Ch’eng-kung Sui (231–273)
I
The secluded gentleman,
1 In sympathy with the extraordinary,
And in love with the strange,
2 Scorns the world and is unmindful of prestige.
He breaks away from human endeavor and leaves it behind.
3 He gazes up at the lofty, longing for the days of old;
He ponders lengthily, his thoughts wandering afar.
He would
4 Climb Mount Chi in order to maintain his moral integrity;
Or float on the blue sea to amble with his ambition.
II
5 So he invites his trusted friends,
Gathering about himself a group of like-minded.
6 He gets at the essence of the ultimate secret of life;
He researches the subtle mysteries of Tao and Te.
7 He regrets that the common people are not yet enlightened;
He alone, transcending all, has prior awakening.
8 He finds constraining the narrow road of the world—
He gazes up at the concourse of heaven, and treads the high vastness.
9 Distancing himself from the exquisite and the common, he abandons
his personal concerns;
Then, filled with noble emotion, he gives a long-drawn whistle.
III
Thereupon,
10 The dazzling spirit inclines its luminous form,
Pouring its brilliance into Vesper’s Vale.
11 And his friends rambling hand in hand,
Stumble to a halt, stepping on their toes.
12 He sends forth marvelous tones from his red lips,
And stimulates mournful sounds from his gleaming teeth.
13 The sound rises and falls, rolling in his throat;
The breath rushes out and is repressed, then flies up like sparks.
14 He harmonizes ‘golden kung’ with ‘sharp chiao,’
Blending shang and yü into ‘flowing chih.’
15 The whistle floats like a wandering cloud in the grand empyrean,
And gathers a great wind for a myriad miles.
16 When the song is finished, and the echoes die out,
It leaves behind a pleasure that lingers on in the mind.
17 Indeed, whistling is the most perfect natural music,
Which cannot be imitated by strings or woodwinds.
IV
Thus, the Whistler
18 Uses no instrument to play his music,
Nor any material borrowed from things.
19 He chooses it from the near-at-hand—his own Self,
And with his mind he controls his breath.
V
20 By moving his lips, there is a melody;
By pursing his mouth, he makes the sounds.
21 For every category he has a song;
To each thing he perceives, he tunes a melody.
The Music is
22 Loud, but not raucous,
Tenuous, but not terminated.
23 Pure, surpassing both reed and mouth-organ,
Richly harmonious with lute and harp.
24 Its mystery is subtle enough to unfold fully pure consciousness and
enlighten creative intelligence;
Its essence is refined enough to explore completely the hidden and
plumb the depths.
25 It holds back the distressing abandon of a Whirling Ch’u melody;
It regulates the extravagant dissipation of a Northern Ward song.
26 It turns floods into drought,
And turns Pure Creativity into Solid Intelligence.
VI
27 Since the cantos induce all possible transformations,
The applications of the tunes are unbounded.
28 The harmonious and happy are made joyful and satisfied;
The grieved and wounded are torn within.
29 At times it is deep and dispersed—about to break off;
At other times it is strong and harsh—filled with high spirits.
30 It wanders slowly to and fro, persuasive and clear;
It rises swiftly in a crescendo, complex and intricate.
31 Though you be lost in thoughts, it can bring you back to your Mind;
Though you be distressed, it will never break your Heart.
32 Whistling combines the eight sounds into perfect harmony;
Indeed, it stabilizes extreme pleasure without going to excess.
VII
Now, if
33 You climb your lofty terrace to look out at the view;
You open your study door and let your gaze roam the distances;
34 With a gasp you raise your head to look up and tap the rhythms;
With a din your long-drawn canto resonates with reverberations.
35 Sometimes the melody rolls out easily and turns back by itself; Sometimes it hesitates, and then lets loose again.
36 Sometimes it is soft and yielding, tender and pliant;
Sometimes it is rushing and vigorous, like the sound of waves and
gushing water.
