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The Works of Li Qingzhao, Ci Poems 3.9 - 3.16
This week we continue working with Li Qingzhao’s ci poetry. As usual, the book is freely available via De Gruyter's Library of Chinese Humanities in Mandarin and English and via several publication formats, including two open access options (the pdf appears to be better formatted than the ebook). We're reading the poems 3.9 through 3.16 inclusive.
Three of this week’s poems have endnotes, but these offer only small points of Chinese language exegesis.
How to Read Chinese Poetry has three chapters on the ci forms Li Qingzhao uses here:
Chapter 12, Ci Poetry: Short Song Lyrics (Xiaoling)
Chapter 13, Ci Poetry: Long Song Lyrics (Manci)
Chapter 14, Ci Poetry: Long Song Lyrics on Objects (Yongwu Ci)
From next week, we’ll be looking at these as recommended reading.
If you’d like to be added to the reminder email list, let me know the address you wish to be contacted via. (You can also unsubscribe from the reminders at any time simply by replying ‘unsubscribe’.)
3.9
莫許杯深琥珀濃。
未成沈醉意先融。
疏鐘己應晚來風。
瑞腦香消魂夢斷 辟寒金小髻鬟鬆。 醒時空對燭花紅。
To the tune “Sands of the Washing Stream”
Do not decline a deep cup filled with luscious amber wine, before real drunkenness sets in, the mind is already numb. The sound of a distant bell answers rising evening winds.
The camphor incense burns down, my dream is interrupted, the warming-gold hairpin is small, my hair knot grows loose. Sober now, I sit vacantly before the candle’s red glow.
Re: 3.9
Li Qingzhao sometimes has a Hölderlin vibe (but I dig her more and I’m not quite sure how that breaks down)
Re: 3.9
Re: 3.9
I like the word used for dream-- dream of the immortal soul (the hun, the soul that can be detached from the body)
Baike wants the red candle to be hopeful / happy, which seems not quite right. (Its vernacular tl uses 'lonely' for what is tled as vacant here)
3.10
小院閑窗春色深。
重簾未捲影沈沈。
倚樓無語理瑤琴。
遠岫出雲催薄暮 細風吹雨弄輕陰。 梨花欲謝恐難禁。
To the tune “Sands of the Washing Stream”
A small courtyard and lattice window, the spring colors are vivid. The double blinds are not lifted, shadows gather deep inside. She leans on the balcony, saying nothing, plucking a pearled zither.
A distant cave emits clouds, hurrying the onset of dusk, a light wind brings rain, rippling the sparse shade. The pear blossoms will soon wither—no preventing it, I fear.
Re: 3.10
I wonder if this is generally the theory on where clouds come from? Maybe the clouds just visually seem to roll out of it.
Re: 3.10
But then its vernacular tl says "The clouds and mist curl around the distant mountain peak like nightfall is imminent"
3.11
淡蕩春光寒食天。
玉爐沉水裊殘煙。
夢回山枕隱花鈿。
海燕未來人鬭草 江梅已過柳生綿。 黃昏疏雨濕鞦韆。
To the tune “Sands of the Washing Stream”
Genial, the spring sunlight, in Cold Food Festival weather.1 Aloeswood burns in the jade censer, a wavering trail of fading smoke. Returned from a dream, the pillow hides my inlaid flower hairpin.
The coastal swallows have not returned, people play the stalk guessing game;
the southern plum has faded, willows shed their cottony fluff. A light rain at sunset moistens the garden swing.
Re: 3.11
This is a weird thing to be surprised by, but I didn’t know they’d have garden swings.
Re: 3.11
Baike's gloss recounts the origins of the swing, from the Spring and Autumn Period's Duke Huan of Qi, popularized by Emperor Wu of the Han dynasty (bc it was a homonym for a thousand years).
