by Tu Fu
TWO QUATRAINS
T The two sections can be read as a single 8-line poem.
3 These swallows would be gathering mud for their nests.
LATE SPRING
2 Hsiao and Hsiang: the region south of Tung-t’ing Lake, named after two of its major rivers. Tu Fu had often hoped that he could travel to this region and settle there.
FAILING FLARE
T Failing flare: p. 150.
8 Unsummoned soul: While Tu Fu is thinking of his being “unsummoned” to the court, he is also alluding to lines 23–29 of the “Summons of the Soul” (from the Ch’u Tz’u—p. 143), where a shaman-speaker is trying to recall the soul of Ch’ü Yüan after he has died:
O soul, come back—you cannot stay in the south. There, tattoo-faced and black-toothed, they offer human flesh to gods and pound bones into paste.
Deadly cobras are everywhere there; huge thousand-mile foxes roam. And nine-headed monsters flash near and far feeding their heart’s content on people. o, come back, come back—you’ll never last long there.
THE MUSK DEER
T Musk deer: very small animals, averaging only two feet in height, and very timid. Today, musk deer (chi) are slaughtered in the wild by the hundreds of thousands not for food, but for their musk oil (each male having only one teaspoon of oil), which is used in fine perfumes.
3 Hermit immortals: After studying for many years, a Taoist hermit named Ko Hsien-weng became an immortal and was transformed into a white musk deer.
DAY’S END
7–8 Flame flickers good fortune: It was thought to be an auspicious sign when a lamp’s flame sputtered.
AUTUMN PASTORAL
This sequence resumes the innovations of “Reflections in Autumn.”
1.3 Well Rope: the star which, according to Chinese astrology, controls the fortunes of the K’uei-chou region.
2.8 North Mountain’s ferns: Po Yi and Shu Ch’i (12th c. B.C.) were esteemed recluses who lived at the end of the Shang Dynasty. Although the Shang emperor was frightfully malevolent, they refused to change their allegiance when the dynasty was overthrown. Refusing even to eat the grain of the benevolent new Chou Dynasty, they withdrew to North Mountain, where they lived on ferns until they finally died of cold and hunger. A bitterly self-mocking allusion.
3.1–3 Paraphrasing Confucius and Chuang Tzu, line 1 proposes the Confucian way (in terms Chuang Tzu specifically denounces), line 2 the Taoist one.
3.3 Gauze cap: These caps, made of thin black silk, were worn by officials. The neglected state of Tu’s cap suggests that he has let his Confucian discipline go by the boards. The rest of the poem confirms him as a follower of the Tao.
4.6 Ch’ing-nü: a goddess who controls frost and snow. She brings frost in the third month of autumn.
4.8 Southern Palace: a constellation. It was also a name for the Department of State Affairs, to which Tu Fu had been appointed when he served as military advisor in Ch’eng-tu. At night, white quilts were given to the officers serving in this department at the capital.
5.1 Unicorn portraits: p. 135.
5.7–8 Hao Lung (4th c.) served in this region as Military Advisor under a particularly pugnacious and infamous minister. He once used the local aboriginal dialect in a poem and, when questioned, bitterly replied that his language couldn’t help but be barbaric now that he was serving in such a distant, barbaric place.
ASKING OF WU LANG AGAIN
T Wu Lang: Tu Fu’s nephew, who was staying in the guest-house at Tu’s Nang-west estate.
6 Tax…: These oppressive taxes were levied to support the huge armies needed to defend the country.
GONE DEAF
1–2 Ho Kuan, Lu P’i Weng: famousrecluses from ancient times.
4 Deaf as dragons: Dragons cannot hear. The character translated by this phrase, lung (“deaf”), is made up of two elements: “dragon” + “ear,” a good example of the immediacy and evocative richness which characterizes Chinese semantics.
5 Autumn tears… gibbon’s cry: pp. 151–52.
THOUGHTS
2.15 Knotting ropes: a method of calculation and record-keeping which preceded written language in pre-history.
LAST POEMS
RIVERSIDE MOON AND STARS
2 Jade String: constellation (p. 139).
4 Strung Pearls: the five planets which the Chinese knew:
Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn.
CHIANG-HAN
T Chiang-han: “Yangtze and Han,” the region where the Yangtze and Han rivers converge.