37 Unexpectedly, the echo is suppressed and the torrent dries up;
Then a pure note floats out, limpid and bright.
VIII
38 Now excessive vitality stirs up an effusion,
A confusing mixture, interchanging and intertwining,
39 Like a rising whirlwind, lieh-lieh,
Tracing echoes, chiu-chiu;
40 Or like the long-drawn neighing of a Tatar horse,
Facing into the cold wind of the northern steppes.
Or also like
41 The wild goose leading her little ones;
The flock cries out as it flies over the desert wastes.
IX
Thus, the Whistler can
42 Create tones based on the forms,
Compose melodies in accordance with affairs;
43 Respond without limit to the things of Nature,
Trigger his inspiration, sending echoes rushing off,
44 Like a turbulent torrent bursting forth,
Or clouds piling up endlessly,
45 Now breaking up, now running together,
About to die out—and then continuing.
X
46 Fei Lien, the Wind God, swells out of his deep cavern,
And a fierce tiger replies with a howl in the central valley.
47 The Southern Sieve moves in the vaulted sky,
And a bright whirlwind quivers in the lofty trees.
48 It shatters our crammed-up cares and scatters them,
Purging the turbid constipations of life’s dusty cloud.
49 It works the changes of yin and yang in perfect harmony,
And transforms the base vulgarity of lewd customs.
XI
Now if the Whistler
50 Wanders over lofty ridges and crags,
crossing a huge mountain,
51 And, at the edge of a gorge,
overlooking a purling stream,
52 Sits down on a massive rock,
And rinses his mouth with the sparkling spring;
53 Or leans into a luxuriant profusion of marsh-orchids,
In the shade of the elegant charm of tall bamboos—
54 Then his warble pours forth,
An endless succession of echoing reverberations.
55 He unfolds the melancholic thoughts harbored mutely in his mind;
And arouses his most intimate feelings, which have long been knotted up.
56 His heart, cleansed and purified, is carefree;
His mind, detached from the mundane, is sylphlike.
XII
Should he then
57 Imitate gong and drum,
Or mime clay vessels and gourds;
58 There is a mass of sound like many instruments playing—
Like reed pipe and flute of bamboo—
59 Bumping boulders trembling,
An horrendous crashing, smashing, rumbling.
Or should he
60 Sound the tone chih, then severe winter becomes steaming hot;
Give free play to yü, then a sharp frost makes summer fade;
61 Move into shang, then an autumn drizzle falls in springtime;
Strike up the tone chiao, then a vernal breeze soughs in the bare branches.
XIII
62 The eight sounds and five harmonies constantly fluctuate;
The melody follows no strict beat.
63 It runs, but does not run off;
It stops, but does not stop up.
64 Following his mouth and lips, it expands forth;
Floating on his fragrant breath, it travels afar.
65 The music is terse and exquisite, with flowing echoes;
The sound stimulates brilliance, with its clear staccatos.
66 Indeed, with its supreme natural beauty,
It is quite distinguished and incomparable!
67 It transcends the music of Shao Hsia and Hsien Ch’ih;
Why vainly find the exotic in Cheng and Wei?
XIV
For when the Whistler performs,
68 Mien Chü holds his tongue and is distraught;
Wang Pao silences his mouth and turns pale.
69 Duke Yü stops singing in the middle of a song;
Master Ning restrains his hands from tapping and sighs deeply.
70 Chung Ch’i abandons his lute and listens instead;
Confucius forgets the taste of meat and stops eating.
71 The various animals all dance and stomp their feet;
The paired phoenixes come with stately mien and flap their wings.
72 They understand the magnificent beauty of the long-drawn Whistle;
Indeed, this is the most perfect of sounds!
Translated by Douglass A. White
The technique of transcendental whistling in old China (also in Turkey, where it was still extant in the 1960s, and some other countries) was a kind of nonverbal language with affinities to the spiritual aspects of meditation. There were many famous whistlers in Chinese history before the composition of this definitive rhapsody on the subject. Among them were Liu Ken (first or second century) and Sun Teng and Juan Chi (both third century C.E.).
