山月記 English

Li Zheng of Longxi was a man of broad learning and keen intellect; in the final years of the Tianbao era, he passed the imperial examinations while still young and was subsequently appointed as a subprefectural official in Jiangnan, yet by nature he was proud and obstinate, placing great stock in himself, and he could not bring himself to accept the degradation of a minor post.

Before long he resigned his position, retired to his home village of Guolüe, cut himself off from all society, and devoted himself wholly to the composition of poetry.

Rather than serve as a petty official and spend his days bowing his knees before vulgar superiors, he had resolved to leave behind a poet's name that would endure a hundred years after his death.

But literary fame proved elusive, and his circumstances grew harder with each passing day.

Li Zheng was gradually seized by a mounting restlessness.

From about that time his appearance too became sharp and gaunt—flesh fallen away, bones jutting, his eyes burning with an idle ferocious light—and nowhere could one find a trace of the full-cheeked handsome youth he had been when he passed the examination years before.

After several years, unable to endure the poverty any longer, he swallowed his pride for the sake of his wife's and children's food and clothing, and set out eastward once more to take up a position as a provincial official.

In part, this was also because he had grown half despairing of his poetic vocation.

Former companions who had sat the examinations alongside him had long since risen to far higher ranks, and one can well imagine how deeply it wounded the pride of Li Zheng—that once-celebrated talent—to have to receive orders from those very men he had dismissed in earlier days as dullards.

He was perpetually unhappy and brooding, and his wild, intractable nature became ever harder to suppress.

A year later, while traveling on official business and lodged one night on the banks of the Ru River, he at last lost his reason.

In the dead of night he suddenly changed color, leapt up from his bed, and, shouting something unintelligible, threw himself down and ran off into the darkness.

He never returned.

The surrounding hills and fields were searched, but not a clue was found.

After that, no one knew what had become of Li Zheng.

The following year, Yuan Can of Chenjun, an imperial censor dispatched on imperial commission to Lingnan, stopped for the night at a place called Shangyü along his route.

When he was about to set out the next morning while it was still dark, a post-station attendant warned him: there was a man-eating tiger on the road ahead, and travelers could not pass except in broad daylight.

It was still early, and he would do well to wait a little longer.

Yuan Can, however, trusting in the size of his retinue, dismissed the attendant's words and departed.

Traveling through a grassy clearing in the forest by the light of the waning moon, he did indeed encounter a fierce tiger that sprang from the undergrowth.

The beast seemed on the verge of hurling itself upon Yuan Can, but it suddenly wheeled and plunged back into the thicket.

From within the undergrowth came a human voice: 'That was a close thing'—

—muttered again and again.

Yuan Can recognized that voice.

Even in his fright, he knew in an instant who it was, and cried out.

'Is that not the voice of my friend Li Zheng?'

Yuan Can had passed the examinations in the same year as Li Zheng, and for Li Zheng, who had few friends, he had been the closest of companions.

No doubt this was because Yuan Can's gentle nature never clashed with Li Zheng's sharp and unyielding disposition.

For some time there was no reply from within the thicket.

Only a faint sound, as of suppressed weeping, leaked out now and then.

After a moment, a low voice answered.

'Yes, I am indeed Li Zheng of Longxi'

—it said.

Yuan Can forgot his fear, dismounted, and drew near the thicket, speaking warmly of how long it had been since they had met.

Then he asked why Li Zheng would not come out.

The voice from within the thicket replied.

He was now a creature of another kind.

How could he bear to show his wretched form shamelessly before an old friend?

Moreover, he knew that if he showed himself, he would surely arouse fear and revulsion in his companion.

And yet, meeting an old friend so unexpectedly now, he felt a longing so strong it overcame even his shame.

Would he not stay just a little while—not minding this ugly form—and speak with the one who had once been his friend Li Zheng?

Strange as it seemed in retrospect, at that moment Yuan Can accepted this supernatural wonder quite naturally and did not think to doubt it at all.

He ordered his attendants to halt the procession and himself stood beside the thicket, conversing with a voice he could not see.

News from the capital, tidings of old friends, Yuan Can's present rank, and Li Zheng's congratulations upon it.

After all this was spoken in the open, unguarded tones of men who had been close in youth, Yuan Can asked how Li Zheng had come to his present state.

The voice from the grass spoke as follows.

About a year ago, on the night I stopped by the Ru River during a journey, I woke from a brief sleep and heard someone calling my name outside.

I answered and went out, and the voice kept calling me urgently from the darkness.

Without thinking, I ran after it.

Running blindly onward, the path before me had somehow entered the forest, and before I knew it I was running with both hands touching the ground.

Something like a great surging power filled my whole body, and I leapt lightly over the rocks.

