Wang Wei

 

     I write here as a reader of English translations of Tang poetry.  I have always felt altogether at home among these poems so distant in time and language.  To reflect the experience of those like myself who have not mastered the Chinese, I quote from a number of the translators I have read over the years.  Each, of course, offers a unique Wang Wei.  See on this same site “Yet Two More Versions of Wang Wei” for multiple takes on the same quatrain, including a couple of my own.

     The poems translated by Wu Fu-ning is from Robert Payne’s The White Pony, those by Burton Watson from in Chinese Lyricism: Shih Poetry from the Second tom the Twelfth Century, Pauline Yu’s from Pauline Yu in The Poetry of Wang Wei

 

    Among the classic poets of the Tang Dynasty Wang Wei exemplifies the gentleman-poet of his day, somewhat as Sir Philip Sidney did for his.  Successful in his examinations, Wang served as a government official as well as writing poetry, but then, in later life, withdrew to a contemplative retirement (not to a hermitage but to his country estate).  In visual art he is regarded as a founder of the Southern School, called literati painting, known for free calligraphic strokes.  [1]  

     He excelled in the paired couplets of five or seven syllable lines called jueju [2], a highly demanding form requiring a set syllabic count for each line, rhymed abcb. [3]  Apart from these demands, the jueju must also conform to certain  prescribed tonal patterns (thus its name “regulated verse”) [4].   A caesura is expected and tonal as well as semantic parallelism is admired, particularly in the middle lines of a quatrain.  Furthermore, this poetry of scholars was replete with allusions and subtler associations reminding readers of earlier verses.  Imagery likewise observed a set of conventions, with Images were often meant to suggest conventional meanings (such as the plaintain for physical frailty and the moon in the water for unreality).  [5]

     In this form the genteel might display wit, imagination, and ingenuity and gain recognition among those of their own class, as their work could only be appreciated only by those sharing a similar education.  These highly sophisticated poetic texts, in an ironic reversal, appeared to many Western readers unfamiliar with the Chinese originals to be direct impressionistic sketches of a natural scene.  The immense influence of Ezra Pound and his edited version of Ernest Fenollosa’s The Chinese Written Character As A Medium For Poetry [6] encouraged the view that Chinese poetry mirrors ordinary consciousness by emphasizing visual perception.  Thus Fenollosa maintained that Chinese poetry embodies a “simple poetic outlook on life” by presenting the reader with “vivid shorthand pictures of actions and processes in nature.”  In sum he claimed that “Chinese poetry gets back near to the processes of nature by means of its vivid figure.”   “The Chinese written language has not only absorbed the poetic substance of nature and built with it a second world of metaphor, but has, through its very pictorial visibility, been able to retain its original creative poetry with far more vigor and vividness than any phonetic tongue.”

    Though Fenollosa’s pioneering account is now largely rejected by Chinese scholars, Pound’s promotion of his ideas fertilized the Imagist movement and subsequent developments through Objectivism, Beat, and Deep Image poetry.  The fact that very few translators have even attempted to preserve the Chinese rhyme patterns, though similar patterns are common in English, has aided this misapprehension.  The use of free verse by many reinforces the impression that Chinese poetry is an immediate record of experience.  As a non-specialist reader of Chinese poetry in translation unable to appreciate the subtleties of pitch patterns and allusions, I continue to consume a poet like Wang Wei while much of his art remains inaccessible to me.  The immense growth in accessible information in English concerning Chinese literary history has enabled deeper readings of the images though still without broadening the appreciation to other elements of the writing.   Indeed, just as African sculpture almost entirely shorn of its meaning in context enriched European art in the early twentieth century, Chinese poetry refreshed English writing with little attention to the vast and learned tradition that underlay it.  Some of the most influential translators, such as Ezra Pound and Kenneth Rexroth, had very sketchy knowledge of the language. 

 

Morning

 

The peach blossom is redder because rain fell overnight,

The willows are greener in the morning mist.

The fallen petals are not yet swept away by servants.

Birds sing.  The guest on the hill is asleep.

