The Songs of Chu

by Gopal Sukhu

  Whoever the author was, the poem is unmistakably a product of Han times. It is one of the few places in the Chuci where the word xian 仙, meaning “transcendent” or “immortal,” occurs. While this word occurs earlier, the xian is not an important figure in pre-Han literature. By the Han the xian represents one of the alternatives to worldly success: the quest for immortality. The thought system that supported this aspiration is traditionally called Daoism, but it should be distinguished from the philosophy represented in the Laozi and the Zhuangzi. In those texts immortality is not a worthy object of desire, as it was thought to be in disaccord with the Dao. In the Zhuangzi those who seek to live forever through exercises, diets, and potions are sometimes even ridiculed. In Han Daoism, however, such regimes were not only respected but also believed to have in fact transformed a substantial number of human beings into xian. The xian were thought to live in remote places like mountains, islands, and even heaven and to have many powers, including healing and flight. Two of the most famous mythical xian, Red Pine (赤松 Chi Song) and Wangzi Qiao 王子喬 (also known as 王僑 Wang Qiao), are mentioned in the poem. A fascinating feature of this poem is that the persona prefers continued life as a mortal to becoming an immortal so that he can better serve his lord.

  The persona, however, also warns that there are other honest ministers who are leaving the king’s court, repelled by its corruption.

  I agree with Hawkes, Wang Siyuan, and others that this poem is made up of not altogether well-joined fragments, some apparently from other poems. I have indicated with ellipses where I think the major breaks in continuity occur.

  Regretting the Vows

  Deploring how I grow older by the year and weaker by the day,

  realizing how many harvests have come and gone never to return,

  I float high, climbing toward blue skies,

  passing through the mountains, daily farther,

  observing the winding river ways wriggling below.

  Then, with clothes dripping after skimming the four seas,

  I ascend to the polestar to rest,

  and breathe in the air of midnight to satisfy my hunger.

  The Vermilion Bird1 flies ahead, on command, to scout for me,

  as I drive Great Unity’s2 ivory chariot,

  with the Azure Dragon3 undulating in the left harness,

  and the White Tiger4 galloping in the right.

  And I raise the sun and moon for canopies

  over the jade women5 who ride in my rear wagons,

  And with them I gallop through dark space,

  Then to rest in the Kunlun Mounds,

  Where we exhaust the limits of pleasure. Still not satisfied,

  I want to wander in playful company with the clear-sighted spirits,

  So I cross the Cinnabar River,6 and pursue at full gallop …

  And on my right the ancient customs of Bactria7 …

  On its first ascent the golden swan sees the wriggling network

  of mountains and rivers …

  On its next ascent it observes the right angles of the earth and the curve of the sky,

  and looks down on the teaming populations of the central states,

  As it yields to the play of the whirlwinds …

  Then we alight in the wilds of the Plain of Youth.8

  Red Pine and Wang Qiao, two masters, join me,

  Each bringing his many-stringed se, which they tune to each other, and

  Perform the “Qing shang”9 at my request.

  At peace and content,

  I wheel through the air absorbing its many energies,

  Mindful, nevertheless, that I’d rather return to my old home

  Than live a transcendent’s endless life …

  When the golden swan comes to nest out of season,

  The owls flock to stop her.

  When the spirit dragon seeks lodging in a waterless land,

  Ants and mole crickets make him their prey.

  If that’s what befalls golden swans and spirit dragons,

  How much worse for the virtuous in chaotic times?

  Life passes gnomon slow, daily I grow weaker.

  As time turns, surely and unceasing,

  The common run never stops following

  the crooked who gather to straighten the already straight,

  and form secret cliques

  to advance each other illicitly,

  while others withdraw from life,

  to hide deep in safety.

  Bitter it is to be weighed in the scales of the careless,

  to be mixed in a pail with the worthless, to be leveled by the same screed,

  and balanced against the same counterweight.

  Some adapt to what is required, changing shape as needed,

  And others speak honestly, daring to contradict.

  It hurts me that you can’t distinguish the faithful from the frauds,

  you who twine your rope with both silk and straw.

  This benighted age is the work of the vulgar.

  They confuse black and white, beautiful and ugly.

  They reject turtles from the deep pools and high-mountain jade,

  while they conspire to raise the price of pebbles.

  Mei Bo10 for his many remonstrations found himself pickled in brine.

  While Lai Ge11 obeying his lord’s every whim won sway in the kingdom.

  Sad to see the humane maintaining their integrity

  Only to be savaged by the small.

  After Bi Gan12 offered his loyal critique, they split his heart open,

  So Ji Zi13 let his hair hang down and feigned insanity.

  Water dammed off from its source stops flowing,

  A tree cut off from its roots stops growing.

  It is not to preserve myself that I fret over the coming disaster

  I simply regret that as a wounded man I’ll be helpless to save my lord.

  Envoi

  It is too late!

