Chinese Civilisation

This is a brief introduction to Tang dynasty poetry through some of the most famous poems of Li Bai, Du Fu, Wang Wei and Bo Juyi. First, a few examples of famous poems in the jueju (“quatrains” or “cut-off lines”) and Regulated Verse (“eight-line” or “octet”) styles.

Chinese text	Word for word translation	Smoother but minimal translation	Form, pronunciation
登鹳雀楼 王之焕 白日依山尽 黄河入海流 欲穷千里目 更上一层楼	Climbing Stork Tower, by Wang Zhihuan White sun lean mountain end Yellow River enter ocean flow Want exhaust thousand mile view more climb one level building	Climbing Stork Tower White sun sinking into mountains Yellow River flowing to the sea. If you want to see a thousand miles You should go up one more level.	5-character Regulated Quatrain 五言绝句 Bai2 ri4 yi1 shan1 jin4 Huang2 he2 ru4 hai3 liu2 Yu4 qiong2 qian1 li3 mu4 Geng4 shang4 yi1 ceng2 lou2
访戴天山道士不遇 李白 犬吠水声中 桃花带雨浓 树深时见鹿 溪午不闻钟 野竹分青霭 飞泉挂碧峰 无人知所去 愁倚两三松	Visit Daitian Mountain Daoist not meet Li Bai Dog bark water sound amidst Peach blossom carry rain thick Trees deep at times see deer Stream noontime not hear bell Wild bamboo divide green mist Flying springs hang jade peak No person know where go Sad lean two three pines.	Paying a visit to the Daoist of Daitian Mountain but not finding him Dogs barking, the sound of water Rain lies heavy on the peach blossoms. Deep in the trees, glimpses of deer At noon by the stream, no sound of a bell Wild bamboo divides green mist Flying springs hang from jade peaks No one knows where he has gone Sadly I lean on two or three pines.	5-character Regulated Verse五律 Quan3 fei4 shui3 sheng1 zhong1 tao2 hua1 dai4 yu3 nong2 shu4shen1 shi2 jian4 lu4 xi1wu3 bu4 wen2 zhong1 ye3 zhu2 fen1qing1 ai3 fei1 quan2 gua4 bi4 feng1 wu2 ren2 zhi1 suo3 qu4 chou2 yi3 liang3 san1 song1.
鹿柴 王维 空上不见人 但闻人语响 返影入深林 复照青苔上	Deer Enclosure, by Wang Wei Empty mountain not see human Only hear human speech sound Return shadow enter deep forest Again shine green moss (on)	Deer Enclosure Empty mountain, no one to be seen Only the sound of human voices Refracted light enters the deep forest Shining again on green moss.	5-character Regulated Quatrain五言绝句 Kong1 shan1 bu2 jian4 ren2 Dan4 wen2 ren2 yu3 xiang3 Fan3 ying3 ru4 shen1 lin2 Fu4zhao4qing1tai2shang4
月夜 杜甫 今夜鄜州月 閨中只獨看 遙憐小兒女未解憶長安 香霧雲鬟濕清輝玉臂寒 何時倚虛幌雙照淚痕乾	Moonlit Night, by Du Fu Today night Fuzhou moon Chamber within only watch alone. Far miss small son daughter Not yet understand think Chang’an. Fragrant mist cloud hair wet Clear bright jade arm cold What time lean empty window Both shine tear track dry.	Moonlit Night. Tonight, a full moon in Fuzhou My wife will see it alone. I miss my little son and daughter. Far away, they don’t yet understand about Chang’an. Her cloudy hair damp from the night mist Her arms, jade-white and cold. When will we lean together at the window, and let the moonlight dry our tears?	5- character Regulated Verse五律 Jin1 ye4 Fu1 zhou1 yue4 Gui1 zhong1 zhi3 du2 kan4 Yao2 lian2 xiao3er2 nyu3 Wei4 jie3 yi4 Chang2 an1 Xiang1 wu4 yun2huan2 shi1 Qing1hui1 yu4 bi4 han2 He2 shi2 yi3 xu1 huang3 Shuang1 zhao4lei4 hen2 gan1
春望 杜甫 国破山河在城春草木深 感时花溅泪恨别鸟惊心 烽火连三月家书抵万金 白头搔更短浑欲不胜簪	Springtime Prospect, by Du Fu Country broken mountain rivers exist City springtime grass trees deep Feel time flower splash tear Grieve separation birds startle heart Watch fires in succession three months Family letter worth ten thousand in gold White head scratch more short Almost will not enough hatpin.	Springtime Prospect The nation is broken, yet the mountains and rivers remain In the city, springtime grass and trees grow thick. Responding to this moment, flowers shed tears Grieving separation, birds startle my heart. The watchtowers have blazed for three months straight A letter from home would be worth ten thousand gold coins. I’ve scratched away so much of my white hair, there’s almost not enough to hold my hatpin.	5- character Regulated Verse五律 guo2 po4 shan1 he2 zai4 cheng2 chun1 cao3 mu4 shen1 gan3shi2 hua1 jian4 lei4 hen4 bie2 naio3 jing1 xin1 feng1 huo3 lian2 san1 yue4 jia1 shu2 di3 wan4 jin1 bai2btou2bsao3bgeng4 duan3 hun2 yu4 bu4 sheng1 zan1

