This life of this poem began with 美人紅 as I doodled with the brush and came up with the following line, 一杯暖壺美人紅. A day later, I looked at the rough draft and the theme was just as rough. As I copied the draft over and over again to practise my brush writing that the poem began to morph into a totally different theme. I remembered reading a book in my youth...
1 金杯傾蕩明皇醉 The golden cup teetered as the Enlightened Emperor became tipsy,
2 夢遊廣寒與仙聚 In his inebriation, he met the fairies in the lunar palace of the Great Cold.
3 惻隱憐心釋孽龍 Out of pity, he released the cursed Dragon of Sins,
4 妖亂天下無安歲 Chaos unleashed, and the world knows no peace from year to year.
5 三百血汗基業散 After three hundred years of blood and sweat... The demise of a dynasty,
6 馬嵬兵變貴妃罪 At the Mawei slope, all blame was put on his beloved imperial concubine.
7 長生誓約白綾斷 The vow made in the Palace of Eternal Life was broken by a white sash,
8 上陽老人寂寞最 Loneliest is the old man in the Palace of Supreme Brightness.
1 The Enlightened Emperor is a title used by the common masses for Tang Hsuan Tsung. The golden cup represents decadence and 傾蕩, the collapse due to wantonness. The emperor began his reign in earnest but in later years became befuddled.
2 Ancient Chinese believes that dreams are the result of the soul leaving the body and went wandering elsewhere. The theme for the first stanza comes from the opening chapter of the novel, 月唐演義. The Emperor paid a visit to the lunar palace. Here 仙 refers to 嫦娥仙子, the goddess of the moon. It is during this visit that he heard the celestial music which inspired him to compose the “Feathered Rainbow Skirt”, a grand musical and dance piece of the Court, when he woke up.
3 The emperor was ruthless in securing his throne. He killed off his rivals including his aunt, the powerful Princess Taiping, the favourite daughter of Empress Wu. His older brother who was the crown prince knew how ambitious his younger is and yielded his position so that he could live in peace, unlike his grandfather’s time. Now in his old age, Tang Hsuan Tsung had grown soft under the beguiling breasts of his favorite concubine. They would indulge themselves in songs, dances and other merrymaking at the expense of running the empire. The theme of this poem is from the opening chapter of the novel, 月唐演義. The emperor dreamt that he flew to the lunar palace. Before the Emperor could meet the goddess of the moon, he came across a chained green dragon begging for its freedom. The kindhearted emperor released it and it escaped towards the north-east and reincarnated as the barbarian general which lead to the eventual demise of the Tang Dynasty. The novel is mainly about the adventures of the White Tiger spirit sent down to earth to subdue the Green Dragon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guo_Ziyi
4 I had deliberately used 安 instead of 寧 because it is the last name of the An Lu Shan.
5 The Tang Dynasty lasted about 300 years. Like in line 4, 基業, foundation, etc. is also a pun to mean the “enterprise of the emperor” because his personal name is 李隆基.
6 The place where Yang Guifei committed suicide. A white silk sash of three foot long was the preferred way of death for the high born in a dignified way. Usually, for women. The last Ming emperor hung himself from a tree in the Coal Hill Garden in the Forbidden City.
7 Name of the palace where the emperor and his beloved made their eternal vows on the Seventh Night.
8 Name of the palace where the “grand emperor” resides in retirement. Though living sumptuously, the former emperor felt loneliness without his beloved. He even hired a Taoist priest so that he could have a glimpse of her. The story goes that the priest went to the lunar palace and found her. As evidence, he brought back her comb broken in half to show that she had become an immortal and all that is past is in the past. They shall meet again when the time comes.
Wednesday, August 25, 2021
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