Fu Xuan - Poetry

Poetry

Fu Xuan's poems, primarily in the yuefu style, are noted for their powerful and empathetic portrayals of women. Translations of several of his sixty-odd extant poems can be found in the book New Songs from a Jade Terrace by Anne Birrell (ISBN 0-04-895026-2).

One of the more famous poems by Fu Xuan is "Woman" which goes as follows:

How sad it is to be a woman!!
Nothing on earth is held so cheap.
Boy stand leaning at the door
Like Gods fallen out of Heaven.
Their hearts brave the Four Oceans,
The wind and dust of a thousand miles.
No one is glad when a girl is born:
By her the family sets no store.
When she grows up, she hides in her room
Afraid to look at a man in the face.
No one cries when she leaves her home—Sudden as clouds when the rain stops.
She bows her head and composes her face,
Her teeth are pressed on her red lips:
She bows and kneels countless times.
She must humble herself even to the servants.
His love is distant as the stars in Heaven,
Yet the sunflower bends towards the sun.
Their hearts are more sundered than water and fire—A hundred evils are heaped upon her.
Her face will follow the years changes:
Her lord will find new pleasures.
They that were once like the substance and shadow
Are now as far from Hu as from Ch'in
Yet Hu and Ch'in shall sooner meet
That they whose parting is like Ts'an and Ch'en

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Famous quotes containing the word poetry:

    “A poet’s object is not to tell what actually happened but what could or would happen either probably or inevitably.... For this reason poetry is something more scientific and serious than history, because poetry tends to give general truths while history gives particular facts.”
    —Aristotle (384–323 B.C.)

    “I regard a love for poetry as one of the most needful and helpful elements in the life- outfit of a human being. It was the greatest of blessings to me, in the long days of toil to which I was shut in much earlier than most young girls are, that the poetry I held in my memory breathed its enchanted atmosphere through me and around me, and touched even dull drudgery with its sunshine.”
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    “Herein is the explanation of the analogies, which exist in all the arts. They are the re-appearance of one mind, working in many materials to many temporary ends. Raphael paints wisdom, Handel sings it, Phidias carves it, Shakspeare writes it, Wren builds it, Columbus sails it, Luther preaches it, Washington arms it, Watt mechanizes it. Painting was called “silent poetry,” and poetry “speaking painting.” The laws of each art are convertible into the laws of every other.”
    —Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)