“Waiting for the Unicorn”
Chu Hsiao-tsang (Kuo-sheng and Ku-wei; OU-YIN and CH’IANG-TS’UN), also known as Chu Tsu-mou, official, scholar and poet, was a native of Kuei-an, in Hu-chou district (modern-day Wu-hsing), Chekiang province. He passed the metropolitan examination in 1883, placing first in the second rank, and was made a bachelor in the Hanlin Academy. After being promoted to compiler and then expositor in the Hanlin Academy, he was next assigned to the Grand Secretariat as a subchancellor, and still later made a vice-president in the Board of Ceremonies. When a belated attempt was made to reorganize and modernize the central bureaucracy in the waning years of the dynasty, he was selected for membership in the newly created Privy Council. When events soon overtook his political career, and when the Republic was born, his conservative views drove him into seclusion on the seacoast, where he remained until his death two decades later.
Chu Hsiao-tsang’s scholarly interests were shaped by his literary preferences; namely, the tz’u, or lyric, tradition. Foremost among his contributions in this field is the much-admired Ch’iang-ts’un ts’ung-shu, in 259 chüan, the printing of which he supervised. This collectanea contains the carefully collated lyrics of 168 poets from the late T’ang to the end of the Yüan dynasty. Among his other publications is an annotated edition of the poems of Wu Wen-ying (?-ca. 1260), a popular anthology of 300 Sung lyrics, and an edition of the yüeh-fu poems of Su Shih.
As a young man, Chu Hsiao-tsang took up the writing of poetry in the traditional shih modes. He abandoned those forms after he was forty years of age, and began to cultivate the lyric form under the influence of Wang P’eng-yün and Cheng Wen-cho (qq.v.), with whom he had by then formed a close personal relationship. By temperament, he was attracted to the manner of the Southern Sung poet Wu Wenying, who has been said to combine a fanciful flight of the imagination with profundity of meaning. Later, he turned for inspiration to Su Shih and Hsin Ch’i-chi, both of whom, although very different as poets in many respects, are vigorous in manner and broad in scope. Chu’s lyrics have been praised for their topicality, intricateness, and musicality. Wang Kuo-wei described him as being without peer in being able to forge a style that is “spontaneous and miraculously inspired.”
(William Schultz)
Tune: Che-ku t’ien
Title: On the Ninth,1 outside Feng-yi Gate, I Passed by
P’ei-ts’un’s2 Country House.
Wild water and an arching bridge,
left from another time:
I try to confess to the old gulls
a heart full of sorrow.
Sad and confused in a southern suburb3
I dropped my whip as I passed.
Toward the clear and bitter western range
I peer from under my hat.4
These tears newly dried,
These poems set to ancient tunes.
Butterflies seldom come
to the lonely house gates.
Red dogwood, white chrysanthemums
have survived unharmed.
Only: before the wind there
there is what I brood on.
(CTYY, p. 3)
(Tr. Li Chi and Michael Patrick O’Connor)
Tune: Che-ku t’ien
Title: New Year’s Eve in the Year Keng-tzu [1900]
A cup of wine as clear as water
reflects my temples going white.
With such a cup, away from home
one easily grows old.
The prickly points of my drunken guts
are as terrible as a row of spears.
The poetry brush, icy and frosted,
sadly cannot bloom.
I throw away the pillow and sit up.
I roll up the book and sigh.
I don’t mind
the screaming of the last roosting crow.
The red of candlewax flowers
changes the world where people live.
The green of mountain shining
brings back the home I dream of.
(CTYY, pp. 11–12)
(Tr. Li Chi and Michael Patrick O’Connor)
A solitary bird crashing into the waves wings off in joy;
Sundered sunset clouds are like dabs of carmine, the water’s like a blank page.
But to whom shall I write endlessly of river and sky?
Over our twin pleasure boats, a moon rises at the plucking of the string;
Facing the window, coiffured hills entice the lingering clouds to stay.
The places where I’ve traveled alone aren’t altogether desolate.
(CTYY, p. 22)
(Tr. Irving Lo)
NOTES
1. On the ninth of the ninth month, when friends usually gather to climb the heights together.
2. Courtesy name of Liu Kuang-ti (1858–1898), a poet and one of the “Six Gentlemen” who met a martyr’s death after the failure of the abortive 1898 Reform Movement.
3. Alluding to the letter, an apologia for his way of living, sent by the recluse Wang Seng-yu (?-ca. 493) to his cousin, containing the following lines:
Your home is near the marketplace;
Mine is at the southern suburb.
Your home is crowded with guests;
Mine is full of sparrows.
4. Alluding to the story about the handsome general Tu-ku Hsin (fl. 540) of the Tsin and Eastern Wei period, who one day came back into the city from hunting at dusk, wearing his hat aslant, thus unwittingly setting a fashion when his admirers in the city on the next day all wore their hats the same way.
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