Li Po and Tu Fu

[tarigwaemir]

Lowell House, on the Feast of St. Valentine

I woke up this morning and felt unusually happy. Perhaps it was the aftermath of pleasant dreams, although I don't remember what they were. I looked outside, saw the falling snow, and had a sudden burst of joy at the sight. Snow! I don't usually like snowy days, especially if I have to walk outside in it, but I suppose the past few snowless months has made me appreciate it more. I didn't even mind the muddy brown slush on the pavement or the tiny crystals of ice that pummeled me on my way to class. I splashed through the puddles of snowmelt and thought about Chinese poetry (I've been reading Li Po and Tu Fu in translation for the past two weeks in class). I haven't been this happy in a while. Strange, isn't it? I was half-expecting to feel disgruntled on Valentine's Day (I don't normally mind being single, but lately the continual badgering from parents and other elders has been getting to me), but instead I've been smiling all day.

Of course, waking up to ten messages in valentinr definitely helped to reinforce the good mood. ^_^ Happy Valentine's Day to everyone! Here, have some poetry by Tu Fu (alas, none of them are about love, although they do reference The Three Kingdoms, which may be of interest to Ravages of Time fans):

Tu Fu wrote the following poem for Ts'ao Pa, an esteemed artist who was descended from Ts'ao Ts'ao (Cao Cao).

"A Song of Painting: For General Ts'ao Pa"

O, General, you who hold
   Ts'ao Ts'ao's blood in you,
Now your threshold is cold,
   poorest commoner:

Yet his art is like gold
   untarnished within you,
Though his armies of old
   are long forgotten

(There's more to the poem, but I only included the first two stanzas for the reference to Cao Cao.)

Arthur Cooper, who translated the particular volume of Li Po and Tu Fu we're reading in class, writes in a footnote: "Ts'ao Ts'ao is famous for his huge armies (said to have numbered more than a million men) and his ferocity, including the ferocity of his discipline to his own men; under which he once sentenced himself to death for letting his horse stray in the standing crops (but was persuaded to commute the sentence). He was the arch-enemy of Chu-ko Liang, usually the hero of the stories and the faithful and resourceful Minister of the King of Shu. This Minister, popularly known as K'ung-ming, meaning 'Enlightened by Confucius', was a special hero of Tu Fu's and is the subject of the next two poems. However, the historic Ts'ao Ts'ao, founder of the Kingdom of Wei, was not merely the cruel and treacherous creature of later popular legend, but besides being a great leader, was also a renowned poet, painter and calligrapher; and the father of one of China's greatest poets, Ts'ao Chih."

(Chu-ko Liang K'ung-ming being presumably Wade-Giles versions of Zhuge Liang Kongming.)

The two poems about Zhuge Liang mentioned by Cooper:

"The Ballad of the Ancient Cypress"

In front of K'ung-ming Shrine
   stands an old cypress,
With branches like green bronze
   and roots like granite;

Its hoary bark, far round,
   glistens with raindrops,
And blueblack hues, high up,
   blend in with Heaven's:

Long ago Statesman, King
   kept Time's appointment,
But still this standing tree
   has men's devotion;

United with the mists
   of ghostly gorges,
Through which the moon brings cold
   from snowy mountains.

(I recall near my hut
   on Brocade River
Another Shrine is shared
   by King and Statesman

On civil, ancient plains
   with stately cypress:
The paint there now is dim,
   windows shutterless....)

Wide, wide though writhing roots
   maintain its station,
Far, far in lonly heights,
   many's the tempest

When its hold is the strength
   of Divine Wisdom
And straightness by the work
   of the Creator...

Yet if a crumbling Hall
   needed a rooftree,
Yoked herds would, turning heads,
   balk at this mountain:

By art still unexposed
   all have admired it;
But axe though not refused,
   who could transport it?

How can its bitter core
   deny ants lodging,
All the while scented boughs
   give Phoenix housing?

Oh ambitious unknowns,
   sigh no more sadly:
Using timber as big
   was never easy.

"The Eight Formations"

Glory outlasting the Kingdoms divided in Three,
The Fame achieved by this military Figure of Eight:
The running river leaves these stones unmoved,
By-passing sorrow at failing to swallow Wu!

These are not exactly my favorite poems by Tu Fu, but I thought they were interesting. I like Li Po's imagery better than Tu Fu's, but find Tu Fu to be more emotionally accessible. The tone of nostalgia feels deeply familiar; Li Po writes about nostalgia too, but I think Tu Fu's poetry has a stronger human element. (Reflecting the Taoist-Confucian dichotomy that Cooper draws between Li Po and Tu Fu, I suppose.)

While I'm at it, some excerpts from my favorite poems in this volume. From Li Po's "The Waterfall on Lu Mountain":

Sudden as if flying lightning came
But mystic, too, as white rainbows rose:
At first I feared the Milky Way had dropped
And sprinkled stars, falling through the clouds!

Also from the same poem:

To left and right the green walls were washed
By flying pearls scattering light mist
And streaming foam boiling round great rocks!

From Tu Fu's "The Journey North: The Homecoming":

Mountain berries, tiny, trifling gems
Growing tangled among scattered nuts,
Were some scarlet, sands of cinnabar,
And others black, as if lacquer-splashed

Of course, the impression one gets from the translation is very different from the original. One of these days, I'm going to try to teach myself literary Chinese so I can read these in the original.

I'm supposed to write another quatrain (in the style of Li Po) for tomorrow. I'm also supposed to be writing my thesis, finishing up problem sets, listening to Bach, and preparing for the trip to Califonia next week. Instead I'm feeling happy and trying to compose pretentious lines about the snow. ^_^ Some days, you wake up and see beauty everywhere: in the spider-like patterns of bare black branches, in the solitary track of footprints across the snow-covered courtyard, in the intricate contrapunctal melodies of organ fugues, in the half-flirting conversation of the couple sitting next to you in the Science Center, in the mathematical equations written in neat chalk variables on a classroom board, in the red spiced chicken they served at lunch in the dining hall. Yes, even dining hall food made me feel happy today. Isn't that ridiculous? I'm expecting a mood swing at any moment now.

I'm putting up fics for the 31_days theme exchange in sets of five (backdated so as to not clutter up your friends lists). I've posted the master list at 31_days06 and will post a complete copy here once all the links are up, but if you're curious, you can start reading via the fiction tag.

Yours &c.

Comments

[mercurysblood.livejournal.com]

Hmmmm... Li Bai and Du Fu? ^^; The in-his-style-but-in-English assignment is quite weird to me... Not that I doubt your writing ability! I can only gawk at poetry like great art. ^_^ Good luck!

[darcenciel.livejournal.com]

....wow.

I love that first poem...it's BEAUTIFUL!!!
/rabid Cao Cao fan

[worldserpent.livejournal.com]

Thanks for these excerpts. I think I read the second poem in another form, which just goes to follow your point about how difficult it is to translate these poems.