Manchu Handwriting

The Staatsbibliothek manuscript is written in at least three distinctive but related styles. By comparing these with the handwriting of known authors, perhaps we could eventually make a guess at who the author(s) of the Staatsbibliothek manuscript might have been.

But what features can we reliably compare between different writers?

One that leaps out when looking at a page of Manchu text is the shape of the left and right tails in words like be and de. These can be written in quite different ways, as can be seen in these examples drawn from Jakdan and Mucihiyan:

Jakdan’s left tail usually goes out in a long, relatively straight line with a small hook at the end. His right tail is usually shaped like a fishhook. Mucihiyan, in contrast, makes his left and right tails quite short, and his right tail is consistently thick while his left tail is consistently thin.

In both Jakdan and Mucihiyan’s handwriting, the be has a small left-pointing tooth before the tail. Contrast that with the handwriting in the Staatsbibliothek, where there is usually a small right-pointing tooth before the tail in be:

Based on these examples, as well as my general feeling from spending many hours reading these texts, it seems unlikely that the Staatsbibliothek manuscript was written by either Jakdan or Mucihiyan. It is unclear, though, whether the SB was written by one hand or by three. Is the thick right tail of SB-B a stylistic flourish, or the work of a different writer? Is the flatter right tail of SB-C just a way to conserve space on the page?

Topic versus Subject

Cén Shēn [岑參] wrote the following lines to Dù Fǔ [杜甫] when the two of them were serving together in different departments of the imperial government:

白髮悲花落，
青雲羨鳥飛。

The meaning of these lines seems relatively clear in the original Chinese:

The white-haired one grieves that flowers fall,
the dark clouds envy that birds fly.

Knowing that Cén Shēn addressed these lines to his respected elder Dù Fǔ, we can assume that the “white-haired one” must be Dù Fǔ, and the “dark clouds” would refer to the dark-haired younger man Cén Shēn. The couplet contrasts the older man’s sadness over what has passed away with the younger man’s envies and aspirations.

While the original lines seem relatively clear, what Jakdan did with them is not straightforward. Here are his lines:

funiyehe šarapi sihaha ilhai okto,
yacin tugingge deyenere gashai hihan,

The first line begins with a perfect converb phrase, funiyehe šarapi, “hair having turned white,” followed by a noun phrase, sihaha ilhai okto, “the medicine of falling flowers.” I have not found many clear cases of enjambment in Manchu poetry, so we should assume that this line contains a complete idea, and therefore that the medicine is a predicate. Somehow, we also need to square it with the meaning of the original.

A noun phrase can definitely be a predicate in Manchu poetry, and we often see this in poems with N-rhymes, because no Manchu verb form ends in -n. When we find the syntax NP₁ NP₂, we can usually insert a copula, reading it as “NP₁ is/are NP₂.” If that is what is going on here, and we take the medicine to be NP₂, then we need to look back and find NP₁, and the only previous explicit noun phrase in this line is “hair.” That would suggest a reading like:

The hair, having turned white, is the medicine of falling flowers

With a little imagination you could see how that line might mean something, but not necessarily the same kind of thing as the original Chinese line. The strangeness of this reading begs a closer examination of the line.

As we know, the hair in question belongs to Dù Fǔ, to whom the poem is addressed. If we take the topic of the line to be an unspoken “you,” then a different reading could be possible because the relationship between a topic and a noun predicate is looser than that between a subject and noun predicate. An example of this is the type of structure you might use when ordering a beer in Japanese:

私はビールです

In this line, the topic is “I” [私] and the comment is “[it] is a beer” [ビールです]. The meaning is not “I am a beer,” but rather “As for me, it will be a beer.” Applying this structure to the first line, we get a more sensible reading:

Your hair has turned white, and for you there is the medicine of fallen flowers

The word “medicine” doesn’t really capture the meaning of okto, which can also mean “poison,” so a slightly better reading could be:

Your hair has turned white, and for you there is the potency of fallen flowers

The topic+comment structure also works well for the second line, where the poet identifies himself as yacin tugingge, “the one with the dark clouds.” Treating that as the topic, we get:

For me, the dark-clouded one, there is the preciousness of flying birds

As a minor note, Jakdan’s birds are “flying away” (deye-ne-re), not just “flying”  (deye-re).