  Did you not see the luan birds14 and phoenixes circling high over our heads,

  who then went to perch in the great unplowed wilds,

  who will wander the four directions and never nest,

  save where they see the virtuous thrive?

  Sages of godly virtue escape dirty worlds and hide—

  for isn’t a unicorn bridled and tethered

  little different from a dog or a goat?

  NOTES

    1. Vermilion Bird (赤鳥 Chi Niao) is a Chinese constellation associated with summer and the south.

    2. The Great Unity (太一Taiyi), worshipped in the Nine Songs, is a personification of the Dao.

    3. Azure Dragon (蒼龍 Cang Niao) is the Chinese constellation associated with east and spring.

    4. White Tiger (白虎 Bai Hu) is the collective name of the seven-member western group of the twenty-eight Chinese constellations.

    5. Jade women (玉女 yu nü) are female xian, or immortals.

    6. The Cinnabar River (丹水 Dan Shui) flows from the Kunlun Mountains.

    7. Bactria (Daxia 大夏) is not a place mentioned in Chinese sources before the Han dynasty.

    8. The Plain of Youth (少原 Shao Yuan) is one of the realms of the xian, or immortals.

    9. “Qing shang” 清商 is an ancient mode associated with autumn and melancholy.

  10. Mei Bo 梅白 was dismembered and soaked in brine for criticizing the cruelties of Djou, the last king of the Shang dynasty. Djou also fed Mei Bo’s pickled flesh to his vassals.

  11. Lai Ge 來革 was a courtier who flattered his way into the favor of the cruel last Shang king.

  12. Bi Gan 比干 was the uncle of King Djou and was thought to be a sage. His cruel nephew had heard that the heart of a sage was different from that of most people, so he had Bi Gan’s heart cut out to see if it was true.

  13. Ji Zi 箕子, or Viscount Ji, was a Shang-dynasty prince who opposed the cruelties of Djou but escaped torture
and execution at his hands by pretending to be insane. He escaped to North Korea after the Zhou overthrew the Shang and is believed to be buried in Pyongyang.

  14. Luan 鸞 birds are fabulous birds in the “phoenix” category.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “Mourning Qu Yuan”   弔屈原    “Diao Qu Yuan”

  and

  “The Owl Rhapsody”   服賦   “Fu fu”

  Jia Yi

  Jia Yi 賈誼 (200–168 B.C.E.) was an important writer, thinker, and political figure of the early Former Han dynasty. His scholarly accomplishments, even as a youth, were so impressive that Wu Gong, the governor of his home city of Luoyang, recommended him to Emperor Wen (r. 180–157 B.C.E.), who appointed him erudite (博士 boshi). At that time this rank designated an official with teaching and advisory responsibilities who was a specialist in at least one classic. Jia Yi’s performance in that position was such that he rose rapidly to the rank of dazhong dafu 大中大夫, in which capacity he advocated governmental reforms. His success and his proposals attracted the envy and ire of the entrenched bureaucracy, who exerted pressure on the emperor to rein in the young upstart. The emperor eventually yielded and sent Jia Yi into exile to serve as grand tutor to the Prince of Changsha, near the city of the same name in modern Hunan. There he wrote both “Mourning Qu Yuan” and “The Owl Rhapsody.”

  Finding himself in Changsha, the main site of Qu Yuan’s exile and suicide, he was moved by the similarity of their plights to write “Mourning Qu Yuan.” The poem occupies a special position in Chuci studies because it contains the earliest known reference to Qu Yuan in a datable poem. It may also mark the beginning of the Han Chuci craze that increased in ardor later in the dynasty.

  “The Owl Rhapsody” is a philosophical poem based in classical Daoism—that is, the Daoism of the Laozi and Zhuangzi, which advocates the calm acceptance of death based on the recognition of its inevitability in the larger process (or Dao) of the universe. That is, at least, part of the message Jia Yi imagines spoken by an owl, a bird of ill omen in China, after it flies into his room. Similarities between this poem and “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe naturally come to mind.

  After about four years, the emperor summoned Jia Yi back to the palace to serve as grand tutor to his youngest son, Prince Huai of Liang (178–169 B.C.E.). Unfortunately the prince died after being thrown from his horse while still under his tutelage. Jia Yi, feeling somehow responsible, died in a state of depression shortly thereafter.

  Jia Yi’s work was not part of the Wang Yi edition of the Chuci, but Zhu Xi included these two poems in his Song-dynasty edition to replace some of the Han poems in Wang Yi’s edition that he found mediocre.

  Mourning Qu Yuan

  Through the great kindness of His Majesty

  I bring my blameworthy incompetence1 to serve in Changsha,

  Where I hear the story of Qu Yuan,

  Who drowned himself in the Miluo River,

  And as I come to reside near the flow of the Xiang,

  I reverently mourn that gentleman,

  Who in the grip of a generation that knew no limits,

  Lost his life.

  Alas, the pity!

