Aestheticism does not seem to be a good enough answer, now that it has been forever divorced from morality. Nor is my sometimes all-consuming, other times ennui-inducing, and permanently self-indulgent "love" for the literary arts, especially that of pre-modern China, a mystified shadow of its former behemoth self. ("Love" is in quotations to indicate a kind of semi-professional obsession, as distinct from, say, my love for furry feline predators. More on that later.)
Meanwhile, let us take up some rattan paper and read ourselves a few poems directly from the brush tip of one of the most expressive poets from Early Medieval China.
Name: Bao Zhao 鮑照 (no, not the dim-sum bun item bao, but the fancy abalone bao)
Sobriquet: Ming Yuan 明遠 ("Clear Distance")
Moniker: Sergeant Bao 鮑參軍 (named so for the military post he held, translated loosely)
Lifespan: 416-466
Bao Zhao lived during a period of division and chaos. Most of them did, those Dead Chinese Poets. (Some of us believe only an age of extreme disquietude would give birth to undying poets. The validity of such a platitude notwithstanding, it does explain the paucity of great poets in our current generation.)
It was an age of dynastic transition between the Eastern Jin (317-420) and what was known as the Southern and Northern Dynasties Period (420-589), when China was split into two geographically distinct regimes. (Imagine a Union-vs.-Confederacy-face-off that lasted for roughly 150 years.)
Our Dead Poet Bao had the misfortune of being a low-born gentry, which meant what little social mobility he had in a feudalistic society was through either writing or the military. From his eventual moniker "Sergeant Bao" we know that he took both routes. Military campaigns took him traveling extensively, and many of his poems describe the hardship of a traveling soldier, such as the following pentasyllabic composition:
代東武吟
主人且勿喧。賤子歌一言。仆本寒鄉士。出身蒙漢恩。
始隨張校尉。占募到河源。后逐李輕車。追虜窮塞垣。
密塗亘萬里。寧歲猶七奔。肌力盡鞍甲。心思歷涼溫。
將軍既下世。部曲亦罕存。時事一朝異。孤績誰復論。
少壯辭家去。窮老還入門。腰鎌刈葵藿。倚杖牧雞豚。
昔如鞴上鷹。今似檻中猿。徒結千載恨。空負百年怨。
棄席思君幄。疲馬戀君軒。願垂晉主惠。不愧田子魂。
"In Imitation of Song of Dongwu"1
Master, for now do not make a noise,
and listen to poor little me sing a song:
Your servant I, originally was a low gentry of no means,
born into the graciousness of the Han Dynasty.2
In the beginning, I accompanied Colonel Zhang,3
and was drafted to the head of the [Yellow] River.
Later I followed General "Swift Chariot" Li,4
chasing the barbarians out of the frontier.
Closely I traveled on roads of ten-thousand miles,
In years of peace I still made seven trips.
My physical prowess was spent on saddleback,
my heart and soul went through many a winter and summer.
Now that the general has passed beyond,
of his battalion and troops few are left.
Things of this age changed overnight,
These outstanding victories --- who still speaks of them?
I left home a young strong lad,
Old and bereft is how I returned.
At my waist hangs a scythe for cutting mallow and beans;
Leaning on my cane, I herd the chickens and pigs.
In the past I was like the hawk, perched on a leather armband;
now I resemble the caged ape.
In vain in me knots the resentment of a thousand ages,
for naught I carry the sorrow of a hundred years.
The abandoned mat longs to be your bedside curtain,5 like
a fatigued horse that misses drawing its master's chariot.6
I wish to be blessed with the grace of the Lord of Jin,
so that I shan't be shamed by Master Tian's spirit.7
Here is another frontier/traveling-soldier themed poem:
代出自薊北門行
羽檄起邊亭。 烽火入咸陽。 徵師屯廣武。 分兵救朔方。
嚴秋筋竿勁。 虜陳精且強。 天子按劍怒。 使者遙相望。
雁行緣石徑。 魚貫度非梁。 簫鼓流漢思。 旌甲被胡霜。
疾風衝塞起。 沙礫自飄揚。 馬毛縮如蝟。 角弓不可張。
時危見臣節。 世亂識忠良。 投軀報明主。 身死為國殤。
"In Imitation of Ballad of Leaving from the Northern Gate of Ji"8Feathered missives rise up from the frontier posts,
beacon fire enters Xianyang.9
Calvary troops gather at Guangwu,10
allocating soldiers to save the northern lands.
In the stern autumn chill, the bow is taut;
barbarian enemy lines are sharp and strong.
The Son of Heaven presses his sword in rage,
messengers look at one another from afar.
Swallows fly following along the stony path,
like fishes head-to-tail, crossing an aerial bridge.
Fife and drum let flow thoughts of Han,
banners and armors are clad in foreign frost.
Violent winds swirling up at the frontier,
blowing up sands and pebbles.
Horse manes cower back like hedgehogs' quills,
horned bows refuse to open up.
During times of crisis, the minister's integrity is thus shown;
in ages of chaos the good and the loyal are seen.
I would cast away my body for a virtuous ruler,
and die a martyr for my country.
If some of these imagery and metaphor of the northern borders appear cliche, it is only because Bao Zhao was writing at a time when the topic of the soldier stationed alone on the frontier had not yet extracted itself from the vast pool of mix-and-match poetics of the early Han. Caught halfway between the anonymous and vernacular older poems of the Han, and the much more familiar yet-to-come poetic vocabulary of the early Tang, Bao Zhao sought a personal expression in conventional language. His versatile talent led him to experiment with alternating lines of unequal lengths, which was pretty much hitherto undone, as far as we know. And he chose the genre of yuefu 樂府 (literally "music bureau") for his innovation, a poetic genre that grew out from lyrics composed and sung to existing tunes:
梅花落
中庭雜樹多。偏為梅咨嗟。
問君何獨然。念其霜中能作花。露中能作實。
搖蕩春風媚春日。
念爾零落逐寒風。徒有霜華無霜質。
念爾零落逐寒風。徒有霜華無霜質。
"Plum Blossoms Falling"11
In the courtyard there are is an assortment of trees, yet
alone to the plum I give my praise.
