Paean to The Long Grass Books no. 2: Willow, Wine, Mirror, Moon

Bowing to the Moon /
Willow, Wine, Mirror, Moon:
Women's Poems
from Tang China,
translated with notes
and introduction
by Jeanne Larsen

UPDATED
WITH COMMENTS
FROM JEANNE LARSEN--
SEE BELOW
More to come

Court lady or courtesan, poor official's child or Lady of the Tao, the poets in this little book move inside and sometimes pass beyond "walls within walls within walls." Escaping, they find deep pleasure in nature; returning, they may have an instant of joy or teasing, though more often they pose in attitudes of loss, with happiness already gone by. The world is past or passing: the sea will turn to dust, the husband or lover wing to and perhaps fall on distant, war-tormented ground. "Winsome" girls shine and fade like flowers, and a moon-lit strand of white hair never renews its lustrous black.

The delicacy of these Chinese poems, the formalized and lovely attitudes and subjects--the loneliness of a girl, a woman with her looks disordered by grief, the cloud-and-rain of sex, the flight of seasons, the news of official promotion--are familiar but hold considerable power to allure. Some are surprising. A young man in scholar's robes reveals himself as an impossiblility, a woman who cannot marry an official's daughter without a (very unlikely!) metamorphosis. An elderly woman turns from the moon, remembering her own shining loveliness, when she lived in sensuous "deep red rooms."

Looking at the little Tang sculpture of a lady on horseback at upper left, I see so many elements of what must be a Tang aesthetic. The poems, too, are brightly pigmented, in love with a certain glaze of moonlight, and reveal clarity and charm and humor. Like the terra cotta statue, these poems show a care for images with graceful lines, color, and an imprint of status. The translations occasionally offer a Taoist or courtly phrase that catches me up, and I wonder whether these are the most difficult bits of all to render into English. It's a wonderful gift to have these lyrics--bright fragments of a lost world.

The sketches of figures behind the poems are often of people barely glimpsed, who have left little more than a name. Jeanne Larsen's thumbnail biographies often stand as poignant memorials. Read the poems of the Greenwall Pilgrimage by Praiseworthy Consort Xu, Queen Mother of Shu and her sister, the Exemplary Consort, and then turn to meet their biographies: "These poets came from an impoverished family of Chengdu. Known for their beauty and their poetry, they were taken as consorts by Wang Jian (847-918), the bandit-turned-general who emerges as military governor, and then independent ruler, of Shu (now western Sichuan) in the war-torn years surrounding the Tang empire's collapse. Wang's capital was a haven for literati and artists in that difficult era. When his son Yan ascended to the throne, both women were promoted to ranks suiting the mothers of princes and wielded considerable power. They--and Wang Yan--were killed after Shu's conquest by a short-lived dynasty called the Later Tang." The notes are full of miniature tales of women hemmed in by history and culture. Some were asked to take their own lives as widows or traitors, some were executed, some died of grief. One rose to transcendence and was spotted astride a purple cloud.

This slim house of poems--a monument to study and travel by Jeanne Larsen, back when she was a Comparative Literature graduate student and a poet, before she added professor and novelist to her life-list--opens many windows onto the daughters of Great Tang and the "Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms." Each of these poets is bound by her times, yet blossoms despite and because of her setting: "Wherever you walk, flowers / fallen--everywhere / . . . Look with joy on the blessed, / on this radiant age."

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Willow Branches
by Zhou Dehua

Along one
bend of the river
Clear, a thousand
willow withies:
twenty years past,
on that old
plank bridge,
I parted from
my love. No word
from him, no
news--this
morning still
no news.

Springtime Views in the Land of Qin
by Yuan Chun

Lovely, these views of spring
from up in the Phoenix Tower:

guard posts at palace gates,
walls within walls within walls,

and in His Majesty's garden
trees in the falling rain--

or peaks of the seekers' range
after the skies turn clear.

Wherever you walk, flowers
fallen--everywhere,

and palpable, favorable airs,
drenched, when evening comes.

Look with joy on this blessed,
on this radiant age,

as skirts of rainbow silk
take the path of the Taoist Way.

Written at Goldflower-Palace Taoist Refuge
from The Greenwall Pilgrimage Sequence
by the Praiseworthy Consort Xu

Again we reach
Goldflower’s peak.

At Darkmystic City
we sought the Way, returned.

Clouds part:
the shape of things shows clear.

Blackness locks in:
towers, spires, come forth.

Rain washed and the hills
around shine clean.

Winds blow and the road
back home moves into view.

Hills like a green-flashed screen of feathers
channel surging streams.

What need to long for Penglai,
that far-off faerie isle?

