it from the neighbors.
A1
Mountain baboons are pretty crafty, skillfully summoning tigers;
B1
river crossbows somehow know to unfairly target people.
(C14)
You have lost little of the family garden feeling from years of old:
——— 218
Zheng Yongxiao, Huang Tingjian nianpu xinbian, 280–81.
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᥋ᦨ٣७ॸছਞ ϤϤϤϥϥϤϤ
D4
with basket in hand you go first to pick before-the-rain spring.
Notes: 542-5–6/ The river crossbow is a three-legged turtle-shaped creature that gets its prey by spitting sand at it. It and the baboon are paired in a poem by Zhang Hu to an exile: ᄻ۩ֽΔມࢋ ᝩ՞ㆻ “Going along a stream, you guard against the water crossbow; / in a rustic inn you find refuge from the mountain baboons.” 219 One hesitates to single out the water crossbow as “mythological,” as the baboon was equally possessed of strange and dangerous characteristics in the minds of those who contemplated travel in remote mountains. 542-8/ “Before the rain” is a type of fine tea made from tender leaves picked before Grain Rain (the sixth solar node, about April 20). Tea is sometimes called “spring” because that is the season in which it is picked.
We can read this poem in line with Fanghui’s recent celebration of the security enjoyed by a person from whom everything has been taken. No one gets rich on an official salary; when exile to a remote place, barely enough becomes “poverty.” On the other hand, you have no nothing to lose to thieves and much to gain from the generosity of neighbors. In the third couplet, Fanghui acknowledges the dangers of living in remote areas barely tamed by civilization. Yet this only emphasizes the triumph of equanimity seen in Huang Tingjian’s cultivation of tea in a homestead whose atmosphere is only a little diminished from that of his native home. Fanghui comes close to aping Huang’s style in the first poem of the pair, with its challenging juxtapositions of allusions. On the other hand, these two poems are nearly fully regulated, while about half of Huang’s three hundred heptametrical Regulated Verses (especially in his early years, when he wrote more in this form) are “twisted” tonally. 220 Where Fanghui does depart from regulated meter, he generally has local purpose; for example, the slight tonal violation in Fanghui’s line 542-7 might express a touch of defiance—defiance of the baboons and river crossbows.
A SUMMARY The other heptametrical Regulated Verses from 1097 and 1098 do not substantially advance our understanding of He Zhu’s art or life, so we shall end our consideration of the genre here. This chapter has given us the opportunity to go beyond the basic characteristics of Regulated Verse as they were presented in the previous chapter and discuss the different dynamics of the pentasyllabic and heptasyllabic lines. The characteristic effects of five- and seven-syllable lines will
——— 219 220
ബᔢড়, QTS, 15:510.5803. See Mo Lifeng, “Lun Huang Tingjian shige chuangzuo di sange jieduan,” 74.
HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE
367
be an important topic in our exploration of He Zhu’s Quatrains, also. Whereas noncanonical meter guided our interpretations of poems in the last chapter, the fact that heptametrical Regulated Verses can incorporate noncanonical sequences of line types gave us a new tool to use in this chapter. We should remember that only ten percent or so of He Zhu’s heptametrical Regulated Verses are what we called “anomalous” in their sequence of line types, but the fact that this option is apparently unique to this genre justifies our giving it so much attention here. This is an area in which more comparative work could produce new insights. Such work could fruitfully take Du Fu’s poems as a point of departure, not only considering non-canonical line sequences but other unusual or difficult syntactic structures. The goal should be not to simply catalog these techniques, but to see which are adopted by which poets and to what effect. Comparative work needs to be done on genre preferences, too. Important studies have already been done on genre preferences among various Tang poets, but there is room for work on more Song poets. For example, if Huang Tingjian and Guo Xiangzheng wrote fewer heptametrical Regulated Verses, we need to explore whether other genres replaced them in certain in social functions, whether their individual styles could not be expresses as well in this genre, and similar issues. Fanghui used this genre to have fun with language, and we have given many examples. At the same time, he gives us glimpses of his thinking about major figures of his time: Wang Anshi, Cai Que, and of course, Su Shi. We have seen that he did not adhere rigidly to one faction or another, but at the same time his implied views on political matters (such as the censorship of history) are more in evidence as factional battles become more vicious. This change is not merely a product of our shift of emphasis from technique to content as we progress through the chapter.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE PENTAMETRICAL QUATRAINS OF HE ZHU, 1085–98 About sixteen percent of Hu Zhu’s extant poems are pentametrical Quatrains (wu yan jueju ⸒ฏ). This proportion, representing ninety-seven individual poems, is unusually high. The table below shows pentametrical Quatrains as a percentage of the total corpus of a few important Tang poets and four contemporaries. It also shows the genre as a percentage of “Regulated Verse,” defined for our purposes here as all Regulated Verses plus Quatrains, whether the latter are regulated or not. 1 Table 4 Pentametrical Quatrains in the Works of Selected Poets
Poet Du Fu Li Bo Yuan Zhen Bo Juyi Han Yu Cai Xiang Su Shi 2 Huang Tingjian Zhang Lei Guo Xiangzheng He Zhu
31 48 30 76 26 7 99 96 18 139 97
% of Corpus ÷ 1458 = 02% ÷ 997 = 05% ÷ 746 = 04% ÷ 2807 = 03% ÷ 414 = 06% ÷ 423 = 02% ÷ 2856 = 04% ÷ 1878 = 05% ÷ 2212 = 01% ÷ 1415 = 10% ÷ 603 = 16%
% of “Regulated Verse” 31 ÷ 1054 = 03% 48 ÷ 214 = 22% 30 ÷ 472 = 06% 76 ÷ 1917 = 04% 26 ÷ 164 = 16% 7 ÷ 321 = 02% 99 ÷ 850 = 12% 96 ÷ 1156 = 08% 18 ÷ 1413 = 01% 139 ÷ 822 = 17% 97 ÷ 418 = 23%
The only poet who comes close to He Zhu is Guo Xiangzheng. (Li Bo and Han Yu show a similarly substantial percentage of their Regulated Verses to be devoted to pentametrical Quatrains; however, that is a function of the relatively small number of Regulated Verses in their collections.)
——— 1 All of the Tang statistics come from Umeda Shigeo, “Haku Kyoeki ni okeru goketsu to shichi-ritsu no tairitsusei o megutte,” 31–32. For Cai Xiang, the data come from Tao Wenpeng, “Cai Xiang: Bei Song qianqi di qijue gaoshou,” 67. The figures for Huang Tingjian come from Mo Lifeng, “Lun Huang Tingjian shige chuangzuo di sange jieduan,” 72. I compiled the statistics for Zhang and Guo from the collections cited for them in this study. 2 2856 is the number of poems in the Su Shi shiji; not all of them are authentic. Using a round figure of 2800 for the total corpus, the percentage of pentametrical Quatrains is 3.5%. Su Shi has 933 octaves, but I do not know how many unregulated octaves should be subtracted from that number and how many extended Regulated Verses should be added to that number to arrive at the number of Regulated Verses. “850” is a very arbitrary guess.
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To be sure, mere statistics do not reflect distinctions between different kinds of Quatrains. For example, the Tang pentametrical Quatrain was generally regulated, while He Zhu’s works in this form tend not to be regulated. This puts him at one extreme of Song Dynasty practice. Guo Xiangzheng’s pentametrical Quatrains are mostly regulated, so Guo is at the other extreme. Pentametrical Quatrains by Zhang Lei and Su Shi are regulated about half the time, placing them in the middle. The pentametrical Quatrain, despite its long history (or perhaps because of it), was by this time a difficult form in which to create. First of all, the full complexity of structures and strategies that one is accustomed to in the octave has to be pared down for a quatrain, though the variety of logical relationships that can be set up in four lines is still considerable. Parallelism can be used, but to use it in both couplets risks monotony, especially when there is nothing preceding the couplets to set the occasion and nothing following to provide an exit from the balanced world and linguistic intensity of parallel couplets. Yet there has to be some principle of coherence to hold the four lines together; with no recourse to the relatively constant framework of the regulated octave, the poet must establish a new structure each time he writes a Quatrain, building it out of just a few allusions, images, and types of illocutionary acts. Adding to the difficulty in writing such a brief poem, the five-syllable line looks “outside of itself” for completion of its meaning. To a greater degree than the heptasyllabic line, the pentasyllabic line looks to its partner in the couplet because only in conjunction with each other can the two lines acquire the context necessary for their significance to be understood. We touched on this idea in the last chapter. I propose that short poems work in a way somewhat analogous to short lines: they seek connections outside themselves. Thus, pentametrical Quatrains can be well suited for presenting a paradox or making a witty allusive remark. Such poems self-consciously link to something beyond their own four lines insofar as they react to a cultural concept, assumption, or precedent. Second, poems in suites with an overall theme can explicitly work variations on a structure or a theme. Read singly, they might be of limited appeal, like a single line of verse; read together, the relationships of identity and change would introduce another level of involvement with the text, like a couplet. This second solution appealed most to He Zhu. Seventy-nine of his pentametrical Quatrains are in eleven sets of three or more poems. Only eight poems out of the total ninety-seven stand alone:
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Table 5
He Zhu’s Pentametrical Quatrains by Year
Year 1085 1086 1087 1088 1089 1090 1091 1092 1093 1094 1095 1096 1097 1098 Totals
Titles 2 5 3 3 1 2 1 1 0 2 1 0 2 1 24
Singles 0 4 2 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 8
Pairs 0 0 0 3 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 5
Sets 2 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 0 1 1 0 2 1 11
No. of Poems 16 9 12 6 1 11 2 8 0 5 5 0 13 9 97
Su Shi may have agreed that Quatrains in sets overcome the limitations of the pentasyllabic line. By one measure, the figures for Su Shi are similar: seventy-five percent of his pentametrical Quatrains are in sets, comparable to a figure of seventy-seven percent for Fanghui’s. Table 6
Su Shi’s Pentametrical Quatrains by Year
Year 1059 1062 1063 1071 1072 1075 1077 1078 1079 1081 1084 1085 1088 1089 1090 1091
Titles 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 4 1 3 1 1 1 2 1
Singles 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 4 0 0 1 1 1 2 1
Pairs 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Sets 0 1 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 3 0 0 0 0 0
No. of Poems 1 21 13 8 1 5 3 1 4 14 12 4 2 1 1 2 1
——— 3 4
The other poem in this pair is heptametrical. One poem is part of a set in which the other three poems are heptametrical.
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1092 1094 1097 1100 ? ? Totals
2 2 1 1 6 3 37
2 2 1 1 6 0 25
0 0 0 0 0 1 2
0 0 0 0 0 2 10
2 2 1 1 75 8 99
(Guo Xiangzheng’s case is complicated. Eighty-six percent of his pentametrical Quatrains are in sets, but one set comprises one hundred poems, or seventy-two percent of the total. Other than that, Guo has only two sets of six poems and one set each of three and four poems. Nineteen titles are for single poems; none is for pairs. One the one hand, then, he didn’t write many sets. On the other, he wrote only nineteen pentametrical Quatrains that were not in sets.) Given the long history of the single pentametrical Quatrain, it must have been difficult to write pieces that did not sound like museum reproductions. Nearly all possibilities of tone and theme had been thoroughly explored by Tang poets and their predecessors. Landscape vignettes, wistful little notes to friends, boudoir scenes, stark frontier situations—these were all too old-fashioned for He Zhu. Suites of poems offered a way to do something fresh.
1085: XUZHOU A marked aspect of Fanghui’s pentametrical Quatrains is the fact that they appear in the record late, ten years after his earliest extant poem, a heptametrical Regulated Verse from 1075. It is only in Yuanfeng 8 (1085), after three years in Xuzhou and during a year of high output for his poetry in general, that Fanghui comes up with pentametrical Quatrains—a set of six and a set of ten—that he preserves. The first set of poems recalls Ancient Verses from 1080 about moths in flames and chickens in pots insofar as it is based on the observation of the death of animals. This time, however, the poet sees a clear moral in the event. The treatment is ironic, not only in the sense that the observer has a wider perspective than the victim, but also in the sense that the poet continually changes our perspective, moving along a chain of ironies from the avian to the human. The title of this set is ᗵ⥝Moved by Stirrings. 6 Tang poets who used this title usually applied it to pentametrical poems, but not in sets of quatrains. A pentametrical set by Mei Yaochen with this title is relevant to the content of
——— 5 6
Some of these may be fragments rather than Quatrains. 8.12577; 8.1a.
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Fanghui’s fifth Quatrain (see note 336-2 below), but before He Zhu only Fan Zhongyan ૃ٘ (989–1052) applies the title to a set of pentametrical Quatrains. 7 332
㔇㓴ቑ⠡㘧 ਇ⍮Ძ⠀ᓸ 㕍㒎╉㜞᮸ ᓙῺ㘻ᦺ㘫
Young sparrows learn to flip and fly, Unaware of the slightness of their feathered wings. The grey chicken-hawk smiles in a tall tree: “I’ll wait for you and satisfy my morning hunger.”
333
㕍㒎ཪ㓴㔇 㘲㘻ଗ㡇ὖ ਇ⍮⊙㢊ജ ᜋᲕർၔ⁍
The grey chicken-hawk devours the sparrow young, Gorging itself to shame kites and crows— Unaware that the black eagle’s power has cleaned out the foxes in the north citywall.
334
⊙㢊₨⸁Ὺ 㘧ᛲ⢄⣮ ਇ⍮ㆆ₫ా ᔅῺ㖮⠧
The black eagle, vicious in beak and claw; Flies away draped in liver and brains. Unaware that the roaming hunter lad will have you grow old on his gauntlet.
335
₫ాῆᬩଶ ᓧᗧ໑㚓ㅙ ਇ⍮ᑙၴ ထ㘻⪦㍦⡺
The hunting lad is the common sort of Yan or Chu; Satisfied just to gallop and chase. Unaware that in the royal basilica sit men satiated on ten thousand cash worth of meat.
336
ᑙၴᠯ㞲㘩 ᣣ⽶ᄤਅ⽿ ਇ⍮ḓ ⥄ᚳ⥱ቴ
In the royal basilica they slaughter live animals to eat, Bear every day more vilification from all the empire. Unaware that on the Five Lakes the traveler is in his small boat.
337
ᚳ⥱ᓐੱ 㔼ᆎ⻎り ਇ⍮㊒㝼⠃ ⟮ੱ⤿
What kind of guy is that in the small boat? Only when his state was hegemonic did he see to himself. Unaware of the old fisher gent, too embarrassed to be his old friend’s minister.
Notes: 335-1/ Yan or Chu: north or south, i.e., anyplace in China. 336-2/ The phrase translated “bear vilification” has other meanings, such as “bear responsibility,” “turn one’s back on responsibility,” and “owe debt.” The following 1056 couplet by Mei Yaochen contains a similar ambiguity but suggests what Fanghui is getting at in the context of his Quatrain
———
7 ᄅࡳტᘋնଈ. Quan Song shi, 3:166.1891–92. Li She ޕ௫ (ninth century ) has one poem under this title (QTS, 14:477.5424) that breaks into three quatrains by rhyme changes, but none of the quatrains could stand alone. For a discussion of the quatrain–stanza continuum in heptametrical Tang verse, see Paul Rouzer, Writing Another’s Dream, 39–50.
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set: ᣢ⽶ᄤਅᦸ㧘ᔅᘷᄤਅ⽿ “One who bears [disappoints?] the hopes of the world / must worry about the vilification of the world.” 8 336-3–4/ “Five Lakes” has several meanings but probably refers to Lake Tai or its region. Fan Li ⨄⳺ served the King of Yue for twenty years and then, when the king became a Hegemon, took to the Five Lakes in a small boat, eventually becoming rich. 9 337-7–8/ The old fisher gent is Yan Guang; see the note to line 6 of Crossing Yellow Leaf Hause, Poem 283.
Most of these poems would make sense standing alone and even be of mild interest, but this is clearly a case in which they need to be part of a larger structure in order to work their magic. The interesting point is that, as the reader moves from the first poem to the last, he, along with the other figures in the quatrains, is a victim of the irony. The reader is as “unaware” as they are that a new figure of superiority will come along to topple the old. There is a well-known precedent for this rhetorical device. In the Shuoyuan, someone uses a similar “foodchain” allegory to warn the King of Wu that his plans to invade another state expose him to dangers that his greed has caused him to ignore. 10 Perhaps this series can be related to the reluctance Fanghui showed in 1080 to draw neat lessons from animal life (see Poem 048): one is, as it were, “sucked into” a continuum of animals and people and blocked from forming detached and stable judgments. The reader is in the position of Fanghui, who observed a moth causing its own death then found himself causing his own near-poisoning with mosquito repellent; the reader expects to contemplate an allegory and finds that he is actually experiencing, on a certain level, the predicament of the allegorized figures. The use of rhyme at the ends of the first lines is unusual in pentametrical Quatrains and in fact violates the description Fanghui gives in his preface for the poems he classifies as pentametrical Quatrains: “those with two rhymes and five character lines, without regard for whether they are Regulated or Ancient” (emphasis mine). The effect of the added rhyme is to speed up the lines, which in turn adds to the sense of wit and cleverness. The second set of pentametrical Quatrains from 1085 is for Wang Gong and Kou Changzhao, who were present at many of the outings that inspired poems in other genres in 1084. It was written in the middle of the eighth month of 1085, a week or two after Kou and Wen had left Xuzhou. Let us look at ⊓႓ᮝ Climbing Yellow Tower, the sixth poem under the overall title ᙿነናరᒠ₺ᢥ⥞ ච㚂 Thinking of and Sent to Kou Yuanbi and Wang Wenju: Ten Poems. 11
———
ࠉᣉ࡚ࡉ࠸ةტᘋնଈհԲ, Mei Yaochen ji biannian jiaozhu, 3:26.885. See the Shi ji, 129.10 (Watson, Records of the Grand Historian, 1993 rev. ed., Han II, 437–38), and the commentary there. 10 This story is Lesson 18 of Michael Fuller’s An Introduction to Literary Chinese (1999). 11 Poems 338–47, 8.12577–78; 8.1b–2b. Wang is the son of Kou’s older sister and the husband of Kou’s daughter. 8 9
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⯪ᑧ ᧲ၔ⊖ዤᮝ ੱ㇊ᓧ ᓟᄛᤚਛ⑺
Where can I welcome the bright moon? the eastern citywall, on the hundred-foot tower. My old friends, how can I meet them? tomorrow night is Mid-Autumn.
Notes: 343-4/ Hou ye usually means “the last half of the night,” and we understood it as such in Fanghui’s 1084 pentametrical Regulated Verse Imitating Wen Feiqing (Poem 166). That might make for a more interesting line, but I am not sure it would make sense in premodern China to say the MidAutumn Festival starts after midnight. There are poems in which it means either “tomorrow night” or “some night in the future.” 12
This poem is carefully constructed. It contains two questions, one asking the best place to view the moon, one asking where or how the poet can meet his friends for mid-autumn fellowship. The answer to the former question points to the building that is the topic of the poem. The latter question is a rhetorical one that has no answer: the speaker knows he cannot see his friends. The last line notes that tomorrow is a day when they should be together. Another way to look at the poem is to study the relationship between the two constituent couplets. The first two lines point toward a fine evening of moonviewing from one of the most famous spots in the empire. The second two lines effect a countermotion: the fine evening cannot take place without the friends, and yet, in another contradiction that takes us back to the reason why one even cares about viewing the moon, it is the Mid Autumn Festival. The unspoken connection between naming the festival and asking the rhetorical question provide the emotional overtones and the effort, however slight, of logical reconstruction that enable four short lines to constitute a poem. For all its skill, though, the Quatrain doesn’t amount to much by itself. It is a verbal postcard to absent friends, not a letter. Ten postcards, however, do add up to something, and this set of ten poems does have a definite structure. The first Quatrain relates He Zhu’s feelings after he saw Kou and Wang off; the next five (including the one translated above) describe his visits to various Xuzhou landmarks that the three of them must have frequented together. The seventh poem simply depicts He Zhu coming home from his office and closing his gate, sitting on a folding chair, and listening to the birds. Obviously life in Xuzhou is not fun without his two friends, so the next two poems “summon” them back individually. Finally, the last poem laments that the poetry society is “empty” when Fanghui happens to come up with a good autumn poem; he is reduced to walking alone in the moonlit courtyard and reciting it aloud to the west autumn wind. Placed in this context, each poem is one aspect of missing departed friends. The
———
12 See, for example, Bo Juyi, ⲡתၲक़ಬ߉խ, QTS, 14:454.5144–45, and Dai Shulun ᚮ࠸ (732–89), ಬܑᙒದ, QTS, 9:273.3072.
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Quatrains that seem so slight individually are building blocks for an extended meditation that has the weight we expect from He Zhu. This series is basically regulated, with some tonal violations. What is wanted here is poetic sophistication, not the “ancient” tone appropriate to the parables of Moved by Stirrings.
THE CAPITAL 1086: RELATIONSHIPS WITH PAST POETRY We have already looked at the various Ancient Verse imitations of earlier poetry that were written in the tenth and eleventh months of 1086; in this section we shall give an overview of pentametrical Quatrains from the ninth month that either imitate works of the past or acknowledge them in some other way. ╵㒸ொ㚂 Answering Chen Chuandao: Five Poems is a set that harkens back to pre-Tang poetry, though not by “imitation.” 13 Instead, the five Quatrains take their rhymes from the words of one line from a series of eighteen or nineteen poems by Ji Kang collectively titled ⿅⑲ᚽァ Presented to a Flourishing Talent upon Entering the Army. 14 Chen Shizhong (Chuandao) selected the line ⋡ㅍᱩ㡨 and added 㔍 to make, “Sending off / with my eyes / the goose / going home / is difficult.” Each word was then used to set the rhyme of one new poem; the resulting five poems were sent to He Zhu. (Chen is probably in his native Xuzhou at this time.) Asked to reciprocate, Fanghui uses the same five rhyme words in his five poems. Not having Chen Shizhong’s poems, we cannot say whether all the rhyme words are the same, nor can we say anything about Chen’s themes or style. What we can say is that Fanghui’s poems are formally very unlike Ji Kang’s; their themes are related only on the highest level of generality, and the imagery and diction show no affiliation. Fanghui’s themes are familiar from his other works. He dislikes the dusty world of the capital; he is tired of traveling; it is better to go home; he misses his friend; and life in Kaifeng is too expensive. Here is the second poem as a sample: 352
ㆆᓳᱩቡ ධർᦝ⋧ㅍ ᄬᓧౌᅤ ൏൏ਇᅤᄞ
We roam in Liang, return again to Song; South then north, in turns we see each other off. Loss and gain, what of these two? such toil and moil, better to be dreaming.
——— 13
Poems 351–55, 8.12579; 8.3a–3b. The count of nineteen includes a pentametrical poem sometimes included at the beginning. With that poem, the line we are interested in comes from the fifteenth poem. See Ji Kang ji jiaozhu, 1.16. In the five poems from this series included in the Wen Xuan, 24, it is in the fourth poem. 14
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Note: 352-1/ Liang can refer to Kaifeng, the Song capital, as noted in the last chapter. Song is the ancient region east of the eleventh-century Southern Capital, which might be considered to include Xuzhou.
Incessant trekking between east and west (Liang and Song) and between north and south does not break new ground poetically but nicely builds a tight opening couplet. A reaction to that back-and-forth rush follows in the second couplet. The rhetorical question in line 352-3 is indirectly answered in the next line: as all good literary Daoists know, the unstated answer to the question is that there is no distinction between loss and gain; the stated corollary is that it is therefore better to dream than to “toil and moil.” (Note that the oppositional pairs, Liang/Song, north/south, and gain/loss, have ended and are replaced by a pair of identical syllables, laolao. Though “toil and moil” still refers back to those oppositional pairs notionally, formally it echoes the dissolution of their distinction in dream.) Thus, the fourth line responds to the third line and the two together respond to the first couplet; there is a subtle layering of relationships that makes the poem a satisfying whole. Because the ideas presented are so trite, however, I feel that the poem still works best as one facet of the more complex plight of the poet as he describes it in all five Quatrains together. The next two poems we shall consider are different. They are not (to our knowledge) part of a set. But do they stand alone? One Quatrain by He Zhu announces itself as an imitation. As is usually the case, we have no certain original, though the title names both a poet and a poem: ᡆഏቁൎ⹗ੳᓧᨐ Imitating Liu Xiaosheng’s Anren Acquires Fruit. 15 Anren is Pan Yue, said to have been so get handsome that women threw fruit to him whenever he went out, filling his carriage. 16 Liu Xiaosheng is a sixth-century figure who leaves only five poems, none of them a Quatrain and none on Pan Yue. There is a pentametrical Quatrain titled ⹗ੳᓧᨐOn Anren Acquiring Fruit attributed to a Li Xiaosheng ᧘ቁൎ who leaves no other poems but apparently lived about the same time. 17 This raises at least three possibilities: 1) this poem is by Li Xiaosheng and is Fanghui’s model, so Fanghui erred in naming Liu as the author; or 2) this poem is by Liu Xiaosheng and is Fanghui’s model, so the attribution to a possibly non-existent Li Xiaosheng is an error that originated in the anthologies from which our current texts of sixth century po-
——— 15
8.12579; 8.3b. Shishuo xinyu, 14.7, note 2. 17 See Lu Qinli, Quan Han Sanguo Jin Nanbei chao shi, 2:Liang shi.13.15 (1573). It is followed by a poem with the same title by a Tan Shiyun ᓫՓႆ. I am indebted to an anonymous reader of a nearly final version of this study for alerting me to the existence of these poems and for many other helpful suggestions. 16
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ems have been derived; or 3) this poem is by Li Xiaosheng poem but irrelevant and Liu Xiaosheng’s poem on the topic, Fanghui’s model, is lost. This candidate for original poem does not, in my opinion, encourage the same kind of analysis we have performed on other imitations. Fanghui’s poem seems to have little in common with it in either diction or structure. Let us quote both poems. *
ẘጪᴡㆻ ᖱ⍮ᡋᨐᄙ 㐽↖⡱ਇ ήᄹ⼂ゞ
Pan Yue returned from by the River, knowing full well too much fruit would be thrown. Shut in beneath his tiled roofs, he heard but did not appear; his carriage is recognized---no help for that!
356
ᨐ⋘₈ᚻ ゞᦝႲ ࿕ᙥᜬ৻╉ వ╵ㄭヮੱ
The fruit is exhausted, but hands still beckon; his carriage stops, but more dust rises. He really should hold that smile and first requite the ones closest to the thills.
Notes: *-1/ Heyang, where Pan had been magistrate at the end of the third century, was on the north side of the Yellow River. *-3–4/ Or: the women heard him but could not see him, so it availed them naught to recognize his carriage.
Fanghui’s first couplet depicts arrested movement (fruit is exhausted, the carriage stops) and lingering action (hands still beckon, dust rises even more) in parallel lines. In the second couplet, we shift to possible future acts (holding a smile and requiting someone) arrayed over two lines, both as the object of the verb “should.” That is enough complexity and change of direction to provide a complete experience. More than the poems from sets we have read so far in this chapter, it seems to me that this poem can stand alone. None of this structure is in evidence in the poem we know under Li Xiaosheng’s name. It is true that the metrical patterns of the two poems are identical but for the first syllable: A1 B1 C1 D1 vs. A2 B1 C1 D1. However, the ABCD line sequence is very common in He Zhu’s pentametrical Quatrains when they are regulated, so it would be hard to argue that he thought that using this meter and this topic was enough to constitute an imitation. I conclude that his model was a lost poem by Liu Xiaosheng. What strikes me about Fanghui’s Quatrain is its strong visual dimension. By this, I do not mean it deploys vivid imagery; rather, it works as if a scene of Pan Yue sitting in a fruit-bestrewn carriage surrounded by beautiful women were before our eyes. If we were told this was a colophon for a painting, we would not be surprised. Literary figures as themes for paintings were becoming common in the late eleventh century, and this would have been an appealing subject.
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Fanghui’s Quatrain would be a good colophon for such a painting insofar as it tells the temporal dimension of a scene that in a painting can only be implied. 18 Of course, we have no evidence that this poem was inscribed on a painting, yet even so, the poem works as if a painting were present. In a sense, I think it is. By singling out a woman (or women) near the shafts of the carriage and saying Pan Yue should respond to her (or them), Fanghui is commenting on a particular tableau that he knows is already known to the reader in its general aspects. (It is known presumably on the basis of many pictorial representations experienced previously in an era when paintings on silk and paper have become commodities in a flourishing art market.) This is a very specific realization of our earlier generalization about pentametrical Quatrains: they look outward to something beyond the four lines that constitute them. The second imitation in 1086 is more precisely a “harmonizing” with an imitation of a style, the style of the sixth-century Jade Terrace Anthology. The title is ₺ᢥ⥞₹⥑㜚 Harmonizing with Wang Wenju’s Jade Terrace Style. 19 357
ධၔⓨ⋡ㅍ 㙚ᣆᔃᦼ ⍮ᄛᕁ ᾽ඨਅᏰ
At the south citywall I saw you off with my eyes in vain; in the western hall our inner commitment is broken. Afar I know of your thoughts tonight: bright lamp, half let down curtain.
Up to a point, the world of the Jade Terrace as refracted through this poem is the world of the lyric. The diction is especially characteristic of Fanghui’s own work in that genre. “South citywall” is found in three of his lyrics. In four of his lyrics, he sees someone off with his eyes. “Hall” (guan) is found eleven times in He Zhu’s lyrics, three times specified as being in a certain direction (always south). The “inner commitment” (or “heart-expectation”) of 357-2 occurs four times in his lyrics. “Tonight” occurs only eight times in Fanghui’s poetry, but fifteen times in his lyrics. There are precedents for this poem. In the Tang, Quan Deyu ᰨᓾヨ (761– 818), one of the leading poets of the late eighth century, wrote ₹⥑㜚චੑ㚂 Twelve Poems in the Jade Terrace Style; all but the first two are pentametrical Quatrains. (Quan is someone who also anticipated some of Fanghui’s contemporaries by making poems out of the names of people, medicines, stars, and so forth.) 20 For pentametrical Quatrains in imitation of the same anthology style in the Song,
——— 18 For a thorough discussion of the relations between colophons and paintings in this period, with references to other important works on the topic, see my “Colophons in Countermotion.” A comprehensive, newer study on colophons is Yi Ruofen’s Guankan, xushu, shenmei. 19 8.12579; 8.4a. Fanghui does not say where Wang Gong is at the time; he may be back in Xuzhou. 20 QTS, 10:328.3673–74. See Jiang Yin, Dali shiren yanjiu, 1:421–24. For Song poems built around the names of medicines, see especially Huang Tingjian’s pentametrical Quatrains, ౸ܛڠ ࠃᢐټᇣԶଈ, Shangu shizhu, 2250:wai.17.398–99.
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we have Mei Yaochen’s 1032 ᡆ₹⥑㜚৾㚂 Seven Poems in the Jade Terrace Style and Ouyang Xiu’s set by the same name from the same year, using the same sub-topics. 21 In Ouyang’s collection, these poems are classified as ballads (yuefu); neither his nor Mei’s poems are regulated. Fanghui’s poem is composed of regulated lines in an unregulated sequence (C2 D1 C2 B1). What sets Fanghui’s poem apart from all of these predecessors is the ambiguity of the gender of the speaker; indeed, it is uncertain whether the identity of the speaker remains the same. The pronouns added in the translation do not entirely remove these ambiguities. All three of the other predecessor poets mentioned follow more closely the traditional palace style of poetry in using skirts, jewelry, fans, and so forth to indicate that the lonely person is female; often they use pronouns and make lines in the poem function as her address to her lover. Fanghui’s diction is quite different. In particular, the gender and persona ambiguities of Fanghui’s poem reflect his debt to Late Tang and Five Dynasties lyrics. 22 In the tenth month on 1086, Fanghui wrote a pentametrical Quatrain called ኙᄛᱎCold Night Lament. The title may remind the reader of the eight-line Ancient Verse Imitation of Bao Rong’s ‘Cold Night Lament,’ written in the following month (Poem 092). Though not an imitation, the Quatrain contains echoes of a number of famous poems, ranging from the frost-like moonlight in front of the bed in Li Bo’s Quiet Night Thoughts to Su Shi’s perversely inquisitive moon in his 1076 lyric to the tune Shuidiao getou (“Full moon, when did you appear?”). 23 359
นᘿశ ᆔᦛᾖⓨᐥ ⥄ᤚరήᄞ ᦝᖤᄛ㐳
How remarkable the light of the full moon, Twisting and turning to shine on an empty bed. Already no dreams at all had come; now I grieve this night will be long.
The fact that lines 359-1 and 2 end with words from Li Bo’s quatrain increases the pressure on the poet to add something new to this situation. Fanghui’s choice is to load the poem with modality. In the first line he comments that the light of Li Bo’s moon is kelian “remarkable/lovable/strange/precious.” Then he ascribes intention to the moon, having it weiqu “twist and turn to/make an effort
——— 21
Mei Yaochen ji biannian jiaozhu, 1:2.45–46; Ouyang Xiu quanji, 1:jushi waiji.1.345. For a subtle analysis of the many issues involved here, see Maija Bell Samei, Gendered Persona and Poetic Voice. 23 Here is Burton Watson’s translation of Li Bo’s poem, with the relevant words in italics. (Instead of “bright,” I use “full” in my translation of Fanghui’s poem.) “Moonlight in front of my bed— / I took it for frost on the ground! / I lift my head, gaze at the bright moon, lower it and dream of home.” Victor Mair, Columbia Anthology of Traditional Chinese Literature, 204. The first line quotation of Su’s lyric is from Alice W. Cheang’s rendition in her Silver Treasury of Chinese Lyrics, 55. There is another precedent for this “gently ironic” treatment of the moon in Su Shi’s shi poetry: see Michael Fuller, Road to East Slope, 237–39. 22
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to” shine on his bed. Of course, Su Shi was there first with his “personification” of the moon, so Fanghui has to do something more. In line 359-3, then, the scene is eclipsed in an explosion of function words: “Already it-was-a-case-of allalong no dreams.” The logical follow-up to zi “already/as a matter of course” in this line leads to geng “now/even more/further” in line 359-4. Kelian “remarkable/lovable/strange/precious” is a very common word in Chinese poetry, but it seems to me, based on a survey of Su Shi’s poetry, that kelian and the other modals or function words we see in this Quatrain are difficult to squeeze into a pentametrical Quatrain. Although Su Shi uses kelian in six Quatrains, they are all heptametrical. He uses zi shi “already/naturally is” ten times, but only in three quatrains; again, all are heptametrical. He uses yuan wu “all along, no” in two heptasyllabic Regulated Verses only and never in Quatrains. He uses zi and geng in parallel eight times, but only once in a Quatrain (heptametrical) and twice in pentametrical poems of medium length. There simply is not much room in a short poem with short lines for all of these modalities and function words. 24 Even these limited comparisons indicate that Fanghui has tried to so something new with a familiar theme and prominent precedents. As a variation on old imagery and themes, his Quatrain is able to stand independently because it evokes familiar precedents and exceeds them in its modality. The muscularity of that modality—“already it was no dreaming at all; on top of that I grieve that this night is long”—also gives the poem enough mass to stand alone.
1087: TEN SONGS ON AUTUMN DAYS Moved by Stirrings (Poems 332–37; pp. 371ff) was an atypical series insofar as it had a tight and obvious structure based on an ever-widening perspective. We have discussed Quatrains that come from other series and offered reasons why they could not stand alone, but we need to work through an entire series to get a better sense of how Fanghui varies the structure of each poem to explore different facets of his theme and avoid monotony. The ninth month of Yuanyou 2 (1087) gives us a fine series to study, another set harmonizing with Chen Shizhong: 㒸ொ⑺ᣣච⹗ Harmonizing with Chen Chuandao’s Ten Songs on Autumn Days. 25 We shall present the Quatrains in pairs; the first two poems are on Autumn Rain and Clear Autumn Skies.
——— 24 It must pointed out that Su Shi wrote seven times more heptametrical than pentametrical Quatrains, so any word has a greater chance of appearing in the longer lines; there are more of them. I don’t think this invalidates our general hypothesis that modals and function words are hard to fit into shorter lines. 25 8.12580–81; 8.4b–5b.
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362
ㄭ⎂ᡋ㡆☟ 㐳◿ ⚛⛣ ỡ⠅ᥭ㡏ᱩ 㜞᪷⪭ኙ
On nearby steps are hurled singing tallies, from long eaves are hanging plain white cords. Sodden wings: dusky crows go home; Tall Pawlonia sheds into a cold well.
363
ᱩ㔕ᖘᖘ 㐳㘑ૼ₫₫ ◿ⷺౌ㐳᭄ ᢳ㓁ᦘ႓ ⪲
Returning clouds go away to limitless vastness; a long-blowing wind comes in howling and hurling. At the corner of the eaves, two tall catalpa: slanting radiance illumines their yellow leaves.
381
The poem on Autumn Rain never mentions rain but never departs from its theme. The first two lines offer vivid images of substitution. Both the sound of the rain and its streaking descent are suggested in the “tallies,” long, thin strips of bamboo, clattering on stone steps. Drips from the roofs blur into “hanging white cords.” The third line adds a little “turn” by moving its verb to the end of the line (the verbs in the other three lines are in the medial position), inserting the only animate creatures (crows), and showing the effect of the rain on them—they have “sodden wings.” The paulownia tree (often left untranslated as wu-tung/wutong) also implies the presence of the rain, which is traditionally associated with this tree. 26 It also typically stands near a well and drops its leaves. Despite the fact that it appears in literally hundreds of Tang and Song poems, Fanghui refers to the tree only this single time. Perhaps he incorporated it here because the combination of tree and well maximizes the distance that the leaves drop—from high above the ground to below the ground—echoing the vertical descent of the rain. Perhaps it is no accident that the next poem refers to the catalpa tree, which is sometimes paired with the paulownia, as they both drop their leaves quickly with the onset of cold weather. This poem on clearing weather, like the one on rain, starts with semantically parallel lines. The vividness this time is in the reduplicatives (youyou “limitless vastness” and lielie “howling and hurling”), not in images of substitution. (Like the rain in the previous Quatrain, though, the clearing skies are only implied.) The third line again interrupts the pattern, this time because it lacks a verb. This gives added emphasis to the verb in the final line, which is evocatively ambiguous: shai can mean to illuminate or to dry, and of course the setting sun does both. I feel that this poem is strong enough to stand by itself, but not so powerful that it seems out of place in a set. The brief flare of yellow leaves in slanting evening sunlight (363-4) anticipates what will come in the third Quatrain, Autumn Night. That poem is followed by one on Autumn Dawn:
——— 26
See David McCraw, “Along the Wutong Trail,” for more on the trees called wutong.
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364
∛㛽ୱⓨᨋ ᦜ᧟㑄ᐸℹ ᥧῒ⥜ኙⳗ ㄴㄴᕁ㘑㔺
Sickly bones, weary in barren groves: dragging my stick, in an idle court I stroll. Dim candles and cold insects; far-reaching longings wind and dew.
365
ᧂᝬඨ☄㔮 ₈⇼ᐸ ୦᮸᳹ᷡᴰ ⇺㘑₫⪇㜰
Not yet furled, half a screen of frost; I still suspect it’s moonlight in the court. Leaning on a tree, I draw from the clear font, an unsteady wind ravaging grizzled hair.
With the coming of night, the visual imagery is curtailed: the body feels weariness; the body walks in a dark courtyard. The dim candles and cold insects in line 364-3 are appropriate to the Autumn Night scene, but syntactically they float untethered to the rest of the poem. One looks to line 364-4 for the verbs that will tell us what the candles and insects do, but that line is difficult to parse. Tiaotiao (“far-reaching”) most commonly describes night, roads, water, and distant places, so the normal 2–3 rhythm of the pentasyllabic line would suggest “far-reaching [night], || longings [in] wind and dew.” Tiaotiao is also associated with longings/thoughts, however. This makes possible an anomalous 3–2 parsing: “far-reaching thoughts | [in] wind and dew.” Finally, si (“longings”) could be a verb, in which case the wind and dew may be its objects. Do the insects in the previous line long for the breeze and nourishing dew of gentler seasons? In the poem on Autumn Dawn, the age-old confusion of bright frost and moonlight is again given new life in the first couplet. Zai + place + noun (365-2) is a very odd construction in poetry. We may be more accustomed to an active verb in place of zai, as in 㔮ᓙ⥃ᐸ “Frost attends the moon looking down on the courtyard,” by Li Qiao ᧘ (645?–714?). 27 Nevertheless, zai does have the sense of ‘to remain’ (of people, it means to be ‘still alive’). Thus, although the diction is unusual, Fanghui’s couplet makes perfect sense: is that frost on the blind, or does moonlight remain in the courtyard despite the dawn? Another instance of unusual phrasing comes in 365-4, “an unsteady wind ravaging grizzled hair.” The verb translated “ravaging” is commonly used with wind, but the object of the verb is usually plants or flags; Fanghui is the only poet I know who takes the small step to make his wind ravage hair. This is one of two poems in the set in which every line ends with a noun. (The other is 369, “Autumn Stirrings,” below.) Ordinarily that would not deserve much notice, but it happens that the first two objects, frost and moon, are cold and white; the third object, spring water, is cold and as liquid as moonlight;
——— 27
Լִ࡚ඒ܂, QTS, 3:58.698.
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the last object, hair, is cold (in the morning breeze) and touched with the frost of advancing years. An effective combination. The next two poems are on the Autumn Moon and the Autumn Wind: 366
㔮ⓨ⪇ ᮻ㈬⡙⋧ወ ᄛᓳምᆻ ੱජ㉿ᄖ
Into the frosty void an argent moon emerges; with a goblet of brew I regard it for a while. The night of parting it is splendid once again; my old friend is beyond a thousand miles away.
367
⚗⚗㛿ᩅ⪲ ⵆⵆᣆᩮ⬑ ਇᓙ็឴ജ 㓣㘑੦⥄᧲
In a flurry and a scurry, leaves free of the branch; tirling and whirling, tumbleweed cut from the root: They don’t wait for the force to blow them aloft; following the wind, they’re eastward bound.
The Autumn Moon poem is so stereotypical in all its components that one wonders how a poet in the eleventh century could avoid inadvertently quoting earlier poetry. All the words seem like they should have been together in previous poems about missing one’s friends while enjoying the charming/splendid moon with brew. Yet Fanghui uses traditional terms in unique phrasings, as far as I can tell. Only hua yue “argent moon” stands out as an unusual term, though the reversed term, yue hua, “moon light, splendor of the moon, moon,” is so common that the reader will not hesitate over it. The closest model for Fanghui’s opening line is from a summer poem by Du Fu: ᄤ⪇ “Into Great Heaven emerges an argent moon.” 28 Fanghui could be innovating by using a “summer” moon in an autumn poem, but it would be hard to argue that such a rare term has conventional seasonal associations. Leaving this term aside, it seems that Fanghui has distilled all previous autumn moon poems into archetypal simplicity. The Autumn Wind poem uses a structure that Su Shi uses several times: the third line momentarily stops the flow of the Quatrain with a negative: “they don’t wait for the force to blow them aloft.” It creates a tension that has to be released in the fourth line, after which the poem can end satisfactorily: “they do follow the wind and go eastward naturally.” Su Shi has seven pentametrical Quatrains in which the third line starts with bu, as here. For example, ⧎శ⚃ṩ ᰣ㧘⨲⦡⛵ήጯޕਇㅩ㕍⌒ੱ㧘㐳⊕⍹Ể”ޕThe light of the flowers: pink fills the balustrade; / the color of the grass: green without borders. / I didn’t meet the dark-eyed one / but sang a long song in the white stone glen.” 29 A statement in the third line that “A didn’t happen, A is not the case” leads one to ask, “What did happen, what is the case?” When the fourth line tells us “B
———
࡙ᑜ, Du shi xiangzhu, 2:7.542. ⶒՂሐԳլሖ, (1079) SSSJ, 3:19.961. Dark eyes, as opposed to eyes that show only the whites, signify the expected friendly attitude of the Man of the Way whom Su came to visit. See the note to line 5 of Poem 515. 28 29
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happened, or B is the case,” then the reader feels the poem has presented a complete experience. It does not need to go beyond twenty syllables. Let us note that in these two poems Fanghui has for the first time used the name of the topic in the poem itself. “Moon appears in line 366-1 and “wind” in line 367-4. To enforce a “rule of coyness” on the entire series would, I think, make the set conspicuously a feat of skill inconsistent with its casual nature. We have also departed from the chronological framework that seemed to guide the first four Quatrains (rain–clearing–night–dawn) and are working steadily through other traditional themes toward topics that no one could predict. The seventh and eighth Quatrains in the set are on an Autumn View and Autumn Stirrings, or Impulses. 368
ኋ㔎Ⴒ㕀㕕 ኙේ㤠Ⓔⓨ ⥃㘑⡙⋡ ਇὑㅍ㘧㡨
Overnight rain: dust-storms in quiescence; chilly plain: millet fields empty. I turn into the wind and just let my gaze go— not to send off any flying geese!
369
ᡆᓬᐽᮔ 㔅ゅ⊓ጊዴ ᥍ᄛኋᄤบ ᛲ㔕⋴ೋᣣ
I’ve decided to follow Master Kangle, in pairs to wear the mountain-climbing clogs: A clear night I’ll spend on Tiantai, wreathed in clouds watch the newborn sun.
