When I visited the small Himalayan Book Centre opposite the old bus park at Bagh Bazaar, Kathmandu, in 2007 after an 8-year-long self-imposed antipodean exile, I was pleasantly surprised and moved when the elderly bookstore owner with thick glasses and slick oiled hair recognized me and enquired where I had been for so long!
Seth, who spent eleven years at Stanford University from 1975 to 1986 researching an economic doctoral thesis that he never completed, went to China to collect field data. While there, he honed his Mandarin. This must have inspired and emboldened him to translate the three premier classical Chinese poets later on.
Seth introduces the three near contemporary poets thus: "The standard trichotomy of Wang Wei as Buddhist recluse, Li Bai as Taoist immortal and Du Fu as Confucian sage has been rejected by some critics as unsubtle and artificial, but it can act as a clarifying approximation for those approaching Chinese poetry of this period for the first time.
"Wang Wei's typical mood is that of aloneness, quiet, a retreat into nature and Buddhism. What one associates with him are running water, evening and dawn, bamboo, the absence of men's voices. The word 'empty' is almost his signature."
Enough talk. Here is a famous poem by Wang Wei as translated by Seth that distills the essence of the contemplative state of mind of a Buddhist hermit:
Birdsong Brook
Idly I watch cassia flowers fall.
Still is the night, empty the hill in Spring.
Up comes the moon, startling the mountain birds.
Once in a while in the Spring brook they sing.
The theme of aloneness and emptiness that Seth associates with Wang Wei is expressed masterfully in the following verse. In the introduction to the translations, Seth draws readers' attention to the contrast of meaning between lines three and four, and five and six, which was required by the strictures of the regulated form of the octet.
Living in the Hills: Impromptu Verses
I close my brushwood door in solitude
And face the vast sky as late sunlight falls.
The pine trees: cranes are nesting all around.
My wicker gate: a visitor seldom calls.
The tender bamboo's dusted with fresh powder.
Red lotuses strip off their former bloom.
Lamps shine out at the ford, and everywhere
The water-chestnut pickers wander home.
In terms of poetic sensibilities, Li Bai was the opposite of Wang Wei. In Seth's words, "Li Bai's poetry sparkles with zest, impulsiveness, exuberance, even at the risk of bombast and imbalance. Sword, horse, wine, gold, the moon, the Milky Way and impossibly large numbers are recurring features of his work. He attempts alchemically to transmute life through the intoxication of poetry or music or wine into delight and forgetfulness." This is what Seth means:
The Waterfall at Lu Shan
In sunshine, Censer Peak breathes purple mist.
A jutting stream, the cataract hangs in spray
Far off, then plunges down three thousand feet --
As if the sky had dropped the Milky Way.
'Bromance' was a staple of classical Chinese poetry long before Matt Damon and Ben Affleck pioneered it in Hollywood. Just like everywhere at the time, in classical China, travels were ponderous, long and fraught with many dangers, and, when friends parted, they could not be sure if they would ever see each other again. After one such parting, Li Bai wrote the following:
Parting at a Wineshop in Nanjing
Breeze bearing willow-cotton fills the shop with scent.
A Wu girl, pouring wine, exhorts us to drink up.
We Nanjing friends are here to see each other off.
Those who must go, and those who don't, each drains his cup.
Go ask the Yangtze, which of these two sooner ends:
Its waters flowing east - the love of parting friends.
Du Fu was born into an impoverished, cadet branch of the royal family, and, despite his prodigious poetic talents, did not pass the imperial civil service exams after repeated attempts (Empress Wu, a concubine of the founding Tang Dynasty Emperor Tai Zong, introduced verse composition into civil service exams during her 15 year reign, prompting a critic to observe that the Chinese thought poets made the best administrators). This effectively hobbled his Confucian aspirations to high office. He spent the rest of his life in penury and desperation, holding minor official posts and suffering horribly during a rebellion from which the Tang Dynasty never recovered.
Typically, the rebellion was started by a 'barbarian' general named An Lushan, who had managed to gain the trust of Emperor Ming Huang's favorite concubine Yang Guifei. When An Lushan marched on the imperial capital Changan, the court fled the capital. The emperor was powerless to save Yang Guifei from the murderous rage of court officials, who strangled her to death with a silk scarf. Whenever I mentioned this episode to my Chinese friends at university, all of them would automatically assume that I had learnt about it by watching Chinese TV soaps on the topic.
Seth writes: "Du Fu's poetry is informed by deeply suggestive and often sad reflections on society, history, the state and his own disturbed times, all central concerns of Confucianism. But what especially endears him to the Chinese is his wry self-deprecation combined with an intense compassion for the oppressed or dispossessed people of every kind in a time of poverty, famine and war."
The following poem is interpreted either as the universe's indifference to human suffering or life's capacity for renewal and growth in the face of wars and tragedies.
Spring Scene in Time of War
The state lies ruined; hills and streams survive.
Spring in the city; grass and leaves now thrive.
Moved by the times the flowers shed their dew.
The birds seem startled; they hate parting too.
The steady beacon fires are three months old.
A word from home is worth a ton of gold.
I scratch my white hair, which has grown so thin
It soon won't let me stick my hatpin in.
Du Fu was too poor to keep his family in the capital Changan. In the following poem, he pines for his family in a moonlit night in Changan:
Moonlit Night
In Fuzhou, far away, my wife is watching
The moon alone tonight, and my thoughts fill
With sadness for my children, who can't think
Of me here in Changan; they're too young still.
Her cloud-soft hair is moist with fragrant mist.
In the clear light her white arms sense the chill.
When will we feel the moonlight dry our tears,
Leaning together on our window-sill?
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