A Book to Burn and a Book to Keep (Hidden): Selected Writings

2. This line alludes to a famous couplet by Du Fu on his passion for composing poetry: “I’m an eccentric sort of person, captivated by fine lines; / until my language is startling, I’d sooner die than give up” (Jiang shang zhi shui ru hai shi liao duan shu 江上至水入海勢聊短述 [On the river, I came upon waters surging like the ocean: For now, I give this short account]); translated, with commentary, in Cai, Chinese Poetry, 184–86.

WATCHING THE ARMY AT THE EAST GATE OF THE CITY

觀兵城東門

GUAN BING CHENG DONGMEN

How dare these island barbarians¹ provoke the heavenly army?

Today I watch soldiers in fish formation head for the border.

If Zhong You were ever to hear about all this,

He would tie his cap string² and run straight into the fray.³

TRANSLATED BY TIMOTHY BILLINGS AND YAN ZINAN

1. Composed in 1597, this poem is in XFS, j. 5, in LZQJZ 3:354–55. “Island barbarians” refers to the Japanese.

2. This is an allusion to a story about Zhong You 仲由 (542 B.C.E.–480 B.C.E.), a famous disciple of Confucius’s better known by his style name, Zilu 子路. When he received a mortal blow from a halberd in battle, which also cut the string of his cap, he said, “When a gentleman dies, he does not let his cap fall off,” then tied his cap string and died. See Sima Qian, Shi ji, ch. 67, “Confucius’s Disciples,” in Nienhauser, The Grand Scribe’s Records, 7:69. The term “to tie the cap strings” (jieying 結纓) has therefore come to signify bravery in battle and fearlessness toward death.

3. The “fray” here is literally “the king’s capital” (wangjing 王京), the capital city of the imperial state that would become Korea three centuries later (present-day Seoul).

AMITĀBHA TEMPLE

彌陀寺

MITUO SI

I stop my boat to ask someone¹

The way to Amitābha Temple

Just as a dark haze shrouds the sun

With yellow sand, beyond this willow.

The willow doesn’t understand

My thoughts have traveled far ahead

And holds me back as if to show

Its green against my whitened head.

TRANSLATED BY TIMOTHY BILLINGS AND YAN ZINAN

1. XFS, j. 5, in LZQJZ 3:355–56. Composed in 1601 in Renqiu in modern-day Hebei province. The implication of the poem is that he has moored his boat to the willow. “Willow” (liu 柳) is homophonous with “stay” (liu 留) and thus often appears in poems of departure.

READING THE RESIGNATION MEMORIAL OF GU CHONG’AN

讀顧沖庵辭疏

DU GU CHONG’AN CISHU

For literary talent and military strategy,¹

you are a paragon of the age,

But to be honored after thousands of miles,

your luck never came through.

The eaters of flesh have almost always

seen only with eyes of flesh,

So what you’ve been given now is the chance

to smash to bits a copper spittoon.²

TRANSLATED BY TIMOTHY BILLINGS AND YAN ZINAN

1. XFS, j. 5, in 3:363–64. Composed in 1594 in Macheng. Chong’an was one of the courtesy names of Gu Yangqian 顧養謙 (1537–1604). After proposing a withdrawal of troops fighting against the Japanese in the Korean Peninsula, Gu was forced to step down from his position as supreme commander of the Ji and Liao regions because his opinion was extremely unpopular at court.

2. “Eaters of flesh” derives from Zuozhuan (Zhuang, year 10): “The flesh-eaters [i.e., military officials] are poor creatures, and cannot form any far-reaching plans,” says a villager contemptuously (and goes on to advise the duke on the battlefield, successfully repelling an invasion by the state of Qi). See Legge, The Chinese Classics, 5:85–86. The phrase “to smash a spittoon” (jisui tuohu 擊碎唾壺) may suggest either the indignation after a disappointment or, more positively, an enduring zeal for success, as exemplified by the ambitious General Wang Dun (266–324), who would pound spittoons so enthusiastically as he recited the poetry of General Cao Cao (155–220) that he would smash them to bits.

SPRING NIGHT

春夜

CHUN YE

I meditate the whole night long¹

behind a thin curtain of rain.

I hold a candle and gaze intently—

spring is already lush.

If you have something to say,

just spit it out.

At the fifth watch, a rooster sings:

day is dawning.

