Indigo fields, sun-warmth

The NYRB Poets series has a volume devoted to Li Shangyin (c. 813–858) contaiing the work of three translators. All of them have a go at his most famous poem, 'Brocade Zither' (or 'The Opulent Zither' or 'The Patterned Lute)'. I first read the last of these many years ago in A. C. Graham's Poems of the Late T'ang and was intrigued by one particular line: 'On Blue Mountain the sun warms, a smoke issues from the jade.' Graham explained this as a reference to Dai Shulun (732-89) who 'said that the scene presented by a poet is like the smoke which issues from fine jade when the sun is warm on Blue Mountain (Lan-t'ien, "Indigo field"); it can be seen from a distance but not from close to.' Although I understood the idea that poetry presents things imprecisely, like smoke on a mountain, and that its richness cannot be studied at close quarters, I was still a bit baffled by the metaphor.

Lantian (Blue Fields) is in Shaanxi province and is most famous now perhaps for Lantian man, the early hominid species. 'In Lantian,' according to Wikipedia, 'white and greenish nephrite jade is found in small quarries and as pebbles and boulders in the rivers flowing from the Kun-Lun mountain range northward into the Takla-Makan desert area.' There is a specific area called Yushan, Jade Mountain, famous for its fine jade. In recent years the Chinese architect Ma Quingyun has established a winery here (as described at some length in an article in The California Sunday Magazine). Back in the eighth century Dai Shulun was saying that in intense heat, the jade hidden in the rocks of Lantian rises into the air. If this is taken literally, I guess he was referring to fine clouds of jade powder from the quarries. 

It is possible to go further and read into this line of poetry deeper allusions to its elements: heat, smoke, jade. Just to give one example, there is a story of a girl called Purple Jade who returned after death to redeem the reputation of her lover, accused of tomb robbery. Her mother wanted to embrace her spirit but she just turned to smoke. Therefore, as Maja Lavrač writes in 'Li Shangyin and the Art of Poetic Ambiguity', jade can symbolize something unattainable. Li Shangyin may be alluding in his poem to something or someone attractive but inaccessible. And this is done through a single landscape image that simultaneously alludes to the mysterious beauty of poetry.

There is a lot more to say about Li Shangyin of course - see for example an excellent interview with translator Chloe Garcia Roberts at The Critical Flame. But I will simply end here with her own rendering of this single line of Li Shangyin's:

Indigo fields, sun-warmth,
Jade begets smoke

From sea's wide spring out flows the tide

This is The Book of Taliesin, which I have been reading in the new translation by Gwyneth Lewis and Rowan Williams. Authors and dates for the poems it contains are impossible to identify, although they are ascribed to the shadowy figure of Taliesin, a sixth century bard associated with one or more of the leading royal houses of the Old North. Of course there are no proper landscape descriptions in these poems, but natural imagery occurs within certain lines. An example is the 'Elegy for Cú Roi mac Dáir' which opens with the movement of the tide. The translators note that the second half of the second line below 'employs two words spelt differently but almost identical in pronunciation, as if to suggest that the water and advances and retreats an equal distance, as it would at high or low water':

Dy ffynhawn lydan   dylleinw aches,
dydaw, dyhebcyr,    dybris, dybrys.

From sea's wide spring   out flows the tide:
It advances, retreats,   it smashes, crushes.

The most appealing poem in the book is 'Taliesin's Sweetnesses', a catalogue of the bard's favourite aspects of creation that reminded me of those lists you find in Sei Shōnagon's Pillow Book, such as  her 'Things that make your heart beat fast'. Taliesin's list covers everything from jewellery and mead to 'a cleric in church if he's faithful,' but I've extracted below some things he enjoys in nature. When you put these together - berries, leaks, purple heather, ospreys on the shore, cattle on a sea marsh - you can start to picture the landscape of Wales and western Scotland that a real Taliesin would have known

Sweet are the berries at harvest time;
Sweet, also is wheat on the stem.

Sweet is the sun on clouds in the sky;
Sweet, too, is light on the evening's brow.

Sweet is a thick-maned stallion in a herd;
Sweet, too is the warp of a spider's web.

Sweet are ospreys on shore at high tide;
Sweet too is watching the seagulls play.