Notes: 369-1–2/ Kangle is Xie Lingyun, supposed inventor of geta-like clogs whose front or back rails could be removed for climbing up or down mountains, so that one’s foot remained level. 30 369-3/ Though barely over 1,000 meters high, Mount Tiantai, in Zhejiang Province, is the easternmost peak of significant size in mainland China (excluding the northeastern provinces that China took over as heirs to the Manchu empire after 1911).
The Autumn View poem avoids a stereotypical autumn view. No mention is made of autumn colors, the clear, deep sky, or frosty trees. The familiar migrating geese are here, but only to be ignored! This time, our poet will enjoy the view for its own sake, with none of the expected whining over geese going home or geese not carrying his letters. The Autumn Stirrings poem is remarkable because the poet professes to be stirred to climb Mount Tiantai—I don’t recall any such enthusiasm for vertical exertion in his other poetry or in any other poem on Autumn Stirrings. It is probably the cool, clean air of the season that inspires this ambition. The last two poems are on Autumn Swallows and Autumn Flies, two topics rare in Chinese poetry and probably in the literature of other languages as well. The first poem takes a position contrary to the only poem I know that does more than mention autumn swallows in passing (and those are rare enough, es-
——— 30
Nan shi, 2:19.540.
PENTAMETRICAL QUATRAINS
385
pecially in the Song). That poem is a heptametrical Quatrain by Sikong Tu มⓨ (837–908); it urges the swallows to stay close to the stove through the winter rather than endure the hardship of migration. 31 370
᪢ᎶᏇⓨ ᱝᓳᓬ ൩ᙈᱩ㘧㆙ ౽㔮ਇῺኈ
Nanmu beams: the nests are already empty; Leaving here, now how will you go? Do not dread the distance of your homeward flight; ice and frost will make no allowance for you.
371
ਇᓳᔶ㘧⡪ ᦺ㔊ᓧᠬ㡆 ᇎᆴ₈ ᇪἱ⇙㙍↢
No more the sound of your angry flight, chickens of the morn monopolize the noise-making! If you want to stagger and dawdle there’s still a place: snuggle up to the Stove God to finish out your lives.
Notes: 370-1/ Nanmu being a slow-growing tree prized for furniture and architectural detail, “nanmu beams” implies a palace or elegant mansion. (᪢ is now generally understood to equal ᬮ in this expression.) 371-4/ “Snuggling up to the Stove” recalls a proverb quoted in the Analects. The meaning of that proverb is unclear but irrelevant; the poet’s humor turns on using a phrase from everyone’s classical education to urge the flies on to their destruction. 32
Fanghui and Sikong Tu have rejected a poetic tradition that noticed swallows only when they came back in the spring to mate. However, Fanghui parts ways with Sikong when he issues no invitation to the swallows to warm themselves by the stove. Instead, he simply warns the swallows that they had better begin their migration, for the ice and frost will not spare them if they stay. The kitchen stove does appear, but only in the next poem, where it is the place for flies to meet their end! A set of poems that started with creative variations on standard themes in poems 362–66 has progressed from ever-more unconventional departures from the expected treatment of themes in poems 367–69 to the jocular treatment of unexpected themes in these last two poems. (Before He Zhu, I know of no one who devotes a poem exclusively to autumn flies. Although Chen Shizhong presumably used the same topics, his poem is not extant.) Note that these unwelcoming Quatrains on swallows and flies consist of regulated lines: Poem 370 is B1 D2 A1 B1; Poem 371 is D2 B1 C2 D2. 33 The incongruity between the classical form and the decidedly un-classical topics surely adds to the effect of Fanghui’s malicious humor. The final two poems in the set also stand out for rhyming the first line, which is as unusual in pentametrical Quatrains as it is in
———
ટᗊ, QTS, 19:633.7264–65. See Legge, III.xii.1, 2, p. 159. 33 Two other poems in the set are regulated, but less neatly: Poem 367 is (C6) D2 A1 B1, and Poem 368 is A1 B1 (C4) D2. 31 32
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eight-line pentametrical Regulated Verse. I suspect that this further contributes to the wit by speeding the tempo. As we move through these ten Quatrains, the poems increasingly seem to undercut my thesis that Quatrains in sets are slight poems that must work together to present facets of a theme. That is indeed one option for a set, but in this case the Quatrains become strong enough to stand alone at some point. They either effect a countermotion against generic expectations or they have a strong enough conclusion and internal countermotion that they don’t really require the other poems in the set. It is impossible to know whether Fanghui planned this progression or thought about it in something analogous to these terms; one has the feeling that the poems simply got more and more independent to resist the pressure to subsume themselves within a single over-arching experience of autumn. Does this mean the set loses its significance as a set, that the poems should be liberated from the confines of the set? I don’t think so. I think we and Fanghui want to keep them together because even those Quatrains that could be enjoyed on their own acquire an added layer of significance precisely because they are part of this progression from the creative to the eccentric.
1088–90: LIYANG AND QUATRAINS FOR MONKS Fanghui’s poetic friendship with Master He at Qingliang Temple in Jinling was maintained mostly through heptametrical Regulated Verses, but in 1088 and 1089 Fanghui sent three pentametrical Quatrains across the river from Hezhou. In the tenth month of Yuanyou 3 (1088), in Liyang, he sent these two: 34 376
ਇᳯධቴ 㗿⡱ᳯධ㏹ ⡊ᐲ㆔ᄛ ᄤኙᄙർ㘑
The traveler in the South I cannot meet; the bell from the South I wish to hear. I incline my ears to cross the distant night— the sky is chill; it’s mostly northern wind.
377
⹜ᳯධቴ ᤨ⢐ᐲ᧰ ᄙᖱᤚḓ᳓ ↣ᣣ⍹㗡ૼ
The traveler in the South I would ask, when can you cross in your bowl? So sentimental are the lake’s waters every day coming from Stony Head.
Notes: 376-1/ “Traveler/guest” is often simply a polite term of address, in this case for Master He.
———
34 ᡖബ堚ළࡉՂԳԲଈ Thinking of and Sending This to Master He of Qingliang [Temple]: Two poems. 8.12581–82; 8.6a.
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387
377-2/ An otherwise unknown monk is said to have crossed rivers in a wooden cup; allusions to this are common in Tang and Song poetry when rivers and Buddhists are involved. 35 377-3/ The lake is probably Xuanwu Lake ₵ᱞḓ, on the north side of Jinling. We know that in the middle of the thirteenth century it drained into the Qin-Huai, whence its waters would have entered the Yangzi and could have been brought to the opposite shore by the tides. 36 377-4/ Stony Head is the location of the Qingliang Temple.
The repeated structures in lines 376-1 and 2 and the play with the directional opposites “north” and “south” in the first poem give it a strong sense of structure. The “fulcrum” on which this poem turns is either between the apparently objective reference to a chilly sky and north wind in the last line and the subjective desires and actions of the speaker in the first three lines or between the last line and the reader’s realization after the poem is finished that, “therefore no sound comes from the south.” (The reader must supply the unspoken relationship between the wind in the last line and the rest of the poem: the wind from the north blows the sound of the temple bell away from He Zhu; he will never hear it booming from the south shore of the Yangzi.) The fulcrum in the second poem is between the first and second couplets. Line 377-2 is a question (“when will you cross in your wooden bowl?”); as such, it creates a slight pause between the couplets while the reader supplies the answer (“maybe never, but obviously not sometime soon, or you would not be asking—and thank you for giving allusive recognition to the fact that I am a Buddhist monk”). 37 The assertion after the pause that the lake waters have “surplus feeling” is in turn a response to the fact that Master He is unlikely to cross soon. At first the response is opaque. Why would water be “sentimental”? When we finish the sentence in line 377-4, we see it is because the water comes daily from Stony Head, where Master He is. Now the interstice between the couplets can be bridged in retrospect by the reader: “In contrast to the hard reality that you will not cross in a bowl, or in compensation for that fact, the waters from where you are seem sentimental as they come to console me.” Since this bridging comes after the second couplet has been interpreted, we could say that this Quatrain also contains a fulcrum after the poem ends. Whether we place the fulcrums after lines 376-3 and 377-2 or at the ends of the poems, the countermotion is strong enough to make each of these two Quatrains complete in itself, I feel; a mate or a set of Quatrains is not needed to
———
35 See, for example, Liu Changqing’s ۞ሐࣥ۫ڝԵفሁ۟ᣞ՞ڝመऄശஃਚࡺ, Liu Changqing shi biannian jianzhu, 2:339–40. 36 See Zhou Yinghe, Jingding Jiankang zhi, 18.6a–8a (1586–87). Wang Anshi, the gazetteer tells us, had proposed turning the lake into farmland for the poor, and Zhou marks that as the beginning of the lake’s shrinkage to what it was in the thirteenth century. However, it was still considered a barrier to invaders in the twelfth century, so presumably He Zhu knew it as a large lake. 37 The pause may not be a literal silence, particularly if the poem is being read or chanted aloud, but a momentary suspension of the mental parsing of what follows.
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build up enough aspects of the experience to achieve a sense of sufficiency. Yet even if I am correct to say each of these two Quatrains can stand on its own, it must be admitted that when they placed together in the order given they form a whole that, formally at least, adds up to more than the parts. (One can discover this by re-reading them in reverse order.) The conceit that waters from the lake in Jinling cross every day to connect Master He and the poet (lines 377-3 and 4) must be the final word in the pair. That conceit is not only the response to the fact that Master He won’t be crossing the Yangzi in a bowl but also the consolation for the failed attempts in the first poem to hear the bells at Qingliang Temple. Let us note that the poet did not sequence his poems as he did because he just wanted a “happy ending.” It is fine (aesthetically) to follow happiness or contentment with sorrow, and he does that often enough; but had he reversed the poems, he would have placed consolation for sorrow (which is what we have in lines 377-3 and 4) before the discovery of sorrow (which is what we have in line 376-4). That would have been clumsy; that would have made one feel that the poems were best separated altogether. The next pentametrical Quatrain in Fanghui’s collection comes fourteen months later, from Stone-Gravel Sconce. The headnote dates the poem to the precise day, the twenty-third of the twelfth month (26 January, 1090), perhaps because of the topic: a branch of flowering plum. It may be that this variety of plum should not have bloomed so early, or that the poet’s relative inexperience in the south and with the varieties of plum there made him think it was extraordinarily early. He was a northerner, we must remember, and the whole point of the poem turns on the fact that the flowering plum is part of the culture of “South of the River.” 38 Equally significant is that the poem—whose title is᪢⪇ ነᷡᶭੱ Plum Blossoms: Sent to Master He of Qingliang—reverses the old story of sending a plum branch with news to the north. 39 The sojourner on Stony Head Enceinte ⍹㗡ၔቴ will take up this one branch of plum: 㗔ข৻ᨑ᪢ How is it that this news of spring ᤐᶖᕷ comes now from north of the River? ᓬᳯർૼ The poem is regulated, with a violation at the end that emphasizes the “punch line”: C1 D2 A2 (B2). Like the flower itself, this Quatrain is delicate, yet valiant; the little question Fanghui imagines forming in Master He’s mind as he receives the sprig from Stone-Gravel Sconce brings centuries of poetic tradition to a halt with one simple fact: the sprig has traveled north-to-south. 378
——— 38 See Maggie Bickford, Ink Plum, 19ff, for the emergence of the plum in the culture of the Southern Courts. 39 8.12582; 8.6a. For story, see the Taiping yulan, 21(55):970.3a.
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389
The poems we have seen in this chapter have aimed at capturing the flavor of a moment (the autumn poems, especially) or making a single point, often a humorous one. Perhaps for that reason, or perhaps because of the difficulty of the pentametrical Quatrain, Fanghui almost never uses them as farewell poems. The next poem in his collection, dated the first month of the following year (Yuanyou 5, 1090–91), is one of two exceptions, the other being a set of eight quatrains from 1092 (Poems 392–99), partially translated below. The 1090 poem is ㅍᴺශᥓ࿃ Sending off Monks Fayin and Zhiyin Ascending Westward. 40 The two monks are apparently going overland to the capital (rather than going east to pick up the canal); most likely theirs is the same as the route of the modern rail line from Nanjing that runs northwest until it reaches the Huai River. 379
ජ㉿㐳᷐ർ ᧲㘑⎕㔐ኙ ᱝⴕભ〝 㛢⋥㐳
A thousand miles, north of the Long Huai, the eastern wind is shattering the snowy cold. On this journey, forget about asking the route— presto be gone! you’ll arrive in Chang’an.
This message, couched within a perfectly regulated A2 B1 C1 D2 sequence of four lines, appears much less personalized than a typical regulated octave. However, the second half of the poem comprises a witty allusion most appropriate for monks setting off on a journey. In the early eleventh-century Transmission of the Lamp, a monk asks “What’s the way to Jingshan [the Buddhist center near Runzhou]?” The answer is the staccato expression “meik drek” we see in line 379-4: “Presto be gone.” 41 Fanghui is the only poet I know of who uses this allusion and this expression in poetry before Lu You in the Southern Song. Recognition of the allusion would come in a flash at the end of the poem, after one has puzzled over why the monks are told they don’t need to ask directions on their way. This insider’s joke is particularly effective after two lines that evoke vast spaces and potential hardship. That the spring wind from the east “is shattering the snowy cold” is some consolation (though the skeptic might see muddy roads as a corollary). The two place names—the Tang capital Chang’an (standing for the Song capital, of course) and the Huai River—carry the aroma of hundreds of years of poetic usage, as do “thousand miles” and “east wind,” for that matter. (Eighteen Tang poems mention the “Long Huai”; Su Shi and Fanghui mention it seven times each; Su Zhe uses the term six times; and Fanghui’s contemporary Zhang Lei uses it seventeen times!). Thus, the two halves of the poem offer a pleasing contrast between the classical, timeless diction describing the journey ahead and the colloquial language of the joke that erases the journey. As a farewell poem, it is satisfying on many levels.
——— 40 41
8.12582; 8.6a. Hanyu da cidian, s.v. mozhi.
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Nine months later, Fanghui writes a set of pentametrical Quatrains to send back to Xuzhou: ᙿነᓄၔᅢච㚂 Thinking of and Sent to Friends in Pengcheng: Ten Poems. 42 It is difficult to say how common it was to use pentametrical Quatrains for quick sketches of friends. Huang Tingjian’s famous 1103 characterization of He Zhu and Qin Guan, for example, is in a heptametrical Quatrain. 43 In any case, it is surely unusual to name the individuals as Fanghui does: he refers to them by their rank among their (male) siblings. Chen Shizhong, for example, is “Chen the Second,” because he is the second son in the family. 44 We shall translate the poem for Zhang Tianji (“the Seventeenth”). The headnote to the poem informs us that Zhang has actually given up his dwelling on Yunlong Hill and expanded his Western Studio in town to a magnificent scale. Bide thee well, Retired Scholar Zhang! ᅢᒛዬ჻ to Yunlong I commend my dreams often. 㔕㦖ነᄞ㗫 Western Studio—I see the breezy moon; 㥲㘑 benches in a row—who else is there now? ㅪ᭪ᓳੱ The implied message is that the breeze and moon of autumn are there in the Western Studio to be enjoyed, but the old coterie of friends who gathered around Zhang Tianji at Yunlong Hill in the late Yuanfeng era is now scattered. A small poem, but one that connects with both the treasured past and the friend whose life has taken new turns in the present. The translation offered here assumes that it is Fanghui who “commends dreams often” to Yunlong; perhaps, however, he imagines Zhang dreaming of his mountain retreat now that he has moved to the city. Whatever the case, this phrase is found in the second lines of two ninth century heptametrical Regulated Verses, one by Du Mu and one by Xu Hun. Du Mu’s line provides the closest parallel: ධ ⋧ ᕁ ነ ᄞ 㗫 “For southern realms I long, commending my dreams often.” Removing the third and fourth syllables gives us “To southern realms I commend my dreams often,” a perfect model for “to Yunlong I commend my dreams often.” The Xu Hun line that seems germane to the present poem is ⯪㘑శነᄞ 㗫 “Somewhere–to the breeze and sunlight–I commend my dreams often.” I find the line rather opaque, even in context. However, Xu Hun is not to be dismissed as a precedent. Xu was mentioned in our discussion of Poem 168 (the second of two 1084 poems under the title Taking in the Morning and Evening Views at the Delightful! Pavilion) as a possible source for paring two pentametrical Regu383
——— 42
Poems 380–89; 8.12582–83; 8.6b–7b. Written in Liyang in the ninth month of 1090. ബ၅ֱڃ, Shangu shizhu, 2246:nei.18.331: “[Qin] Shaoyou lies drunk beneath an old wisteria; / who will sing a cup’s worth for his melancholy brow? / For knowing how to write heartbreaking lines about the South / these days there’s only He Fanghui.” 44 The older brother leaves a minimal record. See Zheng Qian, “Chen Houshan nianpu” Part One, 129–30. 43
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lated Verses that use some of the same words but describe different times of the day. We know that Fanghui read Xu Hun because we have his 1111 postface to the ninth-century poet’s collection detailing how he spent twenty years restoring about one hundred and fifty poems to the collection and collating the text. 45 We cannot prove that either poem provides the single precedent for Fanghui’s line. There may be no single precedent; we should say rather that Fanghui had some memory, perhaps only a vague one, of a phrase from heptasyllabic Tang lines that he could creatively use in a shorter line. 46
1091–92: OUTSPOKEN IN THE CAPITAL A month after writing the heptametrical Regulated Verses for the neighbor we identified as Qian Shi, Fanghui harmonizes with a pair of poems by Qian. The result is two satirical poems under the title ㍦ᓾᓴฎᗧ Harmonizing with Qian Dexun’s ‘Ancient Sense’: Two Poems, the first of which we translate below: 47 390
㚧⼼⍮⠹ ᏓⓃਇ↰ ᄢㄘထቭᐭ ⊖ฮ㘻┆ᐕ
What does drive-the-plow know about cultivation? sow-the-grain never goes into a field. The greatest farmers sit in government bureaus; the myriad officers have full stomachs in lean years.
Notes: 390-1/ “Drive-the-plow” is one of several names for a small, black bird also known as a jijiu 㛖㡀. 390-2/ “Sow-the-grain” is an onomatopoeic name for some species of cuckoo. 48 390-3/ The term translated “greatest farmers” was also a fiscal office or part of the title of a fiscal officer in some regimes from the Han to the Song.
The moral is plain and it plays on the Confucian demand for a rectification of names: that is, people whose names or titles identify them as having certain roles in the family or in society should fulfill those roles. Fanghui uses a joke about bird names to draw a parallel between the birds that don’t do what their names imply and parasitic officers who don’t care for the people as their positions imply they should.
———
45 For Xu Hun’s line, see Հรڶᡖᘣ֖, QTS, 16:536.6119, and for Du Mu’s see ബᗝ٣ᔘ, Fanchuan shiji, 323. For the postface to Xu Hun’s poetry collection, see Xu’s Xu Yonghui wenji, 157. This Southern Song edition, held by the Beijing Library, is based on the edition collated by He Zhu; the poem from which we quote is on pp. 65–66. On pp. 153–57, Fanghui lists the additional poems he found and the editions in which he found them. Since this poem is not among them, we can conclude that it was in the original edition with which he started. 46 There is an additional precedent in the last line of a heptasyllabic Regulated Verse by Li Zhong, who was mentioned in our chapter on Songs. See his ബᡔ՞១ഭᨠૹሐृ, QTS, 21:750.8543. 47 Poems 390–91, 8.12685; 8.7b. 48 See http://www.cjvlang.com/Birds/cuckoo/cuckoo.html (accessed 31 July 2004).
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Thirteen months later, still in the capital, Fanghui writes a remarkable set of pentametrical Quatrains to see off Wang Yansou ₺Ꮅฉ (1043–93). Wang had been made notary of the Bureau of Military Affairs in the second month of 1091, while Fanghui was still making his way back from Hezhou. However, in the fifth month of 1092, he was removed from that position and sent out as prefect of Zhengzhou. Wang had previously enjoyed a long but far from easy career as Censor, and despite accusations to the contrary, he appears to have been independent of any faction. He was critical of Su Zhe’s proposal to mollify the XiXia by ceding territory to them and he forcefully argued against Su Shi’s support for continuing the Hired Service policy. On the other hand, he indicted Cai Que, he defended Su Zhe from his defamers, and he was demoted posthumously in 1094 in the same wave that swept Lü Dafang into exile. 49 In the sixth month of Yuanyou 7 (1092), Fanghui presented Wang with ㅍ₺ ᮥ㎾㈕Զଈ Seeing off Wang of the Western Hub to Secure Zheng Gardens: Eight Poems. “Western Hub” is a kenning for the Bureau of Military Affairs; Zheng Gardens is a place slightly to the east of Zhengzhou also called Putian zhen ↰㎾ (a zhen being somewhat like a taxing parish), clearly a poetic reference to Zhengzhou here. “Secure” is used here in its sense of “administer,” but its root meaning is felt in the context of the poems, which emphasize Wang Yansou’s unwavering defense policy. 50 These poems are interesting for their strong and yet carefully couched support for Wang. We shall translate the first four, enough to show that they cover many topics, from the unfair amalgamation of wealth to frontier policy, with far more specificity than the Ancient Sense Quatrain just translated. 392
ජタำ⤿ᦩ ዂਇഞ ᡴᄤਅ ෘฝᛔ㘑
Once in a thousand years ruler and ministers are in accord; setting their sights on merit not measured in generations. reeling in all the blessings under Heaven they are especially generous to the guardian of the right!
Notes: 392-4/ The guardian of the right was one of three officials who administered the metropolitan region in the Han Dynasty. The term can also refer to the general capital region.
The first poem appears to make a topical allusion to a specific powerful official, “the guardian of the right,” or to powerful people in the region of the capital. For our purposes, it is enough to recognize that the poem posits a time of great
——— 49 See Song shi, 2:17.331and 334, 2:18.341, 31:342.10892, 10894–95 and 10897, and 39:471.13700 for a few of the relevant incidents and dates. See also Ronald Egan, Word, Image, and Deed, 96 and 98; and Li Tao, Xu Zizhitongjian changbian, 13:473.6b (4767). 50 Poems 392–99, 8.12583–84; 8.a–8b. For “Western Hub,” see Gong Yanming, Songdai guanzhi cidian, 102.
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promise that has been betrayed by the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few people in the capital. 393
Ᏸ෴▚ ㆻႲ⪦㉿ᷡ ⮲⡙ᕷ ₈ᤚ৻㐳ၔ
In the tented council you joined in godly calculations; dust on the borders, all ten thousand miles, cleared away. The western frontiers tranquil for the while; still it stands, one Long Wall.
The second poem looks back on Wang Yansou’s defense policy positions, credits him with achieving a period of peace with the Xi-Xia, and finally equates him with the Long Wall. It has been recognized for some time that the Great Wall that wriggles its way across maps of China is often an anachronistic fantasy and has rarely if ever corresponded to the ill-defined and shifting borders between China and other polities. Nevertheless, Song maps show walls, real or imagined, in the far north, and a Long Wall as symbolic of defense (or of the hardship of the laborers who built it) was already well established in the Chinese imagination by this time. 51 394
⺰↱ૼ㊀ 㜞ᙿᱝデ ๋㕖ෘ⍮Ꮖ ᗵᱎᱝ⫷↢
Your rightful pleadings have always been given weight; your lofty feelings make your departure light. It’s not that I am generous to one who understands me; I’m moved to sigh for the common masses.
Note: 394-1–2/ A paraphrase: you have always placed great importance on (or: been honored for?) just opinions; now that you are leaving, your noble feelings will enable you to see this setback as trivial.
After praising the justice of Wang’s opinions in the past and the mental equanimity with which he faces the present crisis (394-1–2) the poet apparently feels he must defend himself against a whispered accusation from the audience that he is simply flattering a powerful patron. (One does wonder how presumptuous Fanghui appeared in claiming that Wang Yansou was one who truly understood his heart.) Hence his protest that his feelings on these matters are inspired by concern for the people and the nation, not personal relations (394-3–4). 395
ᣂᦠ⸵ᓬ ⁗ⓣ⋟ᙥⓨ ነ⺆ᓕዂ ή⍧₫›ഞ
By the new book we were bade to apply ourselves; the cunning burrows were flushed and should be emptied. Send these words to generals heading west: don’t take pride in a hunting dog’s accomplishment.
Note: 395-4/ Fanghui alludes again to the incident when Han Xin remarked that “when the cunning hares have died, the good dog is cooked.” (See note to lines 005-15–16 in Chapter Two.)
——— 51
See Arthur Waldron, “The Problem of the Great Wall,” 645 n.7, 657, and 658.
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The fourth poem in the set clearly warns the generals that they will be betrayed rather than rewarded for their valor. The difficulties lie in the first couplet. All of the terms in the first line have various meanings; put together, they could mean something like, “The new edict ‘allowed’ you to be an ancillary or administrative assistant to a military commissioner.” However, there is no record of Wang Yansou ever having one of these posts in the past and they are not appropriate references for Wang’s new position as prefect. The term xin shu, is probably better understood as we translate it: “new book.” In one historical account, Cao Cao, founder of the Wei Dynasty after the collapse of the Eastern Han, is said to have written a book on military strategy. When his generals went on expeditions, they “all applied themselves to the matter in accordance with his new book” and were successful. In the limited context of that passage, this comes across as one aspect of Cao Cao’s brilliance. Applying this to the present poem, we might read, “If our generals had been allowed to follow your ‘new book,’ the lair of the cunning enemy, having been flushed, would have been empty.” We cannot rest content with this reading, however, because the phrase in question acquired negative connotations at some point. In 770, Daizong issued an edict in which he worries that, pressed by budget worries and military ultimatums, people make decisions based on expediency, they “apply themselves to the matter in accordance with the new book,” and they simply deal with the immediate crises. 52 It is not clear what the Tang emperor means by “new book,” or whether it alludes to Cao Cao. However, his use of this term explains a line by Su Shi that may be relevant to He Zhu’s use of it just a few months later. In late Yuanyou 6 (1091), Su looked back on his tenure as prefect in Mizhou under the New Policies: ᚒᤄ᧲ᱞ㧘ฮᣇ⻯ᣂᦠ “When I was in Dongwu back then, / the clerks were scrupulous about the new book.” In the context of Su’s poem, which is about the exhausted budget of his office in Yingzhou, “new book” has been interpreted as connected with the New Policies and the fiscal demands they made on local government offices. The connection has never been explained clearly, however. I think the key is Daizong’s edict: the clerks were using the “new manual” then in force to deal with immediate crises, rather than taking a long-term or comprehensive view. 53 This gives us a radically different reading: “We dealt with border invasions on a piecemeal basis in accordance with the ‘wisdom’ of the New Policies, so that although the cunning enemy was flushed from his lair, he was not extermi-
——— 52
See the Sanguo zhi, 1: Wei shu.1.54n2, and Jiu Tangshu, 2:11.295. ࠩⰇآ༓ֆ࢈բጣសᐓྥᚭ܂, SSSJ, 6:34.1801. The only commentator to mention the Wei shu passage about Cao Cao is Taigaku Shus Օࢂࡌശ (1345–1423), cited in Shikajikkai, 12:717. However, he does not explain the relevance of the quotation, nor does he mention Daizong’s apparent allusion to it. 53
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nated.” The verb xu in line 395-1 still seems rather opaque, but I think this is the best we can do. The most memorable part of the poem remains the advice to the generals defending the northwestern frontier. They are useful for a time, then expendable.
1095: QUIRKY IN THE CAPITAL He Zhu’s stay in Hailing produced five pentametrical Quatrains in 1094. Of some interest is the set of three Quatrains from the fourth month under the title ㅊ᧡ખⷹฎ咗↢ᦛਃ㚂 Harmonizing with the “Three Master Huang Songs” by My Late Friend Du Zhongguan. 54 The deceased friend is Du Yan, with whom Fanghui had written the Ancient Verses Harmonizing with Du Zhongguan’s qing-character Poems: Two Poems in 1086. (See Poem 084.) Although the Quatrains of 1094 are equally minor pieces, they are patterned after a set of three old ballads of unknown date and authorship that complain of the faithless lover Master Huang. 55 The impulse to work variations on ancient poems has not abated. In the eighth month of the next year (Shaosheng 2, 1095), Fanghui makes uses of ancient poems in a different way with more complex results. Back in the capital now, he is inspired by the 1086 exchange of poems with Chen Shizhong that had used the words from a four-syllable line by Ji Kang plus “difficult” to set the rhyme. (See above, p. 377.) He decides to use the words from the next line in Ji Kang’s poem plus “easy” to set the rhymes for ੩ዬᗵ⥝㚂 Living in the Capital and Moved by Stirrings: Five Poems, which he hopes to show to Chen Shizhong someday. 56 The variety in this set is intriguing. The first poem has an old message in transparent language. 405
ჾนᓳ ⏶᛬ῌ ⽶ㇳੑ㗃↰ ᤨ⪭๋ᚻ
What further talk of grand plans? lithophone-bent, I plot for my five pecks. Two acres of land back to the outer wall— when will they fall into my hands?
Notes: 405-2/ In his 1088 Ancient Verse at Sorewaist Hill (Poem 107), Fanghui expressed his disdain for bending his waist in the shape of a lithophone for the sake of Tao Yuanming’s similarly-scorned five-pecks-of-rice salary. 405-3/ Another allusion to Su Qin’s wish to have two acres of land against the wall of his native Loyang to farm.
——— 54
Poems 402–4, 8.12584; 8.8b. The originals are in Guo Maoqian, Yuefu shiji, 2:45.662–63. Fanghui uses many of the same words, but all of his rhymes are deflected-tone rhymes whereas all of the original ballad rhymes are even-tone rhymes. 56 Poems 405–9, 8.12584–85; 8.9a. 55
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The second and third poems are much more allusive. We shall translate the third: 407
⒮ੱ⥌㜞 ৻ੑ㔍ㆰᢞ 㛥㛉ᓐዂァ ᧂᙥ⾫╙
The multitude gets itself high positions; first or second is hard to reckon on the spot. Spirited Calvary—that general should never have considered Number Five worthy.
Note: 407-3–4/ The General of the Spirited Calvary is He Chong ల (262–346). Number Five is his fifth younger brother, He Zhun Ḱ (ca. 311–57). He Zhun was content to spend his life reading Buddhist sutras and building pagodas and temples. He refused his brother’s urgings that he start an official career. 57
The paraphrasable message is that the bureaucracy has been taken over by the “mob,” with no one standing out as number one or number two. When public service is so meaningless, it is a mistake to consider someone “worthy” and try to bring him into the system. The poem is built around an elaborate attempt to end a line with “five,” one of the words in Ji Kang’s line and thus a word that must be used as a rhyme in this set of Quatrains. Evidently it was not easy to end a line with “five.” Su Shi does it only three times: twice it is in the expression “five out of ten times,” and once in the number “one hundred and five.” 58 Fanghui’s skill in meeting the challenge is admirable. Not only does he find a way to end a rhyming line with “five,” he also uses the numbers “one” and “two” in line 407-2 and, as the rhyme word in that line, sruoQ3c (translated “reckon”), which is graphically identical to the word “number,” sruoH3c. Though the meaning of the poem seems a little opaque to us, the theme of number gives it structure and wit. The fourth poem is simply bizarre. Bizarre, but eloquent. 408
ᡓᡓႲ☜ਅ ኈり੦⥄⾫ ᯖዱㆻሶ ╉⋥ᅤᒏ
Misordered and mistempered, deep in the dusty pannier— if I can get by, that’s worthiness enough. A stretched-out corpse, it’s a child by the road— everyone laughs: he’s straight as a bowstring.
Seeing an abandoned innocent who is rigid in death by the road, someone makes a grotesque comparison. The living laugh; what else can they do? The poet gets his rhyme: “string.” But he also reminds us that there are dead children in the streets of the capital, and perhaps he makes us wonder what agony would make a child stretch out so ramrod straight in the last seconds of his life. The poet is a captive in the dusty pannier of officialdom, but at least he is alive.
——— 57
See the Shishuo xinyu, 18.5 and the Jin shu, 8:93.2417. ။്ڠխॐኂᑗഘ (1072); ಷխٵቛ၅ॸ (1079); and ڻᣉᏥན֮ሁ։Ղց (1091), SSSJ, 2:7.326, 3:18.933 (Fuller, Road to East Slope, 223), and 6:33.1740, respectively. 58
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1097—98: MINING THE PAST IN JIANGXIA The next pentametrical Quatrains we have are from two years later and comprise three sets. The first is ㇇⠧㇢ቭḓᙿฎ㚂 Five Poems Harmonizing with Binlao’s Musings on the Past at Court Gentleman’s Lake. 59 We already know the background to this from the extended pentametrical Regulated Verse with preface that Fanghui wrote three months earlier (Poem 224). The theme of historical memory is prominent, as we would expect in these years. In the third quatrain, our poet revisits the discovery that Court Gentleman’s Lake, named by Li Bo in 758, has largely sunk beneath the waves of the Yangzi, but it predicts that Li Bo’s writings will survive (or have survived?) the kalpa fires of destruction. The last quatrain scorns some of the other people who hosted Li for being unable to respond to his poems and for handing down their names only thanks to the “poetry stone” that remains: they are like two flies getting a free ride on a horse’s tail (an old but apt comparison). We shall translate the first poem. 410
㇢ቭ⠧ㄓ╩ ᓧῺᄈᤐ⎼ ᆞ⾚㙍㕆 ᣁᢥᤚᚧዱ
The poesy-brush of the Court Gentleman is available on your Longevity Spring stele. The lingering numen of conspiring suborners survives This Culture of Ours is a corpse on display.
Notes: 410-2/ Though Fanghui indicates in his poems that a stele of Li Bo’s poetry is present at this site, I am unable to determine why he refers to it here as a “Longevity Spring” stele. 410-4/ The comparison is to the exposure to public view of the corpse of a criminal or rebel as a warning to the populace and as an expression of the wrath of the executing party. For the nuances of “This Culture of Ours,” see Peter Bols’ book by that name.
The first couplet does not prepare one for the outburst of rancor in the second. It is as if remembering Li Bo reminds the poet how Li had been the victim of “conspiring suborners.” I think Fanghui saw in those men an adumbration of the liars and cheats who had seized control of the government in the present day, forcing upright men such as Wang Yansou into exile. Ultimately, the victim is culture itself. This Culture of Ours, which has always been the continuity that runs through history, has reached its end; it is a corpse. One month later, Fanghui immortalized eight sites in Jiangxia that had not attracted much notice; he tells us his set of pentametrical Quatrains will “supplement the gaps in the commandery’s illustrated gazetteer.” Under the title ᳯ ᄐ⹗ Nine Songs on Jiangxia, we find poems on 1) the pond where the First Emperor of Qin is said to have sharpened his sword on a rock; 2) a temple that
——— 59 Poems 410–14, 8.12585; 8.9a. Pan Dalin’s cognomen, Binlao, is written in this title with the character for Bin that is standard with Su Shi. In some other instances Fanghui writes it .
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is said to be the former residence of Meng Zong ቃቬ of the Three Kingdoms period, famous for his filial piety; 60 3) a grave inscription for Zu Guan ⽾, who gave He Zhizhang some cinnabar and spells that evidently enabled him to live to “ninety-five”; 61 4) a now-lost placard, written by Shu Yuanyu ⥥రヨ (789–835) before he left Jiangxia for an illustrious career; 5) a pavilion at a spot visited by Niu Sengru ‐௯ቒ (780–848 or 849), friend of Han Yu, Bo Juyi, and others; 6) a large boulder that is said to be the petrified remains of a sunken boat; 7) a pavilion by a stone that is as smooth and reflective as a mirror; and 8) a “dragon’s lair” ford where a dragon was once spotted. Some of the poems attempt some measure of wit, but the wit often seems forced. The significance of the poems lies in the poet’s will to make a record of these things; perhaps he knew these places and the people associated with them would be remembered a bit longer if his poems were circulated—or even incorporated into the gazetteer; poetry is often quoted in such records as part of the history of a landmark. The fourth poem deserves special mention as a comment on texts. Fanghui’s note to the poem tells us that the placard Shu Yuanyu wrote in 828 after he passed the examinations and prepared to leave has been lost. It was lost just recently, in the Yuanyou period, after a new account of Shu Yuanyu was written and engraved in stone at the behest of Wang Dechen ₺ᓧ⤿ (1035?–after 1115), the prefect at the time. Now, the text of Fanghui’s quatrain is also missing. In some editions, there is simply a blank column; in others, the note ৻ ┨ “one piece lost”; in the Quan Song shi, each missing character is indicated by the standard symbol for missing characters, —غtwenty of them, with punctuation at the end of each string of five. I think the poem never existed. It is a missing poem for a missing placard that Wang should have taken steps to preserve. Wang Dechen shared He Zhu’s interest in preserving information; in fact, he wrote one book in five juan whose title indicates that it contained poems and anecdotes about Jiangxia (thus rivaling Fanghui’s little set of eight Quatrains). 62 However, for him it was acceptable to replace old texts with new ones or with copies. Fanghui knew that books preserved culture, but there was no excuse for failing to preserve the original or earliest possible exemplar of a text, especially if it was the holograph of the writer or the work of a good calligrapher. In the
——— 60 Knowing his mother wanted to eat bamboo shoots, Meng went into the forest and wept, for it was winter. Bamboo shoots sprung up in response to his tears. See the Sanguo zhi, Wu shu, 5:48.1169n3. 61 There appear to be corruptions in the text. First, He Zhizhang died at eighty-five, in 744. Second, the date given for Zu’s visit to He should be the yihai year of the Shangyuan period (corresponding to 675–76), not the yihai year of Yuanhe. The Yuanhe period postdates He and contains no yihai year. 62 See the Song shi, 16:209.5406. I doubt that this book is extant, though another of Wang’s collections of observations and anecdotes is readily available in collectanea: 〈. The preface to this work is dated 1115 and states that the author is eighty years old; if this is not a rounded-off date, Wang was thus born in 1035.
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context of He Zhu’s historiographical concerns in the 1090s, “writing” a missing poem about a missing original artifact also constituted a protest against the erasure of evidence. The last pentametrical Quatrains from Jiangxia are nine “Bamboo Branch” songs composed as part of a drinking game on the First Si Day of 1098 (7 April). Bamboo Branch songs became popular in the Tang as a refined version of folk songs from the region of the Yangzi Gorges. They are always heptametrical quatrains, so Fanghui calls his pentametrical poems “variations,” “deviations”: ⼠┻ ᨑ⹖㚂 Variations on Bamboo Branch Lyrics: Nine Poems. 63 The first couplet of each poem describes a scene or situation in normal poetic language, but the second couplet turns the series into a game: the third and fourth lines invariably repeat the structure “I only hear X; / I don’t see Y,” in which “X” is one of three variations on the name “Bamboo Branch Song” (ending in a level tone if the rhyme of the poem is deflected, in a deflected tone if the rhyme is level) and “Y” is a figure of the past, real or legendary, identified only through allusions, never by name. While predecessor poets write Bamboo Branch Songs in pairs or sets, they do not tie them together with this repeated structure. We shall translate the second and third poems in the set. 424
㓒ጯ᧲Ꮊ ᷡᎹᜉጯᵹ ૉ⡞┻ᨑᦛ ਇ㕍⠜⥱
On opposite shores, eastern and western provinces; The clear River slaps the banks as it flows. I only hear the Bamboo Branch tune— I do not see the Greyquill Boat.
425
㔺ỡ㔕⟜⏉ Ẵᳯ✵⊕ ૉ⡞┻ᨑ ਇ㛉㟗ቴ
Dew is moist, the clouds gauze-cyan. The moon is lucid, the River boiled-silk-white. I only hear the Bamboo Branch song— I do not see the sojourner astride the whale.
Notes: 424-4/ See Poem 197 for the association of the Greyquill Boat legend with Ezhou. 425-4/ Du Fu told a friend who was going off to the sea that he might meet Li Bo there, riding a whale. 64
These nine poems must have delighted and impressed He Zhu’s banquet companions. The second couplet of each Quatrain is entertaining in somewhat the same way as a running joke that always starts the same way (“How cold was it?” “It was so cold…”), piquing the listener’s curiosity about what new variation
——— 63
Poems 423–31, 8.12586–87; 8.11b. See Du shi xiangzhu, 1:1.54–58, ಬ֞ൃ׀ఐូཾࣟۂଫػޕܧ. The statement in question is a variant that comes from a “Song edition”; see Yoshikawa Kjir, To Ho, 1:1.75, note to line 17. Su Shi and other poets clearly accepted the version that put Li Bo on the whales: see especially Su’s ڻᣉ്ڜሐᦰޙᇣ (1071), SSSJ, 1:6.265; Wang Shuizhao, Su Shi xuanji, 29–32; and ࡉ ຯພԲଈհԲ (1100), 7:43.2351. 64
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will follow the lead-in. The difference is that these poems don’t offer humorous punch-lines; instead, they give the listener the satisfaction of recognizing allusions that are familiar, but not too obvious. (The astute reader may have noticed diction from some of Li Bo’s famous lines in lines 425-1 and 2, but I have been unable to find similar clues in the other poems in the set.) Variations on Bamboo Branch Lyrics typifies He Zhu’s work in this genre insofar as the effect of the poems comes largely from their cumulative meaning as a set. Also, even more explicitly than some of the other Quatrains we have seen, these poems situation themselves as alternative versions of previous texts or, more precisely in this case, of a pre-existing form (the heptametrical Bamboo Branch songs).
ADDENDUM: HEXAMETRICAL QUATRAINS IN THE CAPITAL, 1086 AND 1092 Hexametrical quatrains are relatively rare. A mammoth Southern Song collection of Tang Quatrains (7,500 heptametrical Quatrains and 2,500 pentametrical Quatrains) includes only thirty-seven hexametrical Quatrains. For several reasons, the six-syllable line is simply ill-suited for writing and reading poetry in Classical Chinese. In the pentasyllabic or heptasyllabic lines, an odd number of syllables creates a tension and release or a proposition and answer across a definite strong caesura, either 2 || 3 or 2|2 || 3. Faced with an even number of syllables, one does not have a built-in structure to guide the parsing of the line. Is it 2 || 2|2, 2|2||2, or 3|3? Even if by custom or fiat one were to get everyone to use one of those rhythms, the sameness of the constituent units would quickly become tiresome, upon which poets would vary the rhythm from line to line and we would be back where we started, with no underlying structure as guide (or as target for resistance). Worse, there are only two line types available, Qi Gong’s types A and B. If we use ̪ for syllables that can be (in theory) either level or deflected, regulated lines are limited to ̪٤̪٨٤٤ (Type A) and ̪ ٨̪٤̪٨ (Type B). 65 Even if one adds the twenty-eight possible nonregulated permutations of the A line and the twenty-six non-regulated permutations of the B line to the four regulated A lines and six regulated B lines, one never escapes those two basic configurations. Nevertheless, Wang Wei, Wang Anshi, Liu Yuxi, and others produced a handful of works in this form that have garnered praise through the centuries. 66
——— 65 For reasons Qi Gong cannot explain, the type A line was not considered regulated unless it ended with two level tones. Discussions of such matters took place in the context of Regulated Rhapsodies. See Shiwen shenglü lungao, 58–60. 66 The preceding data and outline of the issues are based on Qi Gong’s Shi wen shenglü lungao, 55–63, and Tan Ruwei and Cao Changhe, “Liuyan jueju sanlun.”
PENTAMETRICAL QUATRAINS
401
All of Fanghui’s Quatrains in six-syllable lines were written in the capital; four of them were written on paintings. We shall consider the one that isn’t a colophon first, dated the third month of Yuanyou 1 (1086). The title is 㚍㊀⛫⥟ ㆆ⸒ Once Again Passing Through Old Haunts on Horseback: Hexametrical. 67 348 ᷜᷜ᧲ᵹተḺ
٨ع٤عغ٤ ⇧ᐕ⟓㈬ಽᡣ ٤٤٨٨٤٤ ᓧᯅㆻᬢᩉ ٨٨٤٤٤٨ ᤐ㘑ᐞᐲ㡏 ٤٤٨٨٤٤
Bubbling and babbling, eastward flowing Wan Creek. (A26) That year we finished the brew and untwined our hands. A1 I recognize those willows by the bridge— B6 spring breeze—how many times have these crows cried? A1
Note: 348-1/ There are two or three Wan Creeks in Chinese poetry. Obviously, this Wan Creek (the name means “Winding Creek”) is somewhere in or near the capital where people would be parting.
