“Rhapsody on Observing the Waterclock”
by Pao Chao (d. 466)

Introduction by Allen Haaheim

The waterclock or clepsydra (κλεψύδρα, “water-stealer”), an apparatus for measuring time, was used in China from about 200 B.C. onwards. [1] Simply put, it is a series of containers that leak water into each other, regulated by precision holes, valves and other machinery. In the clepsydra that poet-official Pao Chao describes in this rhapsody or fu, a float in the shape of a scholar in the receiver tank or “ocean” grips the “arrow,” an indicator rod, which rises and falls with the amount of water in the tank. Regular drips cause ripples that spread outwards in a “floriate” pattern (thus the “petals”). Pao regularly puns on these parts of the clepsydra drawing a central conceit from the arrow, and generalizes the time-keeping property of the machine to human life and the universe. He laments that the ebb and flow of water in the clepsydra, like time, is unceasing and beyond our control. After the arrow conceit is introduced in the preface, Pao then proceeds to follow the major formal conventions of the fu by elaborating on the topic from various angles. The clepsydra becomes the embodiment of an abstracted space-time continuum, and the microcosm of a surprisingly cold and objective universe.

Fu is a poetic form interspersed with prose and incorporating elements of prose into its verse. As with the piece translated here, it is often also prefaced with a prose introduction. It lacks an exact equivalent in Western literature, so the form has been rendered variously as “descriptio,” “description poétique,” “poetry in irregular verse,” “prose-poetry,” “polytrophic composition,” “poetic exposition,” “rhyme-prose,” and finally “rhapsody,” which lately has become prevalent in academic circles. In early fu, exaggerated description and exposition in a richly euphuistic style is its primary mode. Writers displayed their vocabulary and expertise, using strange, rare words—even making up new ones, exhaustively listing and describing categories of phenomena from various viewpoints. These epideictic fu were typically presented to the poet’s ruler, and often flattered him directly or indirectly, but often could also indirectly admonish him. [2]

By Pao Chao’s time, however, fu were usually much shorter, less deliberately elaborate and pretentious, were often personal and lyrical as well as descriptive, and had become strictly formalized in structure. The use of parallel couplets, repetition of synonyms, allusive and aphoristic language, difficult and rare graphs, and antithetical, often rhyming or onomatopoeic binomes became increasingly refined. “Rhapsody on Observing the Waterclock” belongs to this category—the shu-ch’ing hsiao fu or “short lyrical rhapsody.” At the same time, it is a yung-wu fu, or “rhapsody singing of material things” that exploits its selected object primarily in the service of personal expression. This fu is thus a shu-ch’ing hsiao fu “disguised” as a yung-wu fu—a common approach in Pao’s time.

Many couplets in a fu such as this cannot be taken at face value. Sometimes, allusions bearing the vast significance of the author’s meaning are all but impenetrable, and can be explained only in lengthy footnotes. Poets of PaoÕs time draw from an assumed cultural repertoire, mostly originating in Taoist and Confucian classics, producing some lines so densely packed with allusion that, if diligently translated according to dictionary meaning, can result in something far from what the author intended, or even defy making any sense at all.

The language of this fu is subtle, extremely compact and frequently allusive, and is further embellished by ornate diction. The parallel word order of the original, which would be tedious if followed in translation, has been disrupted to make the translation palatable, adding some variety in tempo, rhythm, and tone, but there are still many places where the translator is forced to make difficult decisions. For example, there are next to no pronouns in the entire fu, so the translator is often hard pressed to decide if Pao is talking about his feelings, the waterclock—or both—or is generalizing. A rough semblance of the original form has also been attempted: some connectives are left out to imitate the paratactic Chinese, and its terse character is otherwise mimicked. Nevertheless, much is both added and abandoned for the translation to make sense. [3]

Since the fu of this period, the Six Dynasties (220–589), became increasingly laden with allusion and parallelism became increasingly strict, intelligibility can sometimes depend more on matching word order between the lines of a couplet than on the basic denotation of a word. Together with rhyme change sectioning off neat blocks of the tightly parallel hexasyllabic verse, the piece emphasizes form and convention to a point that approaches a level of straitjacketed, meticulous artificiality that is anathema to modern tastes, and was often disparaged in succeeding periods in China. 

Certainly, these formal constraints can easily make a work derivative, wooden and pretentious, but many fu are clearly not without artistic merit, and the observance of strict rules of style and form also has a way of distinguishing the mediocre artist from the master. Moreover, disregarding aesthetic concerns altogether, fu are extremely valuable cultural artefacts: “Rhapsody on Observing the Waterclock” is of obvious horological interest, of formal literary, religious, historical and linguistic use, and presents philological challenges in identifying plants, medicines, and minerals.

