larryhammer | “a very nice style / but it’s always the same in the end / they got a divorce as a matter of course”

Here’s another poem-set partially included in 300 Tang Poems, where this time the editor ‘stoppeth one of three’ as #155—and I translated the other two to find out what’s up with that.

Early Autumn: Three Poems, Xu Hun

1.
Through the long night float sounds of my clear se.
The western wind brings life to bright-green vines.
Last fireflies are settled on jade dew.
An early wild goose shakes the Milky Way.
The tall trees still are dense at break of day.
There’s even more far mountains when it’s clear.
South of the Huai, a single leaf drops down.
I’m aware of my age, of mists on the water.

2.
A single leaf drops down before the steps—
South of the Huai, this man already grieves:
I squandered all my greenhorn expectations,
The distance to my ‘white-cloud’ time decreases.
In age, I’m truly Xiangru in the end;
Impoverished, I worry of Manqian’s hunger.
A new duke and an orchard manager—
Where are these men? For they are my teachers.

3.
North of Ji, the wild geese are still distant—
South of the Huai, this man already grieves.
The last peach falls into the open well
And fresh chrysanthemums grow through the fence.
Books and swords—how could they both be wrong?
The qin and wine-cup—I hold these, at least.
West of my study, wind and rain at night—
But more than this, I chant my feeble poems.

早秋三首

之一
遥夜泛清瑟，
西风生翠萝。
残萤栖玉露，
早雁拂银河。
高树晓还密，
远山晴更多。
淮南一叶下，
自觉老烟波。

之二
一叶下前墀，
淮南人已悲。
蹉跎青汉望，
迢递白云期。
老信相如渴，
贫忧曼倩饥。
生公与园吏，
何处是吾师。

之三
蓟北雁犹远，
淮南人已悲。
残桃间堕井，
新菊亦侵篱。
书剑岂相误，
琴尊聊自持。
西斋风雨夜，
更有咏贫诗。

1. The se was an ancient zither (ancestor of the qin and zheng/koto) with between 25 to 50 strings and moveable bridges. Idiom: the Milky Way is called “Silver River.” The Huai River is in Anhui, in the Yangzi delta region. That a single leaf falling tells the coming of autumn was a commonplace.

2. Xiangru is Sima Xiangru, a literati famous for spending much of his middle years in poverty compounded by poor health, before being rehabilitated by Han Emperor Wu as a court poet. Manqian is the courtesy name of Dongfang Shuo, a literati who acted as Wu’s court jester, who once joked that since he received the same stipend of grain as the dwarfs in the imperial stable, he as a tall man was about to starve. The orchard manager is the philosopher Zhuangzi, who supposedly remained the manager of a lacquer-tree plantation rather than accept a more important position, but I’ve not identified the duke—I’m guessing something Zhou Dynasty, or at least someone (like Zhuangzi) even more ancient than the Han examples.

3. Ji was the capital of the Warring States kingdom of Yan, now part of southwestern Beijing, and most of the geese (aside from the one in the first poem) that nest in Siberia haven’t yet migrated even that far. Wild chrysanthemums are autumn-bloomers. The qin is a 7-string zither with fixed bridges, and as a relatively soft and subtle instrument was the prestige instrument of the scholar-gentleman in his study (in contrast to the books and swords of public life).

Okay, so, actually, this time I do have a clue why the other poems were omitted. One thing I’ve noticed about other poems extracted from sets, at least so far—with one exception, an obvious call and response, each poem can be taken on its own and still be appreciated. They may build on each other (for example, some of Du Fu’s, still to be translated) but stand by themselves pretty well. But these three—they’re tightly linked, with multiple echoes threading an argument through them. (The reason I worded the start of #2.l5 “in age” so awkwardly was to make explicit the echo of #1.l8.) More specifically, the first poem works decently on its own, even if it doesn’t reach the same conclusion as the set as a whole, but the other two are significantly weaker when taken as solo poems without the others for context to build the argument.

Or at least, that’s my take. A clue of a take. Something of one.

---L.

Index of Chinese translations

Subject quote from Scenes From an Italian Restaurant, Billy Joel, and yes I am highly amused to be using him of all people here.