Lu In (Lu Yin)

THE THIRTEEN EXTANT POEMS

TRANSLATED BY HUGH M. STIMSON

INTRODUCTION

DURING the Tarng¹ (T’ang) Dynasty (618-906), a major Chinese poetic form called shy (shih) developed to its highest point. Among the masters of this form were such giants of Chinese literature as Wang Wei (699-759), Lii Bair (Li Po, 701–62), Duh Fuu (Tu Fu,712-70), and Bair Jiuyih (Po Chü-i,772-846). Many excellent translations have made these four poets familiar to Western readers. Recently other poets, especially those who like Bair Jiuyih lived in the latter part of the dynasty, have received careful critical attention in the West, and their works have become familiar in translation. Some of these poets centered around Harn Yuh (Han Yü,768-824), better known for the part he played in the neo-classical reform of prose essays than for his poetry. Of these at least two will be familiar to Western readers: Menq Jiau (Meng Chiao,751-814), and Lii Heh (Li Но,790-816). A minor poet whose name is associated with Harn Yuh and Menq Jiau is Lu In (Lu Yin,746-810). As far as I know, none of the thirteen short poems under his name in the Complete Tarng shy (Ch’iian T’ang shih) ch470, which are all that remains of his huge output, have been translated into English. The translations offered here will perhaps show how good a minor Tarng poet can be. I also hope that they will stimulate interest in bringing the works of other little-known poets of the period to the attention of the English-speaking public.

All the biographical data we have on Lu In appear in a funerary inscription written for him by Harn Yuh.² This brief notice gives Lu In’s home town as Fannyang (Fan-yang), a Tarng commandery whose chief city is the modern Dahshing (Ta-hsing), Herbeei (Hopeh) Province, less than ten kilometers south of the southern boundary of the Beeijing (Peking) municipal district. In his sixty-fifth year he died in Dengfeng Shiann (Teng-feng Hsien), in the modern province of Hernan (Honan) about 40 kilometers due south of the Yellow River and about 60 kilometers southeast of Lohyang (Loyang). He held the minor position of Dengfeng Shiann wey (Teng-feng Hsien-wei), or Chief of Employees in Dengfeng Shiann. His friends included Menq Jiau, who wrote ten dirges for him. Menq Jiau and other higher-ranking officials succeeded in recommending him for promotion, but he had to decline it on account of illness. A former Prime Minister, Jenq Yuching (Cheng Yü-ch’ing, 746-820), helped support him and at his request paid for his funeral; Harn Yuh himself bought the coffin.

Lu In was buried near Mount Song (Mount Sung, the highest of the Five Sacred Peaks, in Hernan, just north of Dengfeng Shiann) in his first wife’s tomb. Sudden death had already deprived him of a son; surviving him were only an unmarried daughter who had become a Buddhist nun, and, presumably, his second wife. Of his intellectual activities, Harn Yuh says that he was a prolific poet and wrote over a thousand pages of verse during his lifetime; also that he was an omnivorous reader, and that what he read he used only to supply content for his poetry.

Here then are the thirteen extant poems of Lu In. They are in the shy style, keeping the number of syllables per line constant throughout the poem and using line-end rhymes in even-numbered lines. The first five poems are each eight lines long; there is one rhyme per poem; even-numbered lines rhyme in all five, and in the second poem the first line rhymes as well; the lines are five syllables long with a fixed caesura after the second syllable: ‘dum dum, dum dum dum.’ The next three poems also use five-syllable lines with the same caesura position, but they are only four lines long; the second and fourth lines rhyme. The last five poems have four seven-syllable lines with two caesuras, one after the second syllable and the other after the fourth: ‘dum dum, dum dum, dum dum dum.’ In the ninth, tenth, twelfth, and thirteenth poems, the first, second, and fourth lines rhyme; in the eleventh poem only the second and fourth lines rhyme. In translating I have not tried to imitate the rhyme scheme, nor have I invented a way of representing in English the peculiarly Chinese device of regulating tones to produce pleasing variety within the line and antithetical balance between lines of a couplet. But I have always kept the original line order, and in all but the second poem I have managed to preserve the Chinese word order to this extent: Chinese words that follow the last caesura are represented by English words that follow the corresponding caesura in the English line.³

THE THIRTEEN EXTANT POEMS OF LU IN

[ 1 ] The first poem compares the situation of a lady (or, morprecisely, secondary wife) recently arrived in the household of her new master with that of the horse she was traded for. The horse is a good one, from Ferghana, in Central Asia: in power and excellence it is like a dragon. But after all the horse is not really the dragon it resembles; in somewhat the same way, the lady must play a subordinate role with respect to the first wife, the “phoenix” of the first line.