The theme is one we have seen before: revisiting the haunts of the poet’s youth in the capital. The diction, however, is particularly reminiscent of Fanghui’s lyric poetry. “Eastward flow” is found in five of his nearly three hundred lyrics (and nine of his poems); “Wan Creek” is found in two lyrics (associated with willows—Zhong Zhenzhen dates them to 1078) 68 ; “untwine hands” (to part) is found in four lyrics; “recognize” in three; “that year” in seven lyrics (and twelve poems); and “how many times” in three lyrics. Some of these phrases are frequent in his poetry, as noted. We are not arguing that any of them by itself is exclusive to the lyric or to He Zhu. Nevertheless, the phenomenon of all of these phrases coming together in one poem alerts us to a case of genre crossover. Lyric poetry is one genre in which hexasyllabic lines abound. (Over sixty percent of lyric matrices have at least one hexasyllabic line, and a few are all hexasyllabic in four-, six-, or eight-line stanzas.) 69 Music, after all, provides an overriding structure that solves many of the problems with the hexasyllabic line that we have mentioned. Fanghui himself considered this poem a hexametrical Quatrain, so we have no idea if he sang it. We can see, however, that he manages to be consistent in the rhythmic divisions in each line: a 2||2|2 parsing is sustained all the way through. Qianqian (meaning “shallow and/or small,” but translated “bubbling and babbling”) is set off as the quality that characterizes “east-
——— 67
8.12578; 8.2b. See Dongshan ci, 148–49 and 451. 69 Tan Ruwei and Cao Changhe, “Liuyan jueju sanlun,” 92. Tan and Cao don’t make it clear that they are describing stanzas, not complete lyrics. My “correction” is based on a limited survey of Tang and Song lyrics. 68
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ward flowing Wan Creek”; “that year” stands apart as the time-frame for “finish brew part hands”; and “recognize” has the next four syllables as its grammatical object. The last line is looser in structure but easily fits the same pattern. I think we can say that this is another example of his fine sense of structure; however subtly, he has tried to impose an overall framework on the lines within which he can work some variations. Also in 1086, Fanghui wrote a pair of hexametrical inscriptions on fan paintings by the early Song monk-poet Huichong ᗆፏ. This was an artist whose work attracted the colophons of Wang Anshi, Su Shi, Huang Tingjian, and Chao Buzhi. 70 Fanghui was in privileged company. In fact, one of Fanghui’s inscriptions is on a painting that has the same subject as one of Huang’s hexametrical inscriptions: wild geese. There is no reason to think Huichong had not produced a great many paintings of geese, but it is certainly possible that both inscriptions were for the same painting, since both poets were in the capital at this time. 71 We shall translate Fanghui’s ⑺᳓⯂㓵 Autumn Waters, Geese Among the Reeds. 72 Huang’s colophon is next, the first of a set under the title 㗴㈕㒐⇠ᄳ㚂 Inscribed in Zheng Fang’s Painting Folio: Five Poems. 73 Although Huang does not identify the painting as being on a fan, fans could be mounted in an album; inscriptions could then be added on the mounting or on a separate piece of silk or paper, not necessarily on the painting itself. 350 Ⴇධ⑺᳓㒜Ⴄ
South of the barriers, autumn-water dykes and tanks. A2
٨٤٤٨٤٤ Reed leaves sigh and sough, half yellowed. ⯂⪲⭤⭤ඨ咗 (A27) ٤٨٤٤٨٤
——— 70 For a translation of such a colophon by Su Shi, see Ronald Egan, “Poems on Paintings,” 436; for one by Huang, see my “Colophons in Countermotion,” 293. 71 Huang’s poem is ascribed to 1087, but there is no reason to take that seriously. The inscriptions he plausibly wrote in the capital at this time are all grouped in 1087; to 1086 are ascribed only an inscription on someone’s holograph and a poem matching the rhymes of an inscription by Su Shi. Dates in Huang’s collection are often assigned on the basis of groupings of poems, and the groupings are often based arbitrarily on a similarity of topic or, as here, stated purpose. That said, we cannot rule out a 1087 date. Although we shall argue that Fanghui in some ways exceeds Huang’s inscription, our point does not depend on the sequence in which the poems were written or indeed whether they really were on the same painting. 72 8.12579; 8.3a. The general title for this and the other poem is ᠲ༡ശքߢԲଈ Inscribed on Fans Painted by Huichong; Hexametrical; Two Poems. The pair is dated the first month of the year, but it follows a poem dated the third month. Since Huichong’s paintings must have been rather precious works of art held by collectors in the capital, and since Fanghui reached the capital only in the intercalary second month, I think first month ִإmust be a scribal error for third month Կִ. 73 Huang’s poem is in Shangu shizhu, 2244:nei.7.128. There is a version attributed to Su Shi, with slight changes in wording, see SSSJ, 8:50.2770. The title of that version, ༡ശᤓႀ, specifies the same topic and artist as Fanghui’s poem.
PENTAMETRICAL QUATRAINS
4
*
4
⋥ർ㘧ૼ㡨㓵 ٨٨٤٤٤٨ ┵⇼ᤚἋḕ ٤٤٨٨٤٤
403
From straight north the geese who flew here B6 actually thought this place was Xiao-Xiang. A1
Huichong’s smoky rain and returning geese ᗆፏᾍ㔎ᱩ㓵 (B23) ٨٤٤٨٤٨ set me down in Xiao-Xiang or Dongting Lake. ထᚒἋḕᵢᐸ (A26) ٨٨٤٤٨٤ I’m about to call for a little boat to take me home, ᰼༐ᚳ⥱ᱩ B6 ٨٨٤٤٤٨ but my old friend says it’s only a painting. ੱ⸒ᤚਤ㕍 A2 ٨٤٤٨٤٤
Notes: 350-4/ The Xiao-Xiang region is referred to as the Three Xiang in a 1089 pentametrical Regulated Verse. See note to line 192-6. Huang-2/ There is a precedent for “set me down…” in one of Du Fu’s poems on a painting. 74
Huang Tingjian’s professed confusion is an old device for praising verisimilitude in painting, with ample precedents in China as well as in the West. These include both humans and animals being fooled by the painting. 75 I think Fanghui has taken this conceit to a slightly higher level: he imagines geese from the north fooled by art into thinking they had reached their winter habitat in the Dongting-Xiang River region and then flying into the painting to become part of it. During this stay in the capital, Fanghui was socializing with members of the imperial clan; we saw his poems to Zhao Lingzhi and Zhao Lingshuai in the chapter on heptametrical Regulated Verse. Whether the Huichong paintings Fanghui saw belonged to one of them or a relative, we do not know; perhaps the otherwise unknown Zheng Fang named by Huang Tingjian was the owner. In any case, during his next period in the capital, Fanghui wrote inscriptions for paintings owned by Zhao Lingzi 㥎 (1058–1100), a member of the imperial clan whose place on the genealogical tree is presently unclear. 76 The poems were written in Yuanyou 7 (1092), but Fanghui did not record them, he tells us, until Zhao died eight years later and the paintings passed into other hands. We shall translate the second, 㡆ℙถ㢬 Sounding the Zither to Call a Crane under the
———
74 See Du Fu’s ࡚٣Ꮵ֟ࢌᄅ՞ֽᎽዚ, Du shi xiangzhu, 1:4.275–79, line 17; Yoshikawa Kjir, To Ho, 2:6–18. 75 See Qian Zhongshu, Guan chui bian 2:712–14. 76 Zhao’s dates are from John Chaffee, Branches of Heaven, 303, and the death date is confirmed by Fanghui’s headnote.
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title 㗴⇠ᓟ⸒ੑ㚂 Inscribed at the End of a Scroll of Paintings: Two Hexametrical Poems. 77 433 ⚿⨆⊖ዤ⨹⥑
He thatched a hut: a hundred-foot, overgrown estrade. A4
٨٤٨٨٤٤ Goosefoot staff: one path, moss-covered. ᧟⮪৻ᓣ⩕⧡ A4 ٨٤٨٨٤٤ An old crane who has broken off with the chicken flock ⻢ 㔊⟲⠧㢬 B1 ٨٨٤٤٨٨ should not come hither just for a zither! ਇᙥ┵ὑℙૼ A2 ٨٤٤٨٤٤ There are two ways of reading this poem. If there is a crane in the picture appearing to respond to the floor-zither, the inscription is a playful criticism of the painting: given that the crane is supposed to be so aloof, it should shun the hermit’s music as resolutely as it shuns the common run of birds. This approach, in which the colophon makes the painting the object of comment, is characteristic of Su Shi. If there is no crane in the picture, if the painting simply depicts a hermit playing the qin in his hut on a woodsy mound, then the poet is telling us why the crane is absent. In this case, the poet assumes or pretends that the painter knows the crane will never come. (This interpretation could apply also to a painting in which the crane is pictured in flight, not yet called down by the zither.) The colophon positions itself and the painting together in playful criticism of the facile or vulgar notion that hermits can call cranes with their music. A similar stance is demonstrable in the colophons of Huang Tingjian. 78 It would seem that Fanghui saw a colophon as an adjunct to a painting that had to do more than simply restate the mood and theme of the painting; its task was to tell us something we might not grasp by simply looking at the painting. How did the geese get there? Should/would a crane respond to human music, even if it is played on the venerable qin? Difficult as it is to interpret colophons for paintings we shall never see, such inscriptions were important venues for the exercise of Song Dynasty wit and subtlety. One regrets that we don’t have more of this kind of poem from He Zhu.
NEW LIFE FOR THE PENTAMETRICAL QUATRAIN The difficulty inherent in writing free-standing pentametrical Quatrains that would not seem merely derivative at this point in literary history may have con-
——— 77 78
8.12587; 8.12a. See my “Colophons in Countermotion,” for examples.
PENTAMETRICAL QUATRAINS
405
strained He Zhu, but clearly he found that by grouping such poems into sets and pairs he could give the genre new life. This surely accounts for his proportionately greater output of pentametrical Quatrains in comparison with other poets. In this chapter, therefore, we found it useful to use what I hope are by now familiar notions of poetic closure and countermotion to analyze why a given Quatrain did or didn’t seem complete in itself. Allusions to precedents, celebrations of places and friendships, flirtation with allegory, and the inclusion of “inelegant” subjects echo what we have seen in other genres. As in other chapters, the 1090s feature more topical comments on mores and politics. Whatever the theme, Fanghui’s pentametrical Quatrains are distillations of the wit and the genius for language that make him so appealing.
CHAPTER SIX
THE HEPTAMETRICAL QUATRAINS OF HE ZHU, 1077–95 There is something very odd about the statistics for Fanghui’s heptametrical Quatrains (qi yan jueju ৾⸒ฏ). In the first place, the numbers are too low for a poet in the late eleventh century. Even including a handful of post-1100 Quatrains found in the supplementary section of Fanghui’s works, there are only eighty-nine heptametrical Quatrains in his corpus. 1 This is slightly fewer than his pentametrical Quatrains. At their “ebb” in the High Tang, heptametrical Quatrains still accounted for sixty-three percent of the Quatrains written in that period; in the following Mid-Tang, they were up to seventy-four percent, and in the Late Tang a full eighty-four percent of all Quatrains were heptametrical. 2 The historical trend toward the heptametrical Quatrain continues in He Zhu’s contemporaries, although it should be noted that three Song poets born in 1002–8, Mei Yaochen, Ouyang Xiu, and Su Shunqin, diverged from this trend. See the table below. 3 Table 7 Heptametrical Quatrains in the Works of Selected Poets
Poet Du Fu Li Bo Yuan Zhen Bo Juyi Han Yu
107 48 198 674 75
% of Corpus ÷ 1458 = 07% ÷ 997 = 05% ÷ 746 = 27% ÷ 2807 = 24% ÷ 414 = 18%
% of “Regulated Verse” 105 ÷ 1054 = 10% 48 ÷ 214 = 22% 198 ÷ 472 = 42% 674 ÷ 1917 = 35% 75 ÷ 164 = 45%
——— 1 The titles of all nine post-1100 heptametrical Quatrains give us their place of composition, but there are no headnotes giving precise dates. As noted in the Introduction, these and other poems in the eleventh juan (buyi ᇖᙊ) deserve different treatment and will not be covered in the present study. 2 These figures are calculated on the basis of numbers from Shi Ziyu, “Tangdai keju zhidu yu wu-yanshi di guanxi,” quoted in Umeda Shigeo, “Haku Kyoeki ni okeru gozetsu to shichiritsu no tai-ritsusei o megutte,” 46. Shi’s data represents all poets in the Quan Tang shi who have one or more juan in that collection. 3 See Table 4 in the previous chapter for data sources and the caveat about Su Shi. For Mei Yaochen, Ouyang Xiu, and Su Shunqin, the data come from Tao Wenpeng, “Cai Xiang: Bei Song qianqi di qijue gaoshou,” 79, supplemented by my own count of Su Shunqin’s Regulated Verses. Tao’s figures are approximate for Mei and Ouyang, and he does not give the form for two of the fifteen poems in a supplementary juan of Cai’s recovered poems. (The other thirteen are heptametrical Quatrains.) Those two poems are not included in my total number of Regulated Verses for Cai.
407
HEPTAMETRICAL QUATRAINS
Poet Mei Yaochen Ouyang Xiu Su Shunqin Cai Xiang Su Shi Huang Tingjian Zhang Lei Guo Xiangzheng He Zhu
180 133 34 143 681 590 673 309 89
% of Corpus ÷ 2800 = 06% ÷ 850 = 15% ÷ 223 = 15% ÷ 425 = 34% ÷ 2856 = 24% ÷ 1878 = 31% ÷ 2212 = 30% ÷ 1415 = 22% ÷ 603 = 15%
% of “Regulated Verse”
34 143 681 590 673 309 89
÷ ÷ ÷ ÷ ÷ ÷ ÷
116 334 850 1156 1413 822 418
= 29% = 43% = 80% = 51% = 48% = 38% = 21%
We must add one caveat here. It will be recalled that many of He Zhu’s pentametrical Quatrains are grouped in pairs and sets. The poems we are to consider in this chapter tend not to be in pairs or sets. If we redefine a work as a title, Fanghui actually wrote many more heptametrical than pentametrical “works,” seventy-two to twenty-four. Table 8 He Zhu’s Heptametrical Quatrains by Year
Year 1077 1078 1079 1080 1081 1082 1083 1084 1085 1086 1087 1088 1089 1090 1091 1092 1093 1094 1095 1096 1097 1098 Totals
Titles 2 0 1 4 12 3 3 0 4 8 7 8 4 1 2 1 0 4 3 3 1 1 72
Singles 2 0 1 3 10 3 2 0 4 7 7 0 4 1 2 1 0 3 3 3 1 1 58
Pairs 0 0 0 0 2 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 5
Sets 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1
No. of Poems 2 0 1 7 14 3 4 0 4 9 7 8 4 1 2 1 0 5 3 3 1 1 80
If we look for sets of ten heptametrical Quatrains, we find none in He Zhu, in contrast to his three sets of ten pentametrical Quatrains. Among all other poets,
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decades of heptametrical Quatrains were more common than decades of pentametrical Quatrains. Huang Tingjian wrote five sets of ten heptametrical Quatrains; Mei Yaochen, three; Su Shi, Su Zhe, and Zhang Lei, two each. Three Tang poets we know Fanghui read, Bao Rong, Xue Neng, and Li Bo, wrote at least one set of ten apiece (Xue wrote two). Fanghui’s heptametrical Quatrains also dwindle in number with the passage of time. This is the opposite of what Mo Lifeng has observed in Huang Tingjian. Huang’s works in this genre comprise only twenty-four percent of his poems in his early period (to 1085), second to his pentametrical Ancient Verse (thirty percent), but after that early period the heptametrical Quatrain is his preferred form. It rises to account for thirty-six percent of his poems in his second period (to 1093) and forty-six percent in his later period (to his death in 1105). In the case of He Zhu, there is an early peak before the Xuzhou period and a moderate plateau in the capital–Liyang period of 1086–88. After that, his output in both Quatrain forms is quite modest. In contrast, his production of heptametrical Regulated Verse (octaves) hits peaks in 1090, 1094, and 1096; his Ancient Verse enjoys revivals in 1089, 1091, and 1096; and even his Songs, which first reached a peak of five in 1084, continue to hit or exceed that number in 1090, 1091, 1094, and 1096. We could blame this on a quirk of preservation. Accidents do happen: twenty-five heptametrical Quatrains from the years 1088 through 1095 were dropped from what is now juan 9, then recovered and patched into juan 10 (shiyi), as discussed in note 1 to our chapter on heptametrical Regulated Verse. Yet these poems were recovered, after all. We need to explore other explanations for the paucity of Quatrains in the later years covered by our study. I suspect that the real reason for the modest output of Quatrains in the 1090s is that our poet found that other genres were better for what he wanted to do. We have already talked about the difficulty of the pentametrical Quatrain; some of the challenges are the same for the heptametrical Quatrain, even though more complex dynamics can be established with a 2-2-3 cadence. One is still limited in the amount of parallelism that can be used and there is no framing that holds up parallel middle couplets for careful scrutiny. Octaves and longer songs or Ancient Verses gave He Zhu the space he needed to develop complex progressions of feeling. The Quatrain was in competition with another genre, as well: the lyric. Certain heptametrical Quatrains were written explicitly to be sung to traditional melodies. We know this because the titles of these poems are simply the names of the tunes: Yangguan Pass, Bamboo Branch, Willow Branch, and so on. However, an ordinary heptametrical Quatrain could also be put to music and sung if it stood out as a favorite poem for some reason. Such poems were set to certain tunes, most especially Bamboo Branch for Quatrains and 㢽㡜ᄤ Zhegutian for
HEPTAMETRICAL QUATRAINS
409
either octaves or Quatrains, with a little pruning and augmenting where necessary. Now, one could criticize a person’s lyrics by saying they sounded like an ordinary heptametrical poem put to music. (Fanghui’s friend Zhao Lingzhi leveled this charge against Huang Tingjian’s lyrics.) 4 This implies that the boundary between a mediocre lyric and a poem sung to music was fuzzy and open to aesthetic dispute. If a bad lyric sounded like a poem set to music, then a poem set to music could also sound like a bad lyric. Fanghui was a fine lyricist. My theory is that if he had a choice between writing a heptametrical Quatrain that could be sung and writing a lyric that would take advantage of and even extend all the musical and rhythmical resources of that genre, he would write the lyric. Furthermore, as he got older and wrote more and more lyrics, this preference probably became stronger. On occasions where either a heptametrical Quatrain or a lyric would serve, the lyric would win out. 5
EARLY START IN THE NORTH Twenty-seven heptametrical Quatrains survive from 1077, when Fanghui was collecting wine taxes in Zhaozhou, through the seventh month of 1082, when he was on his way to Xuzhou. Most of them are solitary pieces.
1077: QUIET SCENES IN ZHAOZHOU The following poem is the fourth extant poem in any shi genre by He Zhu. Before it, we have only the heptametrical Regulated Verse On the First Si Day, Thinking of Excursions at Jinming Lake (1075; Poem 232), the pentametrical Regulated Verse Evening Prospect in the Aftermath of Rain (1076; Poem 160), and one other heptametrical Regulated Verse from 1076. 6 All of those poems’ headnotes say they were written in Lincheng. This poem from the fourth month of 1077 and all the later poems (two heptametrical Regulated Verses and another Quatrain) from the same year are ascribed, however, to Zhao Commandery, an old Tang designation for the prefecture. Perhaps the change in how he refers to the area reflects a shift of assignment: we know that the young poet was an acting magistrate in the prefectural seat at Lincheng at some point, but he was also managing the collection of brew taxes.
——— 4
Zhao Lingzhi, Hou qing lu, 2:8.11a. For a more complete treatment of the phenomenon of singing poems and references to the relevant sources, see Yang Xiaoai, “Zhuo qiangzi chang hao shi.” 6 ᢤ്Փց Presented to Zhang Shiyuan, Poem 233, 6.12558; 6.1a. 5
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Whatever the sequence of posts, Fanghui was only in his mid-twenties at the time and must have been precocious. According to his epitaph, as a new magistrate he issued rulings on several hundred stalled legal cases in three days, much to everyone’s astonishment. 7 Could this reflect the impatience of youth? In any case, there is an intriguing incongruity between the image of the decisive young Fanghui clearing the docket and the mood of this first heptametrical Quatrain, ᷡῆၴ Hall of Fine Swallows: 8 434
4
㓴⡪ཎཎῆ㘧㘧㩷 䃂䂾䃂䃂䃂䂾䂾㩷 ᓧᱼ⚃৻ౌᨑ㩷 䃂䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾㩷 ⌧ᕁਰૼㆶਰ㩷 䃂䃂䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂㩷 ᣣ㐳ᛲਅ☄ᤨ㩷 䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾䂾㩷
D3
Sparrow voices peep-a-cheep, swallows dart and dive.
B1
They count on getting, ‘mid fading pink, a twig or two.
C4
Sleepy thoughts unwares come and unwares leave again;
D1
the day is long, I lay open a scroll, when the blinds are down.
Note: 434-2/ Whether it is the poet or the birds who hope to get the fading pink blossoms is unclear. A variant, ᓧᱼ⚃৻ౌᨑ “There remains fading pink, a twig or two,” avoids the question of why the insectivorous birds or the poet would want to possess fading blossoms.
In the first line of this slight little poem, the heptasyllabic line gives the poet room to use two reduplicatives (tsreik-tsreik and pi-pi) to lighten the tone and speed the rhythm. Then, in the third line, he uses another kind of repetition, a “hook word,” to the same effect: “unwares come and unwares go.” By creating a lively–slow–lively–slow progression through the four lines of the poem, Fanghui mimics the seductive waves of sleepiness that he talks about in line 3. The structure of the poem and its distinctive diction must be what made it worth preserving. (The “peep-a-cheep” reduplicative is much more common in the Tang than in He Zhu’s time, and I believe no one before him combines “dart and dive” with another reduplicative in a heptasyllabic line.) In deploying two reduplicatives in one line (the only time he does this in this genre) and in his use of “hook words,” Fanghui flirts with the style of Wang Anshi. In Wang’s heptametrical Quatrains, both of these tools are significant structural and expressive devices. A recent study on Wang’s heptametrical Quatrains lists fiftyseven reduplicatives that he uses in this genre, some of them ten or more times. That is three times the number of reduplicatives Fanghui uses in his admittedly
——— 7
The epitaph by Cheng Ju ࿓ࠠ (1078–1144) is found in Zhong Zhenzhen’s Dongshan ci, 523–
8
9.12588; 9.1a.
24.
HEPTAMETRICAL QUATRAINS
411
much smaller corpus of Quatrains, only twenty-seven of which use a reduplicative (nineteen heptametrical and eight pentametrical Quatrains). Wang Anshi is extreme in his fondness for reduplicatives. He uses them in over half of his heptametrical Quatrains. For the sake of comparison, I have searched Su Shi’s corpus for all the reduplicatives used in Wang Anshi’s heptametrical Quatrains and all those used in these twenty-seven Quatrains by He Zhu. My conclusion is that Su is less enamored of reduplicatives than Wang, but more apt to use them than He Zhu. Su Shi uses reduplicatives from this list (and he uses most of them) in sixty Quatrains. (Fifty-three of these are heptametrical.) Among these sixty Quatrains, Su uses two reduplicatives in sixteen poems. My impression is that the proportion would be higher in Wang’s Quatrains. In only one of those sixteen poems does Su use the two reduplicatives in a single line. This line, from a 1087 poem, happens to have the same structure as He Zhu’s (XYAAZBB). 9 Wang uses this XYAAZBB format at least once; he also uses reduplicatives in tandem (AABBXYZ) at least twice. 10 Reduplicatives have a long history in Chinese poetry, from the Classic of Poetry on down. In the pentametrical line, their use can evoke the Nineteen Old Han poems and other hoary precedents. In the heptametrical line, the expressive use of reduplicatives seems to have come right along with the rise of the heptametrical Quatrain. Late Tang poets such as Du Mu were particularly skilled at their deployment. In this little digression we may have discovered one reason why Su Shi is quoted by Zhao Lingzhi as saying Wang Anshi’s heptametrical poems had a “Late Tang air.” 11 Possibly it was in a conscious effort to avoid this “Late Tang air” that Fanghui later limited his use of reduplicatives. Their deployment in this 1077 Quatrain is exceptional. Fanghui’s garden poems are concentrated in the heptametrical Quatrain. There are six heptametrical Quatrains with “garden” in the title: five from 1077 to 1087 and one more, on an abandoned garden in the capital, dated 1091. In
——— ྤᠲԮԫଈ, SSSJ, 8:48.2667, line 1: ਞଅഭഭ࡙ናና. See Zhang Ruijun, “Wang Anshi qiyan jueju di yuyan yishu,” 10–11. The XYAAZBB structure is in ᆃխਞ༃, the first line of which is ॹᄿዣዣॸ. See Linchuan xiansheng wenji, 30.336. An example of the AABBXYZ format is ឫឫԼڣၴ, the opening line of ᢤቖ, 34.370. The example of two reduplicatives in a string cited by Zhang Ruijun is the third line of ݥ , ཛཛᑈᑈ़ႆॸ, 33.356. Reduplicatives meaning “every morning, every evening” obviously have a semantic value that is different in kind from “in a flurry in a fluster,” but in terms of formal rhythm they are the same, and we shall not discriminate between them in this discussion of the device. 11 Hou qing lu, Zhibuzuzhai congshu ed., 2:7.10a–b. Tao Wenpeng notes the effective use of reduplicatives in the heptametrical Quatrains of Cai Xiang and cites five examples. Whether Cai was as enthusiastic about reduplicatives as Wang and Su cannot be extrapolated from those examples, but Cai was an early leader in the return to the late Tang fondness for the heptametrical Quatrain. See “Cai Xiang: Bei Song qianqi di qijue gaoshou,” 76. 9
10
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other genres, besides the Ancient Verse An Excursion to Eupatorium Bottoms Garden at Lingbi (1088), only one pentametrical Regulated Verse and one heptametrical Regulated Verse have a garden as their topic. 12 It seems that the garden as a place one stops to visit for a short time was best presented in poetry in a genre that picked out the essence of a momentary experience, but did so in a more relaxed rhythm than the pentametrical Quatrain, where there are no garden poems. (Note, however, that the topic of buildings that may have been in gardens is more widely distributed across genres.) Here is the 1077 garden poem, ർೋᄐ North Garden: Beginning of Summer. 13 435
4
ᄤᷡ᮸⬺Ớ㩷 䂾䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾㩷 Ụ⭯㔎ỡ☄㒶㩷 䂾䂾䃂䃂䃂䂾䂾㩷 ⬸⚃ඨ⪭↢㚅㩷 䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾䂾䃂㩷 ะඡℿ᨞㘑㩷 䃂䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾㩷
B4
The breath of Heaven is clear and mild, the shade of the trees is heavy.
D2
The murky mist of drizzly rain dampens the fenestral.
A1
“Carmine-red has half fallen”— engendering such perfume!
B1
towards evening on the trellis of roses, a breeze.
Notes: 435-3/ The first four syllables are a direct quotation from the third line of a heptametrical Quatrain by Du Mu. I take the zai at the end of the line as exclamatory. 14 An alternative reading would yield: “the living musk remains,” comparing the scent of the flowers to musk produced by a living musk deer, the highest grade.
Fanghui was probably pleased with this Quatrain as a summation of the season in four perfectly regulated lines, the first couplet capturing the mild weather, thick foliage, and humidity of early summer, the second couplet bringing the scene to life with color and scent. The sound patterns do not create the lilting effect we saw in Hall of Fine Swallows; more subtle, they are simply pleasing to the ear. In line 435-2, the alliterative compounds meing meng (hazy; “murky mist,” more commonly written ḵ Ụ ) and lam lung (window-curtain and lattice; “fenestral”) are balanced against the staccato entering tone syllables: meing meng | bak ghuoQ || syep lam lung. In line 435-4, the rhyming disyllabic word mei1a ghwie1a (“roses”) and the final word, pung (“breeze”) are framed within the assonance of all the other syllables in the line: syangH3 manQ3a mei1a ghwie1a kaH2 dzyangH3 pung3b.
——— 12 ሏᑱᗼழּႼ ۃMaking an Excursion to the Shi Family Garden and Ponds in Tengxian; 5.12547; 5.4b (1085) and ᠲৄةᗼႼֽॼInscribed on the Water Pavilion in the Yongcheng County[-office] Gardens, 6.12564; 6.9b (1086). 13 9.12588; 9.1a. 14 Du Mu’s poem: ਞඡᠲଁ୮ॼ, Fanchuan shiji zhu, 2.182–83. For similar uses of zai, see Zhang Xiang, Shi ci qu yuci huishi, 3.307–308.
HEPTAMETRICAL QUATRAINS
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This framing actually enhances a critical point of interest in the poem because it foregrounds the roses and the breeze, whose relationship is both obvious and open to doubt. Note that the line is a noun phrase (“breeze on the rose trellis towards evening”) or two (“roses towards evening; breeze on the trellis”); it makes no proposition, simply noting the existence of the breeze (or the breeze and the roses). Thus, it opens up two possibilities: either one becomes aware of the breeze because it brings the scent (mentioned in line 435-3) from the rose trellis or one becomes aware of the scent because it was carried by the breeze. At this moment in the garden, the consciousness through which we experience the scene is unable to decide which was perceived first, the breeze or the scent. What seemed to be merely a poem about a pretty scene ends up inviting introspection about our perceptual operations.
1080: RESTRAINT IN FUYANG A more intimate view of the poet’s life is offered in two poems of Yuanfeng 3 (1080), after Fanghui has moved south to Fuyang, now assigned to a Chief Manufactory. The first Quatrain shows a startling discovery for a young man of twenty-nine sui: ೋ⊕㜰␜փ Upon Seeing my First White Hair: Shown to My Wife. 15 437
4
⢻ዮᜰ⸘ኽଘ㩷 䂾䂾䃂䃂䃂䂾䂾㩷 ᣣ᧲㘑⊕㗡㩷 䃂䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾㩷 ାᤚ⦡り㕖ᚒ㩷 䃂䃂䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂㩷 ⧯⺰りᄖᦝᖘᖘ㩷 䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾䂾㩷
D2
How could I count off on my fingers to reckon when I’ll be made a lord?
B1
The westing sun, the easterly wind— I see a white head!
C4
Indeed it is true that this self of appearances does not belong to me;
D1
if you want to consider what’s outside the self, it is even more remote.
Notes: 437-1/ If the speaker cannot calculate on his fingers when he will rise to a high position, that day must be far off. 437-2/ Since the poem was written in the third month, the last month of spring, this line may simply mean “late on a spring day I discovered the white hair.” 437-3/ “Appearances” translates the Chinese equivalent of the Sanskrit rpa, that which is apprehended by the senses.
With the discovery of the white hair, the poet knows viscerally that his body is just another phenomenon that goes its own way independent of his will. The
——— 15
9.12588; 9.1b, third month
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idea that the body is a form lent by Heaven and Earth comes from the Zhuangzi, but the contingent reality of the self implied in line 437-3 gives a Buddhist tone. If this line sounds familiar, it is because Su Shi, two and a half years later and in exile at Huangzhou, will say in a famous lyric that his body/self “does not belong to me.” 16 Whether we should construe such sentiments to mean that the official’s body is controlled by the orders of the government or that it is the official’s own ambition that places his self under the control of external forces is difficult to say. Perhaps both meanings are intended. Although much of Fanghui’s later poetry repeats this kind of complaint in various forms, however, in this Quatrain he seems not to be pulled or pushed by “what’s outside the self,” which he pronounces “remote, insubstantial,” youyou. The discovery of a sign of aging seems to have triggered a renunciation of worldly concerns. One wonders whether his wife was ready to accept such sweet insouciance in a husband not yet thirty. Fanghui’s wife may have been both charmed and worried by the heptametrical Quatrain Fanghui wrote a couple of months later, in the fifth month of 1080: ዪਛᱩ Home from the Office. 17 438
4
ᔃἫᚑἯਇᓳὼ㩷 䂾䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾㩷 ╉චਃᐕ㩷 䃂䂾䃂䃂䃂䂾䂾㩷 ඡᶭㅌ㘩ή㙍㩷 䃂䂾䃂䃂䂾䂾䃂㩷 ထ⥜ాᦡᝊ⚕㡇㩷 䃂䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾㩷
B4
The fires of my heart have turned to ash and will not burn again.
D3
My old garden I left with smiles thirteen years ago.
A4
In the evening cool I retire to dine and have no other business
B1
but to sit and with a crowd of kids hold the line of a paper kite.
Note: 438-4/ Or: “and so (zuo) with a crowd of kids I hold the line of a paper kite.”
When one’s heart has turned to ashes (as in line 438-1), it often means he is no longer a slave to passions; he can look upon the world with unruffled calm. Frankly, though, Fanghui is a little young to be claiming such imperviousness to excitement. The context here tells us rather that the fires of his heart have turned to ashes because of the gap between the hopes and aspirations he entertained when he left home “with smiles thirteen years ago” and his present station in life. It is the renunciation of ambition that gives He Zhu “quality time” with the children.
——— 16 See Su Shi’s lyric of 1082 to the matrix Linjiangxian (࡙堬ࣟࡕᙌ༚ᔨ), Xue Ruisheng, Dongpo ci biannian jianzheng, 2.376–78, Ronald Egan, Word, Image, and Deed, 315–16, and Wang Shuizhao, Su Shi xuanji, 300. For the Zhuangzi passage, see Watson, 238, and Graham, 161. 17 9.12588; 9.1b.
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The fact that heptametrical Quatrains tend to be perfectly regulated encourages one to use them to express measured calm and balance. That calm and balance, however, can be deceptive, as we have just suggested. For more evidence of this, let us consider the idyllic life enjoyed by the peasants in what appear to be set pieces harmonizing with a series of poems by an otherwise unknown acquaintance: ፕ⧯᜕྾ᤨ↰ኅ⹖྾㚂 Harmonizing with Lyrics on Peasants in the Four Seasons, by Cui Ruozhuo: 18 440
4
441
4
442
443
㥏⡪ㄫቴ㉎ㆶኅ㩷 䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾䂾㩷 ␠᮸ᰬᣣᓇᢳ㩷 䃂䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾㩷 ༑ᐕᤐ⾽ᅢ㩷 䃂䃂䂾䂾䂾䃂䃂㩷 ➙㗡⚃⽎↢⧎㩷 䂾䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾䂾㩷 ㊁⬧‧⧎ㆊ⍴ 㩷 䃂䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾㩷 㤇⑺ᤨ▵૬ⴅᔔ㩷 䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾䂾㩷 ㄫ㐷⠧ῳᑧⴕቴ㩷 䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾䂾䃂㩷 ᳹ᷡ↞᮸⬺ᶭ㩷 䃂䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾㩷 㔊⡪›ึ㆙⋧ᦸ㩷 䂾䂾䃂䃂䃂䂾䂾㩷 ␠㈬⊓ᮏ༐ቴᚓ㩷 䃂䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾㩷 ᦇᣣ᥍㒜ᦝ㑪㩷 䃂䃂䂾䂾䂾䃂䃂㩷 㘑็⭋㤇ኒ⧎㚅㩷 䂾䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾䂾㩷 ඡ㔐ẂẂᴎీ⟀㩷 䃂䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾㩷
D1
With sound of drums they welcome a guest, and drunken go back home.
B1
The trees of the shrine enring them and sunlight slants.
C2
All delight that this year the spring offering is lovely;
D4
wrapping heads in pink are life-like flowers.
B1
Wild tendrils pull flowers, crossing low walls.
D1
It’s the season of ripening wheat, and then there’s the silkworm rush.
A1
Greeting me at the gate, elders entertain their guest:
B1
what’s drawn from the well is pure and sweet, and cool in the shade of trees.
D2
Chicken voices and barks of dogs— here and there, afar.
B1
Shrine brew shows up in the troughs and they call the guest to taste.
C2
The morning sun is sheer and clear, the reservoir vaster than before;
D4
a breeze blows over buckwheat, dense flowers wafting fragrance.
B1
The sheeted snow of evening submerges rabbit toils.
——— 18
9.12589; 9.2a. Composed in the eighth month of 1080 at Fuyang.
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ṩ⋄⼺♄㙂㈘ኅ㩷 D3 䃂䂾䃂䃂䃂䂾䂾㩷 ᄛ㐳ዋᇚή⥙❱㩷 A4 䃂䂾䃂䃂䂾䂾䃂㩷 ৻㤭㕍᾽✤㤗㩷 䃂䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾㩷 B1
4
Full cups of bean porridge are offered to the neighbors. When nights are long a young wife has no husking or weaving; a point of bluish lamplight attends while she spins hemp.
Notes: 441-2/ Qiu means (when speaking of grain) ‘ripe,’ but also ‘harvest’ and ‘autumn.’ 442-1/ An obvious allusion to the ideal Daoist state, in which villagers can hear the chickens and dogs of neighboring hamlets but have no desire to travel that far away. 443-4/ The steps of braking, heckling, and spinning hemp are all encompassed, I believe, in the verb ji.
This is a world of perfect order and bounty. (Even the metrical sequences are well ordered, alternating between DBCD and BDAB.) Work in this village must be getting done, but the labor is out of sight: when winter wheat is being harvested and silkworms tended in summer, the old men have time to invite the poet in for a drink of cool water; while everyone gathers in the fall to drink more brew at the shrine, buckwheat is there to be smelled, not to be harvested and processed. In spring, the celebrants wear artificial flowers on their heads; then and in the fall, there is brew to share, and later a surplus of steaming cups of porridge to take the chill out of winter. The only person working is the young wife. Is there a slight note of discord here? Of course, that a young wife slaves through the night might strike the poet as a reassuring sign of industriousness, not a mark of desperation, but he does let slip the information that she does not pound grain in a mortar or weave. Does this mean those tasks are already done, or that there was little grain to husk and no silk to weave, despite all the activity of the previous seasons? Five months before this set of Quatrains, Fanghui had written an Ancient Verse to describe drought conditions in the area. 19 In the previous year, in Joy Over Rain (Poem 040) his relief at the ending of a drought had been tempered with the warning that high rents and heavy taxes could still cripple the peasant economy. At the very moment the present Quatrains are being written, let us remember, Su Shi is settling into his exile in Huangzhou. He had “earned” his exile largely by vividly portraying in his poems—many of them heptametrical Quatrains—the hardships and disruptions visited upon the peasants by the New Policies. Even as he approached Huangzhou early in this same year, he still wrote a poem contrasting a utopian village in a painting with the present-day
——— 19
ਞ۩ Spring Travel: Poem 043, 2.12511; 2.3a–b.
HEPTAMETRICAL QUATRAINS
417
reality of county clerks “pressing for cash, beating on the doors at night.” 20 Also, Su’s poem about the “shed-tattered-pants” bird (mentioned in our chapter on Songs) was written in 1080. Whether or not he knew that Su Shi was still writing such poems about the suffering of the peasants, Fanghui had to have known the widely-circulated poems that had gotten Su into trouble. (An important factor that brought about this unprecedented literary persecution was the simple fact that they were so widely circulated, thanks to the relatively new technology of print.) In this context, it seems to me that even a “purely” literary exercise on the theme of happy farmers could not avoid evoking a comparison between the idyllic village life depicted in such a poem and the village life portrayed by Su Shi. This would be true even if local conditions in Fuyang were not as drastic. If the final couplet in the set implies that taxes or rents have taken away the household’s grain and silk, this is the imperfection in the tableau that reveals the poet’s true thoughts about the four seasons of the peasants’ life. With this in mind, I’d like to take another look at the meaning of our poet “sitting with a crowd of kids holding the line of a paper kite” (438-4). In the first month of the year, when he crossed the Huai River on his way into exile, Su Shi had written these words about the son who was accompanying him: ₡༑ዊా ሶ㧘ዋዊ⋧ޕᓬൕ㔍ਛ㧘 ⢄⢖ᅤ㐅⍹”ޕI only delight in my small son, / in youth he devoted himself to contentment and happiness. / Now he follows me in arduous difficulties; / his liver and lungs are like iron and stone.” In a diary entry for 17 August 1891, the Qing official Zhang Peilun ᒛ✈ (1848–1903) singled out these four lines as one example of the “restrained brushwork” (lianbi ᢢ╩) that characterizes Su Shi’s poetry at this juncture. The idea seems to be that by speaking of his own plight as reflected in the changed life of his son and telling us his admiration for his son’s fortitude, Su Shi expresses his own shame and frustration only through implication. 21 Su Shi had been in a position where he could actively campaign for relief from the excesses of the New Policies, but now he was powerless. Fanghui had always been powerless, no matter how high his ambitions. Collecting taxes and supervising arms production, he must have been aware that he was extracting surplus value from the people, not returning benefits to them. However different the situations of the two men, it seems appropriate that Fanghui also express his frustrations over the meaninglessness of his job in “restrained brushwork.”
——— 20 ຫࡱൄࢬ፝ڹຫޘഞቹԲଈհԲ, SSSJ, 4:20.1030; Egan, Word, Image, and Deed, 53; Wang Shuizhao, Su Shi xuanji, 128–29. 21 Jianyu riji, xinmao B.33b–34a. The Su Shi poem is መ, SSSJ, 4:20.1022. The other poem Zhang Peilun cites is ۞طতຟࠐຫԿֲܑۖ, 4:20.1017. The point there seems to be that Su Shi’s anguish or anger over the exile of himself and his brother is expressed indirectly in the opening lines. In those lines, the poet expresses wonderment that Su Zhe, in exile himself, yet grieves for him.
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1081: MAKING IT FRESH The following poem from the second month of 1081, ᧲ၔㅍቴ㚍 At the Eastern Citywall, Seeing off a Guest, On Horseback, is unusual for a farewell poem in that it says virtually nothing about the person who is leaving except that it refers to the smoke rising from the cooking fire on his boat; it is not even clear whether his is the only boat moored there, east of Fuyang, so I have chosen to translate as if there were several “outlander” or “guest” boats. 22 446
4
ะඦቅᾍቴᯱ㩷 䃂䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾㩷 ৻㒜ᤐ᳓ౌ㡗㡝㩷 䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾䂾㩷 Ṫ┬⸃໒ṋᶉᦛ㩷 䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾䂾䃂㩷 ᙥ╉Ⴒ၎㚍㇢㩷 䂾䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾㩷
B1
Toward noon a lone smoke rises from outlanders’ masts.
D1
One bank of springtime waters, two mandarin ducks.
A1
The fisher lad knows how to sing the Canglang Song
B4
and must be laughing at him—all dusty— the young man on the horse.
One hopes Fanghui shared this poem with the departing person, who surely would have appreciated the way he distilled the scene into vertical images (the smoke and masts) in the first line, juxtaposed against the horizontal (water stretching away along the bank) and the point (the colorful ducks) in the second line. There is structural interest, also, in the use of the numbers “one” (meaning “whole”) and “two” in line 446-2. We can see this as a kind of variation on the repetition of a “hook word,” a device we mentioned above (see p. 410). If we imagine boys fishing along the river, the traveler likewise might have enjoyed Fanghui’s pretence that one of them knew the Canglang Song sung by the ancient fisherman who laughed at Qu Yuan. Fanghui puts himself in the place of the ancient poet: though he is the “young man on the horse,” he is supposedly the object of the boys’ scorn. Qu Yuan was scorned because he would not adapt to a changing situation to “wash his cap-strings” when the Canglang’s waters were clear and “wash his feet” when they were muddy. Does this suggest that Fanghui sees himself as equally committed to his course in the world, unable to withdraw? There is one other heptametrical Quatrain preserved from the second month of 1081. Its structure is similar insofar as a striking first couplet of scene description is followed by a second couplet that is syntactically continuous. The title of the poem is 㝵ၔ᧲ East of the Wei Wall. 23
——— 22 23
9.12589; 9.2b. Written in Fuyang. 9.12589; 9.2b. Composed in Yuancheng ցৄ, the county in which Daming lies.
HEPTAMETRICAL QUATRAINS
⍴⍴ች ᧙⧎㩷 䃂䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾㩷 㔧㔧ඡ㔎ỡ㡏㩷 䂾䂾䃂䃂䃂䂾䂾㩷 ᰼ዂᄛᱩᕁᄞ㩷 䃂䂾䂾䃂䂾䂾䃂㩷 ᙀંᤐ㘑็ኅ㩷 䂾䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾㩷
447
4
B1
Over a low and stubby palace wall apricot blossoms can be seen;
D2
by drizzling drops of evening rain crying crows are drenched.
A2
I want to take tonight’s dream of longing to return
B4
and rely on the spring breeze to blow it all the way home.
419
By now we recognize the vivid effect of the reduplicatives (translated “low and stubby” and “drizzling drops”), though they don’t create quite the strong forward momentum that we observed when two reduplicatives were used in the first line of Hall of Fine Swallows (Poem 434; see p. 410). In fact, we might pause a bit to wonder why the wall around a palace would be “low and stubby,” until we remember that the title tells us this wall was built during a Wei Dynasty, that is, under one of the powers that ruled the area at various times from the third to the sixth centuries. It has been worn down by time and cannot screen off the apricot trees that a poet might wish to imagine were once part of the palace gardens. Perhaps it is the apricot blossoms that make the poet want to enjoy spring at home; perhaps it is the drenching rain that makes him want to be away from where he is now. Either way, the scene described in the first couplet leads to the hope that the spring breeze will blow him in dream to the place to which he always hopes to return. The balance and stasis of the seemingly parallel first two lines set off the flowing enjambment of the last two lines very effectively, making the second half of the poem seem like a spontaneous release of energy. For comparison, we can take Bo Juyi’s heptametrical Quatrain ᧮Ꮊㅂ⥷ Boat Back to Hangzhou. 24 I choose this poem because Bo also uses a similar construction in the last couplet of a Quatrain: he “wants to take” something and “rely on” a (non-animate) agent to convey it to a distant destination. *
4
⥄㍦Ⴄጊ᳓ᓟ㩷 䃂䃂䂾䂾䂾䃂䃂㩷 ਇᄙ㘶㈬ᙾี㩷 䃂䂾䃂䃂䃂䂾䂾㩷 ᰼ዂᱝᗧᙀㅂᰂ㩷 䃂䂾䃂䃂䂾䂾䃂㩷 ႎ⥜ḓ㘑⍮㩷 䃂䃂䂾䂾䂾䃂䂾㩷
——— 24
QTS, 13:446.5009.