3.12
香冷金猊
被翻紅浪
起來慵自梳頭。
任寶奩塵滿 日上簾鉤。 生怕離懷別苦 多少事
欲說還休。
新來瘦
非干病酒
不是悲秋。
休休。 這回去也
千萬遍陽關
也則難留。
念武陵人遠 煙鎖秦樓。
唯有樓前流水
應念我 終日凝眸。
凝眸處
從今又添
一段新愁。
To the tune “On Top of Phoenix Tower, Recalling Flute Music”
Incense lies cold in the golden lion, the bedcover is tossed crimson waves, she arises, too languid to comb her hair.
The jeweled make-up case gathers dust, as the sun climbs to the curtain hook. She dreads now this longing for a distant one and parting pain, How many things have happened!
About to speak, she stops.
She’s grown thin of late, not from sickness over wine, nor from sadness over autumn.
No more, no more! When he left this time a thousand verses of “Yang Pass” would not have detained him.
The Wuling man is distant now, clouds lock shut the tower in Qin.
There’s only the flowing river before the tower that should remember me
staring transfixed, all day long. To the spot I stand and stare, from today on will be added a layer of new sorrow.
Re: 3.12
“as the sun climbs to the curtain hook.” So a hook on the side of the window to secure the curtains when they’re pulled back?
“She dreads now this longing for a distant one and parting pain, How many things have happened!” This is interestingly ambiguous, at least in English, re: whether the longing encompasses parting pain as well as distant one, whether she dreads the longing as a painful sensation or because the situation’s changed (how many things have happened) since she and the distant one were parted.
The last line is evocative. Presumably she wants to address some comment to the distant one, but is alone.
“that should remember me” does this idea take the reflection in the water and imbue it with a sense of permanence?
“from today on will be added a layer of new sorrow.” Paralleling the accretive power of her emotional response to alter the landscape (even as these stories have made Wuling and Qin more, culturally, than they are in and of themselves)
Re: 3.12
Baike's vernacular tl simplifies it to merely the parting pain, but I think the original reads more ambiguously.
The vernacular tl for 'should remember me' is 'should pity me', which is very different to me? No gloss though.
3.13
红藕香殘玉簟秋。
輕解羅裳
獨上蘭舟。
雲中誰寄錦書來 雁字回時 月滿西樓。
花自飄零水自流。
一種相思
兩處閑愁。
此情無計可消除
纔下眉頭
却上心頭。
To the tune “A Single Cutting of Plum Blossoms”
The scent of red lotuses fades in jade mat autumn. Lightly she unties her gauze robe to board the magnolia boat alone.
Amid the clouds, who sends a brocade letter? As the wild geese character comes back moonlight fills the western tower.
Blossoms fall on their own, the water flows by itself.
One type of longing,
idle sadness in two places. There’s no means to get rid of this feeling. As soon as it leaves the brow
it surfaces in the heart.
Re: 3.13
“magnolia boat” ?
Again the image of a woman on a boat alone
“a brocade letter” is the letter embroidered somehow? Or does she just mean—the clouds look like brocade, and also like characters?
Re: 3.13
Magnolia boat is even in the dictionary as just 'poetic name for a boat'. Baike adds some context for this history and says some say that it is indicating a bed.
Baike glosses brocade letter as a poetic way to say letter and gives the origin story for this term.
Re: 3.13
Possibly the mat is also cool because she is feeling Lonely(TM).
The final line 'As soon as it leaves the brow it surfaces in the heart' is said by many commentators to be a riff on 眉间心上 无计相回避 (very roughly: there's no escaping this emotion: whether twixt my brows or upon my heart), the final line from fellow Song poet Fan Zhongyan's ci poem set to the tune of 御街行 (Walking on Imperial Streets). Li Qingzhao's version is often held to be superior (though there are dudebros who Want To Be Different who hold to the contrary) because it captures the rippling ups-and-downs of emotions more effectively and evocatively than Fan Zhongyan's relatively 'plain spoken' line.
Re: 3.13
the magnolia boat as baidu says is a reference to a place with magnolias that was carved by legendary figures into a small vessel, or also the wooden bed/couch
兰舟 and 锦书 are pleasing terms...
the brocade letter was (as baidu says) the woven missive of an exiled official's wife.
