“Waiting for the Unicorn”
Ch’ü Ta-chün’s (Weng-shan; HUA-FU, LO-FU SHAN-JEN) several personae reflect the turbulence and ambivalence of his time. A native of P’an-yü district (Canton), Kwangtung province, Ch’ü was a student of the famous Ming martyr-to-be Ch’en Pang-yen (1603–1647) when the North succumbed to rebel hordes in 1643–1644; and Ch’ü had just become a licentiate (at age sixteen) when Nanking and Central China were conquered by the Manchus in 1645. When the center of Ming resistance activity shifted to Kwangtung and Kwangsi, Ch’ü was very sanguine to serve the Yung-li Emperor in Kao-yao, but his father’s death interrupted these plans; and in 1650 when Manchu forces reasserted control over Kwangtung, Ch’ü took the tonsure and studied for the priesthood under the Buddhist master Han-shih (1608–1685).
Ch’ü continued to be active in literary circles, however, and in 1656 he formed very close ties with Chu Yi-tsun (q.v.), who was to become the most prominent bibliophile and most imperially favored scholar and literary critic of his day. With Chu’s assistance, Ch’ü undertook the first of his many travels, sojourning in Kiangsu-Chekiang and in Peking for several years, during which time his fame as a litterateur and as an ardent Ming loyalist grew and spread. Several years later Ch’ü repudiated Buddhism and wrote an apologia for his “return to Confucian life.”
Besides associating with many loyalist scholars, would-be heroes, and swashbuckling figures, Ch’ü also had frequent intercourse with men who actively promoted a Ming restoration. His desire to maintain contact with such men, to visit Ming historical sites, and to avoid prosecution by Ch’ing authorities, accounts for the peripatetic nature of most of Ch’ü’s life. In 1659, for instance, he was forced to seek refuge in the mountains of western Chekiang. And in 1665–1666 he sojourned in Shansi-Shensi and took trips along and outside the Great Wall with such well-known scholars as Li Yin-tu (1631–1692), who remembered painfully events of the conquest in that area. During this time, Ch’ü was married to Wang Hua-chiang, the daughter of a Ming general who had died fighting the Manchus. Ten years later, after his circuitous return to the Canton area, Ch’ü joined briefly in the revolt of Wu San-kuei (erstwhile collaborationist and Southwest satrap) against Ch’ing rule. When the Manchus recovered control in 1679, Ch’ü’s lifelong friend Ch’en Kung-yin (1631–1700) was imprisoned, and Ch’ü fled to Nanking. Nevertheless, he was able to return to Kwangtung in 1681 and thereafter associated freely with Ch’ing officials, apparently considering the Ming cause to be lost.
With Ch’en Kung-yin and Liang P’ei-lan (1632–1708), Ch’ü was known as one of the “Three Masters of Ling-nan.” His writing was highly praised not only by Chu Yi-tsun, but also by the most influential poet of his day, Wang Shih-chen (q.v.). These men and others were most impressed by Ch’ü’s fresh and unlabored use of ordinary language to achieve vivid poetic effects, and by his untrammeled, inspired style, similar to that of Li Po. As an essayist, he wrote most engagingly about Kwangtung local history and customs in his Kuang-tung hsin-yü, 28 chüan. As a poet, Ch’ü identified most clearly with his supposed ancestor, Ch’ü Yüan; and many of his poems are anguished flights of imagination in the Sao form. Among contemporaries, Ch’ü most explicitly admired Fei Hsi-huang (b. 1664), grandson of Fei Mi (1625–1701) and exponent of the “ancient style” movement of the late seventeenth century.
The seditious (i.e., pro-Ming, antibarbarian) character of much of Ch’ü’s writing first came to official notice during the Yung-cheng reign (1723–1735); but it was not until 1774–1775, in connection with the so-called Literary Inquisition of Ch’ien-lung, that Ch’ü’s works were officially proscribed, along with those of Ch’en Kung-yin. This accounts for the scarcity of manuscript copies of Ch’ü’s collected works, the Weng-shan shih-wai, in 20 chüan, and the Weng-shan wen-wai, in 14 chüan. These were printed in the early twentieth century, however, when Ch’ü became a symbol of anti-Manchu Chinese nationalism.
(Lynn Struve)
____________________
1.L. C. Goodrich and Chao-ying Fang, ECCP, 1:201- 203.
All at once nature’s sundry sounding pipes are stilled;
Heaven and earth pass into a vast flurried fog.
Blossoms of chalcedony drop down for a myriad leagues,
And distant prospects are consumed in the chilly light.
Spring should come round at the budding of the plum,
But this night turns into the void under moonglow.
A stranger, I sit in a high building facing out—
As coldness and clarity penetrate into the ravine.
(WSSC, 4:18b)
(Tr. Paul W. Kroll)
Written upon Coming Again to the Tu-hsü Taoist Temple
Stony contours coil round, descending from halcyon heights;
Peak after peak has its cascade, resembling hazy snowfalls.
The ancient trees, ragged and jagged, push forth a protruding pine;
Cold flowers screened from glare send their interspaced leaves soaring.
My white hair will not make the Furred Woman1 laugh;
Yellow-capped,2 I am happy to follow the Plumed Persons home.
The transcendents’ altar for long years has been without its incense fire;
I would sweep it clear of lichens and liverwort, lest I dampen my cloak.
