41: Midnight Four Season Songs: Autumn, Li Bai

Chang'an is a slice of moon,

Countless houses pounding clothes.

The autumn wind blows without end,

always with the passions of the Jade Pass.

What day will see the Northern Savages pacified,

and good men quit their long campaign?

5: A Few Words on Li Bai

Li Bai holds one of the most august thrones in the history of Chinese poetry, as Matt mentioned in the introduction to Li Bai he published here back in November. Li Bai was also a man of his time - a man, that is, on the border of many worlds.

I mentioned during my translations of Zhang Jiuling that, while Westerners tend to think of Chinese history as largely separate from the larger world, the Tang Dynasty was defined by international trade, border wars, and multiculturalism. The Tang capital at Chang'an, which is known today as Xi'an, was the gateway to the Silk Road, an intersection between the Turkic peoples of Central Asia and the Han Chinese. The spices, cloth, poetry, and blood of many cultures flowed through Chang'an, and left a mark that can be seen to this day in the city's cuisine, architecture, and cosmopolitan attitude. Li Bai's life story shares something of this character.

He was born either in southern Gansu province, or (according to some soruces) even further out on the Silk Road, near the modern city of Tokmok, in Kyrgyzstan. Contemporary biographical sources are sparse, but he apparently grew up speaking Turkish as well as Chinese. His family moved to the more central province of Sichuan during his youth, and in his childhood he was captivated by Daoist mysticism and swordplay. He was a frequent and, apparently, enthusiastic duelist. After achieving initial success at court, he offended a chief Imperial eunuch, and found his hopes of advancement within the Tang bureaucracy blocked. During the chaos surrounding the An Lushan Rebellion, Li Bai joined a smaller rebel faction, and was exiled to Anhui province after the rebellion's failure.

Li Bai spoke the Turkish language and fought in a Turkish general's rebellion against the Tang emperor, and yet his poems are a wellspring of Chinese culture. In this nationalist age, it can be hard to imagine someone straddling worlds and lives to such an extent. Then again, that's what many of us try to do today, with travel, with translation, and with the internet: introduce one world to another, or live one life in the context of many others. In that case, maybe we should be looking at artists like Li Bai to help chart the way.

5: Sharing Wine and the Night with a Recluse Beneath Zhongnan Mountain, by Li Bai (part deux!)

The last month has been a bit hectic for both Matt and myself - sorry for the confused schedule! I took a week off in London and never quite recovered. In light of some great vocabulary notes I received for the Li Bai poem I posted toward the end of November, I've decided to offer a revised translation. Commentary to follow!

005李白:下终南山过斛斯山人宿置酒

暮從碧山下, 山月隨人歸,
卻顧所來徑, 蒼蒼橫翠微.
相攜及田家, 童稚開荊扉.
綠竹入幽徑, 青蘿拂行衣.
歡言得所憩, 美酒聊共揮.
長歌吟松風, 曲盡河星稀.
我醉君復樂, 陶然共忘機.

Twilight from a green mountain falls; the
mountain moon follows a man's return.

And yet he looks back up the path he came,
a gray, gray slash on a blue-green ridge.

Watch him led to the house in the fields: a
child opens the chaste-wood gate.

Green bamboo lines the quiet way;
green vines brush the gown.

With happy words, reach a place of rest.
This beautiful wine, we scatter together.

The pine-tree wind sings long songs,
melodies sparse as the Milky Way's stars.

I am drunk, and you are once more happy.
Joyous, carefree - all forgotten, the world's designs.

---

mù cóng bìshān xià, shān yuē suí rén guī,
Twilight from green mountain down, mountain moon follow person return
què gǔ suǒ lái jìng, cāngcāng héng cuìwēi.
however look back place where comes path, gray gray across blue green hillside
xiàng xié jí tiān jiā, tóng zhì kāi jīng fēi.
watch taken by the hand to the farmer's house; a child opens the chaste-tree gate
lǜ zhú rù yōu jìng, qīng luò fú xíng yī
Green bamboo enters the secluded path, Green radishes are brushed aside by the gown.
huān yán dé suǒ qì, měi jiǔ liáo gǒng huī.
Happy words receive this rest, beauty wine for a time share and scatter
cháng gē yín sōng fēng, qǔ jìn hē xīng xī.
Long songs hum pine wind, melodies all Milky Way sparse
wǒ zuì jūn fù lè, táo rán gǒng wàng jī
I drunk you again happy, happy and carefree all forgotten mechanism

Bonus Poem! Tao Qian, Miscellaneous Poems No. 8

Bo-nus! Tao Qian is one of China's greatest poets, and this is the beginning of one of my favorite of his poems.

Miscellaneous Poems, Number Eight

Human life is without root, fluttering like dust on unknown roads,
Scattering apart in the slowly turning wind; this is not its eternal form.
Just as it falls to the dirt, it becomes young brothers. What need have kin of flesh or bone?
Attain contentment and make of it pleasure, and with wine gather closer with your neighbors.
Glorious years do not come again, days dawn but cannot twice rise.
When you can, take advantage, for time attends not man.