Translated Weirdness

Sometimes, when you’re translating a text, you come across something that just doesn’t make sense. If your text is prosaic then you can usually assume the author meant something sensible, and you can hunt around for a rational way to interpret what you’re seeing.

That approach doesn’t work as well when you’re translating poetry, because things happen in poetry that don’t happen in prose. When you find something that doesn’t make normal sense in a poem, you need to figure out whether the poet intended it that way, or whether you’ve simply misunderstood the text. The work becomes even more difficult when you’re translating a translation of a poem by a clever writer like Jakdan, who sometimes inserts his own twists into the product.

Take, for example, Jakdan’s translation of the following line from Spending the Night at the Yamen of the Left Gate in Spring [春宿左省] by Dù Fǔ:

花隱掖垣暮，    gurung-ni fu-i ilha buruhun-i yamjiha,

It’s easy to see which words in Jakdan’s translation equate to which words in the original, but less easy to see how he intends his translation to be understood.

The simplest way to parse the line is as follows:

gurung-ni fu-i ilha, noun-phrase, subject of the sentence, “the flowers on the outside walls of the palace”

buruhun-i, noun marked with the genitive/instrumental case,  adverbial phrase, “dimly, in a shadowy way”

yamjiha, perfect tense, finite verb, “it [the sun] set”

Unfortunately, this simplest way of parsing the sentence gives us a weird line that is difficult to square with the original:

“The flowers on the outside walls of the palace dimly set.”

There’s a certain beauty to the nonsensical idea of flowers setting, but Dù Fǔ can’t possibly have meant “the flowers on the outside walls” in the original because the character 隱 (buruhun, dim) is interposed between the flowers 花 (ilha) and the outside wall 掖垣 (gurung-ni fu).

Another way to parse Jakdan’s line is to take ilha buruhun as a coordinate noun-phrase, “flowers and shadows.” This works better with the original because Dù Fǔ put the two corresponding characters together. If we set aside the palace walls for a moment, and let the genitive/instrumental -i at the end of ilha buruhun-i create an adverbial phrase, then the remainder of the line can be read as:

“Dusk fell in a flowery, shadowy way.”

Again, that’s pretty, but then what do we do about the palace walls, which also carry the genitive/instrumental case marker? It seems awkward and clumsy to suggest that the sun sets in a manner like the palace walls, or by means of the palace walls.

It would be better if we could read the case-marker -i on gurung-ni fu-i as marking an object behind which the sun sets. Semantically that isn’t as big of a stretch as it may seem, because we’re essentially saying that the sun makes evening by means of the thing it sets behind. That gives us:

“It [the sun] set behind the outside walls of the palace, bringing dusk in a flowery, shadowy way”

Or, to put it more concisely:

“Dusk fell flowery and shadowy within the palace walls” 

Bookworm

To the tune Drunk on the East Wind.

	nisiha umiyaha [蠧魚],		Bookworm
	Staatsbibliothek 11.57 (View Online)
	teku ai,		Where is its dwelling?
	bithei boode,		In the studio.
	jeku ai,		What is its food?
	hergen bete,		The written word is helpless before it.
5	umiyahai gebu,		It has an insect’s name,
	nisihai yangse,		but the appearance of a small fish.
	somitai,		Hiding away,
	hoošan tobo,		in a paper hut,
	me wang [脉望] ohakū seme,		it didn’t turn out to be a maiwang, so
10	naranggi,		in the end,
	bolgo gingge.		it’s clean and pure.

Notes:

teku ai, literally, “what is its dwelling?”

hergen bete, I don’t understand what bete is doing here. According to the Qianlong dictionary, a weak or inferior person is called bete. My best guess is that this is saying the written word is weak and inferior before the bookworm.

me wang, [脉望] mài wàng. This is a legendary type of bookworm that only eats the characters for “Immortal Being” [神仙], ignoring all others. By eating these characters, it can become an immortal being, and by eating such a bookworm a scholar can take the highest placement in the examinations.

bolgo gingge, maybe it is the page that is clean and pure, after the bookworm has eaten all the characters?