C2
Since I bade Qiantang’s hills and waters farewell,
D3
I have not drunk much wine and I’m too lazy to chant poetry.
A4
I want to take this feeling and rely on the returning oars
(B3)
to make it known to West Lake’s breeze and moonlight.
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Notes: 1/ Qiantang is another name for Hangzhou. 4/ West Lake is Hangzhou’s most famous landmark.
Bo Juyi’s poem differs from He Zhu’s in two important ways. First, the first couplet uses continuous syntax and thus provides less of a “ground” against which the next couplet can stand out. The parallel neglect of both wine and poetry in line 2 can be seen, however, as a substitute for interlinear parallelism; it does give us pause and its implied message (that the finer things of life lose their appeal when you are away from Hangzhou) provides the psychological ground for the next couplet. Second, both of Bo’s auxiliary verbs come in line 3, while Fanghui prefers to use as much of that line as possible to showcase the long noun phrase “tonight’s dream of longing to return.” Each poem is effective in its own way, and although I prefer He Zhu’s poem overall, I think Bo Juyi’s first couplet is a small masterpiece. The point of our comparison is not to “rank” the poems, however, nor can we generalize about the language and style of each poet on the basis of two Quatrains. My purpose is simply to sharpen our appreciation of how a similar, unusual use of two auxiliary verbs in the closing lines of a Quatrain has slightly different effects in different contexts.
1081: DISINGENUOUS QUATRAINS IN THE DAMING AREA The Yellow River changed course in 1081, breaking through its dykes near the end of the fourth month and overcoming weeks of efforts to contain the flooding. 25 As it established a more western course northward to the Bohai, it became possible to wade across the old riverbed. Living in Guanshi ᳁, a little over 30km northeast of Daming and even closer to the old riverbed, Fanghui experienced this firsthand. (Why Fanghui was living in Guanshi after leaving his position in Fuyang is unknown.) In the eighth month, he wrote ౣ௫ධ⟜ᷰ Crossing at Nanluo Ford Again. 26 452
Ṡ᳓↢⧡ᴎ㚍か㩷 䃂䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾㩷 Ẉᴕ㓩⚂㊄㓇㩷 䃂䂾䃂䃂䃂䂾䂾㩷 ⑬ഞኜਭੱή➊㩷 䃂䂾䂾䃂䂾䂾䃂㩷
B1
Stagnant water engenders algae that sinks a horse’s hooves.
D3
Rising sand: indistinctly the Metal Dike is visible.
A2
The accomplishments of Yu have aged and no one continues them;
——— 25 See the Song huiyao, 8:193.7562–63. Most breaks at this location and others occurred later in the year, in the sixth, seventh, and eighth months. See the table on pp. 58–59 of Yoshioka Yoshinobu, Sdai Kka shi kenky, under Chanzhou ᗁڠ. 26 9.12590; 9.3b.
HEPTAMETRICAL QUATRAINS
ᧂା᧲ᵹਇᓳ㩷 䃂䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾㩷
4
B1
421
I’ll never believe the eastward flow won’t go west again.
Notes: 452-2/ One of the more than dozen dikes in the Daming area was called Metal Dike. 452-3/ Yu is the ancient culture hero who drew off the flood waters and gave mankind dry land on which to dwell.
The eastward course of the Yellow River is so inexorable that it became an ancient image for the linear flow of time. To suggest that the Yellow River might flow west is as absurd as expecting time to run backward or water to flow uphill. The reality, however, is that the river has done just that—in the sense that its course has shifted to the west (though it still flows ultimately to the east via a more northerly route). To remark on this strange fact is to make a little joke, but there is nothing funny about the “rising sand” that has pushed the waters out of the river bed to carve a new course. It is not only an indictment of mankind’s failure to maintain the waterways of the great Yu, it is a sign of a topsy-turvy world in which the Yellow River might “go west again.” There is nothing in this Quatrain to suggest that the Fanghui is passing through anything but an empty landscape. In fact, however, the Song Dynasty had seen a marked increase in population in this area precisely because of the need for labor on hydraulic projects; Daming actually exceeded Kaifeng in size and Hebei Circuit produced the largest number of civil and military officials in the Northern Song. 27 The next two Quatrains, written in the same eighth month, bring us to the human cost of the floods, but again with a sharp sense of irony. ㆊỔ㝵ⵍ᳓᳃ዬੑ㚂 Passing By the Flooded Houses of the People in Chan and Wei: Two Poems, take an odd it’s-an-ill-wind-that-blows-nobody-good attitude toward the havoc wreaked by the Yellow River: 28 454
4
Ꮿᴕ⇉⇔ᐞ⛫᷿㩷 䃂䂾䃂䃂䃂䂾䂾㩷 ඨᱫ႓᪀❸㩷 䃂䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾㩷 ᧂᔅ㈘ኽᅤ⯥㩷 䃂䃂䂾䂾䂾䃂䃂㩷 ⥄↞චቶὑ㝼㩷 䃂䂾䃂䃂䃂䂾䂾㩷
D3
Sand-laden, the reans and acres, how often washed away?
B1
Half dead, brown mulberry trees ring the thorps of yore.
C2
It’s not necessarily that neighboring fiefdoms collect taxes like tigers;
D3
They relish the fact that of ten houses nine have gone to fish.
——— 27 See Yoshioka Yoshinobu, Sdai Kka shi kenky, 229 and 242, and Cheng Minsheng, Songdai diyu wenhua, 134. 28 9.12590; 9.4a. Chanzhou appears on the Zhongguo lishi ditu ji map (6:16–17) as Kaide Superior Prefecture ၲᐚࢌ. Wei is probably Wei County on the same map; cf. the location of “Weizhou” on the map in Yoshioka Yoshinobu, Sdai Kka shi kenky, 396.
422 455
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⩨ዬੱṃ⥜ㅏ㩷 䃂䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾㩷 ⎕☣⑆ደኋṪᴇ㩷 䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾䂾㩷 ਛᐸ⠧᮸⑺㘑ᓟ㩷 䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾䂾䃂㩷 㣣㢬ዂ㔇ᅓ㢋ൃ㩷 䃂䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾㩷
B1
Don’t ask if the people who live here, have drowned or run away;
D1
Smashed hedges and leaning houses shelter fishing bateaux.
A1
The old tree in the courtyard— after autumn’s winds,
B1
storks and cranes will bring their young, to seize the nests of magpies.
Note: 454-3/ “Neighboring fiefdom” conventionally refers to neighboring counties or similar units. Zheng, “collect taxes,” would mean “administration” if read with a departing tone, but that would result in a tonal violation, a phenomenon we have yet to see in Fanghui’s heptametrical Quatrains.
The first poem notes the destruction of agriculture and sericulture caused by flooding and refers to the sites of former villages, yet its second couplet seems to indicate that the people have not fled. The explanation given for their remaining here is not that taxes are higher elsewhere (nor that refugees find no welcome in neighboring circuits, which is probably the reality) but that the fishing is so good now! The same point is made more explicitly in the first couplet of the second poem: the ruined farms “shelter fishing bateaux.” The reference to storks and cranes seizing magpie nests (line 455-4) could symbolize the fact that the people one sees now are fisher-folk who have replaced the peasants, but perhaps it is the peasants themselves who live on boats in their ruined farms. Either way, the magpies have left for drier climes and cataclysmic change is still the overriding theme. I think these two poems and the one we introduced before them hint at a complex and tragic situation that cannot be expressed within the limited space of a heptametrical Quatrain and in fact could not be safely voiced in any poetic form. The hints come in the form of statements that are not quite appropriate in the context. Another example: in another heptametrical Quatrain written at the same time, ㊄㓇ቴ⥡ᦸධᮔၔ Gazing at Nanle City from a Lodge on the Metal Dike, Fanghui says that if the millet crop is lost it is not the fault of the administration, and the people can still dine on fish. 29 Such a statement flies in the face of the reality that river administration was a matter that high officials spent a great deal of time debating. We may think that control of the Yellow River is ultimately impossible, or that it was certainly not feasible with the technology available to the Song government, no matter how many tens of thousands of laborers were employed on it or how ingenious the construction of dikes. That does not mean
——— 29
Poem 453, 9.12590; 9.3b. Nanle was south of Daming, on the route down to Chanzhou.
HEPTAMETRICAL QUATRAINS
423
that the people of eleventh century China accepted floods as inevitable or believed their effects could not be ameliorated. The debates at court had to be predicated on the faith that the river could be tamed if only the right principles were applied. In fact, the administration was still congratulating itself on having repaired the disastrous 1077 break at Chanzhou (causing the flood that nearly inundated Xuzhou when Su Shi was prefect there) in only two years, whereas a similar effort in the Han Dynasty had required three decades to complete. Under the New Policies administration, new fiscal measures, new offices, new engineering projects, and new relief measures had just been put into place, centered on Chanzhou. 30 If these efforts failed to prevent another breakout in another direction, it was a failure of administration. Asserting the contrary, it seems to me, is blatantly disingenuous, just as declaring “let them eat fish” in the pair of poems we have just translated is intentionally provocative. The use of perfectly regulated Quatrains that carefully balance the two possible metrical sequences (DBCD and BDAB) to cheerfully report the benefits of fishing in drowned villages and towns is surely a calculated move to increase the sense of irony and satire. We suspected that Fanghui’s poems on the happy villagers in Fuyang in the eighth month of the previous year were insincere; the mask of insouciance in the flood poems of 1081 is even more transparent.
1081 AND 1082: IN AND OUT OF THE CAPITAL Back in the capital, Fanghui writes only four (extant) heptametrical Quatrains before moving on to the mint in Xuzhou in the seventh month of 1082. We shall present two of them, one for its unique diction, the other for its anticipation of a concept that Li Qingzhao ᧘ᷡᾖ made famous in one of her lyrics. ౻ᄛᙿነᢥᷡㇳᄤテ On a Winter’s Night, Thinking of and Sending This to Zhou Wenqing and Guo Tianfu was written in the eleventh month of 1081, shortly after Fanghui returned to the capital. Before entering the city, he had gone to the northern suburbs and spent several days in the Garden of the Gourd ᄅ⯂ with his brothers-in-law, Zhou Hang and Guo Chen ㇳᔥ. He imagines that they are still having a lively time while he sits in his chilly study. 31 457
ო➨ะṌ⎮↢ẹ㩷 䃂䂾䃂䃂䃂䂾䂾㩷 ઔደ㊀ຯ⥟㩷 䃂䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾㩷
D3
The wall mortar on the verge of extinguishing, my inkstone has sprouted brash.
B1
I look up at the ceiling, canting again from the old scroll of poems.
——— 30 31
See Yoshioka Yoshinobu, Sdai Kka shi kenky, 244–254. 9.12590; 9.4b. See the headnote to Poem 062, 2.12516; 2.10a.
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ᗐർ㑄ᢔ㩷 䃂䃂䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂㩷 㕍㍦ၸထ⾲ችᫎ㩷 䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾䂾㩷
4
C4
From afar I imagine, in the northern garden, my fellows in idle leisure,
D1
with green coins piled at their seats, gambling at palace go.
Notes: 457-1/ The only other reference I can find to a mortar—a bowl of oil with a floating wick—hung on the wall for illumination in the Tang or Song is in a similarly autumnal lyric by Chen Shidao. 32 The reservoir in the stone on which the poet should be grinding ink is filling with brash-ice because of the cold. 457-4/ Green coins are bronze coins. Palace go is mentioned only in a handful of Tang poems, not in other Song poems I know of or lyrics.
Fanghui seems determined to individualize his expression, all the while keeping within the good taste of regulated lines. In addition to the unusual lamp and game mentioned in the notes, we might observe that no Tang poets and only a very few Song poets “look up at the ceiling.” Only two use the phrase more than once, as far as I can tell: Wang Anshi (five times) and Fanghui. 33 It also appears in four biographies in the dynastic histories. Generally, it is associated with sighing, weeping, or feeling preoccupied (but Zhang Lei sings looking at the ceiling when he is drunk). Fanghui’s poem-chanting is unique (in the verb used), but especially apt and effective in this poem because it contrasts in orientation and mood with the intensity with which we can imagine Zhou Hang and Guo Chen are staring down at their game board and coins. When the great lyricist Li Qingzhao, born about two years after the next poem was written, feared her little boat could not “carry so much grief,” she may have been quoting from He Zhu. ᯲⥱ᑝᵤ㐷ᄖ Written While Moored Outside Broadford Gate records the poet’s feelings as he was about to leave the capital for Xuzhou in the seventh month of 1082: 34 460
———
✅ⱸᯅ৾ᣣ⇐㩷 䃂䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾㩷 ᐞ࿁࿁㚂㡅ಪᮝ㩷 䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾䂾㩷 ᅤ৻⪲ᚳ⥱ⵣ㩷 䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾䂾䃂㩷
B1
West of the colored sunbow bridge I tarry on the seventh.
D1
So many times have I turned my head to the phoenix loft!
A1
How can I in a single leaf of a boat
তၢ (৺ॸؚ༃࿗), Quan Song ci, 1:587. In one other poem, he imagines Pan Dalin sleeping in this position. See the last couplet of the 1097 Inscribed on the East Studio of Pan Dalin (Poem 157), a portion of which was translated in our chapter on Ancient Verse. 34 9.12590–91; 9.4b. For a translation of Li Qingzhao’s lyric (ࣳສਞΔ [ଅ۰ቺଉक़բጐ]), see, inter alia, Alice Cheang, ed., A Silver Treasury of Chinese Lyrics, 87. Ten years later, Fanghui will be at the same location on horseback; see Poem 211 in our chapter on pentametrical Regulated Verse. 32 33
HEPTAMETRICAL QUATRAINS
タᓧ㔌ੱ⪦ᢲᗜ㩷 䃂䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾㩷
4
B1
425
carry the ten thousand bushels of the grief of departure?
Note: 460-1/ The seventh day of the seventh month is the day the cowherd and weaving maiden stars can unite across the Milky Way.
This Quatrain is strongly reminiscent of a lyric. It implies that the speaker is leaving a courtesan with whom he has fallen in love (in the “phoenix loft”), a situation we expect to see in He Zhu’s lyrics but not his poems. Only the meter and the uniform, balanced rhythm keep this poem within the bounds of the Quatrain. The long noun phrase in the last line (“leave-person ten-thousandbushel grief”) also strikes me as a construction that would be rare in the lyric. Li Qingzhao’s タਇേ㧘⸵ᄙᗜ “cannot carry / so much grief” is a translation of this line into the rhythm and simpler phrasing of the lyric. Again, He Zhu’s heptametrical Quatrains resolutely assert their distinction from the lyric.
1083 AND 1085: XUZHOU It would seem that Fanghui’s poetry society in Xuzhou ignored the heptametrical Quatrain. Perhaps the form was seen as most suited for casual social functions, not for serious work. Fanghui leaves only four heptametrical Quatrains from 1083, none written in Xuzhou. One was written in Yongcheng, on the way to the poet’s home district on the north side of the Yellow River. Two—a pair of Willow Branch Songs—were written at a banquet in his native Weizhou. One more was written in Yongcheng on the way back to Xuzhou and shortly before he climbed the Delightful! Pavilion. He leaves no poems in this form from 1084 and the four from 1085 have interesting touches but seem mostly perfunctory. (On the other hand, in 1085 Fanghui ventures the first pentametrical Quatrains that proved worthy of preservation, as we saw in the previous chapter.) Su Shi is writing interesting and memorable heptametrical Quatrains in Huangzhou at this time, but apparently they have no immediate impact on He Zhu’s writing. 35 The two Willow Branch songs would ordinarily be for singing, as we mentioned above (p. 408). However, in his headnote, Fanghui tells us that the singer Yang Rou ᬢᨵ brought out two round white fans and requested poems, so these particular songs were to be inscribed on fans for her use or enjoyment. (In fact, it is only in writing that one can see the clever acrostic in the poems, which we shall discuss in a moment.) The songs turn on the common association of
——— 35
54.
Most of these are anthologized in Wang Shuizhao, Su Shi xuanji, 147–48, 150–52, and 153–
426
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willows with feminine grace and the convention that willow twigs are to be given to a departing friend. Here are ᬢᩉᨑ⹖ੑ㚂 Two Willow Branch Songs: 462
4
463
4
ᣇㆊᷡ㔎ᓟᄤ㩷 䂾䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾㩷 ࿁Ⴄᾖᓇᑲめめ㩷 䂾䂾䃂䃂䃂䂾䂾㩷 ᷓᖱᡆጅ㘑శਥ㩷 䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾䂾䃂㩷 ᗲᗂ㐳ᓙዋᐕ㩷 䃂䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾㩷 ᬢᩉ᧲㘑⋘ᣣ็㩷 䂾䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾㩷 ᨵᙥ⥄ਇᜬ㩷 䂾䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾䂾㩷 ㇺ㐷ਃ்ᔃ㩷 䂾䂾䂾䃂䂾䂾䃂㩷 ᒝඨ㕍㕍⿅㔌㩷 䂾䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾㩷
B4
Right after Qingming, subsequent to rain,
D2
In the winding tank they see their image and sport their swaying grace.
A1
With deepest feeling they will beseech the lord of wind and light
B4
to hold dear their long wands until the young man comes.
B4
Willows—the eastern wind blows all day,
D3
Their supple wands surely can not withstand it.
A3
At the metropolitan gate in the third month, a place of anguished hearts;
B4
more than half of their “green-so-green” is given away in parting.
Notes: 462-1/ Qingming is a spring festival that takes place early in the fourth month. 462-3/ Fengguang, “wind and light,” means ‘scenery,’ or ‘time,’ among other things. “The lord of wind and light” may refer to something like “nature,” or a force that controls time and nature.
Fanghui makes no effort to vary the line-type sequence here, using the same BDAB sequence in each poem of the pair. He has another goal: acrostic couplets. The first characters in lines 1 and 2 of each Quatrain spell out two names: Fanghui in Poem 462, and Yang Rou (the singer) in Poem 463. (The words marked in italics in the translation are translations of the relevant syllables in the context of their lines.) Actually, one could make a sentence with the first characters of all the lines in Poem 462: “Fanghui deeply loves.” The initial characters in Poem 463 could form a sentence meaning perhaps “Yang Rou is really something,” but this is a guess. I cannot say with absolute assurance that all four characters make a meaningful string. In any case, whether the poems were partially or wholly acrostic, our poet must have impressed Yang Rou and all the Weizhou locals at the banquet. On his way back to Xuzhou later in 1083, Fanghui evokes Tao Yuanming with simple and conventional allusions in a poem titled⥄ⴡㆶᓢᙑ᳗ၔ₺᳁
HEPTAMETRICAL QUATRAINS
427
Returning from Wei to Xu, I Rest in Mr. Wang’s Garden in Yongcheng. 36 The new interpretations we saw reflected in his Songs after 1096 are not yet in evidence, yet our poet finds a way to startle us. 464
4
ᱩ〝Ⴒ၎ሑ⪺㖊㩷 䂾䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾㩷 ർ⓽ઔᨉ⏉㔕ᄤ㩷 䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾䂾㩷 ᩊ᪀ᱝ⥝ήੱቑ㩷 䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾䂾䃂㩷 ⽶Ὼᷡ㘑৾⊖ᐕ㩷 䃂䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾㩷
B4
On the road home, dirt and dust softly coat my whip.
D1
Below the north window I look up from the pillow at a sky of cerulean clouds.
A1
This gusto of Chaisang is emulated by no one;
B1
we have turned our back on your pure style for seven hundred years.
Notes: 464-2/ In a letter, Tao Yuanming describes the happiness of lying below a north-facing window in the fifth or sixth month and enjoying the cool breeze, as if he were Master Fu Xi. See Note to line 30-5–6. 646-3/ Chaisang is an old name for Tao Yuanming’s native district. (See line 063-24 for a 1081 pun based on this name.)
It is of course an absurdity to claim that the Chinese literati had turned their backs on Tao Yuanming—at least as an ideal. To be sure, one might argue that Tao’s genteel rusticity could never be revived in a world in which the economics of owning and farming land were undoubtedly much more complicated than they had been seven centuries in the past. That, however, is probably not the message here. Rather, I think this poem is a compliment to Mr. Wang’s garden. If we have forsaken the “gusto of Chaisang,” that is true only outside the garden; within it lies a haven like Tao Yuanming’s homestead. As proof, once Fanghui “returns” to Mr. Wang’s garden (the first word in the poem is a nod toward Tao’s Return rhapsody), 37 he actually emulates Tao by lying below a window on the cool side of the house (this is the sixth month, summer) to gaze at the sky. It seems to me, by the way, that if the title had told us this poem was written for a site named after Tao Yuanming or a phrase associated with him, the poem would have been trite; it would have simply explained the name. Part of the appeal of the poem is that it discovers the “neglected” Tao Yuanming spirit where Mr. Wang had not contrived to declare it.
——— 36 9.12591; 9.5b. It will be remembered from our chapter on heptametrical Regulated Verse that Yongcheng is on the Bian Canal about 250 km southeast of the capital. 37 Gui connotes “going home”; note that the word in the title also translated “return,” huan, refers to He Zhu’s trip back to Xuzhou and does not have the same connotation.
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1086–87: THE CAPITAL On the way from Xuzhou to the capital at Kaifeng in early 1086, Fanghui stopped again in Yongcheng. As he was leaving in the intercalary second month, he wrote a Quatrain as an inscription for the studio of the assistant magistrate, Chen Lin 㒸℘. Earlier, in the second month, he had written a heptametrical Regulated Verse for Chen’s Pacing the Clouds Pavilion on the southeastern coast, apparently based on a painting. 38 The heptametrical Quatrain is far more conventional, but we translate it here because it ends with a skillful pairing of allusions to He Zhizhang (the Crazy Traveler from Siming) and Liu Yuxi. It includes, moreover, the first tonal violation we have seen in a heptametrical Quatrain by He Zhu. Its title is ዂ⊔᳗ၔ㗴㒸ષ㓼⫥イ About to Leave Yongcheng; Inscribed on Chen Bojun’s Studio of Meng. Meng is the fourth hexagram in the Classic of Changes; it is probably not possible in a Quatrain to do much with the various meanings ascribed to a hexagram and there is no sign that Fanghui attempts to do so. 39 How many times have we faced the spring wind ᐞወᤐ㘑ᛠ㈬᧰㩷 B1 with a cup of brew in hand? 䃂䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾㩷 My little boat is on the verge of departure ዊ⥱⥃⊔ᦝᓨᓝ㩷 D1 but then I hesitate. 䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾䂾㩷 The day this Crazy Traveler from Siming ྾⁅ቴ㊀ૼᣣ㩷 A4 comes back again, 䃂䂾䃂䃂䂾䂾䃂㩷 4 the pomegranate blossoms in your courtyard— ᐸਅ᭦⧎㐿ᧂ㐿㩷 (B4) will they have bloomed? 䂾䃂䂾䂾䂔䃂䂾㩷 The allusion in the last line is a fairly common one in the Song, in both poetry and lyric. It originates in a pair of heptametrical Quatrains by Liu Yuxi, the first stating that the peach trees that he sees flowering at a Daoist observatory in the capital in 817 were all planted after he left, the second, written twelve years later, observing that all the trees have disappeared. The allusion implies uncertainty about the future or an acute awareness that what one remembers about a place is likely to be ephemeral. It could even suggest uncertainty over the future political situation. In 1070, when Su Shi had wondered whether the peach blos471
——— See ബᠲੈতຫּޡႆॼ Sent as an Inscription for the Pacing the Clouds Pavilion of Mr. Chen in Quannan, Poem 265, 6.12564; 6.9a. Quannan, “south of Quan” does not appear in the usual sources as a place name, but several references to Quannan in the dynastic histories from the Song on indicate that it was on the Fujian coast, presumably south of Quanzhou. Fanghui’s poem mentions the moon bringing the tide as it rises over the ocean. 39 9.12592; 9.6b. For Meng, see Richard John Lynn, The Classic of Changes, 158–65. Lynn renders the hexagram name as “Juvenile Ignorance.” 38
HEPTAMETRICAL QUATRAINS
429
soms would have bloomed when his friend Liu Bin returned in the future from a post in Hailing, the question was seen as a political comment. 40 Is Fanghui expressing similar misgivings about what lies ahead in the capital? Even though the tonal violation in line 471-4 constitutes an invitation to think more deeply about the line, it is impossible to say. It may be that Fanghui is caught up in the subtle wit of his assuming the persona of his eighth-century ancestor to allude to a ninth-century story. The fact that Liu Yuxi admired He Zhizhang and regretted that he lived in a later generation adds to the interest of Fanghui’s ability to range across the centuries. 41 The next heptametrical Quatrain in He Zhu’s collection also features a metrical violation. It is the first of a pair of poems under the title ੩ዬᤐᗵ⥝ Living in the Capital, Moved by Stirrings at the End of Spring, dated the third month of 1086. 42 We shall translate both poems so we can consider to what degree they depend on each other to create a complete aesthetic experience (as did most of the pentametrical Quatrains in pairs or sets that we examined in the last chapter). If this title looks familiar, it is because in 1095, back in the capital, Fanghui will use a similar title for the set of five pentametrical Quatrains we discussed in the last chapter: Living in the Capital and Moved by Stirrings (Poems 405 and 407 were translated). We see nothing so long or heterogeneous in Fanghui’s heptametrical Quatrains. 472
4
473
㑄ဌ࿔ደ㆙ੱ⟲㩷 D2 䂾䂾䃂䃂䃂䂾䂾㩷 ᥄㢋ᤀ㡏੦⡞㩷 B4 䂾䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾㩷 ήᄹᤐ㘑ᄙ㩷 (C15) 䂾䃂䂾䂾䂓䂔䃂㩷 ṩᐸ⧎⛒ᱜ⚗⚗㩷 D1 䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾䂾㩷 ᡓᡓᅁか⥜∔ベ㩷 䃂䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾㩷 ⴝൎ⁅ੱ㩷 䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾䂾㩷
In a quiet ward I pay mail for rooms far from the herds of people. Magpies at dawn and crows at dusk tire me to hear. You can’t do anything about the spring wind that does too much: the whole court is blossoms and catkins, flying in a flurry.
B1
Misordered, reckless, racing hooves and frenzied wheels:
D1
In the Nine Boulevards, on the prowl, they are as madmen.
——— 40 ಬ Ꮵ ᱺ Ỷ ௧ ສ , SSSJ, 1:6.242–44; Fuller, Road to East Slope, 125–27. See also Zhong Zhenzhen, Dongshan ci, 237–38, for Fanghui’s jocular use of this allusion in a lyric that Zhong dates to 1102–4. 41 See Fuller, Road to East Slope, 184–85, translating and explaining Su Shi’s 1072 ୪๐ޣ۔ᕠ ॼݎᇣ, SSSJ, 2:8.371. 42 9.12592; 9.6b.
430
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᧲㘑Ẃㅍᦺૼ㔎㩷 䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾䂾䃂㩷 นᄹ㐳⥄ฎႲ㩷 䃂䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾㩷
A1
To no avail the east wind sends rain falling since the morning;
B1
nothing you can do, in Chang’an, about the dust of olden times.
The tonal violation appears in the phrase translated “does too much.” The phrase is readily understood: it means “creates trouble/work/disturbances.” However, it is, to my knowledge, unique to He Zhu in poetry. Perhaps the tonal violation, minor though it may be, is meant to call attention to the fact that he had coined (or adopted from vernacular speech) a phrase that was perfectly apt for this context, or perhaps Fanghui wanted to give the impression that he truly was writing on the inspiration of the moment, with no time to polish. The phrase “pay mail for rooms/a house” is also rare, though it is recycled from the Last Night of the Year Lament of 1081–82 and Huang Tingjian had used it in 1085 (See Poem 063). It seems to me that each of these poems could stand alone. The heptasyllabic line has an intrinsic advantage in including more complexity, of course, so that there is less need to look beyond it for some kind of completion. Compare: “I pay mail for rooms far from the herds of people; / Crows at dusk tire me to hear. / The spring wind does too much: / blossoms and catkins fly in a flurry.” Even in translation, the thinness of the poem with the first two characters in each line lopped off is apparent. One could argue that the second poem is more easily reduced to a single idea—it is busy and dusty on the streets of the capital (the “Nine Boulevards,” “Chang’an”)—but the phrase “dust of olden times” in line 473-4, by suggesting century after century of striving in the world of human affairs, sets up resonances that require no adjacent poem to create, complete, or confirm. The rhymes in these poems tease us with the possibility that the two Quatrains could be combined to form a single octet. They are: gwen3a, men3a, phen3a, and lwen3b, nyen3b, dren3b. If these two poems were given to us without a blank space between them, would we know to separate them? We might be suspicious, for the AABAAABA rhyme scheme would be impossible in a Regulated Verse and unlikely in an Ancient Verse without a change of rhyme: AABACCDC. Still, given the absence of semantic parallelism in the “middle” couplets, we might guess that we were in fact reading an Ancient Verse. Moreover, Su Shi occasionally rhymes words from the first and second groups (men3a and nyen3b or dren3b, for example) so we know this was possible (though far more often he does not mix the rhymes). There are several things that reveal we are only being “teased” by the rhymes, however. The two Quatrains are too disparate in focus to be combined into a single poem. The first is a poem of quiet solitude; the second takes us onto the busy streets. The third and fourth lines of each poem, while
HEPTAMETRICAL QUATRAINS
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not syntactically continuous, have a logical continuity that we are accustomed to seeing at the ends of poems. (“The spring wind is making trouble, so the courtyard is filled with blossoms and catkins”; “The spring wind brings rain in vain, because there is nothing you can do about the dust of the ages in the human world.”) Even the phrase ᱜ⚗⚗ “flying in a flurry” is so common at the end of Quatrains (of both meters) in the Tang that it constitutes a signal for closure in line 472-4. This leads to a final observation about Fanghui’s cleverness in this pair: the reduplicative that ends first poem, fenfen, and the reduplicative that begins the second poem, raorao, form a double reduplicative that occurs occasionally in Tang and Northern Song poetry: fenfenraorao “in confusion and misorder.” (The less-vivid fenrao is slightly more common.) This suggests that, although his Quatrains would have worked as independent poems, Fanghui wanted them to be read together, in this order. In fact, one can imagine him chanting them with no pause between fenfen and raorao to surprise and delight his audience with the cleverness of his segue from the quiet world of the first poem to the chaotic public spaces in the second. The maintenance of a rhyme that is loosely consistent throughout the eight lines of the pair supports this sleight-of-hand. Much later in the year, on the twentieth of the tenth month (28 November 1086), we get a poem that is explicitly announced as a spontaneous composition. The occasion is being drunk at the hour when an official usually reported for duty, the fourth dual-hour of the day (designated by the fourth Earthly Branch, mao, and equivalent to 5:00a.m. to 7:00a.m.): ව㉎ญ⯳ Extempore on Mao Intoxication: 43 476
4
ኑరೋᐕ౻㩷 䃂䂾䂾䃂䂔䂾䂾㩷 ⾐⠧࿎ኚ੩Ⴒਛ㩷 䃂䃂䂓䂓䂔䂔䂾㩷 ήᔃὂᚻᰨ㐷ᾲ㩷 䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾䂾䃂㩷 ᦑ⢛᥍㓁ထደ᧲㩷 䃂䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾㩷
(D5)
In Bingyin, Yuanyou First Year, winter:
(B29)
Old Man He dwells straitened in the dust of the capital.
A1
He has no inclination to burn his hands on the hot gates of the powerful,
B1
but exposes his back to the clear-day sun, sitting east of his house.
Notes: 476-1/ Bingyin is the cyclical designation of the first year of the Yuanyou period, 18 January 1086– 5 February 1087. The tenth month, when this poem was written, is the first month of winter. 476-3/ Fanghui used the conceit of burning one’s hands on the gates of the powerful in a heptametrical Regulated Verse in the first month of this year, before he had left Xuzhou; see Note 2622.
——— 43
9.12592; 9.7a.
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In keeping with its impromptu nature, this poem is unregulated. The first thing we notice is the metrical violations in the first two lines. The effect of three consecutive level tones in the last three syllables of a line is far more startling than that of a level-deflected-level string (as in line 471-4, p. 428) or a deflected-leveldeflected string (as in line 472-3, p. 429), which are fairly routine types of violations. Next, we note that the proper adhesion between the couplets is also ignored: although lines 476-3 and 4 are regulated, they should be CD lines, not AB lines. It is very unusual for He Zhu to use a reign title in a poem. In this poem it is almost as if the poet were showing that he is not so drunk that he cannot answer the questions, “Do you know what date it is?” and “Do you know where you are?” Yet there may be more to it. Su Shi mentions dates by reign title within the text of a poem only nine times, starting in 1072. Usually Su is looking back on an experience in a previous era, but in the five poems (written 1087–93) that mention the Yuanyou era there is a sense that this is a particularly important period, as of course it was for him and his allies. After 1093, the last full year of Yuanyou, Su Shi never mentions that or any other reign title. Is Fanghui’s use of “Yuanyou 1” in line 476-1 an expression of his hope that the end of the New Policies era will bring a better life? The only other time Fanghui uses a reign title in a poem is in the opening line of Song of the Yellow Tower (Poem 002; 1084), where he recalls “the ding-si year of Xining” in which Su Shi led the people of Xuzhou in fending back the flood that threatened their city. This reminds us that Fanghui is unique in not only dating his poems clearly, but also in almost never using a reign title in the dates. One wonders if this was a retroactive decision made in the mid-1090s, when he put his poetry collection into final form and when he was also re-reading Tao Yuanming. It was said that Tao Yuanming had used only cyclical dates after the Liu-Song Dynasty was founded in 420, whereas up through 419 he had used the Jin Dynasty reign titles. Huang Tingjian had mentioned this belief in a 1078 poem written in Daming, so we may assume that Fanghui would have been familiar with it long before the 1090s. Perhaps his work with Tao’s collection made him realize that Tao did in fact sometimes use cyclical dates before 420, from which he might have concluded that Tao did so as a way of disassociating himself from a court that was already controlled by the Liu clan that would eventually declare a new regime. 44 Whatever Fanghui believed about this historiographical controversy, if he was inspired by Tao Yuanming to show his disdain for a particular faction in power,
——— 44 See Tao’s biography in the Song shu, 8:93.2289 and the Nan shi, 6:75.1859. Huang’s poem is ڻᣉᦰෘࣔႚ, Shangu shi zhu, 2247:wai.2.35. For a good survey of the controversy over Tao’s dating practice, see Huang Baohua, Huang Tingjian xuanji, 31–33.
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he was smart enough to change all his dates so no one could spot the point at which he became “disloyal.” 45 In the third month of Dingmao (Yuanyou 2; 1087), Fanghui wrote a poem that is not unusual for a poet in the upper ranks of the bureaucracy, but most unusual for him: ㅍੱᦺ㙺㒺 Seeing Someone Off to Pay Court at Yu Barrow. Yu Barrow, the full name of which is Yongyu Barrow ᳗㒺, was the tomb in which the emperor Shenzong had been laid to rest 11 November 1085. 46 482
4
ਃᐕਇ㥊ḓ㦖㩷 䂾䂾䃂䃂䃂䂾䂾㩷 ᑿഒႲ၎₹ᐳⓨ㩷 䂾䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾㩷 ⊕㜰ቅ⤿ᔃᣆ㩷 䃂䃂䂾䂾䂾䃂䃂㩷 ṩጊᨰၔ㘑㩷 䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾䂾㩷
D2
Three years we have not seen the dragon of Tripod Lake.
B4
Bow and sword are covered with dust; the nephrite throne is empty.
C2
White-haired, the lone minister has a broken heart;
D1
a whole barrow of full moon, wind in the cypress-walls.
Notes: 482-1/ The Yellow Emperor rode off on a dragon after he had cast a tripod by a lake. 47 Reference to Tripod Lake and a dragon, therefore, denotes the death of an emperor. Shenzong died the fifth day of the third month of 1085 (Yuanfeng 8), two years before this poem was written. Perhaps Fanghui counts three years by the same logic according to which a Chinese person is one sui upon birth: 1087, the date of this poem, is the third year during which Shenzong has been dead. 482-2/ A landslide exposed the Yellow Emperor’s tomb, upon which it was discovered that his coffin was empty while his bow and sword remained. 48 The nephrite throne here designates a throne for the deceased emperor. 482-4/ Imperial tombs were surrounded by walls and cypress trees. A hymn that was composed for Shenzong’s burial mentions the wind in the cypress-walls at autumn. 49
Fanghui uses all the proper imagery for a courtier in mourning. The difference is that he is an outsider; the person he is seeing off will actually participate in the ceremony. And yet, as a descendent of an imperial consort (see note to 271-1), Fanghui must feel that he has the right to mourn.
——— 45 We also have to consider the possibility that cyclical dates simply were more efficient: they were shorter (two characters, as opposed to a minimum of four characters in a reign-title + number + “year”) and they used characters that generally had no semantic content beyond their function as cyclical tokens, thus being immediately recognizable as dates. 46 9.12593; 9.8a. See Song shi, 16.314, et passim for the burials of several empresses at the same site. In 1097 it was suggested that over thirteen hundred commoners’ graves be removed from the site! See 122.2856. 47 Shiji, 4:28.1394. 48 Max Kaltenmark tr., Le Lie-sien tchouan, 50–51. 49 Song shi, 10:140.3318.
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After this poem, Fanghui reverts to the quiet charm that will characterize his heptametrical Quatrains in Hezhou the following year. Here is ᧘᳁ᳰ At the Pond of Mr. Li, written in the seventh month of 1087: 50 484
4
ḓᄖ㘑็㔎⛕㩷 䂾䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾㩷 ඨ㓣ᬢᩉᜀṾẁ㩷 䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾䂾㩷 ᅚ㇢ೢ᛬⮧⧎㩷 䃂䂾䂾䃂䂓䂾䃂㩷 ᴕ㡗㡝⌧ਇ⍮㩷 䂾䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾㩷
B4
Beyond the lake a west wind blows rainy threads.
D1
Half follow the willow trees and brush ripples on the water.
(A6)
A girl slyly breaks off a lotus blossom as she leaves;
B4
on the sand, mandarin ducks sleep unawares.
It is possible to see improvements on predecessor poems here. Having streaks (“silk threads”) of rain descend to blend with willow wands brushing the pond could be seen as an attempt to make more dynamic Wei Zhuang’s image of 㔎 ⛕ᾍᩉ “Rainy threads, misty willows.” 51 I think, however, that Fanghui may want us to pay more attention to the ducks, and he has a subtle way of making them more than mere denizens of the garden. Although the tonal deflectedlevel-deflected violation in line 484-3 is a common one in the penultimate line of a poem, it may not be accidental that the “offending” word is “lotus,” ou. That term for lotus is traditionally used paronomastically for ⡅ ou, “pair”; because mandarin ducks exemplify and symbolize pairing for life, there is a subtle link between them and the lotus. Of course, romantic connotations run throughout the poem—the girl (undoubtedly walking with the grace of a willow) must have secret longings as she quietly breaks off the lotus blossom. Beyond that, there might be delicate echoes of other predecessor poems. Many readers will be reminded of warm sand putting mandarin ducks to sleep in a famous pentametrical quatrain by Du Fu. Or, since Fanghui’s ducks are “unawares,” “unknowing,” Fanghui might be consciously contradicting a 1085 heptametrical Quatrain on one of Huichong’s paintings in which Su Shi says ducks (not mandarin ducks, admittedly) are the first to know when the spring waters turn warm. 52 These echoes of prior poems are by no means profound, nor is it even necessary to agree that our poet was conscious of them to appreciate the charm of the
——— 50
9.12593; 9.8b. See Wei’s ڠ⫼ڣׇ߭ሖ༃ଇৄ؆ᔨܷնଈհն, QTS, 20:699.8040. “Rainy threads” is a rare phrase in the Tang, rarer in the Northern Song, and I know of no other precedent for juxtaposing it with willows. 52 Du Fu’s poem is Բଈհԫ, Du shi xiangzhu, 3:13.1134. Su Shi’s poem, dated the year before Fanghui wrote his hexametrical inscriptions on a painting by Huichong (see previous chapter) is ༡ശਞۂඡནԲଈհԫ, SSSJ, 5:26.1401. Wang Shuizhao, Su Shi xuanji, 176–77, relates the wrangling among later critics over the merits of this line. 51
HEPTAMETRICAL QUATRAINS
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scene. Nevertheless, the fact that such comparisons come to mind expands the scope of a small poetic world.
LIYANG 1088–89: SOUTHERN SCENES Fanghui leaves no heptametrical Quatrains from his progress to Chenliu in late 1087, on to Jinling in early 1088, or across the Yangzi to Hezhou in the second month of 1088. The next poem in this genre is dated the fifth month. Another garden poem, it originates from a visit to a temple we know to have been in Bitter Bamboo, west of Liyang: ㆆ⩑ྥኹ Wandering in the Garden of Zhuangyan Temple. 53 Fanghui is still remarking the newness of the southern clime. The month before, in the pentametrical Regulated Verse On Horseback at Bitter Bamboo Village (Poem 185), he had mentioned the “calid wind”; shortly after his arrival in Hezhou, he had also sent his Song of Three Birds back to the capital to tell of his ornithological discoveries in the countryside, one of which was the cuckoo (see Poem 010). The cuckoo reappears in this Quatrain: 485
4
⍹ᬮ⧎⪭ዊᳰᷡ㩷 䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾䂾㩷 ₡ਅᐔᯅᑲᚸⴕ㩷 䃂䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾㩷 ⭁ᣣ⛵㒶ήⷛ⯪㩷 䃂䃂䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂㩷 ਇᅤᱩౌਃ⡪㩷 䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾䂾㩷
D1
Photinia flowers have dropped, the little pond is clean:
B1
Alone I descend a level bridge, toying with a fan as I walk.
C4
In the sun-covering green shade there’s no place to find him:
D1
“better to go home,” two or three notes.
Note: 485-1/ There are many varieties of photinia in China, many with attractive white flowers in the spring.
It is possible that the photinia was as new to He Zhu as the cuckoo, though some varieties must have grown in the northern areas he had frequented in the past. At any rate, this is a well-constructed little poem. Time and place are sketched quickly in the first line, with the ubiquitous qing ‘clean/pure/unsullied’ defining the atmosphere. Line 485-2 places the poet in the scene and gives him things to do: walk alone from the bridge over the pond, play with his fan. The fan and the falling of the photinia flowers tell us this is midsummer in the south.
——— 53 9.12593; 9.8b. For the location, see Chen Tinggui, Liyang dianlu, 2:8.453 and 362–63. Fanghui says simply that he composed the poem in Liyang.
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The third line puzzles momentarily: what is it that cannot be found? The fourth line creates closure by answering the question: it is the source of those “two or three notes” that cannot be located. Because its call urges the traveler to go home, we recognize the bird as the cuckoo. In comparison to the Song on the cuckoo, the setting is greatly abbreviated and the reaction of the speaker to the call of the bird is only implied. Presumably, Fanghui would be only too happy to go home, but we are spared his regrets over (and excuses for) the pursuit of his career and his vows to retire to a farm. There is only so much space in the heptametrical Quatrain; the nonessential must be left unspoken. An alternative strategy is to make the expected mea culpa early and then shift to a scene that offers an alternative way of life: 488
4
ჾᔮᔮ⽶⇧ᐕ㩷 䃂䂾䃂䃂䃂䂾䂾㩷 ࿁⟴ㄘాㆊᚒ⾫㩷 䂾䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾㩷 ᳓⪭㒜Ⴄ⑺ᣣ⭯㩷 䃂䃂䂾䂾䂾䃂䃂㩷 ઔ⌁‐⢛⋴㕍ᄤ㩷 䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾䂾㩷
D3
Heroic plans huddled and scuttled, I betrayed my youth.
B4
Looking back I envy the peasant boy as wiser than me:
C2
The water has dropped in the reservoir and the autumn sun is wan;
D1
he lies and sleeps on the buffalo’s back, looking at the blue sky.
This is ⨆Ⴄ㚍, On Horseback at Rush Tank, from the ninth month of 1088 in the Wujiang area (9.12594; 9.9a). The complaint in the first line is familiar. We’ve heard Fanghui moan in 1091 that “The years and months press on; I’ve betrayed my stalwart plans.” (Line 314-2 of Harmonizing with Qian Dexun’s ‘Writing my Feelings’; Poem 314.) We’ve seen him begin a pentametrical Quatrain with the same complaint (Living in the Capital and Moved by Stirrings, 1095; Poem 405). What is makes this poem less oppressive than those later poems is the fact that it ends with a scene of pastoral innocence. The scene is not just the context for the poet to feel sorry for himself; it is the agent of a momentary escape from himself and from the consequences of his “bad” decisions in life. Like the poem on the temple garden, this Quatrain expertly creates a slight uncertainty to be resolved in the last line. Here, it is the second line that provokes our curiosity: how is the peasant boy wiser than the poet? The third line delays the answer (while at the same time offering the spatial and temporal context we are used to seeing at the beginning of a poem). The last line finally answers the question by simply telling us what the boy is doing—or not doing. While the poet is at work on horseback (presumably on militia business), the boy has leisure to stare contentedly at the sky.
