Popular Songs and Ballads of Han China
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Popular Songs and Ballads of Han China Popular Songs and Ballads of Han China ANNE BIRRELL Open Access edition funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities / Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Humanities Open Book Program. Licensed under the terms of Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 In- ternational (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which permits readers to freely download and share the work in print or electronic format for non-commercial purposes, so long as credit is given to the author. Derivative works and commercial uses require per- mission from the publisher. For details, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. The Cre- ative Commons license described above does not apply to any material that is separately copyrighted. Open Access ISBNs: 9780824880347 (PDF) 9780824880354 (EPUB) This version created: 17 May, 2019 Please visit www.hawaiiopen.org for more Open Access works from University of Hawai‘i Press. © 1988, 1993 Anne Birrell All rights reserved To Hans H. Frankel, pioneer of yüeh-fu studies Acknowledgements I wish to thank The British Academy for their generous Fel- lowship which assisted my research on this book. I would also like to take this opportunity of thanking the University of Michigan for enabling me to commence my degree programme some years ago by awarding me a National Defense Foreign Language Fellowship. I am indebted to my former publisher, Mr. Rayner S. Unwin, now retired, for his helpful advice in pro- ducing the first edition. For this revised edition, I wish to thank sincerely my col- leagues whose useful corrections and comments have been in- corporated into my text. They are Professor Burton Watson, Professor Jean-Pierre Diény, Professor David R. Knechtges, and Professor Joseph R. Allen. Moreover, I am happy to ac- knowledge the contribution of Professor Hans H. Frankel in terms of his valuable suggestions and his continuing scholarly research in this field. Finally, I am delighted that the University of Hawaii Press has reissued this book and has allowed a gen- erous number of revisions. Its editor, Sharon F. Yamamoto, has been extremely helpful in arranging for the publication of this new edition. v Contents Acknowledgements v Chronological Table x Foreword xi Maps xiii Introduction xiv Chapter One Hymns 1 We Have Chosen a Timely Day 6 Lord God Draws Nigh 8 Greening Yang 10 Scarlet Brilliance 11 West White-light 11 Darkness Obscure 11 Lo! Holy Creator 12 The Horse of Heaven 13 The Song of Cheng-Pai Ditch 16 The Ballad of the Prefect of Goosegate 17 Chapter Two Fables in Verse 20 Vermilion lbis 22 South of the River 24 Young Pheasant Fancy-plume 25 A Crow Bore Eight or Nine Chicks 26 If in a High Field 28 The Fierce Tiger Ballad 29 An Old Ballad, Two White Swans 30 A Yen Song, The Whenever Ballad 31 vi Contents The Butterfly 33 A Withered Fish 35 Song of Sighs, The Date-Tree 36 A Yen Song, A Ballad 36 The Yü-chang Ballad 38 The Pomelo, An Old Poem 40 Chapter Three The Elixir of Life 41 Up the Mound 43 A Long Song Ballad, no. 2 45 The Ballad Tung Flees! 47 The Song of Tung Peach 50 The King of Huai-nan Ballad 51 Walking out of Hsia Gate, A Ballad 53 An Old Yen Song 55 Chapter Four Carpe Diem 57 How Wonderful! A Ballad 59 A Long Song Ballad, no. 1 62 Song of Melancholy 63 A Yen Song, The Whenever Ballad 67 West Gate Ballad, long version 70 West Gate Ballad, short version 72 ‘Nineteen Old Poems’ 74 Chapter Five Burial Songs 75 Dew on the Shallot 78 Artemisia Village 79 The Lament of Liang-fu 80 Chapter Six Political Broadsides 82 Well-water Overflows 84 Crooked Paths 86 Swallow, Swallow 87 East of Flat Mound 89 Straight as a Bowstring 91 Short Wheat 91 vii Contents Crows on City Walls 93 The Song Tung Flees! 95 The Ballad of Breaking Willow 96 Chapter Seven Anti-war Ballads and Songs 100 Light in the East 102 We Fought South of the City Wall 104 Watering Horses at a Long Wall Hole 107 At Fifteen I Joined the Army 110 Chapter Eight Domestic Drama 114 The Ballad of the Orphan Boy 115 The Ballad of the Ailing Wife 118 East Gate Ballad, long version 120 East Gate Ballad, short version 123 The Ballad of Shang-liu-t’ien 124 Chapter Nine Homeward Thoughts 127 An Old Eight Changes Song 129 An Old Song 129 A Long Song Ballad, no. 3 130 Mount Wu is High 131 The Sad Song Ballad 132 Chapter Ten Love Songs 133 Almighty on High! 134 I Lean from the High Terrace 135 The One I Love 135 The Harp Lay 137 Along the Embankment, long version 137 Along the Embankment, short version 141 The White Head Lament, long version 143 The White