A Song on Forsythia to the tune of Wind in the Pines

About 18 of the SBJ poems are about flowers. I’ve previously posted A Chrysanthemum at the End and A Flower, which used the aging flower to talk about human life. In A Song on Forsythia the flower is still used to talk about people, but in a different way.

The name okdori ilha could refer to forsythia or winter jasmine, both yellow flowers that bloom in late Winter or early Spring. This poem showers the flower with backhanded praise, acknowledging its beauty but deriding its simplicity and eagerness.

	okdori ilha-i [迎春花] uculen		A Song on Forsythia
	Staatsbibliothek 14.4 (View Online)
	manggai buyasi sure,		Merely simpleminded,
	sahiba teile,		only fawning,
	niyengniyeri de tosohoi,		as it ambushes Spring,
	bucetei saišabume,		and flatters it to death.
5	guwele mele saikan,		Furtively, stealthily pretty,
	dede dada hojo,		frivolously lovely.
	dembei dedenggi boco,		The silliest color,
	baibi gicuke,		simply disgraceful,
	halukan ici kani,		in league with the warm weather,
10	te uthai kūwasa cokto,		so now boastful and arrogant,
	banjitai oilohon,		superficial by nature,
	funiyagan ajige.		of little forbearance.

A Flower, to the tune of Wind in the Pines

A lot of the SBJ poems are about flowers. Since it’s now Spring, it seems appropriate to start working on some of these. This one is in the same style as Wind and Snow, which use the tune Wind in the Pines and make heavy use of alliteration.

This poem uses many different words for “beautiful,” and in teasing out the different nuances I benefited enormously from being able to look up these terms in Hu Zengyi and Qianlong through the online dictionary at buleku.org.

The first stanza talks about the fresh blooming of a flower, and the second stanza talks about the flower’s decline, a powerful contrast reminiscent of the Moon. This flower was young and shapely once, the center of attention for a cloud of butterflies, but then fades, and longs for that former desire when all the admirers have gone away.

All of the SB poems are anonymous, and perhaps we will never know who wrote them, but the SB 11 poems to the tune of Wind in the Pines seem very sympathetic to the emotional lives of women, and I wonder if we will ever learn that the poet was a woman.

	ilha [花],		A Flower
	Staatsbibliothek 11.18 (View Online)
	ice icebuhengge,		A new thing stained,
	boconggo boco,		with colorful colors,
	fiyangga fiyan fiyen, wangga wa,		a flush blush and rouge, a fragrant scent,
	yangsanggai yaya yangse,		every shape is shapely,
5	hojo kai hocikon,		lovely, indeed, and beautiful,
	yebken ni yebcungge.		fine, oh, and striking.
	geren gemu gefehe,		All settled and thick
	noroko noho,		with butterflies.
	fayangga ai farapi,		But alas, the spirit faints away,
10	buyenin buyecuke,		the desire is longed for,
	tuhen tuhekede,		when what falls has fallen,
	gegese genehe.		and the ladies have gone.

Translation Notes

boconggo boco and fiyangga fiyan fiyen. While boconggo and fiyangga may seem to be nearly the same in meaning, in poetry it seems like the latter is used more often to describe bright pink, orange and red colors, like autumn trees, sunsets and a person’s complexion, while the former is used more broadly. The Qianlong Manchu dictionary gives cira boco sain, beye ambalinggū be fiyangga sembi, “A good color of the face, or a stalwart body, are called fiyangga.” I chose “flush blush” as my translation for fiyangga fiyan to reflect this nuance.

hojo kai hocikon and yebken ni yebcungge. For these words Norman gives a set of overlapping meanings in the range of cute, attractive, likable, beautiful. A look at the Qianlong dictionary suggests that the former represents a specifically feminine type of beauty, as hehesi umesi hocikon be hojo sembi, “when women are very beautiful (hocikon) it is called hojo.” It is tempting to assume the latter is a more masculine type of beauty, but that is almost certainly not the case. Hu Zengyi gives an example sargan jui i arbun yebken saikan bisire fon i adali, “like the time when a girl’s appearance is yebken and saikan.” QL gives us getuken dacun niyalma be yebken sembi, “a lucid and shrewd person is called yebken.”

Snow, to the tune of Wind in the Pines

I have been exploring the idea that some or all of the Wind in the Pines poems in SB 11 are written in response to the corresponding Black-Naped Oriole poems earlier in the same fascicle.

