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Chapter 6 the Song Lyric, Part 2: a New Critical Discourse, a New Male Voice

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Chapter 6 the Song Lyric, Part 2: a New Critical Discourse, a New Male Voice chapter 6 The Song Lyric, Part 2: A New Critical Discourse, a New Male Voice Continuing with Su Shi, we turn here first to the impact of his activity as a songwriter. This is a difficult matter to reconstruct because, even with Su Shi, while there is no shortage of critical comment from later ages on his song lyrics, the number of such remarks from writers of his day is very small. One of the most important is a colophon that Huang Tingjian added to the following composition that Su wrote in Huangzhou: 卜算子 To the tune “The Fortuneteller” 1 黃州定惠院寓居作 Composed while lodging at Dinghui Monastery in Hangzhou 缺月挂疏桐 A crescent moon hangs in the paulownia tree, 漏斷人初靜。 The water-clock is silent, people no longer stir. 誰見幽人獨往來 Who sees the movements of the solitary man? 縹緲孤鴻影。 High above, the silhouette of a lone goose. 驚起卻回頭 Startled into flight, it gazes back 有恨無人省。 With grievances no one understands. ————— 1. Su Shi, “Busuanzi,” Quan Song ci 1: 295. The subtitle is missing in the Quan Song ci text, but is found in other editions of Su’s song lyrics. As for the poem itself, I have adopted textual variants in lines 3 and 8; see Su Shi, Dongpo ci biannian jian- zheng, ed. Xue Ruisheng, p. 242. 296 Z the song lyric, part 2 揀盡寒枝不肯棲 It has tried every cold branch but will not roost 寂寞沙洲冷。 Isolated there in the sandspit’s chill. The first stanza suggests a correspondence between the solitary man and the lone bird, which are the only inhabitants of the night scene and also happen to be aware of each other. In the second stanza, the focus moves completely to the bird, which is now endowed with the human affection of “grievances.” Like the exiled Su Shi, who had good reason in Huangzhou to feel frustrated, the bird can find no place to rest. Comfort and security are denied it. Here is Huang Tingjian’s colophon: This was written by the sage of East Slope, when he was at Huangzhou. The thought of the words is lofty and marvelous, as if they were not written by someone who eats the cooked food of ordinary men. If his breast did not contain ten thousand scrolls, and his brush was not free of any speck of dust or what is vulgar, how could he ever achieve such a composition?2 The phrase “does not eat the cooked food of ordinary men” 非吃煙 火食人 is the sort of thing usually said of Daoists (or Buddhists) who eschew the world and its corrupt ways, choosing lives of purity instead. The statements about the ten thousand scrolls and the tip of his brush recall a couplet Du Fu had written: “I had read to tatters ten thousand scrolls, / And felt divine inspiration whenever my brush touched the page” 讀書破萬卷, 下筆如有神. But Du Fu said this about himself, describing his preparation for the civil service examinations. Huang, transforming the couplet, applies it in praise of his older friend.3 Huang Tingjian is doing far more than saying that Su’s song lyric is skillfully written or effective. He is treating it much as he would treat a favorite shi 詩 poem by Su Shi (or, for that matter, by Du Fu). There is no hint in Huang’s colophon of any apology for the fact that the poem in question is a song lyric. Naturally, this particular composition, as with so many of Su Shi’s, lends itself to such ————— 2. Huang Tingjian, “Ba Dongpo yuefu” 跋東坡樂府, Shangu tiba 2.40. 3. Du Fu, “Fengzeng Wei zuo chengzhang ershier yun” 奉贈韋左丞丈二十二 韻, Dushi xiangzhu 1.74. .
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