Yuan Zhen


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		Yuan Zhen (Wade-Giles name: Yüan Chen)

YUAN ZHEN (779-831)

Yuan Zhen was among the most brilliant poets and statesmen of the Tang dynasty, known by the epithet Yuan the Genius. He was born in Changan to a family descended from the royal house that ruled northern China during the Northern Wei dynasty in the fifth and sixth centuries. Though his father died when he was a child, under his mother's tutoring he became a brilliant scholar. He passed the examinations in the category of "clarification of the classics" when he was fourteen, and when he was twenty-four he passed the "highly selective" examination, which landed him an appointment in the imperial library with Bai Juyi, the poet who was to be his lifelong friend. Several years later, he passed the final palace examination, monitored by the emperor, and gained the highest score, resulting in a position close to the emperor. Like his friend Bo, Yuan dreamed of being a reformer, a dream that was to result in a series of banishments. He did, however, help to create a poetic movement, termed "the new music bureau songs" movement, which attempted to recapture the formal freedoms and the simplicity of diction of the yuehfu form of the Han dynasty, and to use poetry for the serious ends of a social reformer.
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Chrysanthemum Flowers

Autumn clusters surround my house just like Tao Yuanming's.
I walk full circle round the fence as the sun slowly tilts.
It's not that I love chrysanthemums more than other flowers,
but that no others will blossom after these blooms wither.

---Translated by Tony Barnstone and Chou Ping

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Note: chrysanthemum is a late-blooming flower. It blooms in Autumn, and so it is known as the flower that blooms last in a year. Tao Yuanming is a famous Chinese poet know for giving up official life and retreating into country life.

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Two Poems Written in an Inn by the Jialing River

1)
In an inn by the Jialing, my traveler's bed feels empty.
The water flows noisily all night.
I gaze at trees on the mountain past the south wall,
and see wild flowers teasing me in soft moonlight.

2)
Branches blooming outside press on the low wall.
The bright moon lights up half my bed.
No one understands how I feel at this moment.
In the western chamber all night I sleep alone.

---Translated by Tony Barnstone and Chou Ping

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Poem Written for Bai Juyi Who Often Dreams of Me

Thousand of mountains and waters part us. No letters come.
I know you care for me, since you dream of me
but I'm so sick these days my delirious soul
just dreams of random people, won't show me you.

---Translated by Tony Barnstone and Chou Ping

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Note: This poem was written in 817 in reply to the following poem by Bai Juyi:

At dawn I rise and gaze into the wind with worry:
no information ever comes from Tong Valley and Pen Water.
You must have been thinking of me, I don't know why,
so at the third beating of night drum I met you in dream.
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Spring Dawn

It is half dawn and half dark
and drunk in dreams I smell flowers and hear a skylark.
A puppy drags a rope and knocks off a bell, ringing
up memory: twenty years ago at dawn in a temple, my love.

---Translated by Tony Barnstone and Chou Ping

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Note:

The last line refers to a famous love affair at the Pujiu Temple between a scholar and the widow of the prime minister. For more on this story, see this article in China Today.