Yü Hsin, born of an aristocratic family that had distinguished itself in literature and statesmanship, early became an official at the court of the Liang dynasty, which had its capital in the south at present-day Nanking. After the rebellion of Hou Ching that broke out in 548, temporarily disrupting the life of the dynasty, he was dispatched as envoy to the Western Wei, one of the non-Chinese dynasties that ruled in the north. While he was there, the northerners launched an attack on the Liang and Yü Hsin, forcibly detained, was obliged to stand by and watch the destruction of his home state. The following poem was written when he was living, a virtual captive, in Ch’ang-an, the northern capital, probably shortly after the attack on the Liang in the winter of 554. In it, he describes in great detail the small garden of the house where he and his family live, as though determined to convince himself that he is in fact living the life of a wise and carefree recluse. But his thoughts in time turn to the past—his privileged youth, the grim days of the Hou Ching rebellion, and the even more tragic times that followed—and he ends by pouring out his longing for his homeland and his feelings of guilt and despair. The Western Wei and its successor, the Northern Chou, though showering official position and honor upon Yü Hsin, would never permit him to go home, and he died an alien in the north in 581.
Yü Hsin’s poetry is admired not only for its graceful diction and technical skill but for the depth of feeling that informs much of it, particularly that written when he was under detention in the north. As will be apparent from the work that follows, he restored to the rhyme-prose form a note of intense personal emotion. At the same time the passion for allusions had by his day so infected the style of both poetry and prose that his poem, for all its sincerity and pathos, all but sinks under the weight of them. The text is found in Yü Tzu-shan chi, ch. 1.
On one branch alone
The Nest Father could find a spot to nest in safety;
In one single pot
The Pot Gentleman discovered room for his whole body.1
Or better, Kuan Ning’s sofa of goosefoot vine,
Poked full of holes but still good for sitting;
Or Hsi K’ang’s smelting oven—
When firing was finished, it served for a nap.2
What need for rows of doorways, chamber beyond chamber,
Mansions like that of Fan Chung of Nan-yang;
For green porches, blue latticework,
Homes like that of Wang Ken of the Western Han?
I have a few acres, a shabby hut,
Lonely and still, beyond the world of men,
Enough to fend off the worst of summer and winter,
Enough to shelter me from wind and frost.
Though I’m closer to the market than Yen Ying was,
I don’t send morning and evening to ask about the bargains;3
Like P’an Yüeh, I face the city,
Savoring delights of an idle life.4
The yellow crane, alarmed at the first frost,
Has no wish for wheels or a carriage;
The yuan-chü bird, fleeing the wind,
Is wholly uninterested in bells and drums.5
In Lu Chi’s case, two brothers roomed together;
In Han K’ang’s, uncle and nephew managed not to part;6
A snail’s horn, a mosquito’s eyelash,
Still offer space enough to fit into!
And so
The wine cellar’s where I linger;
I too have knocked a hole in the wall.7
Among the paulownias, dew drips down;
Under the willows, a breeze begins to stir.
My lute is the kind with pegs of pearl;
My book bears the title “Cup of Jade.”8
I have crabapples but no hall of that name,
Sour jujubes, though no towers to match.9
But still there’s room to zigzag eighty or ninety feet,
To walk up and down many tens of paces.
Elms and willows, two or three rows of them,
Pears and peaches, a stand of over a hundred:
Part the dense foliage and you’ll find a window,
Thread in and out among them and come on a path;
Dense cover for cicadas—they never take alarm;
No nets spread for the pheasant—what has he to fear?
Plants and trees tangled and untrained,
Stalks and branches twined together;
For hills a heap of shoveled-up earth,
In the ground, a tiny hollow for a pond;
Secretive wildcats burrow side by side,
Fledgling magpies nest together.
Delicate grasses, seeds strung like pearls,
Cool gourds dangling from their long handles—
These can mend the pangs of hunger,
These can offer comfort and rest.
Crooked and sagging are my narrow rooms,
Worn and leaky, my roof of thatch:
Under the eaves try to straighten up—they knock your hat off;
Walk through the door in the usual way and get a thump on the brow.
Roosting by my curtain are no white cranes,
Though tortoises hold up the legs of my couch.10
Birds throng my quiet days,
Flowers change with each of the four seasons.
For heart I’ve a withered tree of Li-ling,
For hair the tangled threads of Sui-yang.11
It’s not the heat of summer and yet I cringe;
Other than autumn days I still feel sad.
Fishes, one inch, two inches long;
Bamboos, two canes, three canes growing;
Cloud breath darkening over clumps of milfoil,
Essence of gold cherished in the autumn chrysanthemum;
Jujubes sour, pears acid to the bite,
Peaches, garden-grown and wild ones; damsons big and small:
Their fallen leaves half bury my chair,
Their rioting petals fill the room—
Call this the home of a country fellow,
Name it the valley of an ignorant sir.
