The Anchor Book of Chinese Poetry

by Tony Barnstone

  Like silk it tangles down my shoulders

  and curls up on my knees.

  What part of me is not lovely?

  3

  The night is forever. I can't sleep.

  The clear moon is so bright, so bright.

  I almost think I hear a voice call me,

  and to the empty sky, I say Yes?

  Four Seasons Song: Spring

  Spring forest flowers are so charming.

  Spring birds pour out grief.

  Spring winds come with exuberant love—

  they lift up my silk skirt.

  Four Seasons Song: Autumn

  She opens the window and sees the autumn moon,

  snuffs the candle, slips from her silk skirt.

  With a smile she parts my bed curtains,

  lifting up her body—an orchid scent swells.

  LU JI

  (261–303)

  Lu Ji was born at the end of the Three Kingdoms Period in the state of Wu, at the family estate at Huading in the Yangtze Delta. He came from a family with a long and distinguished military tradition. His grandfather Lu Sun was a famous general who won the throne for the first emperor of Wu, for which he was awarded the title of duke and the estate at Huading. His father and two older brothers all had commands on the Northern frontier, but the weak Emperor Hao ignored Lu Ji's father's warnings of dangers from the neighboring state of Jin and lost his empire in a decisive river battle. Both of Lu Ji's brothers were killed in this battle. Lu Ji and his younger brother escaped to Huading, where they remained in virtual house arrest for ten years, devoting themselves to scholarship, poetry, and the study of Confucian and Daoist thought. At the age of twenty-nine, Lu Ji and his brother went to the Jin court and succeeded in launching themselves once again into official and military careers. In his forty-second year Lu Ji was a general for Prince Yin, who was engaged in battling his brother, Prince Yi. Because of the treachery of another general who refused to support Lu in a key battle, Lu's troops were decisively routed, and the river was choked with their bodies. His enemies denounced him to Prince Yin, and he was executed on trumped-up charges of treason. His two sons were also executed. It is said that the night before his death, Lu Ji dreamed he was confined in a carriage draped with black curtains, from which he could not escape. His last words were said to be, “Will I never hear the call of the cranes at Huading again?”

  Lu was a prolific writer, but his only major work was a rhyme prose piece of literary criticism titled “The Art of Writing” (wen fu). Its influence on Chinese literary thought cannot be overestimated. “The Art of Writing” sets out to “comment on elegant classics and talk about how strong and weak points find their way into our writings,” but it does much more than that. It is valued equally for its critical contribution and its literary merit. Its evocation of the writer's preparation and of the generation of new poems from readings of the classics culminates in a spirit journey of the imagination in which the poet summons great Daoist powers to conduct him through internal and external space and through the literary past.

  “The Art of Writing” is both a cosmic treatise and an immensely practical one. From the internal journey of the imagination emerges writing in all its styles and genres, many of which Lu Ji catalogues. His ars poetica's sophisticated treatment of the process of writing is its own best exemplar, embodying the virtues and qualities that it champions. In addition to questions of style and genre, Lu Ji treats the question of revision and of key words that “will whip the writing like a horse and make it gallop.” In the preface he writes, “To learn writing from classics is like carving an axe handle with an axe—the model is right in your hand,” and yet the relationship of the writer to works of the past is complicated: what may inspire your work will also kill what you write if you fail to “make it new.” Lu Ji gives writing tips and discusses tone, high and low registers, poetic form, the “dead river” of writer's block, and the “thought wind” of inspiration. His spiritual view of the writing process is mirrored by his faith in the universal power of literature: “With heaven and earth contained in your head/nothing escapes the pen in your hand.”

  Written largely in rhymed verse interspersed with prose passages and in lines paired in a kind of rhetorical parallelism, rather like Western poetry's use of chiasmus, “The Art of Writing” is commonly compared with Alexander Pope's Essay on Poetry (and with Pope's model, the Ars Poetica of Horace) as a great example of literary criticism in verse. The comparison takes on particular relevance when one compares the balanced rhetoric of Pope's rhymed heroic couplets with Lu Ji's parallelism. With characteristic humility, Lu Ji doubts his ability to get at the essence of writing (“this art can't be captured by the finest words”), but this ineffable quality of writing itself expresses writing's spiritual nature. Writing can't express what writing is because it is more than itself; it is a spiritual voyage that connects impulse and action, word and music, and the self to the world.

