The Crab-Flower Club

by Cao Xueqin

  Dai-yu was by this time well on the way to recovery. She seemed so delighted to hear that Caltrop had moved into the Garden, that Caltrop felt emboldened to make her a request:

  ‘Now that I’m here and have got more time to spare, do you think you could teach me to write poetry? It would be such a piece of luck for me if you would.’

  ‘You can make your kotow and become my pupil if you like,’ said Dai-yu goodnaturedly. ‘I’m no expert myself, but I dare say I could teach you the rudiments.’

  ‘Would you really?’ said Caltrop. ‘Then I’ll be your disciple. But you must promise not to get impatient with me.’

  ‘There’s nothing in it really,’ said Dai-yu. ‘There’s really hardly anything to learn. In Regulated Verse there are always four couplets: the “opening couplet”, the “developing couplet”, the “turning couplet” and the “concluding couplet“. In the two middle couplets, the “developing” and “turning” ones, you have to have tone-contrast and parallelism. That’s to say, in each of those couplets the even tones of one line have to contrast with oblique tones in the other, and vice versa, and the substantives and non-substantives have to balance each other – though if you’ve got a really good, original line, it doesn’t matter all that much even if the tone-contrast and parallelism are wrong.’

  ‘Ah, that explains it!’ said Caltrop, pleased. ‘I’ve got an old poetry-book that I look at once in a while when I can find the time, and I long ago noticed that in some of the poems the tone-contrast is very strict, while in others it’s not. Someone told me the rhyme:

  For one, three and five

  You need not strive;

  But two, four and six

  You must firmly fix.

  and at first that seemed to explain the exceptions. But then I found that in some old poems even the second, fourth and sixth syllables seemed to have the wrong tones, and I’ve been puzzling about it ever since. Now, from what you’ve just said, it sounds as if these rules really aren’t important after all – that the most important thing is that the language should be original.’

  ‘You’ve hit it exactly!’ said Dai-yu. ‘As a matter of fact even the language isn’t of primary importance. The really important things are the ideas that lie behind it. If the ideas behind it are genuine, there’s no need to embellish the language for the poem to be a good one. That’s what they mean when they talk about “not letting the words harm the meaning”.’

  ‘I love that couplet by Lu You,’ said Caltrop:

  ‘Behind snug curtained doors the incense lingers;

  In well-worn concave patch the ground ink settles.

  That’s genuine, isn’t it? So vivid.’

  ‘Good gracious! You mustn’t go reading that sort of stuff!’ said Dai-yu. ‘It’s only because of your lack of experience that you can think shallow stuff like that any good. Once you get stuck into that rut, you’ll never get out of it. You do as I tell you. I’ve got the Collected Works of Wang Wei here. You take a hundred of Wang Wei’s pentasyllabic poems in Regulated Verse and read and re-read them, carefully pondering what you read, until you are thoroughly familiar with them all. After that read a hundred or two of Du Fu’s Regulated Verse heptasyllabics and a hundred or two of Li Bo’s heptasyllabic quatrains; then, with a firm foundation of those three poets inside you, if you go on to look at some of the earlier poets like Tao Yuan-ming, Xie Ling-yun, Ruan Ji, Yu Xin and Bao Zhao, with your quickness and intelligence you should have no difficulty in turning yourself into a fully-fledged bard within less than a twelvemonth.’

  ‘In that case,’ said Caltrop excitedly, ‘dear Miss Lin, would you please lend me that book you mentioned, so that I can take it back with me and study it before I go to bed?’

  Dai-yu told Nightingale to fetch down the volume of Regular Pentasyllabics from the Collected Works of Wang Wei.

  ‘Read the ones I’ve marked with red circles,’ she said, handing the book to Caltrop. ‘They are my own selection. Just work your way through them gradually, taking each one as it comes. If you have any difficulties, you can either ask Miss Bao about them or else get me to explain them to you next time you see me.’

  Caltrop carried the book back with her to Allspice Court, and sitting down under the lamp, began reading the poems, oblivious to all around her. Bao-chai made several attempts at making her go to bed, but in the end, impressed by such total absorption, gave up and left her alone.

