Return to the Index of "Other Women's Voices."
Updated 07-22-08
Yu Xuanji /Yu Hsuan-chi
(c.844-868?)
========================================================================
"MY SILKEN WOMAN'S DRESS OBSCURES MY POETRY."
========================================================================
Yu Xuanji (old spelling: Yu Hsuan-chi) was born in Tang China's capital city, Xian (Chang'an). We know nothing of her family. We do know that a volume of her poetry was published during her lifetime, but it is not extant.
The earliest extant account of Yu Xuanji's life was written c.910, in a work that David Young calls "the contemporary equivalent of a tabloid" (p. x). It gave this story: She was the secondary wife of a provincial government official, who later abandoned her in the south (perhaps at the insistence of a jealous wife). Yu Xuanji made her way back to the capital, where she lived for a while as a courtesan, and then became a Daoist priestess. She was executed in her mid-twenties for having beaten a maid to death.
Whatever the factual basis of the traditional story of her life, Yu Xuanji's poetry tells us that she was indeed a follower of Daoism, probably retiring to a community, but traveling and receiving visitors. She maintained literary contacts with other writers: she was believed to be the mentor --- perhaps the mistress --- of the poet Wen Tingyun (812-c.870), who, like her, wrote ci (poems set to existing music).
Her poetry continued to be popular with all classes of Chinese readers, in part because she used little of the historical allusion prevalent in most poetry of the period. All we have left now are 49 poems and 5 fragments to tell Yu Xuanji's story. The story that they tell is one of a poet who will not cheerfully accept her fate.
On this page you'll find:
Links to helpful sites online.
Excerpts from translations in print.
Information about Secondary sources.
========================================================================
1. A link to the text of Yu Xuanji's poems, translated by David Young and Jiann I. Lin, for their 1998 book The Clouds Float North. For each of the 49 poems the original script is also given; notes indicate alternate Chinese characters. You can also link to Young's introduction; however, the book's endnotes are not given here (for information on the print version, see below, under "In print").
2. From other translators:
(a) Links to eight poems, translated by Leonard Ng; the Chinese script is also given.
(b) Five poems, translated by Estill Pollock.
(c) Three translations by Jeanne Larsen: at one site, "A man who loves solitude"; near the bottom of the page of another site, lines from a longer poem, "Roots mature"; and at a third, use your browser's search function to go to "Xuanji" for "Where have you gone, with your divine companion?" (Larsen's note on the poem is also given).
(d) Two translations by Dongbo, each given with the Chinese script, romanization, and notes: "Placid Great River," and "Misty peaks everywhere."
(e) In a description of a 2003 musical composition by Gregory Youtz based on Yu Xuanji's life, the poem "Kingfisher blue along a tangled bank," translated by Geoffrey Waters. At another page of the same site, click on "score sample" for Youtz' musical setting of Waters' translation, "Afraid of the sun."
(f) "I have moved to this home of Immortals," translated by Kenneth Rexroth and Ling Chung (the "Immortals" are Daoist deities).
(g) Jane Hirshfield's translation of the same poem, "I've come to the house of the immortals."
(h) Two translations by Justin Hill: "Tears wet the flowering branches," and "North and south across the river."
(i) Go to "Xuanji" for "She weeps silently, with her hands full of weeds," translated by R. F. Hahn.
(j) Go to "Xuanji" for the closing lines of a poem, "Separated from you, What can I offer?"
3. Reviews (for excerpts from Hill, see "In print"; for information on the collection's treatment of Yu Xuanji, see "Secondary sources"):
(a) Terry Grose on Justin Hill's 2004 novel based on Yu Xuanji's life, Passing Under Heaven; and elsewhere, another review, this by Zoe Green.
(b) Mark Meulenbeld on the 2002 essay collection, Daoist Identity: History, Lineage, and Ritual.
========================================================================
[This anthology includes 40 poems by Yu Xuanji, translated by Bannie Chow and Thomas Cleary. The results are frequently quite different from the translations by Young & Lin online. (See the book's table of contents online.):]
Autumn willows: poetry by women of China's golden age / translated
from the original Chinese by Bannie Chow, Thomas Cleary. Ashland,
OR: Story Line Press, c2003. (117 p.)
LC#: PL2658.E3 A87 2003; ISBN:1586540254
Li, Ye, 8th cent. Poems. English Xue, Tao, 768-831. Poems. English
Yu, Xuanji, 842-872.
--------------------------------------------------------
"I uselessly envy the names on the list I see."