The notes for this selection are keyed to the numbered verses.
4. A mountain in Honan where Ch’ao-fu and Hsü Yu retired when Yao offered them the empire. Po Yi also went there to avoid Yü’s son.
6. This verse touches on the very essence of the theory of whistling as a process of self-cultivation. The two key texts alluded to are the Tao te ching, especially chapter 1, and several critical passages in the appendices to the The Classic of Changes (see selections 3, 4, and 9).
14. The notes of the Chinese pentatonic scale (fa, sol, la, do, re).
15. The grand empyrean is another word for the transcendental void. The wandering is a metaphor for the illusory individual self.
19. The text comes from The Classic of Changes, appendix 2.2. The word shen (Self) here is more than just “body” or “person.” The whistler finds the music and the means of producing it within himself; this refers to meditation. The sages of The Classic of Changes and the Taoist adepts could cognize anything and achieve anything from within themselves without leaving their seat or going out of their “room.” Everything is available within the Self. The breath and the mind are closely linked. By cultivating the flow of his attention, he simultaneously gains control over the flow of his breath.
21. The key principle here is found in the continuation of The Classic of Changes, appendix 2.2: “The sages make the eight trigrams to comprehend the power of pure consciousness and to categorize the conditions of all things.” From any given point of view, each object or situation fits into a category for which there is a corresponding hexagram. Each hexagram consists of yin and yang lines, which may be interpreted as patterns of sound. These are the “songs.” So, whenever the whistler perceives something, he immediately transposes it into a “melody.” With his control of the vital breath (ch’i), he can manipulate these sounds and thereby control any phenomena.
24. “Mystery” and “subtle” recall the first chapter of the Tao te ching. In the remainder of this verse, the author weaves in the vocabulary of The Classic of Changes, appendix 2.5.
25. Two celebrated dance tunes from antiquity.
26. “Solid” may more literally be rendered as “redoubled.” It refers to the second hexagram (K’un) of The Classic of Changes, which is made of the K’un trigram redoubled. The phrase “Pure Creativity” (more literally, “indomitable or excessive yang”) refers to the sixth line of the first hexagram (Ch’ien). The sense here is that yang has reached its maximum when we have six solid yang lines forming Ch’ien. The power of the whistle can turn the pure yang hexagram, Ch’ien, inside out to form the pure yin hexagram, K’un. This shows the capacity of whistling to take us from one pole of creation to the opposite pole.
32. Eight kinds of musical sounds—produced from the calabash (gourd), earthenware, stretched hides, wood, stone, metal, silk strings, and bamboo.
38. The expression rendered as “interchanging and intertwining” also happens to be a technical term for the way the hexagrams of The Classic of Changes interrelate.
39. The italicized bisyllabic words in this line, here somewhat anachronistically given in their MSM pronunciation, are onomatopoeic descriptions of how the whirlwind rose and the echoes were traced. A fairly common device in ancient Chinese poetry, it probably derives from the vernacular realm. Especially in highly colloquial or topolectal speech, many Chinese are still fond of employing such expressions.
46. For the Wind God, compare selection 122, line III.51 and note 50.
47. The Southern Sieve is a constellation.
60–61. See note to verse 14 for the identification of these four musical tones.
67. Whistling is more sublime than the music of Shao Hsia and Hsien Ch’ih, two musicians of the mythical Yellow Emperor. It is more wild and exotic than the music of Cheng and Wei, two states known for the dissipation of their music.
68. Mien Chü was famous for singing in a prolonged manner whereas Wang Pao was noted for singing in an abrupt manner.
69. Duke Yü was a great singer of the Han period whose voice shook the rafters and raised the dust. Master Ning was remembered for singing a deeply moving, sad song.
70. Chung Ch’i was a celebrated lutanist. It is said that Confucius forgot the taste of meat for three months after hearing the music of Shao.