Documento de trabajo El profesor de piano
6. Discriminación y derecho a la diferencia
dated, nor does it refer to any particular incident. Hence I leave it untranslated.
Bo Juyi is hardly in need of an introduction. He too 37
sent Xue Tao a poem which unfortunately was undated.
The mass of Mountain Ernei 3 ^ 4 ^ ^ touches the clouds?^ I want to pursue Mr. Liu, lost on the northern road,
If he is in Yanzhong ^.'j '•j2- he is easy to f i n d . ^
hO
The spring water keeps me apart from Wuling river.
(continued from page 169.)
Together on horseback we are holding today's cup. By the side of the lake we again brush off last
year's plums.
Year after year lonely and getting older. Yet can we say that flowers are not blossoming
anywhere?
When we sing we always add poems to the high feelings caused by wine.
After getting drunk we yet order music to be played, Facing the wine-jar everything is as before.
Counting them over only xiucai Xue is missing. Sun Tao , Quan Tangshihua xubian
jk
Ufa
> in Q ing shihua ^ , Shanghai, 1963, v o l . 2, p. 630.36. Quan Tangshi, vol. 6, p. U6U1.
37- Ibid., vol. 7, p. 525^. For the life of Bo Juyi see Waley, A., op. c i t .
3Ö. This of course refers to the famous sacred mountain in Sichuan.
39» This refers to Liu Chen jf?. who was from Yanzhong (in Zhejiang
~A—
province), and Ruan Zhao who at the end of the Han dynasty went into the Tiantai mountainsd'A and there lost their way for thirteen days. They then suddenly met two beautiful girls who gave them food and drink and invited them to their place. Though they stayed there for half a year it appeared to be spring
Of the remainder of the poets and officials mentioned in
Fei Zhu's account only Liu Yuxi mentions Xue Tao's
4l
name in the title of one of his poems. As it is of no
particular interest I leave it untranslated.
The three poets dealt with so far were all very good
friends. The rest of the people mentioned ty Fei Zhu belonged
to their circle too. Not one of them can be connected with Xue
Tao by means of documents. One rather suspects that Fei included
them because they ought to have done so.
42
The biography of Zhang Ji mentions that
40.
(continued from page 170.) all the time. When finally they
left it turned out that they had been away for seven years. Later they attempted to return but could not retrace their
steps. Wang Shizhen
^
(1526-1590), Huitu liexianquanzhuan (A Complete Account of all
Immortals with Illustrations), Da Zhongguo tushu gongsi
A 7 ^ 4; ^ . Taipei, 1972, ch. 3, pp. 21a-22a.
This refers to a story in a similar vein, the rather
better known Taohuayuan .ji ^ by Tao Yuanming
, where a fisherman travels up the Wuling
river
yt
and reaches a peach tree grove where theinhabitants live in idyllic circumstances and do not
know anything about the outside world. When the fisher
man finally leaves them he is not able to find the way
back again. See Beijing daxue zhongwenxi
41. 42.
^
\
, Tao Yuanming juan j3^) 9 $ , Peking/Shanghai, 3rd printing, 1 9 6 5, pp. 338-9.
Quan Tangshi, vol. 6, p. 4121.
Jiu Tangshu, ch. l 60, p. 10b. He passed as a jinshi in
172.
"gentlemen like Pei Du and Linghu Chu and outstanding poets
like Bo Juyi and Yuan Zhen mixed with him". Niu Sengru was a
uu
friend of both Bo Juyi and Yuan Zhen. There is no doubt that
Wu Wuling also was familiar with some of them, particularly with
1+5
Pei Du. '
In the case of Yan Shou it is rather likely however, that
he knew Xue Tao personally. He was born in Sichuan in 7^6 and
passed as a tjinshi in the Dali
^ ßfy
reign period (766-779), anddied in Changqing
3^
^ 2 (822). As with the others, thereis no written evidence that they did so.
Lastly we come to Du Mu who, as far as age is concerned,
is the odd man out. He was born in 803, twenty-four years after
1+7
Niu Sengru, to whom he owed the start of his official career ' and
who in turn was the youngest of all the men mentioned so far.
All these were born within fifteen years of each other. By the
time Du Mu reached manhood Xue Tao would already have been about
. .
U8
sixty.
1+3. Pei D u ’s biography is contained in Jiu Tangshu, ch. 170,
Xin Tangshu, ch. 173; Linghu Chu's in Jiu Tangshu,
ch. 172, Xin Tangshu, ch. 166.