HEPTAMETRICAL QUATRAINS
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The poems that are completely devoted to scene descriptions are even more of a relief from Fanghui’s complaints, but they seem shallow until one analyses their structure. For example, ㊀ㆆ᫂ⴕ㒮 Again on an Excursion to Brahm Action Cloister, written sixty li south of Liyang in the tenth month of 1089: 54 559
4
ᦇᷰධጟ㉿᧻㩷 䃂䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾㩷 ♖ᑢᧂᏇ⡞㏹㩷 䂾䂾䃂䃂䃂䂾䂾㩷 㐷೨ᜀုᬢᩉ㩷 䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾䂾䃂㩷 ᷋⑺ૼㆊ㚍ぢ㩷 䃂䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾㩷
B1
At dawn I cross the southern ridge— five li of pines.
D2
The shelter of purification not yet seen, already I hear the bell.
A1
In front of the gate, brushing the ground, pendant willows
B1
have swept clean autumn tracks of a visiting horse.
Line 559-2 is poised on a point of transition: “not yet” and “already” exist in the same moment. Then the second couplet releases the tension in a syntactic flow. Line 559-3 builds up a slight suspense at the major caesura because an action is named before the actor: “In front of the gate | sweeping the ground || [are] pendant willows.” The willow trees are in turn the subject of the verb “sweep” in the next line, and because of that enjambment, I think, we then re-parse line 559-3 as a long noun phrase: “the pendant willows that brush the ground in front of the gate / sweep….” The object of “sweep” is a fairly long noun phrase: “since-autumn || passing-horse tracks” (meaning, “tracks of [my] visiting horse that have been there since autumn”). This combination of enjambment and long, complex phrases constitutes an effective release from the threshold hesitation in line 559-2. The last line also takes us back to the title. The hoof-prints the willows have swept clean were made on the previous visit that is implied in “Again on an Excursion….” More subtly, “clean” is the Chinese equivalent of the “Brahm” in the name of the cloister named in the title. 1089–91: THE SOCIETY OF OTHERS Again on an Excursion to Brahm Action Cloister suggests, I suppose, a certain pleasure in discovering the ephemeralness of the traces one leaves behind in life—a Buddhist pleasure, if you will. The three heptametrical Quatrains remaining between this 1089 poem and Fanghui’s return to the capital in 1091 are also
——— 54 “Brahm action” is activity of a “pure” nature, often expressed in negatives: not getting angry when provoked, not using coarse language, not harming people, etc. For the location of the cloister, see Chen Tinggui, Liyang dianlu, 2:8.451. 10.12606; Shiyi.18b.
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written in the context of Buddhist settings: two are written at temples; another is for a pair of monks leaving for the capital. Perhaps for this reason, these Quatrains play more than usual with illusions and paradoxes. I define “illusion” broadly here to include, in the first poem, two statements to the effect that the present scene resembles something else. The title is หᒛṽ᳞ኋඥਛ㒮ኰ Staying Overnight with Zhang Hanqiu in West Lodge of Shengzhong Cloister; the poem was written two months later than the Brahm Cloister poem, in the twelfth month of Yuanyou 4. 55 560
4
௯㑒⓽ᚺቑ⇠⦁㩷 䂾䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾㩷 㕍ᾥ᾽Ἣወᐥ⌁㩷 䂾䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾䂾㩷 ർ㘑Ꮿ㔐ᛲ◿┻㩷 䃂䂾䃂䃂䂾䂾䃂㩷 ḄૃἋḕᄛᴱᄤ㩷 䂾䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾㩷
B4
The windows and doors of the monacal lodge imitate a painted boat.
D4
In the blue brilliance of the lamp we sleep on facing beds.
A4
The north wind brings snow to mantle bamboo at the eaves;
B4
it’s just like Xiao-Xiang, on a day one moors for the night.
Note: 560-2/ Qingying refers to the small glow from a lamp; I borrow Knechtges’ translation “blue brilliance” from another context, finding in its alliteration an irresistible analog for the rhyme in qingying. 56
Mention of the Xiao-Xiang region evokes contradictory emotions, for it is both a place of exile and a place of misty beauty. A heptametrical Regulated Verse by Wei Zhuang avers that it is perfectly understandable to feel melancholy when you encounter a friend in a place that resembles the Xiao-Xiang. 57 On the other hand, Fanghui himself, in a heptametrical Quatrain “inscribed on a banana leaf” in Hailing in 1094, will be thankful that the banana leaves outside his window have not let him down—they produce the sound of night rain in the XiaoXiang. 58 We might add that, a few decades after Fanghui’s poem, Zhang Yuangan ᒛరᐙ (1091–1161) will attempt to capture the charm of a river scene in a lyric by saying it is like a painting, “just like Xiao-Xiang.” 59 Reading the present Quatrain as a whole, we understand wherein the charm for He Zhu lay. The windows and doors of the monastery hotel resemble those of a boat painted with scenes and designs; the two travelers chat in the lamplight from facing beds,
——— 55 10.12606–7; shiyi.18b. The location is given as Wujiang. Zhang Hanqiu is otherwise unknown. 56 Wenxuan, 2:131, line 215 of the Plume Hunt by Yang Xiong, where the phrase describes “jade boulders, peaked and pointed.” 57 ᳯㅩᗝຬᄖ, QTS, 20:698.8035. 58 ᠲ॔ᘔᆺ Inscribed on a Banana Leaf, Poem 569; 10.12607; shiyi.19b. 59 ଅੌ (ଆᨠ༺ඩ), end of first stanza; Quan Song ci, 2:1080.
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as if in the cabin of a boat, while outside snow falls just beyond the eaves. Overall, there is a feeling of cozy togetherness. What strikes me, however, is the fact that the hotel is not a boat, and the poet is not in what is now southern Hunan. The word ‘imitate’ (xue) and the phrase ‘perfectly resemble’ (hun si) are meaningful assertions of identity only in the context of difference. (There is a similar double-vision in Fanghui’s observation that the willows have swept away the tracks of his previous visit to the Brahm Action Cloister [559-3–4]: they are no longer visible, but his memory of them makes them present.) The next poem will find concrete analogies for abstract qualities and actions. In our last chapter, we noted that Sending off Monks Fayin and Zhiyin Ascending Westward represented one of only two occasions when Fanghui used pentametrical Quatrains for seeing someone off. Heptametrical Quatrains are used on five occasions for this purpose; as it happens, we have already translated two of them: see pp. 418 (Poem 446) and 433 (Poem 482). Curiously, when he saw Fayin and Zhiyin off to the capital in the first month of 1090, Fanghui wrote a heptametrical Quatrain in addition to the pentametrical Quatrain. The title is ㅍ ௯ᴺශᔒ࿃ㆆ੩Ꮷ Sending off Monks Fayin and Shiyin on a Westward Excursion to the Capital: 60 561
4
ೞ㔐ⵙ౽‛ᄖੱ㩷 䃂䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾㩷 ᒝ㓣⢈㚍੩Ⴒ㩷 䂾䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾䂾㩷 ᧂᙥήᩱ᩶᧘㩷 䃂䂾䂾䃂䂾䂾䃂㩷 ᳯർᳯධ৻᮪ᤐ㩷 䂾䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾㩷
B1
Carved snow and cut-out ice: men beyond things.
D4
They bring themselves to follow plump horses racing through the dust of the capital.
A2
You won’t find there is no ground to plant peaches and plums;
B4
north of the River, south of the River is the same springtime.
Note: 561-3–4/ To “plant peaches and plums” is to foster the development of good disciples. If you choose wisely whom you will “plant” in the spring, you can figuratively rest in the shade of the trees in the summer and eat their fruit in the fall. 61
While snow and ice are common images for purity, the suggestion that these two monks seem to be made of “carved snow and cut-out ice” (line 1) is new; such expressions as “cut-out snow and shaped ice” 㔐ⵙ౽ were later used in poetry for plum blossoms, not people. 62 Similarly, the application of “peaches
——— 60
10.12607; shiyi.18b–19a. The allegory originates in the Hanshi waizhuan (ca. 150 B.C.E.), 7.20. See James Robert Hightower, Han shi wai chuan, 244. 62 See, for example, Lou Pan ᑔ (fl. early thirteenth cent.), Shuangtian xiaojiao (೪ຳဪ٧), QSC, 4:2850. 61
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and plums” outside the realm of political mentoring strikes me as unusual, though Fanghui does it again in 1096, referring to the monk with whom he used to call on the late Faquan as “peach and plum” 63 Here, it seems to indicate that Fayin and Zhiyin will be engaged in some kind of proselytizing in the north, perhaps as part of the general infiltration of Chan into the capital in the middle period of the Northern Song. 64 Though none of the language in this poem is obviously “Buddhist” (unlike the phrase “presto, be gone!” in the pentametrical Quatrain for the same two individuals), the last line clearly asserts the universality of the message the monks will take to the capital: spring comes to the capital just as surely as it comes to the South. The next heptametrical Quatrain Fanghui saved comes after a one-year hiatus in the genre. It is written in Jinling as Fanghui is on his way down the Yangzi: ㊀ㆆ㎠ጊቯᨋኹ Making Another Excursion to Dinglin Temple on Mt. Zhong. Wang Anshi had maintained a room at Dinglin (Grove of Samdhi) Temple where he studied, wrote, and received guests, but the poem appears to be about nothing more than Fanghui’s own relationship with the place. 65 562
4
⎕౽ᴰ⣂ẇ☣ᩮ㩷 䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾䂾㩷 ჴⴰ㆔⇼ដ᮸₎㩷 䃂䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾㩷 ⳹ዴ⥟∥ਇ㩷 䃂䃂䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂㩷 ᧲㘑వὑᚒ㐿㐷㩷 䂾䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾䂾㩷
D3
Shattering ice, a fountain’s vein flushes the root of the hedge.
B4
A worn-out robe looks from afar like a gibbon hanging in the tree.
C2
Old tracks of my waxed clogs I seek but do not find; the east wind opens the gate for me first.
D4
Notes: 562-2/ The term translated “robe” applies specifically to the patchwork robe worn by Buddhist monks. 562-3/ The clogs are footwear similar to Japanese geta. The grammar here is ambiguous. Our translation is one alternative, supported by the fact that Li Shangyin refers to the light from a cliff reflecting on or shining from the waxed clogs (adjective-noun) of a Buddhist master. The other alternative would be that Fanghui cannot find the place where he waxed his clogs (verb-object) for excursions on Mt. Zhong. In a 1090 poem, Su refers to waxing clogs as a preparation for hiking up a mountain. 66
——— See the heptametrical Regulated Verse ᢤቖ৯ Presented to Monk Yan, Poem 516, 10.12599; shiyi. 10.7b. 64 See Cheng Minsheng, Songdai diyu wenhua, 269–73. 65 10.12607; shiyi.19a. First month of 1091. For Dinglin Temple, see Liu Naichang and Gao Hongkui, Wang Anshi shiwen biannian xuanshi, 169. 66 Li’s poem is ࡚ബڜഏՕஃଫ១፞, Li Shangyin shige jijie, 2:636–39. Waxed clogs commonly figure in an allusion to Ruan Fu ( ݗ278/9–326/7), who was obsessed with wooden clogs and found relaxation in waxing his huge collection. Perhaps Fanghui has reason to believe that this temple on Mt. Zhong is associated with Ruan. (Ruan spent a couple of decades in Jinling 63
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562-4/ “For me” bridges the major caesura in this line, overriding it forcefully: east wind | first for || me open gate. I have therefore not started a new line in the translation at the point where the caesura should be.
There is an interesting progression of verbs in this Quatrain. The fountain breaks the ice and rinses the base of the hedge or fence; that is a dynamic emergence of the unseen. 67 This is followed by the misprision of the monk’s robe for a gibbon hanging in a tree, mental or static activities that involve the concealment of the seen object (he names the robe first; he knows what it is) behind the illusory object. The crucial third line describes the frustrated action of looking for something and not finding it; the tension of this blockage is released in the last line when the wind literally removes a barrier and does it “first,” “already.” The absent caesura emphasizes this release. The balance of presence and absence (or recognition and illusion) we see in this and the heptametrical Quatrains of late 1089 provides another perspective on the air of “insubstantiality” we found in the heptametrical Regulated Verses Fanghui wrote in these same months. The east wind of spring opens the gate to the temple for the poet, but he cannot find his “old tracks.” In fact, he is not really given time to look for them, because the wind opens the gate “first”—a tiny detail, but just as mysterious as his assertion that the Cassia Girl had fled from this mountain to the moon in her canopied carriages last night. Why this feeling that things are happening just fast enough for He Zhu to miss them? Who had worn the tattered monk’s robe that disguises itself as soon as he sees it? If this is not a purely private matter, could these signs have something to do with Wang Anshi’s death in 1086?
THE CAPITAL AND HAILING 1091 AND 1092: SPRING WIND IN THE CAPITAL The next hexametrical Quatrain in Fanghui’s collection treats the theme of time’s passage in a much more conventional way, though there may be a valid allegorical reading. Although it is open to different interpretations, we no longer see the ambiguities of presence and absence or reality and illusion that we have just observed in the poems of late 1090 and the beginning of 1091. What is per-
——— before dying en route to a remote post). Then the meaning would be that he cannot find traces of where Ruan Fu waxed his clogs. See Shishuo xinyu, 6.15. Su Shi alluded to this story in 1094. Su Shi’s poems are տॼ塘ᄘໃڻֆ (1090; SSSJ, 5:32.1704) and ᇢ (1094; 6:38.2072). 67 Although the phrase used occurs nearly thirty times in the Tang, it is rare in the Northern Song; whether we are meant to feel its period flavor or to revivify the metaphor that is buried in the expression is difficult to say.
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ceived may be symbolic, or not, or both, but it is stable. The topic is the abandoned garden of Grand Councilor Jia Changchao ௺ᦺ (998–1065). 68 563
4
⋧ᨋඨᚻᩱ㩷 䂾䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾㩷 ᷡᮻᦦὑᐞੱ㐿㩷 䂾䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾䂾㩷 ⨹᭘㊁⬧឵᩶᧘㩷 䂾䂾䃂䃂䂓䂾䃂㩷 ᘚᗹᤐ㘑ᅤૼ㩷 䂾䃂䂾䂾䂔䃂䂾㩷
B4
The grand councilor’s garden grove was half planted by his hand.
D4
Fine goblets were once set out for so many people!
(A8)
Unruly thorns and wild creepers have replaced the peaches and plums;
(B4)
shame—that the spring wind comes as it did before.
Note: 563-4/ Who is ashamed is not specified, but I take it to be the garden, in an effective image of transference (“personification”).
The first question is whether the peaches and plums in line 563-3 represent good and loyal followers, perhaps talent fostered by Jia Changchao. Fanghui does use peaches and plums allegorically in 1090 and 1096 to refer to religious disciples, as we have noted (see p. 439), so it is not farfetched to take line 563-3 as lamenting the passing of those who benefited from Jia’s political and moral leadership. (The poem does not give away Fanghui’s assessment of Jia, but he seems to have enjoyed a good reputation.) “Thorns and creepers” could then represent the talents of He Zhu’s own generation, inferior by comparison. I think we can be even more specific than that, though: perhaps the phrase designates the squabbling factions at court that had driven Su Shi in 1089 to escape the capital for the post of prefect in Hangzhou. Since it is likely that Su Shi had already been recalled to court when this poem was written, he would be the “spring wind” coming again “as before.” Although a safely conservative reading would see the poem as a simple lamentation on the ephemeralness of all things, embodied in the demise of Jia Changchao’s horticultural heritage, the allegorical interpretation strikes me as equally convincing in the context of the time. (I should add that the tonal violations in lines 563-3 and 4 might be a hint to the reader that there is something worth pausing over, even though these are, admittedly, mutually compensating violations of no great rarity.) Fanghui must have had very specific people in mind as the “garden grove” planted by Jia Changchao and, most importantly, as the “unruly thorns and wild creepers” that infest it. A general attack on everyone in power would not have
——— 68 ᠲᇸּᐒႼ Inscribed on Mr. Jia’s Abandoned Garden, 10.12607; Shiyi.19a. The poem is dated the second month of 1091; one edition dates it to the first month. However, for a number of reasons pointed out by Zhong Zhenzhen in his 1994 “Du He Fanghui nianpu zhaji,” it is more plausible to ascribe it to the third month.
HEPTAMETRICAL QUATRAINS
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made sense for him in 1091. Sometime this year it seems that Fanghui’s mother, who is still alive, will be honored with the title Grand Lady of Yongnian County ᳗ᐕ❐ᄥำ. 69 Fanghui himself will be promoted to the civil side of the bureaucracy under the sponsorship of Su Shi and other very prominent people, as we have seen. He had friends in high places. The coming of the spring wind does not expose the garden to embarrassment in the next poem, composed in the second month of the following year, but it does blow the blossoms from their branches. A wall, through another image of transference, is granted the potential to “plan” to fend off the wind, but it fails: 564
✅Ⰲᯅਅ᳓㑸᧲㩷 䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾䂾㩷 ធ⇒ᨋㅝㅢ㩷 䃂䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾㩷 ❥᧙ඨ㐿㓣ඨ⪭㩷 䂾䃂䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂㩷 ⍴ ή⸘␊ᤐ㘑㩷 䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾䂾㩷
D3
Beneath the colorful rainbow bridge and east of the sluice,
B4
Adjoining the field-paths, garden and grove: a narrow way goes through.
C1
Flourishing apricots half blossom and straightaway half fall;
D1
the short wall has no strategy to hinder the winds of spring.
This poem is titled ᧲ၔ㚍 On Horseback at the East Citywall. 70 The first couplet carefully orients us in space: we are below a certain bridge, east of a certain sluice or checkpoint on the waterway; we are following a narrow path through a grove of trees that abuts the borders of farmland. This geometric world dissolves in line 564-3, where trees “flourish” and change is out of control. Out of control, but symmetrical in their action: half the blossoms open and those blossoms promptly fall. With the wall in line 564-4, we return to straight lines. Alas, that wall is an ineffective boundary. Too short, it cannot halt the wind; in fact, it has not even tried to find a strategy, so its helplessness is absolute. This balancing of sharply defined space in the first couplet with stark rigidities in the second couplet was surely instinctual, but the poet’s instincts were admirable.
——— 69 See the grave inscription, quoted by Xia Chengtao in “He Fanghui nianpu,” 291. Zhong Zhenzhen, Bei Song ciren He Zhu yanjiu, 27, n. 49/51, states that the custom for such an honor was to “enfeoff” the mother in the place where her (natal) family was registered. The Song huiyao says nothing about that, but the ranks that one had to attain in order for one’s mother to be enfeoffed as Grand Lady of a county appear to be higher than He Zhu’s. See 2:2007b–2008a. He Zhu was made a chengshi lang ࢭࠃ (see Xia Chengtao, loc. cit.), which was ninth rank upper class; the positions listed in the Sung huiyao are titular offices that appear to range from the fourth to the sixth ranks, mixed in with some functional titles. (The titles are those used before the reorganization of the bureaucracy in 1082. Table 11 on p. 688 in Gong Yanming, Songdai guanzhi cidian, shows how the old and new titular offices correspond to each other and includes some of the titles mentioned in the Song huiyao.) 70 10.12607; Shiyi.19a.
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1094: FAREWELLS IN HAILING Other than the poem inscribed on the banana leaf that we mentioned above (Poem 569; see p. 438), Fanghui leaves us only four heptametrical Quatrains from the year and some months he spent with relatives in Hailing. That is still an increase over his rate of production in the preceding four years. In any case, three of these Quatrains are farewell poems, constituting half of all his heptametrical Quatrains devoted to this purpose. Interestingly, they are the second poems written for each occasion; they were preceded by heptametrical Regulated Verses (another example of the earliest poems marking a relationship with someone being in that genre). In one case, we know that the first poem was written at a banquet after rhymes were drawn, though we can only guess whether the Quatrain followed on it immediately. 71 In the other case, the heptametrical Regulated Verse Requiting and Parting from Zeng Chen, which we translated in our chapter on heptametrical Regulated Verse (Poem 496), is followed by a pair of Quatrains under the title ㊀ㅍᦦ⺈ਯ◲ ổ㒸ᑀ Again Seeing Off Zeng Chengzhi and Sent Also as a Letter to Yu Dan and Chen Yu. 72 As indicated, the Quatrains expand He Zhu’s audience to include two other friends. These friends are probably in Yangzhou, where Zeng Chen will probably board a boat to go down the canal and back up the Yangzi to Jinling. Chen Yu and our poet became friends in Yangzhou on his way back up to the capital in early 1091. 73 Yu Dan, according to the headnote to the present poem, was also an old friend from Yangzhou. We know a bit more about him: he had studied alongside Huang Tingjian when Huang was in his late teens. Huang’s letters and other writings indicate that Yu found it difficult to mix with the common lot, perhaps because he was very bright and also very comical. This explains Fanghui’s epithet for him in line 566-1: san, undisciplined, careless. Fanghui probably admired his unconventional style. Interestingly, Yu’s installation at Banshan Temple outside Jinling at the behest of Wang Anshi is seen by Huang as one indication that those who associated with Wang in his late years were for the most part “fine men,” ૫჻. 74
——— The first poem is ಬۂፖࠇូ՞ၺ Seeing Off Jiang Yujing, Who is Returning to Shanyang; Poem 499, 10.12596; Shiyi.3b. The second is ؓມഘૹಬۂࡲ At Level-outlands Hall, Again Seeing Off Jiang Maozong; Poem 567, 10.12607; Shiyi.19b–20a. Maozong is the cognomen of Jiang Yujing, according to Fanghui, but I have no other information on this individual. 72 10.12607; Shiyi.19b. 73 Chen is introduced in the headnote to the 1091 Ancient Verse ८՞ሏ An Excursion to Jinshan, Poem 124, 4.12534; 4.3a. 74 See the dozen or so works indexed under Yu’s name in Huang Tingjian quanji, Hu Sheng, Huang Tingjian nianpu xinbian, 17–18, and Zhao Lingzhi, Hou qing lu, 2:8.8a–b. 71
HEPTAMETRICAL QUATRAINS
565
4
566
4
ᤐ㘑ṼṼ⠧ᳯ⯜㩷 䂾䂾䃂䃂䃂䂾䂾㩷 ⴕ⍬㛟ੱᅢ⥄ᜬ㩷 䂾䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾㩷 ඨ⊖ᐛりᅤஜ㩷 䃂䃂䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂㩷 ⍹㗡ၔਅౌ⨆⦿㩷 䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾䂾㩷 㒸㘂ᢔ⥟ㆆ㩷 䂾䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾䂾㩷 ᮻ㈬⋧ㅩቯዋ⇐㩷 䂾䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾㩷 ∛ᖱ₈㩷 䂾䃂䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂㩷 ᤐ㘑৻ᄛᄞ឴Ꮊ㩷 䂾䂾䃂䃂䃂䂾䂾㩷
D2
The spring breeze forlornly loneful ages the selinum,
B4
Go on your way, poet! and may you keep yourself well.
C4
Half a hundred, this illusionary body; should it somehow remain sturdy,
D1
below Stony Head Enceinte: two thatched roofs.
D4
Crazy Chen and dissolute Yu, my old companions,
B4
We met with goblets of brew and had to tarry a while.
C1
Worn and sick, I find the old feelings are still with me;
D2
in spring breezes the entire night I dream of Yangzhou.
445
Notes: 565-1/ The use of momo with wind is rare. Wang Anshi is the only poet I know who uses it with the spring wind: he refers to the wind “forlornly loneful coming onto my clothing” ᤐ㘑ṼṼ . “Selinum” is a fragrant type of plant with small umbellate flowers. It is mentioned at the beginning of the Li sao, where Qu Yuan says he “dressed in selinea and shady angelica.” 75 565-2/ The expression for “poet” is “sao person,” a common term derived from Qu Yuan as an ancestor to all poets. 565-3/ Conventionally, the human life span is one hundred years, so “half a hundred” could mean “half my life has passed. 76 In 1094, however, Fanghui is only forty-three sui. Thus, the line could be understood as referring to the future “When this illusory body is fifty….”
The first poem is obviously addressed to Zeng Chen. The mention of selinum and “sao person” might be meant to tease Zeng for being habitually as anxious in his outlook and his poetry as was Qu Yuan. (See our earlier discussion of Requiting and Parting from Zeng Chen.) That said, it may be unwise to read the lighthearted tone of the second poem into the first. Compare the two “spring
——— See David Hawkes, Songs of the South, 68. The Wang Anshi poem is ല۟կၺബ।ا. Li Deshen, Wang Anshi shiwen xinian, 169, ascribes the poem to 1066, but the date is immaterial here. Since Wang died in 1086, any poem by him would precede this Quatrain by He Zhu. 76 Most sources will site the Zhuangzi and other early texts for the origin of the idea that the human lifespan is one hundred years. However, the passages cited consider such an age to be at the very limit of, if not beyond, the possible life span. I think the convention was actually adopted from Buddhist sources. For example, the Dazhi dulun Օཕ৫ᓵរ (T25:1509) states that a Buddha will appear when people’s life spans have shrunk to one hundred years (4.89c); this notion appears also in the Mahpadna-suttanta ९ॳܶᆖ (T1:1.2a). 75
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breezes” that frame the pair: one “forlornly loneful, ages the selinum”; the other blows on the poet “dreaming the entire night” of romantic Yangzhou— romantic because Du Mu awoke from a ten-year “Yangzhou dream” with a reputation for being a heartless lover in the brothels. 77 Whatever structural principle led He Zhu to use “spring breeze” in the first line of the first poem and the last line of the second poem, these two lines help us gauge the shift in mood. The anticipated retreat to Stony Head in Jinling (565-4) is intriguing. Is there some shared connection with Zeng Chen and either Qingliang Temple or— since his diction is used in line 565-1—Wang Anshi? The significance of that line may forever remain private.
1096: UP THE RIVER TO JIANGXIA We shall skip over the three heptametrical Quatrains Fanghui leaves from 1095 (a slow year for him in all genres). After returning from Hailing to the capital and then setting off for Jiangxia in the tenth month of Shaosheng 2 (1095), Fanghui was still en route when he was held up by unfavorable winds on the Yangzi at Lesser Lone Mountain in the fifth month of 1096. He seems to have been in a comical and clever mood; perhaps he was happy to postpone reporting for duty at the mint in Jiangxia. A few days after his entertaining heptametrical Regulated Verse (Poem 529) with its “Princes” and “Black Ghosts,” he wrote the Quatrain 㒖㘑ዊቅጊඡ᥍ Held up by Wind at Lesser Lone Mountain, Written When the Sky Cleared in the Evening. When reading the poem, it is helpful to know that the name of the peak rising from the river, Xiaogu, is a homophone of ዊᆑ “Little Maiden.” Similarly, the name of Slapping Waves Shelf is a homophone of “Master Peng,” which appears in He Zhu’s poem. 78 489
4
ዊቅጊਅඡᵄᕵ㩷 䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾䂾㩷 ᅷდ㕍㝒₹㏜ᅒ㩷 䃂䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾㩷 ୫⥜ᓄ㇢⋲᮪㩷 䃂䃂䂾䂾䂓䂔䃂㩷 ධೋᱜው➠㩷 䂾䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾䂾㩷
D1
Below Lesser Lone Mountain, the waves of evening are demure.
B1
Trailing, detressed loops of hair so dark; a jade mirror-case.
(C14) D4
She lets Master Peng use it as a model for her brows: the new moon in the southwest, so sharp and slender!
———
ᡖ, Fanchuan shi jizhu, 369. Fanghui quotes Du Mu verbatim in his lyric ݴෝܷ, Dongshan ci, 118, dated by Zhong Zhenzhen to 1100 on the assumptions that “ten years” have passed since Fanghui’s first visit to Yangzhou and that his first visit to Yangzhou was in 1091. 78 9.12594; 9.9a. This poem is dated the fourth of the fifth month; the Regulated Verse is dated the fourth month. That would indicate that Fanghui had been detained for at least five days. 77
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The imagery in this poem is worth savoring. In line 489-2, the undone rings of hair hanging down must be vines and bushes on the dark, steep-sided island. A cliché comparison of water and mirror is avoided by making the river a “jade mirror case.” Finally, a similarly obvious likening of eyebrows to a sliver of moon is given new life by making the moon a model for Master Peng to use in plucking or painting the brows of his “Little Maiden” lover. Fanghui finds such slender shapes highly erotic, to judge by the frequency with which he mentions “slender fingers” in his lyrics. Once it is the very same phrase, “sharp and slender,” that he uses to describe the fingers of a musician playing songs of love. 79 Because the names of these landmarks along the River had already been incorporated into established puns, it would be somewhat trite to simply repeat the joke. Su Shi does exactly that in a 1078 poem, but he is not at Lesser Lone Mountain, he is inscribing an old painting, which makes a difference. His needs are to show that he recognizes the scene depicted and to praise its lifelike quality, which he does in this case by addressing the boatmen in the picture to warn them “Little Maiden” is already married. 80 Fanghui is not adding these gestures to a painting; he is on site—and undoubtedly hearing the same pun over and over from his boatmen and the locals while he waits for a favorable wind. Of course, he cannot ignore the puns on the names because they are inseparable from the place, but he can and must wrestle them into submission. And so he does. The first line, “Below Lesser Lone Mountain, the waves of evening are demure,” resolutely ignores the puns. It simply describes the evening scene without even enough vividness to give us simple imagery, let alone anything more complex. (Although my translation of tian as “demure” suggests some personification of the waves, tian is commonly used in connection with waves and wind and simply means “quiet,” “subdued.”) Most importantly, the line includes the word “mountain” in the name of the landmark to forestall the expected pun. (Hearing “Xiao Gu” alone, one would not know whether it was “Lesser Lone [Mountain]” or “Little Maiden.”) Line 489-2 gives us the Little Maiden who was withheld in the first line, but in the form of an image of substitution, not a verbal pun: “Trailing, detressed loops of hair so dark” can only refer to her, or rather—since there is no real person to be so described—to
——— ᙃฬᜢ (ᡯᡯᢌటྤᏝ), Zhong Zhenzhen, Dongshan ci, 16; Sargent, “Experiential Patterns,” 227. Xian or xianxian “slender” is used fifteen times as a descriptor for hands or fingers in He Zhu’s lyrics, so often that it is sometimes apparently unnecessary even to specify the noun. Line 489-4 accurately depicts what Fanghui would have seen in the southwestern sky that evening. The waxing moon on that date (28 May 1096) would have been about six percent illuminated and would have set around 21:17. This is extrapolated on the basis of data for Jiuzhang on 28 May 1960 (corresponding to the fourth day of the fifth lunar month) from the U.S. Naval Observatory, Astronomical Applications Department, http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/RS_One Day.html. 80 ޕ৸ಝ९ۂቹ, SSSJ, 3:17.872; Wang Shuizhao, Su Shi xuanji, 112. 79
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something on the peak in the river that looks like dark and drooping hair. The “maiden” is thus the vehicle of the unnamed tenor (the peak); our focus is actually on the aptness of her image as a substitution for the peak, not (yet) on her role as the sweetheart of Master Peng. Only in line 489-3 does a “personification” of one of the landmarks appear: Peng Lang (no “Shelf”). Little Maiden herself now comes into her own as the understood subject of the verb: “[She] gives it to Master Peng.” This is the closest we get to the expected treatment of the landmarks’ names. The last line, though it appears to tell us what Little Maiden gives Master Peng, is by itself a simply description of the scene: “in the southwest, the new moon: so sharp and slender.” Note that the moon does not substitute for her brows, nor is there any explicit or implied comparison between it and her brows. The moon is a model to be followed in shaping her brows, so it is always separate from them; it is simply the moon, whether she passes it to her lover or we see it in the sky. We are back where we started, then, with the river scene as it would appear to someone who had never heard the puns.
1096–98: HANYANG AND JIANGXIA: Only four heptametrical Quatrains survive from Fanghui’s sojourn in the area of modern Wuhan, two from 1096, one from 1097, and one from 1098. The 1097 heptametrical Quatrain is an “exception that proves the rule” insofar as it is the first poem written for an acquaintance but is not a heptametrical Regulated Verse. (The two other poems we have for the same person are heptametrical Regulated Verses, but they come later in the same year.) Beyond this reversal of the usual sequence of genres in a relationship, there is nothing remarkable about the Quatrain. 81 More interesting are the changes Fanghui works on well-established themes in the two Quatrains from the previous year. The 1098 poem is the poet’s inscription at the end of his collected works and will appropriately mark the conclusion to this study. In the sixth month of 1096, still recuperating on the north side of the Yangzi, Fanghui wrote 㗴ṽ㓁ኚ⥡⠧᪀ Inscribed on an Old Mulberry at My Lodgings in Hanyang. 82 The theme of the old and rotting tree was an old one by now, but Fanghui gives it several strange twists.
——— 81 The poem is ࡉܦሒ֛ߠመఎᠲ Harmonizing with the Inscription Wu Dafu Left when he Visited, Poem 492, 9.12594; 9.9b. Wu’s name is given as Qian ᑨ in the title to one of the Regulated Verses; see 10.12604; shiyi.15b. Nothing else is known of the man other than that he made friends with He Zhu without consideration for the difference in their ages. 82 9.12594; 9.9b.
HEPTAMETRICAL QUATRAINS
490
4
ᦦήᴅ⧯㘻ⴅܦ㩷 D2 䂾䂾䃂䃂䃂䂾䂾㩷 ⣻ⴆ⡙ଏໟᧁ㙿㩷 B1 䃂䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾㩷 ᐩᲒൕ༝ర✜㩷㩷 (C14) 䃂䃂䂾䂾䂓䂔䃂㩷 ਇᙥᗧ㒝ἻἻ㩷 D3 䃂䂾䃂䃂䃂䂾䂾㩷
449
You never had the glossiness to satisfy silkworms of Wu. You harbor boring insects just for the cravings of wood-peckers. Why with such solicitude did you comfort the turtle? [you] should not have knowingly gone close to the blaze!
Notes: 490-1/ The phrase translated “glossiness” describes the leaves of the mulberry in the Classic of Poetry, Ode 58. Wu, the region around modern Suzhou, is a prime sericulture region; “Wu” is thus sometimes an epithet for good silkworms, regardless of location. 490-3–4/ “Turtle” is “Yuanxu” in the original. In an old tale, a large turtle is captured and is being transported to present to Sun Quan, king of Wu. When the boat carrying the turtle stops for the night near an old mulberry tree, the tree sympathizes with the turtle (calling him “Yuanxu”), but the turtle tells the tree he is not worried because no fire can cook him. That turns out to be true— until the old mulberry tree is used to make the fire. 83
Fanghui does not give the mulberry the time-honored treatment of old trees that the poetic tradition would have us expect. This is not a withered cypress assailed by xylophagous insects and standing for the morally superior gentleman who must endure petty antagonists; in fact it never produced good leaves for sericulture, so its decline is not to be lamented. Nor is it a gnarled oak tree preserving its life by being useless for timber (a model for not chasing after the rewards of society). In fact, the tree is useful now, if only as a site for one kind of creature to devour another. So far as I can tell, Fanghui is the first poet to allude to the story of Yuanxu and the mulberry tree, so the allusive second half of the poem is also a fresh treatment of the topic. Since it was the overheard conversation between the tree and the turtle that suggested burning the tree to cook the uncookable turtle, I think line 490-4 is a rebuke to the tree for getting involved. (An alternative reading would rebuke the tree for showing sympathy for such a cocky creature: “[he] should not have knowingly gone close to the blaze”). Is this simply a playful treatment of the topic, or is there an allegory here? I think it is the former. As we have noted, the poem rejects the standard allegorical treatments of a withered tree. The personification of the tree in the second couplet is simply a witty allusion to a story; even if it suggests a Lesson for Living, the personification is not consistent with any allegorical reading I can imagine for the first couplet.
——— 83
Liu Jingshu, Yiyuan, CSJC (1991 ed), 2723:3.70–71.
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Three months later, having crossed over to Jiangxia, Fanghui writes a Quatrain that similarly avoids making a trite comparison, this time between a scene and a painting. While the scene does remind the speaker of a painting by the tenth century artist Dong Yuan that he’d seen on the art market, the painting and the scene remain distinct. Dong Yuan is well known in art history as one of the men who defined the style of Song landscape painting and in fact the first half of the poem perfectly describes the kind of scene he would have painted, with layered mountain ranges bordering a river. The title of the poem is ⑺ᳯඡ ᦸ Evening View on an Autumn River. 84 491
4
႓⯂ᵮᷪ⿒ᬤᨋ㩷 D4 䂾䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾䂾㩷 ᨋᄖᱼ㓁⇷ᎋᷓ㩷 B4 䂾䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾㩷 ⸥ᓧᑝ㒺ၔⵣᏒ㩷㩷 C4 䃂䃂䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂㩷 ⫃Ḯᯖ㓚⾬ජ㊄㩷 D1 䃂䂾䂾䃂䃂䂾䂾㩷
Yellow reeds on holms and aits; a crimson maple forest. Beyond the forest the fading sun; layered ranges profound. I recall, at Guangling, at the market within the walls: Dong Yuan’s horizontal screen going for a thousand in gold.
Note: 491-3/ Guangling is another name for Yangzhou.
Just as Fanghui refused to treat the old mulberry allegorically, he refuses to see the scene as a painting or even to recognize the painting as a evoking a scene. The painting makes its appearance in the poem only as a commodity. Of course Fanghui mentions the Dong Yuan painting because there is a similarity between the painted and the real scenes, but his remark about the price makes the differences more important. Fanghui wants us to see the scene as itself, not as standing for something else. Beyond that, the implication is that Fanghui could not afford a painting by Dong Yuan, whereas the scene in lines 491-1 and 2 costs him nothing. Furthermore, the painting, for all its suggestion of receding space, is trapped “within the walls” of a busy commercial city, whereas the scene here is boundless, extending even “beyond the forest.” Finally, we come to 㗴ᓟ Inscribed After the Scrolls of Poetry, 1098. 85 ⼼┆ੱ┆⠪Ꮏ㩷 䂾䃂䂾䂾䂔䃂䂾㩷 ᣁ⸒⡞⻉৻⠃㩷 䂾䂾䂾䂔䃂䂓䂾㩷
493
——— 84 85
9.12594; 9.9b. 9.12594; 9.10a.
(B4) (D20)
How can poetry impoverish one? those who are impoverished are good at it. These words I’ve heard from Old Six-Ones.
HEPTAMETRICAL QUATRAINS
┵ᘚዋ⠧ᦝ᜕㩷 䂾䂾䃂䃂䂓䂾䃂㩷 ਇᑜ๋᳭࿕┆㩷 䃂䃂䂓䂾䂔䃂䂾㩷
4
(A5)
Pointlessly ashamed of youthful works, I get clumsier as I age;
(B17)
not throwing away your poems, I am indeed impoverished.
451
Notes: 493-1/ This line is a consolidated version of Ouyang Xiu’s 1046 statement that “It is not that poetry can impoverish a person; it must be that one is impoverished and only then becomes good [at poetry].” 86 493-2/ Ouyang Xiu took the name The Retired Scholar of Six Ones in 1070, explaining that in his household he had one library of ten thousand volumes, one thousand epigraphs, one qin, one chess set, and one jug of wine—plus himself, one old man, to make six. 87 493-4/ This line seems addressed to the collection at the end of which this poem is inscribed.
The poem takes up a theme Fanghui used several times in the 1090s, as we have seen: the relationship between poetry and poverty. It does so in a series of very clever linguistic twists accentuated by metrical deviations rarely seen in our poet’s heptametrical Quatrains. The first couplet is a restatement of Su Shi’s four 1074 lines, 㕖⢻┆ੱ㧘 ┆⠪ਫᎿޕᱝ⺆ାਇᅦ㧘๋⡞⻉㉎⠃, “It is not that poetry can impoverish a person, / one is impoverished and only then becomes good. / These words are truly not nonsense; / I heard them from the Drunken Old Man.” 88 (The “Drunken Old Man” is another of Ouyang Xiu’s sobriquets.) To anyone who recognized the layers of quotations, Fanghui’s consolidation of Su Shi’s lines from four to two (or twenty syllables distilled to fourteen) would have seemed witty enough in itself. The repetition of sounds in “gung…gung…kung” (“impoverish…impoverish…good”) in such rapid succession accentuates the consolidation. (It also makes us realize that modern Mandarin (qiong…qiong…gong) softens the phonetic closeness between “poverty” and poetic “craftsmanship” that the Middle Chinese ear would have felt.) Then Fanghui ruefully reflects that his poetry is getting more “clumsy,” using a word that is the opposite of gong, well-crafted, “good.” Finally, he concludes that if he cannot throw away his poems, if he clings to them as his prized possessions, then he is truly impoverished. (“Impoverished” implies here a general exhaustion of possibilities.) This places the whole controversy over the relationship between poetry and poverty into a new perspective. Now it is not lack of success in the world that makes a person write well-crafted poetry; it is a doting fondness for his already written but not-so-well-crafted poetry that brands He Zhu a failure.
——— මᆣᇣႃݧ, Ouyang Xiu quanji, 1:Jushi ji.14.295. քԫࡺՓႚ; for the text and an appreciation, see Zeng Zaozhuang, ed., Ouyang Xiu shiwen shangxi ji, 188–193. 88 ቖ༡Ⴇॣᒽቖ, SSSJ, 2:12.576–77, lines 13–16. The whole poem is translated in Beata Grant, Mount Lu Revisited, 66. 86 87
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CLOSING THOUGHTS ON THIS GENRE AND THE LYRIC Ironically, the metrical violations in this Quatrain that supposedly reflect He Zhu’s clumsiness actually show how much in command of his medium he is. Ordinarily, his heptametrical Quatrains are metrically “perfect” or nearly perfect, so his ineptitude here is clearly intentional. I believe that Fanghui’s resolute adherence to meter in all the other works in this genre is one way he kept his poems firmly within the realm of shi poetry and distinct from the ci (lyric). It would be interesting to see if other poets known primarily for their lyrics also wrote fewer than average heptametrical Quatrains and were as exacting in their form as He Zhu. A related study could be done of the use of reduplicatives in Quatrains to see if there was indeed a “late Tang” flavor associated with them, a flavor that Fanghui rejected either because he was trying to create a new style for his own time or because the old style was associated in his mind with the early lyric. This chapter has included poems that are either blatantly sarcastic or imply a serious complaint beneath their insouciance and poems in which illusions play a puzzling role. The appearance of these features coincides with similar or related phenomena we have noted in other genres at the same periods of time. However, with these often intriguing exceptions, the heptametrical Quatrain is not a medium for the presentation of serious issues. For example, the censorship of history or the erasure of texts does not appear to be a topic for this genre. If contemporary poets wrote proportionately more heptametrical Quatrains, as noted at the beginning of the chapter, it would be interesting to see if it is because they found ways to address complex issues in them or, as I suspect, they used the Quatrains to explore topics that Fanghui either reserved for the lyric or neglected altogether.
CONCLUSION I hope the reader will by now agree that Fanghui’s shi poetry rewards close study, both for its own sake and as a starting point for reassessing the works of other poets—this despite the fact that all the poems from the last third of his life are no longer extant, making a complete picture of him forever beyond our reach. Although he stayed out of the spotlight shown on Su Shi and the group of men closely associated with him, he was clearly part of the late eleventh-century poetry world and was recognized for more than his lyrics. We have already seen ways in which Fanghui exemplifies certain traits that scholars have identified as “Song.” In trying to understand why he thought a given poem was interesting and worth keeping, I have pointed to its freshness and precision of description as a desideratum for Song poets. 1 (In contrast, I have interpreted evident pleasure in pushing the meanings of words and grammar to the very limit of paraphrasable sense as a revival of “Tang” preoccupations.) Various kinds of intellectual wit evident in He Zhu’s poems can be seen as typical of his age or, more precisely, of either Su Shi or Huang Tingjian. Such general remarks are useful up to a point, because they help explain what Fanghui and his audience valued. They also reassure us that neither Fanghui nor the “more important” poets were atypical; they represent variations on characteristic Song Dynasty responses to life and to literary traditions. On the other hand, since these responses recur throughout the three hundred years of Song poetry, we are still left with the task of discovering some line of chronological development within that span and Fanghui’s contribution to it. There have been promising attempts to associate literary change in the Song with changes in the perceived relationship between wen ֮ (culture/writing) and the moral development of the individual, the improvement of society as a whole, or both. Fanghui, who was above all a verbal artist much enamored of words and all their “colors,” surely was never persuaded by the argument made in some quarters that literary writing impeded the cultivation of the person. It is doubtful that he problematized the question, however. Regrettably, anything he might have written about the nature and value of literature has been lost along with nearly all of his prose and I find it difficult at the present state of my own ——— 1 “Precision of description” has to be understood relative to the Chinese tradition up to this time; English language landscape poetry typically strives for far more particularity. Chinese poets had little interest in describing all the visual details of a scene. Partly because of the concision achievable by Classical Chinese within the prosodic structure of traditional shi poetry, their emphasis would generally be on implied meanings and associations.
