Meng Haoren: His Work
Of the many poems written by Meng Haoran, only about 260 have survived. As to be expected, his life reflected his art: no court or palace poetry, but rather poems of real people, living real lives. Meng did not feel the need for fame or fortune, but he did want to help the people, and his country in any way he could.
He admired soldiers going to fight at the northern frontiers. Although he knew he couldn’t help his country with military skills, he could contribute with his literary skills and writing poems about soldiers.
He also looked up to the sacrifices of Qu Yuan. Qu Yuan (ca 340-278 BC) was a poet, scholar and government minister. Upon learning of the capture of his country’s capital, Qu wrote a lengthy poem of lament, and then waded into the Miluo River holding a large rock in order to commit ritual suicide to protest against the corruption of his era.
Folklore and legend then had the local villagers trying to save him. Failing to due so, and to distract the fish from his body, they threw rice into the water and splashed water with their paddles. To this day the Chinese celebrate him with the Duanwu festival (Double Fifth) or Dragon Boat festival, where boat races are held throughout China.
Qu is regarded as the first poet to have his name associated to his work. Prior to that time, poems were not recognized by any specific poet. He is also revered as the earliest patriot in Chinese history.
Another role model for Meng was Shima Qian (ca. 145 or 135-86 BC), famous for his writing of two thousand years of Chinese history. He is regarded as the father of Chinese historiography.
A criticism of Meng’s poetry, from the famous Song Dynasty poet, Su Dongpo, was that his work was too narrow. It focused too much on mental and spiritual issues, and not enough about the society in which he lived. Su went on to say that Meng knew how to make wine, but did not have the necessary materials (life experiences) to implement this knowledge. Meng Haoran read a lot of books, perhaps too many, which made the majority of his contempories unable to understand him. But then again, some critics of Su Dongpo have said that Su didn’t read enough books. He perhaps had too much material and not enough methodology! Other critics have noticed that Meng was always original in each poem, and that there was at least one word (character) that really hit the nail on the head. From his poetry a person could create a painting or piece of music.
Meng’s poetry has often been compared to the poetry of Wang Wei (701-762). Critics have noted that Meng’s nature poetry concentrates on the particular, with precise, individual foreground scenes, while Wang Wei by contrast writes of nature from a distance, with more abstract backgrounds.
Because Meng never served the emperor at court, or mixed with the palace crowd and government bureaucrats, the people in his poems are mostly common farmers and good hometown friends. In a way he was counter cultural to the busy, prosperous and urbane Tang Dynasty.
Meng’s early and happier poems are filled with mei qing you: with words like “clear, pure, deep and secluded”. His poems have been described as being like snow: light and white, with each flake different from the rest. His landscape poems had a paucity of color
Much of Meng’s poetry was from the shanshui-tianyuan (mountain-water-fields-gardens) tradition. Shanshui literally means mountains and waters (rivers-lakes), but often means landscape in both a poetic sense and in painting. Tianyuan means fields and gardens, but it also alludes to the countryside. So much of Meng Haoran’s poetry included both the natural landscapes experienced while climbing mountains and floating down rivers, as well as the fields and gardens of a settled and rural life.
Central to Chinese culture and art is the notion of yijing. It is most often translated as artistic mood, artistic conception, or perhaps more completely as the mood necessary for artistic creation. From Tao Yuanming, on through the Tang and succeeding dynasties, yijing is the guiding light for Chinese artistic expression. It has been woven throughout the works of Meng Haoren.
Most of Meng Haoran’s poems can be classified into several different themes. Because of his extensive travels, it should be no surprise that most of the poems were written about shanshui: water and boat travel, with the accompanying images of boatmen, fishermen, mists, and river pools, and when Meng was climbing or viewing the many mountains in the part of China where he lived and traveled. Within the mountains, Meng wrote often of woodcutters, as well as the several Buddhist temples and monks. These two themes are well represented by the poem Wan Mountain: Deep River Pools.
“Sit on a comfortable boulder fishing
Clear water increases the idleness of an unoccupied mind
Below trees, fish travel around big deep pools
On one island, monkeys hang from vine to vine…”
Fishermen and woodcutters are admired by Meng Haoren as living moral, simple and carefree lives. The second line is an example of several poems, by Meng, that are near perfect expressions of a mind in deep contemplation, and to reveal his holistic relationship with the environment around him.
Shanshui is also a painting technique which first arose around the Fifth century AD. These landscape paintings concentrated on mountains, which have been considered sacred by Daoism and other spiritual traditions as well. In his book on Daoism, John Blofeld describes the belief of dragon veins. These are invisible lines running down from the sky into the mountains, and then along the earth. These lines in Nature serve a similar function as the qi channels within the body, so often used in acupuncture and yoga. The mountains serve as the conduit for the yang energy flowing from Heaven to intermingle with the yin energies of the earth. These dragon veins can be seen in Chinese shanshui (landscape) paintings by the strong curving lines of clouds, mountain tops and ridges, waterfalls, and in the meanderings of rivers.
Another poem, Western Mountains, Seeking Xin E, not only has the themes of water and mountains, but also three other often-used topics as well: friends, sunsets and feelings of lament and sorrow.
