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卜算子·我住长江头 - Song of Divination · I live at the Long River’s head

by 李之仪 (Li Zhiyi, 1048 to 1117)

我住长江头君住长江尾 wǒ zhù chángjiāng tóu, jūn zhù chángjiāng wěi I live at the Long River’s head, you live at the Long River’s tail end.

日日思君不见君共饮长江水 rì rì sī jūn bùjiàn jūn, gòng yǐn chángjiāng shuǐ Day after day, missing you but not seeing you, together, in the Long River’s water we partake.

此水几时休此恨何时已 cǐ shuǐ jǐ shí xiū, cǐ hèn hé shí yǐ The time when the water’s flow ceases is when resentment for this passes.

只愿君心似我心定不负相思意 Zhǐ yuàn jūn xīn sì wǒ xīn, dìng bù fù xiāng sī yì May your heart be as mine. The love from which this longing springs shall not be in vain.

………………………………………………………………………………………….

Notes

TITLE

The tune pattern for this song is卜算子, commonly translated as Song of Divination. The character卜 (bǔ) is a pictogram often explained as a representation of the cracks that appear on scorched tortoise shells, one of the methods of ancient Chinese divination. And to 算 (suàn), to calculate, is of course another method of divination. There are some different opinions of what this tune pattern is named for. Some say that 子 does not refer to a person, and instead is short for 曲子 - a little song, some say it’s named for ‘a person who does divinations’. Undeniably, there is divination in the name, and a ci is a song. So that’s what I went with!

There are several famous songs with this tune pattern, by Su Shi / Su Dongpo and by Lu You (we should know him quite well by now), of which I would say Li Zhiyi’s might be the most simple yet deeply romantic. This is probably why it’s super famous… that and the fact that it’s in the 300 Song Lyric collection.

// random thought re: 300 Tang Poems, 300 Song Lyrics, 300 Yuan Songs, maybe they were all collected into these anthologies of 300+ works because the Classic of Poetry was originally called 300 Poems?

I love Su Shi’s song for it’s stubborn loneliness in the cold and also its calm. But Lu You’s is just !!!!!!!!!! makes me want to curl around it like a loving cat. Thinking about them both makes me want to share them too!!!

Some other day perhaps.

These are so famous I had no idea they were all using the same tune pattern - and I can’t explain how this one works because Song lyric tune patterns are still a mystery to me. Will share if I ever figure it out, but yeah… I’m nowhere near that point now ahahah.

BACKGROUND

Li Zhiyi, courtesy name - Duanshu, was a poet of the Northern Song Dynasty and an important member of the Su Dongpo circle.

(My man Su Shi was very popular and very beloved in his time with many students and even more admirers, we have talked about how he made friends wherever he gets exiled, how he has a good sense of humor and makes fun of himself too).

Born in 1048 and later becoming a student of Fan Chunren, son of Fan Zhongyan (also a very cool dude! He writes amazing things /cough不以物喜不以己悲cough/, so let’s talk about him someday ~) and passed the imperial exams to become a jinshi in the year 1070 at the age of 22.

Sixteen years later in 1086, Fan Chunren effectively became the prime minister while Li Zhiyi became a scribe at a military division for the central government, and then magistrate for Yuan Prefacture not long after. It was after this time that he began interacting frequently with Su Shi, Huang Tingjian and others from that clique. Li Zhiyi also worked for Su Shi in his Governer’s Office while he was the Governor for Ding Prefecture.

(From Su Shi’s Baidu entry: In 1093, Empress Dowager Gao passed away, so Emperor Zhezong was in power and the new faction rose in prominence again. Su Shi was eventually relegated far from the capital to Hui Province in 1094, and then Hainan Island in 1097.)

And so, in 1099, when Li Zhiyi was promoted to supervisor for the vault for incense herbs - a subdivision under the Minister of Revenue, he was censured for once working for Su Shi and suspended from his position. Unfortunately for him, at some point afterwards, he was recommended for the position of Envoy for Hedong (here’s an interesting article in Chinese on the position of Envoy), but struck from the list when he offended the new prime minister in 1101 with an epitaph for Fan Zhongyan, the use of which was disallowed, and was exiled for a time. At least that’s what I’m interpreting from 东都事略, Summary of Events in the Eastern Capital, a book chronicling Northern Song dynasty (960–1126) history, written by Wang Cheng, a Southern Song official in the historiographic compilation bureau.

He was then posted with his family to Taiping Province, where he stayed for four years. In his own words as referenced from 姑溪居士文集, Collected Works of Guxi Hermit, Volume 1 Chapter 21: In the first year, his son and daughter in law left this world, in the second, he fell ill, Spring and Summer passed like trudging through water and he was doing very poorly, in the third year, his wife died too. In the beginning of the fourth year, he suffered from a skin disease and other conditions.

From 挥麈录 Records of a Horsetail Wisk by Wang Mingqing, a court official of the Southern Song Dynasty, Chapter 6, it seems Li Zhiyi was eventually reinstated as a court official after he was granted amnesty. Cross referencing with events in Emperor Huizhong of Song's rule (he was half-brother of Emperor Zhezong and succeeded the throne after his brother’s death in 1100), it seems that in 1107, there was to be a change of Era Name in the next year and the Emperor had offered sacrifices to the Jade Emperor, Haotian Shangdi (the highest deity in Daoism and Chinese religion from Tang Dynasty onwards); a general amnesty was granted to all as well. But Li Zhiyi did not return to his post, and instead remained in Taiping Prefecture. And this is where someone new and important enters the picture.