  Next morning, just as Dai-yu had completed her toilet, a smiling Caltrop walked in, holding out the volume of Wang Wei and asking to exchange it for a volume of Du Fu’s heptasyllabics.

  ‘How many of them do you think you can remember?’ Dai-yu asked her.

  ‘I’ve been through all the ones marked with red circles,’ said Caltrop.

  ‘And do you think you have learnt anything from them?’

  ‘I think so,’ said Caltrop. ‘Though I can’t be sure. Perhaps you can tell me.’

  ‘Certainly,’ said Dai-yu. ‘Discussion is what I was hoping for. It is the only way of making progress. Tell me what you think they have taught you.’

  ‘Well,’ said Caltrop, ‘as I see it, poetry is very good at saying things which you can’t exactly explain but which leave a very vivid impression in your mind; also it often says things which at first seem illogical but are quite logical and natural when you stop to think about them.’

  ‘That sounds very perceptive,’ said Dai-yu. ‘What about giving an example or two of what you mean?’

  ‘Take that third couplet from his poem “On the Frontier”,’ said Caltrop:

  ‘Over a lone fire the straight smoke hangs;

  In the long river the round sun sets.

  Now how can smoke really be “straight”? And why “the round sun”? Of course the sun is round! Yet when you close the book and start thinking about those lines, the scene they describe is so vivid that it’s almost as though you had been there. And if you ask yourself what other two words he could have used instead of “straight” and “round”, you realize that there aren’t any. Then again, in a couplet from another of his poems:

  When the sun sets, the water whitens;

  When the tide rises, all the world is green.

  “Whitens” and “green” at first seem like nonsense; but when you start thinking about it, you realize that he had to use those two words in order to describe the scene exactly as it was. When you read those lines out loud, the flavour of them is so concentrated that it’s as though you had an olive weighing several thousand catties inside your mouth! And there’s another couplet of his:

  Down by the ford the late sun lingers;

  Over the village a smoke-thread climbs.

  “Lingers” and “climbs”: so simple, but so clever! I remember that year we came up to the capital we moored the boat one evening towards dusk in a very lonely stretch of country with only a few trees on the bank and a few houses far away in the distance from which the blue smoke of peasants cooking their evening meal was rising high, high into the clouds. When I read this couplet last night, it suddenly took me back to that very spot.’

  Bao-yu and Tan-chun had come in while she was talking and quietly sat down to listen. Bao-yu was impressed.

  ‘To judge by what you’ve just said, you don’t need to read any more poetry. The Emperor Jian-wen once remarked that “appreciation needs not to seek far afield”. From your discussion of that last couplet, I should say that you have already reached the samādhi!’

  ‘Actually, although you won’t know this yet,’ said Dai-yu, ‘that “smoke-thread climbs” line you admire so much is based on a line written by an earlier poet. If I show it to you, I think you will agree that it is even more austerely effective than Wang Wei’s line.’

  She took down a copy of Tao Yuan-ming’s Works, hunted out the couplet she had in mind, and handed it to her to look at:

  Half-lost in haze the distant haunts of men,

  Whose dawdling smoke the unseen hamlet marks.

  Caltrop
read it and nodded approvingly:

  ‘Yes, I see. He got the idea for “climbs” from the “dawdling” of this earlier line.’

  Bao-yu laughed delightedly.

  ‘Perfect! You must end your discussion there. If you go on any longer, you’ll begin unlearning what you’ve already discovered. You can start writing poetry yourself now, straight away. It’s sure to be good.’

  ‘I can see I shall soon be writing an invitation asking you to join our poetry club,’ said Tan-chun smilingly.

  ‘Don’t make fun of me, Miss Tan,’ said Caltrop. ‘Writing poetry is something I’ve always wanted to do, and now I’ve got the chance, I’m learning for the fun of it. I don’t expect I shall ever be any good.’

  ‘Good heavens! we only write for the fun of it ourselves,’ said Tan-chun. ‘You surely don’t imagine that what we write is good poetry? If we set ourselves up to be real poets, people outside this Garden who got to hear of it would laugh so loud that their teeth would drop out!’