The moon filling the western tower is <33333
3.14 晚止昌樂館寄姊妹 In the evening at Changle Station, sent to my sisters
淚搵征衣脂粉暖。
四疊陽關
唱了千千遍。
人道山長水又斷。 蕭蕭微雨聞孤館。
惜別傷離方寸亂。
忘了臨行 酒盞深和淺。
若有音書憑過雁。
東萊不似蓬萊遠。
In the evening at Changle Station, sent to my sisters
Tears were brushed from my traveling coat, my powder and rouge warmed by them.
The four stanzas of “Yang Pass”
were sung thousands and thousands of times. People say the hills stretch far and rivers block the way.
In the lone way station we listened to soughing rain.
My heart was in turmoil, regretting our separation.
Now I forget, as I made ready to set out, 8 how deep the wine cup was.
Letters you write can be entrusted to migrating geese. Donglai is not as far, after all, as Penglai.
Re: 3.14 晚止昌樂館寄姊妹 In the evening at Changle Station, sent to my sisters
Interesting that this is maybe the first ci poem that takes the poetess as its actual subject
Re: 3.14 晚止昌樂館寄姊妹 In the evening at Changle Station, sent to my sisters
3.15
暖日和風初破凍。
柳眼梅腮
已覺春心動。
酒意詩情誰與共。 淚融殘粉花鈿重。
乍試夾衫金縷縫。
山枕斜欹 枕損釵頭鳳。
獨抱濃愁無好夢。
夜闌猶翦燈花弄。
To the tune “Butterfly Loves Flowers”
Warm sunlight and pleasing winds, the ice begins to melt. Willow eyelids and plum-tree cheeks, the excitement of spring stirs in my heart.
A taste for wine and poetry—who will share it with me? Tears dry on fading powder, the inlaid hair-clasp heavy.
I try on a lined jacked with gold-thread embroidery.
Resting my head on the mound-pillow, 8 my phoenix hairpin is dislodged.
Alone I clutch dense sadness, no pleasant dream comes. Late at night I trim the lamp wick, toying with it.
Re: 3.15
Hairpins keep getting dislodged in these
The beginning of stanza 1 sets me up to read line 4 as lightly romantic, and then the final line and next stanza spin that into a juxtaposition between the character and their surroundings.
Re: 3.15
silk flowers good T__T
Re: 3.15
The standard first line is more like "Warm rain and clear wind"
Willow eyelids are glossed as: young willow leaves have the appearance of slender eyes, thus, willow eyes. (I'd really tl it to willow eyes instead.)
Plum tree cheeks are glossed as: plum blossom petals are like the cheeks of beautiful women, thus, plum flower cheeks. (Tree seems an odd tl choice.)
Mound-pillow is glossed as: sandalwood pillow. Because the shape is like 凹, it was called a mountain pillow
3.16
寒日蕭蕭上鎖窗。
梧桐應恨夜來霜。
酒闌更喜團茶苦
夢斷偏宜瑞腦香。
秋已盡
日猶長。
仲宣懷遠更淒涼。
不如隨分尊前醉 莫負東籬菊蕊黃。
To the tune “Partridge Sky”
The cold sun is bleak, climbing the lattice window. The paulownia tree must resent last night’s frost. After wine, the tea’s bitterness tastes even better;
my dream interrupted, the camphor incense smells just right.
Though autumn has ended, the days are still long. Missing his homeland made Zhongxuan more dispirited.
Better to get tipsy beside the jug whenever you want, and not be untrue to yellow chrysanthemums along the eastern fence.
Re: 3.16
Huh, is her wine sweet, that the tea is comparatively bitter?
Re: 3.16
Baike says that the tea is a hangover cure. But also I think the tea of that era was still quite bitter?
Re: 3.16
Also, the tree seems to be the Chinese parasol tree, unsure where paulownia comes from? Baike has no gloss on that.
Re: 3.16