Sixty Six (by Bai Juyi)

Through sickness

And recovery

Strength has diminished

With age you feel 

Time’s quickening

58 only yesterday

Today I’m 66

White hair

Adorns my temples

Like fine silk

The grass by

The pond grows

Far more thick and lush

The children have

All grown up

The garden now half

Filled with 

   Thick tree trunks

See how large rocks

Slide down the mountain

And the stream

Penetrates into

The bamboo grove’s depth

 Even when there’s 

But a slow trickle

It sounds

Like a mad rush

Though as long as 

I’ve been listening

I have not yet

Heard enough

六十六

白居易

病知心力减

老觉光阴速

五十八归来

今年六十六

鬓丝千万白

池草八九绿

童稚尽成人

园林半乔木

看山倚高石

引水穿深竹

虽有潺湲声

至今听未足

A Drawing of Pine and Bamboo (by Tang Yin)

 Drawing of Pine and Bamboo

 

Tang Yin

 

A brief banquet seated

With birdsong for musical score

I could inscribe my whole life

This way from my heart’s core

 

Yes, my whole life  

Could surely pass this way

With pine and bamboo together

In simple harmony

松竹图

唐寅

 

促席坐鸣琴

写我平生心

 

平生固如此

松竹谐素音

I wonder if this a poem about making or looking at a piece of art.  Remember that Tang Yin was both a poet and a painter and as a result many of his poems were inscribed in his own hand directly alongside one of his paintings. In either case, I wish I could find the image that inspired this poem, but all I could find with my online searching was this drawing of pine and bamboo made at a much later date, I believe, but nonetheless showing pine and bamboo in harmony.

 

A Picture Too Real (by Tang Yin)

Translating a classical Chinese poem sometimes calls for guesswork, in order to fill in the gaps in my understanding.  These poems are so rich in cultural reference, it's hard for anyone not raised in the tradition to pick up even half the allusions.  Not only that but much classical Chinese poetry is written in a terse or compact style, which makes it inherently subject to more than a single interpretation. At a certain point, you have to be willing to make your own intuitive leap in order to come up with a good reading of the poem.

Even after you make an intuitive leap, though, not everything always neatly lines up with your reading.  It's a bit like trying to hold a cat in a bag, the way the meaning of the text will keep shifting about and can't be firmly grasped.  

The last line of this poem by Tang Yin is a good example of what I mean.  I think I understand this poem but then there's the last line, which makes me wonder about my tenuous perch.

A Picture Too Real

Tang Yin

From ancient times

Flowers have spoken

Of immortal beauty

 

Self too partakes

Of such beauty

No matter how

Ill-fated one’s luck

 

The lilting tune

Of Rainbows and Feathers

Continues – an unending dance

 

With a long winding train  

Of golden brocade

The horse is perched

On a rocky slope

太真图

唐寅

 

古来花貌说仙娥

自是仙娥薄命多

一曲霓裳未终舞

金钿甲委马嵬坡

      

   

Aspirations (by Tang Yin)

Here's a short poem by the Ming artist Tang Yin that captures the artist's aspiration to find a way to live free of the work-a-day world's entanglements.   Most likely written in the early years of the 1500s, it might just as easily come off the pen of a beat or millennial slacker poet. 

Aspirations

Tang Yin

No alchemy

No meditation

No commerce

No work in the fields

 

Just writing at leisure

To the green hills give all

Free of human toil

By money unsoiled

          

言志

 

唐寅

 

不炼金丹不坐禅

不为商贾不耕田

闲来写就青山卖

不使人间造孽钱

In addition to writing poetry, Tang Yin was a painter - in fact that's primarily what he was known for.  He was one of the most highly regarded landscape painters of the Ming Dynasty.  Here's one of his paintings which I think should give you a good idea of how he aspired to give the green hills his all.

Although there are no green hills in this wintry landscape, it is a moment closely observed, as a flock of corvids land in a barren treetop.  I’m not sure this is right … but I see this painting as a self-portrait, of sorts, with the poet/painter being the person shown walking beside the stream.  This is the artist strolling downstream, feeling deeply at ease in nature; he looks up into the tree tops and is suddenly possessed by the idea for a new painting.  It’s the moment of inspiration.  In other words, this is a painting of the moment when the idea for the painting first took form.

Belatedness with Chinese Characteristics

 

I recently came across this poem by the Ming poet Tang Yin (1470-1524) that was written in response to a well-known preface and poem written by the Tang poet Wang Bo (650-676).  Almost 1,000 years separate these two men and yet, as often seems to be the case with Chinese poetry, a remarkable sense of cultural continuity makes their dialog both possible and rewarding.

 

First, my translation of a few lines from Wang Bo’s preface, followed by Tang Yin’s response.

