"A Farewell to Spring" and "Taking Leave of the Swallows"
李玉英 Li Yuying (1506- after 1522)
Lonely behind my brushwood door I sit locked away from the late spring,
While the elm seeds covering the ground do not relieve my poverty.
My cloud-like hair and clothes are half muddied;
Why do you, wildflowers, choose to arouse me?
---
New nests dribble mud while the old nests lie aslant,
Dust half covers my door curtain, almost concealing the stitching.
Mournfully I face the twittering of the swallows, who finally must leave.
The painted hall is as before, but the master is gone.
Trans. Norman Kutcher
I will admit to selecting this poet not so much for her poetry (actually, these two poems are the only ones included in the anthology) - I wasn't sighing at the beauty or melancholy - but for her story. One of the problems with this anthology is that the biographical notes (and translations) were done by a number of different people. This means there are real highlights & then some entries that leave you wanting. Li Yuying's is one of those.
Her father was a member of the imperial bodyguard; after her mother died, his father remarried & the woman really DOES sound like the wicked stepmother out of a fairytale. In keeping with the theme, everything was fine until her father was killed during some sort of military operation; the stepmother then "moved against the children of the first wife to ensure that her own son would inherit the father's property" (178). I love that language - so militaristic! So mercenary! And this woman, surnamed Jiao, really does sound like a piece of work - she sold one daughter off as a servant, poisoned a 10 year old son, and sent another daughter into mendicancy.
But it gets better!
Using Li Yuying's poetry against her, she charged her with "unfilial behavior and lechery, asking that she be given the 'lingering death'" (178-9) - lingering death was slow dismemberment. Li Yuying sent a memorial to the throne detailing all the horrible things that had happened and was spared.
The biographical snippet is far too short - doesn't this sound like one of those terribly interesting stories you'd like to read more about? I'm currently reading Jonathan Spence's The Death of Woman Wang which traces one of those little lives, one of the inconsequential ones. I love stories like that; I suppose it's one reason I do enjoy Dorothy Ko, for all her 'ontological' babble-speak, because she tells such interesting stories about relatively minor figures. What can we learn from dissecting a single life, one belonging to someone without a Name or currency outside of the field (or even within it)?
I wish I had more of my books with me, as I was most interested by the details about the daughters. To go to such lengths to destroy the son, I can understand - but if I'm not mistaken, women's rights to things like inheritances and land holding decreased sharply during & after the Song dynasty (and thus were practically non-existant), and we're dealing here with the 16th century Ming dynasty. I'm also pretty sure the Qing put laws into place preventing people of a certain stature from being sold into anything (though I could be wrong on that, though something is tugging at my brain ...).
So what does this life tell us?
[178-9]
Lonely behind my brushwood door I sit locked away from the late spring,
While the elm seeds covering the ground do not relieve my poverty.
My cloud-like hair and clothes are half muddied;
Why do you, wildflowers, choose to arouse me?
---
New nests dribble mud while the old nests lie aslant,
Dust half covers my door curtain, almost concealing the stitching.
Mournfully I face the twittering of the swallows, who finally must leave.
The painted hall is as before, but the master is gone.
Trans. Norman Kutcher
I will admit to selecting this poet not so much for her poetry (actually, these two poems are the only ones included in the anthology) - I wasn't sighing at the beauty or melancholy - but for her story. One of the problems with this anthology is that the biographical notes (and translations) were done by a number of different people. This means there are real highlights & then some entries that leave you wanting. Li Yuying's is one of those.
Her father was a member of the imperial bodyguard; after her mother died, his father remarried & the woman really DOES sound like the wicked stepmother out of a fairytale. In keeping with the theme, everything was fine until her father was killed during some sort of military operation; the stepmother then "moved against the children of the first wife to ensure that her own son would inherit the father's property" (178). I love that language - so militaristic! So mercenary! And this woman, surnamed Jiao, really does sound like a piece of work - she sold one daughter off as a servant, poisoned a 10 year old son, and sent another daughter into mendicancy.
But it gets better!
Using Li Yuying's poetry against her, she charged her with "unfilial behavior and lechery, asking that she be given the 'lingering death'" (178-9) - lingering death was slow dismemberment. Li Yuying sent a memorial to the throne detailing all the horrible things that had happened and was spared.
The biographical snippet is far too short - doesn't this sound like one of those terribly interesting stories you'd like to read more about? I'm currently reading Jonathan Spence's The Death of Woman Wang which traces one of those little lives, one of the inconsequential ones. I love stories like that; I suppose it's one reason I do enjoy Dorothy Ko, for all her 'ontological' babble-speak, because she tells such interesting stories about relatively minor figures. What can we learn from dissecting a single life, one belonging to someone without a Name or currency outside of the field (or even within it)?
I wish I had more of my books with me, as I was most interested by the details about the daughters. To go to such lengths to destroy the son, I can understand - but if I'm not mistaken, women's rights to things like inheritances and land holding decreased sharply during & after the Song dynasty (and thus were practically non-existant), and we're dealing here with the 16th century Ming dynasty. I'm also pretty sure the Qing put laws into place preventing people of a certain stature from being sold into anything (though I could be wrong on that, though something is tugging at my brain ...).
So what does this life tell us?
[178-9]