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

1. The Abduction of Wen-chi

[x_los]

漢室將衰兮四夷不賓，
動干戈兮征戰頻。
哀哀父母生育我，
見亂離兮當此辰。
紗牕對 鏡未經事，
將謂珠簾能蔽身。
一朝虜騎入中國，
蒼黃處處逢胡人。
忽將薄命委鋒鏑，
可惜紅顏隨虜塵。

The Han house is declining, the barbarians of the four directions have become unfriendly;
They raise arms, and wars are incessant.
Pity my father and mother who bore and reared me:
For witnessing partings and turmoil— this is the moment.
At gauze windows, looking into mirrors, I had not experienced the world;
I thought that the beaded curtains could shelter me.
One day the barbarian cavalry entered China;
Suddenly everywhere we met nomads.
My unfortunate life is now at sword's point,
Alas, a helpless woman carried away into the aliens' dust.

2. Departure from China

[x_los]

第二拍 (5 columns in standard script)
馬上將余向絕域，厭生求死死不得。
戎羯腥膻豈似人，豺狼喜怒難姑息。
行盡天山足霜霰，風土蕭條近胡國。
萬里重陰鳥不飛，寒沙莽莽無南北。

I was taken on horseback to the ends of the earth;
Tiring of life, I sought death, but death would not come.
The barbarians stink so. How can they be considered human?
Their pleasures and angers are like the jackal's and the wolf s— how
unbearable!
We travel to the end of Tien-shan,* enduring all the frost and sleet;
The customs are rude, the land is desolate— we are near the nomads'
territories.
An overcast sky stretches beyond ten thousand miles. Not a single bird
is in sight.
The cold sands are boundless: one can no longer tell the south
from the north.

* Mountains in the far west, in modern Sinkiang province. This is figurative
speech; Wen-chi's party did not go that far west.

3. Encampment in the Desert

[x_los]

第三拍 (5 columns in standard script)
如羈囚兮在縲紲，憂慮萬端無處說。
使余力兮翦余髮，食余肉兮飲余血。
誠知殺身願如此，以余為妻不如死。
早被蛾眉累此身，空悲弱質柔如水。

I am like a prisoner in bonds,
I have ten thousand anxieties but no one to confide them to.
They can make me work, or they can cut my hair;
They can eat my flesh, and they can drink my blood.
Knowing this is death, I would suffer anything willingly,
make me his wife is worse than killing me.
Alas, how a pretty face has made me suffer,
How I resent it that I am weak and soft like water.

4. Longing for Home

[x_los]

第四拍 (5 columns in standard script)
山川路長誰記得，何處天涯是鄉國？
自從驚怖少精神，不覺風霜損顏色。
夜中歸夢來又去，朦朧豈解傳消息。
漫漫胡天叫不聞，明明漢月應相識。

Mountains and streams a long way away— who can remember them?
Where, at the sky's edge, is my native land?
Since my terrifying experience my energy has faded.
Gradually, wind and frost have ravaged my countenance.
In the night I dream of returning, to and fro;
In my half-dreaming state is it possible that some messages may be
transmitted?
In the vast barbarian sky my cries are not answered.
Yet the bright moon is my Han moon, which should recognize me.

5. Encampment by a Stream

[x_los]

第五拍 (5 columns in standard script)
水頭宿兮草頭坐，風吹漢地衣裳破。
羊脂沐髮長不梳，羔子皮裘領仍左。
狐襟貉袖腥復膻，晝披行兮夜披臥。
氈帳時移無定居，日月長兮不可過。

I sleep by water and sit on grass;
The wind that blows from China tears my clothing to pieces.
I clean my hair with mutton fat, but it is seldom combed.
The collar of my lambskin robe is buttoned on the left;*
The fox lapels and badger sleeves are rank-smelling.
By day I wear these clothes, by night I sleep in them.
The felt screens are constantly being moved, since there is no fixed
abode;
How long my days and nights are— they never seem to pass.

* Barbarian-style.

