Xie Lingyun journeys deep into the mountains and meaning. Poet Xie, who we first met in Li Bai’s dream, is regarded in the West as one of China’s first ‘landscape poets’. Here we see how such definitions might be more complex than they first appear.
於南山往北山經湖中瞻眺
朝旦發陽崖，景落憩陰峰。
捨舟眺迥渚，停策倚茂松。
側徑既窈窕，環洲亦玲瓏。
俯視喬木杪，仰聆大壑淙。
石橫水分流，林密蹊絕蹤。
解作竟何感？升長皆豐容。
初篁苞綠籜，新蒲含紫茸。
海鷗戲春岸，天雞弄和風。
撫化心無厭，覽物眷彌重。
不惜去人遠，但恨莫與同。
孤游非情嘆，賞廢理誰通？
Heading from South Mountain to North Mountain, Crossing the Lake and Gazing Into The Distance
At daybreak I set out from the sunlit cliffs,
By sunset I was resting at the shaded summit.
Leaving behind my boat to gaze upon the distant river isles,
I leaned on my cane under a flourishing pine.
Pitched mountain paths wind gracefully,
Surrounding islands weave together exquisitely.
Looking downward, I see the tips of branches reaching for the skies,
Raising my head, I hear the coursing cascade of the great ravine.
Rocks lay across, cutting the stream,
The forest thickens, trails left behind by footsteps.
A release has begun — with what spiritual consequence?
Pushing upwards, growing — everything lush and abundant.
Young bamboo shoots wrapped in green sheaths,
Fresh reeds infused with purple flowers.
Seagulls playing along the spring shores,
The Heavenly Rooster enjoys the gentle breeze.
In dwelling on change my heart never tires,
Beholding these surrounds, my contented feelings intensify.
I don’t regret travelling far away from people,
I only rue that this cannot be shared.
Lonesome roaming does not bring me to sigh,
When the well-regarded is disregarded, who will pass on the truth?
Translation notes
We might be tempted to read this poem, one of the first surviving landscape poems from Chinese history, through a lens that originates the mountains and rivers (shanshui 山水) of Wang Wei’s poems and that expresses the same fundamental essence as Wordsworth’s host of golden daffodils.
However, this poem is nearly two thousand years old. It was written before any of these poetic traditions even existed. Xie Lingyun wrote this poem after having been demoted from a senior rank and retreating to his country estate. This poem is as much a reflection on his life and his demotion, as much as it is a reflection on the beauty of nature.
At the time, this poem would have been read as a youlan 遊覽 poem: you 遊 means to roam around, and lan 覽 means to look broadly at what surrounds. This breadth implies not just appreciating the natural world, but the nature of human existence.
This reading hinges on the characters in line six: xie 解 and sheng 升, which I have translated as “release” and “pushing upwards”. These characters are representations of hexagrams in the Book of Changes (Yi Jing 易經), and would have been recognised as such, which is why I have italicised the text in the translation.
The Book of Changes is one of the five ancient Chinese classics, and was originally written as a divination manual in the Western Zhou period (1000-750 BC). The book offers wisdom and guidance through understanding the concepts of harmony and by interpreting differing patterns or hexagrams that can be generated through the tossing of coins or stalks. The divinations provide insights into the natural patterns of change and are used for ethical decision-making, prediction, and understanding the complexities of life.
The hexagrams for xie and sheng are given below:
䷧䷭
Each line in a hexagram is called a yao 爻, and each line can either be broken or unbroken. A broken line represents yin 阴, associated with the moon, earth, darkness, and coldness. An unbroken line represents yang 阳, associated with the sun, heaven, light and warmth. This is one of the earliest origins of the Chinese principles of yinyang, or balance and harmony in the universe.
I provide this context in order to convey the depth of meaning behind these ideas at the time. In this poem, he alludes to these hexagrams that represent a sense of universal and divine meaning. The release can be read in response to the rocks cutting across the stream of water in the previous line, and yielding vivid green bamboo growing in the following line. Similarly, the pushing upwards mirrors the idea of footsteps continuing despite there being no trail in the previous line, and the growth of all things lush and abundant in the following line.
Here, Xie has identified patterns in nature and juxtaposed them with the patterns of the hexagrams and the deeper meanings they convey. This could even suggest a parallel between the traversal of physical terrain and a metaphorical or spiritual journey, marked by a release from problems or struggles and rising or making progress.
The final line may also represent this idea. Shang 賞 means to recognise the worth of something and fei 廢 means to dismiss, abolish, or abandon something. A clever double meaning exists here: Xie could simply be referring to the importance of examining the natural world with a poetic eye: “if we abandon the capacity to appreciate the world around us, we will be unable to convey the truth of things”. However, an alternative reading could yield an oblique reference to his demotion: “when those who are able to appreciate the world around them are demoted, who will convey the underlying truth of things [to those who govern]?”
Finally, an obscure connection to share with you. Most translations of this poem translate tianji 天雞 (heavenly rooster) as “celestial birds”, but I read the Heavenly Rooster here as a direct referenced from Li Bai’s dream:
I put on the hiking clogs of Poet Xie
And climbed the mountain path to the clouds
Halfway up I saw the sun over the sea
In the sky I heard the Heavenly Rooster
Acknowledgements
Harrison Tse-Chang Huang’s doctoral thesis Excursion, Estates, and the Kingly Gaze: The Landscape Poetry of Xie Lingyun provided a contextualisation of Xie Lingyun’s poetry that supported this translation.