T H R E E

C H I N E S E P O E T S

V k r a m
S e t h
Three Chinese Poets
by the same author

POETRY

Mappings (1980)
The Humble Administrator's Garden (1985)
All You Who Sleep Tonight (1990)

NOVELS

The Golden Gate (A Novel in Verse) (1986)

A Suitable Boy (1993)

NONFICTION

From Heaven Lake: Travels Through

Sinkiang and Tibet (1983)
VIKRAM
SETH
Three
Chinese Poets
-
�

Translations of poems by
Wang Wei, Li Bai, and Du Fu

:: HarperPerennial
A Division of HarperCollinsPublishers
This book was originally published in 1992 in England by Faber and Faber
Limited.

THREE CHINESE POETS. Translation copyright© 1992 by Vikram Seth. All

rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book
may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written per­
mission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and
reviews. For information address HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., 10 East
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FIRST U.S. EDITION

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Three Chinese poets : translations of poems by Wang Wei, Li Bai, and

Du Fu / Vikram Seth.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-06-055352-9 (cloth)
ISBN 0-06-095024-2 (pbk.)
1. Chinese poetry-T'ang dynasty, 618-907-Translations into English.
I. Seth, Vikram, 1952- . IL Wang, Wei, 701-761-Poems-English
Selections-1993. III. Bai, Li, 701-762-Poems-English Selections-I 993.
IV. Fu, Du, 712-770-Poems-English Selections-I 993. V. Title:
Three Chinese poets.
PL2658.E3T46 1993
895.1'1308-dc20 93-15087

93 94 95 96 97 HC 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
93 94 95 96 97 HC 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 (pbk.)
To Yin Chuang

Professor Chuang, whose stern pen drew

Red rings around my puerile scrawling,
I hope this book appears to you,
If not appealing, not appalling.
Enthusiastic and sardonic,
Exacting, warm, and too soon past,
Your classes, once my daily tonic,
Have borne eccentric fruit at last.
Contents

Acknowledgements, ix
Note 011 Pronunciation, xi
Introduction, xiii

WANG WEI (701-762)

Deer Park, 3
Birdsong Brook, 4
Lady Xi, 5
Grieving for Meng Haoran, 6
Remembering my Brothers in Shandong on the Double-
Ninth Festival, 7
The Pleasures of the Country, 8
Autumn Nightfall at my Place in the Hills, 9
Zhongnan Retreat, 10
In Answer to Vice-Magistrate Zhang, 11
Living in the Hills: Impromptu Verses, 12
Lament for Yin Yao, I 3
Ballad of the Peach Tree Spring, 14

LI BAI (701-761)
In the Quiet Night, 19
A Song of Qiu-pu, 20
The Waterfall at Lu Shan, 21
Question and Answer in the Mountains, 22
Seeing Meng Haoran off to Yangzhou, 23
Parting at a Wineshop in Nanjing, 24
Listening to a Monk from Shu Playing the Lute, 25
The Mighty Eunuchs' Carriages, 26
Drinking Alone with the Moon, 2 7
Bring in the Wine, 28
The Road to Shu is Hard, 30
vii]
CONTENTS

DU FU (712-770)
Thoughts while Travelling at Night, 3 5
Spring Scene in Time of War, 36
Moonlit Night, 37
The Visitor, 38
Thoughts on an Ancient Site: The Temple of
Zhu-ge Liang, 39
The Chancellor of Shu, 40
An Autumn Meditation, 41
Dreaming of Li Bai, 42
To Wei Ba, who has Lived Away from the Court, 43
The Old Cypress Tree at the Temple of Zhu-ge Liang, 44
A Fine Lady, 45
Grieving for the Young Prince, 46
Ballad of the Army Carts, 48

Notes to Poems, 5 1

viii l
Acknowledgements

I have consulted a number of books for explanations and

original text. I am particularly indebted to A Little Primer of
Du Fu by David Hawkes (Oxford University Press); The
Poetry of Wang Wei by Pauline Yu (Indiana University Press);
and Li Tai Bai Quan Ji (Collected Poems of Li Bai, 2 vols;
Xianggang Guangzhi Shuju, i.e. Kwong Chi Book Company,
Hong Kong).
I would like to thank my friend Andrew Andreasen, who
looked over these translations and made many valuable
suggestions; and David Hawkes, who helped me greatly with
two of Wang Wei's poems- 'Autumn Nightfall at my Place in
the Hills' and 'Ballad of the Peach Tree Spring'.

v.s.

ix]
Note on Pronunciation

I have used Pinyin, the standard transliteration of Mandarin

Chinese used in mainland China, throughout this book except
for well-known names like the Yangtze. In certain older
transliterations Li Bai and Du Fu are written as Li Po and Tu
Fu.
Most Pinyin consonants sound roughly the same in Chinese
as in English. The notable exceptions are: c pronounced as 'ts';
q as 'chh'; x as 'sh'; z as 'dz'; zh as 'j'.
Most Pinyin vowels sound roughly the same in Chinese as in
English, except for i in the following syllables: chi pronounced
as 'chhrr'; ci as 'tss'; ri as 'rr'; shi as 'shrr'; si as 'ss'; zhi as 'jrr';
zi as 'dzz'.

xi J
Introduction

Works in translation from languages I do not understand have

had as deep an influence on my own writing as works I can
read in the original. In some cases the translations have so
moved me that I have tried to learn the original language of the
work. In others, the form or the spirit of the writing has served
as a template for my own inspiration. Life is short, and I doubt
I will ever have the delight of reading Pushkin in Russian,
Moliere in French, or Homer in Greek. But to have at hand
Charles Johnston's Eugene Onegin, Richard Wilbur's Tartuffe
or Robert Fitzgerald's Iliad has allowed me at least some
ingress into worlds that would otherwise be unreachable and
most likely unimaginable.
This book is presented as a dual offering- as thanks to those
three translators of one generation who have meant so much
to me, and as thanks to the three Chinese poets of another
generation whose original poems have meant even more. If
you, who are reading this, get some pleasure from their poems,
it will be in spite of the unremovable barriers of language,
which are passable only in part. Much - possibly most - of
what they say will be lost, but I hope that even such limited
access to the works of Wang Wei, Li Bai and Du Fu as these
translations provide will be worthwhile.
The Chinese is one of the richest and certainly the oldest
continuous tradition of poetry, stretching back to the Book of
Songs, which was recorded 2,500 years ago. The three Tang
dynasty poets translated in the present volume fall about
midway along the line of time stretching from then until now.
They lived in the eighth century AD, in an age of great cultural
glory interrupted by a disastrous civil war.
The Tang dynasty was founded in 618 by a young man who,
after crushing his military rivals and filially installing his father
xiii]
THREE CHINESE POETS