--------------------------------------------------------
[A poem titled "Seeing the new listing of successful
Degree Candidates." After each civil service test, the results
were posted at various temples. Skill at writing poetry played
a large part in success on these government tests; women, of
course, were ineligible to try:]
Cloudy peaks fill the eyes,
far from the lightness of spring;
silver spools of calligraphy
take shape beneath my hand.
Too bad my silken woman's dress
obscures my poetry;
looking up, I uselessly
envy the names on the list I see. [p.83]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Since you rose to rank at court, we have no chance to meet."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Verses sent to a fellow poet: "Reply to a friend." The other poet had not yet achieved "a Taoist nature" or "a Buddhist heart"; Yu Xuanji perhaps had:]
Though we live on the same street,
You haven't passed by all year.
Fine poetry pleased your former lady,
distinguished laurels, your new degree.
A Taoist nature cares not at all
for the cold of ice and snow,
a Buddhist heart laughs aloud
at ostentatious silk;
since you rose to rank at court,
we have no chance to meet---
having climbed to the lofty sky,
no more is there a way to receive
the misty waves below. [p.84]
--------------------------------------------------------------
"...more easily found than a man who has a heart."
--------------------------------------------------------------
["To a neighbor girl." In the original, the "righteous man" and the "playboy" are named, a poet of the 200s BCE and a recently dead Tang official:]
The shyness of the daytime's covered
by a silken sleeve;
the melancholy of spring makes it
hard to rise and dress.
A priceless gem's more easily found
than a man who has a heart.
Hidden tears on the pillow,
secret sorrows among the flowers;
if one could glimpse a righteous man,
why lament a mere playboy? [p.91]
---------------------------------------------------------------------
"Human life is but a dream, a dream of joy and sorrow."
---------------------------------------------------------------------
["An allegory":]
Rosy peaches everywhere
presenting the colors of spring,
on emerald willows at every house
the moonlight glow is agleam.
Freshly groomed, she awaits upstairs
the coming of the night;
in the bedroom, sitting alone,
she keeps her feelings inside.
Fishes frolic under the leaves
of the lotus flowers;
the twittering of sparrows calls
on the rainbow'd horizon.
Human life is but a dream,
a dream of joy and sorrow;
how can one be able to join
the company of immortals? [p.100]
========================================================================
[This anthology has 19 of Yu Xuanji's poems, translated by Geoffrey Waters; again, it is interesting to compare the differing interpretations of the various translators:]
A Book of women poets from antiquity to now / edited by Aliki
Barnstone & Willis Barnstone. Rev. ed. New York: Schocken
Books, c1992. (xxiv, 822 p.)
LC#: PN6109.9 .B6 1992; ISBN: 0805209972.
Includes indexes.
-----------------------------------------------------------
"Princes would covet what they could not buy."
-----------------------------------------------------------
[A poem entitled "Selling ruined peonies"; a peony was a conventional image for a courtesan:]
Sigh, in the wind fall flowers, their petals dance.
Their secret fragrance dies in spring's decay.
Too costly: no one bought them.
Too sweet for butterflies.
If these red blooms had grown in a palace
Would they now be stained by dew and dust?
If they grew now in a forbidden garden
Princes would covet what they could not buy. [pp.124-25]
-------------------------------------------
"How do we get the life we want?"
-------------------------------------------
[Titled "At the end of spring"; the "loosed boat" is a Daoist symbol of both loss and freedom]
Deep lanes, poor families; I have few friends.
He stayed behind only in my dreams.
Fragrant silk scents the breeze: whose party?
A song comes carried in the wind: from where?
Drums in the street wake me at dawn.
In the courtyard, magpies mourn a spoiled spring.
How do we get the life we want?
I am a loosed boat floating a thousand miles. [pp.125-26]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Pen and inkstone close at hand, Odes and History
surround my seat."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
["To the Minister Liu," who had brought peace to the capital city:]
The Board of War has quelled the mutiny:
Songs fill the streets again.
Now there are spring rains on Fen River.
Flowers on the banks of the Chin.
The jails are long locked and empty,
Spears dusty.
Scholars and monks watch Midnight sing.
We travelers are drunk, on scarlet cushions.
Pen and inkstone close at hand,
Odes and History surround my seat;
For now, in happy times like these,
Even small talents live at ease.
[p.126]
----------------------------------------------
"Thinking hard, hunting rhymes...."
----------------------------------------------
["Sent to Wen Tingyun on a winter night"; Wen Tingyun was a fellow poet, perhaps a lover:]
Thinking hard, hunting rhymes, humming by my lamp,
Awake all night, I fear the cold quilt.