                                     trans. Li Fu-ning 

 

     This poem might pass for a journal entry simply recording the data observed by an early riser.  In this case it might seem a simple appreciation of the beauties of nature, flowers and greenery amid the melodious calls of birds.  A fructifying rain descends like grace.  Those who have no eye for beauty may still be asleep, but the author has included the reader in his delectation of the scene.

     This appreciation of nature is, however, perfectly consistent with Daoist and Buddhist belief.  With this in mind, the “fallen petals” may be a reminder of the transience of this world, and the sleeper may be a soul caught yet in delusion.  These associations are not dependent on association with earlier poems, but peach blossoms have, since the Book of Odes, been a symbol of love, its red blossoms suggesting human passion as well as the returning vitality of springtime.  Yet, the willow suggests for the Chinese the longing resulting from the separation from a loved one (as in Li Bai’s “Hearing a Flute on a Spring Night in Luoyang”) and the mention of “fallen petals” seems surely a momento mori.  The willow  connotes separation while the singing of the birds is a testament to the continuing delight of nature, implying that the properly attuned human consciousness will sing as well.  Yet here the observer, the “guest,” is asleep, unaware of the grand machinery of creation and destruction evident on every side.

     The fact that one may read the lyric as a direct observation of the scene, a verbal cinema verité, and simultaneously as a highly allusive and philosophical rumination constitutes the strength of Wang Wei in common with other poets of his tradition.  The poems may be rewarding regardless of the reader’s degree of sophistication.  They offer a comprehensive and wise-sounding world view while holding all philosophical questions in suspension, an attitude the Pyrrhonian skeptics called ἐποχή. 

  

Visiting the Temple of Accumulated Fragrance

 

I didn’t know where the temple was,

pushing mile on mile among cloudy peaks;

old trees, peopleless paths,

deep mountains, somewhere a bell.

Brook voices choke over craggy boulders,

sun rays turn cold in the green pines.

At dusk by the bend of a deserted pond,

a monk in meditation, taming poison dragons.

                            trans. Burton Watson 

     Again, it is quite possible to read this poem as a simple record of a trek, wandering the hills in search of a remote monastery.  Yet it is also an image of a life-pilgrim restlessly in quest of enlightenment.  The harsh rocks, the chill, the close of day all conspire to suggest the suffering of this life that motivates the poet’s quest.  While the monastery bell in the distance and then the sight of the monk in meditation place liberation at a remove from the speaker, it is nonetheless in view. 

     Just as in “Morning” Wang has managed to be precisely and concretely immediate and at the same time applicable to all humanity.  The facts that the paths are “peopleless” and the pond is “deserted” imply the high isolation of the spiritual striver.  Scholars have differed over just which passage describing poisonous dragons Wang had in mind, but it scarcely matters as it is clear that they represent such hindrances as desires and illusions.   If not full-fledged bodhi he has at any rate gained the equipoise to confront suffering with open eyes and go on living, confident that release is as much a part of the scheme of things as enslavement to passion.

     Such experiences, both the direct sensual ones and the contemplative speculations, may indeed be quite solitary, even private records of subjective consciousness, but, as a court poet with some duties similar to those of British Poets Laureate, he wrote public verses in praise of the rulers.  Unlike the fulsome rhetoric of seventeenth and eighteenth century European dedications, Wang is elegant and oblique in his compliments.

  

Written at the Prince’s Command on the

Emperor’s Having Lent to

the Prince of Qi as a Retreat from Summer Heat

 

The emperor’s son bids farewell to the distant Red Phoenix 

        Turret:

An imperial edict has lent the faraway palace of blue-green 

        mist.

Outside the window vaporous clouds cling to our clothes;

With curtains rolled, streams and mountains come into the 

        mirror.

Below the woods the water’s noise resounds over talk and 

        laughter;

Between the peaks colors of trees obscure houses and 

        dwellings.

An immortal’s home would not perforce be finer than this 

        abode:

Need we play the pipes, looking toward the azure sky?