Tang Poetry: the following brief introduction to Tang poetry includes the perspectives of some of the main characters—Baoyu, Baichai, and Daiyu-- in your later reading assignment in Dream of the Red Chamber (红楼梦) also called Story of the Stone (石头记。

The most characteristic form of Tang poetry is called Regulated Verse.  This is what Baoyu, Baochai, and the others refer to as “octets,” because typically they are eight lines long.  Some translators call them “sonnets,” as sonnets are the most comparably demanding of European verse forms.  As Regulated Verse is the most regular, formally complex, and demanding of Chinese verse form, it is easiest to describe all the other forms by comparison to it.

Regulated Verse may consist of five-syllable lines throughout, or seven-syllable lines throughout.  Whichever the poet chooses—and there are good reasons to choose one or the other, as we shall see below—she must use a single rhyme throughout, and all the even-numbered lines (2,4,6,and 8) must rhyme.  Some rhymes are “broad,” meaning that the poet has a wide range of word choices in that rhyme, and others are “narrow,” which can be fiendishly difficult because they offer the poet fewer possible rhyming words. This rhyming pattern is one of the features that mark the poem’s division into four couplets.  Characteristically, the inner two couplets must be verbally parallel, i.e. a noun in the first line of the couplet must be positioned to match to a noun in the second line of the couplet, a verb with a verb, a color with a another color, a number with another number, and so on, as in Du Fu’s famous couplet:

“The stars hang in the vast, flat wilderness/ The moon surges in the great flowing river.”

As if that weren’t enough, Regulated Verse also requires a set pattern of tones in the second, fourth (and in the case of the seven-syllable line) sixth syllable of each line.  These are called the “eyes” of the line, and as with the verbal parallelism described above, the patterns of tonal reinforce the reader’s sense of the poem’s couplet structure.  Within each couplet, a “level tone” at one of the eye positions in the first line must be matched by a “deflected tone” at the same position in the second line.  Many different patterns of level and deflected tones are permitted, and there are also certain kinds of permitted deviations from standard patterns, but the effect overall must be a crystalline symmetry and inevitability that intensifies both the simplicity and the weight, even grandeur, of the poem’s imagery.  In other words, the emphasis on complementarity in every aspect of the poem’s structure conveys a world encompassed in a moment of perception, poised between yin and yang.  Each parallel term within a parallel couplet, each tone contrast, enable the poem to cycle through its four couplets as if it were, like the monkey king at the moment of his birth, bowing to the four quarters of the universe.