  Translating this notoriously ambiguous text poses special problems. A tortured and embattled critical commentary has built up around it, as many passages are riddles that have countless contradictory solutions. It would be possible to burden the text with footnotes; some translators have been known to produce ten lines of commentary for each line of poetry. Such valuable scholarship distracts from the poem, however, as each word or phrase becomes a trapdoor that drops you into a hypertext of criticism and linguistic exegesis. Our interest has been to chart a middle path between alternative readings and warring commentaries, to make difficult choices and produce a text that reads flu-idly, fluently, and, most important, as a poem in English.

  from The Art of Writing

  Preface

  After reading many talented writers, I have gained insights into the writing craft. The ways that words and expressions ignite meaning, varied as they are, can be analyzed and critiqued for their beauty and style. Through my own efforts I know how hard it is to write, since I always worry that my ideas fail to express their subject and my words are even further removed from insufficient ideas. The problem is easy to understand; the solution is more difficult. So I started writing this rhymed essay to comment on elegant classics and talk about how strong and weak points find their way into our writings. Someday, I hope, I will be able to capture these subtle secrets in words. To learn writing from classics is like carving an axe handle with an axe—the model is right in your hand, but the spontaneous skills needed to carve a new creation are often beyond words. What can be said, however, is verbalized in what follows.

  1. The Impulse

  A poet stands between heaven and earth

  and watches the dark mystery.

  To nourish myself I read the classics.

  I sigh as the four seasons spin by

  and the swarm of living things kindles many thoughts.

  In rough autumn it hurts to see leaves stripped away,

  but how tender the soft sprigs in budding spring.

  Morning frost is awe in my heart,

  my ambition floats with high clouds,

  I devote songs to ancestors

  and sing the clean fragrance of their virtue.

  I roam the classics through a forest of treasures

  and love their elegant balance of style and substance.

  Inspired, I lay down the book I was reading

  and let words pour out from my brush.

  2. Meditation

  At first I close my eyes. I hear nothing.

  In interior space I search everywhere.

  My spirit gallops to the earth's eight borders

  and wings to the top of the sky.

  Soon, misty and brightening like the sun about to dawn,

  ideas coalesce and images ignite images.

  When I drink the wine of words

  and chew flowers from the Six Books,

  I swim freely in the celestial river

  and dive into the sea's abyss.

  Sometimes words come hard, they resist me
<
br />   till I pluck them from deep water like hooked fish;

  sometimes they are birds soaring out of a cloud

  that fall right into place, shot with arrows,

  and I harvest lines neglected for a hundred generations,

  rhymes unheard for a thousand years.

  I won't touch a flower already in morning bloom

  but quicken the unopened evening buds.

  In a blink I see today and the past,

  put out my hand and touch all the seas.

  3. Process

  Search for the words and sphere of thought,

  then seek the proper order;

  release their shining forms

  and tap images to hear how they sing.

  Now leaves grow along a branching thought.

  Now trace a current to its source.

  Bring the hidden into light

  or form the complex from simplicity.

  Animals shake at the tiger's changing pattern

  and birds ripple off when a dragon is seen;

  some words belong together

  and others don't join, like jagged teeth,

  but when you're clear and calm

  your spirit finds true words.

  With heaven and earth contained in your head

  nothing escapes the pen in your hand.

  It's hard to get started at first,

  painful like talking with cracked lips,

  but words will flow with ink in the end.

  Essence holds content as the trunk lifts the tree;

  language is patterned into branches, leaves, and fruit.

  Now words and content match

  like your mood and face—

  smile when you're happy

  or sigh when your heart hurts.

  Sometimes you can improvise easily.

  Sometimes you only bite the brush and think.

  4. The Joy of Words

  Writing is joy

  so saints and scholars all pursue it.

  A writer makes new life in the void,

  knocks on silence to make a sound,

  binds space and time on a sheet of silk

  and pours out a river from an inch-sized heart.

  As words give birth to words

  and thoughts arouse deeper thoughts,

  they smell like flowers giving off scent,

  spread like green leaves in spring,

  a long wind comes, whirls into a tornado of ideas,

  and clouds rise from the writing-brush forest.

  9. The Riding Crop

  Sometimes your writing is a lush web of fine thoughts

  that undercut each other and muffle the theme:

  when you reach the pole there's nowhere else to go;

  more becomes less if you try to craft what's made.

  A powerful phrase at the crucial point

  will whip the writing like a horse and make it gallop;

  though all the other words are in place

  they wait for the crop to run a good race.

  A whip is always more help than harm;

  stop revising when you've got it right.

  10. Making It New

  Perhaps thoughts and words blend together

  into a lucid beauty, a lush growth;

  they flame like a bright brocade,

  poignant as a string orchestra.

  But if you fail to make it new

  you can only repeat the past.

  Even when your own heart is your loom

  someone may have woven that textile before,

  and to be honorable and keep integrity

  you must disown it despite your love.

