A Woman’s Role in the Home: Spring Slumber

COOL POEMS: Introduction > THE POEMS

Topic: A Woman’s Role in the Home

Author: Bai Juyi (772-846)

Spring Slumber

Freshly bathed, body and limbs come alive;
I lie alone, mind and mood at peace.
Seeing as I’d worked so deep in the night,
Soon I was lost in a daylight sleep.

My spring blanket, though thin, felt warm;
The morning window set deep, welcomed ease.
Before long I was lost to the mundane world,
It seemed I’d transformed to a pillow pixie.

Then I arrived at where dreams disappear;
A heavenly peace impossible to describe.
Much better than Pengze’s drunken sleep,
It could vie with Cao’s creekside reverie.

But what’s that calling me to consciousness?
Like the morning dove’s song, and its chirp?
I awake to my dear wife’s laughing face;
Seems the spring’s made a mess of my work!

Comments: This poem is remarkable for the degree to which it celebrates the physical body and the poet’s personal satisfaction with his physical sensations. We must remember that in other parts of Eurasia during this period such a meditation might have been regarded as highly inappropriate if not downright sinful. Bai’s poem in contrast is self-indulgent and even whimsical, yet it is ultimately a poem about an ideal wife. Bai had been working late into the night and so, on a warm, spring morning, falls asleep.  We follow his progress into deeper and ever-more comfy states of consciousness until he achieves “a heavenly peace impossible to describe.” At this point, however, his wife wakes him up!  Surprisingly, he does not portray her as a shrew.  On the contrary, the image of the dove’s song from the Book of Odes is a reference to conjugal happiness. Moreover, he awakes to her smiling face, not the scowl of a pesky shrew.  The reason is that, in the Chinese literary tradition, a good wife is often described as a “wise” wife, a sensible companion who keeps a man’s feet on the ground but in a loving way. Those who saw the film “Crouching Tiger” will recognize this ideal in the relationship between characters portrayed by Chow Yunfat and Michele Yeo.  Whenever Chow started getting philosophical—which is to say, impractical—Michele would bring him down to earth.  That is what Bai’s wife does for him in this intimate family scene. He had fallen into a deep slumber, but she reminds him with a smile that he still has a living to make!

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