Li K’ai-hsien (1501–1568)
There was a man who studied the art of disappearing.
Before he had mastered the technique, he boasted to his wife:
“Tell me, can you see my body now?”
4 The wife laughed: “My eyes have not been taken by a ghost!
Your face is right in front of mine, just inches away;
it’s not as though you’re at the neighbor’s or behind a fence!
Since you have a body, why shouldn’t I be able to see it,
8 unless you were clever enough to pull off some trick!”
The man was outraged at his wife’s frank words;
he kicked her, slapped her, and cursed her out.
Then he asked the same thing of his concubine, and she pretended to be amazed:
12 she looked all around behind her, then stared straight ahead.
Lying, she said, “Master, what art is this!
Your body is hidden away—I only hear your voice!”
The man, delighted, went to town, and stole something from a shop.
16 At first the shopkeeper was too startled to move—then he became furious,
and gave the man a worse beating than the man had given his wife,
screaming and cursing with a voice like a thunderclap.
As for the “master of invisibility,” he yelled too: “Go ahead, beat me up,
20 but if you want to see my body, you’ll have a hard time!”
Now I once lived in the capital, where I became stuck-in-the-mud.
I was afraid to visit the ministers and high officials.
I was rejected, sent away—but still I didn’t change…,
24 Until I escaped, and held my old fishing rod again.
Translated by Jonathan Chaves
Li K’ai-hsien
The earthquake covered Shansi and Shensi;
millions of people died or were hurt.
Homes were flattened to the ground,
and skeletons could be seen lying everywhere.
The prognostication? “Too much Yin.”1
Perhaps this is an omen of some fault in government.2
Three lifelong friends of mine
in one night fell to the dust.3
Translated by Jonathan Chaves
From a family of officials in Shantung, Li K’ai-hsien became a Presented Scholar in 1529. Like Yang Shen (see selection 117), he was an individualist writer difficult to categorize. Li was friendly with a number of orthodox poets but was far more innovative and idiosyncratic. He was instrumental in the revival of Yüan drama in the later Ming period. A playwright of romances (ch’uan-ch’i), Li also wrote suites of arias and a variety of prose works.
In his ability to turn defeat into apparent victory, Li’s “master of invisibility” in this parable foreshadows the main character of Lu Hsun’s “The True Story of Ah Q,” written in 1921.
One poem from a group of ten, all to the same rhymes.
Poet’s notes:
1. “The prognostication says, ‘An earthquake occurs when there is an excess of yin.’”
2. “Local officials submitted a memorial, saying, ‘The land here is usually quiet, but now it has moved: this is because we officials have not been doing our duty.’”
3. “Yang Shou-li, the Secretary, Han Pang-ch’i, the Investigator, and Ma Li, the Lord of the Imperial Banquets: taken by surprise, they were all crushed to death.”
Yang Shou-li (1484–1555), Han Pang-ch’i (1479–1555), and Ma Li (1474–1555) all died in the quake. Han Pang-ch’i had earlier memorialized to the effect that another earthquake was a sign of inadequacy in government, which is in accordance with the Confucian idea that the moral state of human society exerts an influence upon nature. Note that Yin (line 5) is the female cosmic principle.