“Waiting for the Unicorn”
Sung Hsiang (Huan-hsiang, Chih-wan), a native of Chia-ying, Kwangtung, belonged to no clique or school and achieved only regional fame in his lifetime as one of the leading poets of Kwangtung. In fact, his brief biography in the standard Ch’ing history makes prominent mention only of his reputation as a magistrate and his success in pacifying local uprisings. Yet, despite the relatively small corpus of his output, his poetry won the praise of modern critics, including Ch’en Yen (1856–1937), for its affinity with the style of the great T’ang poet Tu Fu. Later his works exercised a decided influence upon the poetry of his fellow townsman, Huang Tsun-hsien (q.v.)
Born either in 1756 or (according to another source) 1748, Sung passed his chin-shih examination in 1779 and, after a brief stint as a compiler in the Hanlin Academy, took up posts in the remote provinces of Szechwan, Kweichow, and Yunnan, either as examiner or as magistrate. He left six collections of his poetry, separately titled, and he also wrote prefaces to the various collections. His earliest collection, known as the Pu-yi-chü chai chi (Collection from the Studio of Not-So-Easy Living), derived its title from the name of another T’ang poet, Po Chü-yi, who frequently expressed his frustrations as an official in exile and over the plight of the common people. As is true of many of Po Chü-yi’s poems, Sung’s work is predominated by landscape poetry; he also prefers simple diction and often adopts an allegorical style. In his passionate defense of originality and spontaneity, however, he goes even farther than Yüan Mei (q.v.). He also shows greater daring in innovation with diction and prosody. His critical remarks on poetry include such unorthodox comments as, “Most people like what they like. Those who drink honey don’t think of it as [overly] sweet; those who chew on the sugar cane don’t prize its beauty. But honey will not lose its sweetness because some people don’t like it, and neither will sugar cane lose its beauty because some people don’t like it.” Also to his credit, he is one of the few critics who openly expressed his admiration for the quatrains of Tu Fu (which traditionalists did not value as highly because of their prosodic irregularities), for Tu Fu (he wrote) “dares to be different.”
(Irving Lo)
First Rain: Sent to Magistrate [Yi] Mo-ch’ing1
Shadows of bamboo hats beyond thousands of dikes,
Sounds of orioles all along the road—
The grasses’ greening starts from today;
Flowers are again as red as the year before.
Tenderly, the farmers’ hands on the plow handle,
Carefully, they skim off the water bugs.
Their constant worrying gives way to exhaustion;
Feebly, I offer consolation to my neighbor, the old man.
(No. 3 from a series of 4; HHSFYK, pp. 55–56)
(Tr. Irving Lo)
Written on the Wall of the Flying Cloud Cave in Kweichow
The green mountain and I are old acquaintances;
Shouldn’t the green mountain be able to recognize an old friend?
Just another October: autumn’s crimson leaves;
Twice three years gone: a wanderer’s white head.
Heaven’s purple clouds2 are only an illusion;
The roadside rill is also pure stream.
Never mind who said “[clouds] aimlessly rise from the peak,”3
The monk goes on striking the bell in a wind-swept tower.
(HHSFYK p. 110)
(Tr. Irving Lo)
I
Did every one of the three hundred poets4 have a teacher?
Yet their unrivaled songs live in our minds and hearts.
People today never talk of water at the fountainhead;
Instead, they just ask: which current trend starts with whom.
II
Emulate Han, emulate Tu, emulate the bearded Su—5
Each commands a stage unlike any others.
Should someone be found wanting a song of his own,
Bells, drums, and pipes will all be for naught.
III
True, one must read ten thousand volumes until threadbare;6
A thousand chants of Buddha’s name come down to emptiness.
How many aspiring brave men are there who must weep
That they are wearing out their lives, strangled by a brush?
Nos. 1, 5, and 8 from a series of 8; HHSFSC:TYK; p. 126)
(Tr. Irving Y. Lo)
Upon Reading the Works of Tu Fu
He pledged himself to live with poetry until old age,
Assured that his words would spread long after he died.
His books, his sword followed him to every mountain and stream;
His singing, his weeping stopped the sun and the stars.
Could wind and dust alone have turned his head all white?
His heart poured out even for stragglers on the road.7
For a thousand autumns the moon above the surging river will shine,
Utterly alone but also exquisitely beautiful.
No. 4 from a series of 4; HHSFYK, p. 5)
(Tr. Irving Lo)
NOTES
1. The noted calligrapher-scholar-official Yi Ping-shou (1751–1815).
2. Most probably referring to success at the Palace Examination.
3. Alluding to the famous line about clouds by T’ao Ch’ien: Yün wu-hsin yi ch’u hsiu, from the rhyme prose composition “The Return,” translated by James Robert Hightower, in his The Poetry of T’ao Ch’ien (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), p. 269.
4. I.e., Shih-ching, the earliest anthology of Chinese poetry, containing 305 poems, most of which are anonymous.
5. The T’ang poets Han Yü and Tu Fu and the Sung poet Su Shih.
6. Alluding to the famous couplet by Tu Fu:
Tu shu p’o wan chüan
Hsia pi ju yu shen
(Only after you’ve read ten thousand volumes until theadbare,
Then you can feel truly inspired when you write.)
7. Alluding to a famous poem of Tu Fu’s, “Ai wang-sun” (The Unfortunate Prince), written in the autumn of 756, in which the poet recorded his encounter on the road with a royal prince, who had been abandoned by the fleeing court after the An Lu-shan Rebellion and the sack of the capital Ch’ang-an. Cf. David Hawkes, A Little Primer of Tu Fu (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967), pp. 33–44.
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