49. The Zither Song

A poem by Li Qi, translated by Hyun Woo Kim

The host welcomes this evening for there is drink,

Asking the guest from Guangling to play the zither.

The castle's moon-lit top, and a crow flies half up in the air;

Lonesome frost on all the trees, and the wind entering the clothes.

A copper brazier, a candle, the candle shines brighter—

"Play the Water of Lu first, and later the Queen of Chu!"

A sound has already rung, and everything quiets down;

All the audience is without a word, and the stars are thinning.

Dispatched to the limpid Huai, more than a thousand lis to go,

I shall dare speak of cloudy mountains from now on.

「琴歌」

主人有酒歡今夕

請奏鳴琴廣陵客

月照城頭烏半飛

霜淒萬樹風入衣

銅鑪華燭燭增輝

初彈淥水後楚妃

一聲已動物皆靜

四座無言星欲稀

清淮奉使千餘里

敢告雲山從此始

From Hyun Woo:

Music is transcendental. Plato considered rhythm and harmony capable of penetrating a soul more deeply than anything else, and Pythagoras correctly understood that the cosmos is constructed with harmonies. It seems Li Qi and his acquaintances shared the same musical experience with them when he wrote “A sound has already rung, and everything quiets down;/All the audience is without a word, and the stars are thinning.”

While “Guangling” is the name of a place, I doubt that it actually refers to where the zither player is physically from. Ji Kang, a legendary zither player, is known to have met a mysterious man who called himself “a person of the past” and learned from him a zither piece called “Guanglingsan”. Most likely, Li Qi was trying to convey that the zither player was as good as Ji Kang.

When Li Qi wrote this poem, he was on his way to Xinxiang to work as a governor, a municipality near the Huai River. However, after listening to the zither player’s music, all he could think of was “cloudy mountains”, implying that he began to dream of living the life of a hermit. Indeed, the music had penetrated his soul.

At this point, you must be wondering what the Chinese zither sounds like. Thus I present you: Guanglingsan played by Guan Pinghu.

If you enjoyed my work, you can buy me a cup of tea. I am not a coffee person, by the way.