tang dynasty times

three poets and a painter--玉藻

He was not just the greatest artist in the Catholic world, but he was an art collector and a classically trained humanist who was knighted by both Philip IV of Spain and Charles I of England. Indeed, so sure was he of his place in the world that he painted himself with sword in hand before the knighting even took place!

I am reading Simon Schama's wonderful book on Rembrandt. And who should come out as shining prince in the book--not Rembrandt-- but Rubens. In the time-old method of understanding one thing but pairing it against its opposite, Schama in order to uncover Rembrandt, illuminates Rubens.

This from the Salon review:

They were night and day, Rubens and Rembrandt. While the older painter
was the soul of taste, a stoic and a devout Catholic, Rembrandt was a Calvinist vulgarian. “Rubens’s most ardent admirers … [celebrated] the Flemish painter’s commitment to discrimination,” writes Schama.“Rembrandt, on the other hand … had no idea when to avert his gaze.” Fittingly, Rubens died a painter-aristocrat who dabbled in diplomacy and was universally mourned. Rembrandt went bankrupt and expired penniless in a hovel just seven years after he had disinterred his wife’s bones so that he could sell the grave to stave off his creditors.

I mean, just look at the self-portrait of Rubens and his new wife sitting among the honeysuckles. Is it not the ultimate expression of marriage (fidelity and union)? So different from Japanese poses, but the hands really are very evocative of this very touching ancient European (Roman) gesture of *promising.* I love her bracelets too. And of course her hat, which seems somehow totally at odds with the rest of her outfit, doesn’t it? I do think they are charming and seem so in love... it’s a favorite of mine. If only I had met my knight when I was sixteen and he eighteen years older—just back from Italy and so handsome in mustard tights! And if only I was fonder of millstone collars. It is the dream of happily-ever-after...

And, you have to admit not all that many painters or poets dared to express happily ever after, did they? Marriage being seen more as a fortress besieged 围城 than as source of poetry and art.

Not for the faint of heart, more common has always been the theme of romantic love and longing of the non-conjugal sort where the promise was only ever at most an ambiguous promise to come visiting that night.

 

♥

 

Yesterday, my favorite poet (and someone very dear to my heart) Samuel Peralta made an adaptation of a poem by Fujiwara no Teika. Rubens had said that, "My talent is such that no undertaking, however vast in size has ever surpassed my courage.” And, I think Sam is himself Rubenseque in his talent and confidence to re-think and re-work a poem from one the greatest poets of all time. The great Teika. 

            こぬ人を                            On the Matsuo Shore
            まつほの浦の                     I wait for him
            夕なぎに                            Pining for him in the quiet of the evening 
            焼くやもしほの                    My longing burns me 
            身もこがれつつ                   Like the seaweed burned to gather salt (牡丹訳）

Truly, Teika was one of the great giants of poetry. And, in the same way that sam re-illuminates Teika, Teika himself was alluding to another very famous ancient poem from the Manyoshu (935) by Kasa no Kanmura:

            淡路島                         At Awaji
            松帆の浦に                  Along the Matsuo shore
            朝なぎに                      In the quiet of the morning
            玉藻刈りつつ                They reap jeweled seaweed
            夕なぎに                      In the quiet of the evening 
            藻塩焼きつつ                They burn the seaweed to gather salt
            海人娘女                      Fishermaidens at the shore
            ありとは聞けど             -- I've heard of them at least
            見に行かむ                  Though I am unable
            よしのなければ             To go and see for myself     ---　笠　金村　　(巻６－９３５）

 

                    

As a translator, I wanted (in my translation above) to retain the echoes from the earlier poem--of the evening calm and the shore but I also wanted to retain as much as I could the idea of longing (matsu in Japanese means pine tree but it also means to wait and to long for--so for a thousand years was the symbol par excellance of a pining women). As Sam says, this poem is so filled with sadness, absence and longing. But, more, what I think Sam's rendition (below) captured better than any is the second play on words, of moshio.  

