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into a high art form. One of his most famous lyrics recalls a favorite concubine “chewing pieces of red silk / and spitting them at her lover with a smile.” SUNG POETS (960–1279) MEI YAO-CH’EN (1002–1060) A low-ranking bureaucrat, impoverished author of some 2,800 surviving poems, founder with his friend Ou-yang Hsiu of the new Sung style, with its emphasis on plain speech (after the Baroque excesses of the Late T’ang) and previously unsung subject matter, such as earthworms, rats, maggots, lice, and “On Hearing Some Travelers Speak of Eating River-pig.” Mei Yao-ch’en: “Though the poet may trust to inspiration, it is extremely difficult to choose words correctly. If he manages to use words with a fresh skill and to achieve some effect that no one has ever achieved, then he may consider that he has done well. He must be able to paint some scene that is difficult to depict, in such a way that it seems to be right before the eyes of the reader and has an endless significance that exists outside the words themselves.” KR (from “Mary and the Seasons,” In Defense of the Earth, 1956): The mist turns to rain. We are All alone in the forest. No one is near us for miles. In the firelight mice scurry Hunting crumbs. Tree toads cry like Tiny owls. Deer snort in the Underbrush. Their eyes are green In the firelight like balls of Foxfire. This morning I read Mei Yao Chen’s poems. . . OU-YANG HSIU (1007–1072) Major figure of his time, the complete Confucian “gentleman”: powerful politician; inventor of a new prose style; prolific author of lyrics and rhyme-prose, histories of the T’ang and the Five Dynasties, collections of ancient inscriptions, and treatises on, among other subjects, the classics, political factions, and the cultivation of peonies. Anecdotes of Poets (18th c.): “In middle age, as Chief Administrator of the Prefecture of Ying, Ou-yang Hsiu called himself Recluse Six-One, because he owned ONE thousand books of rubbings of ancient bronze and stone inscriptions, ONE wan (10,000) of other books, ONE chess set, ONE ch’in, ONE bottle of wine, and was himself ONE old man, growing old with his five things.” Ou-yang Hsiu: “Although it is difficult to acquire mastery in the art of writing, it NOTES 236
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is all too easy to be pleased with oneself and writers often succumb. Having achieved some degree of competence, they conclude: ‘I have attained genuine knowledge.’ Some even go so far as to discard all other matters, concerning themselves with nothing else, and justifying their behavior by saying ‘I am a writer and my sole job is to write well.’” p.147, READING THE POEMS OF AN ABSENT FRIEND: “The absent friend is Mei Yaoch’en. Aware of the music of verse: literally, ‘the Shao music,’ which so entranced Confucius he could not eat meat for three months. A lot of nonsense, following the classical authors, is written about the disappearance of the ancient music in the ‘burning of books’– the musical idiom of a people is extraordinarily resistant to change.” (KR, 100) p. 149, GREEN JADE PLUM TREES IN SPRING: “These poems cannot be appreciated fully unless it is realized that East Wind, plum blossoms, warm mist, and so forth, are mild sexual symbols. Ou Yang-hsiu is a master, along with other virtues, of a quiet eroticism, dreamy as a Sung painting of plum blossoms in mist.” (KR, 100) SU T’UNG-PO (SU SHIH) (1037–1101) See GS essay, “Distant Hills,” p. 206. KR (100): “He is certainly one of the ten greatest Chinese poets. His work may be full of quotations and allusions to T’ang poetry, T’ao Ch’ien and the classics, but it is still intensely personal and is the climax of early Sung subjectivity. His world is not Tu Fu’s. Where the latter sees definite particulars, clear moral issues, bright sharp images, Su Tung-p’o’s vision is clouded with the all-dissolving systematic doubt of Buddhism and the nihilism of revived philosophical Taoism. It is a less precise world, but a vaster one, and more like our own.” GS (from “The Canyon Wren,” Mountains and Rivers Without End, 1996): Shooting the Hundred-Pace Rapids Su Tung-p’o saw, for a moment, it all stand still. “I stare at the water: it moves with unspeakable slowness.” GS (from “We Wash Our Bowls in This Water,” Mountains and Rivers Without End): Su Tung-p’o sat out one whole night by a creek on the slopes of Mt. Lu. Next morning he showed this poem to his teacher: The stream with its sounds is a long broad tongue The looming mountain is a wide-awake body Throughout the night song after song How can I speak at dawn. Old Master Chang-tsung approved him. Su Tung-p’o: “My writings are like the waters of an inexhaustible spring which spread out everywhere over the land. Along the level ground they surge and billow, flow- NOTES 237

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into a high art form. One of his most famous lyrics recalls a favorite concubine “chewing pieces of red silk / and spitting them at her lover with a smile.”

SUNG POETS (960–1279)

MEI YAO-CH’EN (1002–1060) A low-ranking bureaucrat, impoverished author of some 2,800 surviving poems, founder with his friend Ou-yang Hsiu of the new Sung style, with its emphasis on plain speech (after the Baroque excesses of the Late T’ang) and previously unsung subject matter, such as earthworms, rats, maggots, lice, and “On Hearing Some Travelers Speak of Eating River-pig.”

Mei Yao-ch’en: “Though the poet may trust to inspiration, it is extremely difficult to choose words correctly. If he manages to use words with a fresh skill and to achieve some effect that no one has ever achieved, then he may consider that he has done well. He must be able to paint some scene that is difficult to depict, in such a way that it seems to be right before the eyes of the reader and has an endless significance that exists outside the words themselves.”

KR (from “Mary and the Seasons,” In Defense of the Earth, 1956):

The mist turns to rain. We are All alone in the forest. No one is near us for miles. In the firelight mice scurry Hunting crumbs. Tree toads cry like Tiny owls. Deer snort in the Underbrush. Their eyes are green In the firelight like balls of Foxfire. This morning I read Mei Yao Chen’s poems. . .

OU-YANG HSIU (1007–1072) Major figure of his time, the complete Confucian “gentleman”: powerful politician; inventor of a new prose style; prolific author of lyrics and rhyme-prose, histories of the T’ang and the Five Dynasties, collections of ancient inscriptions, and treatises on, among other subjects, the classics, political factions, and the cultivation of peonies.

Anecdotes of Poets (18th c.): “In middle age, as Chief Administrator of the Prefecture of Ying, Ou-yang Hsiu called himself Recluse Six-One, because he owned ONE thousand books of rubbings of ancient bronze and stone inscriptions, ONE wan (10,000) of other books, ONE chess set, ONE ch’in, ONE bottle of wine, and was himself ONE old man, growing old with his five things.”

Ou-yang Hsiu: “Although it is difficult to acquire mastery in the art of writing, it

NOTES 236

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