Ts'ao Sung

Ts'ao Sung (c. 830 – 910) was a Chinese poet of the Tang Dynasty.

Quotes

A Protest in the Sixth Year of Qianfu (A.D. 879)

• 泽国江山入战图，
  生民何计乐樵苏；
  凭君莫话封侯事，
  一将功成万骨枯。
  • The hills and rivers of the lowland country
    You have made your battle ground.
    How do you suppose the people who live there
    Will procure firewood and hay?
    Do not let me hear you talking together
    About titles and promotions;
    For a single general’s reputation
    Is made out of ten thousand corpses.
    • As translated by Arthur Waley in A Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems (London: Constable & Co., Ltd., 1918)
  • Variant translations:
    • Rich hills and fields that war despoiled.
      Their people how could they live?
      Sing me no more of epics—some Man gained
      Eternal fame on skeletons.
      • Shi ci yi xuan: Poems from China (1950), p. 35
    • Lowland hills and rivers dragged on to the war map
      O lowlands lowlands O!
      Those groaning people! how can they live?
      A turnip or two grubbed up
      Don't talk to me about titles promotions all that slop
      One general pulling out a victory
      leaves ten thousand corpses to rot!
      • Rewi Alley, Peace Through the Ages: Translations from the Poets of China (1954), p. 109
    • The submerged country, river and hill, is a battle-ground.
      How can the common people enjoy their wood-cutting and their fuel-gathering?
      I charge thee, sir, not to talk of high honours;
      A single general achieves fame on the rotting bones of ten thousand.
      • Albert Richard Davis, The Penguin Book of Chinese Verse (1962), p. 28
    • The hills and rivers of the Lowland country
      You have made your battle ground
      How do you think the people that live there
      Will gather hay and firewood?
      Do not let me hear you speaking together
      About titles and honors,
      For a single general’s celebrity
      Is founded on ten thousand corpses.
      • "Complaint Against Generals", Ancient Chinese poems in Scots and English, ElectricScotland.com, December 2005.

Quotes about Sung

• Ts'ao is noted for finally passing his chin-shih examination when he was over seventy along with four other septuagenarians. In his poetry he took Chia Tao as his model.
  • Albert Richard Davis (ed.), The Penguin Book of Chinese Verse (1962), p. xvii

• The years of the Tang Dynasty were the golden age of Chinese poetry. Nearly fifty thousand poems written during these 300 years are still extant. ...Up to 755 A.D. the Tang Dynasty was in the heyday of its political and military power and its emperors waged a whole series of aggressive wars against China's neighbours. Many were the soldiers who died on the frontiers in these wars, and many were the widowed! Numerous poems were written about the frontier wars and about women lamenting their soldier husbands.
  Many of the verses composed in the Tang Dynasty and frequently on the lips of the people bitterly exposed the effects of unjust wars on different classes and types of men. For example:

  .........
  For already I have learned, that a general's fame
  stands on a pile of dry bones
  Of what were once the people.

  —Tsao Sung: War

The rulers gained riches and fame by war: in their eyes the bleached bones of the people were worthless means to an end. All they cared for was to indulge in a luxurious life and pursue their greedy desires. The poets bitingly pictured the contrast between the rulers and the ruled, the victor and his victims.

• Yu Kuan-ying, "Peace Through the Ages" (Book Review) in People's China (July 16, 1954), no. 14, p. 36; the poem was translated by Rewi Alley.

• [A Protest in the Sixth Year of Ch'ien Fu is] perhaps the most widely-known short antiwar poem in Chinese literature.
  • David Ray and ‎Judy Ray, New Letters Reader Two: An Anthology of Contemporary Writing (1984), p. 226