Lesbian Sorrow Poetry: Wu Zao is Here

A Qing dynasty heroine

[Pages from a book of poems by Wu Zao. The drawing is not of her - it’s a mountain spirit. There are no photographs of Wu and it is difficult to verify drawings and paintings. The photo circulating around Google Images is also not her]

Wu Zao (or Tsao if you’re an older Sinologist) is the historical figure you never knew you needed. She offers plentiful representation to the majority audience of this Substack, ie. depressed lesbians in a perpetual crisis of illness and sorrow. Some of these poems are appearing on the web for the first time in English today - only a few have been published in print or for a general audience in translation before (in a compendium of Chinese women poets). Shuojun Chen’s thesis, Iron Clappers and Red Castanets, is available online and is a good further source.  

Wu lived in Hangzhou, an ancient city known for its canals, between 1799 and 1862. Despite the mercantile class of her parents, she was exceptionally literate for a woman of her day, writing a play (The Fake Image, containing cross-dressing) and many verse collections, as well as commentary on the famous novel Dream of the Red Chamber. Accusations of lesbianism arise mainly because of a supposed love affair with Qing-lin (or Ch’ing-lin) a courtesan, a love poem to whom of which I have (re)translated somewhere in this newsletter.

Some Poems

Here Wu is writing in dialogue with Li Qingzhao, a female poet from the Song dynasty who has made a record three appearances in the Fairypage literary universe. You can read my translation of the poem she’s replying to in a long-previous issue of this newsletter, or just search ‘Like a Dream’ (there are multiple poems of this title, but this is one of the most famous of all time so should be easy enough to find). 

This new verse has a botanical title with a double meaning - 虞美人, or ‘corn poppy’ (a red flower!), is literally ‘beautiful woman of Yu state’, a reference to a concubine in classical annals. Both Li and Wu draw poetic comparisons between the destruction of flowers and the destruction of female beauty, and this becomes all the more obvious here, with an overt mention of mirrors and maintenance rituals.

(Extra translator’s note. I said these poems aren’t particularly homoerotic, but bear in mind that in Ancient Chinese literary circles, lesbian sex was called ‘rubbing mirrors’ (and after all the things I’ve said re. mirrors and homosexuality in Western culture!) Is Wu writing herself into the crab-apple fantasy as a drunken friend, or as something more?)

虞美人 (The Poppy)

At dawn, the window rouses, the curtain is first rolled back. I poke my finger into the cold - it is like a knife. All night it drizzled; all night the wind raged. 

Crab-apples, too many to count, are pitifully starved of their redness. 

Of course, people, too, are taken ill amongst the flowers. I wearily sidle through to the mirror. At the day’s height, I am alone and do not comb my hair. I only listen to the swallow, muttering his spring sorrows.

Here’s another ‘cover’ of a Li Qingzhao poem, this time the one where she rows a boat while drunk and ends up stuck in a growth of flowers and frightening away lots of birds. Wu totally preserves the original meter here. Unfortunately this is impossible to do in English. I have attempted to do something with the rhyme scheme though. 

如梦令 (Like a Dream)

The swallow is yet to flee with the spring. 

It flies through the curtains (embellished with string). 

When I at my softest speak, it shouldn’t seek to cling.

Delay, delay! You cannot save your laughs to bring. 

I also managed to preserve the rhyme scheme here:

喝火令 (Fire Drinking)

The bamboo mat is cold (a bath). The screen has dreams to cue. 

I want to sleep - I’m frayed all through. 

So I pass the gauzy window, slyly gather scents to stew.

Sorrowed frights and holy orders, poems bring me every flu.

This night is still so like the one just passed, but made anew.

As a lantern (red) it sifts itself, as pasts are prone to do.

As a drunken stupor’s end, the moon shifts on the petals, skew. 

Here is my translation of ‘the lesbian one’. This has been translated before and will probably come up online. I personally don’t think the extant English translation is very true to the text (I have tried to be as true as possible while keeping to tone) but I admire how readable it is. I have given this a minimalistic flair as that’s the vibe I get from the source material. 

The lesbian couple at the centre of Ming dynasty drama ‘Fragrant Companions’ also bond over discussing and composing poetry. I have no idea whether Wu was familiar with this play, but it is a nice thing to think about.

For Qing-lin

Your collarbones jingle and shimmer, like a fairy friend in the jade city.

We meet with a laugh, and I forget my words. 

Calmly picking flowers, idling against the bamboo, with your emerald sleeves picking up the cold - in an empty gulf, we found each other, you with your tender train of thought.

As an iris-perfumed lamp glows from the ground, we play drinking games and speak on poetry, then we sing of the heartbreak South of the river.

Together, we paint our eyebrows until they are beautiful. I tend towards wanting to devour you whole, to receive you until nothing is left - if my lover assents in her heart.

Now it is a misty, smoked-lake spring, and I want to buy a red boat to carry you away with me.

三子令 (Three-Character Verse)

In autumn’s colour, painted screens fade. Wind comes late. Willow trees: thin, crab apples: red. Moon moves curtain, curtain traps moon, both fuzz together. People: yet unscattered, songs first end. Hear geese return. Cold silver armour, whispered soft jade. Sitting is boring, sleep is whatever, don’t drift between.

酷相思 (Thoughts of Mutual Torture)

Lonely, lonely, locked in the courtyard, deep within the heavy doors. A straightforward sleep - sorrow is lacking that. I feel hair echoing from my temples, the pin drooping lightly down.

It is bright daybreak - I lazily comb my hair. It is dusk - I lazily comb my hair.

Who can bear to lie down on a bamboo mat, in a screened-off room? It is hard to bear this burden, the cruel circumstance of sickness. How should twenty years pass, when lights and shadows fall like dreams?

At the start, this hurt my heart. And today, it hurts my heart.