Poems 1–18 from the Wandang Jeonjip, Volume 10
This is Part 1 of the complete English translation of Kim Jeong-hui’s poems from the Wandang Jeonjip, Volume 10; it covers entries 1 through 18, which open the volume with a single flower poem followed by a sustained topographic sequence at the scenic area of Danyang.
The Scroll Begins
Volume 10 opens with a formal decision that marks its difference from where Volume 9 closed. The eight-line regulated verse that dominated Volume 9’s final installments gives way entirely to the heptasyllabic quatrain — four lines of seven characters, 28 characters per poem. Every one of the 18 entries in this installment uses this briefest canonical form. The economy is not accidental: it suits the serial, inscriptional nature of the topographic sequence that constitutes most of what follows.
That sequence begins at poem 2 (Hambyeon Tower / 涵碧樓) and moves systematically through the scenic features of the Danyang area (단양 / 丹陽) along the South Han River in inland Korea. Among the sites in the sequence are four of the famous 단양팔경 (Danyang’s Eight Scenic Views): Jade-Shoot Peak (玉筍峰 / 옥순봉), Turtle Pool (龜潭 / 구담), Island Pool (島潭 / 도담 — site of the famous 도담삼봉, three peaks rising from the river), and Stone Gate (石門 / 석문). To these the sequence adds supplementary features — caves, a second tower, three levels of immortal rock formations, a hidden valley, two additional rock formations, an immortal’s field, and a final pond — creating a verbal landscape scroll of 17 scenes.
The Danyang topographic sequence cannot have been written during the Jeju exile (1840–1848), when Kim was confined to the southern island. It was composed either before the exile, during Kim’s active mainland years, or in the post-exile period after his release in 1848. In either case, the sequence stands as one of the few extended topographic poem-sets in his corpus: not an occasional poem here and there during a mountain excursion, but a systematic inscription of every named feature in a single scenic circuit.
Poem 1 (Autumn Peony) is the preamble: a meditation on a flower that has peony leaves and chrysanthemum flowers, and boldly claims the recluse identity that belongs to neither.
Poem 1
秋牡丹 (Autumn Peony)
Period: Period uncertain; likely pre-exile or post-exile given the mainland context, distinct from the Jeju exile period (1840–1848).
Form: Heptasyllabic quatrain (七言絶句), 4 lines.
Occasion: An observation poem about the 秋牡丹 (autumn peony / 추모란), which the source note identifies as a plant Koreans call 唐菊 (Chinese chrysanthemum / 당국화). The plant has peony-like leaves but chrysanthemum-like flowers and blooms in autumn.
Original text:
紅紫年年迭變更。牡丹之葉菊之英。秋來富貴無如汝。橫冒東籬處士名。秋牡丹。東人曰唐菊。
Translation: Cinemawords
Red and purple — year by year alternating and changing; leaves of the peony, flowers of the chrysanthemum. Autumn coming — wealth and rank: none like you; boldly appropriating the name of East Fence’s recluse.
Reading notes:
“East Fence’s recluse” (東籬處士) is Tao Yuanming (陶淵明, 365–427 CE), whose most famous line — 采菊東籬下，悠然見南山 (picking chrysanthemums at the east fence, easily seeing the southern mountain) — made the chrysanthemum the flower of the principled recluse who refuses office. The autumn peony appears beside east fences in autumn when chrysanthemums bloom, and “boldly appropriates” (橫冒 — recklessly seizing) the recluse identity that properly belongs to the chrysanthemum and to Tao Yuanming’s cultivation.
The source annotation’s bilingual note is the poem’s hinge: Chinese speakers see peony (牡丹), Koreans see chrysanthemum (唐菊 — literally “Tang chrysanthemum”). The plant crosses two naming traditions simultaneously, just as it crosses two species: peony leaves, chrysanthemum flowers. The poem’s argument is that this crossing constitutes a kind of impersonation — “wealth and rank” (富貴) are the peony’s traditional associations, while the recluse is the chrysanthemum’s. The autumn peony carries both, which is to say it carries neither genuinely, and yet it carries them more completely than any single flower could.
