Wen T’ing-yün (?–866)
The mountains on the screen shimmer in the golden dawn;
A cloud of hair brushes the fragrant snow of her cheek.
Lazily, she rises and paints mothlike brows;
Slowly, tardily, she gets ready for the day.
Mirrors, front and behind, reflect a flower,
Face and flower shining each upon the other.
Stitched in the silk of her bright new coat,
Golden-threaded partridges fly pair by pair.
Translated by Lois Fusek
A native of T’ai-yüan in Shansi, Wen T’ing-yün failed the highest civil service examination many times. An accomplished musician on the flute and zither, he was able to create new tunes of his own. Most lyrics attributed to earlier literati poets are barely distinguishable from “square” or “rectangular” classical poetry in form. Performers relied heavily on so-called padding words to flesh them out so that they would fit the irregular contours of popular tunes. Wen’s lyrics, in contrast, are full-fledged with a sprightly rhythm unlike that of classical poetry. The first major poet to produce unabashedly a substantial number of genuine lyrics, Wen did the most to legitimize the lyric as an appropriate genre for literati. Sixty-six of his seventy extant lyrics are preserved in the Among the Flowers Collection (Hua chien chi), the famous anthology of lyrics about love and separation compiled by Chao Ch’ung-tso (fl. 934–965). This is by far the largest number of poems by which any author is represented in this highly significant collection. Ou-yang Chiung, who (like most of the poets included in the collection) was from Shu (present-day Szechwan), wrote a preface dated 940 that attempted to justify this new effete and ornate style of verse as an appropriate vehicle for the expression of literati sentiment.
The lyric selected here is from a group of fourteen by Wen to the same tune title. Although the sinographs usually used to write the tune title P’u-sa man seem to mean “Bodhisattva Southwesterners,” there is much controversy over their correct interpretation. One modern literary historian, Elling Eide, gives evidence that they should be rendered as “Strings of Jewels for Bodhisattvas,” and that the lyrics to this tune were originally all strings of couplets about beautiful women. A Bodhisattva is a savior figure in Mahāyāna (Great Vehicle) Buddhism and “deva” (the translation given for the same word by the translator of Wen T’ing-yün’s lyric) is simply a Sanskrit word for “deity.” The same tune title (P’u-sa man) is rendered as “The Bodhisattva Foreigner” in selection 89.