Backtracking five years to 1102, Yang Shu (杨姝) was a courtesan of Taiping Prefecture at this time. We know more about her because Huang Tingjian, courtesy name Luzhi, the well known calligrapher, artist, scholar, government official, and poet of Song Dynasty (mentioned earlier as being close to Su Shi, just in case you forgot), wrote her several poems while he was Prefect there for nine days in 1102.

Who else was in Taiping Prefecture in 1102? That’s right! Our friend Li Zhiyi.

They played a little poetry writing game, the results of which were recorded in his Collected Works of Guxi Hermit, Chapter 47 as well: 好事近 · 与黄鲁直于当涂花园石洞听杨妹弹履霜操鲁直有词因��韵, (To the tune of) Good Tidings Approach · With Luzhi at Dangtu Garden’s Stone Cave Listening to Yang Shu Pluck Treading in the Frost, Luzhi has lyrics for doing a ciyun. This ciyun just involves writing lyrics according to the rhyme pattern of the original lyric; usually one person writes the first and then another composes a reply in the same pattern. In this case, Huang Tingjian went first, and Li Zhiyi followed. (Let me know if you’d like to see what they wrote!)

During that same period, or perhaps thinking of this day some time after, Li Zhiyi wrote her two more poems to the tune of popular songs. Huang Tingjian wrote one for her as well, calling her a ‘little singer’ in the short prelude to his lyric 好事近, 太平州小妓杨姝弹琴送酒, (To the tune of) Good Tidings Approach, Taiping Prefecture’s Little Singer Yang Shu Plays the Qin and Brings Wine.

And again, from Records of a Horsetail Wisk, we learn that Li Zhiyi, childless and widowed, remarried Yang Shu and brought her home. He was in his late fifties, probably nearing his sixties by this point, and she was his junior by many decades. Miraculously, they had a child together. But it was also this union that was the soft target for trouble to be brought upon them some ten years later - Guo Xiangzheng (郭祥正) who was an enemy of Li Zhiyi had someone accuse their family of falsifying the parentage of this child, such that he could be conferred privileges. (And I assume this is because Li Zhiyi is technically still a court official? If it was something else, I’m unable to track it down…) For the second or third time - I’ve lost count - Li Zhiyi’s name was struck from the court’s records and Yang Shu was sentenced to caning.

We have a poem from the delighted Guo Xiangzheng to learn of the aftermath:

七十馀岁老朝郎 | Seventy and more, the old court official, 曾向元祐说文章 | in Yuanyou era, essays he did compose. 如今白首归田后 | Now white-haired and retired, 却与杨姝洗杖疮 | instead, he washes Yang Shu’s cane welts.

…bro… :/

Yes, we know they were wronged because Li Zhiyi’s nephew and student eventually helped overturn the case and reveal the truth. The text says ‘wife and child were returned to him’, so I imagine they were either jailed for the ‘fraud’ or returned to Yang Shu’s original class and separated from Li Zhiyi. Again, his official status was restored to him and in addition, the post of Grand Master for Court Discussion, but he declined this in favour of his retirement life.

After so much reading, I am still not able to pinpoint a year in which卜算子·我住长江头 was written. Only a general time period of ‘much later in life’ and possibly after having met Yang Shu simply from its place in his Collected Works of Guxi Hermit, Chapter 45. What seems to be certain though, is that it is written for her, and I am glad to hear however indirectly that these feelings were sincere.

Only in the fiercest fire, do you know what’s real gold and all that…

POEM

I would never have guessed that these words were from an old man, because they’re so bright, the emotions so fiery and all the more so for their simplicity.

There is drama in that hyperbole of distance. The Long River is 6300 km long. But how unreachable and impossible is the distance between them, is also how they are connected. Like how we might look up at the sky when a loved one is far away and take comfort in the fact that that they are under the same sky, or looking up at the same moon. Feelings are ‘entrusted’ to a moon, the stars, a river.

I feel like making or forcing this connection figuratively or via physical action of drinking the water from the same river, is absurdly childish yet charming. ‘思君不见君’ Thinking of you but not seeing you is a common lament, and then… here’s something that’s (not) going to make you feel better!

How Not Better are we?

Well... how likely is the Long River to cease its flow?

The resentment springs infinitely like water from the river’s source, what is the source of the resentment though - that’s love. Hence, this love will stop when the roaring river stops: never.

And the thing to remember, at least from how I read this poem, is that it’s one sided. ‘只愿君心似我心’ I only wish that your heart is as mine. He doesn’t know, but he knows. The second part of this line is not a condition but a promise, a statement of fact emphasized beautifully in that 定 ‘for sure’.

Source

#李之仪 #卜算子 #卜算子·我住长江头 #poems #northern song dynasty #you DO not want to know how long i was stuck reading for this #and how much i ommitted #LMAO #so so so many kudos to the meticulous souls who put together timelines of these people's lives on wiki #baidu and all #i really appreciate it #AND CTEXT PROJECT #AND WIKI TOO #oh my god it's so amazing #lifesaving #and to mr c for 断句ing for me when i couldn't read anymore lmao #commentary

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