on the throne for eight years, took over as emperor himself

under the name of Tai Zorg. He recruited talent, honed the
administration, expanded China's frontiers and founded an
academy at the capital Changan, which became the foremost
seat of learning in the world. After his death and that of his
somewhat incompetent son and successor, one of Tai Zong's
erstwhile concubines installed herself on the throne of China
as the Empress Wu. She ruled through intrigue and force for
fifteen years until 705, and is one of the most controversial
figures in Chinese history. One of her innovations was the
inclusion of poetry composition as a compulsory subject in the
imperial civil service examinations, which until then had dealt
mainly with Confucian texts. This measure was to have a
profound influence in contributing to the remarkable reflow­
ering of poetry in the next generation.
Wang Wei, Li Bai and Du Fu grew up under the Emperor
Ming Huang, whose long reign began in 713 and lasted for
most of their lives. The first decades of his reign were seen both
at the time and ever afterwards as a golden age, marked by
unprecedented efficiency in government, peace at home and on
the borders, economic prosperity and brilliance in the arts.
Then, after a long decline, disaster struck.
The emperor, increasingly under the influence of his favour­
ite concubine Yang Guifei, lost all taste for his duties. He
became obsessed with extravagant expenditure at court and
on military expansion, which he financed by increases in
taxation levied on the common people. Honest officials were
dismissed, and Yang Guifei's rapacious relatives and favour­
ites were installed in high office. One such favourite was the
fat, sinister and capable barbarian general An Lushan, who at
first was ingratiatingly jolly and gratefully absorbed the gifts,
resources and positions lavished on him. In 755, however, he
declared rebellion on the throne, and marched on Changan.
xiv]
INTRODUCTION

The imperial family and court fled in panic, and An Lushan's

forces took control of the capital. It took years to crush the
rebellion and the subsidiary rebellions it spawned, and the cost
was terrible. Over ten million lives were lost, the economy was
devastated, and the country divided into what were virtually
military fiefdoms with only nominal imperial sway. The Tang
empire staggered on for another century and a half, but its
days of grandeur and strength were over.
Tang dynasty China, a huge and diverse country in an age of
slow communications, was ruled from the capital by imperial
fiat transmitted through and tempered by an elite civil service
spread throughout the country. This highly literate elite,
recruited largely through rigorous competitive examinations,
was both the creator and the major audience for poetry. The
ability to compose poetry was considered to be one of the
accomplishments of a scholar-gentleman even before it was
made a compulsory subject in the examinations; afterwards it
became a necessity. It was moreover accepted as a profound
medium not only of self-expression but of the indirect
expression of moral or political philosophy.
The world into which the three almost exactly contempor­
ary poets - Wang Wei, Li Bai and Du Fu - were born can be
sensed in many specific aspects of their poetry; for example,
their stance with respect to the court and affairs of state, and
the value they placed on friendship in a world of slow
transport and great distances, where parting from a friend held
the real possibility of never seeing him again. There is a large
common zone of sentiment among the three - their apprec­
iation of music, their acute perception of nature, their bent
towards nostalgia.
But despite this and despite the fact that many of the poems
of these three poets are in identical forms, their personalities
and the spirit of their writing could not have been more
xv]
THREE CHINESE POETS

different. The standard trichotomy of Wang Wei as Buddhist

recluse, Li Bai as Taoist immortal and Du Fu as Confucian
sage has been rejected by some critics as unsubtle and artificial,
but it can act as a clarifying approximation for those
approaching Chinese poetry of this period for the first time.
The centre of gravity of their work, the characteristic emphasis
of their most characteristic poems, is distinct and individual.
Wang Wei's typical mood is that of aloneness, quiet, a
retreat into nature and Buddhism. What one associates with
him are running water, evening and dawn, bamboo, the
absence of men's voices. The word 'empty' is almost his
signature. Li Bai's poetry sparkles with zest, impulsiveness,
exuberance, even at the risk of bombast and imbalance.
Sword, horse, wine, gold, the moon, the Milky Way and
impossibly large numbers are recurring features of his work.
He attempts alchemically to transmute life through the intox­
ication of poetry or music or wine into delight and forgetful­
ness. Du Fu's poetry is informed by deeply suggestive and
often sad reflections on society, history, the state and his own
disturbed times, all central concerns of Confucianism. But
what especially endears him to the Chinese is his wry self­
deprecation combined with an intense compassion for
oppressed or dispossessed people of every kind in a time of
poverty, famine and war.
Wang Wei, the first of the three poets translated here, was
born into a distinguished literary family on his mother's side;
his father was a local official. He was a prodigy - an
accomplished musician, artist, calligrapher and poet who
wrote the classic 'Ballad of the Peach Tree Spring' at seventeen.
When he and his younger brother Wang Jin went up to the
capital they were readily absorbed into aristocratic society.
Wang Wei passed the imperial examinations at twenty-three.
He was appointed to the post of Assistant Secretary for Music,
xvi]
INTROOUCTION

but soon afterwards, probably for some small dereliction of

duty, was transferred to a minor provincial post, where he
served for several years before resigning and returning to the
capital. He bought an estate in the hills on the Wang River
about thirty miles away from Changan. Here he lived when­
ever he was on holiday or out of office, and its landscape was
the source of much of his painting and poetry. Not long
afterwards, Wang Wei's wife died. He was under thirty, and
childless, but he never married again.
He filled a series of posts, none of which seem to have
involved him as much as the calm pleasures of his country
estate: nature, friends and Buddhist philosophy were his
preoccupations. He survived the recurrent court intrigues
unscathed; this was probably because he was not much
interested in what went on at court even though he wrote the
occasional court poem upon request.
When rebellion struck and An Lushan established his
bloody rule in Changan, Wang Wei, after some resistance,
accepted office under him. His dear friend and fellow poet Pei
Di, fifteen years his junior, managed to visit him during the
occupation, and Wang Wei recited to him a poem touching
upon his sorrow and dismay at the recent events. When the
rebellion was crushed and imperial control re-established in
Changan, it was very likely this poem together with the
intercession of his brother Wang Jin - who had followed the
emperor into exile and established impeccable loyalist creden­
tials - that saved him from execution.
Wang Wei died four years later at the age of sixty-one. After
his death Wang Jin, then prime minister, ordered that his
scattered poems be collected, but many-possibly most-of his
poems (like those of Li Bai and Du Fu) have been lost. As for
his paintings - and Wang Wei was at least as famous in his
lifetime for his painting as for his poetry - nothing remains
xvii]
THREE CHINESE POETS

except much later copies (several times removed) of his work.