  To have the ill luck to live in such an era,

  When the phoenix took cover,

  While the buzzards soared—

  When esteem and glory went to the worthless,

  And slander and flattery assured success,

  When worthies and sages were dragged by the feet,

  And the upright were turned on their heads,

  A time when Sui and Yi were called corrupt,

  and Zhi and Qiao pure,

  And the Moye2 sword was reckoned dull,

  and blades of lead thought sharp.

  I sigh, speechless.

  For it wasn’t his fault that

  They cast away the dynastic cauldrons of Zhou,

  And valued worn-out clay jars,

  That they yoked tired oxen to their chariots,

  Or harnessed lame mules,

  While the thoroughbred, ears drooping,

  Pulled the salt carts,3

  And the caps of royal officers

  were cut to line their shoes.

  How long could that have lasted?

  Alas, how bitter for him

  To suffer such wrongs alone.

  Envoi

  “It is all over now,” he said,4

  “No one in the kingdom values me.”

  Alone in your melancholy, to whom could you speak?

  Rising on air the phoenix heads for a higher realm,

  Ensuring its safety by keeping its distance.

  The spirit dragon enters the deepest pool,

  Its treasure, itself, submerged and out of sight.

  If it shuns the crocodile and otter to live in hiding,

  Why would it mingle with shrimp and leeches?

  The divine virtue of the sage that you so value

  protects itself by keeping far from the filthy world.

  If a horse that can gallop a thousand miles is tethered and hobbled,

  How does it differ from a dog or a goat?

  You suffered similar wrong by tarrying in the chaos—

  That indeed was your mistake.

  You could have traveled the Nine Regions to find another ruler—

  Why did you cling so to such a city?

  The phoenix and simurgh soar a thousand fathoms high,

  And land only where they see virtue’s glory,

  But seeing slight virtue’s dangerous signs,

  They beat their wings faster and depart.

  Would a fathom-long puddle of stagnant water

  Have room for a fish large enough to swallow a boat?

  Surely even a sturgeon or whale, with its choice of any river or lake,

  Will be bullied by mole crickets and ants in such a place.

  The Owl Rhapsody

  In the chanye5 year,

  the fourth month, summertime was just beginning,

  On the gengzi day toward evening,

  into my room flew an owl.

  Standing at the corner of my sitting mat,

  at ease and fearless,

  Strange beast landing in my house

  I thought must be some sort of sign.

  Rolling out the divination scroll

  I read it was an omen:

  “Wild bird enters room,

  the master of the house will soon depart.”

  I respectfully inquired of the bird,

  “If I am going,

  Where? If to a good place, tell me.

  If it’s not, I want to know.

  What disaster’s in the offing? Sooner? Later?

  How long have I?”

  Sighed the owl with head uplifted, beat its wings,

  And spoke no word.

  But let me tell you what it wished to say:

  “Everything is in a constant state of change,

  moving in a circular flow,

  always pushing forward only to return,

  from energy to form, from form to energy,

  like the cicada molting

  mysterious, infinite,

  beyond the border of words.

  “Misfortune depends on good fortune.

  Good fortune hides in misfortune.

  Joy and grief crowd through the same gate.

  Calamity and felicity rule the same realm.

  “The kingdom of Wu was great and strong,

  but, under King Fuchai, defeated.

  The kingdom of Yue once fled to Mount Guiji,

  But, under King Goujian, it triumphed.6

  “Li Si7 wandered into success

  but died by the five cruelest penalties.8

  Fu Yue once worked on a chain gang

  but rose to be Wu Ding’s9 prime minister.

  Are not good fortune and bad

  But two strands entwining to make one rope?

  “Fate cannot be fathomed.

  Who kn
ows how you will end?

  The swifter the water, the harder the sailing.

  The swifter the arrow, the farther it strikes.

  There is no action that is not reaction,

  a resonance, a turning in turn,

  clouds rising, rain falling,

  bound to each other by numberless threads.

  “A great potter at his wheel

  turning out countless creations,

  Heaven is unpredictable.

  You cannot foresee its Way.

  Life, whether long or short, is predestined.

  How can you know when your time is at hand?

  “Now Heaven and Earth are the furnace;

  creation and change, the smiths,

  yin and yang, the charcoal,

  and the myriad creatures the bronze ware.

  The joining, separating, destruction, and production

  what meaning or purpose gives shape to it all?

  “One of countless changes and transformations

  without beginning or end,

  you are an accident.

  What of you is worth clinging to?

  You will change into something else.

  What about that makes you afraid?

  Those of little wisdom think themselves precious,

  scorning the idea that they might become other.

  “But the enlightened ones

  have broader vision.

  To the next phase, whatever it brings, they nod yes.

  “The greedy will sacrifice themselves for wealth.

  The ardent will sacrifice themselves for fame.

  The ambitious will die for power.

  But most people simply want to live.

  And, seduced by our desires,

  we sometimes rush east and sometimes west.

  But the great do not so much as bend.

  To them the infinite forms of change are one.

  “The stupid are bound to the ordinary.