Read The Anchor Book of Chinese Poetry Online
Authors: Tony Barnstone
The serene girl is pretty,
waiting for me at the corner.
She loves me but hides from me.
I scratch my head, walking back and forth.
That serene girl is tender,
she gave me a red straw.
The red straw shines;
I love this beauty.
It was picked in the fields.
It is beautiful and rare.
It isn't the straw that is so beautiful
but that it's a gift from a beauty.
In the wilds is a dead river-deer.
White rushes wrap her.
A lady yearns for someone dear.
A fine man seduces her.
In the woods are clustered bushes,
and in the wilds a river-deer is dead
and wrapped up in white rushes.
There is a lady as fine as jade.
Oh! Slow down, don't be so harsh,
let go of my girdle's sash.
Shhh! You'll make the dog bark.
All the grasslands are yellow
and all the days we march
and all the men are conscripts
sent off in four directions.
All the grasslands are black
and all the men like widowers.
So much grief! Are soldiers
not men like other men?
We aren't bison! We aren't tigers
crossing the wilderness,
but our sorrows
roam from dawn till dusk.
Hairy-tailed foxes slink
through the dark grass
as we ride tall chariots
along the wide rutted roads.
Rows and rows of ripe millet,
the sorghum sprouts,
and I take long, slow walks
with a shaking, shaken heart.
My friends say,
“His heart is hurting”
but strangers wonder,
“What can he be looking for?”
O far, far blue heaven
what makes me feel this way?
Rows and rows of ripe millet,
the sorghum is in spike,
and I take long, slow walks
with a drunken heart.
My friends say,
“His heart is hurting”
but strangers wonder,
“What can he be looking for?”
O far, far blue heaven
what makes me feel this way?
Rows and rows of ripe millet,
the sorghum is all grain,
and I take long, slow walks
with a choking heart.
My friends say,
“His heart is hurting”
but strangers wonder,
“What can he be looking for?”
O far, far blue heaven
what makes me feel this way?
I beg you, Zhongzi,
don't come into my neighborhood,
don't break my willow twigs.
I'm not worried about the willow trees,
I'm afraid of my parents.
I do miss you
but I'm scared
of my parents' scolding.
I beg you, Zhongzi,
don't climb over my wall,
don't break my mulberry branches.
I'm not worried about my mulberry trees,
I'm afraid of my brothers.
I do miss you
but I'm scared
of my brothers' words.
I beg you, Zhongzi,
don't trespass into our orchard,
don't break my sandalwood boughs.
I'm not worried about the sandalwood trees,
I'm afraid of rumors.
I do miss you
but I'm scared
of people's gossip.
When the gourd has dried leaves,
you can wade the deep river.
Keep your clothes on if the water's deep;
hitch up your dress when it's shallow.
The river is rising,
pheasants are chirping.
The water is just half a wheel deep,
and the hen is singing to the cock.
Wild geese are trilling,
the rising sun starts dawn.
If you want to marry me,
come before the river is frozen.
The ferryman is gesturing,
other people are going, but not me,
other people are going, but not me,
I'm waiting for you.
*
According to the preface of the
Book of Songs
, the poet is a minister of the Eastern Zhou dynasty (771–256 bce). He comes to the capital city of the earlier Western Zhou dynasty (1122–771 bce) and finds all the temples destroyed and the royal palace replaced by rows and rows of millet. Moved by these changes, he improvises this poem.
*
This is a poem from the perspective of either an unmarried girl or a young widow.
*
The ancient Chinese used to tie gourds around their waist as a safety device when wading.
Laozi was the legendary author of the
Dao De Jing
, a collection of prose and verse wisdom literature that is considered the seminal work of Daoism. Yet mysteries abound about Laozi and the
Dao De Jing.