It was said of him by a later poet, Su Dongpo, that 'there was
poetry in his painting and painting in his poetry'. His land­
scapes, like his poetry, are said to have embodied a sense of
distance, space and the pervading presence of 'emptiness'.
Li Bai was born in Chinese Turkestan in 701 and moved to
Sichuan around the age of five. He travelled a great deal
throughout China, never sat the imperial examinations or held
a post for long, and rarely mentioned specific contemporary
events in his poetry. As a result not a great deal is known about
his life or his exact movements.
He is known to have been married several times, to have had
children, and to have made a great impression on his con­
temporaries as a paradigm of the intoxicated and impulsive
poet with his flashing eyes and great iconoclastic energy. He
was interested in alchemy and in Taoism.
In his early forties he was presented to the emperor in
Changan and given a position in the Imperial Academy, but
this did not last long; he was unseated in a court intrigue.
When the An Lushan rebellion broke out he was in his mid­
fifties. He left for the south and entered the service of Prince
Yong, but the prince was himself later killed by the emperor
who feared that he might usurp his throne. Li Bai too was
implicated in the plot and exiled to the south-west. Before he
got there, however, he was pardoned, and so continued his
wanderings. He died in 762 while visiting a relative, a famous
calligrapher.
The vigour and flamboyance of much of Li Bai's poetry
hides a deep core of loneliness. He achieved great fame in his
lifetime, and seems only on occasion to have known want; for
the most part those who met him felt honoured to provide him
with generous hospitality. But he saw himself as a man in
heroic and romantic opposition to the universe and was torn
xviii]
INTRODUCTION

by nostalgia. He never settled down, and the restless energy of

his life found its counterpart both in the speed with which he
set down his compositions and in their propulsive sweep. His
longer poems in irregular metres are particularly heady and
daring, and provide a sense of escape into a height beyond the
dross and boredom of daily life. Some of his nature poetry -
for example, 'The Road to Shu' - is tumultuous, almost at
times bizarre, in its dramatic detail.
Though Li Bai was born in the same year as Wang Wei and
died just a year before him, it is not clear whether they ever
met. They did however have a common friend in the poet
Meng Haoran, twelve years their senior, and each wrote
poems addressed to him or to his memory. Meng Haoran
could be said to have combined in his work two threads of
Chinese nature poetry-the quietistic stream which was to find
its most intense expression in the poetry of Wang Wei, and the
sense of natural grandeur that found expression in some of the
poetry of Li Bai.
Du Fu's attitude to nature is somewhat different from that
of either Wang Wei or Li Bai. He sees nature not as retreat or
drama but as an emotional or moral entity set in juxtaposition
to human life and human events, whether in sympathy or
antipathy. The noble cypress that is not uprooted by violent
storms, the flowers that insist on returning in spring to a
devastated war-stricken country - these appear to him to be
intimately tied through either consciousness or heedlessness to
human vicissitudes and griefs.
Du Fu experienced a great deal of both during his life. He
was born in 7 r 2 into a distinguished but not wealthy family;
his grandfather was a famous poet. Although-like both Wang
Wei and Li Bai, his seniors by a decade - he displayed great
literary promise in his teens, he failed the imperial examin­
ations in his early twenties, and was to fail them again in his
xix]
THREE C H I N E S E P OETS

mid-thirties. In the meantime he travelled widely in south­

central China, visiting historical sites and meeting (among
other poets) Li Bai, one of his great heroes, who was to become
a lifelong friend. In 7 5 2 Du Fu took a special examination in
the capital, and failed yet again.
For Du Fu, repeated lack of success in the examinations was
a triple failure. He needed the salary of an official: unlike some
other poets he had not been able to obtain economic support
through a personal patron, and had to live apart from his wife
and children, whom he could not afford to keep in the capital.
Secondly, his natural ambition for office was continually
thwarted. Thirdly, his wish to be of use to his country was
frustrated. For a man bred in Confucian traditions, unselfish
service to the emperor, to the state and to the people was what
gave life meaning. Li Bai and Wang Wei, each in his own way,
felt that the essential purposes of life lay elsewhere; this was
not possible for Du Fu.
In 7 5 5 , Du Fu was awarded a minor office low in the official
hierarchy. But soon thereafter the An Lushan rebellion broke
out, and in 7 5 6 the capital fell to the rebels. Du Fu was not in
Changan at the time but arrived there later; it is said that he
was captured by the rebels and brought to Changan, but the
facts are unclear. Many of his greatest poems date from this
period; these include 'Grieving for the Young Prince' and
'Spring Scene in Time of War'. He was again separated from
his family. One of his children had already died of starvation,
and once more his family was faced with penury.
Du Fu managed to leave Changan and join the court in exile.
In 75 7 he was appointed to a higher rank as a reward for his
loyalty. This he lost shortly afterwards; his defence of a
general who had lost a battle caused him to fall out of imperial
favour, and he was exiled to Shaanxi. A couple of years later he
left for Sichuan, where in semi-retirement, in the last decade of
xx]
I N T R O D U CT I O N

his life, he wrote over half of the 1 , 4 5 0 poems of his that

survive. In 76 5 he undertook a journey down the Yangtze. He
fell ill on the way and was forced to remain at Kuizhou for two
years. In 768 he continued towards Henan, where he had been
born; but in 770, while still travelling, he died.
Neither Du Fu's personality nor his poetry made a great
impression on most of his contemporaries. Unlike Li Bai and
Wang Wei, he was not included in major poetry anthologies
for several generations after his death. But from before the
turn of the millennium and continuously since then he has
been considered to be one of China's greatest poets. His feeling
for the things of consequence of his times, his realism and
honesty, the richness of his technique and language, the moral
force of his writing, his affection and concern for those around
him and his sense of fun have ensured immortality for the poet
who received meagre literary acclaim in his lifetime. Even his
unsuccess in office, his long periods of unemployment, can
with time be seen in a different light. As with chat other diligent
bureaucrat Chaucer, we would not have as much of his work
as we do if he had escaped what must have seemed to him
fallow and frustrating times.

Pardy as a matter of interest, and partly in order to illustrate

those effects attained by Chinese poetry that are lost in these
translations, it may be worthwhile briefly to analyse one of the
original poems included in this book. A quick look at the
longer poems of Du Fu or Li Bai shows that several forms using
irregular line-lengths were popular during chis period. How­
ever, the most commonly used of all forms for several centuries
- more standard even than the sonnet in Europe - was an
eight-line regular form with the same number of syllables in
each line throughout the poem, either five or seven. The
second, fourth, sixth and eighth lines of the octet rhymed with
xxi ]
THREE CHINESE POETS

one another, thus reinforcing the basic division of four

couplets within the octet. (Sometimes the first line rhymed
with them as well.)
In the strict or 'regulated' form of the octet that increased in
popularity during the Tang there were two additional features.
One was a prescribed sequence of so-called 'tones' for success­
ive syllables of the poem once a certain pattern had been
chosen. In classical Chinese, syllables - each exactly one
written character long - were classified into tones depending
on the direction of pitch of the sound. (The meaning of the
syllable depended then, as now, upon this pitch-direction.)
The pattern of tones in the regulated octet set up expectations
and provided musical satisfactions that are impossible to
provide in a non-tonal language like English. This is part of
what is necessarily lost in translation.
The other feature was exact grammatical parallelism and
contrast of meaning between lines three and four, and again
between lines five and six. This parallelism within each of the
second and third couplets is a particular pleasure of the
Chinese regulated octet, but in my translations I have often let
natural English syntax override strict parallelism in order to
avoid what might otherwise emerge as a choppy or a rigid
rendering. In the example of the poem by Wang Wei given
below it should be borne in mind that Chinese parts of speech
are not the same as English ones, and that the requirement of
grammatical parallelism has in fact been strictly adhered to in
the middle couplets. (As it happens, in this particular poem
parallelism holds within each of the four couplets, but that is
not a requirement of the form.)
Much of the pleasure of rhymed and metred poetry depends,
obviously enough, on rhyme and metre; and these are intrinsic
to the enjoyment of classical Chinese verse. This is true even
though over the centuries most characters have changed in
xxii]
I NTRO O UCTI ON

