Three Dreams

Three Dreams 鳳陽士人 translated by John Minford from Pu Songling’s (蒲松齡, 1640-1715) Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio 聊齋誌異 is the latest addition to Nouvelle Chinoiserie 奇趣漢學 and Wairarapa Readings 白水札記 in China Heritage. These selections celebrate the variety and vibrancy of China’s literary heritage, as well as Pu Songling’s haunting genius.

In Nouvelle Chinoiserie we introduce literary texts and translations aimed at students of traditional Chinese letters who are interested in the world that lies beyond the narrow confines and demands of contemporary institutional pedagogy. They also reflect the long-term interest of The Wairarapa Academy for New Sinology in ‘cultivation’ 修養.

The translation is followed by the Chinese original.

— The Editor
China Heritage
20 September 2018

***

Reading Strange Tales:

Introductory Note

 

It is interesting that two of Pu Songling’s early translators chose this story for inclusion in their brief anthologies. It forms the ninth of Rose Quong’s forty tales in her Chinese Ghost and Love Stories (London: Dennis Dobson, 1947), entitled rather puzzlingly ‘Dreaming of the Scholar Feng-yang’. Quong (鄺如絲, 1879-1972) was an Australian-Chinese from Melbourne, who later made a name for herself in England and in the United States, as an actress and later as a purveyor of Chinoiserie (for details, see the entry on her by Angela Woollacott in the 2005 edition of the Australian Dictionary of Biography).

In Louis Laloy’s Contes Magiques d’après l’ancien texte Chinois de P’ou Soung-lin (l’Immortel en Exil), (Paris: L’Edition d’Art, 1925) this story forms the fifth item, entitled more appropriately ‘Le Lettré de Foung-yang’. Laloy (1874-1944) was a fascinating individual, contemporary of Eric Satie, musicologist and Sinologist, friend and biographer of Debussy. Herbert Giles does not include it at all in his larger selection of 164 stories.

As Judith Zeitlin points out, this tale is to a certain extent derived from three earlier classical tales 傳奇 from the Tang dynasty, including one by Bo Xingjian 白行簡, the brother of the poet Bo Juyi 白居易, simply entitled ‘A Story of Three Dreams’ 三夢記 (see Zeitlin, Historian of the Strange, p.157 ff., referring to Allan Barr’s 1983 Oxford doctoral dissertation). Incidentally, all of these materials are conveniently included in the invaluable volume by 朱一玄, 《聊齋誌異資料匯編》 , 天津: 南開大學, 2002.

Zeitlin summarizes the story’s theme a little simplistically: ‘Dreams of desire may also suddenly give way to nightmares of anxiety.’ She continues somewhat speculatively: ‘The beautiful lady is both the wife’s double and her rival, the embodiment of the dual nature of her desire and her fears.’ Zeitlin helpfully translates the comment by Dan Minglun (但明倫, 1782-1853), one of the earliest commentators on Strange Tales. Dan is commenting on the beautiful lady’s seductive song:

‘Every line and every word were conceived by the wife in a state of extreme longing, but now they are being sung by the beautiful lady; the lady’s song ends up supplying the words to seduce the wife’s husband — this is really hard to bear!’

Feng Zhenluan Feng Zhenluan (馮鎮巒, 1760-1830) finds the whole scene (and the rather vulgar tone of the song itself) reminiscent of the novel Golden Lotus 金瓶梅. In Ma Zhenfang’s modern compendium — 馬振方編,《聊齋誌異評賞大成》, 麗江, 1992; 臺北: 建安, 1996 — Fan Yihong praises the tale’s psychological realism, but regrets the superstitious dimension of the ending in which all three dreams are shown to have been identical. And yet this surely lies at the very heart of Pu Songling’s intentions.

In this respect, nearly all modern Mainland critics of both Strange Tales and of the slightly later Story of the Stone 紅樓夢 are severely hampered by their ideological inability to accept the interweaving of ‘reality’ and ‘illusion’, the juxtaposition of waking life and of the dream state, the ambivalence of what Cao Xueqin calls ‘truth’ 真 and ‘fiction’ 假. The old commentator Feng Zhenluan, by contrast, praises this ending.

— John Minford

Three Dreams 鳳陽士人

Pu Songling 蒲松齡

Translated by John Minford

 

A certain gentleman of Fengyang in the province of Anhui went off on a long study trip taking his books with him. He told his wife to expect him back in six months’ time. Ten months went by, however, and there was still no news of him. His wife pined for him sorely.

One night, she rested her lonely head on her pillow, her heart filled with the anguish of separation. The moon was shining through the gauze casement, casting a wavering shadow in her chamber, as she lay in her bed restlessly tossing and turning, when suddenly a most beautiful lady, with pearls in her hair, clad in a crimson gown, parted the curtains of her bedstead and addressed her, smiling:

‘Sister, are you not yearning to see your husband once again?’

She rose at once from her bed and answered:

‘Why, yes, indeed I am!’

