Scholar, Poet, and Servant of the People

In Such Hard Times: The Poetry of Wei Ying-wu by Wei Ying-wu
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

First of all, this collection of poems is translated by Red Pine, who always does a great job.

Second, Wei Ying-wu writes some deeply affecting poetry that still works in English more than 1000 years later.

So--pretty awesome.

Most of this poetry is 2, 4, or 8 lines of 5 characters, though there are some 7-character lines and other less common formats. And most of the poems are either biographical or part of correspondence, so they reference actual people, places, and events in the poet's life. All pretty standard. What that means to a reader in English is that (as I prefer) we don't get the rhymes found in the original or any real sense of the feel of the language, and we might struggle to identify and understand references that have no meaning to a modern reader, but we do experience the ideas and feeling in these poems, and the translator has done an amazing job of providing context and background information and illuminating allusions that would otherwise remain opaque. We might lose the music, but we get the meaning, and most importantly we experience the humanity.

The poet lived through troubled times--thus the title--including the An Lushan rebellion (and continued troubles afterwards) which created so much chaos and disruption for the country. As a scholar and an official, with a career including many government jobs in many cities, Wei saw how the people lived and suffered all over the empire. "My pitiful fellow officials," he implores, "think of the hardships of those below us." He is referring to peasants who work all day long and can barely pay their taxes, and how families have to provide a worker each year to labor for free on giant projects: "The disaster of war has worn us all down/ there's no vacation from corvée [forced work] and taxes/ the downtrodden masses need help." While trying to enjoy personal downtime, relaxing at a lake, he says, "farmers this month are busy/ living in comfort I think of them toiling/ and wonder how they deal with the heat."

In "Jade Diggers Ballad," he writes:

The government drafts a common man
tells him to dig for Lan River jade
over the ridge, nights away from home,
he sleeps in thickets of thorns in the rain
his wife returns from taking him food
and sobs just south of their home.

In a poem about inspecting flooding along the Ching River, he writes, in part:

I could see the traces of disaster
perfectly good crops in the river...
once-happy homes in ruins...
whole hillsides were washed away...
meanwhile you gentlemen at court
gossip and laugh and think about parties.

It pains him that there is so much that they can't do to help, and even when there is something that might be done, they aren't allowed. One of his jobs was overlooking the corvée, which meant he had to make sure every family did its part in supplying labor for the government, and he was painfully aware of the difficulty of that sacrifice, giving up a good worker when they were most needed at home.

Many of his poems are about visiting with monks or spending time in monasteries, and he often laments not being able to retire to a life of contemplation. He always intends to, but can never quite walk away. "I love to follow trails to monastic retreats," he writes, "to an orchard of fruit trees after a rain.../ where green shade nurtures quiet days.../ my official duties have kept me so busy/ my footsteps have come here too seldom." Other poets and other officials walked away sooner, living more of their own life, but Wei kept taking new positions in the government, trying to do what he could for the people. He remains humble, claiming to be "inept," but you sense he feels like he is doing at least some good. When he's almost blind he finally retires and teaches farmers' children how to read, but by then most of his friends are gone and almost no one comes to visit him. Still, his last known poem is about a visit from a friend in that last year of his life:

You came with New Year's greetings
walking here alone in the bitter cold...
after starting a fire deep in my stove
and closing the door to my empty room
we shared a gourd full of wine
and didn't speak of all the things that went wrong.

Raise a glass to Wei Ying-wu. He really fucking tried.

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