The Song of the Wretched Scholar, in 5-syllable couplets

Staatsbibliothek fascicles 4 and 14 contain a total of four poems written in five-syllable couplets, of which the poem below is one example. It seems this poem is further organized into quatrains (pairs of couplets), based on the changes of subject matter. This form, borrowed from Chinese tradition, must have been somewhat difficult for a Manchu poet because it limits most lines to two words.

The scholar in the poem is an idealized character, his wretched exterior contrasted with a noble interior. We don’t really get to see the scholar as a whole person, however, with hopes and fears and weaknesses and idiosyncrasies, and in that way the subject seems very shallow.

As the last couplet suggests, we are likely to wonder who the scholar is, and I think the poet had a particular person in mind. Unfortunately, I have never yet seen a Manchu poem where a person is actually named outright, so we may never for certain whom this was intended to describe.

	yadahūn saisa-i ucun		The Song of the Wretched Scholar
	Staatsbibliothek 14.8 (View Online)
	kokima saisa,		The indigent scholar
	umesi yobo,		is quite funny.
	suilacun canggi,		All he has is hardship,
	yadahūn noho,		he’s covered in poverty.
5	abai etuku,		Where are his clothes from?
	abai jemengge,		Where are his meals from?
	aide boo ūlen,		Where is his house and home?
	aide tuwa muke,		Where are his fire and water?
	ai wehe yaha,		What coal does he have?
10	ai jeku bele,		What food and grain?
	jiha yamaka,		Has he any money?
	ulin aibide,		Where is his property?
	nagan fulahūn,		His kang is pink,
	dere [几] ajige,		his table is small,
15	agūra seci,		as for implements,
	mucen-i teile,		just a cooking pot.
	juwari halukan,		Summer is warm,
	kemuni yebe,		so that is nicer,
	tuweri šahūrun,		but winter is cold,
20	ainu hamire,		how will he tolerate it?
	muru ubiyada,		His form is detestable,
	gisun eimede,		his speech repugnant,
	cira horoki,		his face looks old,
	giru šoyoro,		his appearance wrinkled.
25	gūnin wesihun,		His thoughts are exalted,
	beye giohoto,		though he has a beggar’s body.
	oilo buyasi,		Outside he’s humble,
	dolo yekengge,		inside he’s grand.
	hesebun juken,		Fated to be common,
30	mujilen tondo,		his mind is upright,
	mujin ambakan,		his aspirations are great,
	yabun hošonggo,		his deeds are righteous.
	jurgan tuwakiyahai,		As he watches over his virtues,
	hanja hairame,		he loves honesty,
35	jalangga beki,		he’s strong in frugality,
	sahiba moco,		unskilled at fawning.
	aisi de heolen,		Unconcerned with profit,
	tacin de hojo,		gratified in study,
	derenggei doli,		noble in substance,
40	gicukei oilo,		disgraceful in appearance.
	baitalan eden,		Lacking employment,
	funiyagan onco,		his forbearance is vast,
	ere we seci,		if you ask who this is,
	yan dzeng [顏曾] ni gese.		it’s the likes of Yán Huí and Zēngzǐ.

Translation difficulties

derenggei doli. For doli Norman has “the pulp of fruit.” Since the poet has paired it with oilo in the next line, it suggests a meaning that contrasts the scholar’s inner (dolo) being with his outer (oilo) appearance. I chose the translation “substance” as a term that could capture the idea of the stuff a person is made of as well as the stuff you find inside a fruit.

Magpie

In the following poem, set to the tune Celebrating the Sacred Dynasty, the magpie is a wise craftsman who builds a strong and secure house. However, the poem invokes a metaphor of the Duke of Zhou, and that must surely be from the Shījīng [詩經] I.2.12, which begins:

維鵲有巢，維鳩居之
saksaha-i feye be / dudu ejelembiThe nest of the magpie / is occupied by the turtledove

The commentary on this poem from the Manchu translation of the Shījīng reads:

saksaha feye arara faksi.	The magpie is the maker of the nest.
terei feye mujakū akdun beki.	Its nest is truly strong and secure.
dudu-i banin moco, feye arame bahanarakū.	The turtledove, by nature, is crude, and cannot build a nest.
ememungge saksaha-i belen-i araha feye de bimbi.	Some live in the nests ready-made by the magpies.