pronunciation, not always consistently with each other, and as

a result what were once exact rhymes are now sometimes half­
rhymes or less. I felt in my translations that wherever I could I
should maintain rhyme, and also wherever possible retain a
sense of the regularity or irregularity of the metrical move­
ment. The joy of poetry for me lies not so much in transcending
or escaping from the so-called bonds of artifice or constraint as
in using them to enhance the power of what is being said.
With so much by way of general explication, I would invite
the reader to look at 'Living in the Hills: Impromptu Verses' by
Wang Wei - reproduced on the following page with its eight­
by-five grid of characters, their pronunciation in modern
Mandarin Chinese, their meaning, and a line-by-line prose
translation.
This is an immensely simple poem, yet one which, once read,
I have never been able to forget. To compare the incompar­
able, if the difficulty of translating Wang Wei is akin to the
difficulty of playing Mozart, the difficulty of translating Du Fu
with his rich counterpoint of historical allusion can be com­
pared to that of playing Bach. As for translating the wild and
romantic Li Bai - it is rather like playing Beethoven, often full
of sound and fury, signifying (usually) a great deal. But in each
poem, as important as the texture or tone of the work is the
exact content of what is being said - and the translator's task is
not to improvise cadenzas in the spirit of the piece but to stick,
as tellingly as he can, to the score.
There is a school of translation that believes that one can
safely ignore many of the actual words of a poem once one has
drunk deeply of its spirit. An approximate rendering invigor­
ated by a sense of poetic inspiration becomes the aim. The idea
is that if the final product reads well as a poem, all is well: a
good poem exists where none existed before. I should mention
that the poems in this book are not intended as transcreations
xxiii]
T H R E E C H I N E S E P O ET S

I. ;Jj
Ji
�
MO
tt
YAN
�
CHAI
wFEI [Rhyme]

°'
lonely close brushwood door
Lonely, I close my brushwood door.

2. Ji=
C A. N G
�
MANG
ft 74
DUI LUO HUI [ Rhyme]
vast/misty face falling light/brilliance
I face the vast expanse as the sunset falls.

3. t� i:
HE CHAO
fl fl!
SONG SHU
�
BIAN
:]
...
-;.
("l "'
Q. ...
cranes nest pine tree everywhere � ;§
-;. ._
Cranes nest everywhere in the pine trees.

ri
u 0
"' ·-
A VJ ¥ ffff
·.:: 1-r

E "'
4. E o.
...
REN FANG Bl M EN xi [Rhyme]
men VISlt wicker gate fe w

w
I have few visitors at my wicker gate.

5. �
NEN
tfr
ZHU
�
HAN
j)r
XiN FEN
:]
-;.
"' "'
tender bamboo holds new powder Q. ...

*
�;§

n
The tender bamboo holds new powder. -;. ._

74
· cu "'"0
"' ·-
6. � � E "'
HONG LIAN LUO GU vl [Rhyme] "'E o.

*
· red lotus sheds old clothes
Red lotuses shed their old clothes.

7. mt M ffl
DU TOU DENG HUO
�
QI
at the ford lantern fires rise

m
Lantern fires are lit at the ford.

8. � � � �
CHU CHU CAI LING GUI [ Rhyme]
everywhere water-chestnut pickers return home
Everywhere water-chestnut pickers go home.
xxiv]
I NTRODUCTION

o r free translations in this sense, attempts to use the originals

as trampol ines from which to bounce off on to poems of my
own. The famous translations of Ezra Pound, compounded as
they are of ignorance of Chinese and valiant self-indulgence,
have remained before me as a warning of what to shun. I have
preferred mentors who, like the three translators I mentioned
before, admit the primacy of the original and attempt fidelity
to it. Like them, I have tried not to compromise the meaning of
the actual words of the poems, though I have often failed. Even
in prose the associations of a word or an image in one language
do not slip readily into another. The loss is still greater in
poetry, where each word or image carries a heavier charge of
association, and where the exigencies of form leave less scope
for choice and manoeuvre. But if it is felt that the limited access
to the worlds of these poems that translation can reasonably
hope to provide has been given , I will be more than happy.

xxv]
Wang Wei
WANG WEI

Deer Pa rk

Empty hills, no man i n sight -

Just echoes of the voice of men.
I n the deep wood reflected l igh t
Shi nes on the blue-green moss again.

3)
T H R E E C H I N E S E P O ETS

Birdsong Brook

Idly I watch cassia flowers fall.

Still is the night, empty the hill in Spring.
Up comes the moon, startling the mountain birds.
Once in a while in the Spring brook they sing.
W A N G W l'. I

Lady X i

N o present royal favour could efface

The memory of the love that once she knew.
Seeing a flower filled her eyes with tears.
She did not speak a word to the King of Chu.

5]
T H R E E C H I N E S E POETS

Grieving for Meng Haoran

I wil l not ever see my friend again.

Day after day Han waters eastward flow.
Even if I asked of the old man, the hills
And rivers would seem empty in Caizhou.

6]
WANG WEI

Remembering My Brothers in Shandong o n the

Double-Ninth Festival

Alone, a stranger in a distant province -

At festivals I'm homesick through and through.
In my mind's eye, my brothers climb the mountain,
Each carry ing dogwood - but there's one too few.

7)
THREE CHINESE POETS

The Pleasures of the Country

Peach blossom's red ; again it holds night rain.

Willows are green, clad once more in spring mist.
The houseboy's not yet swept the fallen flowers.
The orioles chirp, but don't wake my hill guest.

8l
WANG WEI

Autumn Nightfall a t m y Place i n the Hills

In the empty mountains, after recent rain,

A sense of Fall comes with the evening air.
The moon is bright and shines between the pines.
Over the stones the spring-fed stream runs clear.
Bamboos rustle: washerwomen go home.
Lotuses stir: fishing boats make their way.
At its own will, the scent of Spring has gone.
But you, 'O prince of friends', of course may stay.

9]
T H R E E C H I N E S E P O ETS

Zhongnan Retreat

In middle age I'm quite drawn to· the Way.

Here by the hills I've built a home. I go
- Whenever the spirit seizes me - alone
To see the spots that other folk don't know.
I walk to the head of the stream, sit down, and watch
For when the clouds rise. On the forest track
By chance I meet an old man, and we talk
And laugh, and I don't think of going back.

