“Waiting for the Unicorn”
Liu Shih (Ju-shih; HO-TUNG-CHÜN, MI-WU, and WO-WEN CHÜ-SHIH), a native of Wu-chiang, Kiangsu, was one of those rare Chinese women who, despite her humble origin (her profession was that of a singing girl, or courtesan, in the entertainment quarter), managed to acquire an education. Before she met Ch’ien Ch’ien-yi (q.v.), in 1640, she was probably known as Yang Yi (the character yang, a common surname, also means “poplar tree,” which is usually associated with the character liu, “willow”). Under that name, she won fame not only for her beauty but also for her talents as a poet and calligrapher; and many men of letters of her time were her friends, including the late Ming poet Ch’en Tzu-lung (1608–1647), who was also her lover. After becoming Ch’ien’s concubine on 14 July 1641, Ch’ien gave her the new name of Liu Shih, or Liu Ju-shih (with the two characters of her given name being taken from a conventional Buddhist scriptural phrase (ju-shih wo-wen, meaning “and so I have heard”).
The couple shared many a literary interest: in addition to composing poems together, Liu also helped him compile a highly reputable anthology of Ming poetry, assuming responsibility for the section on women poets. She remained faithful and loyal to Ch’ien for the rest of her life, often bringing on herself unwelcome tasks in order to shelter him from one kind of crisis or another in his stormy career. After a fire destroyed their library, the Chiang-yün lou, she took up Buddhist studies and became a nun a year before the poet’s death. After Ch’ien died in 1663, some of his kinsmen pressed her for money and treasures and, finally, in order to shame her blackmailers, she hanged herself, leaving a request to the authorities that justice be done. (A settlement was eventually worked out whereby a modest income was settled on Ch’ien’s son by his first marriage and on the daughter she had borne with Ch’ien.) Liu Shih’s poetic output was not large—barely two slim volumes included in her husband’s collected works—but it reflects an intensity of feeling reminiscent of the best poetry of the Sung lyricist Ch’in Kuan (1049–1100).2
(Irving Lo)
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1. Chao-ying Fang, ECCP, 1:529- 530.
2. Ibid., p. 530.
Flitting to and fro, by winding paths and sparse fence,
Quietly, done with dancing, it settles down, pillowing on a branch.
With perfume stolen from the handsome young clerk,1 but less nimble-limbed;
With the soul of the philosopher,2 but dreaming of darker mysteries;
As if lying in a thousand-day stupor from the nectar it drinks;3
And the sun’s shadow idles on the moss, to lock up all grief within a curtain.
Alas, awakened by the rascally east wind blowing,
It joins the silly bees in disturbing a lady’s chamber.
(Chou, p. 54)
(Tr. Irving Lo)
A Tz’u-yün Poem Written in Response:4 Tiger Hill
[Original Poem by Ch’ien Ch’ien-yi]
In a little house on Western Hill, undisturbed by crowd or clamor,
I watch a gentle snowfall through a thin curtain, a brazier in front.
A girl pretty as jade keeps me company in an abbot’s room;
From a bed of gold, I can still view flowers rain down from a paradisal sky.5
In the light chill, her face wears makeup fresher than early spring;
The notes of her song, rising from the flute, twirl as round as the moon.
Tomorrow when the city of Soochow gets wind of this affair,
From a thousand homes, who won’t make way for such exquisiteness?
[Poem in Response by Liu Shih]
As the flute and strings cease playing, there’s only laughter and clamor;
Cozy, we sit before goblets of wine, a railing in front.
Already I suspect the moon has fled from the lantern-lit night;
But it’s more like flowers yielding their place to snowflakes in the sky.
Pistils of jade which spring keeps from budding are as thin as I am;
From the silver lamp tonight, the flame burns for you as round as the moon.
New verses, lusty and strong, should quicken peach and plum trees into flower;
Let not the rampaging wind and rain6 cast envious eyes on such exquisiteness.
(Chou, pp. 151–52; MCCHC, 18:7a-7b)
(Tr. Irving Lo)
Tune: T’a so hsing (Treading the Sedge)
Title: Sending a Letter
A trace of flowers, a streak of moonlight,
Tip of sorrow, tail end of remorse:
Not many tears were left when I started this letter;
Now finished, it is suddenly scattered by the wily wind.
May the wily wind smash my feelings to smithereens!
By a half-rolled-up curtain, the dying lamp
Turns everything into dream, into water.
My soul dissolves as I seem to catch sight of him,
Wresting from me for a moment my total devotion;
But because it’s a little dream, he’s nowhere to be found.
(Chou, pp. 63–64)
(Tr. Irving Lo)
NOTES
1. The text reads “Han Ch’üan,” the name of a handsome young man in the Tsin dynasty who eloped with the daughter of his employer, Chia Ch’iung. When Han first presented himself for an interview with her father, she secretly peeked at him and quickly fell in love with this handsome young clerk. They successfully arranged to have an affair, and the father learned about it when he first detected on the young man’s clothing the scent of a rare perfume he had given her.
2. The text reads “Chuang Chou,” alluding to the famous parable in the Chuang-tzu where the Taoist philosopher discoursed on how he had dreamed about turning into a butterfly and, in that state, not knowing if he was really Chuang Chou. Upon waking, he had no assurance that he wasn’t in fact a butterfly dreaming that he was Chuang Chou.
3. See Ch’ien Ch’ien-yi, note 4.
4. A Regulated Poem (lü-shih) requires rhyme at the end of the first, second, fourth, sixth, and eighth lines; i.e., t’ien (“fullness” and “loud noise”); ch’ien (“front”); t’ien (“sky”); yuan (“round”); and yen (“exquisiteness”). A tz’u-yün type of “harmonizing” (ho) poem, written in response to a particular poem, must use the same rhyme words. The full title of this set of poems reads: “On the Night of the Lantern Festival, Together with Prince Ho-tung, Mooring Our Boat at West Creek of Tiger Hill [in Soochow] and Stopping at the Studio of Shen Pi-fu for a Drink.”
5. Yü-hua t’ien (rain-flowers sky), a Buddhist term, said of a moving sermon by a monk of the Liang dynasty which caused the sky to rain down flowers.
6. Possibly containing a pun on the two words liu-feng, which, if written in reverse order, would describe a person of romantic temperament and great charm.
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