A LADY IN EXCHANGE FOR A HORSE

Companion to a phoenix:

the lady in the tower;

resembling a dragon:

the Ferghanan in the stables.

In the same year

they left their former favors;

in different lands

accept their new kindness.

The fragrant apartment:

a place for changing clothes;

a dusty film:

marks of his snorting grass.

Successive whinnies,

tears that she will indulge:

they both long

for their master’s gate.

[ 2 ] The seventh night of the seventh lunar month is supposed to be the time when two stars, the Of Leader, or Herdboy, and the Weaving Girl have their yearly rendezvous across the River, or Milky Way, which separates them the rest of the year. The last line of this poem echoes a line in Chuu tsyr (Ch’u tz’u) “Jeou ge: Shaw sy minq (Chiu ke: Shao szu-ming):” “No sadness is sadder than separation while alive.”

SEVENS’ NIGHT

When the River is bright and the moon is cool,

the Herdboy and the Weaving Girl meet:

their happiness is exactly then;

a waterclock—whom is it really for?

Surely, they cannot complain that fall speeds by;

all they can do is beg the night to delay.

But it overwhelms the traveler and his wife:

for ten years have they wept, alive but apart.

[ 3 ] During the cool nights of early fall, one is still apt to sleep on a mat of finely woven rushes. Such mats are more appropriate to summer: cool air circulating through the mat makes hot nights bearable. The “River” in the third line again refers to the Milky Way. “White elms” as an epithet for stars goes back to an old song: “What is there in the sky? / One by one white elms have been planted.”

MOONLIT NIGHT

Dew falls;

coolness rises from the mat;

no one around;

moonlight fills the courtyard.

Hard to hear

are the waves going up the River;

I only gaze

at stars: white elms.

Around the tree

goes a magpie: lone percher;

at the window

flies a glowworm: approaching darkness.

In a moment

they settle in orchid shadows

and think how together

they sample various aromas.

[ 4 ]

MIDSUMMER
sent to someone south of the Yangtze

The fifth moon

will soon be here;

but for three years

the traveler has not returned.

Her dream complete,

she goes a thousand miles;

from wine awakened,

there come a hundred sorrows.

In evening dusk,

at times, she looks at hibiscus;

in her sad pain,

she does not eat a plum.

Useless, to take

the round, white fan:

she would go on and send it,

but then she hesitates.

[ 5 ] The Book of Changes under “Chyan” (Ch’ien) says, “Clouds follow dragons; the wind follows tigers.” It is the essential nature of clouds to be big and billowy, fit to be included in the retinue of a dragon. The Gongyang juann (Kung-yang chuan) to “Shi 31” (“Hsi 31”) says that on one of the sacred peaks, Mount Tay (T’ai), clouds come out of the mountain, striking rocks. When clouds rake across rocks they disperse in elegantly patterned wisps. “Jade descent” as an epithet for the blue sky appears in a poem by Yang Shyh’eh (Yang Shih-e, fl. 800) entitled “Picnic in a pavilion by the Yangtze” (“Jiangtvng youyann” [Chiang-t’ing yu-yen]), and in the famous “Song of everlasting sorrow” (“Charng henn ge” [Ch’ang hen ke]), by Bair Jiuyih (Po Chü-i). An alternate translation for the fifth and six lines would be: “They make no screen for the light of the crossing moon; / they make indistinct the gleams of the tipping River.” “Tipping River” as an epithet for the Milky Way as it tips toward the West as dawn approaches appears in Shieh Hueylian (Hsieh Hui-lien, 397- 433), “On Sevens’ Night, singing about the Herdboy and the Weaving Girl” (“Chiyeh, yeong Niou-Neu” [Ch’i-ye, yung Niu־Nü]).

CLOUDS ABOUT TO MELT A WAY

They want to hide

their nature: to follow dragons;

there yet remains

their elegance, when they strike rocks.

They drift along,

cling to the jade descent,

by what they seem,

mistaken for other-than-clouds.

They cross the moon

but do not screen its light;

they tip toward the River

and blur its gleams.

If they should chance by

a place of torrential rain,

they would surely become

rising, billowing clouds.

[ 6 ]

MEETING AN ENVOY TO THE FRONTIER

For years

no real news;

every night

she dreams of a frontier city.

Her sleeve covers

a thousand lines of tears;

a letter encloses

one foot of feeling.

[ 7 ]

MOVING TO ANOTHER RESIDENCE

Since I came

to live in Western Syhchuan,

only you

have I parted from with feeling.

Often we met;

across the street was too far;

but now, between us

is an entire city.