Poem 2
涵碧樓 (Hambyeon Tower)
Period: Period uncertain; likely pre-exile or post-exile given the Danyang location.
Form: Heptasyllabic quatrain (七言絶句), 4 lines.
Occasion: The first poem of the topographic sequence, written at Hambyeon Tower (涵碧樓 / 함벽루 — “Embracing-the-Blue Tower”), overlooking the South Han River at Danyang.
Original text:
綠蕪鶴脚白雲橫。取次江光照眼明。自愛此行如讀畵。孤亭風雨卷頭生。
Translation: Cinemawords
Green overgrowth, crane-legs, white clouds lying horizontal; in sequence, the river light illuminating the eyes bright. Loving this trip — like reading a painting: the solitary pavilion — wind and rain arising at the scroll’s beginning.
Reading notes:
The poem’s governing metaphor — the excursion as reading a painting, the landscape as a scroll — frames the entire sequence that follows. A Chinese painted landscape scroll is unrolled scene by scene; Kim’s tour of the Danyang scenic area is structured identically, moving from feature to feature. 涵碧樓 is the scroll’s first image.
“In sequence” (取次 — one after another, in order) already anticipates the sequential structure. The opening line’s three elements — green overgrowth, crane-legs, horizontal white clouds — arrange the landscape into three vertical registers: vegetation, wading birds in shallow water, sky. The egrets or herons (鶴脚 — literally “crane-legs”) stand motionless in the river shallows, the classical image of still alertness.
“Wind and rain arising at the scroll’s beginning” (卷頭生): the solitary pavilion, battered by weather, appears at the very opening of the painted scroll. This is not description of actual weather but of the atmospheric quality that good landscape painting conveys from its first moment — the sense of a world with weather moving through it.
Poem 3
南窟 (South Cave)
Period: Period uncertain; likely pre-exile or post-exile given the Danyang location.
Form: Heptasyllabic quatrain (七言絶句), 4 lines.
Occasion: A poem at the South Cave (南窟), a cave formation in the Danyang scenic area.
Original text:
千秋幽怪歎燃犀。肅肅靈風吹暗溪。彈指龍蛇皆化石。燈光猶作紫虹霓。
Translation: Cinemawords
A thousand autumns of secluded strangeness — lamenting the burning of the rhinoceros horn; solemnly, a spirit wind blows through the dark stream. In the snap of a finger, dragons and snakes all turned to stone; the lamp-light still acts as a purple rainbow.
Reading notes:
燃犀 (burning rhinoceros horn): the Jin dynasty general Wen Qiao (溫嶠, 288–329 CE) burned rhinoceros horn at a dangerous river to illuminate its dark water, revealing supernatural creatures — giant tortoises, dragons, serpents — writhing below. The allusion imports a specific quality of strangeness: what is hidden in the dark can only be seen with exceptional means.
“In the snap of a finger” (彈指) is a Buddhist unit for a moment of time. The cave’s rock formations look like dragons and snakes that froze into stone instantaneously, caught in mid-motion. The entire geological record of the cave — its history of formation — is compressed into one Buddhist instant. “A thousand autumns” and “a snap of the fingers” are both ways of registering the same event: the stone’s origin in a moment so distant it is effectively timeless.
The purple rainbow from the lamp-light is both an atmospheric observation (firelight refracted in a cave’s darkness can produce iridescent effects) and a continuation of the supernatural register: the rhinoceros-horn light produced a rainbow, too.
Poem 4
北壁 (North Wall)
Period: Period uncertain; likely pre-exile or post-exile given the Danyang location.
Form: Heptasyllabic quatrain (七言絶句), 4 lines.
Occasion: A poem at the North Wall (北壁), a sheer cliff face in the Danyang area.
Original text:
兩山斧劈一孤亭。步屧何曾到石屛。十載縱令趨紫陌。看人從此眼常靑。
Translation: Cinemawords
Two mountains split by an axe — one solitary pavilion; how have footsteps and clogs ever reached the stone screen? Even if ten years spent following the purple lanes [of official life]: looking at people from here — eyes always blue [with genuine recognition].
