Autumn wind brings chilliness everywhere except the wedding-chamber, where spring happily lingers.
On this day last spring I was grieving the fall, leaning on my study’s railing all alone. I wanted to ask the blue birds up in the clouds to deliver my message to the Heavenly immortals:1 the realm of passionate love is where I wish to make my mark; I envy not the immortals’ paradise on Yingzhou.2
SCENE 7 CONJUGAL HARMONY
(Fan Shi speaks)
(Fan Shi sings)
To the Tune of Huatangchun (Spring in the Painted Hall) (Fan Shi sings)
My thirst for romantic love fully quenched,
Ever since I married Miss Cui, we have composed linked verses bosom to bosom, and discussed essays with our necks entwined. Although husband and wife, we are more like friends in the same literary club. (Doesn’t that make others envious!)
Passing Tune in the Mode of Xianlü: Zuifugui (Carried Home Drunk)
Could it be that she is praying on and on to the gods of good tidings?
Could it be that she is playing a prank on me to make me feel anxious?
48 6 the fragrant companions
Early this morning, she went to a nunnery to burn Nowincense.itisdusk, but she has yet to return. I can’t stand this loneliness.
Could it be that, like the Goddess of the Moon, she regrets having stolen the elixir of immortality?3
Could it be that she is angry at me for not accompanying her to the nunnery, and is thus unwilling to return home at a decent hour?
(Fan Shi speaks) Why don’t I take a nap by my desk? (Fan Shi sleeps)
Could it be that she has gone off with an old acquaintance?
I covet nothing beyond what I have. Even worldly success and fame, or longevity, can come and go as they please; I am beyond them.
(Jianyun enters with her maid and recites) Having just met my soul mate, my happiness suddenly turns into lament. / Composing only one piece of poetry together, we parted to opposite corners of the world. / The “High-Mountain” does not make Zhong Ziqi stay; / “Flowing Water” can only sob for Yu Boya in vain.4 The poetic exchange that I had today with Miss Cao in the Rain-F lower Nun nery will live on as a literary legend, a marvelous convergence in a woman’s fragrant boudoir! I was going to tell my husband about it,
the fragrant companions 5 49 and share these beautiful verses with him. But now that I have made a date to see her again, if my husband gets wind of it, he will defi nitely want to go with me and steal a glimpse of Miss Cao. If he did something frivolous and unceremonious, and her father heard about it, that would be a death knell for any future union between us! Therefore, today I will only show him Yuhua’s poem and not tell him what her name is, allowing him to appreciate her poem only in anonymity. I will tell him the truth after my next meeting with Yuhua. If one wants to enjoy the “flower” for a bit longer, she must be wary of butterflies. / I shall wait till the honey grows sweet, then thank the bee.5 (Jianyun and her maid enter the house) (Jianyun’s maid says) Oh, the young master is sleeping here! (Jianyun ) He is sound asleep; do not awaken him from his dream. (Jianyun sings) (To the same tune as before) Do not interrupt him from dreaming of writing “pond-grass”
Fearingpoetry.6adraft, I close the window for him, so that chilly wind cannot shatter his “reverie of capturing his prey.”7 Poor thing, look how he has pillowed his head on a rock-hard book, and rested his body against some pointy, insubstantial flowers. (Jianyun speaks) Taking advantage of his sleeping soundly, why don’t I place Yuhua’s poem on his desk, and ask him: (Jianyun sings) Is the “Pen-F lower” more charming than a Let“Talking-Flower?”8meusea“Paper-Cloud ” to envelop him like a “Romantic Cloud.”9
To the Tune of Zaoluopao (Black Silk Robe)
50 6 the fragrant companions
These poems are full of an ethereal flavor, like fairies, about to drift up toward Heaven; the calligraphy reveals a taste of Chan, like an ascetic, gaunt and wizened. But why do these delicately tinged sheets also carry an amorous aroma? (Fan Shi speaks) My lady, where do these poems come from? (Jianyun) I do not know what you are talking about! (She picks up the poems and takes a look) Oh, these are verses of “A Beauty’s Fragrance.” I have been using them as a bookmark. Who took them out and left them here? (Fan Shi asks) Who wrote the poems? (Jianyun answers) They were written by some proper young ladies. The poems have been widely circulated, and I happened to receive a copy, too. (Jianyun sings)