It is by no means certain that a historical personage named Laozi ever existed. The collection itself was originally known simply as
Laozi;
since Laozi also means “old man,” and there is evidence of a body of wisdom literature whose various book titles all translate as “elder” or “old man,” it may be that this collection is the lone survivor of a lost genre. The title
Dao De Jing (Classic of the Way and Its Power)
was subsequently given to it. The
Dao De Jing
may be an anthology by diverse authors of sayings linked by common themes or the work of one author augmented by later redactors. The traditional Laozi is said to have been an older contemporary of Confucius (551– 479 bce), who instructed the younger sage in the rites, but this story seems not to have circulated until the third century bce. It is now thought that the text dates from no earlier than the third or fourth centuries bce. In the first century bce, the famous historian Sima Qian recounted the Confucius encounter and other stories
about Laozi, which he gathered from sources now lost. The story about Laozi's writing the
Dao De Jing
follows:
Laozi cultivated the way and virtue, and his teachings aimed at self-effacement. He lived in Zhou for a long time, but seeing its decline he departed; when he reached the Pass, the Keeper there was pleased and said to him, “As you are about to leave the world behind, could you write a book for my sake?” As a result, Laozi wrote a work in two books, setting out the meaning of the way and virtue in some five thousand characters, and then departed. None knew where he went to in the end.
1
The book itself has more than the five thousand characters mentioned by Sima Qian and is divided into eighty-one chapters in two sections. Unlike the other great source of Daoism, the
Zhuangzi
text, the
Dao De Jing
is not a work of anecdotes and parables; it is a general, didactic work of great poetic beauty, mystery, and ambiguity. Central to the work and to Daoism is the concept of the Dao, which means the way, method, or reason. The Dao is ineffable—it can't be captured in words; it is as small as the essential nature of the smallest thing and as large as the entire universe. The term
De
means “virtue” and refers to the nature of a thing—its inherent virtue and energy. The term
Jing
means “classic,” and thus the title of the book translates as
The Classic of the Dao and the De.
The Dao in this work is seen as the source of the world, as everything and, at the same time, nothing. It is fluid, weak, and passive, yet it conquers all and is the source of all action. Its nature is paradoxical because it is so large that it contains both ends of all oppositions. The Dao is also a contemplative method for understanding oneself and for merging with the Dao. Different interpreters see it either as a method of survival through passive resistance written in a time of great insecurity and turmoil or as a more mystical treatise. In any case, a number of passages treat the proper behavior of citizen and ruler and suggest that true self-interest lies in selflessness (thus, the ruler must humble himself before the people in order to rule, follow in order to lead).
Like Confucianism, Daoism took on magical elements as it developed, and the longevity of the follower of the Dao (who would live longer in turbulent times) was interpreted as physical immortality. Daoism resembled Western alchemy in its quest for the secret of immortality. It later came to blend with Buddhism. Throughout Chinese literature and intellectual history, Daoism has been a liberating counterbalance to the dogmatic order of Confucianism.
The Dao that can be told is not the timeless Dao.
The name that can be named is not the eternal name.
Heaven and earth emerged from the nameless.
The named is the mother of all things.
Lose desire and see the Dao's essence.
Have desire and see the Dao's manifestations.
These two have the same source but different names.
Their sameness is a mystery,
mystery of mysteries,
gateway of untold secrets.
Dao is an empty vessel,
used without ever being filled,
unfathomably deep, the source of all things,
where sharpness blunts,
knots untangle,
glare mellows,
dust coalesces.
So hidden, in nonbeing it is being.
Who knows whose child it is,
this ancestor of the gods?
Thirty spokes join at one hub;
emptiness makes the cart useful.
Cast clay into a pot;
the emptiness inside makes it useful.
Cut doors and windows to make a room;
emptiness makes the room useful.
Thus being is beneficial,
but usefulness comes from the void.
Warp to be whole,
twist to be straight,
hollow out to be full,
fray to be new,
have less and gain more,
have much and be perplexed.
Therefore the sage embraces the One
and is a model for all under heaven.
