“Waiting for the Unicorn” | Open Indiana

Kung Tzu-chen (Se-jen; TING-AN), a native of Hangchow, has the distinction of being a leading poet and one of the most influential thinkers of his time. Much of this distinction he earned by virtue of his breadth of vision as a scholar and his extraordinary sensibility as a lyric poet.

The historical Kung Tzu-chen was a colorful personality and a man of many callings. Coming from an exceptionally learned family, he received a good foundation in the basics of traditional scholarship while still a young child. From his early teens on, he was steadily drawn into a variety of antiquarian pursuits, but soon found his most forceful voice as a social critic and political essayist. The rest of his career was divided between what he called “tending the flutelike heart” (poetry writing) and “wielding the sword” (political ambition). In his quest for a public career, however, he failed rather miserably. Through a string of ironies, including a handwriting that was not quite standard, he did not pass the chin-shih examination until 1829 (after five earlier attempts) and never rose beyond the position of a “minor official.” In the early summer of 1839, after twenty years of residency in the capital and a series of inconsequential posts, he suddenly called a halt to the tedium and returned to his home in the south. To commemorate this “homecoming,” he wrote during the subsequent months a total of 315 inter-echoing quatrains (chüeh-chü), in which he made a thorough review of his past career in the capital, the highlights in his intellectual life, the state of the nation on the eve of a major war, as well as his own state of mind as he was moving progressively from the past into the future. These quatrains, generally known under the title Chi-hai tsa-shih (Miscellaneous Poems of the Year Chi-hai), won instant acclaim for their stylistic novelty, depth of feeling, and concentrated range of reference; they have since remained the most widely read of Kung’s poetic works. Two years later, shortly after the outbreak of the Opium War (1840–1842), Kung died in Tan-yang, near his native town Hang-chow, leaving behind the prophecy that in realms of political thought and general scholarship, he would soon be remembered as a “starter of trends.”

History did remember Kung Tzu-chen well and in more than one way. As a scholar, he is particularly known for his penetrating analysis of traditional society, and for his fervent advocacy of pien (change/reform) and chih (statecraft) as a countermeasure to the rapidly deteriorating social and political situation of his time. Both these ideas—pien and chih— have become cornerstones in modern Chinese thought; they have also inspired more than one generation of political activists, beginning with the late Ch’ing reformers. As a poet, he has many enthusiastic admirers, and has been alternately hailed as a synthesizer of the classical tradition and the harbinger of modern trends.

A critical appraisal of Kung Tzu-chen, however quick, will need to take into account three distinctive features. The most notable feature is his thematic concentration. In lieu of the disjointed moments of pure landscape modes, he reintroduced into Chinese poetry the relevance of biography by writing extensively about his immediate milieu and his own intellectual and emotional life, frequently dwelling on such intensely personal topics as childhood innocence, maternal love, Buddhism as an intellectual paradox, and Buddhism as a personal faith. This microscopic scrutiny of personal experience, when coupled with the recurrent use of private symbols, gives Kung’s shih and tz’u an exceptionally dense range of reference as well as an orchestrated effect. Another feature is his fondness for conversational idiom and his subtle manipulation of speech rhythms within the confines of prescribed prosody. This is particularly noticeable in the Chi-hai quatrains, where the fluid rhythm and colloquial ease partially contribute to their charm as a spontaneous and continuous reflection on a life in motion. Finally, Kung Tzu-chen is also distinguished by his stylistic range and tonal complexity. At his finest moments, whether writing as a social critic or about personal experience, he is capable of fusing description with commentary, balancing thought against feeling, and moving freely along a tonal spectrum which ranges all the way from sardonic humor to tender sorrow. In the final analysis, it is this perennial tension between thought and feeling, this blending of tones and styles, that makes Kung Tzu-chen particularly attractive to the modern reader.

(Shirleen S. Wong)

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1. Chao-ying Fang, ECCP, 1:431–434.

In the City of Wu [Soochow], I Obtained a Record
of Names [of Candidates] from the Civil Service Examinations
Given in the Year Wu-ch’en [1628], during the Ch’ung-chen
Reign of the Ming.¹ I Added This Regulated Verse
at Its End as a Postscript.

When Heaven’s about to withdraw its blessing, signs abound in examination halls.

In supporting scholars, fourteen Ming emperors played the patron.²

In times of turmoil, talents discoursed on grandiose topics,

A bundle of weedy writings became the only record of a historian!

Despite the nod of a red-robed judge,³ none showed luster.

In a heap of faded black ink, seek a nation’s rise and fall.

