1 Odile Kaltenmark, Chinese Literature (New York: Walker and Company, 1964), p. 111.
2 Jonathan Chaves, The Columbia Book of Later Chinese Poetry (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), p. 6.
ZHANG YU
(1333–1385)
With his friend Gao Qi (also included in this volume) and two others, Zhang Yu was known as one of the “Four Distinguished Men of Wu.” Like many high-profile literary men of the early Ming dynasty, a time of purges and political repression, he suffered an unhappy fate. Faced with arrest, he chose instead to commit suicide.
Song of the Relay Boats **
Relay boats come, sounding like thunder.
One is just leaving, another demands to be rushed in.
How dare we delay any of them?
The officials are furious when we don't furnish them right
with painted screens, embroidered quilts, and red carpets,
but spring dreams are short and the boats are soon gone.
A captain kneels on the floor, persuading an imperial envoy:
“Please don't be too happy or too offended,
since ancient times heaven and earth have been like a relay station
with countless people rushing past.”
* The relay boats, like the Pony Express in the United States, were a system for sending missives, messengers, and officials throughout the empire.
GAO QI
(1336–1374)
Gao Qi came from Suzhou, in Jiangsu province, and is thought of as the premier poet of the Ming dynasty. He was a precocious youth, and as a teen formed a poetry group called the “Ten Friends on the North Outskirts,” or the “Ten Talented Ones.” Along with three literary friends (including the poet Zhang Yu, also represented in this volume), he was known as one of the “Four Distinguished Men of Wu.” His reputation is that of a townsman poet, a poet of humble origins, and he was part of a tradition of townsman poetry in the region of Suzhou that included the painter-poet Shen Zhou. He gravitated toward the poets of the High Tang and of the Han and Wei dynasties, anticipating the Old Phraseology School that was to emerge in another two centuries. His extraordinary facility as a poet allowed him to imitate convincingly the styles of past poets. He might have been associated with the government of Zhang Shicheng, whose regime was conquered by the first emperor of the Ming dynasty. Only seven years after the founding of the Ming, Gao Qi was executed on slight pretext, only thirty-eight years old.
Where Is My Sorrow From?
Where is my sorrow from?
I suddenly see it when autumn comes.
It's hard to name it when I try to speak.
In confusion I just know it.
Is it that I'm afraid of aging?
Or complaining about my busy humbleness?
It is not the sigh of poor scholars;
can it be the sadness of being exiled?
If you say I'm counting days till my return—
I have never left my hometown!
If you say I'm sad over separation—
I have never lost sight of my beloved.
I compared my sorrow to autumn grass,
and yet cold dews could not make them wilt.
I liken it to smoke and mist,
yet even autumn wind could not drive it off.
Just let me ask since the arrival of this sorrow
how many days have passed?
When I lived by the west brook,
I enjoyed the spectacular mountains and rivers there.
But when I returned to the east garden,
I sighed over the grass and trees' withering.
Who ever comes to see me when I live here, a nobody?
Only sorrow is my companion.
Most people find ways to entertain themselves,
never tired of outings and banquets.
But I alone have this sorrow,
walking to and fro, for what?
Passing by a Mountain Cottage
In the sound of this flowing stream I hear a spinning wheel.
A stone bridge. A dark springtime of flowerless trees.
From what place does the wind carry this sweet smell?
Tea baking at noon in a cottage over the hill.
Lying Idle While It Rains
By a slant bamboo table behind a screen the bed hides.
I lie watching new swallows visiting a poor house.
Nothing on my mind, I live an idle life,
worrying whether this rain will hurt apricot blossoms.
SHEN ZHOU
(1427–1509)
Shen Zhou was the foremost Ming dynasty painter as well as a distinguished poet and calligrapher. His father was a landowner in the village of Xiangcheng (north of Suzhou), where Shen Zhou lived his entire life despite his extraordinary talent. He lived in the ancestral estate on which he was born until 1471, when he built his own home in the area. He worked as a village head and tax collector and took on painting pupils, many of whom (such as Tang Yin) went on to achieve fame themselves. As a poet Shen Zhou was influenced by Bai Juyi, Su Shi, and Lu You. His subject matter (as in his painting) often dealt with farming life in the villages of his area.
Inscription for a Painting
In green water a red mountain leans on my vine walking stick.
The setting sun lingers west of the small bridge.
I chant poems low, and from the brook a bird startles up
and is lost in a swirl of deep clouds, singing.
Thoughts Sent to a Monk
A hollow wall where a dim lamp-wick glows;
by the unused steps, insects sing chaos.
The River of Stars is shadowed by a thin edge of cloud.
Clear dewdrops are silent among thousands of trees.
In lake country, autumn water brims;
people drift off as wild smoke spills into the sky.
Who knows how to forget worries?
I face green mountains alone and think of old monk Zan.
