BAI JUYI (772-846)

Bai Juyi was born in Henan to a poor family of scholars. He took the imperial exam at age twenty seven and dreamed, with his friend Yuan Zhen, of being a reformer. However, his career as an official was less than illustrious, and his attempts to criticize incidents of injustice only caused him to be banished from the capital (Changan) in 815. He was the Prefect of Hangzhou (822-825) and then of Suzhou (825-827), but finally retired from the political life, which he found ultimately to be a disappointment. He turned to Buddhism. He fared somewhat better as a writer than as a politician. He was popular in his lifetime, and his poems were known by peasants and court ladies alike. He was very popular in Japan, and a number of his poems find their way into The Tale of Genji, he is the subject of a noh play and has even become a sort of Shinto deity. More than twenty-eight hundred of his poems survive, as he was careful to preserve his work; in 815 he sent his writings to Yuan Zhen, who edited and compiled them into an edition of his collected work in 824-25. His poems show an interest in recording his times and his private life alike and often reveal an empathy with the poor that belies the heights of his own career. They are often written in a deliberately plain style, and some of his poetry is written in imitation of the folk songs collected by the Music Bureau (Yuefu poems) in the second century B.C. According to a popular account, Bai Juyi used to read his poems to an old peasant woman and change any line that she couldn't understand. There is a benevolent directed intelligence in his poems that comes through the refractions of culture and translation and makes us feel the powerful presence of this poet who died more than a thousand years ago.

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White Cloud Spring

At White Cloud Spring on Tianping Mountain
the clouds are mindless and the water relaxed.
Why bother to rush down the mountain slope
and add waves to the human world?

        ---Translated by Tony Barnstone and Chou Ping

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Song of Collecting Lotus Seeds

Lotus leaves float on rippling water,
flowers shiver in wind.
Deep among the lotus flowers,
two small boats meet.
She sees a young man, almost speaks,
then just smiles and bows her head
and into the water
her emerald-jade hairpin drops.

        ---Translated by Tony Barnstone and Chou Ping

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From Two Quatrains about a Pond, Poem II

A little boy bamboo-poled a little boat,
sneaking back after stealing white lotus seeds,
but didn=t know how to cover his tracks.
Floating duckweed shows his path.

        ---Translated by Tony Barnstone and Chou Ping

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To my Wife

I often sigh over my long white hair.
My woman shares my sorrow.
She patches up winter clothes under the lamp
while our little daughter is playing in bed.
All our screens and mosquito nets are old and faded,
autumn feels cold on our mats and pillows.
But her poverty could be worse.
At least she didn't marry Qianlou!

        ---Translated by Tony Barnstone and Chou Ping

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Note: Qianlou was a well-known poor scholar who lived in the Qi State during the Warring States Period.
 

See also the Bai Juyi translations available from the Links page