2 Heaven and Earth: p. 141.
FAR CORNERS OF EARTH
5 Wang Ts’an: Han Dynasty poet who, under circumstances similar to Tu Fu’s, fled from Ch’ang-an to the semi-barbaric Yangtze plains, where Tu Fu was when he composed this poem.
6 Ch’ü Yüan: pp. 143, 149.
DEEP WINTER
4 Yang Chu: a shadowy proto-Taoist philosopher (4th c. B.C.) whose sayings are recorded in the Lieh Tzu. He once wept at a fork in the road because he knew either choice would only lead to another fork, with the result that he would become more and more lost.
5 Ch’ü Yüan’s wandering soul…: The “Summons of the Soul” was thought to be an attempt to call Ch’ü Yüan’s soul back to his body after he had died (p. 157).
SONG AT YEAR’S END
2 Hsiao and Hsiang: the region south of Tung-t’ing Lake (p. 157).
5–6 In all standard editions, this couplet appears as lines 9–10. But the incongruity that placement causes in the poem’s development is entirely resolved by advancing the couplet to this position.
ON YO-YANG TOWER
2 Wu and Ch’u: regions once controlled by the ancientstates of Wu and Ch’u (pp. 145, 149).
4 Day and night: Like Heaven and Earth (p. 141), day and night are manifestations of yang and yin.
OVERNIGHT AT WHITE-SAND POST-STATION
T Tu Fu’s note: “I have just passed 5 li beyond the lake’s southern shore.”
5 Ch’i: the life-giving principle or universal breath.
6 Wandering Star: The raft upon which Chang Chien and the fisherman (p. 152) floated to the Celestial River appears in the sky as the Wandering Star.
8 Southern darkness: from the fable which opens the Chuang Tzu (1/1/1/):
In the northern darkness there is a fish and his name is K’un. The K’un is so huge I don’t know how many thousand li he measures. He changes and becomes a bird whose name is P’eng. The back of the P’eng measures I don’t know how many thousand li across and, when he rises up and flies off, his wings are like clouds all over the sky. When the sea begins to move, this bird sets off for the southern darkness, which is the lake of Heaven.
(Watson, 29)
FACING SNOW
7 Floating-ant wine: Expensive wine was fermented in silver jars covered with cloth. In the process, a layer of scum formed on top. When this worthless layer was skimmed off and sold to those who could afford nothing better, it was called “floating-ant wine.”
A TRAVELER FROM
T Mermaid pearl: It was believed that pearls grew from the tears of mermaids. Guangdong, on the southern coast, was China’s chief source of pearls.
MEETING LI KUEI-NIEN SOUTH OF THE RIVER
T Li Kuei-nien: a renowned opera singer. He was by now old and sorrowful, much like Tu Fu, having been driven south by the wars.
ENTERING TUNG-T’ING LAKE
T This poem was found in the middle of the Hsiang River, engraved on a large rock where the river flows into Tung-t’ing Lake, and later attributed to Tu Fu.
2 White-Sand: p. 160.
THOUGHTS, SICK WITH FEVER ON A BOAT
1–4 By playing musical instruments which they had invented, the mythic emperors Huang Ti and Shun created order and harmony on earth.
9 Ma Jung’s flute: After several years away, Ma Jung heard a flute song he had once listened to in the capital. This filled him with sorrow and longing for his home there.
10 Tunic… Wang Ts’an: Wang
Ts’an (p. 159). longing for his home at the capital in the north, wrote: “I face into the north wind and open my tunic.” A particularly apt allusion, because the wind from “a cold homeland” might help cool Tu Fu’s fever.
17 Ghosts… drums: Local tribes used drums to summon ghosts.
18 Owls:p.141.
The poem continues for another fifty lines, as the fever falls through Tu Fu “like mountain cascades,” modulating into a drifting review of his life and the political situation. But that section is less compelling poetically, and the density of its allusion precludes successful translation.
FINDING LIST
Texts:
Kuo, Chih-ta. Chiu-chia chi chu Tu-shih. In William Hung’s A Concordance to the Poetry of Tu Fu. (Chüan and poem number)
Yang, Lun. Tu-shih ching-ch’uan. (Chüan and page number)
Poems can be located in other standard editions by using the finding list in volume 1 of Hung’s Corcordance, pp. cxiii-cxci. To locate the poems in Erwin von Zach’s complete German prose translation, Tu Fu’s Gedichte, see von Zach’s finding list (pp. 810–864).