TRANSLATED BY TIMOTHY BILLINGS AND YAN ZINAN

1. XFS, j. 5, in LZQJZ 3:364.

LISTENING TO THE CHANTING OF THE LOTUS SUTRA

聽誦法華

TING SONG FAHUA

You can chant The Lotus Sutra¹

three thousand times in full,

But with one word from Cao Creek,

you can forget it all.²

It’s shameful how these sons grow up

with nothing underneath;

The Buddha’s words are in their mouths,

but lies are in their teeth.³

TRANSLATED BY TIMOTHY BILLINGS AND YAN ZINAN

1. XFS, j. 5, in LZQJZ 3:375–76. Probably composed in 1600.

2. These two lines allude to a story about the seventh-century monk Fada 法達, who studied under Master Huineng 慧能 (638–713), commonly known as the Sixth Patriarch of the Zen sect of Buddhism. Fada claimed that he had chanted The Lotus Sutra three thousand times, but Huineng felt that Fada did not yet truly understand it and so helped him reach enlightenment partly through a meditative verse, or gāthā. Fada then composed a gāthā of his own on the occasion, which contains the lines, “The three thousand times I have chanted the sutra / Are forgotten with a word from [Huineng of] Cao Creek” (McRae, Platform Sutra, 59). Cao Creek was a river near the Precious Grove Temple, where Huineng lived and taught, and thus became a metonym for Master Huineng or the Southern school of Buddhism more generally.

3. Literally, “They speak the words of the Buddha, but they lie in their vestments.” The translation gives the general idea, but the specifics are difficult to construe. Zhang Jianye argues that clothing (yishang 衣裳) refers to the kāșāya, or Buddhist vestments, but the term has a rich range of metonymic senses from officials to the central state and even to the imperial court, any one of which may be at play here despite the obvious attack against the hypocrisy of certain Buddhists. If Li Zhi is satirizing those who only pretend to Buddhist morality while actually pursuing worldly riches as exemplified by their expensive clothing, we may translate the line as “The Buddha’s words are belied by their dress.”

EIGHT QUATRAINS FROM PRISON

系中八絕

XIZHONG BA JUE

Upon Reviving from My Chronic Illness¹

I have traveled far and wide,

to the famous mountains, to the great gorges,

Yet this is the one place I had never seen,

the inside of these walls.

Between bouts of illness, I finally realize

I am in prison.

How many times has daylight come and gone?

How many times the twilight?

Floating Tufts of the Flowering Willow

The vital spirits are leaving my body

like horses at a gallop;²

Facing two doors, I cannot choose:

the one for life, or the one for death?

The lofting blossoms of the willow enter

the vision of the prisoner;

I’m starting to think the underworld

may have a springtime too.

Bright Moon in the Center of the Sky

For thousands of miles, without a home,

I lodge in villages as I travel,

A lonely soul who, after thousands of miles,

is locked out at the final door.

Lifting my gaze, I rejoice to see

in the dark heaven above

A huge disk of light that can shine even

inside an overturned tub.3

Wishing That My Books Be Carefully Read

In the old story, Master Zeng

could either be slain or spared,⁴

Yet if the one on high should pity him,

would he dare to die?

My only wish is that my books

be examined with meticulous care;

And inevitably, fully, it will be understood

they speak the truth.

The Power of Books to Lead Astray

Generations of people have mocked

those who are enthralled by books,

Who pass their lives for no reason

like virgin girls.⁵

But who in the world

does not read books?

The only thralls to books are those

who read till it brings them death.6

Lamenting My Failures in Old Age

The blazing sun fills my window,

but I have not yet risen;

I doze, and the dreams come one after another;

they know me as only a true friend can.

I think to myself: I am lazy. I am old.

And what have I accomplished?

As always before, I read books

and await the judgment of the emperor.

No Hero

“The man of high ideals never forgets

he may end in a ditch;

The man of great valor never forgets

he may forfeit his head.”⁷

If I do not die today,

how much longer must I wait?

I yearn for the command soon to send me

back to the world beyond this one.

TRANSLATED BY TIMOTHY BILLINGS AND YAN ZINAN

1. XFS, j. 5, in LZQJZ 3:377–79. This series of quatrains was written in 1602 just before Li’s death. Only seven of the eight poems survive, and the last completely disregards all tonal rules for the form.

