The Magpie at Night - Li Qingzhao

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The Magpie at Night

by
Li Qingzhao

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Title:	The Magpie at Night
Author:	Li Qingzhao
Genre:	Poetry
Written:	(12th cent) (Eng. 2025)
Length:	103 pages
Original in:	Chinese
Availability:	The Magpie at Night - US
	The Magpie at Night - UK
	The Magpie at Night - Canada
	Œuvres poétiques complètes - France
	Poesía completa - España

	from: Bookshop.org (US)

The Complete Poems of Li Qingzhao (1084-1151)
Translated and with an Introduction by Wendy Chen
Previously translated by Kenneth Rexroth and Ling Chung as Li Ch'ing-Chao: Complete Poems (1979) and by Jiaosheng Wan as The Complete Ci-poems of Li Qingzhao (1989)

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Our Assessment:

B : solid edition of the works of a significant poet

See our review for fuller assessment.

Review Summaries
Source	Rating	Date	Reviewer
CLEAR*	.	(3:1) 7/1981	A.J.Palandri
CLEAR*	.	(13) 12/1991	Ch'iu-ti Judy Liu
The Hudson Review*	.	Winter/1980-1	Dana Gioia
World Lit. Today*	.	Winter/1981	Russell McLeod

(* review of a different translation)

From the Reviews:

"Misrepresentations and misleading secondary readings of this kind needed to be pointed out so that the reader may be forewarned that the erotomania is typical of Rexroth but alien to the Sung woman poet, however unconventional she might have appeared to her contemporaries. Ever since Freudian psychology made its inroad into literary criticism, erotic speculation and interpretations have come into vogue among translators as wel as creative writers. With the ideal combination of Rexroth's poetic talent and Ling Chung's knowledge of Chinese, their translations should recapture the aesthetic quality of the original faithfully and accurately, without having to resort to Freudian interpretation for added attraction." - Angela Jung Palandri, Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews

"Unlike Rexroth and Chung's translations, which are intended for the general public, Wang's rendition presents scholarly value through his attention to details and language. In general, Wang prefers an English style more akin to that of the nineteenth century than that of the present. His reading of the Chinese is overall reliable; however, a tendency to paraphrase the original lines makes his translations sound verbose. Wang's scrupulousness, bordering on timidity, sometimes leads the reader astray from the immediate charm of Li Qingzhao's voice." - Ch'iu-ti Judy Liu, Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews

"As always, Rexroth's versions from the Chinese, (done in collaboration with Ling Chung) are graceful and moving. Occasionally one hears his own voice overlap with the poet's and produce lines which seem exceptionally personal" - Dana Gioia, The Hudson Review

"Rexroth and Chung's book is intended for a general audience. Specialists will want to argue about some of the translations, but they are adequate as introductions to the originals. There is a full set of notes at the back and a biographical sketch. One needs the notes especially to make out the meaning of several poems filled with historical allusions." - Russell McLeod, World Literature Today

Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.

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The complete review's Review:

Translator Wendy Chen's Introduction offers a useful overview of and introduction to twelfth-century Chinese poet Li Qingzhao (and while the poetry here is what's of primary interest, her life-story, as summarized by Chen, is also fascinating). Despite only a small part of her work surviving -- as this slim 'complete poems'-collection suggests -- Chen reports that: "she is considered the greatest woman poet in Chinese history", renowned especially for her ci poetry ("lyrics set to music").
As Chen explains:

(M)odern day estimations of how many of her poems remain can vary widely depending on their source texts: anywhere from forty to eighty or more. In this collection, I have chosen to translated work whose attribution to Li Qingzhao is commonly accepted. I have included her ci, shi, and surviving fragments of other poetry.

The Magpie at Night collects 40 ci, 14 shi, and 18 fragments.
Almost all Li Qingzhao's verse is very succinct -- hence Chen noting that she: "has been hailed for her intense Dickinsonian clarity and vision" -- and so also some of the very short fragments are among the most powerful bits in the collection:

Idle, I have doubts numerous
as moonbeams

Or:

These silk robes have consumed
all the fragrances from that time.

Or the one from which Chen takes the title of this collection:

The feelings I make into poems
are like the magpie at night,
circling three times, unable to settle.

A sense of a strong, in many ways independent woman comes through in much of the poetry, as also in the nice summing-up in 'Emotions' (for 作诗谢绝聊闭门):

I compose poems, refuse talk,
shut my door.

That poem then closes also revealingly:

Within stillness, I encounter my true selves:
Mr. Nonexistent, Sir Void.

(Such naming is, of course hard to translate; the earlier Kenneth Rexroth-Ling Chung translation (Li Ch'ing-Chao: Complete Poems) went for: "I find my most trustworthy friends in solitude: Mr. Nonexistence and Scholar No Such" (for: 静中吾乃得至交，乌有先生子虚子).)
There's a fair amount of drinking going on here: Li Qingzhao enjoys her wine, from the first poem here ('As in a Dream'), where they were: "So drunk, we could not find / Our way back", to her acknowledging (in 'The Maiden Singer's Charms') times when: "I sober up / from the heady wine". Only the intoxication of poetry can compete -- as she also asks (in 'Butterflies Long for the Flowers'):

Who will drink with me
from wine and poems ?