Head Lament, short version 146 A Yen Song, A Ballad 147 Heartache, A Ballad 149 Chapter Eleven The Ideal Home and Perfect Marriage 152 viii Contents Cocks Crow 152 They Met‚ A Ballad 157 In Ch’angan There is a Narrow Lane 158 Mulberry on the Bank 159 The Lunghsi Ballad 165 Notes 167 Appendix I Shen Yüeh’s Four Categories of Melodic Pieces 229 Appendix II Kuo Mao-ch’ien’s Twelve Categories of Yüeh-Fu 231 Appendix III Earliest Sources of Han Yüeh-Fu Cited 234 Bibliography 237 ix Chronological Table The Age of Culture Heroes and Sage Kings trad. 2852–2206 BC Yellow Emperor/Emperor Yao/Emperor Shun The Golden Age of the Three Dynasties trad. 2205–221 BC Hsia Dynasty (trad. 2205–1767)/Shang Dynasty (trad. 1766–1123) Chou Dynasty: Western Chou (trad. 1123–771), Eastern Chou: Spring and Autumn Era (722–481), Warring States Era (403–221) Ch’in Dynasty 221–207BC Han Dynasty: Former Han (202 BC–AD 8), Latter Han (AD 202 BC–AD 220 25–220) Hsin Dynasty (Interregnum) AD 9–23 The Three Kingdoms: Minor Han, Wei Dynasty (AD AD 221–280 220–265), Wu Dynasty Chin Dynasty 265–419 The Period of Disunion (or The Six Dynasties, or The 386–589 Northern and Southern Dynasties): Wu, Eastern Chin, Liu-Sung, Ch’i, Liang (502–556), Ch’en Sui Dynasty 589–618 T’ang Dynasty 618–907 Five Dynasties 907–959 Sung Dynasty: Northern Sung (960–1126), Southern Sung 960–1279 (1127-1279) Yüan (Mongol) Dynasty 1280–1368 Ming Dynasty 1368–1644 Ch’ing (Manchu) Dynasty 1644–1911 Republic of China 1912 People’s Republic of China 1949 Foreword Thanks to the efforts of many translators, the English-speaking world has become fairly well acquainted with the poetic effu- sions of Chinese men of letters. But another, delightfully dif- ferent kind of Chinese poetry is still comparatively unknown, namely, anonymous poems that are either true folk songs or modifications or imitations of folk songs. A translator’s choice of folk songs rather than poems by known authors has two advantages: first, biographical criticism with its intricacies and pitfalls is automatically excluded; and second, folk songs are only rarely encumbered with learned al- lusions, which present so many problems in the poetry of the literati. The universal appeal of folk songs, even to readers of different cultures and epochs, is too obvious to require elabo- ration. Dr. Anne Birrell’s present selection, translation, and eluci- dation of folk songs from Han China is distinguished by the same qualities that have made her earlier book, New Songs from a Jade Terrace (George Allen and Unwin, 1982, rev. ed. Penguin Books, 1986), so useful and enjoyable. She is one of the few translators able to combine scholarly accuracy with id- iomatic fluency and poetic flavor in English. Dr. Birrell is happily free from the prejudices that have caused traditional scholars (Chinese, Japanese, and western) to overlook, ignore, or distort concepts and images that were in- comprehensible or offensive to them. In particular, she succeeds in exposing erotic images that seemed, to traditional scholars, to violate Confucian taboos, and were therefore misunderstood or explained away. While not everybody will go along with Dr. Birrell in her reading of all such passages, she has certainly made a convincing case for less puritanical readings of many xi Foreword poems. For example, she notes the erotic significance of the fish playing hide-and-seek among the lotos leaves in the song South of the River. Unlike many translators, Dr. Birrell conscientiously renders every phrase and every image, rather than skirting difficult pas- sages, ‘smoothing over’ rough spots, and ‘tidying up’ poems that seem incoherent. One of the features that I find especially commendable in her translations is that she takes great pains to preserve the word order and syntactic structure of the Chinese as far as possible, without doing violence to English syntax. But while she is uncompromising in her fidelity to the Chinese text, her translations are eminently readable, and will give pleasure and enlightenment to a wide circle of readers for many years. HANS H. FRANKEL (Yale University) New Haven, Connecticut, December 21, 1984 xii xiii Introduction Han Songs and Ballads as Social Documents The writings of a great civilization may be subsumed under the Great Tradition and the little tradition. To the Great Tra- dition belong the works of the classical philosophers, historians, poets, scholars, and scientists who form an educated élite of inspired talent. Thanks to the translations of Arthur Waley in England, Burton Watson in the United States, and other sinol- ogists, their writings and those of anonymous classical authors have become familiar to Western readers.