2. Literally, “The Four Great Elemental Separations [sida fenli 四大分離] run like horses.” According to Buddhist tradition, the process of death involves the separation or loss from the body of the four fundamental elements of earth, water, fire, and air, resulting in, respectively, brittle bones; bleeding, sweat, and incontinence; chills; and breathlessness.

3. The allusion refers to an injustice for which there can be no redress since light cannot shine inside an “overturned tub” (fupen 覆盆). In a hopeful twist, Li suggests that the emperor in his wisdom is capable of doing just that.

4. The allusion to Confucius’s disciple Zeng Shen may refer to one of two stories. In one, Zeng submits to a beating by his father for a trivial mistake and dies of his wounds. Confucius criticizes him as unfilial, however, for allowing his father thus to become a murderer. In other words, it would be filial to submit to a beating but not to a lethal beating. In another famous story in the Zhanguo ce 戰國策 [Strategies of the Warring States], Zeng is rumored by so many people to have killed someone that even his mother finally begins to doubt his innocence even though he is utterly guiltless of any crime.

5. Chunü 處女 refers either to a woman confined modestly to the indoors or to an unmarried or sexually uninitiated girl.

6. The suggestion is that only subversive readers like Li Zhi, whose commentaries have landed him in prison with the threat of execution, can truly be called thralls to books (shunu 書奴).

7. These lines are a direct quotation of Mencius 3B1. The translation here is based on that by D. C. Lau: “A man whose mind is set on high ideals never forgets that he may end in a ditch; a man of valour never forgets that he may forfeit his head” (Lau, Mencius, 106).

SPRING RAIN ON A GREAT HOUSE

樓頭春雨

LOUTOU CHUN YU

The rain falls all night on the roof of the great house.¹

The guest sighs with pleasure, his host with gratitude.

Imagine the mind of that midlands prodigy

Who could offer such kindness to a wanderer.

Thick clouds seal up the road ahead;

Rainwater tops up a fresh pot of tea.

On the day I head out on the road again

I know there will be a rosy glow at dawn.

TRANSLATED BY TIMOTHY BILLINGS AND YAN ZINAN

1. XFS, j. 5, in LZQJZ 3:380–81. Composed in 1601 for Ma Jinglun. In 1600, Li Zhi suffered persecution from Feng Yingjing (1555–1606), the assistant surveillance commissioner of Huguang province, who ordered a mob to destroy his temple lodging and preconstructed tomb at Macheng. Li Zhi fled for his safety and lodged at the Dharma Eye Temple on Mount Huangbo near Shangcheng in Henan province, where he met Ma Jinglun, who was visiting and studying there at the time. The next year, Ma Jinglun accompanied Li Zhi to the suburbs of Beijing. Not long afterward, he would bury Li’s body in Tongzhou after his death in prison in 1602. See “Master Li Zhuowu’s Testament,” pp. 291–93.

MY FEELINGS UPON ASCENDING THE MOUNTAIN AND RECEIVING A LETTER FROM JIAO HONG

入山得焦弱侯書有感二首

RU SHAN DE JIAO RUOHOU SHU YOUGAN ER SHOU

As one who is easily moved, I have a lifetime of tears,¹

But for the unforgettable, I have this letter from my old friend.

Three springtimes pass before the wild goose² casts its shadow;

One whole night is spent in my hut reading it over.³

The storm rages after a full cup of wine.

The pines seem now as they were once before.

Opening your letter is like seeing you before me,

But it’s all just a dream. Or is it?⁴

“When true friends exist anywhere in the world,

The horizons themselves are like neighbors.”⁵

The ancients were merely kidding themselves:

These words have never been true.

I study but find so many strange words.

I read but find so few wise masters.

Oh, when will we take up walking sticks again

For a drunken spring day together in old Nanjing?

TRANSLATED BY TIMOTHY BILLINGS AND YAN ZINAN

1. XFS, j. 5, in LZQJZ 3:382–84. Composed in 1581. Ruohou is Jiao Hong’s courtesy name.

2. “Wild goose” (hongyan 鴻雁) was a conventional metaphor for a letter arriving from afar.

3. Literally, “a night in Ziyun’s hut.” Ziyun 子雲 was the style name of Yang Xiong 揚雄 (ca. 53 B.C.E. –18 C.E.), whose hut was a conventional metaphor for the humble retreat of a learned scholar who had no desire to seek fame by serving in the imperial court.