Although there is no room here to explain the entire fu in detail, I will look at a key couplet and discuss its import and the theme of the fu.

Pao’s plaint is strongly in the tradition of the intensely personal and lyrical ancient poetry of the Ch’u tz’u, whose putative author, Ch’ü Yüan, loyal to his king, was slandered, finally committing suicide. Pao blends in ideas on time and existence from various other time-honoured classics. Current fifth-century ideas complicate, even contradict, the older ideas: Buddhism was actively spreading around him at the time, and was interacting with Hsüan-hsüeh (“Mysterious Learning”), part of a developing religious Taoism. Along with these, nature poetry was coming into its own at this time.

The first word of each line in the first couplet of the fu provides a good illustration of PaoÕs intense imagination and creative use of words: the p’ei is a girdle-pendant, dangling a bag stuffed with fragrant herbs and flowers, but is here used as a verb. The ying is a hat tassel or string, also that of a scholar-official, and here denotes the tying of the tassels. The couplet is thus literally “Appending flowing sighs onto the galloping years / tying flowering thoughts onto the fleeing months.”

At the same time, this attire identifies the wearer as a Confucian élite, and directly associates him with Ch’ü Yüan, who originally made the fragrant thoroughwort and p’ei symbolic of Confucian loyalty and virtue (and the mugwort symbolic of corrupt officialdom). Ch’ü Yüan’s (and thus Pao’s) virtue reappears in the final line of the fu as “redolence.” Similar sentiments can be seen worldwide: “By [the token of] Time [through the ages] / Verily Man is in loss. / Except such as have faith and do righteous deeds and / [join together] in the mutual teaching of truth and of patience and constancy (Qur'ān 103: 1–3; qtd. in Stern, 980). “All heads must come / To the cold tomb / Only the actions of the just / Smell sweet and blossom in the dust” (James Shirley [1596–1666], in Chapman 47).

Thematically, “Rhapsody on Observing the Clepsydra” is a vehement cry into the cosmos, a cry of resignation, despair, and even hope. Through his description of the clepsydra, Pao laments the fleetness of a linear, irredeemable time and a vain existence fast approaching death. A Confucian conviction in an imperishable moral order is the poet’s only hope—that and some allowance given to the carpe diem motif. This accompanying carpe diem sentiment is also shared with literary works worldwide and throughout history. Numerous poets in many cultures, notably Ovid, Horace, and cavaliers such as Herrick in the West, make carpe diem appeals that, like Pao, use the imagery of flowing water and waves. Pao even approaches the acutely felt cosmic anxiety, though not the stark horror, of Baudelaire’s “L’Horloge”: “Souviens-toi que le Temps est un joueur avide / Qui gagne sans tricher, à tout coup! C’est la loi. / Le jour décroît; la nuit augmente; souviens-toi! / Le gouffre a toujours soif; la clepsydre se vide” (Peschel, 136; italics are in the original). Pao’s clepsydra is only distinguishable from Baudelaire’s in that it is less sinister.

Pao Chao’s unique talent for creating psychological landscapes from natural images gives “Rhapsody on Observing the Waterclock” much of its value. The arrow conceit is both ingenious and unprecedented, and Pao exploits it in a variety of ways, taking full advantage of a pun on the word chien, which denotes both the indicator rod of the clepsydra and an arrow, likening the speed of the flying arrow to the alternate rising and sinking of the indicator rod in the clepsydra, and using both to represent the swift, uncontrollable, and irrevocable passage of time. There were naturally associations of the indicator “arrow” with “flying” through time before Pao, but never so developed as here. Su Jui-lung, the first translator of this fu, notes that it is “an exquisite comparison equal to a poetic conceit” (141). This invites comparison to famous conceits of the metaphysical poets such as John Donne’s compass.

However, this is clearly not Western metaphysical or modernist poetry. Uninhibited emotional sentimentality and a conventionalized self-pity, another convention that grew from sympathy with the loyal but lachrymose Ch’ü Yüan, is a feature that is jarring to the modern sensibility. For example, a line to the effect of  “snivel and tears lace my face in all directions, drenching my sleeves” is practically an obligatory convention; whether the authors always felt that way is an open question.