Sweet is the garden when leeks are thriving;
Sweet also, is field mustard sprouting.

Sweet is heather when it blossoms purple;
Sweet, too, is a sea marsh for cattle.

Sweet are the fish in the shining lake;
Sweet, too, is water's play of light and dark.

The Fortress of Königstein

 

For various reasons it's much harder at the moment for me to go to exhibitions than it used to be, but I did pop down yesterday to the National Gallery to see Bellotto: The Königstein Views Reunited. These five views (two of them in my photograph above) were painted  in 1756-8 when Bellotto was court painter to August III, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland. I last mentioned Bellotto back in 2007 after I had seen the recently restored Bellotto room of the Royal Palace in Warsaw. I would love one day to visit Königstein which looks still looks spectacular in photographs. The fortress was still being used as a prison until 1922 and among its famous inmates was Frank Wedekind, author of the Lulu plays, who got into trouble for some satirical verses. Here are a few observations on the five views from left to right as they appear in the exhibition:

The Fortress of Königstein: Courtyard with the Brunnenhaus

One of two views inside the fortress. Its rows of railings, windows and chimneys drawing your attention to the painting's lines of perspective. As you get closer your attention is drawn to the figures of guards and gardeners and you begin to wonder about individuals like a beggar leaning against a wall and a man walking along in traditional Polish costume. The light picks out peeling walls, blossoms in the garden and a dog's upturned face.  

The Fortress of Königstein from the North

The first of three broader landscape views, with the castle lit more brightly than the forerground and tiny soldiers visible on its ramparts. The ground sloping up to the castle is interesting in itself, with holes worn into the bare sandstone. Again the figures in the scene suggest unknowable stories - a tired looking herdsman, a coach and horses heading off into the distance...

The Fortress of Königstein from the North-West

Here there is a second mountain, the Lilienstein, repeating the shape of the castle. In the distance a dark rain cloud casts shadows on the plain. The foreground is spotlit like a stage, although the pastoral figures arranged on it seem rather contrived. On the slope below the fortress there is a kind of doorway - the entrance to an underground dungeon.

The Fortress of Königstein from the South-West

This one has a diagonal composition (see photo, right) and the massive sandstone castle wall resembles an impregnable cliff. By this time I was starting to get a feel for the geography of the place, spotting towers from the other paintings and orientating myself imaginatively through the given directions.

The Fortress of Königstein: Courtyard with the Magdalenenburg

The final view includes a building that was apparently home to a 60,000 gallon cask of wine! The figures dotted around range from two gentleman and a lady apparently admiring a carved doorway to some washerwomen laying out laundry. The stained, cracked walls are beautifully painted and the whole scene takes place under a cool blue sky that made me long to be far away from rainy London.

 

 Bernardo Bellotto, The Fortress of Königstein: Courtyard with the Magdalenenburg, 1756-8

 

Back in July Jonathan Jones in The Guardian gave this little exhibition a five star review. He claims Bellotto is a 'forgotten artist' and that the Seven Years' War in which he got caught up is a 'little known conflict'... Nevertheless he does make a good point about the atmosphere of these works which I'll quote: 

A delicate white kiosk balances on a cliff edge among green trees, suggesting this has become a pleasure park, but near it is a much older tower from days of feudal war. The fortress appears daunting from certain angles, oddly elegant from others. Which is the real mood: coffee and Handel concerts – or defensive might? The works have an aura of decay that might suggest Dracula’s castle, if there wasn’t so much life here. It looks as if the entire Dresden court are whiling away their time in the castle precincts, waiting for the Prussians to come.

Laura Cumming's review is more informative and I'll conclude with a quote from her about the way these scenes mix landscape with human interest.

Wandering through these scenes, the eye is taken dramatically into a doorway, up to a balcony strewn with washing, or down to the facade of a church and then back out through the landscape to a dark and distant quietude beyond – a faraway land, unknown and stirring, where hermits might be found in caves, or Nosferatu in a haunted castle. ... Trysts succeed and fail; pot plants slowly decline on high windowsills. Carts bring food effortfully up to the fortress. But down below, where we are, at eye level, the rural world continues through the seasons as if the big people had nothing to do with them. And in some profound sense this was true.