Page 1. Chiu-chia
chi chu
Tu-shih 2. Tu-shih
ching-
ch’Uan
xvii 2/11 2.28b
3 1/5 1.1a
3 1/4 1.1a
4 17/14A 1.2a
4 18/2 1.3a
5 17/17 1.9b
9 18/7 1.5a
10 1/12 1.21a
11 5/15 2.3b
14 18/22 1.25a
15 2/3 2.1b
16 2/9 2.29b
17 1/24 2.23a
18 1/16B 2.24b
18 2/16 3.8a
25 19/6 3.18b
25 2/22 3.17b
26 19/5 3.18b
26 19/9 3.20a
27 19/10 3.21a
27 2/19A 3.23a
28 3/19 4.8b
30 3/6 4.3a
31 3/3 4.4b
34 19/30 4.17b
35 5/10A 5.22a
35 1/20 5.7b
36 3/11 5.16b
37 3/13 5.17b
41 20/1B,D,
J,Q 6.1a
42 20/2 6.5b
43 20/25 6.6a
43 20/3 6.6b
44 20/5 6.9a
44 20/6 6.9b
45 20/9 6.10b
45 20/11 6.11a
46 20/13 6.11b
46 20/26 5.11b
47 20/34 6.15a
47 20/28 6.15b
48 6/16 7.6b
53 22/43 7.18a
53 26/26 12.5a
54 21/4 7.19b
54 21/8 7.20a
55 21/15 7.21a
55 21/5 7.20a
56 21/11 7.21a
56 21/12 8.13b
57 21/7 7.20b
57 21/21 7.27a
58 7/15 8.19a
58 21/23 7.27b
59 22/22 8.10a
59 21/46 8.4a
60 23/3 8.11a
61 23/5 8.5a
62 22/2 8.4b
63 22/18 8.12a
65 23/21 9.13b
65 24/25 9.19b
66 24/7 9.20a
66 24/27 10.8a
67 25/30 11.16b
67 21/25 7.29b
68 7/6 7.29a
69 26/13 11.36a
69 24/47 10.19a
70 26/25 12.4a
75 27/26 12.18a
75 27/25 12.25b
75 31/44 12.28a
76 13/14 12.31a
76 31/7 12.28b
77 7/10 12.30a
78 29/14 13.13b
78 30/2 13.17a
79 31/4 13.29b
79 31/2 13.31a
80 30/8 17.6b
80 31/38 14.3a
81 31/39 14.3b
81 30/32 13.22b
84 31/19 15.9b
85 31/43 15.10a
85 33/8 15.19b
86 25/23 11.24a
86 28/11 15.22a
87 32/25 15.24a
87 28/3A 15.25b
88 28/22 14.6a
88 28/18 16.1a
89 28/9 16.14b
89 30/23B 16.17a
90 29/28 17.10b
90 31/35 17.11b
91 30/6 14.4b
91 29/23 17.13a
92 30/29 17.15b
92 32/29 17.16a
93 29/19 17.16a
93 30/37 17.17a
94 32/3 17.18a
94 26/39
(30/50E) 17.19a
95 30/34 17.1a
97 28/25 17.20a
97 32/4 17.27a
98 32/18A 17.28a
98 32/28 17.33b
99 32/12 17.34a
100 13/19 18.4a
102 13/29 18.13a
105 27/10 12.11b
105 34/5A 19.4a
106 34/6 19.4b
106 30/16 19.11a
107 25/19 19.11b
107 35/1 19.19b
108 31/15 19.19a
108 15/12 19.20b
109 35/4 19.22a
109 35/9 19.24a
110 36/9 20.15b
110 15/4 20.16b
111 15/7 20.17a
111 34/12 20.25b
112 36/27 20.33a
112 36/12 20.34a
BIBLIOGRAPHY
I. EDITIONS OF TU FU’S POETRY
Ch’iu, Chao-ao. Tu-shih hsiang chu. 1713. The most thoroughly annotated edition.
Kuo, Chih-ta. Chiu-chia chi chu Tu-shih. 1181. In Hung, William. A Concordance to the Poetry of Tu Fu. Harvard-Yenching Institute Sinological Index Series, Supplement, no. 14. 3v. Beijing, 1940. Taipei reprint, 1966. The standard edition of the text.
Yang, Lun. Tu-shih ching-ch’uan. 1791. The most serviceable and widely available edition, with poems arranged in generally accurate chronological order. Based on Ch’iu’s edition.