                                                 trans. Pauline Yu 

  

     Though explicitly written at royal command and including the obligatory glorification of the imperial family who enjoy accommodations equal to the immortals’, the poem’s real focus is the rewards of a retreat in the mountains.  Clouds and mist that surround the Jiucheng Palace not only cool the climate, they suggest as well its remoteness from the urban court and create an air of obscure mystery.  The outdoors and indoors mingle both visually as “streams and mountains come into the mirror” and audibly with the resounding “water’s noise.”  The “houses and dwellings” that mark a mundane human presence are obscured (though, unlike those strenuously pursuing enlightenment, the courtiers talk and laugh).

     The concluding lines certainly praise the emperor and his son, placing them on a level with the immortals.  The reference to Wangzi Qiao, a crown prince under Zhou Ling Wang, associates the current royal line with semi-divine antecedents.   Prince Qiao, called Jin, played pipes (and imitated phoenix cries), as he wandered the mountains. Ultimately, he mounted a crane and ascended to heaven. [7]  While complimenting his social superiors and thus assenting to the worldly order, Wang implies that removal from the distractions of the city are likely to prove beneficial for all.  The fine-spun fancy about a legendary prince signifies the spiritual uplift all might gain, even those who never ride a bird to the sky.

      On the other side of the social spectrum, Wang’s “Six Casually Written Poems” concern those who pay no heed to wealth or prestige, the sort of enlightened eccentrics far more commonly admired in Asia than in the West.  For them poverty naturally accompanies a life lived with integrity, but this need not preclude joy. 

  

One of Six Casually Written Poems

 

In a farmhouse lives an old man

With drooping white hair, in his humble retreat.

Sometimes when finished with chores in the fields,

He summons his neighbors with a jug of wine.

Noisily beneath the thatched eaves

They sit around and then stand up again.

Coarse woolen clothes are not too mean for him

And garden sunflower seeds delicacy enough indeed.

If he stirs, it’s just to bring up sons and grandsons;

He has never once gone to the city market.

The Five Emperors and Three Kings

Since ancient times have been called Sons of Heaven.

Compare using arms with polite abdication—

Which way is right after all?

If wishes gained make up happiness,

How then can a rustic farm be scorned?

For now I’ll set my mind at ease and go,

And travel on ‘til all my teeth are gone.

                                         trans., Pauline Yu 

One thinks of the penultimate poem of the Dàodé Jīng in which such an isolated life is seen as ideal.

 

Though they had boats and carriages, they should have no occasion to ride in them; though they had buff coats and sharp weapons, they should have no occasion to don or use them.

I would make the people return to the use of knotted cords (instead of the written characters).

They should think their (coarse) food sweet; their (plain) clothes beautiful; their (poor) dwellings places of rest; and their common (simple) ways sources of enjoyment.

There should be a neighbouring state within sight, and the voices of the fowls and dogs should be heard all the way from it to us, but I would make the people to old age, even to death, not have any intercourse with it.                                               

                                                             trans. James Legge 

 

 Similar sentiments are, of course, available to Westerners more conveniently from Vergil and Horace.  The general idea is that, not military skills, but agriculture is the essential human activity. And that those engaged in cultivation of the land have a more satisfying, a saner and wiser life than those who engage in politics, war, and commerce.  The other poems in this series include one the “crazy man,” Lu Tong, who pretended to be mad to avoid serving an unjust lord, one expressing the longing to retreat from a man still entangled in affairs, another on the poet Tao Qian who preferred drinking to his bureaucratic post, on eon the “husband of the girl from Chao” who drinks and gambles without regard for worldly reputation, and concludes with the touching poem of Wang on his old age, “too lazy to write poems,/ I have old age as my sole companion.”

      One of Wang Wei’s quatrains exemplifies his method in brief. 

  

Deer Park

 

Empty hills, no one in sight,

only the sound of someone talking;

late sunlight enters the deep wood,

shining over the green moss again. 

trans. Burton Watson [8]

 

      The Deer Park in Sarnath near Varanasi is the site of the Buddha’s first sermon following his enlightenment.   The “emptiness” of the first word is a Buddhist term (kong in Chinese, in Sanskrit śūnyatā), here instantly qualified by a vague “sound of someone talking,” though that may be understood as the voice of the poem itself.  The sunlight filters to the forest floor illuminating the moss “again,” implying the cyclic recurrence, reminding the reader of “the great return” which occurs with death.  