The most beloved Tang Regulated Verse poems are simple, with vivid images drawn from nature and ordinary human experience: spring rainstorms, the sound of laundress’s mallets, drinking with a friend before a journey, homesickness, longing for one’s faraway lover.  It is the regularity of the verse form that allows them to sound as if the universe itself is speaking through the poet.

The jueju or “broken-off lines” form—what Baoyu and his cousins call “quatrains,”--follow many of the rules for regulated verse, including integral rhyme, tonal patterning, and verbal parallelism in at least one couplet.  In fact, one way to think of jueju is to think of it as half of a Regulated Verse poem, i.e. a four-line rather than an eight-line piece of Regulated Verse.  The four couplets in Regulated Verse “rise,” “continue,” “turn,” and finally “resolve,” to use the traditional terms; in jueju the pace is quicker, with each line serving the function of the corresponding Regulated Verse couplet.  Jueju also tend to focus on a single fragmentary insight that subsides into resonant silence, which marks them as cousins of the Zen (Chan) koan.

The other Tang verse form, Old Style verse, is somewhat looser in form, with no tonal contrast rules.  Indeed, it was only as Regulated Verse emerged from earlier, less formally stringent forms that Old Style began to be understood as the deliberate avoidance of the strict tonal patterning and verbal parallelism that defined Regulated Verse. Because it was defined through contrast with Regulated Verse, Tang Old Style is more self-consciously archaic than truly old (Han-Three Kingdoms-Six Dynasties) poems. Unlike Regulated Verse, in which any particular word must never appear more than once per poem, Old Style often repeats words, or even whole lines, which can sometimes start to sound like song refrains.  Old Style, therefore, merges at certain points with what is called Music Bureau (Yuefu) or Ballad style.  Some are courtier poets’ imitations of ancient anonymous poems, traditionally assumed to be folk songs, and they use vernacular (and therefore often onomatopoetic or reduplicative) words and particles that would be unacceptable in Regulated Verse.  Because Old Style does not require a single rhyme throughout, it is a far better vehicle for narrative than Regulated Verse, in which the single rhyme would start to clang if it were prolonged much beyond eight lines.  In reading Regulated Verse one hears a lyrical first-person voice; in reading Old Style, one may hear a narrator and various interlocutors, or envision a scene with a number of characters.

Different poets gravitated to different forms—Li Bo, for example, to five-syllable Old Style and to jueju, Du Fu above all to the seven-syllable Regulated Verse—and as one reads more Tang poems, one gradually develops a sense of how poets chose their forms.  A five-character line is very short, without room for much but nouns and verbs; a seven-character line has more room in it for modifiers, or for an extra noun or verb that can function in apposition.  Du Fu, in particular, is a master of apposition, reaching to assemble constellations of nouns and verbs that stretch the reader’s associative faculties to their limits.  This is one reason for his famous untranslatability.  Another is that the seven-character line has more room in it for specific qualifiers like proper nouns, which can introduce a level of historic and geographic specificity that demands, at the very least, a footnote, and often an entire essay.

Li Bo and Wang Wei tend to avoid such references and are thus far easier to translate and to read than Du Fu.  Both look more at landscapes than at people.  They are, therefore, more accessible models for beginning poets, and Daiyu is giving Caltrop good advice when she suggests starting by reading them.

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Finally, here is a famous example of the longer, less strictly formal “ballad” style. This was sung in teahouses throughout China in the late Tang, and it was enormously popular.

Song of Everlasting Sorrow

Bo Juyi

The King of Han longed for a woman so lovely she could overturn a kingdom. For all the years of his reign he sought but did not find her.

The Yang family had a daughter just coming of age, brought up in seclusion so no one knew about her.

She was so beautiful that she could not be overlooked, and soon she was chosen to serve at the emperor’s side. Her dancing eyes were so full of charm that other palace ladies faded by comparison.

In the cool of early spring she bathed at the Huaqing Pool, where the warm spring water slid over her satiny skin. Fragile and appealing, borne up by her maids, at that moment she became the emperor’s new favorite.