Ripples against a small boat, following passable water depths
In order to visit an old friend’s house
“Sunset inside clear river water
Also admire this single fish
Deep rocky pool, can see clear to the bottom
Multicolored sandy riverbank winding back and forth till out of sight
See fishing lines from the bamboo islet
From a thatched hut can hear a spiritual book read aloud…”
Like most, if not all, of the Tang Dynasty poets, Meng Haoran wrote many poems about, to, and for his friends. These included poems about wine and music, as well as the “send off” poems, so commonly written by those working in the government bureaucracy and those traveling, whether from post to post, to and from the capital, or in Meng’s case, so often, just in order to be inspired to write shanshui (landscape) poetry. In Yong Jia, at Shangpu Guan, Met Zhang Zirong.
“We meet during our travels at a country inn
Sunset at a small country village
Among many remote mountains, share wine
Together at a solitary islet, write poetry on a large boulder…”
And the poem Writing About Master Kong’s Room Within the
Cui Wei Temple, Southern Mountains.
“Cui Wei Temple inside the Southern Mountains
After rain, now reflections of sunset light
He is a long time in seclusion, sunk in deep and profound contemplation
With a walking stick, I climb up to this high place
Then go to the place of Master Kong
Now I begin to know his mastery of silence and mystery
Two Confucian sects, although not the same paths
Yet we both share and harmonize with this area of clouds and forest
Two heart-minds share these joys and satisfactions
All day until sunset, together we talk, laugh and discuss…”
The translation using heart-minds, in line nine, is a complete rendering of the character xin. Interesting that the Chinese language does not separate the two: heart and mind, but one implies the other.
Meng Haoran wrote many poems about lament, regret and sorrow for his not passing the imperial exams, and therefore not having an opportunity to use his talents in the service for his country, the emperor, and his family. Closely related are the many homesick poems Meng wrote while traveling away from his home. The poem Rural Seclusion, is representative of these feelings.
“…Cannot control the push of time, year after year
Thirty years and still not chosen to come out of here
Almost too late now to apply book learning and the martial arts
Close to sunset in my secluded garden…
Admire the soaring swan
Lament my competing for scraps among the chickens and ducks…
Sing my hometown songs without my best friends
No friends or relatives within the imperial hierarchy…”
Another next set of poems has to do with Meng’s prolific use of the characters for “sunset”, and with what Wang Wei, Meng Haoran’s friend and poetic successor, called the wanjing, or “evening view”. From Wang Wei‘s quote in The Luminous Landscape: Chinese Art and Poetry:
“In the evening view, the mountains embrace the crimson of the setting sun; sails are furled, and boats are in the inlets. Men on the road are hurrying on their way, and the brushwood gates of the cottages are half-closed.”
This evening view could be just another way of saying yinju and/or biguan. Yinju means to withdraw from society and live in solitude or seclusion. Biguan means to close the gate, the city wall, or even the country, as China did during most of its’ history, including most recently the years of Mao Zedong. Biguan also means to stay secluded meditating and studying scriptures for a fixed period of time. A Buddhist interpretation would contend that biguan is closing the gates of the senses to the outer world. Included in this genre is the nostalgia and longing for a rural simplicity. These two moods and concepts can be found often throughout much of ancient Chinese poetry.
One of the last of the major poetic themes is the one involving vast distances, horizons, and large spaces where the sky meets the water. Once again Wang Wei has written about this theme, wangjing, which literally means to gaze or look into the distant scenery.
“Distant men have no eyes; distant trees have no branches. Distant mountains have no stones, and they are as fine and delicate as eyebrows. Distant water has no ripples, and reaches to the clouds. These are the secrets.”
One of Meng’s poems to illustrate this would be Early Morning, Go Out to Yu Putan. Interesting to see that Meng Haoran also introduces us here to the zhaojing, or the “morning view”.
“Early rays of sunlight in the east
Sandbar birds already up and noisy
From the boat, hear the fish at the river mouth
And the oars turning over and over
Sunrise views emerge layer after layer
Only then know, this part of the river is vast…”
A very complete example is the poem At Dongting Lake: Send to Yan the Ninth:
“Autumn and Dongting Lake pure and vast
I want to float slowly in the boat on the way home
Cannot distinguish which shore is Jing and which is Wu
Can only see where the water meets the sky
Water so vast cannot see any trees
River and lake water crowded together
Wait for your boat oars to appear
Hope we together can cross another river in a larger boat.”
Meng’s poem Summer Day: Southern Pavilion, Thinking of Xin Da
weaves together many of these themes, and then adds two more prevalent moods and concepts found throughout ancient Chinese poetry: those of xian and ziran. Xian literally means unoccupied, idle, leisurely, having spare time. Ziran has several related meanings:
it can be Nature, as in the natural world of plants and animals (including man); it can be natural, as in the natural course of events; and like xian, it can mean to be at ease and unaffected. Line six is perhaps one of the most exquisite lines written by Meng Haoran, and maybe even during all of the Tang Dynasty. It indirectly alludes to a profound silence so often found in Dao-influenced poetry.
“Sunset afterglow suddenly leaves the west
Step by step, moon rise in the east on a pond
Cool sunset, hair falls down loose and free
Open windows, lie down in the leisure room
Wind sends the sweet fragrance of lotus
Echoes of clear dew drops falling off the bamboo
Want to find my qin to play and sing
Too bad no one here to enjoy these words together
Can feel the hearts-minds of old friends
Middle of the night, difficult to find them in a dream.”