IO l
WANG WEI

In Answer to Vice-Magistrate Zhang

Late in my life I only care for quiet.

A million pressing tasks, I let them go.
I look at myself; I have no long range plans.
To go back to the forest is all I know.
Pine breeze: I ease my belt. Hill moon : I strum
My lute. You ask - but I can say no more
About success or failure tha n the song
The fisherman sings, which comes to the deep shore.

II ]
THREE CHINESE POETS

Livingin the Hills : Impromptu Verses

I close my brushwood door in solitude

And face the vast sky as late sunlight falls.
The pine trees: cranes are nesting all around.
My wicker gate: a visitor seldom calls.
The tender bamboo's dusted with fresh powder.
Red lotuses strip off their former bloom.
Lamps shine out at the ford, and everywhere
The water-chestnut pickers wander home.

12]
WANG WEI

Lament for Yin Yao

How long can one man's lifetime last?

In the end we return to formlessness.
I think of you, waiting to die.
A thousand things cause me distress -
Your kind old mother's still alive.
Your only daughter's only ten.
In the vast chil ly wilderness
I hear the sounds of weeping men.
Clouds float into a great expanse.
Birds fly but do not sing in flight.
How lonely are the travel lers.
Even the sun shines cold and white.
Alas, when you still lived, and asked
To study non-rebirth with me,
My exhortations were delayed -
And so the end came, fruitlessly.
All your old friends have brought you gifts
But for your life these too are late.
I 've failed you in more ways than one.
Weeping, I walk back to my gate.

1 3]
THREE CHINESE POETS

Ballad of the Peach Tree Spring

A fisherman sailed up-river; he loved the hills in Spring.

On either bank of the old ford stood peach trees blossoming.
He stared at the red trees. The miles passed; unaware,
He reached the green creek's end but saw no human anywhere.
A gap - a hidden path twisted and turned about -
Then suddenly among the hills a vast plain opened out.
From far, a host of clouds and trees - but as he neared
Among bamboos and scattered flowers a thousand homes
appeared.
Woodcutters with Han names and surnames passed them on.
The villagers still wore the clothes of Qin times, long since
gone.
Together all of them now lived at Wuling Spring,
Tilling their gardens and their fields away from everything.
Moon bright below the pines - their houses all lay quiet.
When the sun rose among the clouds, roosters and dogs ran
riot.
A visitor from the world! They gathered round and vied
To ask him home and question him on how things were
outside.
From village lanes at dawn they swept the flowers away.
Woodsmen and fishermen rowed home towards the close of
day.
At first they'd come to flee the world and, some maintain,
Had then become immortals and decided to remain.
From these ravines who'd guess human affairs exist? -
And from the world you'd only see blank mountains cloaked
in mist.
He did not think such realms were hard to hear or see;
His heart, still dusty with the world, longed for his own
country.
1 4]
WANG WEI

He went out th rough the cave, not heeding stream or hill,

To take his leave from home and then return here at his will.
Certain he could not lose what he had just passed through,
How could he know when he returned the landscape would
look new ?
He'd gone into deep hills - but nothing else was clear.
How often into cloudy woods do green creeks disappear ?
All over eve ry st ream in Spring peach blossom lies .
Who can discern where he should seek the spring of paradise ?

15 ]
Li Bai
LI BAI

In the Quiet Night

The floor before my bed is bright :

Moonlight - like hoarfrost - in my room.
I lift my head and watch the moon.
I drop my head and think of home.
T H R E E C H I N E S E P O ET S

A Song of Qiu-pu

The Qiu-pu shore teems with white gibbons.

They leap and bounce like flying snow.
They tug their young down from the branches
To drink and play with the moonglow.

20 ]
LI BAI

The Waterfall a t L u Shan

In sunshine, Censer Peak breathes purple mist.

A jutting stream, the cataract hangs in spray
Far off, then plunges down three thousand feet-
As if the sky had dropped the Milky Way.

21 l
T H R E E C H I N E S E P O ETS

Question and Answer in the Mountains

They ask me why I live in the green mountains.

I smile and don't reply; my heart's at ease.
Peach blossoms flow downstream, leaving no trace -
And there are other earths and skies than these.

22 ]
LI BAI

Seeing Meng Haoran off t o Yangzhou

Yellow Crane Terrace: my old friend bids me goodbye.

To Yangzhou in the mists and flowers of Spring he goes.
His single sail's far shadow melts in the blue void.
All I see is the sky to which the Yangtze flows.

23]
T H R E E C H I N E S E P O ETS

Parting at a Wineshop in Nanjing

Breeze bearing willow-cotton fills the shop with scent.

A Wu girl, pouring wine, exhorts us to drink up.
We Nanjing friends are here to see each other off.
Those who must go, and those who don't, each drains his
cup.
Go ask the Yangtze, which of these two sooner ends:
Its waters flowing east - the love of parting friends.
LI BAI

Listening to a Monk from Shu Playing the Lute

The monk from Shu with his green lute-case walked

Westward down Emei Shan, and at the sound
Of the first notes he strummed for me I heard
A thousand valleys' rustling pines resound.
My heart was cleansed, as if in flowing water.
In bells of frost I heard the resonance die.
Dusk came unnoticed over the emerald hills
And autumn clouds layered the darkening sky.
THREE CH INESE POETS

The Mighty Eunuchs' Carriages

The mighty eunuchs' carriages

Raise a grea t swirl of dust that shrouds
The fields in darkness though it's noon.
What wealth ! Their mansions touch the clouds.
They bump into a cockfight now.
Bright canopies ! Superb headgear !
A double rainbow tints their breath.
Folk by the roadside quake with fear.
Since Xu You washed his ears in shame
When offered a place at court, who can
Distinguish between Yao and Zhi -
The brigand and the virtuous man ?
LI BAI

Drinking Alone with the Moon

A pot of wine among the flowers.

I drink alone, no friend with me.
I raise my cup to invite the moon.
He and my shadow and I make three.
The moon does not know how to drink;
My shadow mimes my capering;
But I'll make merry with them both -
And soon enough it will be Spring.
I sing - the moon moves to and fro.
I dance - my shadow leaps and sways.
Still sober, we exchange our joys.
Drunk - and we'll go our separate ways.
Let's pledge - beyond human ties - to be friends,
And meet where the Silver River ends.
THREE CHINESE POETS

Bring in the Wine

The waters of the Yellow River come down from the sky,
Never once returning as towards the sea they flow.
The mirrors of high pal aces are sad with once-bright hair:
Though silken-bl ack at morning it has changed by night to
snow.
Fulfil your wishes in this life, exhaust your every whim
And never raise an empty golden goblet to the moon .
Fate's loaded me with talent and it must be put to use !
Scatter a thousand coins - they'll all come winging
homeward soon.
Cook a sheep, slaughter an ox - and for our further pleasure
Let's drink th ree hundred cups of wine down in a single
measure.
So here's to you, Dan Qiu -
And Master Cen, drink up.
Bring in, bring in the wine -
Pour on, cup after cup.
I'll sing a song for you -
So lend your ears and hear me through .
Bells and drums and feasts and jade are all esteemed in vain:
Just let me be forever drunk and never be sober again.
The sages and the virtuous men are all forgotten now.
It is the drinkers of the world whose names alone remain.
Chen Wang, the prince and poet, once at a great banquet
paid
Ten thousand for a cask of wine with laughter wild and free.
How can you say, my host, that you have fallen short of
cash ?