Hair like a cloud, face like a flower, a swaying golden headdress, inside lotus bed curtains she warmed his spring nights. But the spring nights were painfully brief, and the sun rose high. From this time on the king failed to attend early morning court.

At his pleasure she attended banquet after banquet. In spring she followed him, in spring they disported, night after night. The love he might have given to three thousand palace beauties he reserved for her alone. Lavishly adorned she waited in her golden chamber, longing for night, after banquets in the jade tower they were drunk with love.

Her brothers and sisters rose to high rank, and their doors shone with a brilliance envied by all. And thus throughout the empire parents came to value daughters over sons.

The high towers of the palace reached the blue clouds, immortal music was everywhere, floating on the wind.

Love songs and languorous dances blended with pipes and strings,

The king watched all day long and never seemed to have enough.

From Yuyang came a sound of drums that shook the earth, interrupting the Song of Rainbow Skirt and Feather Robe.

Smoke and dust arose from the nine-fold city watchtowers, tens of thousands of horsemen fled to the southwest.

The imperial standards wavered, moved forward, stopped again, over one hundred miles from the city’s western gate.

The emperor’s six armies would not proceed, he had no choice

He let that fragile beauty face the horses and die.

Her flowered ornament fell to the ground, no one picked it up

Nor her kingfisher comb, her golden sparrow hairpin, her jade hair clasp.

The king covered his face, he could not save her. As he looked back, blood and tears mingled together.

Yellow dust scattered everywhere, a mournful desolate wind, the twisting mountain path to Sword Pavilion.

Few people pass below Omei Mountain. The royal banners shone no longer, the day grew dim.

Sichuan rivers jade green, Sichuan mountains blue,

Day and night His Majesty was sunk in grief and rue.

From his travelling palace he saw the moon, and his face betrayed his pain.

In the rainy night a tolling bell, the sound of his breaking heart.

But heaven turns, earth turns. Once again the dragon chariot was his.

Once again in this place, he stopped and could not go on. In the mud below Mawei slope he did not see her jade-like face, only the empty space of death.

The emperor and his ministers gazed at each other, their clothing soaked with tears. Eastward to the capital gate they trusted their horses to find the way.

They returned to find the lakes and parks exactly as before, white lotuses of Taiyi, green willows of Weiyang.

Lotus like her face, willows like her eyebrows—

Face to face with this, how could he have kept from weeping?

Spring winds in peach and plum, the flower-blooming days, yield to rainy autumn when the wutong leaves fall

The Western Palace and Southern Court were full of autumn grass,

Red drifts of fallen leaves on the unswept stairs.

The actors of the Pear Garden troupe newly white-haired

The maids and eunuchs of the Pepper Palace all grown old.

In the twilight palace as the fireflies drifted, he was sunk in gloomy thought. The single lamp used up its wick but still he could not sleep.

Slowly, slowly, the bells and drums marked the long night’s beginning.

Brilliant, brilliant the Milky Way, at last the break of day.

The mandarin duck tiles were icy, heavy with frost

The kingfisher feather quilt was cold—there was no one to share it.

The living and the dead were separated by an ever-widening year

Not once had her soul entered into his dreams

A Daoist priest from Linqiong who was visiting the capital

Could summon the spirits of the dead with his purity of soul

He was moved by the emperor’s distress

And the emperor asked him to search for her spirit.

The priest vaulted through the void, riding the winds, hurtling like lightning

Ascending the skies, descending through the earth, seeking in hidden places

Upward he reached the limits of heaven, downward he came to the Yellow Springs

But in neither vastness was she anywhere to be found.

Then he heard of a fairy mountain on the sea, at the diaphanous border of being and non-being

With exquisite towers and pavilions rising from five-colored clouds

And in those towers dwelt marvelous immortal beings

Among them one named Taizhen, with snowy skin and a flower-like face rather like hers…

The priest knocked at the jade door to the western wing of the golden watchtower

Sent a message by Little Jade to tell Doubly Perfect

News of the emissary from the Han Son of Heaven

Woke her from dreams in nine-fold flowered bed curtains.