 

Wang Bo (an excerpt from Preface to Prince Teng’s Pavilion)

 

A lone bird flies towards the setting sun

Autumn water and broad sky merge as one

A fisherman’s song echoes dimly across the lake

Startled, a flock of geese break the stillness

With trembling calls as the cold draws near

Along the shoreline

王勃《滕王阁序》

落霞与孤鹜齐飞

秋水共长天一色

渔舟唱晚

响穷彭蠡之滨

雁阵惊寒

声断衡阳之浦

Tang Yin

Untitled Poem

 

Expressing yourself

Something always

Remains concealed

Or omitted

A lone bird, the clouds at sunset

Autumn waters and broad sky

In this auspicious place

Mountains and lake

Without blemish

 

A thousand years

Pass by in an instant

Just ask the people on the water

How the Emperor’s pavilion

Looked back then

无题

唐寅

 

兴发总关情

自落霞孤鹜

秋水长天

幸此地湖山无恙

 

古今才一瞬

问江上才人

阁中帝子

比当年风景如何

It may help your understanding of the interchange between these two poets if I share a bit of background.  Wang Bo was part of the first wave of great poets during the Tang Dynasty.  He was a child prodigy who started writing his own poems at the age of 6 but whose life was cut short when he drowned at sea at the age of 26.  Even so, he left a lasting mark on the history of Chinese poetry, not just for his body of work, consisting of 76 poems, but also for his contribution to poetic theory. Wang is generally credited as one of the first major proponents of the idea that a poem ought to directly reflect the poet’s own state of mind (诗言志). This was a novel idea at the time but soon became accepted as a fundamental part of the Tang esthetic, essential to the art the great Tang poets who followed in his wake, from Li Bai to DuFu to Wang Wei, all of whom adopted and adapted Wang Bo’s precept in their own way.  This view of poetry as a deeply personal mode of expression is what makes Tang poetry so accessible to us today.      

 

Wang Bo’s contribution to poetic theory is one of the keys, I think, to understanding the subtlety of Tang Yin’s response.  The first line of Tang Yin’s poem (兴发总关情) may be best understood as a gloss or further refinement on Wang Bo’s view of poetry as direct personal expression.  Whatever a poet reveals, something always remains concealed.

 

There’s alot going on here, including historical references,not all of which I fully understand.  Both poets stood in the same place, more or less, when they wrote their poems, on the shores of the Gan River, looking towards a monument known as Prince Teng’s Pavilion.  This is one of the most well-known structures in southern China, originally built in 653 by a younger brother of the Tang Emperor Taizong. But in the intervening years between Wang Bo’s poem and Tang Yin’s, the Pavilion was destroyed and rebuilt more than 25 times.  I think this is part of Tang Yin is thinking about in the second stanza of his poem – Prince Teng’s proud tower standing as a monument to cultural continuity, destruction and change.

 

What I find so compelling about Tang Yin’s poem is how it’s imbued with this strong sense of belatedness – a later day poet puzzling over his own place in a long-standing cultural tradition.  But this is belatedness with distinctly Chinese characteristics, as opposed the way Harold Bloom used the term.  Tang Yin as a later day poet is not so much struggling to make his own mark by overcoming his predecessor poet. The grand monuments in Chinese culture are always being built, destroyed and rebuilt, just as the grand poetic tradition is never complete (because no personal expression can ever be said to be complete) but remains ever evolving.  A sense of belatedness is no cause for struggle but rather stands as an invitation to participate in the long sweep of Chinese culture. 

Belatedness Abounding

Expending oneself

To what end I wonder

Writing bluesky haiku

What used to matter

So much it wanted

Constant rephrasing

What of the sunset

Used to feel

Praise worthy 

Beyond mention now

Passes without notice

Belatedness abounds

Even for those unable

Or unwilling to speak

A Poem About Middle Age (by Tang Yin)

 Here’s my translation of another poem by the Ming artist Tang Yin. I’m just beginning to read his poems and I find myself once again falling under the spell of Chinese poetry. What a wonderful spell it is. 

Tang Yin is the real deal as a great Tang poet, except that he lived about 900 years too late to be considered among their dynastic rank. He falls into the category of what I like to call the Later Day Tang Poets, in that he writes imbued with the spirit of Tang but, at least in Tang Yin’s case, from a much more modern (or more accurately, a pre-modern) point of view. It’s a bit like feeling young at heart but in an older person’s body - which is perhaps a good introduction to this untitled poem, by a great Later Day Tang Poet, Tang Yin, about being middle aged.

Untitled - by Tang Yin

To remain sleeping without relish

In middle age the mood’s gone missing

Most of us wake up to the rooster’s cry

Without thought of pursuing fortune or fame

无题

唐寅

残睡无多有滋味     中年到底没心情

世人多被鸡催起     自不由身为利名

It might help you better appreciate this poem if I explain the reference to pursuing fortune and fame in the last line. This is considered to be the Confucian ideal. But that was not Tang Yin’s path, as I’ll further explain in a subsequent post.  He came from the school of roustabout Later Day Tang Poets, in the company of such kindred spirits as Jack Kerouac and Gary Snyder.

A Little Taste of Tang Yin

 I've just discovered a Chinese poet named Tang Yin.  He was apparently best known as a painter during the Ming Dynasty.  Like Wang Wei before him, he became a master of both arts.  His dates are 1470 - 1524.  So far I've only read and translated a few of his poems but they really fit my current mood.  Tang Yin has a casual, almost flippant style to his poetry, with a very mordant wit.

Here is one from a series of untitled poems that I started translating earlier today:

Untitled – 2

  

Remove the yoke of the Imperial City

Unkempt I return to lie in an old thatched hut

Where there’s barely room to stand, don’t laugh

Ten thousand li of mountains and rivers flow

Through my brush and come to life

无题

唐寅

 

 

领解皇都第一名 猖披归卧旧茅蘅

立锥莫笑无余地    万里江山笔下生

I particularly love the last line (which I've rendered in two lines) as a description of an artist through whom the life force is fully flowing.  The way Tang Yin expresses it, it's unclear if he is speaking of painting or poetry, either way, the mountains and rivers flow through his brush ....