  ‘That’s what Mencius calls “throwing yourself away”,’ said Bao-yu. ‘You shouldn’t do that. The other day, when I was discussing Xi-chun’s painting with some of Father’s gentlemen, they told me they had heard about our poetry club and asked if they could see some of our poems, so I wrote a few out for them from memory. I assure you, they were genuinely impressed. In fact, they have calligraphed them for blocks to have them printed.’

  ‘Is this really true?’ Tan-chun and Dai-yu asked incredulously.

  ‘If anyone’s telling lies, it must be the parrot,’ said Bao-yu.

  The two girls were aghast.

  ‘You really are the limit! Quite apart from the fact that the poems aren’t good enough, you have no business to go showing our stuff to people outside.’

  ‘What’s the harm?’ said Bao-yu. ‘If those famous poems written by poetesses in days gone by had never been taken outside the women’s quarters, we shouldn’t know about them today.’

  Just then Xi-chun’s maid Picture arrived and called Bao-yu away to her mistress. Caltrop pressed Dai-yu to lend her the volume of Du Fu; she also begged Dai-yu and Tan-chun to set her a subject for a poem.

  ‘Let me try my hand at writing one myself,’ she said, ‘and you can correct it for me.’

  ‘Last night there was a very fine moon,’ said Dai-yu. ‘I’ve been thinking of writing a poem about it myself, but haven’t yet got round to it. Why don’t you write a poem about the moon? You can use “sky” and “light” as your rhymes; but I won’t set the other rhyme-words for you, you can use whichever ones you like.’

  Clutching the volume of poems, Caltrop returned in great glee and at once began thinking about her composition. After working out the first line or two, she could not resist peeping at the Du Fu and reading a couple of poems. And in this way she continued, alternately reading and composing by fits and starts, too excited to think about eating or drinking or to sit still in the same place for two or three minutes together.

  ‘Why give yourself so much trouble when you don’t have to?’ Bao-chai asked her. ‘It’s all that Frowner’s fault. I shall have to go and have it out with her. You are inclined to be a dreamer at the best of times, but now you are becoming a real case!’

  ‘Please, Miss Bao!’ said Caltrop. ‘You are putting me off.’

  She was writing while she said this. Soon she had completed the draft of a poem and handed it to Bao-chai to look at. Bao-chai read it and laughed.

  ‘No, this is no good. This isn’t the way to write poetry. Still, don’t be disheartened. I should take it to her just the same and see what she says.’

  Caltrop followed her advice and went off to look for Dai-yu. Dai-yu took the poem and looked at it. This is what Caltrop had written:

  A chilly radiance bright, a fair round shape,

  The cold white moon hangs in the middle sky.

  The poet for inspiration seeks her oft;

  The homesick traveller from her turns his eye.

  Like a jade mirror hanging on azure wall,

  Like disc of jade suspended from on high.

  No need for lamps on such a glorious night,

  When every beam and post is bathed in light.

  Dai-yu smiled.

  ‘You’ve certainly got some ideas there, but the words you’ve expressed them in somehow don’t hang together properly. It’s because you haven’t read enough poetry yet. It looks to me as if you’ve got rather stuck with this poem. If I were you, I’d abandon it altogether and begin another one. Let yourself go a bit more this time.’

  Caltrop returned in silence. This time she did not even go indoors but remained outside among the trees at the water’s edge – to the considerable mystification of those who passed by and saw her – sitting on a rock meditating, or squatting on her heels in order to scratch characters on the ground.

  Li Wan, Bao-chai, Tan-chun and Bao-yu, hearing of this interesting sight, stood on a little hillock some distance away from her and watched with amusement. Bao-chai insisted that Caltrop had gone mad.

  ‘You should have heard her last night. She was muttering away to herself until four or five in the morning. And she can’t have slept for more than half an hour, for as soon as it was daylight, I could hear her getting up again. She rushed through her toilet and then rushed off to see Frowner. Presently she came back again, and after mooning around for half the day, she produced a poem; and as that was no good, I assume she is now trying to write another one.’

