also by Evelyn Eaton
I Send a Voice
ISBN 978 1 84819 100 6
eISBN 978 0 85701 082 7
of related interest
Creativity and Taoism
A Study of Chinese Philosophy, Art and Poetry
Chung-yuan Chang
ISBN 978 1 84819 050 4
eISBN 978 0 85701 047 6
EVELYN EATON
GO ASKTHERIVER
FOREWORD BY
CHUNGLIANG AL HUANG
LONDON AND PHILADELPHIA
The poems of Hung Tu adapted by Mary Kennedy were originally published by Gotham Book Mart, New York, in 1968 under the title I Am a Thought of You. Some of the material used also appeared in a Worthy Shorts Edition of I Am a Thought of You in an edition copyright © 2008 by Michael Cook. Copyright to all Mary Kennedy works are now held by Cook and Taylor Publishers, New York City. The poetry is reproduced with the kind permission of Michael Cook.
The poem “A Vision” by Yuan Chen and the stanza “Go Ask the River...” from a poem by Li T’ai Po are reprinted from A Garden of Peonies: Translations of Chinese Poems into English Verse by Henry H. Hart. They are used with the kind permission of Stanford University Press, www.sup.org. Copyright © 1938 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Jr. University, renewed 1966.
Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and to obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The authors and the publisher apologize for any omissions and would be grateful if notified of any acknowledgements that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book.
This edition published in 2012
by Singing Dragon
an imprint of Jessica Kingsley Publishers
73 Collier Street
London N1 9BE, UK
and
400 Market Street, Suite 400
Philadelphia, PA 19106, USA
www.singingdragon.com
First published in 1969 by Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc.
Copyright © Evelyn Eaton 1969, 1990, Estate of Evelyn Eaton 2012
Foreword copyright © Chungliang Al Huang 2012
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form (including photocopying or storing it in any medium by electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of this publication) without the written permission of the copyright owner except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 or under the terms of a licence issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Applications for the copyright owner’s written permission to reproduce any part of this publication should be addressed to the publisher.
Warning: The doing of an unauthorized act in relation to a copyright work may result in both a civil claim for damages and criminal prosecution.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Eaton, Evelyn Sybil Mary, 1902-
Go ask the river / Evelyn Eaton ; foreword by Chungliang Al Huang.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-84819-092-4 (alk. paper)
1. Xue, Tao, 768-831--Fiction. 2. China--History--Tang dynasty, 618-907--
Fiction. 3. Poets, Chinese--Fiction. I. Title.
PS3509.A84G6 2012
813’.54--dc23
2011046587
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 84819 092 4
eISBN 978 0 85701 075 9
To Wang Sun
FOREWORD
CHUNGLIANG AL HUANG
In the poetry primer Three Hundred Poems of Tang Dynasty read by all Chinese students of literature, although it is common for the male poets included to use the female voice to write poems of love and sentimental longings, there is less than a handful of women poets represented. The same scarcity is also apparent in the definitive anthology of Tang poetry, The Complete Tang Poems; out of a total of approximately 2250 poets, only 130 women are listed. If we are tested on the annals of poetry, most of us probably can only name a handful of woman poets of distinction. The one for me has always been Xue Tao.
Through stories told by the women in our household, I first became familiar with the legendary Tang Dynasty poetess Xue Tao and her illustrious poems. Xue Tao, also known as Hung Tu (Hong Du), was celebrated not only for her genius and artistry as poet and calligrapher, but even more for her courageous and adventurous life as the renowned courtesan in Chengdu’s Blue House on the Silk (Brocade) River.
Many stories were told, imagined and fabricated about how she distinguished herself as the poet-scholar and official hostess at the governor’s mansion. In the world of the literati reserved for men of letters, she was highly respected, honored and sought after. All the more intriguing were her many romantic liaisons with famous poets during the high cultural period of the time.
When I met Evelyn Eaton at Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California, in the late ’70s, we felt an immediate kinship. She told me about the amazing incident when she was in Sichuan, China, during the war as a foreign correspondent for LIFE Magazine. One day in Chengdu, she had an “out of body” experience, feeling as though she was a Chinese living in old China. She was drawn to follow her instinct and came upon the gravesite of Xue Tao, which led to a passionate obsession in researching the poet’s life and her poems. The book, Go Ask the River, Evelyn confided in me, felt as if it was channeled by spirit and dictated by her new-found ancestral lineage.
When Evelyn sent me the last copy of this out-of-print book, I also had the feeling that those English words can be read by the modern Western reader to sound genuinely Chinese in their nuanced exotic expressiveness. We suspected that somewhere in Evelyn’s psyche the Chinese soul resided deep. We were both enthralled with this awareness. Evelyn had guided me into the private sanctum of Xue Tao’s inner life which had been, until then, only a mythic and romantic imagining. Suddenly, her poetry became vividly alive and deeply meaningful to me.
After Evelyn died in 1983, her daughter Terry and I convinced my publisher Celestial Arts to bring out the book, which had enjoyed only a brief period of success, in 1990.
Another two decades had passed, and this edition came into being fortuitously during a lovely dinner with Jessica Kingsley, in the spring of 2010 after the book launch in London of my four perennial editions with Singing Dragon. Between our celebratory toasts, I shared with her the story of Evelyn and Xue Tao. Our mutual excitement about the possibility of bringing the book back was immediately ignited.
Returning home, I opened my treasured first edition of this book. It contained a letter I had saved from Evelyn, thanking me for the rebirth of this book, with a wish that I should provide a Foreword for the new edition. Regrettably with the 1990 edition, which had a fine introduction by Paul Reed, I was unable to provide the