Pulling on her robes, pushing aside her pillow she got up in confusion

Opened pearl curtains and silver screens

Cloudlike hair disordered, barely awake,

Her flowery crown aslant as she came down to the hall.

The wind fluttered and lifted her fairy sleeves

As if she were still dancing the Rainbow Robe and Feather Cloak.

Her jade-white face was lonely, with traces of tears--

A branch of pear blossom in spring rain.

She gazed at the priest, full of feeling, and sent thanks to His Majesty.

Since their parting, their memories of each other’s face and voice have faded

Their passionate love in the Chaoyang palace is finished,

And in the Penglai palace the days and months are long.

When she turns her head to gaze down at the realm of mortals,

She does not see Chang’an, but only dust and mist.

She could only choose some mementos to show her deep affection

An inlaid box, a golden hairpin, giving them to the priest to take back

But she kept half the hairpin, and the lid from the box.

Dividing the hairpin’s gold and the box’s inlay

Only asking for his heart to be indestructible as gold

For they will meet again, in the mortal realm or in heaven.

And as the priest departs she entrusts him with a message

Including a promise that both remember in their hearts,

Made on the seventh day of the seventh month in the Palace of Eternal Life

When they talked softly together alone in the night

“In the sky we will be two birds who share a wing,

On earth we will be two trees with branches intertwined.”

Heaven is long, earth will endure, yet both will come to an end.

The sadness of this parting will last forever and ever.

