“Waiting for the Unicorn”
Yu T’ung (T’ung-jen, Chan-ch’eng; HUI-AN, KEN-CHAI, HSI-T’ANG LAO-JEN), a native of Ch’ang-chou, Kiangsu, enjoyed a long and successful life as a distinguished scholar and sometime official during the early Ch’ing period. Widely known for his literary abilities while still an uncapped youth, he later served for four years (1652–1656) as police magistrate of Yung-p’ing fu in Chihli province. He then returned home to a life of ease, devoting himself to his literary pursuits, until in 1678 he was put up, at the age of sixty, to take the special pohsüeh hung-tz’u examination. He passed the examination the following year and was appointed to a post in the Hanlin Academy where he assisted in compiling the Ming shih. In 1683 he retired once more to his home near Soochow and lived out his remaining years as a respected literatus whose friendship was eagerly sought by younger scholars.
Yu was a prolific writer of both prose and poetry, and produced admired compositions in all major verse forms, including dramatic lyries. His works were extremely popular and had wide currency during his lifetime, even being read at the imperial palace where his talents were praised by both the Shun-chih (reg. 1644–1662) and K’ang-hsi emperors. His best poems often exhibit playful turns of phrase or surprising conceits handled in an easy and natural manner.
(Paul W. Kroll)
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1.Lien-che Tu, ECCP, 2:935- 936.
A storm of wind and rain suddenly whips up, autumn talking with itself;
In an empty chamber still and calm I myself seem a stranger.
Ducklings sleeping quietly are not yet aware of the cold;
The heart of the incense is nearly gone, and threads of fragrance rise.
They allure me with their dark shadows like the folds of a gauze robe,
Almost becoming smoke but not, almost becoming clouds but not.
Now the embers of the snuff are quenched, yet the fumes still remain—
A clear breath that wafts its odor to one who sits in silence.
(No. 1 in a series of 2; HTCML, 1:15b)
(Tr. Paul W. Kroll)
Desultory Thoughts on My Old Home
With a whip as my staff I’ve come home under autumn’s evening sky;
The sunbright things of my old garden still are richly green.
White nuphar, with no one to tend it, floats on the water of the brook;
Yellow sparrows, always active, contend over the wild fields.
Sunlight slanting down sinks away at last, in the wake of withering leaves;
The distant hills suffer no shifting along with the unruly clouds.
And the lotus blossoms as before flaunt their colorful hues,
By the west wind swung and scattered about for who knows how many years.
(HTHT, 1:6b)
(Tr. Paul W. Kroll)
Within the chukar’s call the twilight sun moves westward,
Upon the footpath travelers, all with heads bowed down.
Over this earth’s passes and mountains their journeys never done.
—Are your cries so full of feeling for their bitter misery?
(SHEN, 11:13b-14a)
(Tr. Paul W. Kroll)
Leaf upon leaf dancing in the western window,
Their voices increasing the solitude of the nighttime rain.
They are water sprites waving bamboo fans,
Or mountain demons in sheared-off singlets of gauze.
Or paper unfolded by the wind and written on by a monk,
A portrait set flying by snow, on which is drawn a visitor.
—In my house there are such autumn dreams;
Those chasing the deer1 may laugh at a poor woodcutter.
(HTCML, 1:18b)
(Tr. Paul W. Kroll)
The air at night an unbroken whistling wail,
But my dreams are as deep as an entire year.
The failing lamplight glistens on shadows of teardrops,
And falling leaves stir mournful zither strings.
I mark the dots of time, like a traveler writing on the void,
Grow thin as a monk in meditation facing the wall.
A bell at daybreak reaches me from somewhere—
And a hundred deep feelings are gone utterly into vagueness.
(HTCML, 1:16a)
(Tr. Paul W. Kroll)
Note
1. “Chasing the deer” here implies the pursuit of official position. The poet pictures himself in the figure of the simple woodcutter.
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