Bibliography of Jeanne Larsen

Willow, Wine, Mirror, Moon: Women's Poems from Tang China
click here to see a sample, or buy a copy from BOA Editions, Ltd.
Manchu Palaces novel
Bronze Mirror novel
Silk Road novel
James Cook in Search of Terra Incognita poems
Brocade River Poems: Selected works of the Tang Dynasty Courtesan Xue Tao
translated poems
Engendering the Word (co-editor) critical essays

Links to poetry and prose on Jeanne Larsen's web site: Four Little Tales; from The Starry Messenger (a narrative sequence of poems); from 10,000 Bodhisattvas (a very different sequence); from Hell & Heaven at Tateyama (creative nonfiction)

Illustration: The Tang sculpture of a lady on horseback was collected . . . some time ago, but where? I'll have to see if I can find her again.

Comments from Jeanne Larsen

Some time ago, sculptor Chris Miller posted some Tang figures in rainbow glazes on his MountShang blog, and we recently talked about the poem with "rainbow silks." He asked a question that I sent on to Jeanne: "The Tower reminds me of the one built by the great genius-villain-warlord -- of 'Romance of Three Kingdoms' whose greatest ambition in life was to obtain the world's most beautiful woman and install her in a magnificent tower built to his specification. (story based on history of 2nd Century -- and fictionalized about 900 years later.) . . . I'm curious about how the translator came up with the last line "Take the path of the Taoist Way" (since "tao" means "way" -- as in "the way birds fly" -- the "way the seasons change" etc -- so I question where there would have been a specific reference to the cult of Taoism -- as this translation seems to imply.) "

Jeanne Larsen responded in an informal email with some interesting thoughts in reply. Here is part of what she had to say, with some light editing and cutting (at her request):

There are so many towers in poems in women's voices in China --a "tower" sometimes meaning simply a building with more than one story. So the word comes into Tang poems loaded with traces of beautiful and often, neglected, women from at-least-fairly affluent households. (See Yu Xuanji's beautiful "Another Poem on Riverside Willows Trees" or Guan Panpan's three on "Swallow Tower ".) The Romance of the 3 Kingdoms has been on my Must-Reread [in translation, let me add!] list for, um, several decades now--so thanks to yr sculptor friend for another nudge. Oddly, I've been thinking about it lately, but for its warrior-heroes, not women.

'Fraid I'm not going to be able to give a satisfactory explanation without the original text. But I can say that "the path of the Taoist Way" does attempt to catch the range of meanings of the Chinese word tao—to include "road/path", "a philosophical/religious system/perspective", “philosophical Taoism [Taojia]”, "the Tao [that un-namable source of the 10000 things] spoken of in the Tao te ching (AKA Daode jing)", "[so-called] Popular Taoism [Taojiao]”—i.e., much of Chinese 'folk religion', with imperial pantheon and assorted other goddesses and such, and assorted Taoist practices—fairly esoteric alchemical/dietary/sexual/breathing/visualization technologies for spiritual self-cultivation. Also, whatever other words/phrases might go on that list of English rough equivalents, though I'm not sure "way" in the sense of "manner” is quite within the range--more like "way" as in "way of life". (In Japanese it's sometimes pronounced "do" as in Akido (the Way of Harmonized Energies), Chado (the Way of Tea), Bushido (the samurai way) and suchlike.

“Path” catches a lot of it, especially if one includes new-age-y uses of that word, but surely not all. So my version offers 3 English words attempting to triangulate, and necessarily imperfectly, on 1 especially rich Chinese one. One of the many bits of clumsy galumphing that translators of poetry are regularly reduced to, and I galumph as much as any.

I wouldn't have included "Taoist" in the English if I hadn't been convinced that that was a grammatically & contextually legitimate reading of the original. Again as far as close-up grammar (Arugh! I'm beating my head against my desk...what IS the original wording?), I think it's there. Could get into it on word-by-word level next week if requested. As for context--well, the poet speaks from the social role of a woman who has taken Taoist orders (she’s a "Taoist nun") and as my brief note suggests, there's a subtle tone of sorrow and disillusionment throughout this poem that sets up a longing for something other than just a pretty poem about life locked up inside the harem walls. (See her bio note.) Could I have over-translated? Well, sure. But I think I’m not the only person who has read the poem w/ these overtones—again, I need my notes.

Yuan Chen's poem as I did read, still read, it isn't so much a reference to a "cult" as a sad awareness that transient beauties are not, ultimately, the means of lasting happiness, and that lives restricted by gender roles (however materially privileged) might include some yearning for spiritual fulfillment. Will the palace women inside the walls really go anywhere with that yearning? Dunno. As my note says, "Is this fact, or [the poet's? the palace women's?] wish, or some of each?" Love the ambiguity, however, the multiple possibilities--I'd rather the poem, instead of delivering a rant on patriarchal oppression or a sermon on the value of spiritual praxis, left us all scratching our heads, a little uncomfortable, wondering . . .

If you have a question for Jeanne Larsen, leave it in comments, and I'll see if we can turn up a reply.

She says that she'll "be glad to respond to others too."

And for Chris-the-sculptor: "I have a little replica of a Tang camel rearing its head back in my study—got it in Xian (the modern city built atop the Tang capital), natch. I liked the modern piece on the Mount Shang site quite a lot."

The Paean to The Long Grass Books no. 1 is here.

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