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CONCLUSION
knowledge to use this gross thematic rubric to tease out any deeper meanings in his poetry. The organization of this book reflects my belief that another type of research has to be pursued further before we can write a more adequate history of Song poetry, or indeed of all post-Tang shi poetry. First, the chronological arrangement of the investigation within each of my chapters does more than remind us that a poet doesn’t “happen all at once,” despite the continuities we expect from a mature and active writer. While chronology encourages us to give due attention to shifts in direction, interruptions, and bypaths in the works of a single person, we can also use it to bring to the fore similar explorations on the part of other poets working at roughly the same time. As we accumulate data, we can start to make historical hypotheses of great potential value. If we reduce each poet to one or two ideas or features that fit into a received narrative of literary development, we both efface the complexity of the individual poet and obscure other lines of development waiting to be discovered. Second, by devoting each of the six chapters in this book to one genre of shi, I suggest that at least some of these lines of development are to be found in the history of each genre. To put it another way, I think it might be fruitful to focus on these histories rather than the history of Song shi as a whole. Of course, it would be absurd to say genre has been totally neglected in previous studies. Literary historians have traditionally noted that some poets favored such-and-such a genre or did their most characteristic work in a certain form; studies are even being done now on changing genre preferences during the lifetime of a single poet, notably Mo Lifeng’s work on Huang Tingjian, cited elsewhere in this book. The next step is to go beyond noting that Ouyang Xiu’s best poems are Ancient Verse, for example, and examine how his work in Regulated Verse or Quatrains did or did not advance those forms. When we better understand how genre expectations from the Mei Yaochen generation were remolded in the hands of He Zhu and his contemporaries of similar stature, opening the way for younger poets, we will be much closer to writing a new history of Song Dynasty poetry as a whole. Let us review here how Fanghui’s work relates to the development of each genre as we understand it now and as we might like to probe it in the future. In Ancient Verse, there seem to have been few options for formal experimentation. The significance of He Zhu’s use of first-line rhyme (concentrated in 1080–86) is difficult to assess without comparison to the practice of other Song Dynasty poets; for the present, we can only say it is unusual in pentametrical poetry. Thematically, Fanghui innovated within categories already established by the late eleventh century. The fact that allegory seems to have become a problematic mode with him is consistent with what other scholars have noted in Huang Tingjian and Su Shi. Whether the theory of imitation we proposed for He Zhu’s
CONCLUSION
455
Ancient Verse imitations will be verified by research on other poets is a matter that cannot be resolved yet. In Songs, the urge to experiment is more in evidence: Fanghui appears to have adopted diction from popular tales; he used interlocking rhymes at least once; and he built a suite of three Songs whose designations seem to indicate that he was either following or inventing a definite sequence of yin, ci, and ying as an overall structure. The distinction Fanghui apparently made between heptametrical Ancient Verses on a set topic (with some word meaning “song” appearing in the title) and heptametrical Ancient Verses in general is perhaps to be found in the works of other Song Dynasty poets, but whether particular combinations of line length and rhyme patterns correlate with certain topics or occasions is a question for more research. “Innovation” is a bit harder to speak of in Regulated Verse, whose form is supposedly set by definition. Like most poets, however, Fanghui finds ways to work outside narrow expectations. In our chapter on the pentametrical form, we noted that Fanghui shows an unusual willingness to begin these poems with a rhyming couplet. I proposed that this enabled him to achieve certain pleasing or evocative placements of even-tone syllables later in the poem. If we can divide Song Dynasty poets into those who avoided rhymed openings in pentametrical Regulated Verse (like Huang Tingjian, Guo Xiangzheng, and Zhang Lei) and those who embraced them (like He Zhu), we can then look for factors that might explain this, such as an ear for music (as evidenced by stature in the realm of the lyric) or lines of influence. This would contribute to the history of this genre. On another level, I frequently explain details of pentametrical Regulated Verses (as well as other poems in the book) by reference to the diction or structure of earlier poems that are presumed or known to have been read by the poet. Sometimes we find He Zhu “correcting” predecessor poets in the conspicuous and often witty ways that were celebrated in jottings on poetry then and later, but more often they seem to be subtle reworkings of phrases and ideas that the poet would have pointed out only to someone who was as deeply immersed in the sounds and senses of words as he was. Such a person would be interested in poetic challenges, other examples of which would include pairs of poems on the same site or the imitation of an extended Regulated Verse; these would be of greatest interest to the practicing poet, not the wag who tries to get a laugh out of his fellow party-goers with clever “overturned cases” (fan’an). Our chapter on heptametrical Regulated Verse emphasized the expressive rationale behind noncanonical sequences of line types; this opens up a new way of viewing the loss of “adhesion” between couplets in the Regulated Verses of other poets by encouraging us to analyze the phenomenon as more than just a prosy rejection of the rules. This chapter also offered examples of other topics for exploration in other poets: enjambed lines with long noun phrases, subtle variation in rhyme
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CONCLUSION
with apparent rhetorical effect, and Du Fu as a source of inspiration for prosodic experimentation. Fanghui’s pentametrical Quatrains are notable for being proportionately more numerous in his corpus in comparison with Tang and other Northern Song poets, for seldom following the rules of regulated verse, and for almost always coming in pairs or sets. I think he was searching for new ways to work in a form whose possibilities must have seemed exhausted by the eleventh century, but wider comparative studies are needed to show whether others adopted similar solutions. With heptametrical Quatrains, it appears that Fanghui’s contribution to the development of the form would lie in steering it away from the lyric. He did this by using mostly regulated lines in regulated sequences. Whether this is related to his proportionately low output in the heptametrical Quatrain and his avoidance of sets of ten, in contrast to other poets, is a topic that requires comparative research. The wit he often displays in these short poems is surely typical of his age; whether other Song poets can match him in the careful craftsmanship that we described in Chapter Six remains to be seen. I hope to be able to contribute more to this work in the future. In the meantime, perhaps some aspects of this book have lived up to the mission of the critic as summarized by William H. Gass: What one can do, with description and analysis and expressions of enthusiasm, is entice, lure others to peek between the covers; to remove possible prejudices or expectations that might interfere with the experience; to provide suggestions of where best to start, what to expect, how to look or read or listen; and to give reasons why the work should be treated with seriousness and respect.2
——— 2 Quoted by Michael Dirda in his review of Gass’s A Temple of Texts: Essays, the Washington Post Book World, February 19, 2006, p. 15.
CHRONOLOGY OF POEMS TRANSLATED OR MENTIONED IN THE PRESENT STUDY Year
Mo.
Place
1075 Ԭ ዺኑԶʳ 1076 ׇ߭ዺኑʳ ʳ ʳ 1077 ԭգ ዺኑԼʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ 1078 ؙ֑ց᠆ցʳ ʳ ʳ 1079 ա آց᠆Բʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ 1080 ࢊ عց᠆Կʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ 1081 ߬߸ ց᠆ʳ ʳ ʳ
3 5 10 4 4 5 6 9 4 8 9 9 3 3 3 4 4 5 5 5 7 7 8 9 9 9 10 2 2
ᜯৄʳ ᜯৄʳ ᜯৄʳ ᎓ಷʳ ᎓ಷʳ ᎓ಷʳ ✽ၺʳ ✽ၺʳ ✽ၺʳ ✽ၺʳ ✽ၺʳ ✽ၺʳ ✽ၺʳ ✽ၺʳ ✽ၺʳ ✽ၺʳ ✽ၺʳ ✽ၺʳ ✽ၺʳ ✽ၺʳ ✽ၺʳ ᴫⵟʳ ✽ၺʳ ✽ၺʳ ᴫⵟʳ ✽ၺʳ ✽ၺʳ ✽ၺʳ ցৄʳ
Title No. 232 Ղգڶᡖ८ࣔཾۃᓾʳ 160 ॸ塒ඡඨʳ 233 ᢤ്Փց! 434 堚ᗊഘʳ 435 קႼॣʳ 234 ॸ墾۫༅ؾʳ 161 ۞ʳ 039 ײᙋʳ 040 ॸʳ 041 ۔ዒʳ 237 ࡉᔤխߠബʳ 042 መጤཕʳ 239 ࡉضᙕࠃᄅᗊʳ 437 ॣߠػᕓقփʳ 044 ኙʳ 045 ၳൣԲଈʳ 047 ᠲݥ՞ቹʳ 048 ံಈʳ 049 ᛠᇌʳ 438 ݝխូʳ 054 ෪ᠪᑜʳ 001 ហፕዚʳ 440 ࡉാૉࢿழض୮ဲଈʳ 056 ᠲᥞສ׆ᅾອʳ 057 ᴫⵟಷᑔඡඨʳ 058 ٘ޙᨠ࿆ហፕߠബʳ 059 ࡙מ༅ऴʳ 446 ࣟৄಬড়್Ղʳ 447 ᠿৄࣟʳ
QSS
6.12558 (c) 5.12544 6.12558 9.12588 9.12588 (b) 6.12558 5.12544 2.12510 2.12510 2.12511 6.12559 (c) 2.12511 (a) 6.12559 (a) 9.12588 (a) 2.12511 (c) 2.12512 2.12512 2.12512 (a) 2.12512 (a) 9.12588 (a) 2.12514 1.12497 9.12589 2.12514 (c) 2.12515 2.12515 2.12515 9.12589 9.12589
Key: (a) Sequence in month unknowable. (b) Sequence deduced from title or contents. (c) He Zhu provides specific day. Note: Only the first poem in a pair or set is listed here, regardless of which poem appears in this study.
458
CHRONOLOGY OF POEMS Year
Mo.
Place
ʳ ʳ 8 তᢅྀʳ ʳ ʳ 8 ८ၿʳ ʳ ʳ 8 ᗁڠʳ ʳ ʳ 11 ࠇஃʳ ʳ ʳ 11 լࣔʳ ʳ ʳ 12 ࠇஃʳ 1082 ֙ کց᠆նʳ 7 ࠇஃʳ ʳ ʳ 8 ஊڠʳ ʳ ʳ 8 ஊڠʳ ʳ ʳ 8 ஊڠʳ ʳ ʳ 9 ஊڠʳ ʳ ʳ 9 ஊڠʳ ʳ ʳ 9 ஊڠʳ 1083 ંَ ց᠆քʳ 1 ஊڠʳ ʳ ʳ 1 ஊڠʳ ʳ ʳ 2 ஊڠʳ ʳ ʳ 5 ಷʳ ʳ ʳ 6 ৄةʳ ʳ ʳ 6 ஊڠʳ ʳ ʳ 9 ஊڠʳ ʳ ʳ 10 ஊڠʳ ʳ ʳ 12 ஊڠʳ 1084 ظ ց᠆Ԯʳ 2 ஊڠʳ ʳ ʳ 3 ஊڠʳ ʳ ʳ 4 ஊڠʳ ʳ ʳ 5 1 ஊڠʳ ʳ ʳ 7 ஊڠʳ ʳ ʳ 8 2 ஊڠʳ ʳ ʳ 9 ஊڠʳ ʳ ʳ 11 ஊڠʳ ʳ ʳ 11 3 ஊڠʳ ʳ ʳ 12 ஊڠʳ ʳ ʳ 12 ߅ሐխ ——— 1
“Summer.” Undated. 3 Month uncertain. 2
Title No. 452 ٦௫তᢅྀʳ 453 ८ၿড়ॐඨতᑗৄʳ 454 መᗁᠿֽࡺاԲଈʳ 062 ࡌພݵʳ 457 ࡙מᡖബࡌ֮堚ພ֚᎖ʳ 063 ೈ࡙ᑜʳ 459 くۣᐖྀ॰؆܂ʳ 064 ബ٘ޙᨠʳ 065 ሏႆᚊ്ּ՞ࡺʳ 066 ࿆႓ᑔڶᡖᤕઍ՞ʳ 067 ટᡖԲଈʳ 242 ᠲ༙ৄ്ּ࣋ᦊॼʳ 243 ֲ࿆ᚭ್ፕʳ 163 ಬॣ࣐ޕᝫၺʳ 164 ૹಬʳ 165 ਞʳ 462 ᄘࣤဲԲଈʳ 464 ۞ᓡᝫஊᖈּ׆ৄةႼʳ 070 ݶবॼʳ 244 ֲ׀ګޕܧʳ 245 ᠲ༙ৄতፕڝΞΞʳ 071 ଆពॼʳ 246 ਞᡖʳ 072 Ղգ৵ԫֲ⡲ݶবॼ܂ʳ 248 ࡉ༙ৄس׆൧ዚԳઐઐʳ 073 ᦰޕ墿ᇣʳ 166 ᚵᄵଆହʳ 167 ݶবॼཛᑈ༅ؾԲଈʳ 075 ױߩֲڼ൦ʳ 002 ႓ᑔዚʳ 005 ዚଅፕဲʳ 006 ድዚʳ 076 ຝհ߅ሐխΞΞʳ
QSS
9.12590 9.12590 9.12590 2.12516 9.12590 (b) 2.12517 9.12590 2.12517 2.12518 (c) 2.12518 2.12518 (a) 6.12560 6.12560 (c) 5.12544 5.12544 5.12545 9.12591 9.12591 2.12519 6.12560 (c) 6.12560 2.12519 6.12560 2.12520 (c) 6.12561 (c) 2.12520 5.12545 5.12545 2.12521 1.12498 1.12499 1.12499 (a) 2.12521 (a)
459
CHRONOLOGY OF POEMS Year
1085 Ԭժ ց᠆Զʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ 1086 ׇഫ ցయցʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ
Mo.
Place
2 ஊڠʳ 3 ஊڠʳ 6 ஊڠʳ 6 ஊڠʳ 8 Ղʳ 8 ም◻ሐխ 8 ᝫஊሐխ 8 ᝫஊሐխ 8 ஊڠʳ 8 ஊڠʳ 8 ஊڠʳ 9 ஊڠʳ 9 ஊڠʳ 9 ஊڠʳ 10 ஊڠʳ 1 ஊڠʳ 1 ஊڠʳ 1 ஊڠʳ 2 ৄةʳ 2 ৄةʳ 2 ৄةʳ 2 4 ৄةʳ 3 ࠇஃʳ 35 ʳ 3 ࠇஃʳ 4 ࠇஃʳ 9 ࠇஃʳ 9 ࠇஃʳ 9 ࠇஃʳ 9 ࠇஃʳ 10 ࠇஃʳ 10 ࠇஃʳ 10 ࠇஃʳ 10 ࠇஃʳ
——— 4
Intercalary second month. be error for Կִ.
5ִإmust
Title No. 171 ࡉԳሏػႆ๗Բଈʳ 007 ۂতڴʳ 175 ಬຫႚሐ᥊ࡴᠨᄮʳ 332 ტᘋքଈʳ 255 Ղఎܑޕཕ׀ʳ 080 ࡙۩ምᗼሐխሖॸ܂ʳ 177 ۞◻ᝫஊሐխʳ 178 ڰ࿇ޘ׆ሐխബཕ׀ʳ 082 ಬപց༘֮׆ᜰʳ 338 ᡖബപց༘֮׆ᜰԼଈʳ 465 ஂՂ։ᣉബຫႚሐ ! 256 ຫႚሐʳ 257 ᡖബപց༘! 258 ࢵപց༘ଫػܧႆ๗്ឆࡺ 260 ᠲෘࣔನʳ 083 ԳسԮԼ࿕ʳ 262 ఎ്ܑػႆᘩ׀ʳ 263 ఎܑപࡳʳ 264 ৄةࡌցຏΞΞʳ 265 ബᠲੈতຫּޡႆॼ! 267 ٵฅฯ༅ऒৄةΞΞʳ 471 ല࿇ৄةᠲຫ܄ሹ፞ನʳ 348 ್Ղૹᆖ៱ሏքߢʳ 350 ટֽᤓႀʳ 472 ࠇࡺਞᑈტᘋԲଈʳ 084 ࡉ٘ޙᨠॹڗᇣԲଈʳ 352 ຫႚሐնଈʳ 356 ᚵᏥݕူڜո࣠ʳ 357 ࡉ֮׆ᜰدፕ᧯ʳ 086 ಬޕ۩ڎΞΞଈʳ 090 ᚵতඩᐝࠑऄஃᗑ࣬ぃ۪ʳ 091 ᚵ࡙ޡխլ౨༆ʳ 359 ༃࡙ᑜʳ 476 ᔨՑᇆʳ
QSS
5.12546 1.12500 (a) 5.12547 (a) 8.12577 (a) 6.12562 3.12523 5.12547 5.12547 3.12524 (a) 8.12577 (b) 9.12591 (a) 6.12562 6.12562 6.12563 6.12563 3.12524 (b) 6.12563 6.12564 6.12564 6.12564 6.12564 9.12592 8.12578 8.12579 9.12592 3.12525 8.12579 8.12579 8.12579 3.12525 (a) 3.12525 3.12526 8.12580 (a) 9.12592 (c)
460
CHRONOLOGY OF POEMS Year
ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ 1087 ԭ ցయԲʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ 1088 ؙ߭ցయԿʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ 1089 ագ ցయʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ
Mo.
Place
11 ࠇஃʳ 12 ࠇஃʳ 3 ࠇஃʳ 3 ࠇஃʳ 3 ࠇஃʳ 4 ࠇஃʳ 7 ࠇஃʳ 7 ࠇஃʳ 9 ࠇஃʳ 9 ࠇஃʳ 11 ຫఎʳ 12 ຫఎʳ 2 ᨋᕻʳ 3 ८ສʳ 3 ८ສʳ 3 ८ສʳ 3 ८ສʳ 3 ᖵၺʳ 4 ᖵၺʳ 5 ᖵၺʳ 7 קࣟۂ 7 קۂʳ 9 קۂʳ 9 ۂʳ 9 ۂʳ 10 ᖵၺ۫ק 10 ᖵၺʳ 10 ᖵၺʳ 1 ᖵၺʳ 4 קࣟۂ 5 ᖵၺʳ 6 ८ສʳ 7 ۂʳ 9 فᗦڪʳ 9 ᖵၺʳ 10 ᖵၺಷק
Title No. 092 ᚵᚁᄫ༃ୱᑜʳ 271 ಬ᎓≷חհࡴຫڠΞΞʳ 480 ࡉԳ႞ਞʳ 481 ૹᓿࠇࡺᑈਞტᘋʳ 482 ಬԳཛ墑ᇛສʳ 273 ሟࡲח༡ᕠʳ 184 ۫ৄڶᡖ៱ሏʳ 484 ۃּޕՂʳ 362 ࡉຫႚሐટֲԼଈʳ 095 ಬຫႚሐհࡴլᴬʳ 096 ࣟᒂۣࡺॴຳΞΞԿଈʳ 099 ఎঀᐔՀ܂ʳ 100 ሏᨋᕻᥞఙႼʳ 102 ሏ८ສॸक़ፕʳ 275 ༅ऒ८ສ༈׆౸ֆຫᇾʳ 276 ୪ٖΞΞԲଈʳ 279 ಬᑰནոհࡴᚢ؆ΞΞʳ 008 Կ຺ူʳʳ 185 ેޘێত್Ղʳ 485 ሏ๗ᣤڝႼʳ 105 മᣪੈ՞ᐝֲڝʳ 106 ᖠ৫႓ᆺᚢࣟߣΞΞʳ 186 ᠲ壆ᆼ⡱ض୮ᕻʳ 283 ৫႓ᆺᚢΞΞʳ 488 ૄჀ್Ղʳ 107 ᆨక՞௬ቹՀ܂ʳ 376 ᡖബ堚ළࡉՂԳԲଈʳ 554 ֱ࿆ڕ՞ʳ 189 ᡖബᑰءݕଫ១ࠡߢʳ 108 ᖠ࿆ਹࡽڃඨ८ສΞΞʳ 109 ᖵၺԼူʳ 119 Կ՞ʳ 288 ࣟۂၢᝫ್Ղ܂Բଈʳ 292 ֲᡖࠇຟ៱ሏʳ 190 ಬ്۫۔Ղʳ 011 ࣟဎ್ՂΞΞʳ
QSS
3.12526 6.12565 9.12593 9.12593 9.12593 6.12565 5.12548 (a) 9.12593 (a) 8.12580 3.12527 3.12527 3.12527 3.12528 3.12528 (b) 6.12566 6.12566 6.12566 1.12500 5.12548 (c) 9.12593 (a) 3.12529 (c) 3.12530 (c) 5.12549 (a) 7.12568 (a) 9.12594 (a) 3.12530 8.12581 10.12606 5.12549 3.12530 3.12530 4.12533 7.12569 7.12570 (c) 5.12549 (a) 1.12501 (a)
461
CHRONOLOGY OF POEMS Year
Mo.
Place
ʳ ʳ 10 ۂʳ ʳ ʳ 10 ᖵၺʳ ʳ ʳ 12 فᗦקڪ ʳ ʳ 12 ۂʳ 1090 ࢊ֑ ցయնʳ 1 ᖵၺʳ ʳ ʳ 1 ߧ⅕ʳ ʳ ʳ 1 ۂʳ ʳ ʳ 1 ۂʳ ʳ ʳ 4 ۂʳ ʳ ʳ 7 ᖵၺʳ ʳ ʳ 9 ᖵၺʳ ʳ ʳ 11 ᅝܓՑʳ 12 ᅝܓՑʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ 12 ८ສʳ ʳ ʳ 12 6 ʳ ʳ ʳ 12 ८ສʳ ʳ ʳ 12 ८ສʳ ʳ ʳ 12 ८ສʳ ʳ ʳ 12 ८ສʳ ʳ ʳ 12 ८ສʳ ʳ ʳ 12 ८ສʳ 1091 ߬ آցయքʳ 1 ८ສʳ ʳ ʳ 1 ८ສʳ ʳ ʳ 1 ८ສʳ ʳ ʳ 2 ८՞ʳ ʳ ʳ 2 ८՞ʳ ʳ ʳ 2 ८՞ʳ ʳ ʳ 2 ᐖສʳ ʳ ʳ 2 ၡʳ ʳ ʳ 2 ࠇஃʳ ʳ ʳ 4 ࠇஃʳ ʳ ʳ 4 ࠇஃʳ ʳ ʳ 5 ࠇஃʳ ʳ ʳ 6 ࠇஃʳ ʳ ʳ 7 ࠇஃʳ ——— 6
Undated.
Title No. 192 ࿆ۂਹࡽᡖബᑰནոʳ 559 ૹሏත۩ೃʳ 378 මဎബ堚ළࡉՂԳʳ 560 ്ٵዧޣമ֒խೃ۫ᐇʳ 195 ٵሐຏஃհଉ್ࣥڝՂʳ 295 ۞ᖵၺ⅕ߧ۟ۂۉඦᇞʳ 379 ಬऄٱཕ۫ڂՂʳ 561 ಬቖऄ۫ڂݳٱሏࠇஃʳ 197 ಬؐછۂരʳ 012 ᐖღബޕ㐁ʳʳ 380 ᡖബ༙ৄࣛړԼଈʳ 303 くۣᅝ܂ཽܓʳ 201 くۣᅝܓՑৱଅΞΞԲଈʳ 013 ۣڻ८ສᡖബᖵၺ׆ઌʳ 014 ᢤሐՓㅒ߭ʳ 015 ㏊ۣຳխࠊࠡ❺ʳ 204 ދമ堚ළ!ڝ 306 ८ສ׆ၳ଼լሖఎܑʳʳ 307 ᠲ८ສ९եڝჃʳ 016 ബᕠזᢤᄘழʳ 494 ቖʳ 308 ᠲ८ສ֚ᐜᨠॱನʳ 562 ૹሏ՞ࡳࣥڝʳ 017 ఎܑቖʳ 311 ඡऒ९ᤓڶᡖΞΞʳ 124 ८՞ሏʳ 126 ८՞࡙ႃࢵۏցີլ۟܂ʳ 127 ᐖສ՞٠࡙ڝႃΞΞʳ 020 ఎܑضචʳ 563 ᠲᇸּᐒႼʳ 314 ࡉᙒᐚ༛ᡖʳ 315 ஂՂܧᙒᐚ༛ʳ 390 ࡉᙒᐚ༛ײრԲଈհʳ 128 ᠲശ֨ྤڝတʳ 129 ࡉᙒᔞᐚ༛༅ᡖԲଈʳ
QSS
5.12550 (a) 10.12606 (a) 8.12582 (c) 10.12606 5.12550 7.12570 8.12582 10.12607 5.12551 1.12501 8.12582 7.12571 5.12551 1.12502 1.12502 1.12502 (a) 5.12552 (c) 7.12572 (a) 7.12572 (a) 1.12502 (a) 10.12595 (a) 7.12572 (a) 10.12607 (a) 1.12503 (a) 7.12573 4.12534 4.12535 4.12535 1.12503 10.12607 7.12573 7.12574 8.12583 4.12535 4.12535
462
CHRONOLOGY OF POEMS Year
Mo.
Place
ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ 1092 ֙ عցయԮʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ 1093 ં߸ ցయԶʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ 1094 کظฯᆣցʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ
77 8 9 1 2 2 6 8 ? ? 2 5 5 8 8 9 10 11 11 12 12 2 3 3 3 3 4 4 48 59 5 5 5
ࠇஃʳ ࠇஃʳ ࠇஃʳ ࠇஃʳ ࠇஃʳ ࠇஃʳ ࠇஃʳ ࠇஃʳ լࣔʳ ࠇஃʳ ࠇஃʳ ࠇஃʳ ࠇஃʳ ࠇஃʳ ࠇஃʳ ࠇஃʳ ሸʳ ᳯ‼ʳ ᳯ‼ʳ ၡʳ ᐖສʳ ௧ສʳ ௧ສʳ ௧ສʳ ௧ສʳ ௧ສʳ ௧ສʳ ௧ສʳ ௧ສʳ ௧ສʳ ௧ສʳ ௧ສʳ ௧ສʳ
——— 7
Out of sequence in text. Intercalary fourth month. 9 “Summer.” 8
Title No. 132 ტஅའʳʳ 131 ᠲ֚堚ڜڝՂԳקನʳ 209 ࣐ࡴ৵៱ٌܧʳ 316 ֙عՂցڶᡖ८ສ៱ሏʳ 211 ᐖ੍॰್ࣟՂʳ 564 ࣟৄ್Ղʳ 392 ಬ۫׆ᑐנᔤԶଈʳ 212 ՆఐബԲԿᘣ֖ʳ 321 ബޕ᎓Բ֖ʳ 432 ᠲ࠴৵քߢԲଈʳ 322 ޕܧհᏚʳ 323 ᢤ്հթʳ 134 ࡙ॸ墾ᡖʳ 213 ટ۪ፊॸඣᘋೝʳ 214 ۏሸցີߠመʳ 135 ബᠲொॼᗼټቯॼʳ 215 ఎܑۏሸԲଈʳ 136 ሏᳯ‼ত՞قᄘտʳ 137 ሟܑᳯ‼ޙᝨʳ 326 ၡۣࡺኙຳʳ 330 ᐖສ಄မඡऒ! 496 ሟܑམݵʳ 565 ૹಬམᇨհΞΞԲଈʳ 567 ؓມഘૹಬۂࡲʳ 023 ՋՖີʳ 499 ಬۂፖࠇូ՞ၺʳ 504 ௧ສॸʳ 402 ಳࡉՋ֖٘ޙᨠΞΞԿଈʳ 507 ᠲ௧ສ༅ॐଈʳ 024 ᦊ۔ቮʳ 139 ᠲ௧ສၲցڝཨႆတʳ 510 ፊᤕઍ՞᠅ښ܂ڠʳ 569 ᠲ॔ᘔᆺʳ
QSS
4.12536 4.12536 5.12553 7.12574 (c) 5.12553 (a) 10.12607 (a) 8.12583 5.12553 7.12575 8.12587 7.12575 7.12575 (a) 4.12536 (c) 5.12553 5.12554 4.12537 5.12554 4.12537 4.12538 7.12575 7.12578 10.12595 10.12607 10.12607 1.12504 (a) 10.12596 (a) 10.12597 8.12584 10.12597 1.12504 4.12538 (a) 10.12598 (a) 10.12607 (a)
463
CHRONOLOGY OF POEMS
ʳ ʳ ʳ
Year
Mo.
ʳ ʳ ʳ
6 6 9
Place
௧ສʳ ௧ສʳ ࠇՑʳ
Title No. 025 ಬڜ׆ᆏࣳൈരʳ 026 ಬ௧ສࡌ֜ښᯈ࠹זᝫཛʳ 218 ᠲڝزټសΞΞʳ
QSS
1.12505 1.12505 5.12554 (c)
1095 Ԭَ ฯᆣԲʳ 2 10 ۂˮ̆˼˶˰ 552 ԲִԲֲஂՂᓿʳ
10.12605
ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ 1096 ׇ ฯᆣԿʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ
10.12599 (a) 8.12584 1.12505 10.12599 10.12599 10.12599 10.12599 10.12600 10.12601 5.12555 10.12601 9.12594 (c) 1.12506 5.12555 4.12539 9.12594 4.12539 4.12539 4.12540 10.12601 (b) 5.12556 (b) 9.12594 (a) 10.12602 (a) 10.12602 1.12507 (c) 4.12541 4.12542 1.12507 (a) 10.12603 (a) 1.12508
6 ࠇஃʳ 8 ࠇஃʳ 9 ࠇஃʳ 3 ८ສʳ 4 ८ສʳ 4 ८ສʳ 4 ८ສʳ 4 Կ՞ʳ 4 ࡤᑵᄻʳ 4 ᅝჁሐխ 5 ՛ࡰ՞ʳ 5 ՛ࡰ՞ʳ 5 ۂʳ 5 ၺʳ 5 ዧၺʳ 6 ዧၺʳ 7 ዧၺʳ 7 ዧၺʳ 7 ዧၺʳ 8 ዧၺʳ 8 ۂʳ 9 ۂʳ 9 ۂʳ 9 ۂʳ 9 ۂʳ 10 ۂʳ 10 ۂʳ 10 ۂʳ 10 ۂʳ 12 ۂʳ
——— 10
Date or place clearly wrong.
515 405 028 516 517 519 520 524 526 223 529 489 030 224 140 490 141 142 143 530 225 491 534 537 032 146 156 033 538 034
ಬࡌၲలښנᔦၺʳ ࠇࡺტᘋնଈʳ ནॽʳ
ᢤቖ৯ʳ ࡴԲଈʳ ࡉܑ堚ළࡉՂԳʳ ૹܑࡉՂԳʳ ֙عՂցڶᡖ८ສ៱ሏʳ
くۣࡤᑵᄻʳ ۩ۂᐊඨʳ ඡऒ՛ࡰ՞܂ʳ ॴଅ՛ࡰ՞ඡ墾܂ʳ ಬີ߶ໃฝ୮塒ࣜץ୮՞ʳ ࡴྋʳ ബᠲᑲၺࡌּᖷᄻ౻ഘʳ ᠲዧၺ༅ॐ۔ௌʳ ㅍᄈర⠃
ᠲຯ壃ᆏႃ৵ʳ ᇖტ༅ᇣʳ ࡌցౖ㔀ਞሐխʳ ᠲᣪੈࡴॐᕻʳ
ટۂඡඨʳ ۂટᡖԿଈʳ ഏݳຫ࿆ࠃ৵ʳ
ඡৄۂנፊߡʳ ᡖബࡌցౖԼଈʳ ᠲ࣑ࣳᔤࡴܒऴᆏॼʳ ബዧၺ᎓രʳ ബܑ֟ཾʳ ಬࣳ৪ូឆึতʳ
464
CHRONOLOGY OF POEMS Year
Mo.
1097 ԭժ ฯᆣʳ 4 11 4 ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ 5 5 ʳ ʳ 6 ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ 8 ʳ ʳ 8 ʳ ʳ 9 ʳ ʳ 9 ʳ ʳ 9 ʳ ʳ 10 ʳ ʳ 10 ʳ ʳ 10 1098 ؙഫ ցฤցʳ 3 ʳ ʳ 3 ʳ ʳ 3 ʳ ʳ 3 ʳ ʳ 4 ʳ ʳ 5 6 ʳ ʳ ʳ ʳ 6
——— 11
Qingming festival.
Place
ۂʳ ۂʳ ۂʳ ۂʳ ۂʳ ۂʳ ۂʳ ۂʳ ۂʳ ۂʳ ۂʳ ۂʳ ۂʳ ۂʳ ۂʳ ۂʳ ۂʳ ۂʳ ۂʳ ۂʳ ۂʳ
Title No. 492 ࡉܦሒ֛ߠመఎᠲʳ 539 ᑰנ۔ԼᑇᇣΞΞԲଈʳ 227 ۂ༅ᘋԲଈհԲʳ 541 ڶቖ۞խࠐΞΞԲଈʳ 035 ಬၠڠ٩ጂ׆ᚬΞΞʳ 157 ᠲᑰՕᜯࣟನʳ 410 ࡉᯈࡴ۔ྋᡖײնଈʳ 544 ૹബᑰ۔ʳ 545 ᑰא۔९ᒧܠޣΞΞʳ 415 ۂԶူʳ 036 دራᛩዚʳ 229 ಬ፠݆ຫ৯ࣙូ။ʳ 546 ࣼ׆قʳ 423 ᧢ဲࣤێଈʳ 037 তᑔዚಬ࣑ࣳშ֜ښᝫཛʳ 230 ಬ८ᕽშח㝧ʳ 493 ᠲᇣ࠴৵ʳ 159 ࡉᑰ۔ዧՂ᥆ؾʳ 550 ࿆႓ᦊᑔᡖײΞΞʳ 551 ബֱ࣑ࣳחᜯޕരགΞΞʳ 038 ᠲ႓ࡽࣟࡕᑰּٍᠱសʳ
QSS
9.12594 10.12603 (a) 5.12556 (a) 10.12603 (a) 1.12508 4.12542 8.12585 10.12604 10.12604 (a) 8.12585 (a) 1.12508 5.12556 10.12604 8.12586 (c) 1.12509 5.12557 9.12594 4.12543 10.12605 10.12605 1.12509
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historian: assembled commentaries and verifications). [Tokyo: 1932–34]. Reprint, Taipei: Hongye shuju, 1972. Tan Ruwei ⼄᳭ὑ and Cao Changhe ᦡ㐳ᴡ. “Liuyan jueju sanlun—jiantan liuyanju shi di qiyuan he xingshuai” ߢฏᢔ⺰Γ⺣⸒ฏ⊛Ḯ⥝ (Remarks on sexametric quatrains—with comments on the origin, flourishing, and withering of the sexasyllabic line). Tianjin shehui kexue 1983, no. 6: 86–92. Tanoue Keiichi ↰ᗆ৻. “Kr fu sekkoku k” ႓ᮝ⾮⍹ೞ⠨ (Inquiry into the stone engraving of the Yellow Tower Rhapsody). Shoron 20 (1982): 255–67. Tao Jinsheng 㒻↢. Bei Song shizu: jiazu, hunyin, shenghuo ർቡ჻ᣖї ኅᣖޔᇕᆪ↢ޔᵴ (The elite classes of the Northern Song: lineage, marriage, life). Taipei: Lishi yuyan yanjiusuo, 2001. Tao Wenpeng 㒻ᢥ㢈. “Cai Xiang: Bei Song qianqi di qijue gaoshou” ⬰ⶪї ർቡ೨ᦼ⊛৾㌩㜞 ᚻ (Cai Xiang: A master of the Heptametrical Quatrain in the early period of the Northern Song). Fuyin baokan ziliao: Zhongguo gudai, jindai wenxue yanjiu 2003, no. 3: 67–79. Tao Yuanming 㒻ᷗ. Tao Yuanming ji 㒻ᷗ㓸 (Works of Tao Yuanming). Edited by Lu Qinli ㅲ᱄┙. 1979. 3rd printing. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1995. Teraji Jun ኹㆩ. Nan S shoki seijishi kenky ධቡೋᦼᴦผ⎇ⓥ (Research on the political history of the early period of the Southern Song). Hiroshima: Keisuisha, 1988. ——. “Shin Katsu no shizen kenky to sono haikei” ᴉߩ⥄ὼ⎇ⓥߣߘߩ⢛᥊. Hiroshima daigaku bungakubu kiy 27, no.1 (December 1967): 99–121. Thurman, Robert A.F.(1941–), tr. The Holy Teaching of Vimalakrti: A Mahyna Scripture. 1976. 8th printing. University Park: The Pennsylvania state University Press, 1992. Tomlonovic, Kathleen. “The Poetry of Su Shi: Transmission of Collections from the Song.” The East Asia Library Journal 8, no. 2 (Autumn 1998): 103–52. Tsien, Tsuen-hsuin (1909–). Written on Bamboo and Silk: The Beginnings of Chinese Books and Inscriptions. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1962. Uchiyama Seiya փ՞壄Ո (1961–). Annotated tr. of Su Shi’s ऄ༡ڝᖩፇᎹ. Ganlan 7 (1998), 119–31. Umeda Shigeo ၒ↰㊀ᄦ. “Haku Kyoeki ni okeru gozetsu to shichiritsu no tairitsusei o megutte” ⊕ዬᤃߦ߄ߌࠆ㌩ߣ৾ᓞߩወ┙ᕈࠍߋߞߡ (The contrast of five-word quatrains and seven-word octets in Bo Juyi’s Poetry). Chgoku shibun rons 4 (June 1985): 30–47. U.S. Naval Observatory, Astronomical Applications Department. “Complete Sun and Moon Data for One Day.” http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/RS_OneDay.html. Accessed 23 May 2005. Wai Kam-moon 㖡㊄ṩ. “Lue lun Li Bo wuyanlüshi zhi gelü” ⇛⺰᧘⊕⸒ᓞਯᩰᓞΓ(Brief discussion of the form of Li Bo’s pentametric Regulated Verse). Xinya xuebao 19 (June 1999): 53–82. Waldron, Arthur N. “The Problem of the Great Wall of China.” HJAS 43, no. 2 (December 1983): 643–63. Wang Anshi ₺⍹ (1021–86). Linchuan xiansheng wenji ⥃Ꮊవ↢ᢥ㓸 (Collected writings of Wang Anshi). Hong Kong: Zhonghua shuju, 1971. ——. Anseki ₺⍹ (Wang Anshi). Shimizu Shigeru ᷡ᳓⨃, tr. Chgoku shijin senshu, 2nd ser. 1963. 3rd printing.Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1973. Wang Dingbao ₺ቯ (870–ca. 955). Tang zhiyan ໊⸒ (Collected stories concerning the Tang Dynasty). CSJC, 2739–40. Wang Kunwu ₺๋. Sui Tang Wudai yanle geci yanjiu 㓍໊ῆᮔㄓ⎇ⓥ (The metrically irregular banquet songs of the Sui and Tang). Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1996. Wang Li ₺ജ (1900–1986). Hanyu shilüxue ṽ⺆ᓞቑ (Chinese language versification). 1962. Shanghai: Shanghai jiaoyu chubanshe, 1965. ——. Shici gelü ⹖ᩰᓞ (Prosody of poetry and lyrics). Hong Kong: Zhonghua shuju, 2002. Wang Mengyin ₺ᄞ㓩. “He Zhu nianpu” ⾐㐎ᐕ⼆ (Chronological biography of He Zhu). Henan shida xuebao 1982, no. 5: 94–103. Wang Shuizhao ₺᳓ᾖ (1934–). Su Shi xuanji ⯃ジㆬ㓸 (Selected works of Su Shi). Taipei: Wanjuanlou, 1993.
476
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FOUR-CORNER INDEX OF POEMS TRANSLATED Code
˧˼̇˿˸ʳ
Num.