6. The Constellation of the Dipper

[x_los]

第六拍 (5 columns in standard script)
怪得春光不來久，胡中風土無花柳。
天翻地覆誰得知，如今正南看北斗。
姓名音信兩不通，終日經年常閉口。
是非取與在指撝，言語傳情不如手 。

I resent it that spring is so short here;
In the nomad land there are few flowers or willows.
Who knows if heaven and earth have not been turned upside down?
Here we see the Great Dipper in the south.
Since our names, sounds, and signals are wholly different,
All day and all year I keep my mouth closed.
"Yes" and "no" and accepting and giving things away all depend on
finger gestures;
For expressing our feelings, speech has become less useful than the hand.

[x_los]

For the record, here's a Discord conversation some of us had about the week's poems:

Vorvayne: Reading through the intro to the poems determinedly annotating everything with the pinyin
Hate to say it but wade giles makes sense tho
Like it's really systematic and there's no fussing about whether your i is an eeee or an ih sound because they're written differently
The places where it makes no sense are places where the pronounciation has literally changed in the intervening century
Hm guess she really doesn't like being a captured princess, what a shock
x_los: oh WAIT for the coming weeks which stress how much! she struggles with leaving! her husband!!!!!
and like evidence of this in text:
arguably 1 line
in 18 poems
and it is ARGUABLE
and I'm like ???????
at hoooow easily the commentators are like yeah she loves him
I mean ladies do, right? that's a lady thing
douqi: What's the positionality of the commentators?
Are they like contemporaneous Han people? Or, like, modern-day people
x_los: modern (well, 1974?)
like these are tang poems about a han subject
and then the commentary is 1974
but also I think everyone but the og subject is a dude
and she wrote her own poems, and wang anshi wrote a treatment of the theme, but I can't find either
douqi: The prevailing Tang view I thought would be 'well OF COURSE she wants to leave him and come back'
x_los: this is apparently the most famous one bc of the scroll
yeah that's true I think
there's not a LOT about him
he's more present pictorially
than in the lit
and even in the pics she's always like--looking AWAY from him
up at the moon or whatever the fuck
a goose
some self-harm she's doing to maybe communicate via a goose
douqi: The goose is a motif
Zhaojun, another Han diplomatic bride, was said to be so beautiful that the geese fell out of the sky looking at her as she crossed the border https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_Zhaojun
"Wang Zhaojun
Wang Qiang (Wang Ch'iang; 王牆, also 王檣 and 王嬙), commonly known by her courtesy name Wang Zhaojun (Chinese: 王昭君; Wade–Giles: Wang Chao-chun) was known as one of the Four Beauties of ancient China. Born in Baoping Village, Zigui County (in current Hubei Province) in the Western Han dynasty (206 BC–8 AD), she was sent by Emperor Yuan to marry Chanyu..."

x_los: fffff
what a tribute like
'that goose DIED... because I was so hot'
douqi: This is the most metal one
Xi Shi had sinking fish
Which is a bit ehhhh
The Liao/Jin take on Wenji's return is interesting too
Isn't it fun that basically everyone gets to argue over what her experience was like
And use her in their own nation/culture-building projects
x_los: like do we just not /have/ her poems on it or have they simply not been translated or have they been somewhere I can't find?
douqi: We have hers on it: https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E6%82%B2%E6%84%A4%E8%AF%97/5383786?lemmaId=6785&lemmaTitle=%E8%94%A1%E6%96%87%E5%A7%AC&bk_fr=chain_bottom×tamp=1631455953855
Don't know if translated
It seems to have been the only bit of her writing that's been handed down
x_los: it'd be nice to have somewhere like, a sourcebook/parallel treatment over time, with context, like that'd be a neat study
douqi: There seems to be more in this about her grief at parting from her children
She doesn't seem to mention the husband specifically
The kids take up quite a bit of verse time
The actual 'living here is truly miserable' takes up surprisingly little verse time
x_los: huh bc the tang is ROLLLING in that
like still sucks shit that I can smell sheep fat
so fucking gross, so fucking bored
Vorvayne: Oh wow
I can't read all of it but like
Is it just me or is it a whoooole lot grimmer and more direct than the Tang retelling?
douqi: It is very direct
Vorvayne: She's not fucking around