【藻塩（もしお）】
海藻から採る塩のこと。古い製法で、海藻に海水をかけて干し
　乾いたところで焼いて水に溶かし、さらに煮詰めて塩を精製しま
　した。「焼く」や「藻塩」は「こがれ」と縁語で、和歌ではセット
　で使われます。「まつほ～藻塩の」は、「こがれ」を導き出す序
　詞（じょことば）です。

Moshio: Gathering salt from seaweed. In old times, after being soaked in saltwater, seaweed was dried in the sun. It was then burned to dry it before it was boiled to produce salt. In poetry, "yaku" (to burn) and "moshio" (gathering salt from seaweed) are associated with the theme of "longing" and are used in poetry as a set (ie moshio→　longing) 詞.

Here is Sam's version:

Gathering
after Fujiwara no Teika

Dusk falls in Matsuo, late.
As the charred salt, wrung
From simmered seaweed, burns –
So smolder the ashes of this heart,
As I wait for you, as I wait

That nothing new is ever born is a fact. I think Rushdie is someone who has explored this in particularly interesting ways and in many of his books, there will be one character or another who claims that “Nothing comes from nothing, Thieflet; no story comes from nowhere; new stories are born from old-it is the new combinations that make them new.” Haroun and the Sea of Stories.

And so in the same way that the Great Teika writes in allusion to the ancient Manyoshu poet Kasa no Kanmura, so too does Samuel Peralta light up Teika's poem to give it new life, in Modern Antiquity.

drifting boat, stormy sea

千山鳥飛絕，萬徑人蹤滅；孤舟蓑笠翁，獨釣寒江雪。                -- 柳宗元《江雪》

 

Snowy River--Liu Zongyuan

Over a thousand mountains, birds disappear from sight

Over ten thousand paths, peoples' footprints all extinguised

Floating in a small boat, sits an old man in a straw raincoat and conical hat

All alone fishing in the frozen river, snow falling

 

**

For many years now, Palinurus has been much on my mind. Palinurus at the helm--in fear and dread--dread of the water; dread of the waves, dread of the thick mists, and dread of that god damn boat that was all that kept Aeneus and his men from the cold waters below.

Is it not one of the great Western literary images par excellance? A boat drifting in stormy seas... Like Romeo bitterly complaining that he is "no pilot"--and so, alas, remains unable to steer his boat away from the tragedy of being utterly dashed up against the rocks.

Palinurus' boat is no Polynesian outrigger gliding gracefully, effortlessly on the water's surface-- headed south toward Tahiti-- no, theirs is a tiny boat full of gaping holes being tossed about atop cold, deathly waters.

Sometimes at night when I close my eyes, I almost feel the rise and fall of the swell.

And we all know what it is like to feel as vulnerable as Palinurus.

Others would gratefully succomb to the temptation of sleep. Release, as he called it. But not Palinurus-- for his promise was too great. And so he grasps the tiller--griped in fear and bathed in the mists of sleep.

You see, this is why I hate boats.

Sailing toward Athens across stormy Adriatic waters-- all I could think of was the limbless bronzes, sunk down at the bottom looking up at us. Laughing at our temerity. Yes, I pity Palinurus-- I pity his promise, I pity his occupation, I pity his fate. And, I loath the feckless waves.

Today, though, Ting-Jen had posted the poem and photograph by Dong Hong-Oai above on facebook.I wanted to try a translation of my own and in doing so I felt the image of the drifting boat on stormy waters to be turned on its head... drifting... for isn't Liu Zongyuan continuing in the tradition of Tao Yuanming's 採菊東籬下-- Plucking chrysanthemums by the eastern fence? The old man alone fishing in the snow is no depressing poetic cry lamenting his fate like in Romeo and Juliet. Quite the opposite for the image illuminates what is the serenity achieved by a lifetime of cultivation at the end of the hero's journey.

Drifting.

Fishing.

All alone in a boat, in the snow--with nothing but a straw raincoat and a conical hat.