"Why, my good man, is this so?"
"On account that it can bloom in the frost, bear fruit in the snow, unlike you ---
who sway in the spring breeze, flirt with springtime sunshine.
"On account that you wither and fall, chased by the blistering wind,
useless -- you have only frostlike flowers, without frostlike substance."
"Plum Flower Falling" is a little ditty cast as a conversation between the poet and the unpraised, "assortment" of deciduous trees. The flowering plum appears frequently as a poetic image of moral rectitude and chastity, for its ability to persevere through the cold winter months.
Here is another yuefu poem describing a banquet scene where dancers swirl in rapid movements to the music of "White Hemp," a dance tune from the Warring States kingdom of Wu, located roughly in modern Jiangsu.
代白紵曲二首之一
朱唇動。素腕舉。洛陽少童邯鄲女。
古稱淥水今白紵。催弦急管為君舞。
窮秋九月荷葉黃。北風驅雁天雨霜。
夜長酒多樂未央。
"In Imitation of White Hemp Song," first of two songs
Her vermilion lips parting, white wrist raising,
[dancing are the] children from Luoyang, the girls from Handan.
Ancients call [the tune] "Clear Water," now it is "White Hemp;"
with strings vibrating and pipes rushing, let me dance for you, my lord.
End of autumn, in the ninth month, lotus leaves have yellowed;
northern winds chasing the swallows in a rainy, frosty sky.
The night is long, wine is aplenty --- let our merrymaking never end
"White Hemp" cautiously ends when the banquet has reached a point of unsurpassable joy. Yet if the poem were to continue, extreme pleasure would spill over and teeter on the verge of existential despair:
擬行路難十八首之十五
君不見柏梁台。今日丘墟生草萊。
君不見阿房宮。寒雲澤雉棲其中。
歌妓舞女今誰在。高墳壘壘滿山隅。
長袖紛紛徒競世。非我昔時千金軀。
隨酒逐樂任意去。莫令含歎下黃壚。
"In Imitation of Hard Traveling," no.15 of 18
Friend, do you not see the Boliang Terrace of yore,
now a desolate mound overgrown with weed?
Friend, do you not see the E-Fang Palace of past,
now in chilly clouds, occupied by water fowls?
Of the singing girls and dancers --- who of them remain?
tall graves, one on top of another, fill the mountain alcoves,
Long sleeves vied in vain to be the best in the world;
I am not what I was, this body that used to worth one-thousand in gold.
Enjoying wine, chasing pleasures, just let it go ----
do not let me descend into the yellow earth harboring regrets.
It is always at the peak of pleasure that one is reminded of the brevity of life. Both Boliang Terrace and E-Fang Palace are extravaganzas of past emperors: Boliang Terrace is the imperial observatory built by Emperor Wu of Han 漢武帝 (r. 141-87 B.C.), and E-Fang Palace belongs to the First Emperor of Qin 秦始皇 (r. 221-210 B.C.), one dynasty prior. Both of these figures predate Bao Zhao by over six hundred years; it would be roughly equivalent to our being moved by the splendors of the early Renaissance.
Perhaps it was Bao Zhao's many military campaigns and the many deaths he witnessed that infused his poetry with an indelible sense of desolation. For the traveling soldier, the most unbearable seasons are the late autumn leading into the dead of winter, when everything withers in the natural world and signifies decline that echoes the fear of mortality in the poet's heart. Even wine can only provide temporary escape, for the perseverance of the snow-weathering plum blossom remains but an unattainable poetic ideal for the mortal man. The poet was killed in one of the many bloodthirsty uprisings in 466, at age 54.
1 "Song of Dongwu" is an old tune from Dongwu, a city in the Warring States kingdom of Qi, located in modern day southeast Shandong.↩
2 The Han Dynasty (202B.C.-220A.D.), once established, brought relative stability. The period that this and the following couplet refer to is approximately the 150s B.C.↩
3 "Colonel Zhang" refers to Zhang Jian 張騫 (200-114B.C.), explorer and diplomat, the first official envoy to Central Asian tribes.↩
4 Li Cai 李蔡 (d. 118B.C.), a famed general who received the title "Swift Chariot" from the Han Emperor.↩
5 The abandoned mat refers to an anecdote from Hanfeizi 韓非子, which tells the story of Lord Wen of Jin who, upon returning to Jin after many years of exile, decides to throw away his bamboo sleeping mats and is criticized by his ministers as being ungrateful.↩
6 This refers to an anecdote from Hanshi waizhuan 韓詩外傳, which tells of a man named Tian Zifang 田子方 who, upon seeing an old horse that was about to be let go, purchases the horse.↩
7 See footnotes 5 and 6.↩
8 Ji is the old capital of the Warring States kingdom of Yan, located in modern southwest Beijing.↩
9 Xianyang is the capital of the Warring States kingdom of Qin, located in modern northern Shaanxi.↩
10 Guangwu is the old battleground where Chu and Han forces faced off, located in modern day Xingyang, Henan.↩
11 "Plum Blossoms Falling" is an old tune from early Han, usually played on transverse flute.↩
Such simple old soldiers song. Reading the Sergeant's poem makes all other poets seem like they try too hard. They should make a movie about him, starring Tom Hanks.
ReplyDeleteTom Hanks is a safe choice. A more daring choice would be Denzel :D
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