In a courtyard full of leaves, sad winds rise.
Through my curtain, a wretched moon sinks.
I hoped we'd be together. Instead: apart.
But life's changes are nothing to a sage's heart.
Hunting a perch in the dark paulownia grove,
Wheeling. evening sparrows wail and sob.
[p.130]
--------------------------------------------------------
"Flowers everywhere we didn't plant before."
--------------------------------------------------------
["Staying in the Mountains in Summer," on the Daoist goal of retirement from earthly cares:]
I've moved here to the Immortal's place:
Flowers everywhere we didn't plant before.
The courtyard trees are bent like clothes-horses.
At the feast, winecups float in a new spring.
Dark balcony. Path through deep bamboo.
Long summer dress. Confusion of books.
I sing in the moonlight and ride a painted boat,
Trusting the wind to blow me home again. [p.133]
========================================================================
[Justin Hill's novelization of the life of Yu Xuanji includes his translation (complete or partial) of 29 of the 49 extant poems. A note at the end gives the titles of all of Xuanji's poems and indexes those included in the novel:]
Hill, Justin. Passing under heaven. London: Abacus, 2004.
(440 p.)
LC#: PR6108.I44 P37 2004x; ISBN: 034911739X
---------------------------------------------------------------
"I dream myself a butterfly searching for a flower."
---------------------------------------------------------------
[The first half of a longer poem, "By the Yangtze River" (cf. Young & Lin's "River Journey" online). This stanza refers to the sage Zhuangzi's question: Was he a philosopher who dreamed he was a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming he was a philosopher? :]
Our boat slants across the wide river
to Wuchang city
past Parrot Island,
home to ten thousand households,
and I dream myself a butterfly
searching for a flower. [p.328]
----------------------------------------
"A wild moth begins to flutter."
----------------------------------------
[The first of two poems with the title "Saying Goodbye":]
For several nights
at the House of Qin
he soothed my heart,
till all at one
my darling had to go.
Sleeping alone
there's no knowing
which way the clouds journey.
Around the old paper lantern
a wild moth begins to flutter. [p.315]
-------------------------------
"Pine trees are content."
-------------------------------
[Titled "A poem in reply, matching the form"; this is identified in the earliest manuscript as one of Yu Xuanji's last complete poems:]
Dashing red and purple,
the clatter of official carriages
fills the streets.
Walking behind
my crude wicker gate
I chance upon a poem:
these white flowers
so undeserving
of my poor verses.
In my tender life,
the thirst for company
has passed,
pine trees are content
to live their lives
on high mountain slopes. [p.394]
========================================================================
[This is the print version of the translation by David Young and Jiann I. Lin of the complete poems available online. The book includes 15 pages of valuable endnotes not given online:]
The clouds float north: the complete poems of Yu Xuanji /
translated by David Young and Jiann I. Lin (Wesleyan poetry).
Hanover: Wesleyan University Press: University Press of New England,
c1998. (xviii, 75 p.).
LC#: PL2677.Y77 A28 1998; ISBN: 0819563439, 0819563447
========================================================================
[This collection includes Suzanne Cahill's essay, "Material
Culture and the Dao: Textiles, Boats, and Zithers in the Poetry
of Yu Xuanji (844-868)," which gives Cahill's own translation
of 18 poems, analyzing each to see how Yu Xuanji made use of
conventional Tang images: clothing as an indication of the state
of the soul; a boat as a wandering spirit; the use of the zither
representing an attempt at communication. (See
the book's table of contents online.):]
Daoist identity: history, lineage, and ritual / edited by Livia
Kohn and Harold D. Roth. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press,
c2002. (x, 333 p.: ill.)
LC#: B127.T3 D36 2002; ISBN: 0824824296, 0824825047
Includes bibliographical references and index
---------------------
[Although Marilyn Wagner mentions Yu Xuanji only briefly (pp.87-88),
she provides a good description of Tang period poetry and useful
background on courtesan culture. (The tz'u of the title
is the old spelling of the term ci):]
Wagner, Marsha L. The lotus boat: the origins of Chinese tz'u
poetry in T'ang popular culture (Studies in Oriental culture;
no. 18). New York: Columbia University Press, 1984. (xviii, 199
p.: ill.)
LC#: PL2341 .W33 1984; ISBN: 0231042760
Bibliography: p. [171]-179. Includes index
========================================================================
Updated 07-22-08