Chen captures the melancholy tinges nicely, as in (from 'Silk Washing Stream', for 梨花欲谢恐难禁):

The pear blossoms want
to wither

I fear
I cannot stop them.

So also among the sentiments Li Qingzhao addresses is that of the inevitable passing of time and the loss of the past and the moments and feelings from the past. In 'Southern Song' she concludes:

The weather is the same as before,
my clothes the same.
Only I have changed.

And similarly, in 'By Chance' she notes:

Fifteen years ago,
by flowers under the moon,

we composed poems together,
admiring the blooms.

Tonight, the flowers and moon
are exactly the same.

But how could my feelings
be like before ?

Given how slim the collection is -- and how pithy most of the the poetry is --, it is a shame that the edition isn't a bilingual one, with the Chinese text facing the translations. Even those without any Chinese may be interested to see, for example, the original of the beginning of 'Slow Notes':

寻寻觅觅，冷冷清清，凄凄惨惨戚戚。
乍暖还寒时候，最难将息。

Searching, searching. Seeking, seeking.
Cold, cold. Bleak. Bleak.
Icy, icy. Misery, misery. Grief, grief.

Sudden warmth.
But still, it is the cold season —
the hardest time to find peace.

(This poem also closes nicely, with: "how could one word — "sorrow" — / ever be enough?" (怎一个愁字了得！).)
This poem can also serve as a good comparison with the earlier Kenneth Rexroth-Ling Chung translation, where they have it:

Search. Search. Seek. Seek.
Cold. Cold. Clear. Clear.
Sorrow. Sorrow. Pain. Pain.
Hot flashes. Sudden chills.
Stabbing pains. Slow agonies.
I can find no peace.

While the final line there is:

How can I drive off this word —
Hopelessness ?

Chen's Li Qingzhao presents herself quite differently than the one in the Rexroth-Ling Chung translation, as, for example, 'Complaint against a Prince' also suggests, where:

My resentment never ends.

The more I feel,
the more I am provoked.

The emotions Rexroth-Ling Chung suggest (in 'Spring Ends II') are presented rather differently:

My sorrow is drawn out, endless as silk floss.

Too much passion results in too many entanglements.

       Certainly, Chen's version seems closer to the more seething spirit of the original -- 恨绵绵。多情自是多沾惹。 -- here and generally.
       The majority of the poems in the collection are ci, set to specific songs (tunes), and of course this element is entirely lost to the contemporary reader-in-English-translation. But Li Qingzhao's verse holds up well on its own -- also in translation, with Chen's renderings reading well.
       There is also a quite extensive section of Notes at the end (though references are not marked in the text itself -- no distracting numbering or asterisks), offering information about various mentions in the poems (as well as the Chinese characters for these -- making it all the more confusing why the Chinese originals of the poems aren't included in their entirety) --, though it's a somewhat hit and miss selection (i.e. many references are not elucidated -- though given how referential classical Chinese poetry is, one can understand (some of) the restraint) -- and some of the explanation-choices seem unnecessary and/or odd (grind bricks of jade tea is annotated: "This refers to the act of grinding blocks of tea leaves into powder in order to make tea"; horn -- where it's pretty obvious that it is the instrument -- is annotated: "A bugle-like instrument used in the army")). Still, the presentation of the corresponding Chinese characters is helpful. Less helpful is that there is no corresponding mention of the page-numbers that the Notes refer to, just the titles of the poems (and the line numbers of the references; somewhat helpful, but the lines in the poems themselves are not numbered ...) -- making them harder than they should be to use, especially since there are not notes for all the poems, so it can be hard to keep track/figure out where notes to a specific poem appear.
       Li Qingzhao is certainly a poet worth knowing, showing even in the little that remains of her work both good variety and some very fine writing. Chen's are fine renderings of the verse, and her Introduction is also very useful, making this a welcome edition -- and also something of an advance on the earlier Kenneth Rexroth-Ling Chung edition.

- M.A.Orthofer, 14 February 2025

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Links:

The Magpie at Night:

Farrar, Straus and Giroux publicity page
Penguin Classics publicity page
New Directions publicity page
Gallimard publicity page
Ediciones del Oriente y del Mediterráneo publicity page
The Complete Ci-poems of Li Qingzhao, translated by Jiaosheng Wang [pdf]

Reviews (* review of a different translation):

Other books of interest under review:

See Index of Poetry
See Index of Chinese literature
See Index of Books Written Before 1900

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About the Author:

Chinese poet Li Qingzhao (李清照) lived around 1084 to 1151.

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