If that is true then the poem below is a response to the Snow of my last post. Certainly some relationship between the two is likely in the fact that they both start with the same word, untuhun. With the consistent alliteration within each line it seems likely that this one would have been written by the same author that wrote Wind to the same tune.

	nimanggi [雪],		Snow
	Staatsbibliothek 11.19 (View Online)
	untuhun ulejefi,		The sky tumbled down,
	šahūn šarapi,		turned white as white,
	beri beri benjime,		bringing one after another,
	sisaha, sisa canggi,		it sprinkled, only sprinkles
5	tuheke tuhekei,		fell, but as it fell,
	inggaha inggari,		it became fluff and down.
	murušeme muduri,		Seeming that dragons
	becunuhei bi,		were fighting,
	emke emken esihe,		one scale after another,
10	fasar farsi farsi,		scattered piece by piece,
	tucinjihe tucin,		came forth in order
	sabubuha sabi.		to make an omen known.

Translation Difficulties

sisa. The usual meaning of sisa is “bean, pea,” which might suggest the idea of hail if it weren’t for the fact that Manchu has a much more common word for hail with the same number of syllables (bono). Given that sisambi means “to sprinkle,” I have read sisa as “sprinkes,” perhaps meaning snowflakes, or else maybe small icy drops.

The Moon, to the tune of Wind in the Pines

Here is another poem to the tune of Wind in the Pines. The theme is the moon (biya) so it has the thematic A-rhyme.

This poem is like a diptych, with the two stanzas of the Wind in the Pines form giving us two starkly different views of the moon. The first stanza describes the moon as an object of beauty, a sphere in space that bathes the world in a cold light. The second stanza abruptly turns to the regret Chang’e feels after being parted from the fertile earth to live out a cold eternity in the vast and empty palaces of the moon.

	biya [月],		The Moon
	Staatsbibliothek 11.20 (View Online)
	untuhun ya bai tana,		From what region of the void is this pearl?
	buleku fiyangga,		Mirror-colored,
	we-i hungkerehengge,		molded by whom?
5	fosoci, gehun ba ba,		When it shines, everywhere it is bright,
	gecen helmen jalu,		full of frost shadows,
	muke elden niša,		replete with water light.
	da e simen bakjikan,		Her menstrual flow was once thick,
10	te goidatala,		now, after so long,
	ekiyehun erin fulu,		thin times remain.
	muheliyen ainu tongga,		How limited is this sphere,
	selabun seriken,		happiness is sparse,
	seyecun utala.		and regret so plentiful.

Translation Difficulties

e simen. Norman has in-i simen, “menstrual discharge,” which must surely be the same thing, the word in being Chinese 陰, and the word e being the native Manchu word for the feminine principle.

Wind, to the tune of Wind in the Pines

This poem seems like a response to the the previous version of Wind, which was set to the Black-Naped Oriole tune. The two poems use the same rhyme, but while the previous poem described the wind in sublime and lofty terms, ending with a reference to the primordial eldest sister, this poem takes the eldest sister and imbues her with might and power.

The Manchu poems set to Wind in the Pines in Staatsbibliothek 11 and 14 consist of two stanzas with the metrical pattern 7,5,7,7,6,6 and rhyme pattern A,A,x,A,xA. This is essentially the same as the cí tune 風入松 as used by Song poet Wú Wényīng in a work titled 鄰舟妙香 (“Wonderful fragrance of the neighboring boat.”)

In addition to fitting the Chinese cí pattern, this poem also makes every line alliterative.

	edun [風]		Wind
	feng žu sung [風入松] sere mudan		To the tune of Wind in the Pines
	Staatsbibliothek 11.17 (View Online)
	ere eyungge eyun,		This eldest sister,
	dosire dosin,		her entry, when she enters,
	ara arbun amba ni,		doesn’t she take a mighty form?
	asuki, ai ajigen,		A faint noise, but nothing small,
5	fafuri fafungga,		stern when fierce,
	nemeyen nesuken.		tender when gentle.
	lasihire lalahūn,		The soft one that shakes
	wenere weren,		is the ripple that melts.
10	were wara encu ba,		She will nurture and kill in different places,
	enteke encu erin,		she does so in different seasons.
	mutubure muten,		The force that raises to maturity
	šahūrara šajin.		is the holy power that makes cold.