Special Interlude: Song of Everlasting Regret

[x_los]

 
First off, w h a t a title? Don't skimp on the drama, Bai Juyi: tell me how you really feel. 

"Composed by Bai Juyi in the year 806, The Song of Everlasting Regret (or Sorrow) details the events surrounding the death of the lady Yang Guifei during the Anshi Rebellion in 755. Yang Guifei was the beloved concubine of the Emperor Xuanzong of Tang." 

This is an approachable Tang dynasty poem of a little under 150 lines. Just read the above translation, and thought if anyone else had thoughts, this would be a good place to put them.

Comments

[x_los]

Okay so I do NOT feel the key turning point, the matter of footnote 8, was sufficiently explicated in the poem itself. I can see wanting to be vague about recent history, or to make the parallels less direct, but honestly that's the prime emotional lever of the whole piece, and I want access to the decision involved, the justifications, the pov!

Also I don't quite know how to read 102-103, which suggest that in having ascended she's lost touch with all the feelings of her mortal life (especially if her death involved a kind of betrayal, per my last paragraph) a la Princess Kaguya, in light of the poem's end, which suggests a more conventional (at least to me) 'meet again in the afterlife' reunion, which is predicated on the constancy and continuing potency of that love?

[douqi]

Extremely non-expert, garnered from historical dramas memory: Consort Yang's family were given high positions in court, causing friction with other factions and possibly criticism among the populace (very standard thing each time an empress of Imperial consort gains 'too much' favour). There's some allusion to this in the earlier part of the poem, where the emperor is so enamoured of her that he stops attending morning court. Then there was the An Lushan rebellion, which some quarters believed was triggered by conflict between General An Lushan and Consort Yang's cousin, Yang Guozhong. As An Lushan approached the capital, the emperor fled the capital with Consort Yang and entourage, ending up at Mawei Station. So in that context it's the flash point of a long-simmering conflict.

Wikipedia articles on Consort Yang (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yang_Guifei) and the An Lushan rebellion (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Lushan_Rebellion) give some idea.

Also, I have a wild and completely baseless theory that Bai Juyi was being sarcastic in the last part, in a 'lol the emperor had this woman strangled and is somehow still deluded enough to believe that she's still in love with him in the afterlife' way, but so far I have seen absolutely nothing that substantiates this.

[douqi]

Also, stylistically, Bai Juyi was the 'plain-speaking', vernacular poet so accounts for the approachability.

[forestofglory]

I actually have some context for this one as I'm reading Empire of Style: Silk and Fashion in Tang China by Buyun Chen and apparently Yang Guifei was fashion icon for generations.

The book also suggests that Tang imperialism and military conquest resulted in more power in the hands of generals An Lushan making the Anshi Rebellion more possible. (There's also a lot of stuff about how the tax system changed after the rebellion but I don't think its relivent here)

[llonkrebboj]

While we're on the topic of song of everlasting regret! - just wanted to share this before i forget.

There's this line 青山不改，绿水长流, 后会有期 (~ verdant mountains do not change, the green waters run on, there will come a day that we'll meet again) from The Untamed, the inspiration for which is often misattributed to a poem by the title of 《离别》 Farewell, allegedly Bai Juyi.

The poem is not written by Bai Juyi. Nor does the line originate from there. However! The last line of this Farewell DOES come from the ending of Song of Everlasting Regret.

i.e. 此恨绵绵无绝期 This hate/regret goes on and on. It does not have an end.