28 ]
LI B A I

You've got to buy more wine and drink it face to face with me.
My furs so rare -
My dappled mare -
Summon the boy to go and get the choicest wine for these
And we'll dissolve the sorrows of a hundred centuries.
THREE CH INESE POETS

The Road to Shu is Hard

Ah ! it's fearsome - oh ! it's high !

The road to Shu is hard, harder than climbing to the sky.
The kings Can Cong and Yu Fu
Founded long ago the land of Shu.
Then for forty-eight thousand years
Nothing linked it to the Qin frontiers.
White Star Peak blocked the western way.
A bird-track tried to cut across to Mount Emei -
And only whe1' the earth shook, hills collapsed, and brave
men died
Did cliff-roads and sky-ladders join it to the world outside.
Above - high peaks turn back the dragon-chariot of the sun.
Below - great whirlpools turn around the waves that rush
and stun.
Not even yellow cranes can fly across -
Even the clambering apes are at a loss.
At Green Mud Ridge the path coils to and fro :
Nine twists for every hundred steps - up a sheer cliff we go.
The traveller, touching the stars, looks upwards, scared out
of his wits.
He clutches his heart with a deep sigh - down on the ground
he sits !
Sir, from this journey to the West, will you return some day ?
How can you hope to climb the crags along this fearful way ?
Mournful birds in ancient trees - you'll hear no other sound
Of life : the male bird follows his mate as they fly round and
round.
You'll hear the cuckoo call in the moonlight,
Sad that the mountain's bare at night.

3 0]
LI BAI

The road to Shu is hard, harder than climbing to the sky.

Just speak these words to someone's face - you'll see its
colour fly.
A hand's breadth from the sky peaks join to crown a
precipice
Where withered pines, bent upside down, lean over the
abyss.
Swift rapids, wrestling cataracts descend in roaring spasms,
Pound cliffs, boil over rocks, and thunder through ten
thousand chasms.
To face such danger and such fear,
Alas, from such a distance, Sir, what could have brought
you here ?
Dagger Peak is high and steep -
Even a single man can keep
The pass from thousands - though he may
Become a wolf or jackal - and betray.
By day we dread the savage tiger's claws,
By night the serpent's jaws,
Its sharp, blood-sucking fangs bared when
It mows down like hemp stalks the lives of men.
Though Chengdu is a pleasure dome,
Better to quickly turn back home.
The road to Shu is hard, harder than climbing to the sky.
Leaning, I stare into the west and utter a long sigh.
t± ffl Du Fu
DU FU

Thoughts while Travel ling a t Night

Light breeze on the fine grass.

I stand alone at the mast.
Stars lean on the vast wild plain .
Moon bobs in the Great River's spate.
Letters have brought no fame.
Office ? Too old to obtain.
Drifting, what am I like?
A gull between earth and sky.

35]
T H R E E C H I N E S E P O E TS

Spring Scene in Time of War

The state lies ruined; hills and streams survive.

Spring in the city; grass and leaves now thrive.
Moved by the times the flowers shed their dew.
The birds seem startled ; they hate parting too.
The steady beacon fires are three months old.
A word from home is worth a ton of gold.
I scratch my white hair, which has grown so thin
It soon won't let me stick my hatpin in.

3 6]
DU FU

Moonlit Night

In Fuzhou, fa r away, my wife is watching

The moon alone tonight, and my thoughts fill
With sadness for my ch il dren, who can't think
Of me here i n Changa n ; they're too young sti l l .
Her cloud-soft h a i r is moist w i t h fragran t mist.
In the clear l ight her white a rms sense the ch i l l .
When will w e feel t h e moonl ight d ry our tears,
Lea ning together on our window-si l l ?

3 7]
T H R E E CH INESE POETS

The Visitor

South and north of my house lies springtime water,

And only flocks of gulls come every day.
The flower path's unswept: no guests. The gate
Is open : you're the first to come this way.
The market's far: my food is nothing special.
The wine, because we're poor, is an old brew -
But if you wish I'll call my ancient neighbour
Across the fence to drink it with us two.
DU FU

Thoughts o n an Ancient Site: The Temple of Zhu-ge

Liang

The name of Zhu-ge Liang resounds through time.

The statesman's likeness awes: revered, sublime.
The empire, split in three, curbed his great aim
But not the soa ring feather of his fame.
He equalled Yi and Lii ; if he'd gained power
Great names like Cao and Xiao would have ranked lower -
But time would not restore the Han again.
He died, devoid of hope, his plans all vain.

39 )
THREE CHINESE POETS

The Chancellor of Shu

The Chancellor of Shu, where may his shrine be seen?

Among dense cypress trees beyond the city walls.
Unviewed against the steps the grass greets spring in green.
Sweet-voiced, leaf-screened, unheard, a yellow oriole calls.
Begged thrice to plan the world, he finally complied.
He founded or maintained two reigns with faithfulness.
Before his armies proved victorious he died.
Heroic men shed tears to think of his distress.
DU FU

A n Autumn Meditation

I've heard it said Changan is like a chessboard, where

Failure and grief is all these hundred years have brought.
Mansions of princes and high nobles have new lords.
New officers are capped and robed for camp and court.
North on the passes gold drums thunder. To the west
Horses and chariots ru sh dispatches and reports.
Dragon and fish arc still, the autumn river's cold.
My ancient land and times of peace come to my thoughts.
T H R E E C H I N E S E P O ET S

Dreaming of Li Bai

The pain of death's farewells grows dim.

The pain of life's farewells stays new.
Since you were exiled to Jiangnan
- Plague land - I've had no news of you.
Proving how much you're in my thoughts,
Old friend, you've come into my dreams.
I thought you still were in the law's
Tight net - but you've grown wings, it seems.
I fear yours is no living soul.
How could it make this distant flight ?
You came : the maple woods were green.
You left : the pass was black with night.
The sinking moonlight floods my room.
Still hoping for your face, I stare.
The water's deep, the waves are wide.
Watch out for water-dragons there.
DU FU

To Wei B a , who h a s Lived Away from the Court

Like stars that rise when the other has set,

For years we two friends have not met.
How rare it is then that tonight
We once more share the same lamplight.
Our youth has quickly slipped away
And both of us are turning grey.
Old friends have died, and with a start
We hear the sad news, sick at heart.
How could I, twenty years before,
Know that I'd be here at your door?
When last I left, so long ago,
You were unmarried. In a row
Suddenly now your children stand,
Welcome their father's friend, demand
To know his home, his town, his kin -
Till they're chased out to fetch wine in.
Spring chives are cut in the night rain
And steamed rice mixed with yellow grain.
To mark the occasion, we should drink
Ten cups of wine straight off, you think -
But even ten can't make me high,
So moved by your old love am I.
The mountains will divide our lives,
Each to his world, when day arrives.

