Another Round of Chinese Poetry

 I've been reading a book by Red Pine, or Bill Porter, who's my go-to guy, along with David Hinton, for delving and dipping into different eras of Chinese poetry.  The book in question is entitled, "In Such Hard Times: The Poetry of Wei Ying-wu."

Many of China's greatest poets happened to live through the An Lu-Shan rebellion in 755/6 CE, which seemed to split the T'ang era (618 - 906) in half, and which brought to a close a cultural golden age, turning a large portion of the society into refugees, and which kept simmering in various provincial uprisings for decades thereafter.

Wei, born in 737, had been called to the court at age 15, serving in the palace guard, which sounds like it was the high life for a young man.  But when Wei was only 18 or 19, that life was disrupted by the rebellion.  Although Wei later established himself in government service, with periodic retirements here and there, during the rebellion itself Wei often found sanctuary in Buddhist monasteries, a practice that continued for some time and later involved his entire family, i.e., wife and children.

Wei never did permanently retire from service in the government, pursuing posts in regions far from the day's capital, Ch'ang-an, eventually passing away in Suchou in 791 at the age of 54.

What I find especially interesting about this book is the format that Red Pine chose.  He arranged Wei's poems in chronological order, and sectioned them off according to the location in which they were written.  He also has the helpful habit of including explanatory notes at the bottom of the page containing the original script, with the English translation on the facing page.  Hence, it's quite easy to follow the course of Wei's life, travels, and relative tribulations as you read his unique way of responding to his life's events.  It's an autobiography, in poetry.

Chinese poets of the time usually, it seems, addressed their poems to specific individuals, and Red Pine fills in those details as best he can.  Another strength of these notes is Red Pine's fine grasp of Chinese geography, right down to the ancient layout of certain cities, with the locations of the sites and buildings mentioned by Wei in his poems.

In order to give you the flavor of one of Wei's poems, I opened the book at random to this particular poem from the year 781.  Wei was 44 and his wife had passed away some years before, leaving him with young children to raise.

At this time, however, Wei was living at Shanfu temple near the Feng River, a period of a couple of years of retreat and peace in Wei's life.  The poem is entitled, "Waking late in my garden: to Magistrate Han and Secretary Lu in Chaoying."

"Farmers have already started to plow/thick smoke is rising from their yards/birds are singing sweetly from garden trees/ being retired I was still asleep/unaware the day was so late/ I got up and gazed at the azure sky/ I stretched my limbs/ and felt quite happy indeed/then I went back below thatched eaves/ poured some wine and considered  fine men/ adjusting their belts  on their way to the office/ with nothing but documents to fill their days/wishing they were here in the woods/ enjoying the sight of mountains and streams/  unless you're living in enlightened times/why not work on yourselves instead"

So there you have it.  Conversational, common, not grand in tone, not set in remote mountains on hermit peaks, just a hut in the woods somewhere along a river.  Sounds like a calm, settled life.  The Taoist ideal of "do nothing/no effort."

But alas, the world and its work kept calling Wei back into government service.  Although he maintained friendships with hermits, poets, and Buddhist monks wherever he happened to be posted, most of us would recognize his life by the daily worries and concerns that he had.  And that's what marked Wei out -- he wrote about those concerns, worries, problems and troubles, and the attendant feelings, even as one part of him kept to the detached view of the "witness" or the monk's elevated perspective.

All in all, a different kind of read for me in the realm of Chinese poetry.