You left me sitting sad and alone in this empty study; I looked for you in the dream of Gaotang,10 and there I found you, my lady! (Fan Shi sees the poems) Where did these come from? In my sleepiness I do not remember resting my head on these poems. How have I awakened to find these sheets of a manuscript by my side? (Fan Shi looks at the poems and mutters to himself) How strange! These characters do not look like those written by a poet and the poem does not seem to be written by a calligrapher. (Jianyun) Why do you think so? (Fan Shi sings)
(Fan Shi awakes) (Jianyun speaks) Dear, I bet you got impatient waiting for me. (Fan Shi ) Don’t even mention it! (Fan Shi sings)
You could say that they are like the royal sisters Ehuang and Nüying,11 who were a pair of pearls, both adorned in brocaded robes; or the Lu brothers, Ji and Yun, or the prodigiously talented Lu Ji and Pan Yue.12
The names of the poets are unknown; I only know that they were written about a belle with the last name Cao. (Jianyun sings)
Neither of them could be praised as the better of the pair!
(Jianyun speaks) If an examiner read these two poems, he would have to pick a winner among the two. He most certainly could not award first place to both of them! (Fan Shi) If you want me to pick a
the fragrant companions 5 51
These marvelous pieces were penned for a maiden of the Cao Althoughfamily,hername is unidentified, I hear that she is a first-class beauty.
(Jianyun speaks) My lord, which one of the two poems do you think is better? (Fan Shi) While the first one is uplifting and pure, the sec ond one is elegant and unrestrained; they are both on par with one another, and it is difficult to rank one over the other. (Jianyun sings)
(To the same tune as before)
(Fan Shi speaks) Do you know the names of the poets? (Jianyun )
They are new verses by two damsels of the inner quarters; because everyone is copying and passing them around, I too have included them among the verses I recite when I have time for leisure.
winner, you will need to invite both of them here. I will have to sit them down by my side, give them a face-to-face exam, and only then will I be able to pick a winner. Right now, I can only rule this a tie. (Jianyun) If that’s the case, can you compose a couple of response poems in matching rhymes? (Fan Shi laughs at her) You have not yet passed the civil service examination and earned the rank of “Elevated Scholar,” yet you want to test the examiner? All right, I will write one. (He takes a brush in hand and whispers to him self) Let me first visualize this beautiful girl, then sniff the air with my nose for her scent; only in this way can I produce a captivating piece. (He makes a gesture of smelling) (Jianyun looks at him and laughs) (To the same tune as before) (Fan Shi sings) My nose has caught a rare scent, barely detectable, like a wisp of particles from ancient ink, suffusing the hairs of my writing brush. (Fan Shi speaks) Bah! How can I ignore the beautiful woman stand ing before me and try to sniff out that imaginary one? All I have to do is to catch a whiff of the scent on my wife’s body, then it won’t be just two poems—I can come up with ten of them! (Fan Shi sings)
A beautiful mountain rises in front of me but does not invite me in, where in the vast empty sky can a poet go to find inspiration? (Fan Shi leans towards his wife and sniffs, saying) Here is the scent of her rouge-covered lips, here is the scent of her raven hair, here is the scent of her delicate fingers, and here is the scent of her tiny lotus feet. (Fan Shi sings)
52 6 the fragrant companions
the fragrant companions 5 53
