Translation:Self-Written Epitaph

by Zhang Dai

Zhang Dai was a man of Shu; Tao'an was his sobriquet. In his youth he was a fop of the silk-trousered set, and he loved splendour above all things. He loved fine dwellings, lovely maids, beautiful boys, fresh garments, good food, swift horses, brilliant lanterns, fireworks, the Pear-Garden stage, pipes and drums, antiques, flowers and birds; and withal a debauch of tea and a tyranny of chess, a bookworm and a poem-demon. Half a lifetime of toil — all of it become dream and illusion.

When he reached fifty, his country was broken and his family ruined, and he fled the world to dwell in the mountains. What remained to him was a broken bed and a smashed table, a snapped cauldron and an ailing guqin, a few bundles of damaged books, one chipped inkstone — and nothing more. In hempen cloth and coarse rice, he often came to the point of having no fire to cook with. Looking back on the twenty years before, it is truly as though a world had come between.

He often judged himself, and found in himself seven things past understanding.

Once, in plain cloth, he measured himself upward against dukes and marquises; now, of a great house, he is the equal of beggars downward. Thus noble and base are in a tangle — the first thing past understanding.

His estate did not reach a middling man's, yet he would drive abreast of Golden Valley [the estate of Shi Chong]; the world has many a shortcut, yet he alone kept the blind watch by the stump at Yuling. Thus poverty and wealth run counter — the second thing past understanding.

A scholar treading the field of war-horses; a general turning over the halls of letters. Thus civil and martial are crossed — the third thing past understanding.

To sit with the Jade Emperor above and not flatter; to sit with the beggars of the Compassion-Field Home below and not give himself airs. Thus high and low are confounded — the fourth thing past understanding.

Weak, he will let spittle dry on his face of itself; strong, he can ride alone to meet the enemy. Thus leniency and fierceness turn their backs on each other — the fifth thing past understanding.

In the seizing of profit and the contending for fame, he is content to come behind others; at watching the show and playing the game, would he ever let another go first? Thus slack and urgent are inverted — the sixth thing past understanding.

At draughts and at dice he cannot tell victory from defeat; yet sipping tea and tasting water, he can tell the water of the Mian from that of the Zi. Thus wisdom and folly are mingled — the seventh thing past understanding.

With these seven things past understanding, he cannot understand himself — how should he look for others to understand him? And so: call him a rich and noble man, it will do; call him a poor and base man, it will do as well. Call him a wise man, it will do; call him a fool, it will do as well. Call him a stiff-necked man, it will do; call him a soft and yielding man, it will do as well. Call him a hot-spur, it will do; call him a sluggard, it will do as well.

Calligraphy he studied, and did not succeed; the sword he studied, and did not succeed; integrity and martyrdom he studied, and did not succeed; the art of writing he studied, and did not succeed; the Daoist learning he studied, the Buddhist learning he studied, farming he studied, the garden he studied — and succeeded in none. Let the world call him a prodigal, a waste, an obstinate brute, a dull pedant, a dozing fellow, a dead old spectre — so be it, and there's an end.

At first his courtesy name was Zongzi; men called him the Stone Lord, and so he took Shigong for his courtesy name. He loved to make books, and those he accomplished — The Book of the Stone Casket, Genealogy of the Zhang Clan, Lives of the Righteous and the Ardent, Ancient and Modern, The Langhuan Collection, Elucidating the Book of Changes, The Function of the Great Book of Changes, Lacunae in History, Encounters with the Four Books, Dream Recollections, Tinkling Talk, Annotations on the Poems of Li He, Discoursing on the Past in the Garden of Delight, Ten Collections of the Xinang, In Search of West Lake in a Dream, A Scroll of Ice and Snow — have gone out into the world.

He was born at the mao hour of the twenty-fifth day of the eighth month in the dingyou year of Wanli: the heir-son of Dadi Weng, chancellor of the state of Lu; his mother was a lady of the Tao, of the rank of yiren. As a child he was much troubled by phlegm, and was raised for ten years by his maternal grandmother, the lady Ma. His maternal great-grandfather, Master Yungu, had held office in the Two Guangs and had stored up raw Calculus bovis pills enough to fill several bamboo chests; from my childhood to my sixteenth year I ate them all, and only then was the sickness cured.

At six years old, my grandfather Master Yuruo carried me to Wulin [Hangzhou], and there we met Master Meigong [Chen Jiru], straddling a one-horned deer, a sightseer at play in Qiantang. He said to my grandfather: "I hear your grandson is good at matching couplets; let me try him to his face." And pointing to the screen-picture Li Bai Riding the Whale, he said: "Taibai rides the whale, and scoops the night-moon from the bank at Caishi." I answered: "Meigong rides a deer, and cadges his way through Qiantang county." Meigong laughed aloud, sprang up and cried: "How can he be so bright and quick! He is my little friend." He meant to urge me on to an enterprise of a thousand years — who would have thought that I should accomplish not one thing?

After the jiashen year I drifted and dazed, able neither to seek death nor to keep alive; my white hair whirling, I still look and breathe in this world of men. Fearing that one morning I may go before the dew and rot with the grass and trees, I remembered how the ancients — Wang Wugong [Wang Ji], Tao Jingjie [Tao Yuanming], Xu Wenchang [Xu Wei] — each made his own tomb-inscription; and I too have aped them and made one. No sooner had I framed it than I felt the man and the writing alike to be no good, and twice I put down the brush. Yet if I speak only of my own obsessions and errors, it may still be handed down.

I once made ready a living grave on Cock's-Head Mountain in the village of King Xiang; my friend Li Yanzhai inscribed the vault: "Alas! The grave of the great Confucian scholar and writer of the Ming, Zhang the Elder, styled Tao'an." Bo Luan was a lofty gentleman, and his tomb lies near Yao Li's — and so I took my plot in Xiang village. Next year I shall reach seventy; the day and month of my death and burial are not yet known, and so I do not write them.

The inscription says:

A poor Shi Chong, matching himself against Golden Valley.
A blind Bian He, offering the jade of Jing.
An old Lian Po, doing battle at Zhuolu.
A counterfeit Longmen [Sima Qian], opening a history bureau.
Greedy as Dongpo [Su Shi], starving as Guzhu [Bo Yi and Shu Qi].
The Five-Ram Minister [Baili Xi] — how could he sell himself?
Vainly to study Tao Qian, fruitlessly to aspire to Mei Fu.
One must seek out the Wild Man of the Three Outsides [Zheng Sixiao] — only then will one know the song in my heart.