ZHU YUNMING
(1461–1527)
Zhu Yunming came from a literary family in Changzhou prefecture, Suzhou. Born with six fingers on one hand, he took on the literary name Zhishan (“extra knob”). He was known as one of the “Four Gentlemen of Wu.” A talented and intelligent youth who was able to compose poems by the age of eight, Zhu passed regional exams and became an official. He was the magistrate of Xingning, Guangdong, and earned a reputation for just governance and for moral leadership in education. He was not a proponent of neo-Confucianism or of Daoist rituals and beliefs and was critical of scholar-officials for what he saw as their puffery, hypocrisy, and even outright betrayal (he was very critical of Zhao Mengfu, for example, for agreeing to serve the government of the Mongol invaders). He became the assistant prefect of Ying-tien (Nanjing), and after retiring devoted himself to scholarship and to writing.
In addition to poetry, Zhu Yunming wrote random meditations, stories, histories, and anecdotes. He was also a painter and a master calligrapher who specialized in the “mad grass” style. As Yoshikawa Kojiro notes, “His actions were as free and uninhibited as his calligraphic style. In return for his services as a calligrapher he most welcomed being recompensed with female companionship. If the payment happened to be in cash, he would squander it drinking with his cohorts, which may account for why he was pursued by creditors whenever he stepped out the door.”1 A nonconformist and a freethinker, he became the subject of a number of stories, and ultimately of a novel, The Romance of Zhu Yunming.
Taking a Nap by a Mountain Window
Resting my body in a monk's cloud chamber,1 my dreams relax.
Pine trees and cranes rise between screen and pillow.
A beautiful pheasant makes a long song.
My hand pushes the window, and mountains fill my eyes.
1 Yoshikawa Kojiro, Five Hundred Years of Chinese Poetry, 1150–1650, translated by John Timothy Wixted (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989), pp. 126–27.
1 “Cloud chamber”
is a term for a monk's bedroom.
TANG YIN
(1470–1524)
A famous landscape painter and calligrapher, Tang Yin was grouped with three other poet-painters as one of the “Four Gentlemen of Wu.” In 1489 he passed the provincial exam and was listed as the top candidate. The next year he took the national exam and was involved in a case in which other candidates cheated. After a full investigation he was demoted to government clerk, ending his hopes for an official career. He worked as a painter and met with great success (along with Shen Zhou, Wen Zhengming, and Qiu Ying, he was considered one of the “Four Masters of the Ming”). He was called upon to work for a prince, Qu Chenhao (died 1521), but when he learned that the prince was planning a rebellion, Tang Yin pretended to be insane, drinking wildly, acting stupid, and stripping naked, which enabled him to resign his position. After that he was very much given to carnal pleasures and wine, and yet at the same time he tried to seek comfort in Buddhism. His amorous exploits were the source of countless anecdotes, short stories, and even a play. On his deathbed his final words were that the generations to come would misunderstand him just as his own had.
In Reply to Shen Zhou's Poems on Falling Petals
From the truth in the mirror, Cui Hui1 painted a self-portrait,
but who can convey the beauty of the Goddess of Luo River?2
Seasons move faster than a finger snap
and fallen flowers are wreckage when spring is gone.
A pink-faced immortal needs to slough off three lives' bones
along a purple road where fragrance disappears in ten feet of dust.
I walk a hundred times around a tree and my heart speaks to my
mouth: next year who is going to be x-ed out of this world?
Boating on Tai Lake
Tai Lake is broad, with wave on wave to infinity.
The sky is frozen in ten thousand acres of lake light.
Green mountains are tiny dots in the distance.
The cold sky inverted in the lake blends into white air.
Diyi3 is gone for a thousand years
but his high manner is still admired today.
Wu and Yue rose and fell with the flowing water.
All that's left from then is a moon to light the fishing boats.
Thoughts
I don't pursue the pill of immortality, don't meditate,
eat when hungry, sleep when tired,
and to make a living, I've a painter's brush that also writes poetry.
My footprints can always be found by flowers and willows.
In the mirror I am aging with the spring.
By a lamp my wife and I share the full moon.
Ten thousand occasions of pleasure, a thousand times drunk,
I am a lazy person in the human world, an immortal on earth.
1 Cui Hui was a singing girl of the Tang dynasty who was in love with a man named Fei Jingzhong. When they were forced to separate, she asked a painter to paint her portrait and send it to Fei. Tang dynasty poet Yuan Zhen wrote a poem about this titled “Song of Cui Hui (with a Preface).”
2 ”The Goddess of Luo River” is the subject and title of a long rhyme prose (fu) poem by Cao Zhi (192–232). In it the poet describes a river goddess's beauty and how he (or the narrator) falls into doomed love with her.
3 Diyi is the epithet by which Fan Li referred to himself. He helped the King of Yue destroy the Wu State and boated on Tai Lake with the beauty Xi Shi.