I’ve tried lying down in these shady groves;
So long I’d envied those who had doffed official hatpins.
I have a gate but it’s always closed;
No ocean here, yet I’ve sunk out of sight!
Late spring I shoulder my hoe along with friends;
Fifth month I put on leather coat, ready for chores.12
I look into Ko Hung’s writings on the properties of medicines,
Pay a visit to Ching Fang’s forest of divinations.13
Yet these grasses fail to “banish sorrow” from my mind,
These flowers bring no “lasting joy” to the heart.14
What use would a bird have being offered wine?
What heart would a fish have to listen to a lute?
On top of this
The cold and heat here are of a different kind;
They offend my southern nature.
Ts’ui Yin through lack of joy shortened his life;
Wu Chih by constant grieving made himself sick.15
House spirits I’ve stilled by burying stones;
To ward off mountain goblins I’ve a mirror to flash;16
Yet often I’m moved to Chuang Hsieh’s kind of singing,
To commit acts as senseless as the order to Wei K’o.17
Dusk falling on quiet rooms
Finds old and young hand in hand,
Sons as tousle-headed as those of Wang Pa,
My wife, hair in mallet-bun, like the wife of Liang Hung.18
Of parched grain we have two bins,
Of cold vegetables, one garden plot full.
Winds wail and buffet, lashing through the trees;
Skies are bleak and threatening, clouds pressing down.
Gathered by the empty barn, sparrows complain;
Chiding the lazy housewife, cicadas shrill.
In the past I pretended to play the pipes,
Trusting to hand-me-down fortune, as the Wen-yen says.19
Our house was praised for its pervasive virtue,
Our family received gifts of books from the ruler.
On occasion I attended His Majesty in the Tower of the Dark Warrior;
Sometimes I waited on him in the Place of Phoenixes,
Granted audience in the Great Hall where sacrificial meats are received,
Composing fu in the officials’ lodge like that on Ch’ang-yang Palace.20
But then
Mountains crumbled, rivers ran dry;
There was a cracking of ice, a shattering of tiles.
The great bandit worked his usurpation,
The star of our heavens faded for all time.21
Things shattered—because free rein was given on Three Peril Hill;
Broke—because there was reckless driving on the Slope of Nine Turnings.22
Ching K’o had his heartbreak beside the cold waters,
Su Wu his farewell in the autumn wind.23
At border mountains, wind and moon filled me with foreboding;
By Lung waters, my liver and bowels broke in two.
The tortoise told me this land was too cold;
Cranes warned of this year’s snow.24
A man’s hundred years—how swift in passing,
Youth’s bright flower faded long ago!
I shall not work to wipe out the mishap at Yen-men,
But recall the long flight of the swan across the plains.25
I cannot change shape in the Huai or ocean,
I cannot be transmuted like cinnabar or gold.26
Having failed to leave my bones to bleach by Dragon Gate,
I end like the horse on the slope, head hung down.27
Truly Heaven’s workings are dark and devious;
Alas for mankind in the tangle of their maze!
NOTES
1. The Nest Father was a recluse of high antiquity who lived in a tree; the Pot Gentleman a sage of the Eastern Han who slept in a large pot suspended in his otherwise bare room.
2. Kuan Ning was a recluse; Hsi K’ang, who in his poorer days was supposed to have made a living by smelting iron, has appeared on this page.
3. Yen Ying (d. 500 B.C.), a statesman noted for his frugality, was urged by his sovereign to move out of the crowded part of the city to a pleasanter neighborhood, but he replied that he preferred living close to the market place so he could send over morning and evening to buy what happened to be cheap.
4. On P’an Yüeh, see this page.
5. Duke Yi of Wei sought to please his pet crane by taking it for a ride in a carriage. The sea bird called yuan-chü took refuge from a storm in the capital city of Lu where, to the bird’s distress, the inhabitants offered it sacrifices and serenaded it with bells and drums. Yü Hsin hints that he hopes the rulers of the northern dynasty will not try to force him to take office under them.
6. Lu Chi, author of the “Fu on Literature,” in his youth shared cramped and humble quarters with his younger brother Yün when, after the destruction of their native state of Wu, they came north to seek their fortune. Han K’ang faithfully followed his maternal uncle Yin Hao in a life of enforced wandering. Yü Hsin likens himself to these displaced wanderers.
7. When Yen Ho was pressed by the ruler of Lu to appear for an interview, he knocked a hole in the rear wall of his garden and ran away.
8. Actually a chapter from a very serious work of philosophy by the Han Confucian Tung Chung-shu; Yü Hsin mentions it here only because it forms such a neat parallel to the “pegs of pearl” in the line above.