[ 8 ]

AT PERNGKOOU,⁴ MEETING A FRIEND

In difficult times

we have been long apart;

at court and away

our comradeship grew deep.

Changed

are the norms of that time;

useless, what remains:

our heart of former days.

[ 9 ]

THE RAIN HAS STOPPED
I climb the north riverbank and send this to a friend

The rice plants are yellow, extend everywhere

the millet is glossy rich;

amid fields, trees, and successive hills,

a torrent flows of itself.

I remember back, years ago,

in the Pyngyih⁵ region,

when you, Master Shieh, escorted me

up to the top of a tower.

[ 10 ] During the poet’s lifetime there was trouble with foreign nations at China’s borders. Eastern Turks at the north of the present province of Shanshi (Shansi, an area known to ancient geographers as Bingjou, Ping-chou) made military garrisons there necessary. In times of particular stress, able-bodied civilians would be expected to put aside frivolous undertakings, such as might be associated with the ancient southern state of Chuu (Ch’u), and adopt the more military bearing of another ancient southern state, Wu: “Hook of Wu” in the first line is a sickle-shaped weapon.

FRIENDS AND RELATIONS IN CHARN G’AN

No Chuu orchids at my belt;

at my belt a Hook of Wu;

I bring wine to the main city gate

and part from an old comrade.

My years of age are many now,

but the muscle is still there;

I’ll take my bow and arrow

and go as far as Bingjou.

[ 11 ] The Chinese year is divided into twenty-four periods according to the position of the sun in the zodiac. “White Dew” is the name of one of these periods, ending with the autumnal equinox. Migrating wild geese serve as a link between separated loved ones; chirping cicadas exacerbate the pain of loneliness. The weather has turned chilly; one is reminded of winter; it is meaningless to carry a fan.

SAD AT AUTUMN

Wild geese cross the autumn emptiness;

the blue sky is far;

cicadas chirp in sparse-growing trees;

the White Dew is wintry.

By the steps, wilting orchids

still have some spirit;

in her hand, the round fan

has gradually lost its point.

[ 12 ]

EVENING CICADA

Hidden deep in a tall willow,

its back to the slanting rays,

it has power to rouse his lonely sadness

and to lessen his former girth.

And yet it fears that the traveler

will not become white-headed;

again and again it changes trees,

making its noise as it flies.

[ 13 ] Weiyang (Wei-yang) Commandery, an archaic name for a large area in southeastern China, serves to designate the city in that area later known as Yangjou (Yang-chou) in Jiangsu (Kiangsu) Province. In the Tarng Dynasty Yangjou was famous for its opulence and for the variety of its entertainments. Many of its beautiful women, with skin like white jade, must have gravitated there from outlying farm areas.

AT A PAVILION TO THE WEST
of Weiyang Commandery : to a friend

Duckweed swishes on the windy pond;

its fragrance fills the boat;

willow leaves are in quiet array

against the late spring sky.

The Jade One’s present-day

matters of the heart:

how are they like when she rode a goat,

those years, going to market?

NOTES

1. In transcribing Chinese names and terms I prefer a romanization that indicates the tones. The one that does this with the least typographical difficulty is the National Romanization, where letters represent the tones in an intricate but systematic and, ultimately, memorable way. Of course, using this romanization will help only those who have learned enough Chinese to know what the four tones are and who have exposed themselves to National Romanization itself. To others, accustomed to the Wade transcription and to postal spellings of place names, having this romanization foisted upon them will at the very least be a nuisance, or, worse, a source of genuine confusion. To avoid this possibility of confusion, I have indicated the alternative romanization in parenthesis following the Chinese word at its first occurrence, except in the poems. In poem 7, line 2, alternate romanization is Szechwan.

2. “Dengfeng Shiannwy Lu-In muhjyh” (Teng-feng Hsien-wei Lu Yin muchich), in Maa-Tongbor (Ma T’ung-po),Harn-Changli wen jyi jiawjuh (Han Ch’ang-li wen chi chiao-chu ), p. 211 (Shanqhae [Shanghai], 1957).

3. My friend and colleague, Professor T. Y. Li, went over these translations in an earlier version, and his generous help is hereby gratefully acknowledged.

4. Perngkoou (P’eng-k’ou) is in the northwest of the present Perng Shiann (P’eng Hsien), Syhchuan (Szechwan) Province, about forty kilometers north-northwest of Cherngdu (Ch’eng-tu).

5. Pyngyih (P’ing-i) is now called Dahlih (Ta-li), and is in Shaanshi (Shensi) Province on the Loh (Lo) River, about one hundred ten kilometers northeast of the Tarng capital city, Charng-an (Ch’ang-an).