     The Chinese poets, far more frequently than those in Europe, pay tribute to the importance of friendship.  Poems on the occasion of parting are common.  Among the most affecting Tang poems are those describing the separation of men who had been close, often on the occasion of one receiving an official appointment in another region of the vast empire.  The pain of parting is then an illustration of the inevitable suffering that life entails, though a testament as well to the warmth of their relationship. 

  

Farewell to Senior Officer Yang

Going to Office in Guozhou

 

Baoxie Valley will not hold a carriage:

Where then will you be going?

A bird’s path for a thousand miles,

And gibbons’ cries all hours of the day.

By the official bridge, travelers offer wine;

Amid mountain trees, a shrine to the Young Maid.

After parting we will share the bright moon:

You should hear the cuckoo’s call.

trans., Pauline Yu 

 

The wildness and presumably the hazards of the journey are suggested by the reference to a narrow gorge, making travel difficult.  “A bird’s path,” after all, is no path at all.  The poet suggests that “for a thousand miles” his friend will be lost in nature.  The mention of sacrifices of wine is another reminder of the dangers of the trip.  The mention of the shrine to the daughter of Zhang Lu, the military leader who, despite his Daoist insight (as a “Celestial Master”) and reputation for humane wisdom, saw much of his family executed for political revenge and himself brought to surrender to Cao Cao, reminds the reader of the tumultuous turns of the wheel of fortune. 

     In a phrase that sounds like it comes from a love poem the concluding couplet with grace and poignance suggests that even in separation “we will share the bright moon.”   The call of the cuckoo became a conventional motif in poems of parting as it was imagined to resemble the words “It’s better to return” (bu ru guiqu)

 

      Perhaps this sample is sufficient to indicate the principal characteristics of Wang’s style and the basis for his appeal.  I and many others have felt such sympathy with him, Bai Juy, and others among ithese old poets?  For me the appeal is the direct recording of experience which, though seeming almost like improvisation, hints at intimations of a universal order, a Dao implied in all the phenomena that swirl about us, a finger on the pulse of the universe independent of revelation.   One need not translate culturally specific mythological terms into philosophic equivalents.  The Tang masters present moments of consciousness, compounded as they are of sense experience and the mind’s treatment of those data, but shaped in their expression by all the poems that went before.  Western lyric tradition is not far removed from the formulation attributed to the “Great Shun” by Liu Xie “Poetry is the expression of sentiments,” [9] but it is Daoist and Buddhist world-views that color the Chinese poets’ emotional reactions in a way rare in the West. [10]  Poets like Wang Wei seem easily assimilable because their concerns are our own.    

 

 

 

 

1.  Named by the scholar-artist Dong Qichang (1555-1636), the terms are not really geographical, but rather an analogy to the Northern and Southern forms of Ch’an Buddhism.

2. A type of regulated verse or  jintishi ("modern form poetry").

3. It is a sign of the level of artifice in the form that rhymes might be based on pronunciations no longer current but accessible in a rhyming dictionary. 

4. Guoyu or Mandarin has four tones.  Such tones play a significant role in a great many of the world’s languages (especially in Asia, Africa, and pre-Columbian American) 

5.  Burton Watson, Chinese Lyricism: Shih Poetry from the Second to the Twelfth Century, 171.

6.  Published in 1919.  Among Pound’s changes were the suppression of references to Buddhism and to the importance of sound patterns. 

7.  The story appears in the Book of Immortals (Lie xian zhuan).  Jin on the crane’s back is a popular motif for painters.

8.  For a fascinating translation study, see Eliot Weinberger and Octavio Paz, “Nineteen Ways of Looking at Wang Wei: How a Chinese poem is translated.”  I add two more of my own in “Yet Two More Versions of Wang Wei,” available on this site.

9.  Liu Xie, The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons, Chapter VI.