Reading notes:
斧劈 (axe-split): in classical Chinese ink landscape painting, the 斧劈皴 (axe-split texture stroke) is the technique for rendering sheer, striated cliff faces — as if an axe had hewn the rock. The North Wall looks like this: two mountains whose sheer faces resemble axe-split surfaces. Kim reads the actual landscape through the painter’s technique.
“The purple lanes” (紫陌) are the capital’s dust-covered official roads, where officials pursue their duties. Ten years of that world, the poem argues, cannot diminish the capacity for genuine aesthetic recognition (靑眼 — blue eyes). The blue eyes refer to Ruan Ji (阮籍, 210–263 CE), one of the Seven Worthies of the Bamboo Grove, who showed white eyes (indifference) to conventional visitors but clear blue eyes (admiration and recognition) to those he genuinely respected. “From here” — this spot between axe-split mountains — the eyes remain capable of that recognition regardless of official history.
Poem 5
玉筍峰 二首 (Jade-Shoot Peak — Two Poems)
Period: Period uncertain; likely pre-exile or post-exile given the Danyang location.
Form: Heptasyllabic quatrain (七言絶句), 4 lines each; two poems.
Occasion: Two poems at Jade-Shoot Peak (玉筍峰 / 옥순봉), one of the most famous of the Danyang Eight Views — a cluster of tall, narrow rock columns rising from the South Han River, resembling jade shoots or bamboo sprouts emerging from the water.
Original text:
其一 無端鍾皷發蒼寒。宛轉空江月一丸。若比人間凡艸木。芙蓉萬朶自珊珊。
其二 如人筆力走雷霆。逸韻幽情散遠汀。千里擔挑論片石。齋頭移得一峯靑。
Translation: Cinemawords
I
Without cause, bells and drums sending out a dark coldness; winding and turning, the empty river — the moon, one sphere. If compared to the ordinary grass and trees of the human world: ten thousand lotus blossoms — themselves lovely and swaying.
II
Like a person’s brush-power charging like thunder and lightning; transcendent rhyme and secluded feeling dispersing across the far shore. A thousand li of carrying and comparing fragments of stone — the studio front: moved, obtaining one peak of blue-green.
Reading notes:
Two poems at one peak, each approaching from a different angle. The first poem argues the peak’s superiority through comparison: the rock columns compared to ordinary vegetation produce the image of ten thousand lotus blossoms —芙蓉萬朶 (lotus blossoms) swaying of their own accord, each lovely in itself. The comparison converts geological mass into botanical elegance.
The second poem argues through the calligrapher’s vocabulary: the peak has the quality of 筆力 (brush-power) — the energetic force that drives a great calligrapher’s stroke. “Thunder and lightning” is the classical description of the Han dynasty calligrapher Zhang Zhi’s (張芝) brush energy. The peak’s visual energy equals that calligraphic force.
“A thousand li of carrying and comparing fragments of stone”: a reference to the classical practice of transporting famous rocks long distances to scholars’ studios. The Jade-Shoot Peak renders this practice absurd — no fragment could be carried; only the whole peak, seen from the riverbank, can be obtained, and then only as a view. “The studio front: moved, obtaining one peak of blue-green” is the resolution: not transport but perception, the study’s wall opening to admit the whole peak.
Poem 6
二樂樓 (Ieryu Tower)
Period: Period uncertain; likely pre-exile or post-exile given the Danyang location.
Form: Heptasyllabic quatrain (七言絶句), 4 lines.
Occasion: A poem at Ieryu Tower (二樂樓 / 이락루 — “Two Pleasures Tower”), a pavilion in the Danyang area bearing a three-character calligraphic inscription associated with a scholar from approximately two centuries prior.
Original text:
紅樓斜日拜三字。二百年中無此君。想見當時洗硯處。古香浮動一溪雲。
Translation: Cinemawords
The red tower, slanting sun — bowing to the three characters; in two hundred years, there has been no one like this gentleman. Imagining the inkstone-washing place of that time: ancient fragrance floating and moving in the one-valley cloud.
