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Song of a Virtuous Woman, Meng Jiao (300 Tang Shi #44)
Tuesday, 1 March 2022 08:15Parasols and paulownias age together,
And mated mandarin ducks die side by side.
A chaste wife’s worthy, dying for her husband—
Who gives her life should thus be thought the same.
The heavy waves, I hereby vow, won’t rise,
And this one’s heart is water in the well.
烈女操
梧桐相待老，
鸳鸯会双死；
贞妇贵殉夫，
舍生亦如此。
波澜誓不起，
妾心井中水。
O hai icky traditional cultural values. Have I mentioned I don’t get along very well with certain aspects of Confucianism? This would be one. This type of “song” (操) is specifically a piece for accompaniment by qin, and apparently was popular enough as such that in the Complete Tang Poetry anthology, it’s collected in the book of pieces for qin as well as under the author. According to folklore, parasol trees and paulownia trees are the males and females of the same species, and grow together as mated pairs. Mandarin ducks famously mate for life. The last line has a humble first-person pronoun used only by women, rendered as usual as “this one” —which would read better if I avoided “I” in the previous line, grump grump.
(Am noodling around with more folk-song-style poems while I wrestle with the next couple by Meng Haoran.)
---L.
And mated mandarin ducks die side by side.
A chaste wife’s worthy, dying for her husband—
Who gives her life should thus be thought the same.
The heavy waves, I hereby vow, won’t rise,
And this one’s heart is water in the well.
烈女操
梧桐相待老，
鸳鸯会双死；
贞妇贵殉夫，
舍生亦如此。
波澜誓不起，
妾心井中水。
O hai icky traditional cultural values. Have I mentioned I don’t get along very well with certain aspects of Confucianism? This would be one. This type of “song” (操) is specifically a piece for accompaniment by qin, and apparently was popular enough as such that in the Complete Tang Poetry anthology, it’s collected in the book of pieces for qin as well as under the author. According to folklore, parasol trees and paulownia trees are the males and females of the same species, and grow together as mated pairs. Mandarin ducks famously mate for life. The last line has a humble first-person pronoun used only by women, rendered as usual as “this one” —which would read better if I avoided “I” in the previous line, grump grump.
(Am noodling around with more folk-song-style poems while I wrestle with the next couple by Meng Haoran.)
---L.