Before these men achieved their fame, the world had changed;

Half of them became martyrs, half became monks.⁴

(KTCCC, pp. 450–451)

(Tr. Shirleen S. Wong)

Miscellaneous Poems of the Year Chi-hai [1839]

This trip shall take me through hills to the north and east.⁵

My image in the mirror looks passably young, still.

A white cloud floats along no fixed path:

Alone it visits the world, alone it drifts away.

I Saw a Professional Juggler by the Roadside and Presented Him with This Poem.⁶

You know this art well, but may I venture a thought

And offer you, Master of Illusion, an honest word.

Though the principle is hard to fathom, facts are plain to see:

Ten balls you’ve tossed up in the air, ten in all!

III

By chance I composed “Ascending the Clouds,”⁷ by chance I grew tired of flying.

By chance I longed for leisure, and here I am in my layman’s robe.

If by chance I meet a lady with a patterned Lute,⁸

I’ll say: “It’s for you and the spring I’ve returned.”

Tending a bare hill takes no small talent;

A poet’s mind flows from a painter’s eye.

Those low camelia close together, this soaring pine alone—

Remember, it was I who put them where they are.

View phenomena as void, view phenomena as appearance, such is the ultimate view.⁹

Buddha’s words and the truth of the phenomenal world are not the same

But human life does have past, future, and the now:

As I lie under an eave, listening to the flowers fall till autumn’s half gone.

(Nos. 4, 19, 135, 202, and 226 from a series of 315; KTCCC, pp. 509–530)

(Tr. Shirleen S. Wong)

Tune: Pu-suan tzu

There is a tall tower by the river.

Is it as secluded as the tower by the lake?

Beyond that tower, gentle ripples spread, ring after ring,

Staying not even the shadow of a startled wild goose.

Duckweed leaves flirt with the slanting sunlight,

Orchid buds wilt in the bright mirror.

Nipping every autumnal bloom, the cold air hangs heavy,

And someone lies ill south of the river.

(KTCCC, p. 574)

(Tr. Shirleen S. Wong)

NOTES

1. Only sixteen years before the fall of the Ming dynasty.

2. Of the sixteen Ming emperors, only fourteen were given imperial burial, thirteen near Peking.

3. The “red-robed judge” alludes to a legend which features the Sung scholar-statesman, Ou-yang Hsiu. It is said that one day when Ou-yang was grading a set of examination essays, he was vaguely aware of someone in a red robe standing behind him and offering him assistance. The man in red allegedly nodded his head from time to time; each time the nod sealed Ou-yang’s favorable opinion of the essay he was reading.

4. The poet seems to be suggesting that, though these late-Ming scholars may be lowly in status and lacking in intellect, they at least had the moral sensibility not to capitulate to the alien conquerors as did some of the ranking Ming officials. Some descendants of the Ming royal house, such as the painter Chu Ta (ca. 1626-ca. 1705), as well as many late-Ming literati—e.g., Ch’ü Ta-ch’ün and the scholar-official Fang Yi-chih (d. 1671?)—also chose the route of monastic retreat instead of declaring their allegiance to the new dynasty.

5. “Hills to the north and east” (Tung shan and Pei shan) may allude to two poems in the Shih-ching— both of which lament the plight of soldiers and officials separated from their families. The two terms may also refer to the Tung Shan associated with the Tsin statesman-general Hsieh An and the fictitious Pei Shan immortalized by K’ung Chih-kuei’s (448–501) Pei-shan yi-wen (Proclamation of the North Mountain). In that case, they suggest retirement and reclusion.

6. This is an example of how Kung Tzu-chen can turn a trivial incident, real or imagined, into an occasion for allegory. The “Master of Illusion” in the second line may allude to the Ch’ing government, whose act of balancing ten balls in the air vividly captures the precarious situation it was in at the time of the poet’s departure from the capital in 1839, one year before the outbreak of the Opium War.

7. “Ascending the clouds” alludes to the Ta Jen Fu by Ssu-ma Hsiang-ju, written for the perusal of the author’s royal patron, Emperor Wu of Han. The emperor allegedly was so entranced by the rhetoric of the composition that in his mind’s eye he began to “take on wings and ascend to the clouds.”

8. “A lady with a patterned lute” (chin-se chia-jen) echoes the last line of a poem by Tu Fu: Ch’ü-chiang tui-yü (Facing the Rain at Ch’ü-chiang).

9. This line sums up the doctrine of the T’ien-t’ai School of Buddhism, which stresses that the phenomenal world is both empty or void (k’ung) and apparent (chia), and that these two views of reality can exist in a single instant of thought.

Waiting for the Unicorn