4. In this linguistically clever line (shi mengzhe fei yu 是夢者非歟), only the word “dream” (meng 夢) is a so-called solid word (shizi 實字), a grammatical term for nouns, verbs, and adjectives, which have substantive meaning, whereas the remaining four characters are all “empty words” (xuzi 虛字)—i.e., syntactical function words such as conjunctions, interjections, prepositions, adverbs, and the like. The distinction between the two is not always precise, but the point is that the learned reader would recognize this line as more “empty” than “solid.”

5. This couplet is a verbatim quotation of “Song Du shaofu zhi ren Shuzhou” 送杜少府之任蜀州 [Seeing off District Defender Du, who travels to take a post in Shuzhou], a poem by Wang Bo 王勃 (ca. 649–ca. 675).

AFTER THE SNOW

雪後

XUE HOU

The snow has melted, but still no one comes.¹

It must be the frigid air, the lonely sojourner guesses.

Reading books with a cold eye is easy.

Drinking alone with a troubled heart is hard.

The solstice having passed, I know the nights will shorten,

But when a man is old, he fears winter will linger.

I ought to have a kindred spirit with me.

I tell the boy to boil some snow, and wait.

TRANSLATED BY TIMOTHY BILLINGS AND YAN ZINAN

1. XFS, j. 5, in LZQJZ 3:391. Composed in 1596 in Qinshui in Shanxi province.

SITTING ALONE IN MEDITATION

獨坐

DU ZUO

There’s a guest here whose eyes are wide open.¹

No one is questioning the falling blossoms.

A warm wind spreads a fragrance through the new grass.

A cool moon casts a radiance on the smooth sand.

I’ve been lodging a long time, but it’s all still like a dream.

When friends come, I no longer miss my home.

I have not yet unpacked my zither and books.

I sit alone and send off the evening glow.

TRANSLATED BY TIMOTHY BILLINGS AND YAN ZINAN

1. XFS, j. 5, in LZQJZ 3:395–96. Composed in 1589.

A SUDDEN CHILL

乍寒

ZHA HAN

At first, I think I must be falling ill.¹

At midnight, I rise and pace back and forth.

I hammer the charcoal like young iron for burning.

I rake out the coals from dead ashes for lighting.

Will that icy teapot of the moon ever warm?

For whom does its crystal brilliance shine tonight?

The upright cypress on the plain already knows

A time of bitter cold is on its way.

TRANSLATED BY TIMOTHY BILLINGS AND YAN ZINAN

1. XFS, j. 5, in LZQJZ 3:396–97. Composed in 1596.

EVENING RAIN

暮雨

MU YU

A single torrent of water crashes along the river;¹

A thousand mountains carry the sound of rain.

Suddenly, I hear a thick confusion of maple leaves;

At once, I shudder at the thinness of my hemp jacket.

Ten thousand volumes of books are hard to get right;

A single spirit sleeping alone is easily disturbed.

The blowing of the autumn wind briefly ceases:

It cannot bear its own desolate moaning.

TRANSLATED BY TIMOTHY BILLINGS AND YAN ZINAN

1. XFS, j. 5, in LZQJZ 3:398. Composed in 1592 in Wuchang in modern-day Hubei province.

WATCHING THE RAIN WITH DAZHI

大智對雨

DAZHI DUI YU

Outside the city, the smoke of habitation is scant.¹

I live quietly in the northern chambers here.

In the wind and rain, I am dreaming by the third watch.

In the clouds and peaks, I have books to read by the thousands.

A monk comes to ask about difficult passages.

I have no strength left to weed and sweep the courtyard.

It is September. We sit at the south window.

We are free and at ease, you and I.

TRANSLATED BY TIMOTHY BILLINGS AND YAN ZINAN

1. XFS, j. 5, in LZQJZ 3:398–99. Dazhi was a monk from Macheng.

HARD RAIN

雨甚

YU SHEN

Time is something I have no need to recall.¹

When I miss someone, then I ask the year.

In the third month of last autumn I crossed the Qin River;

In the ninth month of this year I reached the Western Paradise.²

A little stream swells in a great surge before me.

Thousands of trees hang in the bleak cold around me.

The mountainsides teem with persimmons and dates.

Eat enough of them, and you become an immortal.

