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Friday, January 27, 2023

We Fought South of the Walls

"We Fought South of the Walls" is a Yuefu song from the Han Dynasty, imitated later on by Li Bai and other poets. Here is a detailed write-up of the idea and history of Yuefu. Basically it's collected folk songs, as opposed to literary creations, that represent, or are meant to represent, the feelings and thoughts of common people. Let's look at the original poem first, then Li Bai's adaptation.

戰城南

戰城南
死郭北
野死不葬烏可食
為我謂烏

且為客豪
野死諒不葬
腐肉安能去子逃

水深激激
蒲葦冥冥
梟騎戰斗死
駑馬徘徊鳴

梁筑室
何以南
何以北
禾黍不獲君何食
愿為忠臣安可得

思子良臣
良臣誠可思
朝行出攻
暮不夜歸

We Fought South of the Walls

We fought south of the walls
Died north of the city
Dead in the wilds, unburied, so crows can eat
Tell the crows on our behalf

Cry for the strangers
Dead in the wilds and so unburied
Whose rotting flesh can't escape you

The deep water runs bright
The reed bank grows dark
Brave horsemen died fighting
Tired horses wander neighing

They fortified the bridge
How to go south
How to go north
The harvest ungathered, how will our lord eat
We pray to be faithful vassals, but how is it achieved

We think of you good vassals
Good vassals truly are remembered
In the morning you went out to fight
At evening didn't return to sleep

The stanza breaks and italics are my own, based on rhyme sounds and clear distinctions in voice. Although not anti-war per se, this ancient poem is graphic and deeply mournful about war. The ghosts of dead soldiers, crows pecking at carion, exhausted horses wandering the battlefield - these are potent and indelible images. Even more moving, however, is how the poem enacts a community's grief and remembrance.

The movement of the poem is impressive, and its structure, complex, yet effective. I imagine the poem being performed by two choruses: one representing the dead soldiers (stanzas 1, 2, and 4), and the second, a stand-in for ourselves, the audience (stanzas 3 and 5). The soldiers first speak mournfully of themselves. Then the poem pulls back and surveys the scene from a wider perspective, seeing humans and horses against the backdrop of nature. But the ghosts are unappeased and we find ourselves suddenly in the thick of battle again, where the enemies have blocked the bridge and there is no escape. Some kind of textual corruption, perhaps a missing character, in the twelfth line accidentally heightens the effect.

There's bite or venom in the repetition of the word "eat" in line 15, I think - it recalls the crows of the first stanza. In connecting crows with the feudal lord, then in questioning whether it is possible to be a loyal subject, the soldiers' anguish reaches new heights and becomes a threat to the social order. It is at this point that the second chorus decisively steps in again, first to offer comfort to the unhappy ghosts, then to enact the community's grief and remembrance.

This is such an amazing poem, recording the facts of war and representing how an ancient community dealt with its aftermath. I find it as moving as any anti-war poem that I have read.

Now let's read Li Bai's anti-war poem, which is perhaps more famous, but a pastiche and not nearly as powerful, being a rhetorical exercise, rather than a direct expression of grief.

戰城南

去年戰桑乾源
今年戰蔥河道

洗兵條支海上波
放馬天山雪中草

萬里長征戰
三軍盡衰老

匈奴以殺戮爲耕作
古來唯見白骨黃沙田

秦家築城避胡處
漢家還有烽火然

烽火然不息
征戰無已時

野戰格鬥死
敗馬號鳴向天悲

烏鳶啄人腸
銜飛上掛枯樹枝

士卒塗草莽
將軍空爾爲

乃知兵者是兇器
聖人不得已而用之

We Fought South of the Walls

Last year we fought at the Sanggan's source
This year we fought on Cong River's roads

We washed arms in Tiaozhi's sea waves
Pastured horses on Tianshan's snowy grass

Countless miles we fight
The entire army spent and old

The Xiongnu make carnage their husbandry
Yellow sand fields ever showing only white bones

Qin men built walls to keep out the barbarians
Han men, too, have beacon fires burning

Beacon fires burn nonstop
For fighting without an end date

Fighting in the wilds, adversaries each has died
Riderless horses whinny skyward piteously

Black kites peck at human guts
Carry off to hang on the branches of dry trees

Dead soldiers soil the grass
Generals go for naught

Now I know that weapons are evil tools
That wise men use only when there's no other recourse

During Li Bai's time, the Chinese were again fighting deep inside Central Asia. Using Han terms to refer to contemporary situations was a habit and convention, but Li Bai literally resurrects a Han poem to do so. He uses most of the same elements, but with a rhetorical purpose; the geography and timeline become more general, at the same time that the details grow ornately grotesque. I admire the poem, but don't find it moving in the way that the original is moving.

What do you think? Am I being unfair to Li Bai?!