Reading notes:
The tower’s “three characters” (三字) — a calligraphic inscription, likely the name of the tower or an associated verse — become the object of reverence: Kim bows to them as if to the person they represent. The slanting sun frames this act of veneration, its oblique light giving the red tower the quality of a late-afternoon altar.
“In two hundred years, no one like this gentleman” is the poem’s central claim: the scholar commemorated here, from approximately the early to mid-seventeenth century, was exceptional enough that two hundred years of subsequent history have not produced his equal. The claim is expressed without naming the person — the three characters of the inscription stand for the whole person.
“Imagining the inkstone-washing place” (想見當時洗硯處): Kim does not look at a relic but reconstructs an action — the specific act of washing an inkstone in the stream, the most intimate scholarly domestic gesture. The cloud floating in the one-valley stream carries what remains of the ancient fragrance: not the person, not the inscribed characters, but the atmosphere of serious literary attention that once inhabited this place.
Poem 7
下仙巖 (Lower Immortal Rock)
Period: Period uncertain; likely pre-exile or post-exile given the Danyang location.
Form: Heptasyllabic quatrain (七言絶句), 4 lines.
Occasion: The first of three poems at successive levels of Immortal Rock (仙巖) — lower, middle, and upper formations.
Original text:
陰陰脩壑似長廊。流水浮廻日月光。一點緇塵渾不着。白雲深處欲焚香。
Translation: Cinemawords
Shaded, shaded — the deep ravine like a long corridor; flowing water floating and revolving — sunlight and moonlight. Not a single speck of dark dust sticking: in the depths of white cloud, wanting to burn incense.
Reading notes:
緇塵 (dark dust) is the standard Buddhist term for the contaminating dust of the mundane world — all the distractions, temptations, and preoccupations of ordinary human concern. The ravine’s condition — shaded, reverberating with water-light — is defined by the absence of this dust. Not a speck adheres.
The contrast between the long corridor’s deep shade and the white cloud’s depth organizes the poem spatially: entering the shaded ravine (a horizontal corridor) leads into a vertical white-cloud depth (wanting to burn incense — the desire to make this a formal devotional space). The flowing water distributes both sunlight and moonlight equally: day and night are not separate in this space.
The three Immortal Rock poems together describe an ascent: lower, middle, upper. The lower poem establishes the purifying entry condition.
Poem 8
中仙巖 (Middle Immortal Rock)
Period: Period uncertain; likely pre-exile or post-exile given the Danyang location.
Form: Heptasyllabic quatrain (七言絶句), 4 lines.
Occasion: Second in the three-poem Immortal Rock sequence.
Original text:
百弓石作疊書床。可置宣罏與縹囊。更有疎松交翠影。一編文字寫溪光。
Translation: Cinemawords
A hundred bow-lengths of stone making stacked study couches; suitable for placing the Xuan stove and the blue-green book-bag. Furthermore, sparse pines exchanging jade-green shadows: one volume of written characters writing the stream’s light.
Reading notes:
Where the Lower Rock was defined by purity and incense, the Middle Rock is furnished as a study. A “hundred bow-lengths” (百弓) of stone create stacked horizontal surfaces resembling the low sleeping or study platforms (書床 — study couch) of a scholar’s room. 宣罏 (Xuan stove) = the refined bronze brazier from Xuancheng; 縹囊 (blue-green bag) = the pale silk bag in which scrolls and books are stored. These scholar’s implements could be placed on the stone as if it were a custom-made studio.
“One volume of written characters writing the stream’s light” closes the poem with the sequence’s central metaphor inverted: instead of the landscape being read like a text, the text (the literary character) writes the stream’s light — calligraphic practice and natural observation become identical activities at the Middle Rock.
Poem 9
上仙巖 (Upper Immortal Rock)
Period: Period uncertain; likely pre-exile or post-exile given the Danyang location.
Form: Heptasyllabic quatrain (七言絶句), 4 lines.
Occasion: Third and highest of the Immortal Rock poems.
Original text:
行行路轉峰廻處。一道淸泉天上來。縱使有方能出世。異時歸海亦蓬萊。
Translation: Cinemawords
Walking, walking — where the path turns and the peak curves back; one channel of clear spring coming from heaven. Even if there is a method capable of leaving the world — at a different time, returning to the sea: this too is Penglai.