What may grate most abrasively against stereotypical views of China is Pao’s forbidding and merciless natural law. This poem provides only a glimpse of this attitude, which can be seen more clearly in other poems of his. His apparent solace in nature shown near the end and belief that Confucian virtue will endure, taken in the context of his complete works and other literature of his time, may be more conventional than it is representative of his actual personal beliefs. In either case, it is hard to find a more glaring contrast to the idealized, mystical China of poets peacefully contemplating a benign nature. The worldview of some of the more radical ancient Hebrew prophets like Ecclesiastes and Isaiah is more akin to Pao: “All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field. / The grass withers, the flower fades: because the spirit of the Lord blows upon it” (Isaiah 40: 6–7). There is only temporary relief in wine and song, the only enduring constant is virtue, and this virtue can only be passed down to future generations by writing poetry. Of course, many Chinese poets and philosophers, especially in dynasties long after Pao Chao, do indeed find cosmic peace and harmony, but in the tumultuous times of the Six Dynasties, Pao and many of his contemporaries clearly do not. Instead, there is an obsessive anxiety with time, death, and the prospect of immortality—specifically the lack thereof. Thus, the goal of Confucian poets of the age was immortality through literary fame, by passing down the “fragrance” of Confucian virtue.

This fu is thus not only a challenge to translate, and perhaps difficult to appreciate, but violates the cherished view of a China radically opposed to other conceptions of the universe. Often, lyricism in nature poetry is expressed through the buffer of images drawn from natural scenery, which can soothe and reassure through their comfort, familiarity, and beauty. The abstractions they embody are forgotten through the pleasure the vehicle gives. There is obviously beauty in the passage of the seasons, which softens the effect of time passing. But when basic human anxiety over the passage of time is expressed through the vehicle of an entirely indifferent machine such as the clock, the conception is abstracted, and the angst felt becomes all the more poignant and clear in this refined state. The same can be said of modern technology that, in driving ever nearer to the creation of the perfect machine, brings our worst fears ever more clearly into focus at the same time. For Pao Chao, the frail flower of Confucian fragrance is the only means of appeal against such a fate, and to infuse the essence of this perfume into writing is the only means of obtaining a form of immortality in the face of certain blackness.

References and Resources

Chapman, Edwin O., ed. A Thousand and One Gems of English and American Poetry. New York: Worthington, 1884.

Ch’ien chung-lien, ed. and comm. Pao Ts’an-chün chi chu. Shanghai: Chung-hua shu-chü, 1959.

Ch’en Meng-lei (b. 1651) et al., comp. Edited by Chiang T’ing-hsi (1669-1732). Ku-chin t’u-shu chi ch’eng. (10000 chüan.) Ts’e 33 (Li-fa tien), chüan 98-99 (Lou-k’o pu). Shanghai: Chung-hua shu-chü, 1934.

Chu Ch’i-hsin. “Shuo wen t’an wu: Lou.” Wen-shih chih-shih 1 (1999): 62-65.

Knechtges, David R., trans. and comm. Compiled by Xiao Tong (501-531). Wen xuan, or Selections of Refined Literature, vol. 2: Rhapsodies on Sacrifices, Hunting, Travel, Sightseeing, Palaces and Halls, Rivers and Seas. (3 vols.) Taiwan edition. Taipei: SMC, 1990.

Needham, Joseph et al. Science and Civilisation in China, vol. 3: Mathematics and the Sciences of the Heavens and the Earth. (6 vols.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959.

Peschel, Enid Rhodes, trans. and ed. Four French Symbolist Poets: Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Verlaine, Mallarmé. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1981.

Stern, M.S., “Time in the Islamic World.” In Helaine Selin, ed., Encyclopedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1997.

Su Jui-lung, “Versatility within Tradition: A Study of the Literary Works of Bao Zhao (414-466).” Ph. D. diss., University of Washington, 1994.

Waley, Arthur. The Temple and Other Poems. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1923.

Modern language translations of this fu can be found in Chiaki Nakajima, “Hō Shō no ‘Kan rō no fu’ ni tsuite,” in Abe Yoshio et al., eds., Uno Tetsuto sensei hakkuju shukuga kinen tōyōgaku ronsō (Tokyo: Hakuju Shukuga, 1975), 741-60; Jui-lung Su, “‘Rhapsody on Observing a Waterclock’ by Bao Zhao (414-466)” Chinese Literature 2 (1999), 118-122; Jui-lung Su, “Versatility within Tradition: A Study of the Literary Works of Bao Zhao (414-466),” (Ph. D. diss., University of Washington, 1994), 139-49; and Michel Kuttler, “Le poète Bao Zhao” (Ph.D. diss., École des Haute Études en Sciences Sociales, 1988), 226-32.