The beautiful lady invited her to follow her, urging her to put aside any concerns she might have as to the length of the journey. She took her by the hand, and together they walked out into the moonlit night. After about the distance of an arrow’s flight, she was hobbling along and the beautiful stranger was already outstripping her. She asked the lady to wait while she returned home to fetch a new pair of shoes. But the lady instead led her to the side of the road, and bidding her to be seated, took off her own shoes and offered them to her. She gladly accepted, and put them on at once. Luckily they were a perfect fit. And so the two of them set off again on their journey. Now she felt as if her feet had grown wings.

A little later, she espied her husband coming towards them, riding a white mule. He seemed greatly startled to see them, and dismounted at once.

‘Where are you going?’ he asked.

‘I was on my way to visit you,’ she replied.

He asked her who her beautiful companion was. Before his wife could reply, the lady raised her hand to her mouth and said with a smile:

‘Do not bother her with questions. She has travelled far to come here and be with you. And you too sir must be tired after travelling half the night, as must your mule. My own home is close by. Please be my guests, come and rest in my house. You can set off again in the morning and be home in plenty of time.’

A little further on they came to a village and the three of them halted before a courtyard house. Here the beautiful stranger roused her sleeping maidservants and instructed them to welcome her guests.

‘Tonight the moon is bright and we have no need of candles. Let us sit here outside on the terrace on this stone bench.’

The gentleman tethered his mule beneath the eaves of the house, and they sat down.

‘Surely my shoes must have been too large for you,’ said the fair lady to his wife. ‘They must have caused you considerable discomfort on the way. Since you will be riding home tomorrow, would you be so kind as to let me have them back?’

The wife returned them with thanks. Shortly thereafter wine and food were served. The fair lady poured the wine herself.

‘You two have been apart for so long,’ she said. ‘We should celebrate tonight’s reunion!’

The gentleman responded to her toast, and drained his goblet. He and the fair one talked and laughed together animatedly, and a certain amount of foot-tapping began to take place beneath the table.  He could not keep his eyes off her, and made a series of highly suggestive remarks. Between husband and wife, by contrast, after their long separation, hardly a word passed.

The fair lady kept flashing her eyes at the gentleman, bewitching him with subtle words of seduction, while the wife sat there silently, feigning indifference. Eventually the two grew quite tipsy, and their conversation became more and more intimate and salacious. The fair lady pressed on him a large horn-cup of wine, which he at first declined, saying he was already drunk. She insisted, and he laughed:

‘If you’ll sing for me, then I’ll drink for you!’

She agreed to sing for him, and taking her ivory-inlaid plectrum in her hand, she plucked the strings of her zither and began to sing:

Twilight falls, I put my finery aside,
A cool west wind blows through the gauze casement.
The plantain leaves rustle,
The rain descends in wave upon wave.
To whom is he whispering sweet nothings tonight?

I gaze across the endless autumn waters,
But he does not return.
My cheeks are wet with streaming tears.
I long for him, for him I yearn:
And yet he brings me nought but pain!
A crimson broidered slipper in my hand,
I ask the spirits: ‘Will he ever come home again?’

She ceased her song, and smiled at him:

‘That was just a local ditty, hardly worth your listening to. But it’s rather popular in these parts, so I thought I might sing it for your pleasure.’

She had indeed sung in a most sensuous manner, and there was no mistaking her seductive intent. The gentleman was by now quite undone, and could contain himself no longer. After a moment, feigning drunkenness she withdrew from the terrace, and he rose and followed her immediately indoors. They were absent a long while. The maidservants grew tired and lay down to sleep on the verandah.

The wife sat there alone out on the terrace, wrestling with her loneliness, her intense misery mingled with anger and indignation. She half wished to escape and return home. But the night was dark and she did not know the way, so she hesitated. Finally she rose and went indoors to spy on them. As she came near their window, she detected the unmistakeable sounds of love-making — the ‘wisps of cloud releasing drops of rain’. Then she heard her husband speaking intimately with the fair stranger, and recognized the very same obscene expressions he had once spoken to her. By now she was shaking violently and her heart was thumping in her breast. It was more than she could bear. She wanted to crawl into a ditch somewhere and die.

Returning angrily to the terrace, suddenly she caught sight of her brother Sanlang arriving at the house on horseback. He dismounted and she told him the story of her husband’s infidelity. He flew into a mighty rage and went storming into the house with her. They found the door of the lady’s bedchamber barred and bolted, while intimate lovers’ voices were still audible within. The brother lifted up a great rock, and hurled it through the window-frame, smashing it into half a dozen pieces. A frantic cry was heard from within.

‘Alas my poor darling! Your head is quite broken in!’

The wife was greatly shocked when she heard this, and burst out sobbing to her brother:

‘I never asked you to kill my husband! Now what will we do?’

Her brother stared at her wide-eyed.

‘You cried to me for help! So I rubbed out this blot from our lives! And now you take his part, and turn against me! Your whims are really too much to bear!’

He turned on his heel and was about to leave. She clung to him.

‘Take me with you! Else what will become of me?’

But he cast her off and having thrown her to the ground, he made good his escape.

