Li Qingzhao

Li Qingzhao 李清照 (1083 - 1151) is a Chinese poetess of the time of the Dynastie Song.

Biography

Li Qingzhao is born in 1083, to the Shandong and passes its childhood to Jinan. His/her father, a famous well-read man, was to later integrate the Bureau of the Rites, at the Court. The child, according to the family tradition - his/her mother followed itself the traces of her own father, celebrates poet - proclamation very early rare gifts that its entourage notices and supports. Soon, competing in worms with the friends of its parents, it acquires, still teenager, a notoriety that, by chance, its marriage does not oppose, quite to the contrary.

At eighteen years, she marries Zhao Mingcheng. Wire of a brilliance civil servant, called later to play the part of a Prime Minister, Mingcheng is a young well-read man scholar, versed in the study of antiquated bronzes, then lately revealed with Anyang (with the Henan). Li Qingzhao, which makes the admiration of his/her father-in-law, is devoted more than ever to its art; a coterie well-read man surrounded the young couple while a true love was born from this shared passion. Zhao Mingcheng, brilliantly received with the examinations, very quickly obtains a post office at the Court.

The couple thus settles in the capital, Kaifeng. It was, paradoxically and almost at once, the beginning of the difficulties: since 1102, the Li Qingzhao father must exile and wait three years to finally reinstate his functions (1105) in the Office of the Rites. Then the terrible play of the factions strikes again: his/her father-in-law, driven out government (1107), dies about it promptly. The poetess and her husband judge careful then to leave the city, accepting in province a more modest and surer station. Well took some to them and happiness, apparently, was with go, readable through many poems as well as a treaty of epigraphy written together, without counting the children who were born from their union.

But in the north of the Yellow River, the general situation of the country worsens. The fall of the Song of North (1126) and the creation of the dynasty of the Jin (by people of not-Chinese origin, the Jurchen) soon constrained husbands to emigrate further towards the South, until Nankin. They settle there (1128), while having lost, with their great sadness, most of their ancient bronze collections - not easily transportable - as well as paintings, sold to survive.

The life begins again nevertheless, while Song reconstitute little by little a reappearing government; Zhao Mingcheng, starting again a career, obtains initially a station with the Zhejiang, then with the Jiangxi. But these ceaseless dramas and these displacements undermined its health: he dies (1129) on the way of his new assignment. He had forty-eight years.

During this time, Jurchen always advance, more insatiable and threatening that never; Li Qingzhao, widow and despaired, end up taking refuge (1132) with Hangzhou, where the Chinese Court finally has just fixed itself. It settles there with her brother who, probably, encourages it to contract a second marriage: what could, indeed, a woman alone, dispossessed of her fortune, in the company of a time if disturbed? But this late union (the poetess approached around fifty) appears disastrous: the new spouse is concerned little with literature and maltreats his wife; this one, not having lost anything of its moral fiber, does not hesitate to divorce at the end of a few weeks.

It passes the remainder of its life alone, finding refuge in an increasingly despaired writing, where the melancholy of the lost love answers the patriotic topic of the martyrized fatherland. She dies in 1151.

Danielle Elisseeff

Works

Poetry

Happiness of an eternal meeting

Twilight runs gold

Where gather the turquoise clouds.

Where is it?

The thick fog drowns the summit of the willows

While murmur a flute which complains.

Who can know the duration of spring?

Rumor of a festival in the night

And in the soft air.

Will the rain accompany-T' it wind?

To invite me, a luxurious attachment is sent to me

I thank these companions for poetry and intoxication.

Zhongzhou! Where was radiant Bianliang!

In the apartment of the women we had all our time

I remember!

Preferring a hairstyle furnished with feathers of kingfisher

With a gold lattice on a jade cloud. Hesitating in the choice of the ribbons…

When today the sorrow which devours me

With deposited white frost on my hair.

I fear to leave this night.

And I will still listen behind the curtains

The laughter and words of the men.

Fragile Beauty

In the gardens and the courses deserted

The wind still makes lean the fine rain

The heavy doors should be closed again.

Here are flowers of willows! It is the Festival of Hanshi *

When the sky is as capricious as my poems.

I support my head; my intoxication is dissipated

Such an amount of tests me and since so a long time the pain of our separation.

Even this flight of cranes fled…

Then to which can I say these thousand wounds of my heart?

In the house, the cold spring sun lights my pedestal table,

None the curtains is raised,

And dolente, I accoude more with the balustrade…

I wake up: my bed is frozen, the perfume of the dissipated incense!

But sadness will not prevent me from raising me,

The clear dew of the morning drains

The new branches of the trees push.

That I would like to travel this spring!

The sun dissipates the fog of the sky.

Doesn't it make good weather, today?

Note: Hanshi or Festival of Cold-eating, founded in memory of Jie Zitui, which preferred immoler by fire rather than to betray its deposed sovereign. That occurred at the time of the Printemps and the Falls (636 av. J. - C. - 628 av. J. - C.)

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