0022
7
ஂՂܧᙒᐚ༛ʳ
315
2010
4
ૹሏත۩ೃʳ
559
0022
7
ၡۣࡺኙຳʳ
326
2010
4
ૹሏ՞ࡳࣥڝʳ
562
0024
7
࡙۩ምᗼሐխሖॸ܂ʳ
080
2110
0
Ղգ৵ԫֲ⡲ݶবॼ܂ʳ
072
0024
7
2110
0
Ղգڶᡖ८ࣔཾۃᓾʳ
232
0028
2111
0
ױߩֲڼ൦ʳ
075
6
৫႓ᆺᚢᡖബ堚ළػႆတ ʳ ᐖ੍॰್ࣟՂʳ
283
0033
෪ᠪᑜʳ
054
2224
7
᧢ဲࣤێଈհԲʳ
424
2
2224
7
᧢ဲࣤێଈհԿʳ
425
2600
0
۞ʳ
161
2600
0
۞ᓡᝫஊᖈּ׆ৄةႼʳ
464
2600
0
۞◻ᝫஊሐխʳ
177
2600
0
۞ᖵၺ⅕ߧ۟ۂۉඦᇞʳ
295
2624
1
ࡌցౖ㔀ਞሐխʳ
530
2641
3
ᠿৄࣟʳ
447
2690
0
ࡉ֮׆ᜰدፕ᧯ʳ
357
2690
0
440
2690
0
2690
0
2690
0
2690
0
ࡉാૉࢿழض୮ဲଈ հԫʳ ࡉാૉࢿழض୮ဲଈ հԲʳ ࡉാૉࢿழض୮ဲଈ հԿʳ ࡉാૉࢿழض୮ဲଈ հʳ ࡉᑰ۔ዧՂ᥆ؾʳ
2690
0
ࡉ༙ৄس׆൧ዚԳઐઐʳ
248
2690
0
ࡉ٘ޙᨠॹڗᇣԲଈհԫʳ
084
2690
0
ࡉຫႚሐટֲԼଈհԫʳ
362
2690
0
ࡉຫႚሐટֲԼଈհԲʳ
363
2690
0
ࡉຫႚሐટֲԼଈհԿʳ
364
2690
0
ࡉຫႚሐટֲԼଈհʳ
365
2690
0
ࡉຫႚሐટֲԼଈհնʳ
366
2690
0
ࡉຫႚሐટֲԼଈհքʳ
367
2690
0
ࡉຫႚሐટֲԼଈհԮʳ
368
2690
0
ࡉຫႚሐટֲԼଈհԶʳ
369
211
0062
7
८ສ׆ၳ଼լሖఎܑʳʳ
306
0071
0
ՋՖີʳ
023
0090
6
ࠇࡺਞᑈტᘋԲଈհԫʳ
472
0090
6
ࠇࡺਞᑈტᘋԲଈհԲʳ
473
0090
6
ࠇࡺტᘋնଈհԫʳ
405
0090
6
ࠇࡺტᘋնଈհԿʳ
407
0090
6
ࠇࡺტᘋնଈհʳ
408
0090
6
ࠇࡺტᘋնଈհնʳ
409
0468
6
ᦰޕ墿ᇣʳ
073
0761
0
ံಈʳ
048
1010
3
دራᛩዚʳ
036
1022
7
ॸ墾۫༅ؾʳ
234
1022
7
ॸ塒ඡඨʳ
160
1024
7
࡙ॸ墾ᡖʳ
134
1044
7
٦௫তᢅྀʳ
452
1060
0
۫ৄڶᡖ៱ሏʳ
184
1111
0
קႼॣʳ
435
1210
8
࿆ۂਹࡽᡖബᑰནոʳ
192
1210
8
࿆႓ᑔڶᡖᤕઍ՞ʳ
066
1260
0
ሟࡲח༡ᕠʳ
273
1260
0
ሟܑམݵʳ
496
1768
2
ዚଅፕဲʳ
005
2010
4
565
2010
4
ૹಬམᇨհଫ១ᗀຫൌ Բଈհԫʳ ૹಬམᇨհଫ១ᗀຫൌ ԲଈհԲʳ
566
441 442 443 159
FOUR-CORNER INDEX
480 0
ࡉຫႚሐટֲԼଈհʳ
370
3322
7
ᇖტ༅ᇣʳ
143
2690
0
ࡉຫႚሐટֲԼଈհԼʳ
371
3410
0
ኙʳ
044
2690
0
ࡉԳሏػႆ๗Բଈհԫʳ
171
3512
7
堚ᗊഘʳ
434
2690
0
ࡉԳሏػႆ๗ԲଈհԲʳ
172
3713
6
ድዚʳ
006
2690
0
ࡉᙒᐚ༛ײრԲଈհԫʳ
390
3722
0
ॣߠػᕓقփʳ
437
2690
0
ࡉᙒᐚ༛ᡖʳ
314
3730
2
መᗁᠿֽࡺاԲଈհԫʳ
454
2690
0
410
3730
2
መᗁᠿֽࡺاԲଈհԲʳ
455
2690
3730
2
መጤཕʳ
042
0
ࡉᯈࡴ۔ྋᡖײնଈհ ԫʳ ࡉᔤխߠബʳ
3772
7
ࡴྋʳ
224
3815
7
௧ສॸʳ
504
3830
3
ಬີ߶ໃฝ୮塒ࣜץ୮՞ʳ
030
2690
237
2724
0
ല࿇ৄةᠲຫ܄ሹ፞ನʳ
471
2730
3
࡙מ༅ऴʳ
059
2730
3
࡙מᡖബࡌ֮堚ພ֚᎖ʳ
457
2732
7
288
3830
3
ಬ۫׆ᑐנᔤԶଈհ ԫʳ
392
2744
013
3830
3
ಬ۫׆ᑐנᔤԶଈհ Բʳ
393
3830
3
ಬ۫׆ᑐנᔤԶଈհ Կʳ
394
3830
3
ಬ۫׆ᑐנᔤԶଈհ ʳ
395
0
ࣟۂၢᝫ್Ղ܂Բଈ հԫʳ ۣڻ८ສᡖബᖵၺ׆ઌʳ
2780
0
ՆఐബԲԿᘣ֖ʳ
212
2845
3
㏊ۣຳխࠊࠡ❺ʳ
015
2998
0
ટ۪ፊॸඣᘋೝʳ
213
2998
0
ટֽᤓႀʳ
350
2998
0
ટۂඡඨʳ
491
3830
3
ಬࣳ৪ូឆึতʳ
034
3022
7
༅ऒ८ສ༈׆౸ֆຫᇾʳ
275
3830
3
ಬቖऄ۫ڂݳٱሏࠇஃʳ
561
3023
2
264
3830
3
ಬऄٱཕ۫ڂՂʳ
379
3830
3
ಬ௧ສࡌ֜ښᯈ࠹זᝫཛʳ
026
3830
3
ಬؐછۂരʳ
197
359
3830
3
086
3830
3
3830
3
3026
1
ৄةࡌցຏ٦ᇣᢤ ܑʳ മᣪੈ՞ᐝֲڝʳ
3030
3
༃࡙ᑜʳ
105
3062
1
ബዧၺ᎓രʳ
033
3062
1
ബ٘ޙᨠʳ
064
3062
1
ബᕠזᢤᄘழʳ
016
3062
1
ബᠲொॼᗼټቯॼʳ
135
3062
1
ബᠲᑲၺࡌּᖷᄻ౻ഘʳ
140
3830
3
ಬޕ۩ڎհࡴࣾອ ଈʳ ಬ᎓≷חհࡴຫڠଫ១ࡌ ֮堚ʳ ಬၠڠ٩ጂ׆ᚬפᒽ ࡴΞΞʳ ಬຫႚሐ᥊ࡴᠨᄮʳ
3
ಬࡌၲలښנᔦၺʳ
515
271 035 175
3062
1
ബܑ֟ཾʳ
538
3830
3111
2
ۂટᡖԿଈհԲʳ
535
3830
3
ಬԳཛ墑ᇛສʳ
482
3111
2
ۂટᡖԿଈհԿʳ
536
3830
3
ಬ८ᕽშח㝧ʳ
230
4
ሏᨋᕻᥞఙႼʳ
100
3111
2
ۂ༅ᘋԲଈհԲʳ
227
3830
3111
2
۩ۂᐊඨʳ
223
3830
4
ሏႆᚊ്ּ՞ࡺʳ
065
4
ሏ๗ᣤڝႼʳ
485
3214
7
ហፕዚʳ
001
3830
3216
9
ᑰנ۔ԼᑇᇣΞΞԲଈ հԫʳ ᑰנ۔ԼᑇᇣΞΞԲଈ հԲʳ
539
3830
4
ሏ८ສॸक़ፕʳ
102
4001
7
ֲ࿆ᚭ್ፕʳ
243
4001
7
ֲ׀ګޕܧʳ
244
3216
9
540
FOUR-CORNER INDEX
481
7
ֲᡖࠇຟ៱ሏʳ
292
5708
1
ᚵᚁᄫ༃ୱᑜʳ
092
4022
7
5708
1
ᚵᄵଆହʳ
166
4022
5708
1
ᚵতඩᐝࠑऄஃᗑ࣬ぃ۪ʳ
090
7
5708
1
ᚵ࡙ޡխլ౨༆ʳ
091
4040
7
ڶቖ۞խࠐΞΞԲଈհ ԫʳ ڶቖ۞խࠐΞΞԲଈհ Բʳ ۃּޕՂʳ
541
484
5708
1
ᚵᏥݕူڜո࣠ʳ
356
4060
0
ײᙋʳ
039
6022
7
࣐ࡴ৵៱ٌܧʳ
209
4060
5
ॸʳ
040
6040
0
ڰ࿇ޘ׆ሐխബཕ׀ʳ
178
4422
2
ૄჀ್Ղʳ
488
6180
8
ᠲᇣ࠴৵ʳ
493
4460
4
ેޘێত್Ղʳ
185
6180
8
ᠲ壆ᆼ⡱ض୮ᕻʳ
186
4471
1
۔ዒʳ
041
6180
8
ᠲݥ՞ቹʳ
047
4471
1
ᦊ۔ቮʳ
024
6180
8
ᠲᇸּᐒႼʳ
563
4480
6
႓ᑔዚʳ
002
6180
8
ᠲ࣑ࣳᔤࡴܒऴᆏॼʳ
156
4692
7
ᄘࣤဲԲଈհԫʳ
462
6180
8
ᠲശ֨ྤڝတʳ
128
4692
7
ᄘࣤဲԲଈհԲʳ
463
6180
8
ᠲᑰՕᜯࣟನʳ
157
4772
7
ᴫⵟಷᑔඡඨʳ
057
6180
8
ᠲዧၺ༅ॐ۔ௌʳ
490
4895
3
くۣᐖྀ॰؆܂ʳ
459
6180
8
ᠲ௧ສ༅ॐଈհԲʳ
507
4895
3
くۣࡤᑵᄻʳ
526
6180
8
ᠲ௧ສ༅ॐଈհʳ
509
4895
3
くۣᅝ܂ཽܓʳ
303
6180
8
ᠲ௧ສၲցڝཨႆတʳ
139
4895
3
201
6180
8
ᠲ༙ৄ്ּ࣋ᦊॼʳ
242
4895
6180
8
4895
6180
8
7
ᠲ༙ৄতፕڝᤕઍ՞ᇣࠥ ৵ʳ ᠲᥞສ׆ᅾອʳ
245
3
くۣᅝܓՑৱଅีֲΞΞ Բଈհԫʳ くۣᅝܓՑৱଅีֲΞΞ ԲଈհԲʳ මဎബ堚ළࡉՂԳʳ
6180
8
ᠲ႓ࡽࣟࡕᑰּٍᠱសʳ
038
6180
8
433
4001
542
202 378
056
5060
3
ਞᡖʳ
246
5090
4
ࡴԲଈհԫʳ
517
5090
4
ࡴԲଈհԲʳ
518
6180
8
ᠲ࠴৵քߢԲଈհԲᏓ ྶᦊ״ቹʳ ᠲຯ壃ᆏႃ৵ʳ
5090
6
097
6180
8
ᠲ८ສ֚ᐜᨠॱನʳ
308
6180
8
ᠲ८ສ९եڝჃʳ
307
6401
1
ᖠ৫႓ᆺᚢࣟߣᡖബ८ສ ࡺ׆Փၳ଼ʳ ᖠ࿆ਹࡽڃඨ८ສᡖബ ՞ੈஃʳ ඡৄۂנፊߡʳ
106
311
142
5090
6
ࣟᒂۣࡺॴຳᡖബԲԿव ៱ԿଈհԲʳ ࣟৄಬড়್Ղʳ
5090
6
ࣟৄ್Ղʳ
564
5090
6
011
6401
1
5320
332
6701
6
6701
6
6701
6
ඡऒ९ᤓڶᡖ८ສᖵၺࣛ ړʳ ඡऒ՛ࡰ՞܂ʳ
6886
6
ᢤሐՓㅒ߭ʳ
014
7124
6
ᆨక՞௬ቹՀ܂ʳ
107
7132
7
್Ղૹᆖ៱ሏքߢʳ
348
7721
0
ॴଅ՛ࡰ՞ඡ墾܂ʳ
489
446
0
ࣟဎ್Ղᡖബ堚ළࡉֆଫ ബषխࡺࢿ׆Փʳ ტᘋքଈհԫʳ
5320
0
ტᘋքଈհԲʳ
333
5320
0
ტᘋքଈհԿʳ
334
5320
0
ტᘋքଈհʳ
335
5320
0
ტᘋքଈհնʳ
336
5320
0
ტᘋքଈհքʳ
337
5706
2
ࢵപց༘ଫػܧႆ๗്ឆ ࡺʳ
258
108 032
529
FOUR-CORNER INDEX
482 0
്ٵዧޣമ֒խೃ۫ᐇʳ
560
8860
1
ቖʳ
494
7722
0
ٵሐຏஃհଉ್ࣥڝՂʳ
195
8860
1
٘ޙᨠ࿆ហፕߠബʳ
058
7722
0
267
8860
1
ຫႚሐնଈհԲʳ
352
7722
8860
1
ຫႚሐʳ
256
7
ٵฅฯ༅ऒޕࢵৄة࣒ ٘ʳ ݝխូʳ
9003
2
343
7722
438
7740
1
ፊᤕઍ՞᠅ښ܂ڠʳ
510
7760
2
ఎঀᐔՀ܂ʳ
099
9003
2
ᡖബപց༘֮׆ᜰԼଈհ ք࿆႓ᑔʳ ᡖബ堚ළࡉՂԳԲଈհԫʳ
7760
376
2
ఎ്ܑػႆᘩ׀ʳ
262
9003
2
ᡖബ堚ළࡉՂԳԲଈհԲʳ
377
7760
2
ఎܑضචʳ
020
9003
2
ᡖബ༙ৄࣛړԼଈհʳ
383
7760
2
ఎܑۏሸԲଈհԫʳ
215
9003
2
ᡖബࡌցౖԼଈհԲʳ
147
7760
2
ఎܑۏሸԲଈհԲʳ
216
9003
2
ᡖബࡌցౖԼଈհԿʳ
148
7772
0
ᔨՑᇆʳ
476
9003
2
ᡖബࡌցౖԼଈհʳ
149
7790
4
ၳൣԲଈհԫʳ
045
9003
2
ᡖബࡌցౖԼଈհքʳ
151
7790
4
ၳൣԲଈհԲʳ
046
9003
2
ᡖബࡌցౖԼଈհʳ
154
7829
4
ೈ࡙ᑜʳ
063
9503
0
ݶবॼʳ
070
8010
9
८՞࡙ႃࢵۏցີլ۟܂ʳ
126
9503
0
ݶবॼཛᑈ༅ؾԲଈհԫʳ
167
8860
1
୪ٖଫ១堚ළࡉՂԳԲ ଈհԲʳ
277
9503
0
ݶবॼཛᑈ༅ؾԲଈհԲʳ
168
INDEX OF POEMS BY POEM NUMBER Page numbers in italics include translations (full or partial). SONGS 001 ហፕዚ, 126–30, 173, 187 002 ႓ᑔዚ, 137–39, 432 005 ዚଅፕဲ, 131–35, 186 006 ድዚ, 135–36 007 ۂতڴ, 139–41 008–010 Կ຺ူ, 141–46, 435 011 ࣟဎ್Ղᡖബ堚ළࡉֆଫ១षխࢿ׆ ࡺՓ, 146–49 012 ᐖღബޕ㐁, 149–53, 186–87, 221n, 350 013 ۣڻ८ສᡖബᖵၺ׆ઌ, 155–57, 272, 322 014 ᢤሐՓㅒ߭, 153–55, 187 015 ㏊ۣຳխࠊࠡ❺, 155n, 272 016 ബᕠזᢤᄘழ, 157–60 017 ఎܑቖ, 116n 020 ఎܑضච, 163 023 ՋՖີ, 160–62 024 ᦊ۔ቮ, 162–64 025 ಬڜ׆ᆏࣳൈര, 164n 026 ಬ௧ສࡌ֜ښᯈ࠹זᝫཛ, 164–67, 341 028 ནॽ, 255n 030 ಬີ߶ໃฝ୮塒ࣜץ୮՞, 168–71, 187 032 ඡৄۂנፊߡ, 175–77 033 ബዧၺ᎓ര, 171, 173–75, 187, 241n, 255n 034 ಬࣳ৪ូឆึত, 177–178, 187 035 ಬၠڠ٩ጂ׆ᚬפᒽࡴᝫ௧ສଫ១ ८ສࡉՂԳ, 178–79 036 دራᛩዚ, 125, 171, 179–82 037 তᑔዚಬ࣑ࣳშ֜ښᝫཛ, 171n, 255n 038 ᠲ႓ࡽࣟࡕᑰּٍᠱស, 182–86 ANCIENT VERSE 039 040 041 042 044
ײᙋ, 13–15, 22, 193 ॸ, 15–17, 124, 255, 416 ۔ዒ, 17–19, 64, 123, 124 መጤཕ, 19–21 ኙ, 21–23, 24, 25, 129
045, 046 ၳൣԲଈ, 35–36 047 ᠲݥ՞ቹ, 23, 25, 122, 123 048 ံಈ, 28–30, 123, 373 049 ᛠᇌ, 29–30, 123 054 ෪ᠪᑜ, 30–33, 123, 129 056 ᠲᥞສ׆ᅾອ, 23–24, 123, 261 057 ᴫⵟಷᑔඡඨ, 24, 34, 102, 190, 193 058 ٘ޙᨠ࿆ហፕߠബ, 24–25, 126n 059 ࡙מ༅ऴ, 25–27, 123 062 ࡌພݵ, 36n, 423n 063 ೈ࡙ᑜ, 36–38, 427, 430 064 ബ٘ޙᨠ 38–41, 55n 065 ሏႆᚊ്ּ՞ࡺ, 42–45, 281 066 ࿆႓ᑔڶᡖᤕઍ՞, 41–42, 123 067, 068 ટᡖԲଈ, 123 070 ݶবॼ, 48–47 071 ଆពॼ, 284n, 285n 072 Ղգ৵ԫֲ⡲ݶবॼ܂, 47–48 073 ᦰޕ墿ᇣ, 48–49 075 ױߩֲڼ൦, 49, 63 076 ຝհ߅ሐխᡖബ༙ৄष֖, 39n 080 ࡙۩ምᗼሐխሖॸ܂, 26, 51–54 082 ಬപց༘֮׆ᜰ, 13n, 123n 083 ԳسԮԼ࿕, 53n 084 ࡉ٘ޙᨠॹڗᇣԲଈ, 55–56, 395 086 ಬޕ۩ڎհࡴࣾອଈ, 39n 090 ᚵতඩᐝࠑऄஃᗑ࣬ぃ۪, 56–57 091 ᚵ࡙ޡխլ౨༆, 58–59 092 ᚵᚁᄫ༃ୱᑜ, 59, 62–63, 121, 200, 379 095 ಬຫႚሐհࡴՀᴬ, 107n 096–098 ࣟᒂۣࡺॴຳᡖബԲԿव៱Կଈ, 80 099 ఎঀᐔՀ܂, 25n, 64–70, 73n 100 ሏᨋᕻᥞఙႼ, 74–77, 78, 121–22 102 ሏ८ສॸक़ፕ, 77 105 മᣪੈ՞ᐝֲڝ, 78–79 106 ᖠ৫႓ᆺᚢࣟߣᡖബ८ສࡺ׆Փၳ଼, 79 107 ᆨక՞௬ቹՀ܂, 80–82, 395 108 ᖠ࿆ਹࡽڃඨ८ສᡖബ՞ੈஃ, 82–84 109–118 ᖵၺԼူ, 84–86, 326n 119 Կ՞, 82n
484
INDEX OF POEMS BY POEM NUMBER
124 ८՞ሏ, 86n, 444n 126 ८՞࡙ႃࢵۏցີլ۟܂, 79–80, 86– 88 127 ᐖສ՞٠࡙ڝႃఎܑ႓࣒٘ޗ, 88n 128 ᠲശ֨ྤڝတ, 89–90 129, 130 ࡉᙒᔞᐚ༛༅ᡖԲଈ, 327n 131 ᠲ֚堚ڜڝՂԳקನ, 90n 132 ტஅའ, 53n, 90–91 134 ࡙ॸ墾ᡖ, 91–92 135 ബᠲொॼᗼټቯॼ, 92–96, 122 136 ሏᳯ‼ত՞قᄘտ, 14n, 96n 137 ሟܑᳯ‼ޙᝨ, 97n 139 ᠲ௧ສၲցڝཨႆတ, 97–99 140 ബᠲᑲၺࡌּᖷᄻ౻ഘ, 89, 100–104, 123 141 ㅍᄈర⠃, 100n 142 ᠲຯ壃ᆏႃ৵, 108–10, 122, 187 143 ᇖტ༅ᇣ, 110–13, 115 146–155 ᡖബࡌցౖԼଈ, 115–17 156 ᠲ࣑ࣳᔤࡴܒऴᆏॼ, 117–18, 122 157 ᠲᑰՕᜯࣟನ, 120 159 ࡉᑰ۔ዧՂ᥆ؾ, 119–20, 123 PENTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE 160 ॸ塒ඡඨ, 189–91 161 ۞, 191–94, 210 163 ಬॣ࣐ޕᝫၺ, 211n 164 ૹಬ, 211n 165 ਞ, 193 166 ᚵᄵଆହ, 194–202, 268, 374 167, 168 ݶবॼཛᑈ༅ؾԲଈ, 202–207 171, 172 ࡉԳሏػႆ๗Բଈ, 211–214 175 ಬຫႚሐ᥊ࡴᠨᄮ, 42n, 214–17 177 ۞◻ᝫஊሐխ, 217–21, 222 178 ڰ࿇ޘ׆ሐխബཕ׀, 221–223 184 ۫ৄڶᡖ៱ሏ, 223–25 185 ેޘێত್Ղ, 226–28, 435 186 ᠲ壆ᆼ⡱ض୮ᕻ, 228–30 189 ᡖബᑰءݕଫ១ࠡߢ, 230n 190 ಬ്۫۔Ղ, 211n 192 ࿆ۂਹࡽᡖബᑰནո, 230–32 195 ٵሐຏஃհଉ್ࣥڝՂ, 232–34 197 ಬؐછۂര, 211n, 234–35, 258 201, 202 くۣᅝܓՑৱଅีֲᡖബৄխࣛ ሏԲଈ, 236–38, 325n 204 ދമ堚ළڝ, 322n 209 ࣐ࡴ৵៱ٌܧ, 239–43, 268 211 ᐖ੍॰್ࣟՂ, 243–45, 426n 212 ՆఐബԲԿᘣ֖, 245–48 213 ટ۪ፊॸඣᘋೝ, 248–51 214 ۏሸցີߠመ, 251 215, 216 ఎܑۏሸԲଈ, 252–55 218 ᠲڝزټសଫബۏցີ, 107n
223 224 225 227 229 230
۩ۂᐊඨ, 80, 256–58 ࡴྋ, 258–62, 268, 397 ᠲᣪੈࡴॐᕻ, 255n ۂ༅ᘋԲଈհԲ, 262–65 ಬ፠݆ຫ৯ࣙូ။, 211n ಬ८ᕽშח㝧, 211n, 265–66 HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE
Ղգڶᡖ८ࣔཾۃᓾ, 273–76, 409 ᢤ്Փց, 409n ॸ墾۫༅ؾ, 276–77 ࡉᔤխߠബ, 278–80, 290 ࡉضᙕࠃᄅᗊ, 35n ᠲ༙ৄ്ּ࣋ᦊॼ, 280–82, 284 ֲ࿆ᚭ್ፕ, 283–85, 304 ֲ׀ګޕܧ, 285–87 ᠲ༙ৄতፕڝᤕઍ՞ᇣࠥ৵, 287–89 ਞᡖ, 193, 270t, 289–91, 311 ࡉ༙ৄس׆൧ዚԳઐઐ, 284 Ղఎܑޕཕ׀, 222n ຫႚሐ, 270t, 291–93 ᡖബപց༘, 293n ࢵപց༘ଫػܧႆ๗്ឆࡺ, 270t, 293–94 260 ᠲෘࣔನ, 108n, 292n 262 ఎ്ܑػႆᘩ׀, 294–96 263 ఎܑപࡳ, 58n 264 ৄةࡌցຏ٦ᇣᢤܑ, 296–98 265 ബᠲੈতຫּޡႆॼ, 428n 267 ٵฅฯ༅ऒޕࢵৄة࣒٘, 58n, 298–300 271 ಬ᎓≷חհࡴຫڠଫ១ࡌ֮堚, 300– 302 273 ሟࡲח༡ᕠ, 302–4 275 ༅ऒ८ສ༈׆౸ֆຫᇾ, 305–6 276, 277 ୪ٖଫ១堚ළࡉՂԳԲଈ, 307–9 279 ಬᑰནոհࡴᚢ؆ଫബெࣥൕ࠸, 230n 283 ৫႓ᆺᚢᡖബ堚ළػႆတ, 309–11 288 ࣟۂၢᝫ್Ղ܂Բଈ, 270t, 311– 12 292 ֲᡖࠇຟ៱ሏ, 270t, 312–13 293 ۞ᖵၺ⅕ߧ۟ۂۉඦᇞ, 271t, 313– 15 303 くۣᅝ܂ཽܓ, 271t, 315–16 306 ८ສ׆ၳ଼լሖఎܑ, 271t, 316–19, 326 307 ᠲ८ສ९եڝჃ, 319–22 308 ᠲ८ສ֚ᐜᨠॱನ, 322–25 311 ඡऒ९ᤓڶᡖ८ສᖵၺࣛړ, 325–29 314 ࡉᙒᐚ༛ᡖ, 322–23, 436 315 ஂՂܧᙒᐚ༛, 271, 329–31, 353 232 233 234 237 239 242 243 244 245 246 248 255 256 257 258
INDEX OF POEMS BY POEM NUMBER 316 321 322 323 326 330
֙عՂցڶᡖ८ສ៱ሏ, 271t, 359n ബޕ᎓Բ֖, 271t ޕܧհᏚ, 269n, 336n ᢤ്հթ, 255n ၡۣࡺኙຳ, 331–32 ᐖສ಄မඡऒ, 328n PENTAMETRICAL QUATRAINS
332–337 ტᘋքଈ, 371–73, 380 343 ᡖബപց༘֮׆ᜰԼଈհ, 373–75 HEXAMETRICAL QUATRAINS 348 ್Ղૹᆖ៱ሏքߢ, 401–2 350 ટֽᤓႀ, 402–3 PENTAMETRICAL QUATRAINS 351–355 ຫႚሐնଈ, 375–76 356 ᚵᏥݕူڜո࣠, 376–78 357 ࡉ֮׆ᜰدፕ᧯, 378–79 359 ༃࡙ᑜ, 379–80 362–371 ࡉຫႚሐટֲԼଈ, 380–86 376, 377 ᡖബ堚ළࡉՂԳԲଈ, 386–88 378 මဎബ堚ළࡉՂԳ, 388 379 ಬऄٱཕ۫ڂՂ, 389 380–389 ᡖബ༙ৄࣛړԼଈ, 390–91 390 ࡉᙒᐚ༛ײრԲଈհԫ, 391 392–399 ಬ۫׆ᑐנᔤԶଈ, 392–95 402–404 ಳࡉՋ֖٘ޙᨠײ႓ڴسԿଈ, 395 405–409 ࠇࡺტᘋնଈ, 395–96, 416, 425 410–414 ࡉᯈࡴ۔ྋᡖײնଈ, 397 415–422 ۂԶူ, 10, 397–399 423–431 ᧢ဲࣤێଈ, 399–400 HEXAMETRICAL QUATRAINS 432, 433 ᠲ࠴৵քߢԲଈ, 403–4 HEPTAMETRICAL QUATRAINS 434 堚ᗊഘ, 410, 419 435 קႼॣ, 412–13 437 ॣߠػᕓقփ, 413–14 438 ݝխូ, 414, 417 440–443 ࡉാૉࢿழض୮ဲଈ, 415– 17 446 ࣟৄಬড়್Ղ, 418, 439 447 ᠿৄࣟ, 418–20 452 ٦௫তᢅྀ, 420–21 453 ८ၿড়ॐඨতᑗৄ, 422 454, 455 መᗁᠿֽࡺاԲଈ, 421–22 457 ࡙מᡖബࡌ֮堚ພ֚᎖, 423–24 459 くۣᐖྀ॰؆܂, 424–25 462, 463 ᄘࣤဲԲଈ, 425–26
485
464 ۞ᓡᝫஊᖈּ׆ৄةႼ, 426–27 465 ஂՂ։ᣉബຫႚሐ, 301n 471 ല࿇ৄةᠲຫ܄ሹ፞ನ, 428–29, 432 472, 473 ࠇࡺਞᑈტᘋԲଈ, 429–31, 432 476 ᔨՑᇆ, 431–32 480 ࡉԳ႞ਞ, 258n 481 ૹᓿࠇࡺᑈਞტᘋ, 250n 482 ಬԳཛ墑ᇛສ, 433, 439 484 ۃּޕՂ, 434–35 485 ሏ๗ᣤڝႼ, 435–36 488 ૄჀ್Ղ, 436 489 ॴଅ՛ࡰ՞ඡ墾܂, 446–48 490 ᠲዧၺ༅ॐ۔ௌ, 448–49 491 ટۂඡඨ, 450 492 ࡉܦሒ֛ߠመఎᠲ, 448n 493 ᠲᇣ࠴৵, 450–51 HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE 494 ቖ, 189n 496 ሟܑམݵ, 333–34, 444 499 ಬۂፖࠇូ՞ၺ, 444n 504 ௧ສॸ, 271t, 334–36, 353 506, 507, 509 ᠲ௧ສ༅ॐଈհԫΔԲΔ , 120, 168, 271t, 336n, 336–39, 357–58 510 ፊᤕઍ՞᠅ښ܂ڠ, 339–41, 362 515 ಬࡌၲలښנᔦၺ, 342–44 516 ᢤቖ৯, 440n 517, 518 ࡴԲଈ, 271, 344–48 519 ࡉܑ堚ළࡉՂԳ, 348n 520 ૹܑࡉՂԳ 348n 524 ඡऒԿ՞ᡖײଫബᖵၺࣛሏ, 271t 526 くۣࡤᑵᄻ, 271t, 348–50, 358 529 ඡऒ՛ࡰ՞܂, 350–51 530 ࡌցౖ㔀ਞሐխ, 336, 350, 352– 55 534–536 ۂટᡖԿଈ, 26, 355–58 537 ഏݳຫ࿆ࠃ৵, 271t 538 ബܑ֟ཾ, 358–59 539, 540 ᑰנ۔Լᑇᇣઃڶᡖᤕ⭟ृڠ ڂᓿԲଈ, 360–63 541, 542 ڶቖ۞խࠐ႓ᚉ֫ڠ፹ಁଫ ౨ሐࠡ೯ᙩፖᑰ۔ᓿԲଈ, 337, 363–66 544 ૹബᑰ ۔271t 545 ᑰא۔९ᒧܠޣא೫ءಬհ 358n 546 ࣼ׆ق, 359n 550 ࿆႓ᦊᑔᡖײଫബᑰ࣒٘۔, 255n 551 ബֱ࣑ࣳחᜯޕരགଫ១႓ࡽԲᑰ࣒ ٘, 255n 552 ԲִԲֲஂՂᓿ, 343
486
INDEX OF POEMS BY POEM NUMBER HEPTAMETRICAL QUATRAINS
554 559 560 561 562
ֱ࿆ڕ՞, 80n ૹሏත۩ೃ, 437, 439 ്ٵዧޣമ֒խೃ۫ᐇ, 438–39 ಬቖऄ۫ڂݳٱሏࠇஃ, 439–40 ૹሏ՞ࡳࣥڝ, 440–41
563 ᠲᇸּᐒႼ, 441–42 564 ࣟৄ್Ղ, 443 565, 566 ૹಬམᇨհଫ១ᗀຫൌԲଈ, 444–46 567 ؓມഘૹಬۂࡲ, 444n 569 ᠲ॔ᘔᆺ, 438, 444
INDEX AB poems. See opening line-type sequences, AB acrostics, 425, 426 adhesion. See couplets, adhesion between alchemy, 154, 168 allegory: as a mode not favored, 7–33, 54, 337, 373, 405, 442, 449; political, 110–15; Zhang Heng’s Four Sorrows as, 149 alliterative compounds, 412. See also bisyllabic compounds; sound play Also Yan Studio, 182–85 ambiguity: of implication, 98–99; of reference, 62–63, 249, 334, 353, 379; syntactic, 200, 229–30, 249–50, 280, 315–16, 382. See also gender ambiguity Analects, 184, 262n, 385 Ancient Verse: as Bao Rong’s least favorite form, 62; farewells in, 164; formal characteristics of, 12–13, 101, 121–23; He Zhu’s definition of, 2–3, 12; importance of historiography in late, 178, 262; obliterated texts in early, 322; preferred by Huang Tingjian and Guo Xiangzheng, 269; preferred for imitations and inscriptions, 121–23, 139; preferred in past for poems on Xuzhou sites, 131; preferred in Tang for ganyu ტሖ poems, 110; relative weight of, in He Zhu’s works, 12; thematic variations in, across time, 123– 24, 276; unusual form in, 42, 161; used for farewells and correspondence, 188; variations in output of, 13, 91, 100, 160, 408. See also under genre boundaries; meter; rhyme; Songs Anyang, 13 Anzhou, 300 ao lines (‘awkward lines’), 202. See also metrical violations Arai Ken, 32 arms, manufacture of, 13, 278 assonance, 412 Badong, 177 Baixia, 83, 156, 157 ballads, 120, 142, 144, 381; alluded to, 201, 332, 346–47, 348, 364; diction recalling, 20, 41,
130, 137, 395; from Dunhuang, 134; titles of, 42, 139, 141, 143, 343n bamboo: horses, 137; roof tiles, 264; tabula, 280; writing on, 83, 91, 118, 290n, 332 Bamboo Branch songs, 235n, 389–400, 408 Ban Chao, 239–43, 268 Banshan Temple, 305, 444 Bao Rong, 59–63, 121, 131, 200, 379, 408 Bao Zhao, 56 Baofeng Industrial Prefecture, 38–39. See also Baofeng mint Baofeng mint, 50–51, 292, 300 Baoguang Dharma Master. See Jian Gongchen Baojia Mountain, 168 Baoquan mint, 100. See also mint, in Ezhou Baoquan Mountain, 78 BB poems. See opening line-type sequences, BB BD poems. See opening line-type sequences, BD Bi Shao (Yanzu), 298, 299 Bian Canal, 64, 74, 222, 243, 252, 296, 297, 302, 342; construction and management of, 40, 65n Biographies of the Lofty Gentlemen of the Lotus Society, 179 birds: calls of, in poetry, 141–42, 145; imagery of, discussed, 212, 231, 253, 317–19, 322, 364, 365; names of, in satiric poetry, 391 bisyllablic compounds, 143. See also alliterative compounds, reduplicatives, rhyming compounds Bitter Bamboo (village), 226, 435 Blackrobe Lane, 140 Bo Juyi, 126, 138n, 219, 353, 398; alluded to, 174; and East Slope, 173; enjambment in, 284–85; “overturned” by He Zhu, 287; as precedent or parallel, 20, 103, 132n, 142, 156–57, 216–17, 229–30, 250n, 374n; Quatrain by, 419–20; treatment of animals in, 27 Bo pagoda, 90 Bolangsha, 71 Boliang form, 157–58, 160, 304 Bols, Peter, 397 borrowed parallelism. See parallelism, by pun Boyang, 109
488
INDEX
Brahm Action Cloister, 437 Branner, David Prager, 7, 8 Broadford Gate, 243, 245 Brown Crane Tower, 235 caesura, 200, 210, 231, 238; as guide to parsing of line, 382, 400; in heptasyllabic lines, 275; overridden, 283–84, 295, 297, 302, 304, 335, 345, 359, 382, 441; suspense at, 345, 400, 437 Cai Canal, 300 Cai Jing, 261, 262n, 302, 327n Cai Que, 85, 107, 300–302, 304, 392 Cai Xiang, 303, 304, 411n Cai Youlin, 39 Canglang Song, 22–23, 101, 418 “Cao Anthology,” 25n, 143n, 280, 290n Cao Cao, 15, 52–53, 86, 147, 247, 248, 394 Cao Fu, 241n Cao Jie (Mengde?), 313, 314, 316 Cao Tang, 323n Cao Tingdong, 25n Cao Xuequan, 25n Cao Zhi, 306 Cassia Girl, 323, 443. See also Chang’e CD poems. See opening line-type sequences, CD Cen Jing, 259 Cen Shen, 40–41, 244n Chaisang, 38, 109, 427 Chan Buddhism, 440 Chan Master Quan. See Faquan Chang’an, 19, 55, 68, 93, 177, 315, 317 Chang’e, 323, 324. See also Cassia Girl Changgan (district or temple), 319, 322 Changlu, 325 Changsha, 138, 288 Chanzhou, 420n, 421n, 422n, 423 Chao Buzhi, 57, 96, 108, 113–15, 279, 362n, 402; ganyu in title of poem by, 111 Chao Duanzhi (Zuyu), 19, 20 Chao Guanshi, 159n Chao Yuanzhong, 113 Chao Yuezhi, 128, 159n, 176n, 215n, 264 Chaozhou, 340, 362 chaupar, 165 Chaves, Jonathan, 217 Chen Congyi, 33–34 Chen Lin (Bojun), 428 Chen Shi, 104, 251 Chen Shidao (Wuji), 14, 49, 89n, 107, 257, 284n, 287n, 316n; lyric by, 424
Chen Shizhong (Chuandao), 49, 107–8, 130, 135, 214, 291, 292, 301n, 375, 380, 385, 390, 395 Chen Yu (Minshan), 86n, 444 Chen Ziang, 237 Cheng Hao, 159 Chengdu, 247n Chengtian Temple, 296n Chenliu, 64, 65, 74, 79, 364, 435 Chenzhou ຫڠ, 85, 107, 300, 301, 339 Chenzhou ⍣ڠ, 358, 359 Chi Yin, 328, 329 Chicken Pannier, 86, 325–26 Chongshen Temple, 89 Chu: ancient state, 22, 23, 45, 104, 132, 255, 264; Han fiefdom, 41; the south, 68, 176, 226, 227, 234–35, 372; ‘thorny trees,’ 227 Chu Shaosun, 364 Chu Tao, 294n Chu ci, 140, 151, 226n Chu waters (the Yangzi), 307 Chuzhou ᄑڠ, 233, 296n, 314, 331n Chuzhou ✶ڠ, 28 ci (supposed type of heptametrical Ancient Verse), 131, 143–45, 160n, 186. See also lyrics Cizhou, 13, 278 Classic of Changes, 66, 67n, 68, 70n, 101, 224, 262n, 428 Classic of Poetry, 14n, 15, 42, 105, 114, 115, 168n, 256, 303, 307, 320, 411; diction from, 19, 48, 59, 61n, 68, 109n, 127, 151, 159, 329–30, 352, 360, 449 Cloud-Roosting Hut, 97–98 clouds: and light, 216–17, 219; and no-mind, 97–99; over Shamanka Mountain, 23, 35; short for yunmu, ‘mica’, 229n; white, associated with reclusion, 88, 279; early symbolism of, 66, 67 Clustered Estrade, 127 colophons (on paintings), 23, 122, 377–78; 402–4 communication in Song China, 88, 262n, 287, 336n, 339, 359, 361, 363, 365 Confucius, 119–20, 183, 184; born at Hollow Mulberry, 114; expressions derived from, 49, 52, 94, 109–10, 117; as historian, 92, 118–19; and recluses, 22, 26 countermotion, 374, 377, 386, 387–88, 405 couplets: adhesion between, 9, 138; closing, 191, 193, 290–91, 311, 347, 349–50, 354; constituted by theme rather than form, 161; ending on odd-numbered lines, 137; in extended Regulated Verse, 195, 199, 247–48;
INDEX couplets (continued) importance of, in pentametrical verse for completion of idea, 275; middle, 188, 189, 194, 204–7, 216, 225, 233, 235, 240, 243, 253, 276, 277, 313, 347, non-adhering, 208n, 244–45n, 272, 311, 316, 319, 326, 331, 337, 345, 348–49, 432; non-adhesion between, as key to analysis in heptametrical Regulated Verse, 366–67; opening, 347; opening, determining sequence of middle couplets, 215, 267, 277, 291; opening, rhymed, 207–10, 269–70, 274–76; parallelism in three or more consecutive, 199, 227, 258, 235, 319, 326; pentametrical, in heptametrical poem, 128, 148–49 166–67, 168; rhyming, in Songs, 130, 155–56; semantic parallelism in first, 199, 258, 310; third, lack of parallelism in, 331; tonal antithesis within, 138; two or more consecutive AB, 271, 290, 311–14, 316, 319, 325, 326. See also under opening line-type sequences; rhyme Court Gentleman’s Lake, 258–62, 397 Cui Hong, 170 Cui Ruozhuo (Zhizhi), 415 Culai Mountain, 159 Cyan Ceiling Cavern, 340 Cypress Hill, 82 Dai Kui, 45, 317, 318, 332 Dai Shulun, 374n Daizong, 394 Daming, 309, 418n; Huang Tingjian in, 54n, 128, 432; larger than capital, 421 Dangtu, 84–85, 256, 269n, 348 Danzhou, 359 Daoan, 148, 308 Daoism, 18–19, 69, 97, 118n, 153n, 253n, 262n, 322–25, 327 Daoists, 128, 153–55, 170, 191, 254, 325; noncelibate, in Sichuan, 155 Daosheng, 77 Daotong, 231–34, 314 dates, cyclical, 24; cyclical vs. by reign title, 432–33 Davis, A. R., 103, 108, 109 DB poems. See opening line-type sequences, DB DD openings. See opening line-type sequences, DD Delightful! Pavilion, 45–47, 202, 281, 425 Deng Forest, 112–13 Deng You, 147n, 165 Dengzhou, 296
489
Deping, 55n Deqing, 241n Dezhou, 49 Ding Lingwei, 127–28, 130, 163 Dinglin Temple, 440 Dingzhou, 107, 336, 339 Directorate of Palace Buildings, 223 Dong Yuan, 450 Dongfang Shuo, 247, 355n Donghua, 146 Donglai, 77 dou (‘pause’; ‘penetrates’), 79–80, 257 Dou Hongyu, 149n Double Ninth (Double Yang), 170, 278, 283, 287 drought, 15, 17, 117n, 416 Du Fu, 45, 93–96, 147, 181; precedents for language in, 27n, 33–34, 70, 112–13, 170, 190–91, 205–6, 256, 257–58, 260n, 273, 295, 328n, 349–50, 354, 383, 399, 403; precedents for syntax and structure in, 138, 204n, 216, 220–21, 229, 280, 326, 349–50, 353, 367; thematic precedents in, 15–16, 17, 39n, 69, 71, 106, 126, 136, 434 Du Mu, 40n, 71, 95, 260n, 286–87, 329n, 390, 411, 412, 446 Du Qiu, 40 Du Shenyan, 191 Du Xunhe, 111n Du Yan (Zhongguan), 24n, 39, 55–56, 126, 130, 395 Du Yu ޙᝨ (Zizhi), 96–97, 339 Du Yu ޙቃ, 119n Du Zhengcang, 103n Du Zhengxuan, 103n Duan Xun (Shencong), 211n Dugu Ji, 119 Dunhuang, 134 E, Lord of, 234–35 East Slope, 172–73, 182–86 Egan, Ronald, 28, 64 Emperor Xiao Temple, 306 Empress Gao, 332n Empress Lü, 68, 69 enjambment, 53, 284–85, 245, 295, 298, 419, 437 Erya, 31–32 Eupatorium Bottoms Garden, 74–76, 121, 122, 293 Ezhou, 100n, 101n, 118, 171, 172n, 178, 179, 235, 264, 340, 399
490
INDEX
fan an (‘overturned cases’), 285–87 Fan Bolu, 90n Fan Kuai, 240, 241–43, 268 Fan Li, 373 Fan Zhongyan, 372 Faquan, 82–84, 440 farewells, 241n, 244, 245, 254; in Ancient Verse, 88, 164, 188; in heptametrical Quatrains, 418, 439, 444; in heptametrical Regulated Verse, 266, 272, 326–27, 343; in pentametrical Quatrains, 389, 439; in pentametrical Regulated Verse, 188, 210–11, 234, 265–66; in Songs, 126, 164 Fashioner of Things, 98–99, 173 Fayan, 183 Fayin, 389, 439–40 Feng Xuan, 162–64, 235, 293–94 Fenghuang (mountain and village), 93 “filling out” (guang) a poem, 149–53 First Si Day, 47–48, 273 fishermen, 22–23, 25, 135–36; 182, 191, 418 Five-Cloud Stream, 329 Five Hauses (Wuling), 231 Five Phases (wu xing), 129, 137 Five Tumuli, 290, 291, 332 floods, 53, 86, 100n, 114; in Daming area, 4, 36, 420–23, in Xuzhou, 41, 52, 137, 281–82, 432 flowering plum, 388 folding chairs, 203–4, 206 four elders, 68, 170 Four Sorrows, 150–53, 350, 353 Frodsham, J. D., 185 fu (‘and then’; ‘again’), 193 Fu Liang, 64–65n Fu Xi, 109, 170, 427 Fuchun River, 285 Fujian, 45n, 89n, 181, 241n, 361 Fuli, 293 Fuller, Michael, 31 function (“empty”) words: in heptametrical Regulated Verse, 282, in pentametrical Regulated Verse, 194, 220; in Quatrains, 380 Fusang, 136 fuxi (‘lustration’) festival, 225 Fuyang, 13, 17, 23, 27, 36, 39, 123, 191, 413, 415n, 417, 418, 423 ganyu in poem titles, 110–11 gao (‘bottom-land’), 226–27 Gao Changgong, 23–24n Gao Huaide, 91 Gao Pian, 60 Gao Shi, 240
Gaoyou, 331n, 339 Gaozong, 86n, 327n gazetteer from regional government unit, 397, 498 ge (supposed type of song), 144–45 gender ambiguity, 36, 379 genre boundaries: Ancient Verse vs. heptametrical Regulated Verse, 121–22, 280, 287, 290; Ancient Verse vs. the lyric, 34–36; Ancient Verse vs. Regulated Verse, 12; Ancient Verse vs. Song, 12; heptametrical Quatrains vs. the lyric, 36, 408–9, 425, 452; heptametrical Regulated Verse vs. Ancient Verse and Songs, 272; hexametrical Quatrains vs. the lyric, 401; Songs vs. heptametrical Ancient Verses broadly defined, 126, 128; Songs vs. heptametrical Regulated Verse, 155, 156, 304 Ghost-Gate Pass, 360 gifts, 56–57, 157, 179–81, 302–4, 353 Gongcheng, 52, 230, 332 goosefoot staff, 181, 227, 299, 352 Grand Canal, 40, 86, 163n, 233, 236n, 244, 314, 325n, 331n Great Wall, 393 Greyquill Boat, 234–35 gu (‘still’), 257–58 Gu Kuang, 56–57 Guan Lu, 129n Guan Ying, 73–74 Guancheng, 165, 166 Guangji Canal, 222 Guangling (Yangzhou), 450 Guangnan Circuit, 230 Guangnan East Circuit, 339 Guanshi, 420 Guling, 67, 73 Guo Chen (Tianfu), 423, 424 Guo Ji, 137n Guo Xiangzheng (Gongfu), 82n, 85, 209, 269, 367, 368, 369, 371 Gushu, 85 Gushu Creek, 348n, 357 Hailing, 97, 160, 164, 166, 171, 178, 186, 248, 256, 331, 334–37, 338–39, 359, 395; Liu Bin in, 428–29 Hainan, 184, 185, 359 Han ឌ (ancient state), 65 Han Chuan, 309 Han Cong, 295n Han ዧ Dynasty, founding of, 65–74, 104, 131–36, 215, 308 Han Fei, 114
INDEX Han Hong, 235n Han Kang, 317, 318, 322 Han River, 181, 215, 263–64 Han Xin, 67, 69, 73, 133, 134–35, 240, 241, 308, 393 Han Yu, 18n, 59, 149n, 201n, 303n, 398; exile of, 340, 341; He Zhu’s familiarity with, 48– 50, 207, opening line-type sequences in, 208, as precedent or parallel, 26–27, 42, 116, 250n, 257–58, 337, 353; Quatrains by, 368, stele inscription by, 262 Han Yue, 240 Handan, 25, 126, 280, 322, 364 Hangzhou: Bo Juyi on, 419–20; Su Shi in, 87n, 100, 172, 147, 240n, 242, 442 Hanshan, 357–58 Hanyang, 100, 105, 110, 120, 168, 248, 258, 262, 264, 347n, 351 Hare Garden, 332 harmonizing. See rhyme: following other’s He Chong, 396 He, Master, 146n, 306–7, 340, 347, 386, 387 He Shengzhang, 160–62, 292 He Zhizhang, 92; allusions to, 55n, 291–92, 428, 429; Du Fu on, 170n; He Zhu’s identification with, 55n, 94–95, 308, 328, 329, 330–31; longevity of, 398 He Zhu (Fanghui): allusions in lyrics by, 128n, 140, 225, 226–27, 235, 446n; ancestry of, 88n, 301, 433, anecdotes about, 5–6, 265, 302, 410; cognomen of, 7, 329, diction in lyrics by, 47n, 359, 378, 401, 447; editorial activities of, 391; father of, 53n, 329n; financial status of, 182, household of, 96, 292; mother of, 53, 329, 443; poetry collection of, 1–2, 11, 95n, 100, 243, 269, 301; postings of, 13n, 50–51, 53, 74, 86, 100, 141, 188–89, 191, 223, 225–26, 252n, 256, 278, 300, 310, 315, 344, 409–10, 413, 417, 423, 446; preface to collection of, 2, 125–26; promotion from military to civil status of, 88–89, 90, 172, 238, 239, 242, 443; and Qu Yuan, 182, 191; ranks of, 240n, 443n; religious aspirations of, 81– 82, 148, 310–11, themes in lyrics of, 21; wife of, 162, 414 He Zhun, 396 Hebei, 13, 189n Hebei Circuit, 421 Hebei East Circuit, 52 Hebei West Circuit, 13, 17, 189n, 230 Hengtang (Thorter Dykes), 335 Henricks, Robert, 114
491
heptametrical poems: sense of insubstantiality in certain, 157. See also genre boundaries; Quatrains, heptametrical; Regulated Verse, heptametrical; Songs Heyang, 179, 266, 361, 377 Hezhou, 53, 74, 86, 141, 155, 225–26, 228, 232, 233, 238, 310, 386, 392, 435. See also Liyang history: alternative possibilities of, 71, 131; censorship of, 4, 364–65, 367; evidential bases of, 14–15, 25, 39–40, 91–92, 258–68, 322, 397–99; existing only in the present, 357; lost, 14–15, 22, 92, 322; a poem performing the functions of, 104; necessity of writing, 92, 117–120, 178–79, 262, 364–65; non-canonical, 69, 133–34, 364–65; not a topic for He Zhu’s heptametrical Quatrains, 452; number and, 129 Hollow Mulberry, 114 Holzman, Donald, 165, 185 homosexuality, 343 Hong Chu, 362 Hongmen, 66, 71 honkadori, 206, 345–46 “hook words,” 410, 418 Horse-Sporting Estrade, 130, 282–84 Hu Zeng, 71, 131 Hu Zi, 105 Huai-Chu, 233 Huai River, 65n, 76, 96, 106, 132, 133, 233, 314, 417 Huaihai Campaign, 284n Huainan East Circuit, 96, 339 Huainan West Circuit, 74, 352 Huainanzi, 176 Huaiyang Commandery. See Chenzhou Huan Wen, 344–45, 348 Huang Cai (Chengbo), 86n, 88 Huang Shang, 75n Huang Shu (Jixu), 86n, 88 Huang Shuda, 365 Huang Tingjian (Shangu), 3, 83, 85n, 96n, 100– 101, 119, 153n; 184–85n, 302, 327, 444; calligraphy of, 116–17; and Chao Buzhi, 113– 14; colophons by, 402–3, 404; contrasted with He Zhu, 14, 51, 53, 57, 79, 366; exile of, 116, 362, 364; and He Zhu, 337, 359n, 362– 66, 390; and the heptametrical Quatrain, 408; and the heptametrical Regulated Verse, 269, 366, 367; and historiography, 118, 364; lyrics of, criticized, 409; as precedent, parallel, or influence, 49, 54–56, 128, 142, 219, 227, 241–42 252–53, 295, 298, 299, 310, 334, 430; preferred opening line-sequences of, 209;
492
INDEX
and the question of allegory, 31–32; on Su Shi, 362–63; on Tao Yuanming, 432; on Wang Anshi, 306, 324n, 444 Huang Xiang, 88 Huangfu Mi, 170n Huanggang. See Huangzhou Huangxian, 296 Huangzhou: Delightfull! Pavilion in, 46; Pan family in, 120n, 361; Su Shi in, 27n, 30, 31, 137, 138, 139, 142, 172, 183n, 203, 281, 288, 414, 416, 425 Huichong, 402, 403, 434 Huikan, 56, 57–58 Huiri Temple, 78 Huizhou, 114, 360n, 361 Huiyuan, 179 Huizong, 302, 327n humor, 157, 159–60, 166, 167, 185, 187, 308– 309, 318–19; malicious, 385; playful, 254–55, 291, 293; parodic, 293–94; sarcastic, 52; sardonic, 129, 423; satirical, 393, 425; directed at self, 52, 53, 247. See also wit Hunan, 231 Huzhou, 137, 138, 139 images of substitution, , 205–6, 447–48 images of transference, 347, 378–79, 442, 443 imitations, 56–64, 121, 194–202, 268, 376–77; and “filling out,” 151–53; heptametrical Regulated Verse not used for, 272; of period style, 121, 378–79; Su Shi’s, of a ti (‘style’), 142 Inferior Baofeng Industrial Prefecture, 38–39, 50–51n ink, 157–60, 302–4 inscriptions, 92, 121–23, 181–86, 281, 287–89, 324, 352, 428 intercalary months, 76 inversions, 282 irony, 129, 187, 247, 273–75, 423 Jade Terrace Anthology, 378–79 Jar Mote (Purple Gold Mountain), 322–23 Ji Bu, 134 Ji Kang, 246, 254, 298, 375, 395, 396 Ji River, 176 Jia Changchao (Ziming), 442 Jia Dao, 286 Jia Shou, 186n Jia Yi ᇸࡵ, 73, 138, 264, 288, 340, 341 Jia Yi ᇸ࣐, 309 Jian Gongchen (Yizhi), 153–55 Jian kiln, 181
Jian Xuchen (Shouzhi), 153n Jian Zhoufu, 153n Jian’an, 89n Jiang-Huai, 133, 134, 316 Jiang Xu, 102 Jiang Yan, 103n Jiang Yujing (Maozong), 444n Jiangnan East Circuit, 341 Jiangnan West Circuit, 39n, 55n, 100, 114, 157, 227, 341, 360 Jiangxia, 88, 117, 171, 176, 178, 181, 208, 234– 35, 256, 258, 264, 344, 364; compilation of texts about, 398; low cultural level of, 347; sites in, 397–498 Jiangzhou, 168, 170 Jiaoran, 244n jiedui (borrowed correspondence). See parallelism, by pun Jin Dynasty, 64, 432 Jing Ke, 115 Jing-Luo, 316 Jinghu North Circuit, 354 Jinghu South Circuit, 358 Jingshan Sconce, 293 Jinling, 74, 179, 238, 257, 346, 347, 435; feelings of absence and insubstantiality in, 319, 321–25, 441; sites in, 77, 82–83, 140, 146–48, 156, 228n, 236, 305–7, 319–20, 322–26, 344, 386; and Wang Anshi, 304–6, 444, 446 Jinming Lake, 224, 225, 273 Jinshan, 86, 88 Jintan, 265n, 266 jiu (‘recovery’; ‘matching awkwardness’), 202. See also metrical violations; tonal violations Jiujiang, 168n Jizhou, 341 Jurchen, 1, 302, 327n Kaifeng (‘the capital’), 36, 51, 88, 315; canals in vicinity of, 65n, 297; dusty, 375, 430; “Liang” or “Great Liang,” 176, 312, 376; smaller than Daming, 421 Kamimura Baiken, 60, 62 Kang Pian, 149n Kangle Precinct, 305 Kong Rong, 19, 20, 103n Kongzi jiayu, 184 Kou Changzhao (Yuanbi), 49, 75, 77, 130, 293–93, 373–74 Lake Dongting, 231, 340, 353, 354, 403 Lake Tai, 44, 186n, 373 Lake Jinming. See Jinming Lake