TRANSLATED BY TIMOTHY BILLINGS AND YAN ZINAN

1. XFS, j. 5, in LZQJZ 3:399. Composed in 1597.

2. Literally, “western heaven” (xitian 西天). The term refers to Sukhāvatī, or the Western Pure Land of Bliss, the home of the Buddha Amitābha according to the Mahayana sect of Buddhism, here used as a metaphor for Li Zhi’s new home in the Temple of Bliss on West Mountain in the outskirts of Beijing.

VIEWING THE YELLOW CRANE PAVILION FROM THE RIVER

江上望黃鶴樓

JIANGSHANG WANG HUANGHE LOU

Frosted red maples and snow-blossoming reeds¹

emerge through the river mist.

Mottled rocks and gliding fish

show clearly and delight.

The masts of merchant vessels

appear in the clouds above.

The towers of the immortals

hang in the mirror below.

In autumn, the shadow of my little raft

extends across the sparkling river;²

I hear a flute playing “Plum Blossoms”

falling from the distant sky.³

Like a lone fisherman at the water’s edge

with a passion that knows no bounds,

I raise my voice in the depth of night

and pound the gunwale in song.

TRANSLATED BY TIMOTHY BILLINGS AND YAN ZINAN

1. XFS, j. 5, in LZQJZ 3:411–12. The notoriety of this sensuous poem may be due to an incident in which Li Zhi was accused of heresy by an angry crowd at Yellow Crane Pavilion during a visit there with Yuan Hongdao in 1591. (Li later speculated that the crowd may have been set upon him by Geng Dingxiang; see LZQJZ 26:453–54). It has recently been demonstrated, however, that this poem was almost certainly written by Grand Secretary Zhang Juzhang (1525–1582) and later misattributed to Li Zhi in his posthumous Another Book to Burn (1618). For the original title, variants, and biographical details, see Liu Yong, “‘Jiangshang wang huanghe lou.’” Perceptive readers may even recognize the difference in tone and diction from Li’s other poems translated here. It is probably but one of several poems in the posthumous collection that are misattributed to him.

2. The “sparkling river” is literally the “bright Han.” This line alludes to a famous couplet by Cui Hao 崔颢 (ca. 704–754): “In the bright river—how clear are the trees [on the banks] of the Hanyang! / And the fragrant grasses—how they flourish on Parrot Island!” See “Huanghe lou” 黃鶴樓 [Yellow Crane Pavilion], in Quan Tang shi, 1329.

3. This line alludes to a famous couplet by Li Bai 李白 (701–762): “In the Yellow Crane Pavilion, someone plays the jade flute; / In this riverside city, ‘Plum Blossoms’ fall in the fifth month.” See “Yu Shi langzhong Qin ting huanghe lou shang chui di” 與史郎中欽聽黃鶴樓上吹笛 [Accompanying Gentleman of Interior Shi Qin, listening to a flute playing at Yellow Crane Pavilion], in Quan Tang shi, 1857.

DRIFTING ON EAST LAKE WITH LI JIANTIAN

李見田邀遊東湖

LI JIANTIAN YAOYOU DONGHU

I have not visited Hangzhou’s famous West Lake¹

for ten autumns now;

When the inspiration arises to set out on the water,

it is easier to come here.

In the vast expanse before our eyes

there is nothing but cold waves and mist;

On the clouded horizon

the jade trees float in the air.

Peach trees bloom along the banks

as our little skiff glides by;

Lights from the vessels in the distant channel

are fishermen mooring for the night at Luzhou.

We travelers, at heart, are but guests in this world

roaming freely at ease like this;

Just think of the bark that carried Li and Guo

and a friendship made famous for ages!²

TRANSLATED BY TIMOTHY BILLINGS AND YAN ZINAN

1. XFS, j. 5, in LZQJZ 3:413–14. Composed in Wuchang in 1584, this is the first of two heptasyllabic regulated-verse poems (lüshi 律詩) with this title.

2. The phrase “the bark that carried Li and Guo” (Li Guo zhou 李郭舟) alludes to Li Ying 李膺 and Guo Tai 郭太. The penniless scholar Guo Tai met Li Ying, governor of Henan Commandery, who appreciated his talent and befriended him. When Guo returned to his home village for a visit riding on a bark with Li, people lined the riverbank to see the two together. See Hou Han shu, ch. 68, “Guo Fu Xu liezhuan” 郭符許列傳 [The biographies of Guo Tai, Fu Rong, and Xu Shao].