The use of the words faksi, akdun, beki in the poem below show a direct allusion to the commentary above. The ending lines of the Manchu poem ask a question that could be understood in two different ways, depending on whether faksi means “craftsman” or “craftiness”:

• Who is taught by this kind of wise craftsman?
• Who is taught by this kind of clever craftiness?

I think the ambiguity may be intentional, allowing the poet to simultaneously challenge the wisdom of working hard when one’s work will ultimately be taken over by another, and also to invite the listener to consider what kind of person would see this and take it as a model for their own dishonest behavior.

	saksaha [鵲雀],		Magpie
	Staatsbibliothek 11.59 (View Online)
	banitai,		By nature,
	banin gali,		precocious in disposition,
	jilgaci,		when it sings,
	jilgan sabi,		its song is an omen,
5	jeo gung duibulen,		it was a metaphor of the Duke of Zhou.
	feye arambi,		It makes a nest,
	uce fa,		doors and windows
	akdun beki,		strong and secure.
	tacibuhangge weci,		Who are the ones that are taught
10	enteke sure faksi.		by this kind of clever craftiness?

Translation Notes

weci, this is either “from whom” or the plural form of we, “who?” I think the latter makes more sense in this context.

The musical rhythm of the Black-Naped Oriole

The Black-Naped Oriole is the most popular cí tune in the Staatsbibliothek poems. Looking in fascicle 36 of 新定九宮大成南北詞宮譜, there are four melodies set to different versions of the tune, recorded using gōngchě notation.

Of these, the third variant seems the best fit to the meter of the poems in the Staatsbibliothek manuscript, and we can use it to figure out not only the musical tune that accompanied the performance of a Black-Naped Oriole poem, but also the lengths assigned to each syllable when the poem was sung out loud.

The notes in gōngchě notation are recorded to the right of the syllable they accompany, and the timing is indicated by dots and circles to the right of the notes. The dots and circles represent the alternating weak and strong beats of a drum, and by looking at their placement in the tune, we can figure out how long most of the syllables were held for.

The shortest syllable length is half a beat, and all other syllable lengths are multiples of that. If we represent syllable lengths in half-beats (so the shortest syllable is length 1, double that is length 2, and so forth) the Black-Naped Oriole rhythm looks like the following:

Line 1:    1 - 1 - 1 - 3 - 6 (rhyme)
Line 2:    2 - 2 - 2 - 1 - 3 - 2 (rhyme)
Line 3:    1 - 1 - 2 - 2 - 1 - 3 - 5 (rhyme)
Line 4:    1 - 1 - 1 - 2 - 5 (rhyme)
Line 5:    1 - 1 - 1 - 2 - 2 (rhyme)
Line 6:    2 - 2 - 2 - 2 - 1 - 3 - 4  (rhyme)
Line 7:    2 - 2 - 2 (rhyme)
Line 8:    1 - 1 - 2 - 2 (non-rhyming line)
(caesura length 1)
Line 9:    1 - 2 - 1 - 3 - 2 (rhyme)

A number of really interesting features emerge when you look at the poem this way. One of these is that the caesura before line 9 (the punch-line) really is a caesura, and it looks like a unique feature of the Manchu performance of the Black-Naped Oriole. In the Chinese form there is actually a character there that occupies half a beat, but in Manchu there is never a syllable there, and the scribe often puts a line that visually indicates the presence of the caesura.

Another feature is a rhythmic theme at the ends of lines that runs 1 - 3 - 2+. It appears at the ends of lines 1, 2, and 3, but then there is something like a Western musical bridge in lines 4, 5 and 6. Lines 7 and 8 set up the punch-line, and the punch-line returns to the theme.

To apply this to a poem, here is the Fishing poem, with the theme in green and the bridge in blue.

tugi mukei ba
mini boo ya falga
ula tenggin hūi ciha
asu maktara
nimaha niša
nure hūlašacina
wei sasa
nurei hoki
(caesura)
bele edun biya