Reading notes:
Penglai (蓬萊 / 봉래) is the mythological immortal island of the eastern sea, one of the Three Mountains of the immortal world. The poem’s argument: even if one could achieve the ability to transcend the world entirely, and then at some later time return from that transcendence to the ordinary sea — that return would also be a form of reaching Penglai. The spring coming from heaven establishes the Upper Rock as already in contact with the immortal register; the conclusion extends this logic: there is no beyond the world that is separate from the world’s best moments.
The three-poem Immortal Rock sequence moves from purification (lower) to scholarly furnishing (middle) to liberation (upper). The upper poem’s resolution — return is also immortality — is the sequence’s philosophical climax.
Poem 10
隱仙臺 (Hidden Immortal Terrace)
Period: Period uncertain; likely pre-exile or post-exile given the Danyang location.
Form: Heptasyllabic quatrain (七言絶句), 4 lines.
Occasion: A poem at the Hidden Immortal Terrace (隱仙臺), a natural platform in the Danyang area.
Original text:
黃葉空山打角巾。長歌何處采芝人。鞭鸞駕鶴還多事。旣是神仙又隱淪。
Translation: Cinemawords
Yellow leaves, empty mountain — striking the corner-cloth headgear; long song — where is the mushroom-gathering person? Whipping a phoenix, riding a crane — still so much trouble; already an immortal, yet also hidden and withdrawn.
Reading notes:
角巾 (corner-cloth headgear): the cloth headgear worn by retired scholars or recluses who have refused official caps. “Striking” it suggests the casual, careless manner of someone wandering freely. 采芝人 (mushroom-gatherer) is the classical figure for Daoist recluses gathering the 靈芝 (lingzhi / spirit mushroom) of immortality — their “long song” resonates somewhere in the yellow-leaf mountain, though they are not visible.
“Whipping a phoenix, riding a crane — still so much trouble”: even the immortal’s preferred transport involves complication. The phoenix and crane must be managed; the journey to the immortal realm is itself a form of affair (事 / 多事). The poem presses further: “already an immortal, yet also hidden and withdrawn” (旣是神仙又隱淪). The terrace’s name (隱仙 — “Hidden Immortal”) contains the paradox: achieved immortality and voluntary concealment are simultaneous conditions, not sequential. You can be a fully realized immortal and still be in hiding.
Poem 11
仙遊洞 (Immortal Play Valley)
Period: Period uncertain; likely pre-exile or post-exile given the Danyang location.
Form: Heptasyllabic quatrain (七言絶句), 4 lines.
Occasion: A poem at Immortal Play Valley (仙遊洞), a gorge or valley in the Danyang area.
Original text:
碧雲零落作秋陰。唯有飛泉灑石林。一自吹簫人去後。桂花香冷到如今.
Translation: Cinemawords
Blue-jade clouds scattered — making autumn shade; only the flying spring sprinkling the stone forest. Since the flute-playing person departed: osmanthus fragrance cold until now.
Reading notes:
The “flute-playing person” (吹簫人) is a classical figure for the Daoist musician-recluse. In the Tang poet Xiao Shi’s story, he played the phoenix-calling flute on a tower until a phoenix came, then departed riding it. More generally, any person of exceptional talent who has “played their flute” in a specific location and then vanished leaves that location defined by their absence.
The osmanthus (桂花 / 계화) is the autumn flower associated with the moon and with Daoist atmosphere — cold, clear, fragrant in a way that intensifies rather than dissipates. The fragrance remains “cold until now” — colder as the person recedes further into the past, more concentrated as the presence that generated it becomes purely atmospheric.
“Flying spring sprinkling the stone forest” is the only active element remaining in the valley. The spring continues its natural work; the human presence has departed. The valley is defined by the gap between what continues (natural processes) and what has stopped (human music, human occupation).
Poem 12
龜潭 (Turtle Pool)
Period: Period uncertain; likely pre-exile or post-exile given the Danyang location.
