Chinese 323 Contemplating Nature (3)

Heidi's Selction:

A Yuefu/Yüeh-fu Song from tha Han Period

"A Withered Fish"

 

A withered fish by a river wept.

Too late for remorse now!

He wrote a letter to carp and bream

Warning them: Mind how you come and go!

 

(Anne Birrell, Popular Songs and Ballads of Han China, p. 58)

 

Adeline's Selection:

Xue Tao/Hsüeh T'ao (768-831)

"The Moon"

 

The cresent, tiny as the curtain hook;

The fan, woven on the Han loom, is round.

The slender image, its nature, to gain fullness-

Where else on earth is this seen?

 

(Tr. by Eric W. Johnson. Liu and Lo, eds., Sunflower Splendor, p. 190)

 

Kelley's Selection:

Xue Tao/Hsüeh T'ao (768-831)

 

"Sketch of Stonebarrel Mountain"

 

Hills and rivers in landscape

paintings of the Wangs:

 

all is expressed

through appearances-

white lead powder,

ink.

 

But today I chanced to climb

a barren scene

and gaze

 

at Stepway Ridge,

at Kingfisher Cap,

at their thousand peaks.

 

(Jeanne Larsen, Brocade River Poems: Selected Works of the Tang Dynasty Courtesan Xue Tao, p. 77)

Translator offers the following explanation on this poem:

"Hills (or mountains) and rivers" is the Chinese idiom for "landscape." In the original, as in the translation, the reader is a few words into the poem before learning whether a painting or the earth itself is being described. The poet continues to play with the concept of illusion, reminding us that paintings (and therefore, all that they manage to express or even to create) are entirely effects of the artist's paint and powdered pigment.

Similarly the phrase "barren scene" has been used not only to describe a desolate, hilly territory but as a Buddhist term for "the realm free of passions." The implication here is that the scene viewed from the hilltop was both a wasteland and a reminder of the reality behind the apparently real, the Void. The poem closes with one more reversal. Just as a flat painting in black and white re-presents a three-dimensional scene, so when the poet climbed to this empty place she suddenly saw the manifold peaks of nearby mountains whose very names suggest life, color, and the allure of human appearances. (pp. 103-4)

 

Travis' Selection:

Du Mu/Tu Mu (803-52)

"Pien River blocked by Ice"

 

For a thousand miles along the river, when the ice begins to close,

Harness jades and girdle jaspers tinkle at the jagged edge.

The drift of life's no different from the water under the ice

Hurrying Eastward day and night while no one notices.

 

(A.C. Graham, Poems of the Late T'ang, p. 131)

 

Catherine's Selection:

Li Shang-yin (812-858)

 

"Spring Wind"

 

Though the blue spring wind is naturally fine,

Things in spring are too luxuriant.

If only spring had feelings, she should

Send flowers to one twig alone.

My feelings differ from spring's feelings:

Before spring, I am already heartbroken.

 

(James J. Y. Liu, The Poetry of Li Shang-yin, p. 136)

 

"Being Intoxicted beneath the Flowers"

 

While searching for fragrance, I became intoxicated with the "Streaming Cloud" unawares;

As I slept soundly, leaning against a tree, the sun had already set.

After the guests have dispersed and I have woken up deep in the night,

I still hold a red candle to enjoy the few remaining flowers.

 

(James J. Y. Liu, The Poetry of Li Shang-yin, p. 137)

 

Valerie's Selection:

Lu You/Lu Yu (1125-1210)

 

"The Stone on the Hilltop"

 

Autumn wind: ten thousand trees wither;

spring rain: a hundred grasses grow.

Is the really some plan of the Creator,

this flowering and fading, each season that comes?

Only the stone there on the hilltop,

its months and years too many to count,

knows nothing of the four-season round,

wearing its constant colors unchanged.

The old man has lived all his life in these hills;

though his legs fail him, he still clambers up,

now and then strokes the rock and sighs three sighs:

how can I make myself stony like you?

 

(Burton Watson, tr., The Columbia Anthology of Traditional Chinese Literature, p. 258)