“Waiting for the Unicorn” | Open Indiana

K’u T’ai-ch’ing (Tzu-ch’un; YÜN-CH’A WAI-SHIH), a Chinese bannerman in ancestry, is also known by her Manchu name of T’ai-ch’ing Ch’un. As a favorite concubine of the Manchu prince Yi-hui (1799–1838), who was also a poet, she shared with him a life of travel and literature and the arts.¹ After his death, she and her children were expelled from the family mansion by one of his sons by an earlier wife, who had inherited his father’s title as Prince Jung. Suddenly fallen into poverty, she had a difficult time but managed successfully to raise her seven children, all of whom she married off to noble families. In 1875 she went blind. The suffering she endured in her late years can be detected in her verse, some of which contain Buddhist overtones.

Ku T’ai-ch’ing is said to have left seven chüan of shih poetry, entitled T’ien-yu-ko shih-chi (Poems from the Heavenly Wandering Studio), and four chüan of lyrics, entitled Tung-hai yü-ko (Fisherman’s Songs from the Eastern Sea). The Japanese scholar Suzuki Torao records that he saw the entire collection, and the manuscript may still be in Japan. Chinese printed sources, however, have preserved less than half of her oeuvre. As a tz’u writer, Ku is sometimes considered the equal of Singde (q.v.) and a worthy successor of the Sung poet Chou Pang-yen (1056–1121). Stylistically, her poetry, both shih and tz’u, departs from the ornately allusive manner and favors the natural rhythms of simple speech and direct expression.

(Pao Chia-lin)

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1.Chao-ying Fang, ECCP, 1:386–387.

Sitting in Meditation: A Random Thought

One more round of trials, another ordeal endured—

Aware that there’s only Nonbeing, my mind is composed.

Talk of finding the true source of wisdom?

Tangled branches, o’er-reaching leaves must all be cut down.

(Hsu, 188:5a)

(Tr. Pao Chia-lin)

Tune: Huan hsi sha
Title: Sitting Up at Night

Bamboos cast blurred shadows, the shadows of trees lengthen;

A pale, thin mist and the moon at yellowing dusk—

In the autumn courtyard, the confused chirping of cicadas.

A few dots of glowworm’s lights—tiny, brilliant;

Beneath a sky of wind and dew, bean blossoms stay cool.

Night advances, flying squirrels climb up palace walls.

(THYK/THCK, 2:158)

(Tr. Pao Chia-lin)

Tune: Lang t’ao sha (Waves Washing Sand)
Title: In a dream, I visited a place called the Monastery
of Heavenly Music, and I saw the text of a lyric
on the wall [of a room]. Upon awakening, I
tried to recall the words and to write them down.
It was written, “To the Tune of Lang t’ao sha,”
and I have now completed it.

Outside the pavilion, the rain just cleared;

I lean against the mica screen

Moonlight floods the room, shining on the singing mouth organ;

Half of my arm catches the chill of the meddling night air,¹

So callous, too, is spring.

The dying candle is still aglow,

As I awake from my pleasant dream.

Dawn’s colors at the window, it is already daylight;

Heavenly music comes from a monastery I know not where—

Just a scene of an unreal encounter.

(THYK/THCK, 1.2, p. 160)

(Tr. Irving Lo)

NOTE

1. Alluding to a line from Tu Fu’s poem “Moon Night,” written while the poet was separated from his wife. Tu Fu’s couplet, in which the poet visualizes his wife watching the moon from her bedroom at home, reads (in a translation by David Lattimore): “In the sweet mist her hair-clouds moisten/In the pure glitter her jade arms are chill.”

Waiting for the Unicorn