  ‘ “The genius of the place brings out the excellence of the person”,’ said Bao-yu, misquoting slightly. ‘The lord above doesn’t give us our talents for nothing. We always used to say what a pity it was that a person of her qualities should lack refinement – but look at her now! It proves there is some justice in the world.’

  ‘If only you had her powers of concentration,’ said Bao-chai, ‘you might study to some purpose.’

  Bao-yu did not reply.

  Just then a very pleased-looking Caltrop was to be seen hurrying off in the direction of the Naiad’s House.

  ‘Let’s go after her and see if it’s any better this time,’ said Tan-chun.

  When the three of them arrived, Dai-yu had the poem in her hand and was already discussing it.

  ‘What’s it like?’ they asked her.

  ‘Well, for a beginner, of course, it’s very good,’ said Dai-yu; ‘but it isn’t really right yet. It’s too laboured. She’ll have to try again.’

  The others asked if they might have a look. This is what they read:

  Silver or water on the casement cold?

  See its round source in yon clear midnight sky.

  Blanched ghostly white, plum-blossoms spread their scent,

  And dew on willow-slips begins to dry.

  Is it white powder on the paving spilled?

  Or grains of frost that on the railings lie?

  I wake to find no other soul in sight

  But that still face which through the blind sheds light.

  ‘It’s not much like a poem about the moon,’ said Bao-chai, ‘but if you altered the title to “Moonlight”, it would fit rather well. Look at these lines: each of them is not about the moon, it’s about moonlight. Well, all poetry is only a lot of nonsense! I should leave it for a few days, Caltrop, if I were you. There’s no hurry.’

  But Caltrop, though she had truly believed that this second poem was a minor masterpiece and was extremely dashed by its rejection, was most unwilling to give up. She wanted to begin thinking about her next poem straight away; and as she found the talk and laughter of the cousins distracting, she went out to where the bamboos began, at the foot of the terrace. There she gave herself up to cogitation of such fierce intensity that she became totally oblivious to all sights and sounds around her, and when Tan-chun jokingly called to her through the window to ‘call it a day’, she merely looked up with a somewhat dazed expression and replied that ‘ “day” didn’t rhyme: the rhyme-word she was using was “sky” ’. The others, hear
ing this, all burst out laughing.

  ‘The girl’s got poetry mania!’ said Bao-chai. ‘This is all Frowner’s doing.’

  ‘Nonsense!’ said Dai-yu. ‘The Sage tells us that we should be “tireless in teaching others”. She came and asked me for help. How could I possibly refuse her?’

  ‘Let’s take her to Xi-chun’s place and get her to look at the painting,’ said Li Wan. ‘Perhaps it will take her mind off poetry for a bit.’

  She went outside, the others following, and taking Caltrop by the hand, led her to the Spring In Winter room of Lotus Pavilion, where they found Xi-chun, fatigued by her labours, lying on the couch taking an afternoon nap. The painting was on the wall, masked by a covering of gauze. The cousins woke up Xi-chun and removed the cover from the painting. Barely three-tenths of it had been completed. Several female figures were to be seen scattered about here and there in the landscape.

  ‘Look,’ they said, pointing them out to Caltrop, ‘anyone who can write poetry gets put into the picture. You must hurry up and learn, so that she can put you in too!’

  After chatting and joking for a while, they broke up and went off to their several apartments.

  Caltrop could think of nothing else but her poem. In the evening she sat by the lamp thinking about it, and it was after midnight when she went to bed. Even in bed she lay with her eyes wide open, continuing to think about it; and it was not until three or four in the morning that she gradually dropped off to sleep.

  At daybreak Bao-chai woke up and listened: Caltrop appeared to be fast asleep.

  ‘She was tossing about all night,’ thought Bao-chai. ‘I wonder if she managed to finish her poem. I won’t call her now; she must be exhausted.’

  Just then she heard Caltrop laugh and call out in her sleep:

  ‘Ha! Got it! Let her try saying that this one isn’t any good!’

  Bao-chai was both touched and amused.

  ‘What have you got?’ she asked, quickly waking her. ‘This poetry business is becoming positively unnatural! I don’t know about learning how to write poetry: what you’ll likelier get, if you go on much longer in this fashion, is a serious illness!’