Of being easily contented 易安.

I'm not afraid of storms; for I'm learning to sail my ship. -Aeschylus;

At the Borobudur, there is one stone relief depicting the buddhist story of the seafarers. I don't know too much about it--just that sometimes a boat (goard/egg/boat of salvation) is likened to that which carries a person to enlightenment. Googling "boats and buddhism" and "boats and daoism," I discover what is a really very different view of this literary image and metaphor. I would love to learn more--for now my favorite that I came up with is this below:

Life is like stepping onto a boat that is about to sail out to sea and sink. Shunryu Suzuki   

Ára Bátur

butterflies love flowers 蝶恋花

 

 

 

醉花陰ー重陽　

薄霧濃雲愁永晝，瑞腦消金獸。
佳節又重陽，玉枕紗櫥，半夜涼初透。

東籬把酒黃昏後，有暗香盈袖。
莫道不消魂，簾卷西風，人比黃花瘦

Drinking Wine in the Shawdow of the Flowers-- the Chrysanthemum Festival

Wispy mist and thick clouds
The afternoon stretches on, endlessly in sadness
Sweet incense rises from a golden brazier
On this auspicious festival day—Chongyang.
As evening fall, the chills slips in
Through silken curtains to my little jade pillow

Sipping wine that evening—there by the eastern fence
The fragrance of the chrysanthemums filling up my sleeves, secretely, quietly
How can I not be distraught?
The autumn wind fills the curtains
I have grown thinner than the chrysanthemums.

 

 

Li Qingzhao--longing for her husband who was faraway on business, spent the day in bed-- drinking wine and composing poems, in the shadow of the flowers by the eastern fence (採菊東籬下).

Sending him the poem, it is said that when he read it, so impressed was he that he vowed to not leave his room until he had composed a poem back of equal perfection. Refusing all food and all visitors for three days, he composed poem after poem. Later, he would incorporate her words with words of his own in a poem that a friend would remark about, "there are only three good lines in this one" (and those three good lines were, of course, the ones he had borrowed from his wife's masterpiece!)

She was the greatest poetess in Chinese history. And like all great poets, she sought to refine her emotions in elegant and edifying metaphors about nature. Lady Li loved flowers and by situating her emotions in seasonal images, personal emotions were therby refined and made universal. But at the same time, she saw things in the flowers themselves that were admirable and worthy of emulation; for not only are flowers beautiful and joyous but they also symbolize strength and nobility of character-- attributes that we can all learn from. Or, in the words of my ikebana teacher, when a flower blooms, it either blooms in its fullest capacity and with all its might, or it’s a dud.

No half measures for flowers.  --with Ting-Jen

Interesting article on emotion, nature and japanese Buddhism--here. Photo and video by the Great Ninagawa Mika

TED Talks-Gratitude and Flowers too

**

Be like a flower,  from Sri Aurobindo's The Spiritual Significance of Flowers

Be like a flower. One must try to become like a flower: open, frank, equal, generous and kind. Do you know what it means?
A flower is open to all that surrounds it: Nature, light, the rays of the sun, the wind, etc. It exerts a spontaneous influence on all that is around it. It radiates a joy and a beauty.
It is frank: it hides nothing of its beauty, and lets it flow frankly out of itself. What is within, what is in its depths, it lets it come out so that everyone can see it.
It is equal: it has no preference. Everyone can enjoy its beauty and its perfume, without rivalry. It is equal and the same for everybody. There is no difference, or anything whatsoever.
Then generous: without reserve or restriction, how it gives the mysterious beauty and the very own perfume of Nature. It sacrifices itself entirely for our pleasure, even its life it sacrifices to express this beauty and the secret of the things
gathered within itself.
And then, kind: it has such a tenderness, it is so sweet, so close to us, so loving. Its presence fills us with joy. It is always cheerful and happy.
Happy is he who can exchange his qualities with the real qualities of the flowers. Try to cultivate in yourself their refined qualities