Oh, the white sun rolls West, and the bleached moon leaves the Eastern cliffs.
Rolling, rolling, an endless distance glimmers; empty, empty, the middle of the sky.
The wind comes into my house and my chamber; in the middle of the night my pillow and mat are cold.
The air shifts, and I awake to the change; I cannot sleep and know the eternity of the night.
Desire for speech, with no one to talk to; I raise a cup and drink to my lonely shadow.
The sun and the moon meet men, then go; even those of will cannot win their release.
Memory of this fills me with bitter regret; at the last I know I cannot be at peace.

40: Midnight Four Season Song: Summer, Li Bai

Very sorry for the delay! Completely my fault, and so in recompense I'll offer another *bonus* translation tonight.

Midnight Four Season Song: Summer

On 300 li of Mirror Lake

young lotuses reveal flowers.

In the fifth month Xi Shi plucks,

others fill the shore watching.

Then, back to the boat without attending the moon,

returning to the House of the King of Yue.

5: Sharing Wine and the Night with a Recluse Beneath Zhongnan Mountain, by Li Bai

Apologies for a late post! In my defense, I've been in London the last four days, wandering about with friends and enjoying some pints -- a past-time which Li Bai, whose poems I turn to this week, would have respected. So, without further ado:

005李白:下终南山过斛斯山人宿置酒

暮從碧山下, 山月隨人歸,
卻顧所來徑, 蒼蒼橫翠微.
相攜及田家, 童稚開荊扉.
綠竹入幽徑, 青蘿拂行衣.
歡言得所憩, 美酒聊共揮.
長歌吟松風, 曲盡河星稀.
我醉君復樂, 陶然共忘機.

Twilight from a green mountain falls; the
mountain moon follows their return,

but lonely they walk upon the path, a
gray, gray slash on a blue-green ridge.

Watch her led to the house in the fields: a
child opens the chaste-wood gate.

Green bamboo lines the quiet way;
green vines brush the gown.

With happy words achieve at last this rest,
beauty and wine all shared and scattered.

The pine-tree wind sings long songs,
melodies exhausted by sparse river stars.

I am drunk, and you are once more happy,
joyful, all the seeds of care forgotten.

---

mù cóng bìshān xià, shān yuē suí rén guī,
Twilight from green mountain down, mountain moon follow person return
què gǔ suǒ lái jìng, cāngcāng héng cuìwēi.
however lonley which comes path, gray gray across blue green hillside
xiàng xié jí tiān jiā, tóng zhì kāi jīng fēi.
watch taken by the hand to the farmer's house; a child opens the chaste-tree gate
lǜ zhú rù yōu jìng, qīng luò fú xíng yī
Green bamboo enters the secluded path, Green radishes are brushed aside by the gown.
huān yán dé suǒ qì, měi jiǔ liáo gǒng huī.
Happy words receive this rest, beauty wine for a time share and scatter
cháng gē yín sōng fēng, qǔ jìn hē xīng xī.
Long songs hum pine wind, melodies all river star sparse
wǒ zuì jūn fù lè, táo rán gǒng wàng jī
I drunk you again happy, happy and carefree all forgotten (root cause, seed)

39: Women In and Around Chinese Poetry

You may have noticed that one of the tags on the Four Seasons: Spring translation is "female-voiced poetry". Like Du Fu in The Beautiful Woman, Li Bai in his Midnight Four Season Songs is impersonating, or at least focusing on, the voice of, a young woman. This was (and continued to be) a common practice among male Chinese poets, going back at least to Qu Yuan's Li Sao, and possibly as far back as the Book of Songs, which includes many poems in a woman's voice that may (or may not) have been recorded or composed by men. Not that there weren't a number of well-known women writers of poetry; indeed, in the case of Midnight Four Season Songs, the female-centric poems of a male author are patterned after the much older work of a female poet. That Li Bai would and even could make this choice is of great significance; it means that by his day (8th century CE, the High Tang), the activity of men engaging in explicit literary impersonations of women had grown to involve the work of women themselves -- all to say nothing of the way such literary gender games naturally interacted with works of other genres (eg in the frontier or garden poem). Never a simple matter, the use of a female voice in a poem by a man became a sort of nexus of layered representation. On the one hand, Li Bai, the quintessential "poet of personality" known almost more for his image and lifestyle than his work (remember his many names), is inevitably closely linked to the appearance of his work as a powerful figure in his own right, a sort of inevitable, ghostly overlay above the text itself. On the other hand, unlike in some of his other more famous poems, here he writes not of himself but of a series of women, in the style of a specific woman. What are we to make of this?

There is an enormous amount to say about the topic of women in Chinese poetry, and I won't attempt to go any further in one post. For more, I recommend the book Women Writers of Traditional China, by Kang-yi Sun Chang and Haun Saussy.