Form: Heptasyllabic quatrain (七言絶句), 4 lines.
Occasion: A poem at Turtle Pool (龜潭 / 구담), one of the most celebrated of the Danyang Eight Views, named for a large rock formation resembling a turtle descending into the river.
Original text:
石怪如龜下碧漣。噴波成雨白連天。衆峰皆作芙蓉色。一笑看來小似錢.
Translation: Cinemawords
Strange stone like a turtle descending into blue ripples; spray from the waves becoming rain, white connecting heaven. All peaks becoming lotus color: laughing and looking — small as a coin.
Reading notes:
The turtle-shaped rock at the pool’s edge gives the site its name and its opening image. “Descending into blue ripples” — the stone appears to be mid-motion, entering the water rather than simply resting on the bank. The spray from the river’s movement becomes rain, connecting earth and heaven through water.
“All peaks becoming lotus color” — the surrounding mountains, reflected in the pool and seen through the spray-mist, take on the soft, saturated color of lotus flowers. The entire scenic environment has unified into a single color.
“Laughing and looking — small as a coin”: the poem’s comic pivot. From this vantage, surveying the spray and the peaks, one laughs at the scale — the peaks that looked enormous are, from this angle of perception, no bigger than coins. The laughter is not contempt but the particular pleasure of discovering that the grand and the miniature are interchangeable depending on distance and perspective. This is the Daoist scale-reversal in good humor.
Poem 13
島潭 (Island Pool)
Period: Period uncertain; likely pre-exile or post-exile given the Danyang location.
Form: Heptasyllabic quatrain (七言絶句), 4 lines.
Occasion: A poem at Island Pool (島潭 / 도담), site of the 도담삼봉 (Dodam Three Peaks) — three rocky peaks rising directly from the middle of the South Han River, one of the most famous scenic sites in Korea.
Original text:
徒聞海外有三山。何處飛來學佛鬟。格韻比人仙骨在。恰如中散住塵寰。
Translation: Cinemawords
Merely hearing that beyond the sea there are Three Mountains [of immortality]; from where did it fly, imitating the Buddhist chignon? Its character and rhyme — compared to humans — immortal bones present: exactly like Zhongsan [Ji Kang] dwelling in the dusty world.
Reading notes:
The Three Mountains (三山) of Daoist mythology — Penglai, Fangzhang, and Yingzhou, the immortal islands beyond the eastern sea — are the obvious comparison for the three peaks rising from the river at Dodam. The poem’s opening question is rhetorical: you don’t need to go beyond the sea to find the Three Mountains; they have “flown” to this Korean riverbank.
“Buddhist chignon” (佛鬟): the rounded topknot of the three peaks resembles the ushnisha (the raised protrusion on the crown of a Buddha statue), the crown of enlightenment. The three peaks simultaneously evoke the immortal islands and the Buddha’s head.
Ji Kang (嵇康, 223–262 CE), also called Zhongsan after his official title 中散大夫 (Gentleman of the Central Dispersed Office), was one of the Seven Worthies of the Bamboo Grove — famed for his extraordinary talent, his refusal to compromise with political power, and his execution by the Sima regime. “Exactly like Zhongsan dwelling in the dusty world” positions the Dodam peaks as Ji Kang figures: exceptionally gifted presences occupying an ordinary world that cannot quite contain them.
Poem 14
石門 (Stone Gate)
Period: Period uncertain; likely pre-exile or post-exile given the Danyang location.
Form: Heptasyllabic quatrain (七言絶句), 4 lines. The source has one missing character (缺) between 千 and 杳 in the second line.
Occasion: A poem at Stone Gate (石門 / 석문), one of the Danyang Eight Views — a natural stone arch formation through which the river passes.
Original text:
百尺石霓開曲灣。神工千 缺 杳難攀。不敎車馬通來跡。只有烟霞自往還。
Translation: Cinemawords
A hundred-foot stone rainbow opening a curved bay; divine craftsmanship — a thousand [one character missing] — darkly hard to ascend. Not allowing carriages and horses to pass through: only clouds and mist going and returning freely.
