Seven Quatrains (jueju)
from the TangDynasty
translated by Ad Blankestijn
Passing a Wine Shop
by Wang Ji (d. 644)
Getting drunk here today,
is not how I feed my mind.
But when I see that everyone is befuddled,
how can I alone remain sober?過酒家
此日長昏飮
非関養性霊
眼看人盡酔
何忍独爲醒
At Night Mooring by Maple Bridge
by Zhang Ji (mid 8th. c.)
The moon sets, crows caw, hoarfrost fills the sky,
maples at the River, fisherman's fires, a tormented sleep.
From the Temple of Cold Mountain outside Suzhou's walls
the booming of the midnight bell reaches the boat of the traveler
楓橋夜泊
月落烏啼霜滿天
江楓漁火對愁眠
姑蘇城外寒山寺
夜半鐘聲到客船
A Spring Morning
by Meng Haoran (689-740)
Asleep in springtime, I missed daybreak,
until I heard birds twittering all around.
Last night the wind and rain were howling -
how many blossoms will have fallen off?
春晓
春眠不觉晓
处处闻啼鸟
夜来风雨声
花落知多少
Seeing Monk Ling Che Off
by Liu Changqing (709-780)
Deep green, Bamboo Forest Temple,
muffled booms the evening bell.
The evening sun on the straw hat on his back,
alone he departs to the far blue hills.
送靈澈
蒼蒼竹林寺
杳杳鐘聲晚
荷笠帶夕陽
青山獨歸遠
Spring Song
by Liu Yuxi (772-843)
She steps out wearing a fine new hairstyle -
hidden spring splendor: a courtyard full of sorrow.
She walks into the garden and counts the blossoms -
a dragonfly settles on the jade clasp in her hair.
春詞
新妆宜面下朱楼
深锁春光一院愁
行到中庭数花朵
蜻蜓飛上玉搔头
Snow on the River
by Liu Zongyuan (773-819)
A thousand mountains - no sign of birds in flight,
ten thousands paths - no trace of human tracks.
A lonely boat, an old man in straw cape and reed hat,
fishing alone, in the cold river snow.
江雪
千山鳥飛絕
萬徑人蹤滅
孤舟蓑笠翁
獨釣寒江雪
Visiting the Hermit but not Finding Him
by Jia Dao (779-843)
Under the pines the pupil answered me
and said: my master went to seek herbs -
he is somewhere here in the mountains,
but the clouds are so deep I don't know where.
尋隱者不遇
松下問童子
言師采藥去
只在此山中
雲深不知處
[Landscape by Zhou Wenjing, featuring Liu Zongyuan's poem
"Winter Snow" ("孤舟蓑笠翁，獨釣寒江雪")]
The "Complete Tang Poems" or Quantangshi was compiled in 1705, but it is not the 49,000 poem-strong anthology that I am interested in here, but more in general the poetry of the Tang dynasty (618-907) itself. The Tang dynasty ruled from 618 to 907, with an interregnum between 690 and 705. The Tang was a high point in Chinese civilization, and a golden age of cosmopolitan culture. The Tang capital at Changan (present-day Xi'an) was then the world's most populous city.
The Tang was also the greatest age of Chinese poetry, and I have treated its best poets like Li Bai and Du Fu in separate articles. Here I have brought together some (at least in the West) lesser known poets, and at the same time I have opted not for longer forms of poetry (such as the gushi which has no fixed length or the lüshi with its length of 8 lines), but for the short jueju (also called (quatrain), which comes in 4 lines of either 5 or 7 syllables each. As a haiku-fan, I appreciate brevity, and the jueju certainly delivers that. Moreover, many jueju are picture-perfect small paintings, setting down a scene as on an ink painting in just a few strokes. At the same time, the jueju was not an easy form of poetry - just as in the eight-line lüshi, rhyme was prescribed between even-numbered lines, and strict tonal patterns had to be observed within the line, and between lines. It was a sort of "dancing in fetters" where every character counted to make a successful poem. The above are among my favorite Chinese poems.
[Stone rubbings of Hanshan & Shide (left) and
the poem by Zhang Ji (right) - these rubbings are available
in the Hanshan Temple in Suzhou]
Notes:
Wang Ji (d. 644): Of course it is not literally true that everyone is drunk - this is not a modern poem about sport fans celebrating the victory of their team - but the "state of the world" seems like inebriation.
Zhang Ji (712-779): See the above rubbings which are identical to a set I bought many years ago
at the Hanshan Temple in Suzhou. I had them for a long time hanging in
my room, but now I have so many book cases that there are no
free walls left anymore. Some translators have a "tolling" bell, but that type of sound belongs to church bells in the west - bells
in China and Japan are struck from the outside (there is no clapper)
and give off a deep booming sound. This is an interestingly impressionistic poem. By the way, Hanshan is a legendary recluse associated with a collection of poems partly in the Chan Buddhist tradition (we will introduce his poems in part 28 of this series). No one knows who he was, when he lived and died, or whether he actually existed. Traditionally Hanshan and his sidekick Shide are honored as emanations of the Bodhisattvas Mañjuśrī (Wenshu Pusa) and Samantabhadra (Puxian Pusa).
Meng Haoran (689-740): In contemporary mainland China, the
above poem by Meng Haoran may very well be one of the best known poems
from the Tang dynasty, as it has appeared in a widely used first
textbook to which hundreds of millions of students have been exposed.
Meng Haoran is one of the best known Tang poets after Wang Wei, Li Bai,
Du Fu, Bai Juyi and Li Shangyin.
Liu Changqing (709-780): A farewell poem, also a very impressionistic one, with again a booming temple bell.
Liu Yuxi (772-843): A poem on the popular theme of "lonely women." Her husband / lover neglects her, therefore "her courtyard is full of sorrow." She may be the concubine of a ruler or a powerful merchant, waiting (a bit bored) for his return. The description of the woman is finely done.
Liu Zongyuan (773-819): A beautiful landscape poem, that was made into an actual landscape painting as the illustration above shows. Liu Zongyuan was known for his landscape writings, not only in poetry but also in prose.
Jia Dao (779-843): A poem on the theme of "hermits," of which also Wang Wei was a prollific practitioner.
The above are my own translations.
Quantangshi at Chinese text Initiative
More translations of Tang poetry can, for example, be found in The Columbia Anthology of Traditional Chinese Literature (Columbia U.P., 1994) and in An Anthology of Chinese Literature by Stepen Owen (Norton, 1996).
Photos: Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons;
Lyric Poetry Around the World Index