The Collected Poems of Li He
Page 28
7. As Ban did, when invited to ride with the Emperor. She refused on the grounds that only degenerate rulers allowed women to accompany them on their outings.
8. Paper money, burnt at funerals, flutters around the graveyard pines.
9. A party is going on in a wealthy household.
10. A reference to the legend about ten suns once appearing on the Fu-sang tree. The line means: (a) the entrance court was bright with candles, (b) the sun never set on their merrymaking.
11. “White fishes”: culters. The fish are attracted by the music.
12. Whistling was a form of entertainment.
13. Because Mount South is eternal, while man’s life is ephemeral.
Song: Never Sorrow
5-character: 2 rhymes
Songs about a singing-girl called Mo-chou (whose name means “Never Sorrow”) date back to the Six Dynasties period, probably to the early fifth century or so. They belong to that rather languid yet passionate tradition of southern love-songs which was later to assert itself anew in that genre known as the ci.
1. A pool near Jiang-ling. North of it stood the Fishing Tower of King Zhuang of Chu.
2. The fishes were painted on the prow of the boat, which she needed for gathering lotuses.
3. For aloeswood, see above Poem.
4. She was playing a se, see Poem 1 from Six Satires above.
5. Or possibly: “A sliver of waning moon, like a curtain-hook.”
Pleasure Comes at Night
7-character: 2 rhymes
A fashionable singing-girl, with a wealthy clientele, entertains her guest.
1. A pattern of carp was carved onto the candelabra.
2. Gibbons were so fond of wine that they were generally captured by making them drunk. Hence wine-jars were often shaped like gibbons.
3. Literally: “A smile from A-hou…A-hou was a name used for singing girls, deriving from a poem of Emperor Wu of Liang.
4. Dawn has come and her guest is departing for the court.
5. Where high officials stayed while awaiting audience with the emperor.
Deriding the Snow
5-character: 1 rhyme
A girl is deriding the snow because its promise of the joy of spring is false, since her soldier husband is still away from home.
1. Cong-ling mountains: mountains in the Himalayas, north of Nepal.
2. “Orchid isles”: perhaps gardens of rich families in Chang-an.
3. “Dragon Sands”: the desert beyond the Great Wall.
4. Ding Ling-wei, from Liao-dong (on the Korean border), was a Taoist who could change himself into a crane. He returned home after an absence of a thousand years to find all his friends long dead. The girl is comparing her husband, now feathered white with the snow that is falling beyond the Great Wall, to an aging crane that has flown off to Liao-dong never to return. We could also translate thus: “It’s been long since the snow parted from the crane on the walls of Liao. The feather-robe by now must have grown sere.”
Ballad: Spring Longings
7-character: 1 rhyme
A courtesan, alone at night, is dreaming of her lover.
1. She is playing her pi-pa, which is decorated with a pattern of phoenixes and fairies, with a plectrum, whose guard was made of gold. So: “Strumming with a plectrum tipped with gold, she plays ‘Fiery Phoenix.’ ”
2. “Clouds”: her hair.
3. Dragon-brain was a name given to Borneo camphor, a highly prized aromatic.
4. “A-hou”: see “Pleasure Comes at Night” above.
5. Zhou Yu (175–210) was noted for his bravery and good looks.
Ballad of the White Tiger
7-character: 6 rhymes
Commentators generally maintain this poem couldn’t have been written by He. While agreeing that this poem is markedly inferior in style to the rest of He’s work, I feel that since arguments based on stylistic grounds alone are rather dubious, its exclusion from this collection would be unjustifiable. The white tiger stands for the Qin dynasty, which conquered the last of the feudal kingdoms in 221 B.C., thus bringing about the formation of a centralized state. White was the symbolic colour assigned to Qin; the tiger was the symbol of oppressive government. The King of Qin, who reigned as First Emperor of Qin (Qin Shi Huang-di) from 221 to 210, was a ruthless innovator, a great destroyer of tradition, who earned for himself the undying execration of the Confucian literati.
1. The fire-bird was the symbol of the Zhou dynasty. When King Wu of Zhou was on his way to destroy the Shang dynasty, fire fell from heaven upon his house and then took on the form of a red crow with a melodious song.
2. Li Si, Qin Shi Huang-di’s minister, persuaded his master to order that all histories of the feudal states (with the exception of those of Qin) should be burnt, as well as The Classic of Poetry, The Classic of History, and the philosophical works of the Hundred Schools.
3. The expression pei jue “to wear a jade ring at the belt,” also means by a play on words, “to act decisively.” The government was militaristic and ruthless.
4. Qin Shi Huang-di is said to have sent the magician Xu Shi on an expedition to search for the three magic islands of the Immortals which were supposed to lie in the Eastern Sea. On his return, Xu Shi excused his failure by claiming that a great fish had prevented him from reaching the islands. He went on to ask that an archer with a multiple-firing crossbow should accompany him on his next trip to deal with the fish. The Emperor then ordered that all fishermen and sailors should take arms against this fish.