Reading notes:
“Stone rainbow” (石霓) — the natural arch of the Stone Gate curves across the visual field like a rainbow, its stone body spanning the river or the gap between cliffs. A hundred feet of stone rainbow opening a curved bay: the arch and the water below form a single visual unit, the bay curved as if by the arch’s influence.
“Divine craftsmanship” (神工): the Stone Gate’s construction exceeds human capacity — only divine effort could have made it. The missing character between 千 and 杳 is the source’s gap; the line’s rhythm and meaning indicate that something was “darkly hard to ascend,” suggesting a descriptor of the scale or difficulty of the divine work.
“Not allowing carriages and horses to pass through / only clouds and mist going and returning freely”: the gate admits only the atmospheric and the weightless. Human traffic — official and commercial, represented by carriages and horses — cannot enter; the gate is carved for another kind of passage. The freedom of clouds and mist (自往還 — going and returning of their own accord) is the poem’s closing image of what the Stone Gate actually accommodates.
Poem 15
仙人田 (Immortal’s Field)
Period: Period uncertain; likely pre-exile or post-exile given the Danyang location.
Form: Heptasyllabic quatrain (七言絶句), 4 lines.
Occasion: A poem at the Immortal’s Field (仙人田), a rock terrace in the Danyang area resembling cultivated terraced fields, supposedly farmed by immortals using tigers and leopards as draft animals.
Original text:
虎耘豹耜事荒唐。𨗩石爲田亦杳茫。折盡玉英餘畹在。江風吹動古馨香。
Translation: Cinemawords
Tigers plowing, leopards drawing the plow — what an absurd affair; clearing stone for fields — also obscure and vast. All jade blossoms broken off, the fragrant plot remaining: river wind blowing and moving the ancient fragrance.
Reading notes:
Tigers plowing and leopards pulling the plow (虎耘豹耜): the impossible farm animals of the immortal farmers, an absurdity that establishes the field’s supernatural credentials while also making the whole enterprise comically impossible. Even divine agriculture is difficult: the stone-clearing is 杳茫 (obscure and vast), the work having no clear end or result.
The second couplet invokes the Chu Ci (楚辭 — Songs of Chu) tradition. 玉英 (jade blossoms) and 畹 (fragrant plot, specifically a 12-mu tract of land) appear in the Li Sao (離騷), where the loyal minister cultivates fragrant plants in his private garden as figures for his own virtue and the virtue he wishes to protect. “All jade blossoms broken off, the fragrant plot remaining” — the flowers are gone, but the cultivated ground persists, still carrying the ancient fragrance that gave it its identity. The river wind moves this fragrance through the empty field. The Chu Ci emotional register — loyal cultivation, unjust exile, the fragrant plant surviving the loss of its cultivator — enters the poem through these compressed images.
Poem 16
隱舟巖 (Hidden Boat Rock)
Period: Period uncertain; likely pre-exile or post-exile given the Danyang location.
Form: Heptasyllabic quatrain (七言絶句), 4 lines.
Occasion: A poem at Hidden Boat Rock (隱舟巖), a rock formation in the Danyang area resembling a concealed boat.
Original text:
江綠秋涵古壁苔。渾無窽坎可容杯。不是東風吹石裂。梭船短棹自何來。
Translation: Cinemawords
River green, autumn encompassing ancient wall moss; not a single hollow or depression that could hold a cup. If not for the east wind having split the stone: the shuttle-boat with short oar — from where would it have come?
Reading notes:
The poem is organized around a negative conditional: without the east wind’s splitting of the rock, the boat-shaped form would not exist. The rock’s boat-shape is entirely the product of weathering — the wind has cracked the stone into its current form. 梭船 (shuttle-boat) is a small, swift vessel shaped like a weaving shuttle.
“Not a single hollow that could hold a cup” is a classical measure of rock quality from the garden rock aesthetic tradition — a good display rock should have perforations and hollows (the 瘦漏透縐 / thin-perforated-transparent-wrinkled four qualities of the perfect garden stone). The Hidden Boat Rock has none of these qualities except its boat shape. In other words: it is not a refined garden rock but a natural accident, its single quality — resemblance to a boat — the direct result of wind-cracking.