9. Crabapple and Sour Jujube are the names, respectively, of a famous hall and pair of towers.
10. A Taoist adept named Chieh Hsiang, having died at noon at Wu-ch’ang, was seen at evening in Chien-yeh (Nanking) far away. A shrine was built in his honor, where white cranes often came to roost. Yü Hsin hints that, though he too longs to go to Chien-yeh, the capital of the southern court, he lacks Chieh Hsiang’s magical powers. The second line refers to the tale of an old man who used tortoises to support the legs of his couch. When he died some twenty years later, the tortoises were found to be still alive. Cranes and tortoises are stock symbols of longevity.
11. Li-ling is famous for its camphor trees, many of them old and withered. Sui-yang is where the philosopher Mo Tzu saw strands of white undyed silk and sighed to think that they could be made to take on any color the dyer chose.
12. The leather protects the shoulders when carrying firewood and other loads.
13. Ko Hung (4th cen.) is the author of the Pao-p’u Tzu, a work on Taoist alchemy. Ching Fang (77–37 B.C.) was an expert on the I Ching and author of a work entitled “Collected Forest of the Chou Yi.”
14. “Banish sorrow” and “lasting joy” are names of a kind of plant and flower respectively.
15. Ts’ui Yin of the Eastern Han died of grief when his superior, General Tou Hsien, refused to heed his admonitions. Wu Chih, friend of Ts’ao P’ei (Emperor Wen of the Wei) and the poets of the Chien-an period, grieved especially that so many of his companions had died in the plague epidemic of A.D. 217.
16. Stones buried at the four corners of the house protect it from ghosts; goblins flee from a mirror because they are incapable of casting a reflection.
17. On the singing of the homesick Chuang Hsieh, see this note. Wei K’o’s father, a minister of the state of Chin in Chou times, in the last stages of illness gave an order that his favorite concubine was to be killed and buried with him. Wei K’o, in view of his father’s deranged condition, ignored the order.
18. Wang Pa and Liang Hung were recluses of the Eastern Han.
19. The first line refers to the story of a man who pretended to be able to play the pipes and was employed in the orchestra of King Hsüan of Ch’i; the deception was exposed when the king’s son and successor forced the members of the orchestra to play one at a time. Yü Hsin is modestly referring to his official service under the Liang. The Wen-yen Commentary on the I Ching states: “A family that piles up noble deeds is certain to have an abundance of good fortune.”
20. These lines, embodying allusions to various great statesmen and scholars of the Han such as Chia Yi, Yang Hsiung, Cheng Hsüan, and the members of the Pan family, refer to the distinguished history of the Yü family and Yü Hsin’s own career as an official.
21. These lines refer to the fact that in 548 the military leader Hou Ching revolted against the Liang, seized the capital, and declared himself emperor. Emperor Wu, deposed, died in captivity.
22. Hou Ching, a northerner, had earlier submitted to Emperor Wu and been enfeoffed and honored by the Liang. Yü Hsin is censuring the lack of caution and forethought evidenced by these actions and the disaster that ensued.
23. Ching K’o, setting off on an attempt to assassinate the ruler of the enemy state of Ch’in (3rd cen. B.C.), took sad farewell of his friends by the cold waters of the Yi River. See this note. Su Wu, a general of the Han, left China in 100 B.C. to act as envoy to the northern Hsiung-nu tribes and was detained in the north for twenty years. Yü Hsin compares his own departure from the south and detention in the north to the cases of these men.
24. A ruler of one of the northern dynasties acquired a tortoise which he kept captive for sixteen years until it died. Later the tortoise appeared in a dream to a diviner and complained that it had longed to return to its home in the south but was forced to die a captive in the north. The parallel with Yü Hsin’s situation is obvious. When there were heavy snows in the winter of A.D. 281, two white cranes were heard to remark that the snow was as severe as the year when the ancient sage ruler Yao died. Yü Hsin is alluding to the death of Emperor Yüan of the Liang at the hands of northern invaders in the winter of A.D. 554.
25. The first line alludes to the career of an official of the Former Han who, while governor of Yen-men, was tried for an offense and removed from office. When he later resumed office, he was warned by a friend not to try to achieve any outstanding merit in hopes of compensating for his earlier disgrace. The second line refers to the I Ching, hexagram #53: “The wild swan slowly crosses the plains, but the traveler does not return.” Though Yü Hsin refers to the swan, it is the second part of the statement that weighs upon his mind.
26. According to Chinese nature lore, sparrows that dive into the ocean are turned into oysters, and pheasants that enter the Huai River become clams. The second line refers to the transformations of Chinese alchemy.
27. When the mythical sage Yü cut a channel for the Yellow River through the mountains, he created a narrow gorge called Dragon Gate. Fish strong enough to ascend the rapids turned into dragons; those that could not fell back and died. Po Lo, an ancient connoisseur of horses, once encountered a thoroughbred hitched to a wagon of salt and struggling up the slopes of the T’ai-hang Mountains. Yü Hsin is saying that, because he did not die fighting in defense of the Liang, he has now sunk to a position of captivity and disgrace.