II. TRANSLATIONS AND STUDIES
Alley, Rewi. Tu Fu: Selected Poems. Beijing: Foreign Language Press, 1962.
Ayscough, Florence. Tu Fu: The Autobiography of a Chinese Poet, Volume I, A.D. 712–759. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1929.
——Travels of a Chinese Poet: Tu Fu, Guest of Rivers and Lake, Volume II, A.D. 759–770. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1934.
Birch, Cyril, ed. Anthology of Chinese Literature. 2 v. New York, Grove Press, 1965.
Cheng, François. Chinese Poetic Writing. Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1982.
Chuang Tzu. The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu. Trans. Burton Watson. New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1968.
Ch’ü Yüan. Ch’u Tz’u, The Songs of the South. Trans. David Hawkes. London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1959. Penguin reprint, 1985.
Cooper, Arthur. Li Po and Tu Fu. Hammondsworth: Penguin Books, 1965.
Davis, A. R. Tu Fu. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1971.
Graham, A. C. Poems of the Late T’ang. Hammondsworth: Penguin Books, 1965.
Hawkes, David. A Little Primer of Tu Fu. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967.
Hung, William. Tu Fu: China’s Greatest Poet. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1952.
Liu, Wu-chi and Irving Yu-cheng Lo, eds. Sunflower Splendor: Three Thousand Years of Chinese Poetry. Garden City: Doubleday, 1975.
Mei, Tsu-lin and Kao Yu-kung. “Tu Fu’s ‘Autumn Meditations’: An Exercise in Linguistic Criticism,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 28 (1968), 44–80.
Owen, Stephen. The Great Age of Chinese Poetry: The High T’ang. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1981.
Rexroth, Kenneth. One Hundred Poems from the Chinese. New York: New Directions, 1971.
Seaton, J. P. and James Cryer. Bright Moon, Perching Bird: Poems by Li Po and Tu Fu. Middletown: Wesleyan Univ. Press, 1987.
Shih Ching. The Book of Songs. Trans. Arthur Waley. London: Allen & Unwin, 1937.
T’ao Yüan-ming. The Poetry of T’ao Ch’ien. Trans. James Hightower. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1970.
Von Zach, Erwin. Tu Fu’s Gedichte. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1952.
Watson, Burton. Chinese Lyricism: Shih Poetry from the Second to the Twelfth Century. New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1971.<
br />
——The Columbia Book of Chinese Poetry: From Early Times to the Thirteenth Century. New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1984.
Yoshikawa, Kojiro. “Tu Fu’s Poetics and Poetry,” Acta Asiatica, 16–17 (1969), 1–26.
Young, David. Wang Wei, Li Po, Tu Fu, Li Ho: Four T’ang Poets. Oberlin: FIELD Translation Series, 1980.
INDEX OF TITLES AND FIRST LINES
Poem titles are printed in italic type.
Abbot Ts’an’s Room, Ta-yün Monastery, 27
Above K’uei-chou’s wall, a cloud-form village. Below, 78
Above the tower—a lone, twice-sized moon, 80
Above the wall’s corner walkways, pennants and flags, 75
A crescent moon lulls in clear night, 99
Adrift, 68
A Farmer, 55
After Three or Four Years Without News…, 89
After midnight, eluding tigers on the road, I return, 102
Again, in town to the north, a watchman’s final, 107
A Guest, 54
A Guest Arrives, 59
A Letter From My Brother at Lin-Yi…, 9
Alone, Looking for Blossoms along the River, 60
A Madman, 57
An ancient cyprus stands before Chu-ko Liang’s temple, 77
An Empty Purse, 47
An old man from Tu-ling unhinged a life, 18
Another night on the water: last light, 109
Apart still, and already oriole songs, 27
A river moon cast only feet away, storm-lanterns, 75
As bamboo chill drifts into the bedroom, 69
A Servant Boy Comes, 88
As I row upstream past a tower, the boat, 68
Asking of Wu Lang Again, 97
Asking Wei Pan to Find Pine Starts, 53
A slight rain comes, bathed in dawn light, 87
A thousand feet up, along sheer silk, 81
A Traveler From, 110
A traveler from southern darkness came, 110
At Sky’s-end Thinking of Li Po, 43
At the edge of heaven, tatters of autumn, 44
Autumn Pastoral, 95
Autumn Rain Lament, 18
Autumn returns, and again we are cast thistledown together, 5
