Po Chu - I

Koon Woon (Poetry 2010) on Po Chu-I

The Selected Poems of Po Chu-I

Translated by David Hinton, New Directions 1999

Chinese poets, ancient or modern, do not force themselves upon you, like “Shock and Awe,” but quietly state their case. There is no brilliant display of virtuosity or great constructions, but only a handful of lines in each poem that sometimes seem like offhanded remarks, with nothing to prove. Yet, these sparse and spare lines, have endured the ages and come to us as the things we are telling ourselves now in this life. And of the greatest poetic epoch of China, The Tang Dynasty, the most prolific and the quintessential poet of this era is Po Chu-I (772 – 846 A.D.). Arthur Waley has written a 240 page book on Po Chu-I of his life and times, and 2800 poems of Po survived. And so what I can write here is a very limited account of what I take away from a very few of his poems that affected me in some useful way. Let us begin with the poem “Reading Chuang Tzu” written during his years of exile between 815 and 820 A.D. –

                Reading Chuang Tzu

                Leaving home and homeland, banished to some far-off place,

                I wonder how it is I’m nearly free of grief and pain. Puzzled

                and searching Chuang Tzu for insight on returning to dwell,

                I realize it’s a place beyond questions: that’s our native land.

Po Chu-I was a Taoist poet, like T’ao Ch’ien (365 – 427), who was a man who preferred idleness and contemplation. Chuang Tzu was a follower of Lao Tzu, the legendary author of the Tao Te Ching and Chuang Tzu was famous for the puzzle of whether he was a man who dreamed that he was a butterfly or whether he was a butterfly which dreamed that it was a man. In this poem, consisting only of 4 lines, which most likely are 2 couples of 7-character lines in Chinese, Po Chu-I says that the puzzle is that the place he is banished to almost feels like home, but it isn’t, the same way that a man can dream that he is a butterfly but isn’t one, for the reality lies in not thinking, or idleness in this sense of Ch’an (the Chinese predecessor of Zen in Japan). In the West we speak of being. To

try to resolve this puzzle, Po reads Chuang Tzu, that is, going back to authority, but it only leads to more questions about existence. Only in one’s native land does one take everything for granted and that there is no harm in doing so. There is, however, a deeper philosophical point here – whenever we encounter change or the unfamiliar, we are led to seek similarities with the familiar (“I wonder how it is I’m nearly free of grief and pain”) but we never can trust our thoughts because as Jacque Lacan has stated, our thoughts are words that chase other words and that chase never ends. Buddhism puts it this way: “All thoughts lead to vacuity.” And so in the end, the only time when we are comfortable with ourselves is being in our native land, and that’s to say, being in a place where we do not ask any questions – and that’s precisely what the Ch’an Buddhists call idleness or its near equivalent in Western thought, being. One does see the koan-like quality of this poem. And so back to the level of being, well, then, this poem is about pain, the pain and grief of not being at home, in one’s familiar territory, and being banished, which at that time in China, was a very grievous punishment. I might add one other remark before we move on – the word dwell at the end of the third line is well-chosen, because of its double-function of dwell, as a place to live, or to dwell, as to linger on the thoughts of.

Po Chu-I was a very capable scholar as well as social redeemer. He, by his native gifts, passed the Imperial exams despite his family’s dire poverty.  He never forgot his roots, and so when he was the palace librarian and had direct access to the emperor, or when he was governor of various prefectures, he advised or criticized the policies of the ruling clique. Therefore, he was banished three times and demoted in rank. Each time a new emperor shows infatuation with Po’s work (and his work was extensive – ranging from yueh fu, folk songs, to vignettes and poems), Po tries to affect social change, but each time, the palace intrigues and misfortunes placed him in jeopardy and so finally, he learns not to partake in politics but retire to semi-monastic life. But before he did that, he retired from his sinecures and built himself a comfortable dwelling, and here is one poem of the Late Period (829-846):

                A SERVANT GIRL IS MISSING

                From the low walls of our small courtyard

                to the notice-board outside our district gate,

                I’ve searched and searched, ashamed our love

                proved meager, wishing I could do it all over.

                But a caged bird can’t bear a master for long,

                and the branch means nothing to the blossom

                freed on the wind. Where can she be tonight?

                Only the moon’s understanding light knows.

This is a beautiful poem that elevates the servant girl above and beyond the grossness and corruption of the master. Perhaps Po is talking about himself here. He gave up all his governmental posts to live the life of a recluse, knowing that in the palace, he is only a tool for the emperor and the men of low conscience. So, he chose not to serve but to be idle.

There are almost 150 poems in this collection. Each poem reads like a polished jade piece and I am sure in the original Chinese, the multiplicities of meaning would be more generous. Truly Po Chu-I was one of the greatest poets of China. It does make me homesick to read his poetry, written some 1,200 years ago. In a way China has not changed. But still, I regret I cannot go back to the China that I knew. I am banished from a place of time and locality. My dwelling is in the culture that I must win back. This commentary is really a wake-up call to myself. You can’t go home again but you can look back, albeit with a sense of regret.