5. Nobody could enlist the aid of Heaven to destroy Qin. “Sky River”: the Milky Way.
6. Literally: “Who suffered most, who suffered most?”
7. Jing Ke, also known as Jing Qing, was a man from Wei who eventually became a retainer of Prince Dan, the heir-apparent of the state of Yan. He was something of a drunkard, spending his days sprawled in the marketplace with his friend Gao Jian-li, who was a skilled performer on the five-stringed zhu-lute, singing and drinking wine. In 227 B.C., when Yan was menaced by Qin, he volunteered to set off on a suicidal mission to assassinate the King of Qin. The attempt failed and Jing was cut to pieces. Gao Jian-li then tried to avenge Jing’s death by filling his lute with lead and attacking the King of Qin with it. This attempt was also unsuccessful.
8. Liu Bang, the founder of Han, called himself the son of the Scarlet Emperor. Hence the Han banners were scarlet.
Someone I Love
Irregular: 5 rhymes
Here the poet is speaking through the person of Wen-jun, wife of the poet Si-ma Xiang-ru. She is waiting for him to return from his journey to Shu.
1. Sichuan.
2. Literally: “the wind of the second lunar month.” This can fall any time between the end of February and mid-April.
3. As did the tears of the two wives of Shun, which fell upon the bamboos near the river Xiang and made them speckled.
4. The Milky Way.
5. The yi-yuan, a fifth-century collection of tales of the supernatural, carries the story of a certain Tao Kan, who pulled up a shuttle while out fishing. After he had taken this home and hung it up on a wall, it changed into a red dragon and flew away. Presumably shuttles were sometimes carved in the shape of dragons to commemorate this story.
6. The Weaving Lady and the Herd-boy, lovers separated by the river of the Milky Way, are fated only to meet on the seventh day of the seventh month, when the wings of magpies form a bridge for them to cross the waters which divide them. Since the west wind, the harbinger of autumn, has not yet risen, the seventh month is along way off.
7. The moon.
8. Pieces of jade arranged so that they would tinkle musically when the wind blew, were hung by the windows of well-to-do houses.
9. To consult the omens so that she might know when her husband would return. One version reads “south of the Wall…”
Ridiculing a Young Man
7-character: 6 rhymes
1. As Han Yan, companion of Emperor Wu, did
during the Former Han dynasty, losing a dozen a day.
2. Either “I have never been under obligation to anyone,” or “I have never travelled.”
3. An allusion to a passage in a Buddhist sutra which warns: “When the hair grows white and the face turns haggard, death is near.” This poem is surely too superficial and vulgar to be anything but a forgery.
A Private Road in Eastern Kao-ping County
5-character: 1 rhyme
This poem was probably written when He was visiting Zhang Che in Lu zhou. Gao-ping county is in Shanxi.
1. Ternstroemia japonica.
Ballad of the Immortals
7-character: 2 rhymes
1. On the magic islands of the Immortals in the Eastern Sea.
Song: Dragons at Midnight
7-character: 5 rhymes
1. Gong and zhi are the first and fourth notes of the pentatonic scale.
2. Images evoked by the music.
3. The sound of silk being beaten on the fulling-blocks in autumn, to make winter clothes, is a familiar symbol of parting and sorrow.
The Kun-lun Envoy
7-character: 2 rhymes
Emperor Wu of Han sent Zhang Qian as an envoy to the far west, where he came upon the source of the Yellow River, in a range of mountains he dubbed “Kun-lun.” Though this poem appears to be a satire on the insatiable ambitions of Emperor Wu, who was always eager to enlarge his empire, it is actually an attack on Emperor Xian-zong.
1. Emperor Wu was already buried in the Mao-ling tomb before Zhang returned.
2. No Taoist recipes could give the Emperor the secret of eternal life. For the brazen bowls see the poem “Songs of the Brazen Immortal Bidding Farewell to Han” above.
3. Stone unicorns (qi-lin) and carved dragons around the mausoleum are weathering with time.
Tang-ji of Han Sings as the Wine is Drunk
5-character: 2 rhymes
In the ninth month of A.D. 189 Dong-zhuo forced the boy-emperor, Liu Bian (Shao-di), to abdicate after a reign of only a few months. In the first month of the following year Zhuo ordered Li Ru, one of his officers, to force the Emperor to drink a poisoned draught. The Emperor then held a farewell banquet at which his wife, Tang-ji, sang and danced for him. When this was over, he drank the poison and died. Afterwards Tang-ji returned to her native town to live in seclusion, refusing to marry.
1. Since the Emperor was not imprisoned at Yun-yang (Shanxi), one commentator believes this is an allusion to Cheng Miao, who was said to have invented the form of writing known as li-shu (clerkly script) while in prison at Yun-yang. Hence Yun-yang here is simply a literary term for “gaol.” Since the Emperor was on the verge of death he is styled a “ghost.”