Not exhibiting himself, he stands out.
Not full of himself, he is acclaimed.
Not boasting, he succeeds.
Not vain, his works maintain. He doesn't strive
and so nothing under heaven strives with him.
The ancients say, “warp to become whole.”
These are not empty words.
Return to the source and be whole.
Know others for wisdom,
but enlightenment is knowing yourself.
Master others to gain power,
but true strength is mastering yourself.
Wealth is to know you have enough.
Acting with force is willpower,
but stay still to endure.
To die without expiring is longevity.
The softest thing in the world
can inundate the hardest thing under heaven,
slipping in formless where there is no breach.
This is why I know nonaction is valuable.
But the lesson taught without words,
the value of doing nothing,
can be understood by few under heaven.
Without walking out the door,
know the whole universe.
Without looking out the window,
see the Way of heaven.
The farther you go,
the less you know.
Thus the sage knows by staying still,
fathoms without seeing,
achieves through nonaction.
The sage doesn't have his own heart.
The people's heart is his heart.
He is kind to the kind
and kind to the unkind since virtue is kind.
1
He has trust in the trusting
and trust in the trustless since virtue is trust.
He breathes carefully,
not to scare those under heaven.
He seems muddled when he does things for the world and in the eyes and ears of all he seems to act like a child.
76
Soft and weak at birth,
a man is rigid hard at death.
Trees and plants are soft and supple alive,
brittle and withered when dead.
Thus the hard and brittle belong to death
and the soft and weak belong to life.
An adamant army may be decimated.
A tree that's too strong will be crooked.
Thus the hard and strong are subjugated
and the soft and weak triumph.
Nothing is softer and more yielding than water,
yet nothing is better in attacking the solid and forceful
because nothing can take its place.
Weak conquers strong,
soft conquers hard.
No one doesn't know this,
yet who practices it?
Thus the sage says,
“The state's true master takes on
the country's disgrace
and by taking on the country's misfortunes
is king under heaven.”
Straight speech may seem like paradox.
1
D. C. Lau, tr.,
Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching
(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1963), p. 9. The Wade-Giles transliteration of this quotation has been changed to the Pinyin system.
1
In lines 4 and 6, two homonyms with the sound of
de
are used in different versions of the text. One character for
de
means “virtue,” and the other
de
means “gain.” So line 4, for example, could also be read “and kind to the unkind to gain in kindness.”
The
Verses of Chu
is the second great anthology of Chinese poetry. Since it comes from the kingdom of Chu, a Southern state located in the central valley of the Yangtze River, it is often considered representative of a Southern style of poetry, as distinguished from the Northern style of the
Book of Songs.
The two collections have formal elements in common, however, and modern scholars question the adequateness of the Northern/Southern dichotomy.
Most of the poems in the
Verses of Chu
are attributed to Qu Yuan (c. 340-c. 278 bce), the first Chinese poet whom we know by name, but the anthology itself reached its final form some four hundred years after he lived, in the second century ce. It seems highly unlikely that Qu Yuan composed all the works attributed to him. We know little about the historical Qu Yuan, except that he belonged to the royal house of Chu and served in the court of King Huai (329–299 bce). As a result of slander from a jealous colleague, Chu fell from the king's graces and was said to have written the extremely important poem
Encountering Sorrow
to show his faithfulness and remonstrate with the king. Qu Yuan was supposed to have warned the king repeatedly against the aggressions of the state of Qin, but he was ignored, and the king was captured by Qin. After the king's death in captivity abroad, his son was inaugurated but proved as gullible and flawed a king as his father. He banished Qu Yuan to the far south, and Qu Yuan drowned himself in the Miluo River in protest. Eventually the state of Chu was swallowed up by Qin. Qu Yuan is a highly influential early figure of the honest retainer who dares to criticize his superiors, along the Confucian model, and his death is the subject of the yearly Dragon Boat Festival in China.