Waiting for the Moon

From the Introduction

Bo Juyi was born at Tai-youan in Shansi. Most of his childhood was spent at Rong-yang in Henan. His father was a second-class Assistant Department Magistrate. He tells us that his family was poor and often in difficulties.

He seems to have settled permanently at Chang’an in 801. This town, lying near the northwest frontier, was the political capital of the Empire. In its situation it somewhat resembled Madrid. Luo-yang, the Eastern city, owing to its milder climate and more accessible position, became, like Seville in Spain, a kind of social capital.

Soon afterwards he met Youan Zhen, then aged twenty-two, who was destined to play so important a part in his life. . . .

Of Youan’s appearance at this time we may guess something from a picture which still survives in copy; it shows him, a youthful and elegant figure, visiting his cousin Cui Ying-ying, who was a lady-in-waiting at Court. At this period of his life Bo made friends with difficulty, not being, as he tells us “a master of such accomplishments as calligraphy, painting, chess, or gambling, which tend to bring men together in pleasurable intercourse.” Two older men, Tang Chu and Deng Fang, liked his poetry and showed him much kindness; another, the politician Kong Tan, won his admiration on public grounds. But all three died soon after he got to know them. Later he made three friends with whom he maintained a lifelong intimacy: the poet Liu You-xi (called Meng-de), and the two officials Li Jian and Cui Hsuan-liang. In 805 Youan Zhen was banished for provocative behavior towards a high official. The Tang History relates the episode as follows:

Youan was staying the night at the Fu-shui Inn; just as he was preparing to go to sleep in the Main Hall, the court official Li Shiyouan also arrived. Youan Zhen should have offered to withdraw from the Hall. He did not do so and a scuffle ensued. Youan, locked out of the building, took off his shoes and stole round to the back, hoping to find another way in. Li followed with a whip and struck him across the face.

The separation was a heavy blow to Bo Juyi. In a poem called “Climbing Alone to the Luo-you Gardens” he says:

I look down on the Twelve City Streets—

Red dust flanked by green trees!

Coaches and horsemen alone fill my eyes;

I do not see whom my heart longs to see.

Kong Tan has died at Luo-yang;

Youan Zhen is banished to Jing-men . . .

In 804 on the death of his father, and again in 811 on the death of his mother, he spent periods of retirement on the Wei River near Chang’an. It was during the second of these periods that he wrote the long poem (260 lines) called “Visiting the Wuzhen Temple.” Soon after his return to Chang’an, which took place in the winter of 814, he fell into official disfavor. In two long memorials entitled “On Stopping the War,” he had criticized the handling of a campaign against an unimportant tribe of Tartars, which he considered had been unduly prolonged. In a series of poems he had satirized the rapacity of minor officials and called attention to the intolerable sufferings of the masses. . . .

The remaining years of Bo’s life were spent in collecting and arranging his Complete Works. Copies were presented to the principal monasteries (the “Public Libraries” of the period) in the towns with which he had been connected. He died in 846, leaving instructions that his funeral should be without pomp and that he should be buried not in the family tomb at Xia-guei, but by Ru-man’s side in the Xiang-shan Monastery. He desired that a posthumous title should not be awarded.