長恨歌

白居易

漢王重色思傾國，御宇多年求不得．

楊家有女出長成，養在深閨人未識．

天生麗質難自棄，一朝選在君王側．

回眸一笑百媚生，六宮粉黛無顏色．

春寒賜浴華清池，溫泉水滑洗凝脂．

侍兒扶起嬌無力，於是新承恩澤時．

雲鬢花顏金布搖，芙蓉帳暖度春宵．

春宵苦短日高起，從此君王不早朝．

承歡侍宴無閑暇，春從春遊夜專夜．

後宮佳麗三千人，三千寵愛在一身．

金屋妝成嬌侍夜，玉樓宴罷醉和春．

姊妹弟兄皆列土，可憐光彩生門戶．

遂令天下父母心，不重生男重生女．

驪宮高處入青雲，仙樂風飄處處聞．

暖歌慢舞凝絲竹，盡日君王看不足．

漁陽瞽鼓動地來，驚破霓裳羽衣曲．

九重城闕煙塵生，千乘萬騎西南行．

翠華搖搖行復止，西出都門百餘里．

六軍不發無奈何，宛轉蛾眉馬前死．

花鈿委地無人收，翠翹金雀玉搔頭．

君王掩面救不得，回頭血淚相和流．

黃埃散漫風蕭索，雪棧縈紆登劍閣．

峨嵋山下少人行，旌旗無光日色薄．

蜀江水碧蜀山青，聖主朝朝暮暮情．

行宮見月傷心色，夜雨聞鈴腸斷聲．

天旋地轉迴龍馭，到此躊躇不能去．

馬嵬坡下泥土中，不見玉顏空死處．

君臣相顧盡沾衣，東望都門信馬歸．

歸來池苑皆依舊，太液芙蓉未央柳．

芙蓉如面柳如眉，對此如何不淚垂？

春風桃李花開日，秋雨梧桐葉落時．

西宮南內多秋草，落葉滿街紅不掃．

梨園弟子白髮新，椒房阿監青娥老．

夕殿螢飛思悄然，孤燈挑盡未成眠．

遲遲鐘鼓初長夜，耿耿星河欲曙天．

鴛鴦瓦冷霜華重，翡翠衾寒誰與共．

悠悠生死別經年，魂魄不曾來入夢．

臨邛道士鴻都客，能以精誠致魂魄．

為感君王輾轉思，遂教方士殷情覓．

排雲馭氣奔如電，升天入地求之偏．

上窮碧落下黃泉，兩處茫茫皆不見．

忽聞海上有神仙，山在虛無縹緲間．

樓閣玲瓏五雲起，其中綽約多仙子．

中有一人字太真，雲膚花貌參差是．

金闕西廂叩玉扃，轉教小玉報雙成．

聞道漢家天子使，九華帳裏夢魂驚．

攬衣推枕起徘徊，珠箔銀瓶迤邐開．

雲髻半偏新睡覺，花冠不整下堂來．

風吹仙袂飄飄舉，猶似霓裳羽衣舞．

玉容寂寞淚闌干，梨花一支春帶雨．

含情凝睇謝君王，一別音容兩渺茫．

朝陽殿裏恩愛絕，蓬萊宮中日月長．

回頭下望人寰處，不見長安見塵霧．

惟將舊物表深情，鈿合金釵將寄去．

釵留一股留一扇，釵擘黃金合分鈿．

但教心似金鈿堅，天上人間會相見．

臨別殷情重寄調，詞中有誓兩心知．

七月七日長生殿，夜半無人私語時．

在天願作比翼鳥，在地願為連理枝，

天長地久有時盡，此恨綿綿無绝期．

Poems in Chinese can be translated in many different ways, depending on how the translator weighs the various factors involved in translation. If one translates word for word, the overall meaning of the poem is often lost, and it rarely sounds pleasing. Even word for word translation requires choosing among many synonyms or near-synonyms in English, or trying to compensate somehow for the non-existence of an equivalent word.

If the translator instead tries to emphasize pleasing sound rather than literal meaning, it often means squeezing the original language into patterns of sound that are native to the target language rather than the original. Line lengths in poetry are related to natural speech rhythms, which can be very different from one language to another. Iambic pentameter, for example, is natural in English but very awkward in Chinese.

Rhymes are not just hard to reproduce in translation, they can actually end up sounding mechanical—or a translator may end up sacrificing fidelity to the original language for the sake of fidelity to a rhyme pattern in either the original or the target language. Other important aspects of language and poetry—tone, assonance, patterns of accented and unaccented syllables, mood particles, whether or not a subject must be specified in a sentence—may exist in the original language but not in the target language, or vice versa.

It is also tempting for the translator to explain too much, to insert language that makes a poem clearer but destroying its evocative power by confining it to a single level of meaning. But sometimes a translator has to explain a reference that any Chinese reader would know, but that an English-language reader wouldn’t. Sometimes it requires a footnote longer than the poem itself! Translators, therefore, often choose to translate poems that don’t require a lot of explaining—which ends up favoring poets like Bo Juyi, who use simple, concrete language, and not poets like Du Fu, who use a lot of multi-leveled historical references and abstract concepts that translate into English either misleadingly or not at all.

Here is an example of one poem translated many different ways. All are reasonably “good” or at least plausible translations. Which do you prefer and why?

Red Peony

紅牡丹

綠豔閑且靜，紅衣淺複深。


花心愁欲斷，春色豈知心。

----王維

　

green glamour idle and calm

red clothing shallow doubled deep

flower heart grief about to break

spring color how know heart?

Among captivating greens idle and serene,

Its red robes are shallow, and then so deep.

A blossom’s heart is grief torn? In all this

Spring color, who could fathom the heart?

----David Hinton

Such radiance of green,

So casual and composed;

The tint of her dress

Blends crimson with pink.

The heart of a flower

Is nearly torn with grief.

Will spring’s brilliance

Ever know her heart?

--------Irving Lo

The Red Peony

Voluptuous green so leisurely and tranquil

and robe of red now light, now dark

heart of the flower sadness about to break

but how could we know this from such spring colors.

------anonymous

Sensuous green, languid, quiet

A crimson robe deepens to carmine

The flower’s heart, so sad it’s breaking

How to know the heart of one so beautiful?