INDEX Lake Pengli. See Pengli Lake Lantian (Indigo Fields), 112, 181 Laozi, 109, 154, 155 Leizhou Peninsula, 114 Lesser Lone Mountain, 350–51, 446–48 Li Bo, 86, 348n, 399; in Jinling, 82, 305n; and the heptametrical Quatrain, 408; and the pentametrical Quatrain, 368; precedents and parallels in, 84–85, 95n, 115, 126, 136, 244, 263, 287, 337n, 379, 400; preferred opening line sequences of, 208; sojourn of, through Hanyang, 258–62, 268, 359, 397; on Zhang Liang, 64, 70–71 Li Deyu, 362 Li Guang, 73n, 112, 173 Li He, 359n Li Hui (Zhifu), 149, 151–52, 221–23 Li Lake, 156 Li Ling, 364 Li Qiao, 382 Li Qingchen, 46, 47, 90n, 239 Li Qingzhao, 423, 424–25 Li Shangyin, 91, 260n, 264–65, 440 Li She, 372n Li Shen (Daoyuan), 298–99 Li Tinggui, 159, 303 Li Xiaosheng, 376–77 Li Yi, 48, 59 Li Yixing (Yichu), 39n Li Yong, 200 Li Zhaoqi (Chengfu, Chengji), 285–86 Li Zhi, 165, 215n, 355n Li Zhiding, 11, 253 Li Zhiyi (Duanshu), 269, 336n Li Zhong, 136n, 391n Lian Stream, 101, 117 Liang Deyu, 111n Liang Dynasty, 306 Liang Hong, 254–55, 317, 318, 322 Liang Zhe Circuit, 168, 265n Liangshan Marsh, 222 Lianyue (Lotus Peak), 56 Liaodong, 128 Liezi, 218, 219, 357 Liguo Industrial Prefecture, 39, 46n Lincheng, 168, 188, 189n, 191, 273, 409 line length: changing, in Songs, 125, 142–43, 144n, 151, 166, 183; diction associated with, 79; heptasyllabic and pentasyllabic, compared, 148–49, 166–67, 168, 171, 274–75, 341, 430; pentasyllabic expanded to heptasyllabic, 60; titles associated with, 84, 111 Lingbi, 76n, 293
493
Lingnan (‘South of the Hauses’), 340 Liting, 93, 96, 122 Liu Ban, 75n, 241n. See also Liu Bin Liu Bang, 66–69, 71–73, 104, 130–35, 215, 240, 280 Liu Bin, 429. See also Liu Ban Liu Chang, 40 Liu Changqing, 149, 152, 220, 227, 387n Liu Chen, 154 Liu Cheng, 253 Liu Gui, 302n Liu Jing, 68 Liu Jingsu, 103n Liu Jisun, 240–42 Liu Ping, 242 Liu-Song Dynasty, 283, 432 Liu Wei, 111 Liu Wu, 90 Liu Xiaosheng, 376–77 Liu Yizhi, 237 Liu Yong, 314 Liu Yu, 64n, 71 Liu Yuxi, 52, 77n, 86, 206–7, 286, 337, 364n, 400, 428, 429 Liu Zhi, 75 Liu Zongyuan, 220, 351n Liyang, 74, 80, 84–86, 208, 226, 233, 238; port of, 236, 315; sites in or near, 86, 156, 314, 325, 435, 4377. See also Hezhou locative phrase at end of line, 282 Longe (‘Dragon Forehead’), Marquis of, 240, 241 Longevity Spring stele, 397 Lou Pan, 439n Lowell, Robert, 152 Loyang, 38n, 68, 72, 73, 133, 174n, 292, 298– 99, 315, 317, 395 Lu (ancient state or region), 51, 118, 159n Lu Deming, 224 Lu Dian, 16, 31n Lu Guimeng, 135n, 260n Lu Ji, 298–99, 307–8n, 364 Lu Sidao, 23–24n lu yin (‘salaried recluse’), 254, 255 Lu You: and enjambment, 285; expressions and diction in poems of, 215n, 332; ganyu in poem title, 111; travel records of, 82, 85n, 236, 325n, 348, 350–51 Lu Yu, 44 Lu Yun, 298–99 Lü Benzhong, 129 Lü Dafang, 360, 361, 362, 364, 392 Lü Shang, 357
494
INDEX
Lü Zuqian, 128 Luo Binwang, 237, 248 Luo River, 65 Luo Ye, 372 Luo Yin, 260 Luo Yuan, 140 lustration festival, 225 lyrics (ci), 269n, 149n; expressions and diction in, 79, 176, 197–98, 216, 244, 314, 425, 439; gender ambiguity in, 379; rhymes in, 321; term used in title of Song, 131n; tunes or matrices of, 330n. See also under genre boundaries; He Zhu Ma Dai, 233 Madman of Chu, 26–27, 88 Mather, Richard, 11, 165 mei (‘besmirch’), 255 Mei Yaochen, 26, 27–28, 90n, 111n, 146n, 303n, 378–79; on bird “words,” 142; and the heptametrical Quatrain, 406, 408; on obsession with poetry, 247n; poems by, on creatures, 27, 29, 206; poems by, in sets of ten, 85; as precedent, parallel, or influence, 40, 49, 79–80, 121, 214, 233, 257, 371, 372–73; pride of, in his poverty, 182; “social” poetry by, 15–16, 17; xing by, 144n Meishan (Brow Peak), 41, 44, 123, 288, 289 Mencius, 20, 22 Meng Haoran, 60, 244–45 Meng Jiao, 28, 59, 86, 111n, 116n, 253; He Zhu’s familiarity with, 29, 80 Meng Zong, 397–98 Metal Dike, 421 meter, 8–10; adherence to, effect of, 293, 296, 343, 351, 356; emotive effect of, 160–62, 211–12, 245, 266, 291, 319, 341, 347–38; identical, in adjacent lines, 353; identical, in different poems, 202, 207, 216–17, 228, 377; impact of, on analysis, 9, 218, 224, 267, 271, 309, 366–67; influence of, on content, 188, 230; latitude of, in heptametrical Regulated Verse, 270–72; notation of, explained, 9–10; overriding normal readings of characters, 8, 256, 345, 353; regulated and unregulated, in poem pairs, 347–48; regulated, incongruous with topic, 385; as regulated line-type sequences in Ancient Verse, 78; regulated, in Songs, 138, 139–41, 167; regulated, in unregulated line sequences, 379. See also under couplets; metrical violations; opening linetype sequences; poetic closure; tone; tonal violations
metrical violations: compensating, 290, 311, 338; emotive effect of, 215, 231, 338; formal effect of, 9; rare in heptametrical Quatrains, 422, 428; rhetorical effect of, 309, 314, 345, 388, 429, 430; systematic, 353. See also under meter; tonal violations Mi Fu (Yuanzhang), 5, 6, 86–88, 107, 197, 251–55, 302 Mi Heng, 112 Mian River, 317, 358 Mid-Autumn Festival, 374 Milky Way, 197, 201, 263 “millet and broomcorn millet,” 219 mints: in Cizhou, 13n; in Xuzhou, 38–39, 50– 51, 292, 300; in Ezhou (Jiangxia), 100, 171, 172, 234, 264, 344, 357, 359, 446 Mirror Lake, 95, 171, 329 Mizhou, 137n, 240, 296n, 309, 394 Mo Lifeng, 408 Moling, 83 Mou Huaichuan, 199, 200, 201, 207 Mount Emei, 154 Mount Hui, 44 Mount Lu, 100 Mount Min, 154 Mount Sumen. See Sumen Mount Tai, 76, 98, 104 Mount Tiantai, 154, 384 Mount Zhong, 83, 440 Nanjing. See Jinling Nankang, 39n, 55n, 157 Nanle, 424 nanmu, 385 narrative poetry, 133 Nephrite Void, 323 New Policies: attempts to reverse, 308; consequences of, 30, 394, 416–17; factions of, 85, 111, 286, 306; flood control under, 423; pressure on historians to praise, 118, 364; question of He Zhu’s attitude toward, 302, 432 New Songs from a Jade Terrace, 196–97n, 244 no-mind, 90, 98–99 No-Mind Hut, 90 north-south differences, 157, 308–9 Northern Marchmount Shrine, 252n Niu Sengru, 398 noun phrases: 282, 297–98, 318, 413, 420, 425, 437 numbers: correlations featuring, in parallel couplets, 200–201, 250, 326, 350;
INDEX numbers (continued) as “hook words” within line, 418; odd vs. even, 241n; Quatrain built around, 396 no Shsaku, 32 onomatopoeia, 223, 391 opening line-type sequences: AB, in heptametrical Regulated Verse, 312, 316; BB, in heptametrical Regulated Verse, 293, 294; BD, in heptametrical Regulated Verse, 269–70, 277, 313, 319–20; BD, in pentametrical Regulated Verse, 208–10, 258, 270; CD, in heptametrical Regulated Verse, 319, 320, 321; CD, in pentametrical Regulated Verse, 208–10, 215, 245, 252, 258; DB, in heptametrical Regulated Verse, 156, 269–70, 277, 291, 292; DB, in pentametrical Regulated Verse, 208–11, 214–15, 258; DB, in Song, 156; DD, 271, 345, 353 oral storytelling, 134, 186 Ouyang Xiu: as connoisseur, 39n, 45n, 57; contrasted with He Zhu, 235, 292–93, 379; and Du Fu, 33, 205–6, 280; ganyu in title of poems by, 111n; and the heptametrical Quatrain, 406; imitation of Han Yu by, 149n; poems by, on animals, 27–28; in politics, 303; on poverty and poetry, 116, 451; as precedent, parallel, or influence, 49, 147n, 165, 191, 192, 212, 213, 250, 295, 346n, 379 Owen, Stephen, 108 ox cloak, 307, 308, 309 Ox Harness, 114–15 Ox Holm, 236, 325 pai lü. See Regulated Verse, pentametrical: extended paintings: as commodities, 450; of Daoist, 154. See also Huichong Palace of Upper Clarity Stored-up Auspiciousness, 261–62 Palumbo-Liu, David, 32 Pan Daguan (Zhongda), 182, 185 Pan Dalin (Binlao), 119, 120, 185, 182, 359, 361 Pan Geng, 120n Pan Gu, 159 Pan Xiaoben (Jingren), 230, 231 Pan Yue, 80n, 179, 266, 361, 376–77 Pang Degong, 83, 317, 318, 322 Pang Wen, 83–84 Panpan: women named, 284 parallelism, semantic, 12, 77–78, 84, 188, 189– 90, 129, 212–13, 233, 267, 268, 284, 349; dif-
495
ficulty of, in Quatrains, 171; coherence of, needed in heptametrical verse, 276; ease of, dangerous in heptametrical verse, 296; expected, weak or absent, 213–14, 222–23, 235, 238, 243–45, 250, 331, 349, 350, 353; “folding-fan,” 155, 156, 244; internal to line, 212, 290, 324, 420; in more than two couplets of a Regulated Verse, 191–92, 199, 227, 249–51, 258, 319, 326; “notional,” rather than lexical, 79, 212, 223, 282, 310, 349; and numbers, 250; by pun, 200, 215, 220–21, 227, 260, 279, 345; rhetorical effect of, 289; rhetorical effect of absence of, 292–93; visual or graphic, 263, 324 parallelism, tonal, 78, 121, 188, 213, 243, 245, 250, 292, 345; coherence of, needed in heptametrical verse, 276; violated, 272, 337 Pavilion for Releasing Cranes, 281 Peach Blossom Spring, 197, 201 Peach Leaf (song, woman, and mountain), 140, 196 Pei, 131, 132 Pen City, 117 Peng Gate Road, 138 Peng Yue, 67, 73n, 131 Pengcheng (Peng City). See Xuzhou Pengli Lake (Poyang Lake), 341 Pengze, 344 pentasyllabic lines in heptametrical poems, 128, 137, 140–41, 144, 148–49, 166–67. See also under line length personification, 449. See also images of transference Phoenix Estrade, 82n Phoenix Mountain, 284n Phoenix Perching Estrade (=Phoenix Estrade?), 325 Phoenix Plain, 284 Pi Rixiu, 28 pivot construction, 285 poems on objects, 142 poetic closure, 48, 53, 77, 82, 145, 193, 215–16, 224–25, 227, 228, 248, 277, 326n, 354, 383– 84, 405, 431, 436 poetry society, 50, 374, 425; not mentioned in context of Songs, 130, 139 Pound, Ezra, 63 poverty, 308, 362, 365–66; and poetry, 116, 171, 246, 451; the poet’s, 19–21, 247; Yan Hui’s contentment with, 182–85 Poyang, 341–42, 343 print culture, 92 prosy language, 295, 335
496
INDEX
pronouns: first-person, 168, 254, 318, 359; interrogative, 220; relative objective, 220; second-person, 174, 254, 318; supplied in translation, 253, 301, 333, 379; third-person, 334, 359 puns, 255n, 347, 446–48. See also parallelism, by pun Purple Gold Mountain (Zhongshan; Northern Mountain), 323 Putian jian, 392 Qi (ancient region or state), 114, 117, 159n, 194n Qi Gong, 9, 10, 271, 337n, 400n Qi Prefecture, 352 Qian Shi (Dexun), 327, 391 Qian Qi, 208 Qian Qianyi, 170n Qian Yu, 327 Qiantang River, 95 Qianzhou, 114, 362, 364, 365 Qiao Xuan, 247 Qichun, 352 Qiji, 244 Qin (ancient state), 38n, 115, 174 Qin Dynasty, 65, 71, 130, 132, 134 Qin Guan, 40, 53n, 89n, 160n, 237, 239, 257, 286–87, 343n, 391; exile of, 358–59 Qin-Huai, 83, 236, 344, 347, 387 Qinfeng Circuit, 92, 307 Qing Bu, 67, 131 Qingliang Temple, 148, 306, 308, 309, 340, 347, 386, 387, 446 Qingming, 426 Qingping, 309 Qinzhou, 93 Qishan, 307 Qizhou, 108n, 114 Qu Yuan, 22, 136n, 181, 189, 191, 215, 287, 288, 333, 334, 418, 445; by the marshes, 41– 42, 182, 237 Quan Deyu, 111n, 192n, 378 Quannan, 428n Quanzhou, 86n Quatrains, heptametrical, 13; by Cai Que, 85; Cai Xiang and the revival of late Tang fondness for, 411n; difficulties of, 408; as first poem to a new acquaintance, 448; on history, 131; for inscriptions, 121; in pairs or sets, 415–17, 429–31; preferred by Huang Tingjian and Guo xiangzheng, 269; preferred in past for poems on Xuzhou sites, 130–31; relative weight in poets’ works, 406–8; usu-
ally regulated, 415; by Wang Anshi, 71–72, 146n; variations in output of, 408. See also genre boundaries, heptametrical Quatrains vs. the lyric Quatrains, hexametrical, 400–404 Quatrains, pentametrical: as correspondence, 386; difficulties of, 369, 371; He Zhu’s definition of, 373; linking to something outside themselves, 369, 378; in pairs or sets, 369–76, 380–86, 387–88, 390, 391–400, 429; relative weight in poets’ works, 368, 405; regulated vs. unregulated, 369, 375 Queen Mother of the West, 197, 324 Quzhou, 86 Raffel, Burton, 63, 152n Raozhou, 341 recent-style verse. See Regulated Verse Record of Exhaustion and Sorrow, 362 Record of Rites, 176 Red Embankment, 313n, 314 reduplicatives: examples of, 376, 382, 401, 414; linking two Quatrains, 431; in late Tang and/or Wang Anshi, 410–11, 445, 452; placement of, dictating line sequence, 221; two, combined to make rhyming compound, 245; vivid effect of, 381, 419; in yin, ci, and xing, 143–45 Regulated Verse: conventional structure of, 204, 249; development of, 141; difficulty of writing imitations in, 121; Mi Fu’s preference for, 253; without parallel lines, 244–45 Regulated Verse, heptametrical: for correspondence, 386; explicit social function of, 188, 272, 296, 326–27; extended, 351–54; as first poems to new acquaintances, 222n, 272, 306–7, 444; for inscriptions, 121; metrical latitude in, 270–72; opening line-type sequences in, 156, 169–70; pre-Xuzhou, 273, 279; preferred over pentametrical for farewells, 266; prevalence of first-line rhyme in, 269–70; relative weight in poets’ works, 269; variations in output of, 155, 160, 273, 306, 408 Regulated Verse, pentametrical: avoidance of repeated characters in, 260, 309; extended, 194–202, 245–48; as first poems to new acquaintances, 272; never used for harmonizing, 278; in pairs, 207, 235–38, 262, 268; sequence of line types in, 188, 270; used for farewells and correspondence, 188; variations in output of, 207–8 Rhapsody of the Houlet, 138, 264, 340
INDEX Rhapsody on Living in Idleness, 361 Rhapsody on Snow, 332n Rhapsody on the Yellow Tower, 261 rhetorical questions, 193, 212, 215, 328, 334, 374, 376; in predecessor poet answered by He Zhu, 286 Rhino Shining Pavilion, 325 rhyme: across category boundaries, 430; across tone boundaries, 321; in all or most lines, 137, 139, 157, 160, 161, 163, 167, 181; anomalous pattern of, in Su Shi, 321; borrowed from song alluded to, 294; categories of, indicated in transcriptions, 8; change of, dividing poem into sections, 61–62, 128, 137, 143, 145, 148–49, 161; change of, an option in Songs, 12, 125; change of, rare in pentametrical Ancient Verse, 12–13, 123; contribution of, to overall sound play, 41; contribution of, to reading, 130, 183; deflectedtone, in Regulated Verse, 138n, 154; deflected-tone, in Songs, 141, 155; dictating order of images, 84; difficult categories of, 88, 316; entering-tone, 28; feigned, in fifth line of Regulated Verse, 327, 329–30; following other’s, 64, 105, 108,113, 114, 153n, 211, 278–79, 391; interlocking, 128, 153–54, 168, 187; internal slant, 218; level-tone, required in Regulated Verse, 10, 272; openingline, rare in pentametrical verse, 13, 25n, 120, 123, 149, 208–11, 233, 320, 223, 373, 385– 86; opening-line, typical in heptametrical verse, 269–70, 274, 276, 326; “reconciled,” 320–21; resumed, 153, 163; set by words from another text, 375, 395; slant, 149n, 299–300; suggesting content, 185; unchanging, in Songs of 1090–97, 187; virtuoso, in extended Regulated Verse, 195, 353 rhyming compounds, 143–45, 245, 250–51, 337 Rising Dragon Festival, 238n Rongzhou, 360 Round Fan song, 196–97 Rouzer, Paul, 195 Ruan Fu, 440–41n Ruan Ji, 26, 52n, 55, 58, 59, 185, 246, 252, 298, 340, 342n Ruan Zhao, 154, 155 Rufang Mountain, 80–81n Ruichang, 168 Ruzhou, 137 Samei, Maija Bell, 36 Sanshan, 82
497
Shaanzhou, 309 Shadick, Harold, 162 Shamanka Mountain, 23, 25, 35, Shandong, 51, 76, 77, 159, 160n, 296, 309 Shandong West Circuit, 214n Shanyin, 88, 97, 253, 255n, 328n, 332 Shao Yong, 32, 129 Shaoxing, 88, 92, 95, 292 Shen Gua, 33, 159n Shen Huan/Linghuan (Xianyu), 265–66 Shen Quanqi, 346n Shen Yue, 165 Shen Zongjie, 171–72n Shenzong, 50, 118, 225, 364, 433 Shi Decao, 144–45 shi ming (‘poetic cries’), 116 Shouna, 189n Shu (state), 136, 201 Shu Yuanyu, 398 Shuanggou, 107, 214n, 292 Shuoyuan, 373 Si River, 215, 288 Sichuan, 52, 93, 136, 153n, 154, 155, 274, 332, 361; dialect, 351; Li Shangyin in, 265; as place of exile, 260, 362, 365 Sikong Tu, 385 Sima Daozi, 323 Sima Guang, 300n Sima Qian, 72, 73n, 117–18, 364 Sima Shao, 197 Sima Xiangru, 35, 247n, 288, 332 Siming, 94–95, 328 Sir Fantasy, 288 Sizhou, 65n, 96, 98, 182, 302, 339 slant rhyme. See under rhyme Slapping Waves Shelf, 350, 351, 446 Snow Hall, 361 solar nodes, 232, 366 ‘song’ in title of heptametrical Ancient Verses on set topics, 125–26 Song Minqiu, 29 Song Xiang, 184n Song Yu, 45 Song of the Great Wind, 131 Songs: challenges of, 125; composed with group, 130; as first poem to new acquaintance, 272; He Zhu’s definition of, 2, 125; preferred in Song Dynasty for bird-speech poems, 142–43; relative weight of, in He Zhu‘s corpus, 125; variations in output of, 130, 408. See also under Ancient Verse; genre boundaries; meter; rhyme Sorewaist Hill, 80–81n
498
INDEX
sound play, 290, 295, 412, 451 South Estrade, 284, 287 Sporting Horse Estrade, 130 Stone-Gravel Sconce, 312n, 388 Stony Head, 148, 228n, 306, 387, 446 Su Qin, 38n, 174, 395 Su Shi (Zizhan, Dongpo): allusions to, 46–47, 109, 138–39, 287–89, 308–9, 360, 451; arrest of, 17, 31; associates of, 57n, 82n, 83, 85, 87n, 96, 97, 100, 106–8, 119, 130, 153, 186, 232, 240, 241n, 301n, 339; and Bo Juyi, 229n, and the Boliang form, 158, 160; and Cai Que, 85; calligraphy of, 116–17; collection of, 3; colophons by, 402, 434, 447; comparisons with, 14–15, 17, 79, 81, 97, 98–99, 100–101, 147n, 148–49, 153n, 160n, 257, 264, 286–87, 292–93, 379–80, 396, 411; concordance to poems by, 5n; and East Slope, 172, 173, 182, 185–86; equanimity of, 357; on Eupatorium Bottoms, 74–75; exiled to Hainan Island, 184, 185, 203, 359–62; exiled to Huangzhou, 30, 74, 137, 138–39, 172, 414, 416–17; exiled to Huizhou, 108n, 261–62; exiled to Yingzhou, 336, 339, 359; and Han Dynasty Daoist Mr. He, 324; in Hangzhou, 100, 240n, 442; and He Zhu, 90, 239, 242, 359, 443; and the heptametrical Quatrain, 380n, 408, 425; Huang Tingjian on, 362–63; and measurement of time, 314; and New Policies, 4, 30, 324n, 392, 416–17; northerners’ hostility to, 308–9; and the pentametrical Quatrain, 369, 370–71, 380n; as precedent, parallel, or influence, 20n, 27, 34, 38, 40, 52–53, 65n, 69n, 77, 80, 83–84, 88n, 91n, 104, 109n, 116, 117, 144n, 170, 173, 176, 192n, 212, 239n, 249, 264, 274n, 281, 282, 298, 305n, 329, 337, 340, 345n, 357–58, 361n, 379, 383–84, 414, 428–29; as prefect of Dingzhou, 252n; as prefect of Yingzhou, 240–41n; and the question of allegory, 31, 32; references to goosefoot staff in, 181; reign titles in poems by, 432; rhymes in, 123n, 218n, 299, 321, 430, 440; route of, to Dengzhou, 296; route of, to Huizhou and Tengzhou, 114–15; Stele for the Palace of Upper Purity and Stored-up Auspiciousness by, 261–62; and Tao Yuanming, 105–10, 177, 187; and Wang Anshi, 306, 411; wit of, 89–90, 142, 177, 187, 286–87; and Xuzhou, 41–47, 137, 138–39, 202, 227, 281– 82; 283, 287–89, 423, 432; on Zhang Liang, 64, 66 Su Shunqin, 90n, 337, 406
Su Zhe (Ziyou): attacks on Li Qingchen by, 47n; comparisons with, 257; and the heptametrical Quatrain, 408; as precedent, parallel, or influence, 94, 172–73, 184, 250n, 337; Rhapsody on the Yellow Tower by, 261; and Su Shi, 46, 114, 298, 360; and Wang Yansou, 392 Sui River, 297 suites of poems, 141–46, 186 Sumen, 52, 145, 177, 279 Sun Deng, 52n, 279 Sun Fang, 50n Sun Quan, 449 Sun Xiu (Anshi), 307–9 Suzhou, 292, 335, 449 Swallow Tower, 284 Taihang Mountains, 286 Taihe, 100 Taiqiu, 251 Taiyuan, 5 Taizong, 301 Tan Shiyun, 376n Tanabe Shha, 60 Tao Hongjing, 324 Tao Yuanming (Tao Qian): allusions to, 38, 49, 77, 98, 167–71, 173–74, 330, 331, 344–45, 395, 426–27; collection of, 184; diction of, cited, 19, 20, 81, 103, 197, 213–14, 249; format of dates in writings of, 432; friends of, 146, 340; image of, revised in 1090s, 105–10, 171, 173–77, 187; studio named after, 292n tea, 44–45, 56, 115–16, 181, 365–66n temples: on ancient site, 90; founded by Wangwu, 97–98; as hostels, 78, 86, 215, 322; at Jinshan, 86, 88; kennings for, 98; on Mt. Zhong, 83; poems on, 226n, 232 temporal phrase at end of line, 282 Tengzhou, 114, 360 Thorter Dykes. See Hengtang Three Chus, 332 Three Galleries, 320 Three Hundred Tang Poems, 193, 244n three-syllable lines, 42, 123, 142, 143 Three Xiang, 231 Tian Zhiming (Tian Zhou; Chengjun), 35, 163 Tianqing Observatories, 322 Tianxi Temple. See Changgan time, 23–25, 275, 283, 435; ambiguous, 353; cyclical, 193, 212, 218; living only in the present, 355–57; passage of, 189, 212, 224, 247; measurements of, 314, 433;
INDEX time (continued) as running away from the self, 129, 436; transition points in, 218. See also temporal phrase at end of line titles: as clues to existence of sub-genres, 264; “harmonizing” vs. “following the rhymes of” in, 278; unusual, 248–49 tonal violations: emotive effect of, 311–12; minor, in third syllable, 245–46, 250, 253, 254; offsetting semantic parallelism, 191; offsetting each other, 192, 202, 245–46, 254; rhetorical effect of, 193, 202, 235, 240, 254– 55, 291, 319, 337, 338, 345, 434; symbols showing, 9. See also metrical violations tones: antithesis of, between lines of a couplet, 138; awkward sequences of, 12, 158, 292, 335, 337, 346, 347, 432; decided on basis of meter, 224, 260, 266, 345, 353; deflected, effect of, 155, 162, 224–25, 231, 238, 314, 346; and diction, 245; emotive effect of, 161–62; entering, 28, 123, 223, 251, 290, 412; the four, indicated in Branner’s transcriptions, 8; level, in B lines, 224, 231; level, in D lines, 210, 215–16, 313, 316; level, effect of, 155, 235, 314; level, forbidden at end of nonrhyming line in Regulated Verse, 309; line type defined by, in second and last positions, 9, 188, 271, 291, 311; lone deflected or level, 12, 222, 231, 290, 335, 432, 434, 442; metrical importance of, at second position in opening line of Regulated Verse, 210, 270; of numbers, 250 349, 350; and rhyme, 12, 41, 123, 138, 141, 155, 156, 157, 207–8, 221, 272, 290, 320–21; rhetorical effect of, 138; rising, 123n; symbols for, used in this book, 9–10. See also couplets, adhesion between; meter; metrical violations; parallelism, tonal; tonal violations Tongchuan, 332 Tonggu, 93, 94 Tongji Canal, 297 transcriptions of Chinese, 7–8 Tripod Lake, 433 Tripod Stream. See Si River Vimalakrti, 69n, 83, 98 Wai Kam-moon, 208n Wan Creek, 401 Wang Anli, 75n Wang Anshi, 38n, 164, 348n, 402; comparisons with, 190, 257, 280, He Zhu’s view of, 306, 324–25, 441; and the hexametrical Quatrain,
499
400; in Jinling, 83, 146n, 305, 309n, 387n, 440, 444; as precedent, parallel, or influence, 23n, 81, 181, 233–34, 263, 424, 445, 446; reduplicatives used by, 410–11, 445; on Zhang Liang, 64, 71–74; Zi shuo by, 31n Wang Chang, 192n Wang Chun, 152 Wang Dechen, 398 Wang Gong (Wenju), 130, 194, 373, 378n Wang Hong, 170 Wang Huizhi, 355; snowy night journey of, 88, 317, 318, 322, 332, 355 Wang Ji ׆ᛎ, 307–8n Wang Ji ׆ᜎ, 315 Wang Li, 193, 245n, 282n, 284–85, 309n Wang Ling, 128n, 152–53, 241n Wang Mao (Yuangong), 179 Wang Rong, 246–47 Wang Sheng, 166 Wang Shi, 130, 135, 172, 173 Wang Shipeng, 3 Wang Shizhen, 60, 62, 63 Wang Wei, 17, 118, 160n, 208, 282n, 284, 400 Wang Xiang (Yuanxu), 155, 238 Wang Xianzhi, 140, 196 Wang Xizhi, 35, 88, 117, 148, 305, 328 Wang Yang, 52 Wang Yansou (Yanlin), 308–9, 392–94, 397 Wang Yucheng, 190, 215n, 230, 318n Wang Zhang, 307 Wang Zhuo (Xiansou), 146, 148, 316–19, 321– 22 Wang Zun, 52, 53 Wangchun Gate, 91 Wangwu (mountain and/or monk), 97, 98, 99 Wei Zhongjiang, 159 Wei Zhuang, 434, 438 Wei River, 307, 357 Wei Xian, 102 Weizhou ᓡڠ, 52, 145, 296, 332, 425, 426 Weizhou ᠿڠ, 421n Wen Qiao, 325 Wen Tingyun, 59, 196n, 197–202, 219n, 260n, 265, 268 Wen Tong, 91n Wenyang, 160 Western Province Gate, 306 Western Studio, 390 whistling, 52n, 102n, 165, 167, 206–7, 341 White Cloud Hut, 309 White Cloud Villa, 213, 294 White Egret Island, 140, 148 White Lotus Society, 146, 179
500
INDEX
Whitegate Road, 227–228 Willow Branch songs, 408, 425–26 wit, 18–19, 87–88, 89–90, 135, 145, 177, 187, 247–48, 251, 261, 373, 385–86, 398, 404, 429, 449, 451; See also under humor Wu (region or state), 254, 449 Wu form, 326n Wu Jiong, 91n Wu Qian (Dafu), 448n Wu Rong, 196n Wu Xiang (Mingshu), 177–78 Wu Youxu, 178 Wu Yu, 321 Wu Yuanheng, 111n Wu Yun, 170 Wu Zetian, 178 Wuchang, 118, 171, 175n Wucheng, 94 Wuhan, 118, 172n, 235, 448 Wujiang, 78, 228, 311n, 335n, 436, 438 Wukang, 164 Wuwei, 309 Wuxi, 44 xi (refrain word), 144n, 151, 160n Xi Kang. See Ji Kang Xi Shen, 103n Xi-Xia, 392, 393 xianpu (gazetteer?), 86 Xiang River, 231 Xiang Yu, 66, 67, 71, 73, 130, 132, 280, 283n Xianyang, 133 Xianyu Shen (Zijun), 57n Xiao He, 68, 69 Xiao-Mian, 132, 133 Xiao Qingwei, 105, 106 Xiao-Xiang, 76n, 403, 438 Xiayi, 73n Xie An, 45, 305, 306, 332, 343, 355 Xie Huilian, 343 Xie Lingyun, 113n, 185, 283n, 305, 343, 384 Xie Tiao, 82, 348 Xie Xuan, 305 Xie Zhan, 71 Xin Qiji, 170n xing (supposed type of Song), 143–46, 186 Xinhui, 114 Xu Dazheng, 89 Xu Hun, 207, 260n, 390–91 Xu Prefecture, 214n Xu Zhongya, 244 Xuanren Empress, 50 Xuanwu Lake, 387
Xuanzong, 149 Xue Neng, 47, 281, 282, 408 Xun Shuang, 174 Xuyi. See Sizhou Xuzhou, 53, 261, 376; and Chen Shizhong, 107, 108n, 214, 375; flood threat to, 423, 432; and Han Yu, 42, 49–50, 207; sites in or near, 38– 39, 41–48, 130–31, 137, 138–39, 202, 222, 280–84, 287–88, 292, 294, 373, 390; and Yang Shi, 157, 159. See also poetry society; Su Shi, and Xuzhou Yan Guang, 310, 373 Yan Hui, 183–85 Yan Jun, 39 Yan Shu, 314 Yan Yanzhi, 340, 341 Yan Zhenqing, 253 Yang Guifei (Honored Consort Yang), 149 Yang Jie, 96 Yang Rou, 425, 426 Yang Shi (Zhongli), 157, 159–60, 161, 179, 181, 302, 304 Yang Tan, 306 Yang Wanli, 165, 215n, 332 Yang Xiong, 160, 182–83, 303 Yang Xiuzhi, 184n Yang Zhu, 218, 354 Yangchun, 114 Yangchun Pavilion, 281 Yangguan Pass (tune title), 408 Yangzhou, 88, 244n, 308, 339, 444, 450; romantic associations of, 40, 446; Su Shi in, 97, 106–8 Yangzi River (Jiang): boiling, in sagas of Han founding, 132, 134; downstream travel on, 154, 177; crossing of, 97, 100, 186, 236, 315, 331, 339, 435; erosion along, 259, 261, 313n, 397; and Greyquill boat, 235; in Jiangxia area, 181, 263–64, 355; kennings for, 55n, 307; sites along, in Liyang-Nanjing area, 82, 84, 86, 140, 148, 156, 236, 313, sites along, in Runzhou area, 86, 325; as emblematic of the South, 226–27; upstream from Jiangxia, 118, 177, 340, 362, 365, 399; upstream travel on, 74, 156, 168, 342, 344 Yanshi, 308 Yanzi, 194n Yao He, 88 Ye, 13, 92, 280 Ye Mengde, 5, 38n, 265 Yecheng, 305n Yelang, 259, 260, 262, 359
INDEX Yellow Emperor, 433 Yellow Leaf Hause, 310 Yellow Millet Dream, 364, 365 Yellow River, 309, 315; administration of, 422– 23; and Bian Canal, 65n; boiling, in saga of Ji Bu, 134; climate along, 233n; course change and flooding of, 4, 36, 420–21; reference to, in oath, 104 Yellow Stone, 66, 70, 73 Yellow Tower, 41, 137, 261 Yi Yin, 114 yin (supposed type of song), 143–45, 186 Yinglong, 98 Yingzhou ڠ, 339, 340, 359 Yingzhou Ⰷڠ, 91n, 106, 107, 240–41n, 301n, 394 Yiyang, 56 Yong Chi, 67–68, 72 yong wu shi (poetry on objects), 142 Yongcheng, 296, 299, 425, 428 Yongchun xian, 86n Yongjia, 340 Yongqiu, 107, 251, 252 Yongyu Barrow, 433 Yu Dan (Qinglao), 444 Yu Liang, 203–4 Yu Shinan, 237 Yu Yi, 117 Yuan Jiang, 216 Yuan Zhen, 17, 85n, 142, 147, 337, 343n, 353 Yuancheng, 418n Yuanming Studio, 107, 108, 292n Yuanxu, 449 Yuanyou Empress, 327 Yue ᆕ, 340 Yuezhou ࢂڠ, 340 Yuezhou ။ڠ, 95, 328, 329, 332, 337 Yuling. See Yongyu Barrow Yunlong Hill (Cloudy Dragon Hill), 42–43, 139, 227, 281–82, 390 Yunzhou ᆐڠ, 172n Yunzhou ◻ڠ, 217 Yuzhang, 343n ~zai exclamation, 48–49, 137 Zeng Chen (Chengzhi), 332–34, 444–46 Zeng Guofan, 42 Zhang Bangjie (Zicai), 168–71 Zhang Fangping, 131 Zhang Han, 292, 342 Zhang Hanqiu, 438 Zhang Heng, 150–53, 323n, 350, 353 Zhang Hu, 111n, 365–66
501
Zhang Ji, 52, 86 Zhang Jiuling, 111 Zhang Lei: cited, 120n; comparisons with, 257, 424; ganyu titles in the works of, 111n; and the goosefoot staff, 181; as precedent or parallel, 165, 216, 240–42, 250, 389; preferred openings in Regulated Verse by, 209; Quatrains by, 369, 408 Zhang Liang, 64–74, 109, 132, 133, 170 Zhang Peilun, 417 Zhang Shizhi, 348 Zhang Shuo, 76, 77 Zhang Siyong (Zixiu), 86–87n Zhang Tianji (Shengtu), 42–43, 227, 228, 281, 282, 390 Zhang Wei, 259 Zhang Xu, 303 Zhang Yuangan, 438 Zhang Yue, 340, 341, 343 Zhang Zai ്ሉ (late third century), 35, 151 Zhang Zai ്ሉ (1020–77), 32–33 Zhang Zhonglian (Mofu), 211, 212, 213, 293, 294 Zhang Zhongwei, 40, 41n Zhao (ancient state), 25 Zhao Commandery, 276n, 409 Zhao Defang, 301n Zhao Dexiu, 301n Zhao Dezhao, 301 Zhao Lingshuai (Jingdao), 302, 403 Zhao Lingzhi (Jingkuang), 85, 106–7, 300–302, 304, 339, 403, 409, 411 Zhao Lingzi (Wenhuan), 403 Zhao Mian (Daoyuan), 171n Zhao Pang (Peiran), 171n Zhao Tingzhi, 309 Zhaozhou, 409 Zhedong, 292 Zhegutian (tune title), 408–9 Zheng Fang, 403 Zheng Gardens, 392 Zheng Jin (Yanneng), 54 Zheng Yuan (Linji), 278 Zhenjiang, 86, 87, 107 Zhezong, 50, 238n, 327n Zhi River, 278 Zhiyin, 391, 439–40 Zhong Zhenzhen, 359 Zhongnan Range, 177 Zhou Bin (Kaizu), 97, 98, 164–67, 341–43 Zhou Bo, 73–74 Zhou Dunyi, 89, 100–104, 352 Zhou Hang (Wenqing), 36–38, 300, 423, 424
502 Zhou Jianzhong (Yuantong), 296–98 Zhou Shou (Yuanweng), 100–104, 115–18, 352–54 Zhou Tao (Ciyuan), 100–104, 352 Zhou Wei, 297n Zhu (ancient state), 160n Zhu Guangting, 308 Zhu Xi, 321, 362n Zhu Yun, 310 Zhuangyuan Temple, 435 Zhuangzi, 18, 27n, 77, 153n, 194n, 214n, 218, 227n, 251, 413–14
INDEX Zhuge Liang, 136, 201, 229 Zhuge Vale, 229, 230 Zigong, 184 Zilu, 184 Zizhang, 184 Zu Guan, 398 Zuo Ci, 52 Zuo Qiuming, 119 Zuo Si, 20 Zuo Tradition, 119, 148, 184, 264, 356 Zuo Yu (Tusou), 235
