In 1125 c.e. A vast storm began to gather over the glories of Sung China. The Jurchen peoples, expanding out of Manchuria, were breaking the Sung's hold on its northern territories. In 1127 they overwhelmed the emperor's forces at Kaifeng, the capital (where I was married, by the way, 869 years later), forcing them south.
Lu Yu, self-nicknamed Fang (fang: "the wild old man") was born around this time, in a small boat tethered to banks of the Huai, the traditional boundary between northern and southern China, parallel to and between the Yellow and Yangtze Rivers. His life would be long- 82 years- and would see the gathering of an even greater force than the Jurchen, the Mongols, who would destroy the Jin and eventually overwhelm the Sung.
His life would also meld the two great philosophical traditions of Chinese philosophy: the engaged, rational, urbane Confucian and the ironic, wholly untamed Daoist. He was a brilliant writer early in life, but never passed the crucial civil service exam, a stilted and complex literary test which guaranteed a place in the Chinese world. He was a patriot, and deeply critical of the government's weak response to the Jurchen threat. He would often disappear to his hermit retreat in the West, far from the turmoil and failure that forever shadowed him.
His poetry is dense with qualities utterly untranslatable to English. Keep in mind that the tones (or pitch direction) of each word in the Chinese is distinct and patterned, and each pair of lines can mirror each other in this way. Another thing is that many Chinese words sound very, very similar, allowing for a richness of punning impossible in our language. And lastly, the words are actually dense, abstract, visual designs that also constantly pun and comment on each other.
What follows are translations by David M. Gordon.
"Crossing Spirit-Rock's Three Peaks"
On that crag meet horse?
Shocked hell out of old crock.
Shu Range or Wu Crests,
the same washed clean abyss.
From ground up, blue green,
five thousand fathoms:
I'll cram that vast peak
into this flea-sized poem.
Where the above poem signals the light spirit of the hermit out west, this poem expresses the disappointment of the exhausted and duty-bound Confucian:
"New Spring'
I'm at age's rim:
three years ill,
and new king's first
ten day's overcast;
drooping fence,
a dried vine ties up,
and ruined wall
overrun with green moss.
Grief for own land,
labor, alone, tears-
to lull Huns,
warrior bends heart's will.
I'm disjoined from my
kids' world-
how make them
a white-haired song?
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