Eighteen Songs of a Nomad Flute: Poems 1-6

[x_los]

Eighteen Songs of a Nomad Flute is "a series of Chinese songs and poems about the life of Han Dynasty (202 BCE – 220 CE) poet Cai Wenji[;] the songs were composed by Liu Shang, a poet of the middle Tang Dynasty. Later Emperor Gaozong of Song (1107–1187) commissioned a handscroll with the songs accompanied by 18 painted scenes." 

This week, we're reading poems 1-6, up to page 40, in this collection. Because of the nature of the book in question, I'll ask you to refer here for Chinese and English copies of the poems and the images together.

You can view the scroll as a whole more easily and read some background on the Met's website; the Wiki page will also help orient you.  

This is the first of three weeks we'll be spending on this collection. I'll link us to some additional background information in the coming weeks, once we've had a chance to orient ourselves; this is the first time the piece we're looking at has come with its own explanatory material, and that's a sound starting-point. 

Comments

Re: 1. The Abduction of Wen-chi

[douqi]

Haven't gone through everything yet but I read this some time ago on different depictions of Wenji's abduction and return:

'To the Chinese, Wenji was a heroine who never wavered in her loyalty
to China, and her story was celebrated in paintings and poems throughout
successive dynasties. The Wenji legend was revived in the eighth century by
the Tang poet Liu Shang and again in the Song in a poem by the famous
statesman Wang Anshi (1021–1086). In pictorial representations of the poems,
tribesmen in the nomad camp where she was taken strongly resemble contemporary
Kitan. Wenji enthusiasm reached a new high in the twelfth century,
when the Song empress dowager, who had been captured by the Jin at the fall
of the northern capital, was allowed to return to the Song court—giving rise
to more paintings and poems recalling Wenji’s story. Clearly, for the Song
the main motif of the Wenji story was her loyalty and eventual return.
To the horse-riding pastoralists of the northern frontiers, however, the
Wenji story had a different meaning. Wenji and women like her mediated between
the two worlds of the steppe and China. A short Jin-dynasty hand scroll
depicting Wenji’s return is illustrated in figure I.1. The scroll is dated between 1200 and 1209 and was executed by a Jin court artist, painted in color on silk. In the painting, Wenji is shown on her way back to the capital accompanied
by servants in Jurchen costume. She is portrayed as a middle-aged
matron riding with the ease of experience and a firm foot in the stirrup. The
wind that forces the other figures in the work to shield their faces is welcome
to Wenji, who alone faces it without protection. The Wenji of this painting is
a heroic figure, emotionally and physically courageous. She was also a mother
who had been forced to leave her two sons behind. Her loss is poignantly suggested
by the foal accompanying the lead mare; even so lowly a creature as a
horse could bring her child with her while Wenji was alone. Courage—as well as good horsemanship—were qualities that characterized Liao and Jin heroines,
as shown in the succeeding chapters.

Wenji is depicted in Jurchen attire, with a fur hat, ribbons, a belted jacket,
skirt, pantaloons, and high boots. She wears the Jin imperial color yellow (now
faded). By the date of the painting, the tribal or “raw” Jurchen had become
so peripheralized and alien in Jin society that they could stand in as the “barbarians” who had abducted Wenji. As art historian Susan Bush has pointed
out, the painting may have been intended as a moral exemplar for women in
the imperial household. Wenji’s depiction as a mounted warrior woman reflects
the martial roles for women in Liao and Jin cultures, while the implicit
messages she bears, loyalty and filial piety, can be understood with reference
to the twelfth-century Jin state, which in this representation allegorically represented the Han state, the epitome of a civilized Chinese cultural entity, to
which the Jin considered itself equivalent.'

That's from 'Women of the Conquest Dynasties'