The poem raises the question of how natural resemblance comes about. The answer here is geological: the east wind. The rock did not choose its form; the wind gave it one.
Poem 17
怪石田 (Strange Stone Field)
Period: Period uncertain; likely pre-exile or post-exile given the Danyang location.
Form: Heptasyllabic quatrain (七言絶句), 4 lines.
Occasion: A poem at the Strange Stone Field (怪石田), an area of unusual limestone rock formations in the Danyang area.
Original text:
半畝雲階石作叢。頭頭縐漏又玲瓏。千株縱有他山石。一片安能在其中。
Translation: Cinemawords
Half-mu of cloud-steps — stone forming clusters; each head wrinkled, with holes, also delicately lovely. Even if there are a thousand other mountain stones: how could a single piece [like these] be among ordinary stones?
Reading notes:
縐漏 (wrinkled and perforated): two of the four qualities (瘦漏透縐 — thin, perforated, transparent, wrinkled) that define the ideal garden rock in the classical Chinese aesthetic tradition. The Strange Stone Field’s rocks have wrinkled surfaces (縐) and perforations (漏), combining two of the four prized qualities naturally. 玲瓏 (delicately lovely, tinkling) is the additional quality of fine workmanship.
“Even if there are a thousand other mountain stones — how could a single piece like these be among ordinary stones?” The argument parallels the Jade-Shoot Peak poem: these stones are so exceptional that comparison with ordinary stones is meaningless. A fragment of Strange Stone Field cannot be moved and placed among ordinary rocks without immediately being evident as different.
The “cloud-steps” (雲階) describe the terraced natural arrangement of the limestone formations, their stepped quality resembling a stairway into clouds.
Poem 18
義林池 (Righteous Forest Pond)
Period: Period uncertain; likely pre-exile or post-exile given the Danyang location.
Form: Heptasyllabic quatrain (七言絶句), 4 lines.
Occasion: The final poem in the topographic sequence, at Righteous Forest Pond (義林池 / 의림지), a named pond in the Danyang scenic area.
Original text:
濃抹秋山似畵眉。圓潭平布碧琉璃。如將小大論齊物。直道硯山環墨池。
Translation: Cinemawords
Heavily daubed autumn mountain — like a painted eyebrow; round pond spread flat — blue-green glass. If one were to discuss small and large with the Zhuangzi’s “equalizing of things”: directly say: it is inkstone mountain encircling an ink pool.
Reading notes:
The topographic sequence closes at a pond, and the final poem transforms the entire landscape into calligrapher’s tools. 齊物 (equalizing of things) refers to the core concept of Zhuangzi’s Qiwulun (齊物論 / “On the Equalization of Things”), which argues that all distinctions of large and small, right and wrong, are relative and ultimately equal from the perspective of the Dao. Applied here: the mountain is an inkstone, the pond is an ink pool. Scale is not fixed; what looks like a mountain and a pond from ordinary human perspective is, from the perspective of equal-things, identical to what a scholar sees on a writing desk.
“Heavily daubed autumn mountain — like a painted eyebrow” opens with the painter’s term 濃抹 (heavy application of paint/ink), then converts it into a beauty metaphor: the mountain’s autumn foliage applied thickly like a painted eyebrow on a face. The pond spreads flat as blue-green glass — still, even, a perfect reflecting surface.
The final image — “inkstone mountain encircling an ink pool” — returns to poem 2’s scroll metaphor and extends it: the landscape is not just like a painting but like the tools that make paintings. Volume 10’s first topographic sequence closes by converting the world into the instruments of writing.
Closing Note
Eighteen quatrains constitute Volume 10’s opening — all in the same brief form, all moving through a single scenic circuit. What the sequence demonstrates is not just a set of scenic views but a method: the landscape is read like a scroll, inscribed like a text, furnished like a study, and finally identified with the tools of calligraphy. The next installment continues this volume’s pre-exile world, bringing in social poetry, farewells, and the Beijing network of Volume 9 extended into new occasions — before the arrival, at poem 100, of the first explicit Jeju exile poems.