The scent of her powder is sweet and pure, the scent of her locks, luxuriantly lovely, the scent of her fingers, pointily succulent, and the scent of her feet, faintly alluring. (fan Shi speaks) There is another type of scent that I need to taste. As is said in one of the poems, “Oh, from the belle’s crimson sashes it comes forth.” I beg you to loosen your sashes, so that I can smell this particular scent. (He tries to untie Jianyun’s sashes) (Jianyun ) You are not writing the poems, but pestering me with your mischievous intentions. (She pushes him away) (Fan Shi ) Your adorable little fit of pique has spurred me to finish my poems: here they are! (He writes down the poems. Jianyun reads them out loud) “The aroma is not borrowed from scenting hampers, / even Lily of the Valley pales in comparison. / Do not blame the poet for surrendering to its sweet intoxication, / he finds his “tender home” among the myriad flow ers.13 / Stop guessing, you common butterflies; / she speaks a special language of the flowers. / If like Xun Yu, she sits with me for three days,14 / it’s no wonder that I am captive to her scent.” These are good answering verses; it’s just that the last two lines are a bit friv olous. (Jianyun sings) (To the same tune as before) Your poems are as good as the songs of “White Snow” and “Spring Time,”15 but they are overly amorous, and a bit overwrought. If I allow you to come into the presence of that talented belle, I worry that you would devise some wicked scheme to seduce her. (Fan Shi speaks) I was just joking! How come you’ve turned jealous? My lady, let’s talk this over. Now that I’ve written some answering
Talking of poetry with my beloved late into the night, I enjoy his gentle teasing but pretend to be upset. (Fan Shi sings)
Standing right beside the flower I failed to detect its onlyfragrance;afterwriting about it, did I realize how rare is its sweetness.
54 6 the fragrant companions poems, how can we find a way to send them to these beauties, so that my hard work will not have been in vain? (Jianyun ) Deliver ing the poems would not be too difficult; I am just afraid that after reading your verses (Jianyun sings) their lovely faces would burst with ire.
The paper on which your poems are written would meet torndisaster,topieces, and quickly thrown into a fire or roiled up into a flood, which will sweep away this silly infatuation that has consumed you this whole day! (Jianyun sings)
“A wonderful and long-awaited addition to the world canon of queer literature!”
“A tremendous achievement, this felicitous translation of The Fragrant Companions makes Li Yu’s most popular play accessible and should inspire stagings of the play across the English-speaking world.”
“This expert and highly readable translation takes readers into the world of Chinese opera by presenting a new classic, rich in literary quality, delightful in its panorama of life in seventeenth-century China, and unique in its portrayal of female same-sex romance.”
TRANSLATIONS FROM THE CLASSICS UNIVERSITY | design: Milenda Nan Ok Lee image: (flower painting by Chen Hongshou [1598–1652]).
ASIAN
—TZE-LAN DEBORAH SANG, AUTHOR OF THE EMERGING LESBIAN: FEMALE SAME-SEX DESIRE IN MODERN CHINA
“This engaging translation makes available in lively English the maverick playwright
PRESS
—SE KILE, UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
YING WANG is Felicia Gressitt Bock Professor of Asian Studies at Mount Holyoke College.
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Photograph by Jiahuan He . © Sichuan Museum PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.
—PATRICIA SIEBER, COEDITOR OF HOW TO READ CHINESE DRAMA
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—KEITH McMAHON, AUTHOR OF CELESTIAL WOMEN: IMPERIAL WIVES AND CONCUBINES IN CHINA FROM SONG TO QING “Li Yu’s wit fully comes alive in this elegant and entertaining translation.”
Li Yu’s playful and convention-defying account of romantic love between two women almost four hundred years ago. Resonating with conversations about sexuality and gender identity in our contemporary social world, this adept translation not only is poised to become indispensable reading in a range of undergraduate courses but also would lend itself well to stage adaptation.”
—SOPHIE VOLPP, AUTHOR OF THE SUBSTANCE OF FICTION: LITERARY OBJECTS IN C HINA, 1550–1775 LI YU (1611–1680) was a popular author, playwright, and theatrical impresario with a reputation for tales that tested social limits. He was born into a gentry family, but after the chaos of the Ming-Qing transition kept him from an official career, he became a commercially successful writer. Li’s works in English translation include A Couple of Soles: A Comic Play from Seventeenth-Century China (Columbia, 2019).
STEPHEN RODDY is a professor of languages, literatures, and cultures at the University of San Francisco.