4 3]
T H R E E C H I N E S E P O ETS

The Old Cypress Tree at the Temple of Zhu-ge Liang

Before the temple stands an ancient cypress tree.

Its boughs are bronze, its roots like heavy boulders lie.
Its massive frosty girth of bark is washed by rain.
Its jet-black head rears up a mile to greet the sky.
Princes and ministers have paid their debt to time.
The people love the tree as they did long ago.
The clouds' breath joins it to the long mists of Wu Gorge.
It shares the moon's chill with the high white peaks of snow.
Last year the road wound east, past my old home, near where
Both Zhu-ge Liang and his First Ruler shared one shrine.
There too great cypresses stretched over the ancient plain,
And through wrecked doors I glimpsed dim paintwork and
design.
But this lone tree, spread wide, root-coiled to earth, has held
Its sky-high place round which fierce blasts of wind are hurled.
Nothing but Providence could keep it here so long.
Its straightness marks the work of what once made the world.
If a great hall collapsed, the oxen sent to drag
Rafters from this vast tree would turn round in dismay.
It needs no craftsman's skills, this wonder of the world.
Even if felled, who could haul such a load away ?
Although its bitter heart is marred by swarms of ants,
Among its scented leaves bright phoenixes collect.
Men of high aims, who live obscure, do not despair.
The great are always paid in disuse and neglect.

44 ]
DU FU

A Fine Lady

There is a lady, matchless in her beauty.

An empty valley's where she dwells, obscure.
Her family, she says, was once a good one.
She lives with grass and trees now, spent and poor.
When lately there was chaos in the heartlands
And at the rebels' hands her brothers died,
Their high rank failed them, as did her entreaties:
Their flesh and bones remained unsanctified.
The busy world, as fickle as a lamp-flame,
Hates what has had its day or is decayed.
The faithless man to whom she once was married
Keeps a new woman, beautiful as jade.
Those trees whose leaves curl up at night sense evening.
Without its mate a mandarin duck can't sleep.
He only sees the smile of his new woman.
How can he then hear his old woman weep?
Among the mountains, spring-fed streams run clearly.
Leaving the mountains, they are soiled with dross.
Her maid has sold her pearls and is returning.
To mend the thatch they drag the vines across.
Her hands are often full of bitter cypress.
The flowers she picks don't go to grace her hair.
She rests against tall bamboo trees at nightfall.
The weather's cold and her blue sleeves threadbare.

4 5]
TH R E E C H I N E S E P O ETS

Grieving for the Young Prince

From Changan walls white-headed crows took flight

And cawed upon the Western Gate at night -
Then on officials' roofs they pecked and cawed
To warn them to escape the barbarian horde.
The gold whips broke, so hard were they applied.
The exhausted horses galloped till they died.
The court fled, panicked - those they could not find
Of the imperial line were left behind.
Below his waist, blue coral, glints of jade -
I see a young prince, weeping and afraid
By the cross-roads. Although he won't confess
His name to me he begs in his distress
To be my slave. Thorn scrub he's hidden in
For months has left no untorn shred of skin -
But the imperial nose betrays his birth :
The Dragon's seed is not the seed of earth.
Wolves, jackals roam the city. In the wild
The Dragon and his court remain exiled.
Take care, dear Prince. I daren't speak long with you,
But for your sake will pause a breath or two.
Last night the east wind's blood-stench stained the air
And camels filled the former capital's square.
The Shuofang veterans, bright in their array,
How bold they seemed once, how inane today.
I hear the Son of Heaven has abdicated,
And in the North the Khan, it is related,
And each of his brave warriors slashed his face
- So moved were they by the imperial grace -
DU FU

And swore t o wipe this great dishonour o u t .

B u t we must mind o u r words, with spies a bout.
Alas, poor Prince, be carefu l . May the power
O f the Five Tom b s protect you hour by hour.

4 7]
THREE CHINESE POETS

Ballad of the Army Carts

Carts rattle and squeak,

Horses snort and neigh -
Bows and arrows at their waists, the conscripts march away.
Fathers, mothers, children, wives run to say goodbye.
The Xianyang Bridge in clouds of dust is hidden from the eye.
They tug at them and stamp their feet, weep, and obstruct
their way.
The weeping rises to the sky.
Along the road a passer-by
Questions the conscripts. They reply:
They mobilize us constantly. Sent northwards at fifteen
To guard the River, we were forced once more to volunteer,
Though we are forty now, to man the western front this year.
The headman tied our headcloths for us when we first left
here.
We came back white-haired - to be sent again to the frontier.
Those frontier posts could fill the sea with the blood of
those who've died,
But still the Martial Emperor's aims remain unsatisfied.
In county after county to the east, Sir, don't you know,
In village after village only thorns and brambles grow.
Even if there's a sturdy wife to wield the plough and hoe,
The borders of the fields have merged, you can't tell east
from west.
It's worse still for the men from Qin, as fighters they're the
best -
And so, like chickens or like dogs, they're driven to and fro.
Though you are kind enough to ask,
Dare we complain about our task ?
Take, Sir, this winter. In Guanxi
DU FU

The troops have not yet been set free.

The district officers come to press
The land tax from us nonetheless.
But, Sir, how can we possibly pay ?
Having a son's a curse today.
Far better to have daughters, get them married -
A son wil l lie lost in the grass, unburied.
Why, Sir, on distant Qinghai shore
The bleached ungathered bones lie year on year.
New ghosts complain, and those who died before
Weep in the wet grey sky and haunt the ear.