Suddenly the wife awoke and knew it that it had all been a dream.

The very next day her husband did indeed return, riding a white mule. She marvelled at this within herself, but said nothing.  Now, it transpired that the previous night, he too had had a dream. When he told her of it, they were both utterly astounded to discover that it corresponded in every detail with her own.

Her brother learned that his brother-in-law was back from his travels, and came over to welcome him home. In the course of conversation, he said casually:

‘Last night I dreamed that you had returned, and now here you are! Isn’t that strange?’

His brother-in-law laughed.

‘And luckily, I haven’t actually been crushed to death by a great rock!’

‘What on earth do you mean?’ asked the other in amazement. 

When he heard the whole story of their shared dream, he too marvelled at it greatly.

That very night, he dreamed that he had found his sister weeping and pleading with him for help, and that in his rage he had hurled a great rock at her husband. So all three dreams tallied exactly. But no one ever discovered the identity of the beautiful lady.

《聊齋志異》

鳳陽士人

 

鳳陽一士人，負笈遠遊。謂其妻曰：半年當歸。十餘月，竟無耗問，妻翹盼綦切。一夜，纔就枕，紗月搖影，離思縈懷。方反側間，有一麗人，珠鬟絳帔，搴帷而入，笑問：

姊姊，得無欲見郎君乎。

妻急起應之。麗人邀與共往，妻憚修阻，麗人但請勿慮，即挽女手出，並踏月色。約一矢之遠，覺麗人行迅速，女步履艱澀，呼麗人少待，將歸著複履。麗人牽坐路側，自乃捉足脫履相假，女喜著之，幸不鑿枘，復起從行，健步如飛。移時見士人跨白騾來，見妻大驚，急下騎，問何往。女曰：

將以探君。

又顧問麗者伊誰。女未及答，麗人掩口笑曰：

且勿問訊。娘子奔波匪易，郎君星馳夜半，人畜想當俱殆。妾家不遠，且請息駕，早旦而行，不晚也。

顧數武之外，即有村落，遂同行。入一庭院，麗人促睡婢起供客，曰：

今夜月色皎然，不必命燭，小臺石榻可坐。

士人縶蹇檐梧，乃即坐，麗人曰：

履大不適於體，途中頗累贅否。歸有代步，乞賜還也。

女稱謝，付之。

俄頃，設酒果，麗人酌曰：

鸞鳳久乖，圓在今夕，濁醪一觴，敬以為賀。

士人亦執琖酬答。主客笑言，履舄交錯。士人注目麗人，屢以游詞相挑，夫妻乍聚，並不寒暄一語。麗人亦美目流情，妖言隱謎，女惟默坐，偽為愚者。久之漸醺，二人語益狎，又以巨觥勸客，士人以醉辭，勸之益苦。士人笑曰：

卿為我度一曲，即當飲。

麗人不拒，即以牙板，撫提琴而歌曰：

黃昏卸得殘妝罷，窗外西風冷透紗。聽蕉聲，一陣一陣細雨下，何處與人閒磕牙。望穿秋水，不見還家，潸潸淚似麻。又是想他，又是恨他，手拿著紅繡鞋兒占鬼卦。

歌竟，笑曰：

此市井里巷之謠，不足污君聽，然因流俗所尚，姑效顰耳。

音聲靡靡，風度狎褻，士人搖惑，若不自禁。少間，麗人偽醉離席，士人亦起，從之而去。久之不至，婢子乏疲，伏睡廊下。女獨坐，塊然無侶，中心憤恚，頗難自堪，思欲遁歸，而夜色微茫，不憶道路，輾轉無以自主。因起而覘之，裁近其窗，則斷雲零雨之聲，隱約可聞。又聽之，聞良人與己素常猥褻之狀，盡情傾吐。女至此，手顫心搖，殆不可遏，念不如出門竄溝壑以死。憤然方行，見弟三郎乘馬而至，遽便下問。女具以告，三郎大怒，立與姊回，直入其家，則室門扃閉，枕上之語猶喁喁也。三郎舉巨石如斗，拋擊窗櫺，三五碎斷。內大呼曰：

郎君腦破矣，奈何。

女聞之，愕然大哭，謂弟曰：

我不謀與汝殺郎君，今且若何。

三郎撐目曰：

汝嗚嗚促我來，甫能消此心中惡，又護男兒怨弟兄，我不慣與婢子供指使。

返身欲去。女牽衣曰：

汝不攜我去，將何之。

三郎揮姊仆地，脫體而去，女頓驚寤，始知其夢。越日，士人果歸，乘白騾，女異之而未言。士人是夜亦夢，所見所遭，述之悉符，互相駭怪。既而三郎聞姊夫遠歸，亦來省問，語次，謂士人曰：

昨宵夢君歸，今果然。

亦大異。士人笑曰：

幸不為巨石所斃。

三郎愕然問故，士人以夢告，三郎大異之。蓋是夜，三郎亦夢遇姊泣訴，憤激投石也。三夢相符，但不知麗人何許耳。