Po Chü-i: Selected Poems

Tr. Burton Watson

Columbia University Press, 2000; Pages: xvi, 172

Po Chü-i (772-846) is one of the most famous Chinese poets from the T'ang dynasty period. In his 70 years of life spent mostly at various government posts, he composed about 3,000 poems, of which around 2,800 have been preserved. This makes Po one of the most prolific and best preserved poets ever. Widely popular during his lifetime in China and especially in Japan, he began by writing yüeh-fu (the name comes from the name of the government office, Music Bureau, charged with collecting folk songs in an effort to discern grievances of the populace) in which he criticized government policies, especially the failure to provide for poor people and victims of drought. This, as one would expect, did not endear him to government officials and Po ended up demoted to a post in a distant province. Although at first he seems to have resented the loss of the cushy sinecure in Ch'ang-an (the capital), he soon learned to appreciate the simplicity of rural life and the opportunities his leisure time allowed for practicing the art he loved most. He practically ceased writing social poems and concentrated on capturing the fleeting experiences of daily life.

These poems mislead in their apparent simplicity. Like Zen Buddhism, whose devout adherent and practitioner Po became, what seems simple on the surface is actually the product of long and arduous concentration, an attention to experience that is distilled in most parsimonious terms. However, unlike the riddles of Zen, Po's poems are straightforward in the extreme. Legend has it that he read every single poem to an old illiterate woman and changed everything she could not understand. Doubtless apocryphal, the story reflects very well his obvious desire to capture the his impressions and make the comprehensible.

One of the most interesting aspects about Po's fame is his popularity in Japan. His poetry became a staple reference for the courtiers at the height of the Heian period, influencing the indigenous forms developed there. As with the Western translations, Po's moving poem Song of Everlasting Regret about the tragic love of Emperor Hsüan-tsung and the beautiful Yang Kuei-fei (immortalized on the silver screen by Mizoguchi Kenji's Princess Yang Kwei-Fei) is perhaps the poem most often alluded to in various waka. (Regrettably, Watson decided to omit it from the volume because of the numerous existing English translations.)

It is not difficult to see whence the appeal: simplicity and frank directness that is notably absent from the other great T'ang poets like Li Po or Tu Fu, and even more so from the later Li Shang-yin. In any case, one should not mistake simplicity for shallowness although Po did write many poems of quite pedestrian variety.

Watson's translation is very good because it avoids the excessive formalism that usually results from literal translations. He does not appear to have taken many liberties with the text and in comparison with other decent translations (e.g. David Hinton's), I have to say that his fares rather well. There are very helpful notes introducing each poem which, in addition to specifying, somewhat unnecessarily, the style of the original, places the poem in biographical context). There are very few explanatory notes, and the ones that he does have deal with Chinese terms or practices. Seldom does a poet achieve such ready comprehensibility centuries later and in an entirely different cultural context. (Heck, we can't even read Shakespeare in the original and without copious explanatory notes.)

This collection of 128 poems and one prose piece (about Po Chü-i's famous thatched hall on Mount Lu) is therefore a welcome addition to the growing number of translations from Chinese classics. For some reason, Po's work has been mostly neglected here until recently, at least compared to the number of translations from the other T'ang poets. Given his wide influence and persisting popularity, one hopes that we shall see more of these collections coming our way.

October 18, 2001

@book{
    title     = {Po Ch\"{u}-i: Selected Poems},
    author    = {Burton Watson},
    year      = 2000,
    publisher = {Columbia University Press},
    address   = {New York},
    isbn      = {0-231-11839-2 (pbk.)},
    note      = {Tr. Burton Watson}
}