SU MANSHU (THE HALF-MONK) (1884-1918)

Novelist, poet, Buddhist monk, and revolutionary Su Manshu (born Su Jian), was born in 1884 in Yokohama, Japan. His father was a Chinese merchant, and his mother his father's Japanese maid (his father was married to a Chinese woman, and another Japanese woman, his father's concubine, actually raised him). He attended school as a youth in China, then returned to Japan where he studied in Tokyo and became involved in student revolutionary groups seeking the overthrow of the Manchu rulers of the Qing Dynasty. He traveled widely across Asia, practicing revolution, working as a radical journalist, and writing poems, fiction, articles, and translations. He translated the poems of Byron into Chinese, and saw Byron as his poetic master. Eventually, he converted to Buddhism and took on the name "Manshu." He was known as the "half-monk" of the Southern School of Poets, and despite his vows was known for having affairs and for his many love poems.
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from 10 Narrative Poems

1
Infinite spring sorrow and infinite complaints
abruptly twang around your fingers.
I'm also frustrated and sick.
I can't bear to hear your eight-cloud zither.

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2
A ten-by-ten room. You make me brick tea.
Deep talk, the tea turns cold, tears roll down.
"My real mother didn't love me.*
Only Mahamaya can tell me of my previous life."
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Note: Baizu's mother sold her to be a geisha.
 

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4
At the table you are too shy to tell me your gratitude
and fragrance fades in your black jade eyes below knitted eyebrows,
but even if you remain silent I understand you.
In your last life you must have been the celestial beauty Xianglan.

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Note: Xianglan: Ma Xianglan (1548-1604), a well-known courtesan in Jinling (Nanjing) at the end of Ming dynasty, one of the Eight Beauties of the Qinghuai Area. She was good at writing poems and painting orchids. She loved to associate with celebrities and fell easily into romantic relationships, but when she attempted to seduce Wang Zhideng (1535-1612, a Ming dynasty man of letters and calligrapher) she was turned down by him. In the year of 1604 when Wang Zhideng was celebrating his 70th birthday, Ma Xianglan traveled to hold celebration banquets for him for months. After her return she became sick and she died sitting in Buddhist meditation.

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5
With peach blossom cheeks and sandalwood lips you sat playing a reed pipe.
Spring water is hard to measure when old regrets brim.
Huayan waterfall is one thousand feet high,
but not as deep as your love for me.

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6
Like a Wushe goddess walking on waves with skin white like snow,
you hold a red leaf and ask me for a poem.
I give back to you a bowl of loveless tears.
I wish we'd met before my hair was shaved!

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Note: Liu Yazhi, a well-known poet and Su Manshu's friend, commented on the last two lines, "Practicing Buddhism and falling into love become the battle between ice and fire
inside Manshu during his life."

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7
You cared for my sick bones turned light as butterflies
as I dreamed through ten thousand li of clouds around the Luofu Mountains,
I sent you a volume of affectionate Sakoontala.
Years later I hope to see your garnet skirt again, tear-stained.
 

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Note: 8th line, Master Zan was a well-known monk in the Tang Dynasty.

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        ---All translated by Tony Barnstone and Chou Ping