  11. Ordinary and Sublime

  Flowering forth, a tall rice ear

  stands proudly above the mass,

  a shape eluding its shadow,

  its sound refusing echoes.

  The best line is a towering crag.

  It won't be woven into an ordinary song.

  The mind can't find a match for it

  but casts about, unwilling to give up.

  After all, jade in rock makes a mountain shimmer,

  pearls in water make the river seductive,

  green kingfishers give life

  even to the ragged thornbrush,

  and classic and folk songs

  blend into a fine contrast.

  18. The Well-Wrought Urn

  My heart respects conventional rules

  and laws of composition.

  I recall the great works of old masters

  and see how my contemporaries have failed—

  poems from the depth of a wise heart

  may be laughed at by those who are blind.

  Poems fine as jade filigree and coral

  are common as beans on the plain,

  endless like air in the world's great bellows,

  eternal as the universe;

  they grow everywhere

  but my small hands hold only a few.

  My water jar is often empty. It makes me worry.

  I make myself sick trying to expand my pieces.

  I limp along with short poems

  and patch up my songs with common notes.

  I'm never happy with what I've done,

  so how can my heart be satisfied?

  Tap my work: I fear it clunks like a dusty earthen bowl

  and I'm shamed by the song of musical jade.

  19. Inspiration

  As to the flash of inspiration

  and traffic laws on writing's path,

  what comes can't be stopped,

  what leaves will not be restrained.

  It hides like fire in a coal

  then flares into a shout.

  When instinct is swift as a horse

  no tangle of thoughts will hold it back:

  a thought wind rises in your chest,

  a river of words pours out from your mouth,

  and so many burgeoning leaves sprout

  on the silk from your brush,

  that colors brim out of your eyes

  and music echoes in your ears.

  20. Writer's Block

  But when the six emotions are stagnant,

  the will travels but the spirit stays put,

  a petrified and withered tree,

  hollow and dry as a dead river.

  Then you must excavate your own soul,

  search yourself till your spirit is refreshed.

  But the mind gets darker and darker

  and you must pull ideas like silk from their cocoon.

  Sometimes you labor hard and build regrets

  then dash off a flawless gem.

  Though this thing comes out of me,

  I can't master it with strength.

  I often stroke my empty chest and sigh:

  what blocks and what opens this road?

  21. The Power of a Poem

  The function of literature is

  to express the nature of nature.

  It can't be barred as it travels space

  and boats across one hundred million years.

  Gazing to the fore, I leave models for people to come;

  looking aft, I learn from my ancestors.

  It can save teetering governments and weak armies;

  it gives voice to the dying wind of human virtue.

  No matter how far, this road will take you there;

  it will express the subtlest point.

  It waters the heart like clouds and rain,

  and shifts form like a changeable spirit.

  Inscribed on metal and stone, it spreads virtue.

  Flowing with pipes and strings, each day the poem is new.

  PAN YUE

  (247–300)

  Pan Yue, along with Lu Ji, was among the finest poets of his time, but only twenty of his poems have survived the centuries. He was born in today's Henan province to a family of officials, and he himself held a succession of important official posts. As legend has it, his extraordinary beauty wa
s such that he was mobbed by crowds of women when driving through the streets of the capital. His involvement in a political scheme against the crown prince led to his execution in 300. His three poems to his dead wife are his most famous works, though he was also renowned as a writer of rhyme prose (fu).

  In Memory of My Dead Wife**

  Slowly winter and spring fade away;

  cold and heat suddenly flow and change.

  She has returned to the underground spring,

  separated forever from me by heavy soil.

  Secretly I want to join her there, but I can't,

  so what is the use?

  I'll obey the imperial order

  and return to my old official position.

  Yet seeing our house I remember her.

  Our life together haunts the four rooms.

  I cannot find her behind the curtains or drapery,

  only her ink calligraphy.

  Her fragrance lingers,

  her things still hang on the walls.

  In a trance I sometimes feel her presence.

  It hurts to return to my senses.

  We were a pair of birds nesting in the woods.

  One woke in the morning to find himself alone.

  We were a pair of fish swimming eye to eye.

  Halfway one found the other gone.

  Spring wind sneaks in through a gap in the door.

  The eaves weep a morning flow in the gutter.

  I can't forget her, trying to sleep in our bed.

  My sorrow piles deeper each day.

  I hope this grief will fade till like Zhuangzi after his wife died

  I can beat on a jug and sing.1

  * According to ancient regulations, an official should remain in mourning for his wife for a year before starting to work again. This poem was written when the mourning period was just over.

  1 The Daoist sage Zhuangzi had a very unconventional understanding of death—that it could be a good thing in disguise. When his wife died, he did not mourn; instead he sang a song while beating a jar with a stick.