1+1+. See Waley, A., op. c i t .
1+5. According to his biography in Jiu Tang s h u , ch. 203,
p. l6a. The dates of his birth and death are not known,
but he passed as a .jinshi at the beginning of the Yuanhe
/ O reign period (began 806). Ibid. , p. 12b.
1+6. Ibid. , ch. ll+6, pp. 5a-7a.
1+7. Xin Tangshu, ch. 166, p. lib.
1+8. Lest the reader consider it improbable that Du might have
taken an interest in her, he is reminded of the fame of another singing girl, told by Waley, A., o p . ci t , , pp. 100-101, retained even though she was by now a
173
.On the other hand Fei Zhu leaves out one poem that was dedicated to Xue Tao. It has been ascribed to both Wang Jian
and Hu Ceng (see below). ^ The poem reads By the side of the Ten-thousand Mile Bridge (Wanli- qiao ^ rfXjL ) the lady secretarial revisor
Lives under flowering loquat trees behind closed doors. Few and rare nowadays are the talented with beautiful
eyebrows
Yet none can compete with her in mastering the spring- wind!
Wang Jian fits into the same age group as all the men discussed already. He passed as a jinshi in Dali 10 (775) and is again mentioned as an official at Shanzhou |5^. 'Hi (in mod. Henan) in the Taihe years (827-835). Later he returned to Xianyang
$
, . .More problematical is Hu Ceng's
^
supposed relation ship with Xue Tao, mainly because their lifetimes are widelyapart. Though Hu's date is unknown, we do know that in the Xiantong years (860-873) he sat for a jinshi examination
51
but failed. Most of his extant poems deal with places of interest throughout the empire. The reference in the poem to Xue Tao spending her time behind closed doors makes it clear that
.
50
*fj)
(in mod. Shanxi) where he associated with Zhang Ji.49. Quan Tangshi, v o l . 5, p. 3434 , and v o l . 10, 7438, respectively.
50. Ibid., vol. 5, p. 3362.
51. Ibid., vol. 10, p. 7417. On the life of Hu Ceng see also Xin Wenfang ^ , Tang caizi zhuan
A
> p. l4l. On Hu Ceng and his one surviving work, the Yongshi shi^
^2% (Chanting History in Poems) seeZhang Zhengliang
fA-
, "Jiang shi yu Yongshishi
AAl
r " , Bulletin of theInstitute of History and Philology Academia Sinica, vol. 10 (1948), pp. 617-626.
Hb.
it cannot have been written before the last years of her life.
In Wang Jian's version the title contains the character ^
(sent to), while Hu's has zeng (bestowed on). One would
imagine that these characters would be used when referring to a
living person. In Wang's case there is no difficulty in this.
Hu, however, in view of the date given for his attempt at the examination, would probably have been unborn or at most a few
years old at the time. It would seem, then, that Wang was the
author of the poem.52 This view is reinforced by the fact that
Zheng Gu ^ , perhaps a slightly younger contemporary of Hu
53
Ceng wrote a poem in which he mentions Xue Tao 's grave.
Xue Tao's poems regrettably are not of much help either. Though the titles of some of them do contain names they generally
are too vague to be of much use. Two poems are dedicated to a
certain Duanjj^ which one may reasonably assume to be Duan
Wenchang. Two others are dedicated to Wu Yuanheng /[_j
) h _
56
*
•but the name has been left out in other versions.
I
Another poem, addressed to "His. excellency Wu 'jrQ ^ ^ " may be
assumed to refer to the same person. Reasonable proof is only
obtainable in the case of Yuan Zhen which already has been dealt w i t h .
52. The Chengdu fuzhi, ch. 35, p. 3b, also gives Wang Jian
as the author.
53. He passed as a jinshi in Guangqi 3 (
887
).Quan Tangshi, v o l . 10, p. 770*4 .
5*4. Ibid., vol. 10, p. 77^2.
55. Ibid. , vol. 11, p. 90*43.
56
. Wu (758-815), at one time Chief Minister at the Capital,was a friend of Bo Juyi. See Waley, A., o p . c it. , p. 91. For the poems see Quan Tangshi, vol. 11, pp. 9037-8.
His biography appears in Jiu Tangshu, ch. 158 and in Xin Tangshu, ch. 152.