(WSSC, 5:17α-b)
(Tr. Paul W. Kroll)
Written at the Year’s End, While Visiting Chien-ling
Like a single wall stretching on athwart the sky,
A thousand slanting scarps press down upon the river.
Soaring towers are here placed among the lofty trees,
Their upended shadows covering the flat sandbanks.
Falling leaves tend to startle a stranger,
And when the oriole sings out, one’s thoughts turn homeward.
Wildly reeling beyond the curtained awnings,
Wind-driven snow takes the form of flowers!
(WSSC, 3:12a)
(Tr. Paul W. Kroll)
An Ancient Plum Tree at the K’ai-hsien Buddhist Monastery
Withered and worn, near a cloud-misted cloister,
I take it for a monk of the time of the Six Dynasties!
Its lanky hair hanging down a thousand feet—
Moss-grown majesty covered for several layers.
The dried limbs now wholly transmuted into stone,
Its quenched fire suddenly fused into ice.
There’s only shame and chagrin as spring’s blossoms burst forth,
When one is made to gaze on its ancient wisteria.
(WSSC, 3:14a)
(Tr. Paul W. Kroll)
Inscribed on T’ai-po Shrine, at Colored Stone Jetty3
From of old men of genius have been prey to kraken dragons;4
T’ai-po, along with Ch’ü Yüan, is now become a sylph of the water.5
In rhapsodic verse he had matched him like paired sun and moon;
His essential numen still is active in this single mountain stream.
From the broken wall in mid-current his portrait in blue and vermilion shows forth;
By the soaring tower at the edge of the trees are hung the sacrificial trays and platters.
For a thousand years men have acclaimed the excellence of the “poet-sage,”6
But your flowing charm reaches far beyond that of Tu Shao-ling!
(WSSC, 5:26a)
(Tr. Paul W. Kroll)
Fu-ch’un Mountains7 in myriad folds;
Fishing jetty black-green against the snow’s glare.
I am like the T’ung River moon,
Long following the Han Guest Star.8
Cold gibbons chant against the precipice;
White egrets alight on sandy shores.
An old fisherman waves and waves his hand,
Homeward boat disappearing in the deep haze.
(WSSW, 6:18b)
(Tr. Lynn Struve)
Tune: Meng Chiang-nan (Dreaming of the South)
I
Lament the falling leaves:
The falling leaves, let them fall in spring.
Year after year leaves fly away but more will be found;
Year after year people take their leave, and fewer remain.
On a red sash, the tear stains are new.
II
Lament the falling leaves:
The falling leaves sever the date of return.
Though the blossoms may cover the tree when he returns,
The new branch is not the same as last year’s branch;
So why not drift with the river’s gentle flow?
(Yeh, p. 30)
(Tr. Irving Lo)
NOTES
1. The Furred Woman (Mao nü) was a trancendent of ancient times. According to the Lieh-hsien chuan, she was originally a palace lady of Ch’in Shih Huang-ti, but later fled to Mt. Hua-yin, there subsisting on the bark of pine and cypress trees (symbols of longevity). Fur grew over her body, hence her name.
2. “Yellow-capped”: in formal Taoist religious attire. “Plumed (or feathered) persons” (yü jen) were early Taoist divine beings who were capable of flight beyond this temporal world. The poet hopes to invoke the Furred Woman and the Plumed Persons through sacred rites at the long-unused altar.
3. According to popular tradition, the inspired T’ang poet Li Po (whose style name was T’ai-po) was supposed to have drowned in a river when, in a drunken state, he leapt from his boat at night in a vain attempt to embrace the moon’s reflection in the water. Later, a shrine in his honor was erected at Ts’ai-shih (Colored Stone) Jetty, located near Tan-tu, Anhwei.
4. Krakens are a particularly malevolent breed of dragons who delight in capturing and consuming humankind. See Edward H. Schafer, The Divine Woman: Dragon Ladies and Rain Maidens in T’ang Literature (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973), pp. 20–21.
5. Ch’ü Yüan, the tragic composer of the famous poem “Li Sao” (Encountering Sorrow; for a translation see David Hawkes, Ch’u Tz’u: The Songs of the South [Boston: Beacon Press, 1962], pp. 21–34), was also reputed to have met his end by drowning.
6. “Poet-sage” is an epithet applied to Tu Fu, also commonly referred to, as in the next line, as Tu Shao-ling. He and Li Po were traditionally considered the two greatest T’ang poets, with Tu Fu usually being ranked slightly higher. Our poet reverses that judgment.
7. Rising to the west of T’ung-lu district in northwestern Chekiang.
8. A reference to Yen Kuang (fl. A.D. 42), a close companion of Liu Hsiu (6 B.C.—A.D. 57), founder of the Later Han dynasty. After Liu became emperor (posthumously styled Kwang-wu ti), Yen purposely remained incognito as a fisherman on the T’ung River section of the Ch’ien-t’ang River in Chekiang, until he was constrained to join the Han court. After his familiarity with the emperor raised a warning from the court astrologer that a “guest star” had violated the emperor’s celestial position, Yen refused to accept a less intimate official post and returned to a simple life in the Fu-ch’un Mountains.
We use cookies to analyze our traffic. Please decide if you are willing to accept cookies from our website. You can change this setting anytime in Privacy Settings.