XU ZHENQING
(1479–1511)
Xu Zhenqing was known as one of the “Four Gentlemen of Wu,” and later as one of the “Earlier Seven Masters of the Old Phraseology School,” an archaistic movement in which poets chose to imitate the diction, imagery, and style of High Tang poetry, especially that of Du Fu. They also imitated the poetry of the Han and Wei dynasties and disdained all other earlier periods, feeling especially that the Song dynasty was a debased era for literature. Xu Zhenqing was a brilliant scholar from a military family. His poetry was well known even when he was just a youth. He came from Suzhou to the capital in Beijing and passed the highest imperial exam, becoming a judge in the Grand Court of Revision. In 1509 he began working in the National University. He wrote poetry, fiction, and prose (including biographies, anecdotes of strange events, and meditations on Tai Lake) and was deeply interested in Daoist religion, with its promises of longevity and immortality. He died at the age of thirty-two, survived by a son, who was also a poet.
Written at Wuchang
The leaves are not falling yet into Dongting Lake.
Autumn is poised to rise along Xiaoxiang River.
In this tall house I hear rain tonight,
sleeping alone in Wuchang City. Burdened with a homesickness,
I grieve here where the Han and Yangtze Rivers merge
and can't understand why those geese outside the sky
are so happy about long migration.
YANG SHEN
(1488–1599)
Yang Shen was a brilliant scholar who came from a distinguished family in Xindu, Sichuan. He took first place in the imperial examination in 1511 and held a series of offices. When he opposed Emperor Zhu Houcong's wish to offer imperial rituals to his deceased father, who had not himself been emperor, Yang Shen, along with 133 other men, was beaten in prison, bastinadoed in the imperial courtyard. He was sentenced to exile in Yunnan as a convict in permanent military service. In his thirty-five years in exile, he became a popular, extremely prolific scholar, writing poetry, scholarly works on the classics and etymology, and collections of miscellaneous jottings, compiling anthologies, and editing editions of other authors' works. A political failure, Yang Shen was an extraordinary success as a writer and a scholar, traveling widely in his mind even as his body remained in exile in Yunnan. His second wife, Huang E (1498–1569), was a talented poet.
On Spring
Ocean wind blows ocean trees
and for ten days I shut my doors,
sitting here, grieving the loss of spring blooming
and counting red petals falling over the wall.
WANG SHIZHEN
(1526–1590)
Wang Shizhen came from Taicang, near Suzhou, and was descended from a family of scholars and officials who traced their lineage back to an important Six Dynasties Period family. Like Xu Zhenqing (1479–1511), Wang was associated with the Old Phraseology School, in which poets imitated the style of older work, especially that of the High Tang, and to some extent that of the Han and Wei dynasties. Those who followed the Old Phraseology School were told that “One should not read anything after the Tang dynasty,” but Wang, especially later in life, was happy to learn from Song dynasty poets Su Shi and Lu You and Tang dynasty poet Bai Juyi, whom the Old Phraseology writers tended to disdain. Wang is closely associated with Li Pan-long (1514–1570), a leader of the movement, who was his great friend; many letters and poems they wrote to each other survive. Together they were part of a group of Old Phraseology writers known as the “Later Seven Masters.”
Wang passed the highest imperial exams, but in 1559 he gave up his provincial post to return to the capital in an unsuccessful attempt to save his father, a famous military man who had been ordered executed by the prime minister, an enemy of Wang Shizhen's. He found himself unable to sustain regular postings after this. He became the leading literary light of his day, revered for his passion and his scholarship (he was a poet, historian, and scholar of the arts). Scores of acolytes flocked to him for instruction and advice. The Old Phraseology School that he was a part of fell into disrepute after his death, but his reputation helped to cement it as the principal movement of the sixteenth century.
Saying Good-bye to My Young Brother
We walk to the riverbank hand in hand.
Looking back from the far bank, I'm already gone.
You stand alone in the dark and ride home late.
Now in springtime, moonlight is twice as white as frost.
Climbing Up the Taibai Tow
er
It is said in the past Li Bai
gave a long howl and climbed up this tower.
Once he paid a visit here,
and his high reputation remains for a hundred generations.
Behind the white clouds the sea dawns
with a bright moon, a celestial gate, and autumn.
As if to greet Li Bai's return,
the Ji River water flows with music.
GAO PANLONG
(1562–1626)
Gao Panlong came from a wealthy family of landowners in Wuxi. His father gave him away to a granduncle who was unable to have his own children. Gao passed the provincial exams in 1582 and the imperial exams in 1588. A neo-Confucianist, a stoic, and a fatalist, he became a serious scholar associated with the philosophical and political movements of the Donglin Academy and was said to spend half of each day sitting in meditation and the other half devoted to scholarship (see his poem, “Idle in Summer,” below). Following a political schism in 1593, he was demoted and sentenced to live far from the capital (Beijing), becoming a jail warden in Guangdong province. In 1595 he returned home after the death of both of his birth parents. He spent years without a position, simply attending to scholarly pursuits and helping to reestablish the decrepit Donglin Academy as a meeting place for local scholars. He used his wealth and land to help widows, orphans, and the poor.
The Anchor Book of Chinese Poetry Page 33