Bitter that face

An extraordinary expression I had not stumbled across before; also an early yuefu form imitated by Lu Ji and others. Text here is from Yiwen leiju (wikisource), which refers to Yuefu shiji, among others.

Fu Xuan, Bitter that Face. 晉傅玄豫章行



Bitter that face, of woman you are,
Lowly, worthless, hard to look at you.
The manchild heads the house,
Dropping to earth he gives birth to spirit.
The manly mind may rove, all the four seas,
Ten thousand leagues, hoping to blow in the dust.
Girls are reared without joy, without celebration;
They are not what the family treasures.
Their jade faces always age with time,
Husbands mostly take to the new and younger.
Once before you two were like body and shadow,
Now you are as distant as East from West.

Fu Xuan's 傅玄 (217-278) verse seems so starkly feminist, it is surprising to see his iconic portrait, spread out over the web. He is mentioned as an orphan, however; perhaps he has extra empathy for women because he dreams of what a mother would have been like. His membership in the court of Cao Cao explains his iconic significance; it also testifies to his poetic talent.

苦相身為女．早_{○馮校本作平．按樂府詩集三十四作卑．當作卑．}陋難再陳．男兒當門戶．墮地自生神．雄心志四海．萬里望風塵．女育無欣慶．不為家所珍．玉顏隨年變．丈夫多好新．昔為形與影．今為胡與秦．

This isn't the text used in Owen; he follows Lu Qinli and Yutai xinyong in using a version of which this is a short excerpt. Just now, in between readings, I like the shorter version better!

Fu Xuan, Bitter that Face. 苦相篇 豫章行 作者：傅玄


Bitter that face, of woman you are,
Lowly, worthless, hard to look at you.
The manchild heads the house,
Dropping to earth he gives birth to spirit.
The manly mind may rove, all the four seas,
Ten thousand leagues of hope to blow in the dust.
Girls are reared without joy, without celebration;
They are not what the family treasures.

長大避深室　　藏頭羞見人

垂淚適他鄉　　忽如雨絕雲

低頭和顏色　　素齒結朱唇

跪拜無復數　　婢妾如嚴賔

情合同雲漢　　葵藿仰陽春

心乖甚水火　　百惡集其身

Growing up they retreat to deep inner chambers,
Hide their faces, ashamed to see men.
Dropping tears they are shunted to other villages,
Suddenly, like rain parting from the cloud.
They lower their heads, blushing,
White teeth meet between vermillion lips.
They kneel, koutou, and never matter again.
Even the servants are there to demand service.
If their love is well-matched, then Oxherd has his Weaver Woman,
Swamp plants await the bright sunny Spring.
And if his heart should change? Then, worse than water or fire,
A hundred hatreds build inside her body,

and then it picks up again where the shorter version leaves off:

Their jade faces always age with time,
Husbands mostly take to the new and younger.
Once before you two were like body and shadow,
Now you are the morning and evening stars.

But onto the ending also comes a new ending couplet, one that feels very tacked-on to the reader who encountered the shorter version first:

Morning and evening may meet again,
Sooner, at least, than a broken marriage be mended.
胡秦時相見　　一絕踰參辰

Note: a literal translation brings up Chinese geography, Hu and Qin, that do not immediatly have the intended symbolic effect -- they do not deliver the intended information that the wife feels distant toward the husband and vice versa. It makes sense to me to mine further for a metaphor that is likely to work for the English reader; here we take "the morning and evening stars" out of the actual symbols used in the final line: Shen and Chen 參辰, stars of the evening and morning, respectively. A similar unpacking of culturally-specific metaphor is Oxherd and Weaver Woman from, "Cloudy Han" yunhan 雲漢, a term for the belt of stars across the sky that works like our "Milky Way" (wonder if there's a Cloudy Han candy bar?). Take this note as an entry in my evolving (and only virtual) poetry translation manifesto.

苦相身為女　　卑陋難再陳

男兒當門戶　　墮地自生神

雄心志四海　　萬里望風塵

女育無欣愛　　不為家所珍

長大避深室　　藏頭羞見人

垂淚適他鄉　　忽如雨絕雲

低頭和顏色　　素齒結朱唇

跪拜無復數　　婢妾如嚴賔

情合同雲漢　　葵藿仰陽春

心乖甚水火　　百惡集其身

玉顏隨年變　　丈夫多好新

昔為形與影　　今為胡與秦

胡秦時相見　　一絕踰參辰

Images: A piece of gaming art: iconic or just random? I'd like to see odd pornography in pop art as the continuation of a long tradition of gender-anger.