49 ]
Notes to Poems

1 Lady Xi
The King of Chu in the seventh century BC defeated the ruler of Xi and
took his wife. She had chi ldren by him but never spoke to him.
Fou rteen centuries lacer Wang Wei, then twenty years old, wrote this
poem in the fol lowing circumstances. One of his patro!)s, a prince, had
acq u i red the wife of a cake-seller. A yea r later he asked her if she still loved
her h usband, and she gave no answer. The man was sent for, and when she
saw him her eyes filled with rears.
Th is took place before a small but distinguished literary gathering, and
the prince, moved, asked for poems on the subject. Wang Wei 's poem was
finished first, and when it was read out, everyone else agreed it was
pointless to try ro wme something better.
The pri nce reportedly returned the cake-seller's wife to her husband.
2. Autum11 Nightfall at my Place i11 the Hills
The reason for Wang Wei's unseasonable mergi ng of the disappearance of
spring with the onset of autumn is that he is referring co and contrasting his
lines with an a ncient poem that was well-known ro Ta ng dynasty readers.
In that poem, while a ttempting to draw a recl usive gentleman (the so-called
'prince') back IO civilization, the anonymous poet mentions the dense
spring grass as one of che fea tu res of che mountain wilderness that the
recl use has retreated to, and where he 'should not stay long'.
3 Lame11 t for Yi11 Yao
In Buddhism, 'non-rebirth' (wu-sheng: literally, non-birth) denotes nirvana
or liberation from the cycle of eternal rebirth.
4 Ba llad of the Peach Tree Spring
If the character for 'woodcutter' in line 9 is a miscopy ing of the original
cha racter for 'fisherman' - which is possible since the two written
cha racters are quite similar - a reading would result which accords far
better with Wang Wei's origi nal prose sou rce for the legend. Lines 9 and 10
could then rea d :
'The fisherman w a s c h e fi r s t c o spread t h e tidi ngs of c h e Han.
The folk here still wore clothes in vogue before that age began.'
5 In the Quiet Night
This is the well-known, well-loved and much-quoted version of the
quatrain. In the version of the poem found in most anthologies of Li Bai,
the moon in line 3 is specified as a hill moon or mountain moon.
6 Listening to a Monk from Shu Playing the Lute
See note 1 0.

5 1]
TH REE CH INESE POETS

7 Drinking A lone with the Moon

The Silver River is the Chinese name for the Milky Way.
8 The R oad to Shu is Hard
See note I O.

9 Thoughts while Travelling at Night

The Great River is the Yangtze.
IO Thoughts on an Ancient Site: The Temple of Zhu-ge Liang
Shu is the name for the ancient kingdom approximating modern-day
Sichuan, and is a term still used to refer to that province. It consists mainly
of a vast, fertile, densely populated, mountain-ringed basin in the upper
reaches of the Yangtze. In Tang times it was connected to the outside world
either by precipitous mountain paths or via the three gorges (including the
long Wu Gorge) that led to the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze.
The legend, ancient even in Tang times, goes that a king of Qin promised
his five daughters to a king of Shu, and five brave men of Shu were sent to
fetch them. On the way back they tried to pull the tail of a huge serpent
that had fled into a cave. The mountains crumbled and everyone perished,
but a path of sorts was thus created between the two kingdoms.
Ancient China consisted of a large number of independent kingdoms. A
few centuries after Confucius, a ruler of Qin conquered Shu and the other
rival kingdoms and unified China for the first time. (It is in fact from 'Qin'
that the word 'China' derives.) His brief dynasty was followed by the long
Han dynasty ( 206 BC to AD 220), after which the empire split again, this
time into th ree kingdoms - Shu, Wu and Wei - each of which vainly
attempted to swallow the other two, ostensibly to return the country to the
peace and unity it had enjoyed under the Han. (It was only just before the
Tang dynasty, a lmost four centuries later, that the empire was once again
unified.)
The period of the Three Kingdoms is the basis of much chivalric legend
and romance built around several striking historical characters. These
include the great general Zhu-ge Liang, the so-called 'Chancellor of Shu',
who was one of Du Fu's particular heroes. Du Fu admired him for his
loyalty, strategic ability, astuteness and breadth of vision, and placed him
among the greatest soldiers and statesmen in history.
Zhu-ge Liang, living in retirement, was requested th ree times by the
adventurer Liu Bei (who considered himself the legitimate heir to the Han
empire) to act as his adviser before he finally consented and helped establish
Liu Bei as the First Ruler of the re-created Shu kingdom. Liu Bei on his
deathbed asked Zhu-ge Liang to set his own incapable son Liu Chan aside
and become emperor, but Zhu-ge Liang made Liu Chan the Second Ruler
and served him as loyally as he had served his father. In AD 2 2 8 Zhu-ge

5 2]
N O T E S TO P O E M S

Liang personally led a campa ign aga i nst the ki ngdom of Wei , but he died
before it came to a decisive ou tcome.
Several sh rines i n Shu were dedicated to Zhu-ge Liang. In 'Thoughts on
a n Ancient Site' the likeness referred to is his portra it in a temple in
K u izhou. I n 'The Chancellor of Shu' the shrine mentioned in the poem
stands outside the city walls of Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan. In 'The
Old Cypress Tree' the scene is again the temple in K u i zhou, but the
common shrine to Zhu-ge Liang and Liu Bei referred to in line 1 0 hearkens
back to Chengdu once more.
Li Bai l i ved in Shu for much of his youth ; he moved here from Chi nese
Turkestan when he was five. Du Fu lived in Shu i n his old age and wrote
much of his greatest poetry here. Even today in Chengdu, his 'thatched hut'
is a much visited tourist spot.

1 1 The Chancellor of Shu

See note 1 0.

ll. An A utumn Meditation

Th is is one of a group of eight meditations Du Fu wrote while recuperating
i n Kuizhou. The chessboard is i n fact a go board; the streets of Changan
were laid out i n a square grid.

13 The Old Cypress Tree at the Temple of Zhu-ge Liang

See note 1 0.

1 4 Grieving for the Young Prince

The D ragon and the Son of Heaven a re references to the Emperor.
The Sh uo-fang veterans were the loyalist troops ra ised to defend the pass
that was the key to the capital. They were unwisely ordered to attack the
l a rge rebel army of An Lushan rather than to hold the pass defensively. As
a result they were defeated, and the capital was laid open to the cavalry and
ca melry of the rebels.
The Five Tombs mentioned i n the last line of the poem refer to the tombs
of the early Tang emperors, the pri nce's ancestors.

53]
 POETRY

i/!:L.1IJ!JL -
T h e t h r e e T'a n g d y n a s t y p o e t s t r a n s l a t e d here
are a m o n g the g r e a t e s t l i t e r a r y f i g u r e s of
C h i n a , or i n d e e d the w o r l d . R e s p o n d i n g d i f­
fere n t l y t o t h e ir c o m m o n t i m e s , W a n g We i ,
L i B a i , a n d D u Fu c r y s t a l l i z e t h e imme n s e
variety of China and the Chinese poetic
t r a d i t i o n a n d , a cross a d i s t a n c e o f twe l v e
h u n d r e d y e a r s , m o v e t h e r e a d e r a s i t i s r a re
for e v e n p o e t r y t o d o .

VI KRAM SETH , who h a s t r a n s l a t e d t h e s e poets ,

i s the a uthor of two b e s t s e l l i n g novels ,
A S u i t a b l e B o y-a v e r it a b l e t o u r de f o r c e i n
f i c t i o n-a n d a n o v e l i n v e r s e , T h e G o l d e n
Gate . He spent several years living in China
a n d p u b l i s h e d a t r a v e l b o o k , From H e a v e n
L a k e : Tr a v e l s T h r o u g h S i n k i a n g a n d Ti b e t .

:i Harp erPerennial ISBN 0-06-095024-2

90000
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Cover design © 1 993 by Barbara de Wilde

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