2. The usual text reads:
“Grasping swords as bright as autumn water,
Evil powers often threatened the emperor.”
3. The expression “a mountain of jade about to topple” was used to describe the poet Xi Kang (223–62) when drunk.
4. The Emperor will not be buried with imperial honours.
5. “Zhao-yang”: the name of the palace of the Han Empress Zhao Fei-yan. Here it means the palace where Tang-ji had lived.
6. “Southern road”: the busy road to the south. Tang-ji will live in seclusion.
Song: Listening to Master Ying Playing the Lute
7-character: 4 rhymes
Ying was evidently a celebrated performer on the qin. Han Yu also wrote a poem to him with the same title.
1. The clouds drift towards the Milky Way leaving the moon (“the isle of cassia flowers”) shining serenely.
2. “Two phoenixes”: Ying’s hands.
3. The lute sounds like the singing of the goddess of Mount Tian-mu (in Xin-chang county, Zhejiang), which was once heard by a King of Yue.
4. “Hidden” because worn inside the garments.
5. See the poem Song of the Sword of the Collator in the Spring Office above, for the story of Zhou Chu.
6. Zhang Xu, a contemporary of Li He’s, was famous for his calligraphy in the draft script. When drunk he would rush wildly around shouting, then soak his long hair in ink and use it to write down huge characters. When sober, he could remember nothing of this, swearing he must have been possessed by a spirit.
7. Master Ying must have resembled a Buddhist monk.
8. This was the great lute (da qin) which was eight feet one inch in length.
9. Literally: “Not the grandson of a kolanut tree.” Mount Yi-yang, in Jiangsu, was renowned for its kolanut trees, which were prized for lute-making. The small branches which were generally used were called “grandsons.” He remarks that this particular lute is so big it must have taken a whole tree to make it, not just a branch.
10. A mat of dragon’s-beard or Baltic rush.
Ballad of the World
5-character: 1 rhyme
A young girl, brought up in the Imperial palace, leaves it to become a singing-girl.
1. “Shang-lin park”: the Imperial park.
2. “Pomegranate skirt”: the pomegranate-coloured skirt of a singing-girl.
Select Bibliography
The following editions of Li He’s poems were among those consulted:
CHINESE EDITIONS
San Jia Ping Zhu Li Chang-ji Ge Shi. Shanghai, 1959.
Li He Shi Ji. Edited by Ye Cong-qi. Peking, 1959.
Li Chang-ji Wen Ji. Taibei, 1967.
Li He Ge Shi Bian. Taibei, 1971.
Tang Li He Xie Lü Gou Yuan. Hong Kong, 1973.
JAPANESE EDITIONS
Ri Ga. Edited by Arai Ken. Tokyo, 1959.
Ri Chūkichi Kashishū. Edited by Suzuki Torao, 2 vols. Tokyo, 1961.
Ri Ga. Edited by Saitō Shō. Tokyo, 1967.
Among secondary works consulted were the following:
ENGLISH
Chen, David. “Li Ho and Keats: A Comparative Study of Two Poets.” Unpublished dissertation, Indiana University, Bloomington, 1962.
Du Guo-jing. “The Poetry of Li Ho (790–816).” Unpublished dissertation, Stanford University, 1974.
Fish, Michael B. “Mythological Themes in the Poetry of Li Ho (791–817).” Unpublished dissertation, Indiana University, Bloomington, 1973.
Robertson, Maureen A. “Poetic Diction in the Works of Li Ho (791–817).” Unpublished dissertation, University of Washington, Seattle, 1970.
South, Margaret T. Li Ho: A Scholar-official of the Yuan-ho period (806–821). Adelaide, 1967.
CHINESE
Ai Wen-bo (Robert L. Frick). Li He Shi Yin De (A Concordance to the Poems of Li Ho 790–816). Taibei, 1969.
Hu Yun-yi. Tang Shi Yan Jiu. Shanghai, n.d.
Qian Zhongw-shu. Tan Yi Lu. Shanghai, 1937.
Zhou Cheng-zhen. Li He Lun. Hong Kong, 1972.
Zhou Lang-feng. She Ren Li He. Shanghai, n.d.
JAPANESE
Harada Kenyu. “Ri Chōkichi o megutte,”
Hō Kō nos. 1–6 (March 1953–September 1956).
“Ri Ga no shōki,” Hō Kō, no. 10 (July 1963); no. 13 (October 1966): also in Kyōto Joshi Daigaku Jinbun Ronsō, nos. 7, 8 and 14–18 (November 1962–June 1970). Ri Ga Kenkyu (January 1971–).
Kusamori Shinichi “Suisho no kyaku—Ri Chōkichi den,” 41 chapters in Gendai-shi techō vol. 8 no. 9 and vol. 16 no. 4.
For a complete bibliography see my The Poems of Li Ho (Oxford, 1970), pp. 284–89.