When I noticed, my hands and forearms seemed to have sprouted fur.

When a little light came and I looked at my reflection in the valley stream, I had already become a tiger.

At first I did not believe my eyes.

Then I told myself it must be a dream.

For I had had dreams before in which, while dreaming, I knew that I was dreaming.

When I was forced to understand that it was not a dream, I was dumbfounded.

And then I was afraid.

I felt deeply afraid, thinking that truly anything at all could happen.

But why had this come about?

I did not know.

We understand nothing at all.

To accept without question what is thrust upon us without reason, and to live on without knowing why—that is the fate of living creatures.

I thought at once of death.

But at that moment, the instant I saw a rabbit dart past before my eyes, the human being inside me vanished without a trace.

When the human inside me woke again, my mouth was smeared with the rabbit's blood, and around me lay scattered tufts of its fur.

That was my first experience as a tiger.

As for what acts I have continued to commit from that day to this—those I cannot bring myself to recount.

Only this: for several hours every day, the human mind returns to me.

In those hours, as in days gone by, I can use human speech, sustain complex thought, and recite passages from the classics.

When, with that human mind, I look upon the savage deeds I have done as a tiger and reflect upon my own fate, I feel my worst anguish—piteous, terrifying, and full of rage.

Yet even those few hours of being human grow shorter as the days pass.

Until now I had been puzzling over how I could have become a tiger, but a little while ago I caught myself wondering instead how I could ever have been a human being.

That is a terrifying thing.

Before much more time passes, the human heart within me will sink entirely beneath the habits of the beast and be extinguished.

Just as the foundation stones of an ancient palace are gradually swallowed by the shifting earth.

Then at last I will forget everything of my past and roam as a single tiger gone mad, and if on some day such as this I were to meet you on the road I would not recognize you as an old friend but would tear you apart and devour you without a shred of remorse.

After all, whether a beast or a human being, was each of us not originally something else?

At first one remembers what one used to be, but gradually one forgets, until at last one is convinced that one has always been exactly what one is now—is that not how it goes?

But never mind all that.

If the human heart within me were to disappear entirely, in all likelihood I would become happier that way.

And yet the human within me finds that prospect more terrifying than anything in the world.

Oh, how terrifying, how sorrowful, how agonizing it is—

the thought of losing the memory of having once been human!

No one can understand this feeling.

No one can understand it.

Unless they have been reduced to the same condition as I.

But that aside—yes.

Before I become altogether unhuman, there is something I wish to ask of you.

Yuan Can and all his company had been holding their breath, listening entranced to the wonders the voice from the thicket had to tell.

The voice continued.

Simply this.

I had always intended to make a name for myself as a poet.

But my work was not yet complete when this fate overtook me.

The several hundred poems I had composed were, of course, still unknown to the world.

By now even the whereabouts of my manuscripts must be lost.

Yet among them there are some tens of pieces I can still recite from memory.

I wish to have these recorded on my behalf.

It is not that I want by this means to put on airs as a full-fledged poet.

Whether the work is fine or coarse I cannot say, but I cannot die in peace—even in death I cannot be at rest—without passing on some part of what I clung to all my life, even at the cost of my fortune and my sanity.

Yuan Can ordered one of his attendants to take up a brush and write down what the voice from the thicket dictated.

Li Zheng's voice rang out clear and sonorous from within the undergrowth.

Some thirty poems in all, of varying length—every one of them marked by lofty purity of tone and singular distinction of spirit, each immediately conveying to the reader a sense of the author's uncommon talent.

Yet even as he listened with admiration, Yuan Can was dimly aware of a feeling he could not quite articulate.

Yes, there could be no doubt that the author's gifts were of the first rank.

And yet, as they stood, was there not something (at some extraordinarily subtle point) that fell just short of making them first-rank works?

Having finished reciting his old poems, the voice of Li Zheng suddenly changed in tone, as if mocking itself, and said:

It is a shameful thing—yet even now, even now that I have been reduced to this wretched state, I still dream of my collected poems resting on the desks of the literary men of Chang'an.

Lying in a cave, I dream this dream.

Go ahead and laugh.

At this pitiful man who failed to become a poet and became a tiger instead.

(Yuan Can listened with a heavy heart, recalling the old self-deprecating habit of the young Li Zheng he had once known.)

Yes.

While we are on the subject of things to laugh at, shall I try to set down my present feelings in an impromptu verse?

As a sign that the Li Zheng who once was still lives on, here inside this tiger.

Yuan Can again ordered an attendant to write it down.

The poem ran:

By chance, through a fit of madness, I became a different creature—calamity followed upon calamity, and there was no escape.

Today, who would dare stand against these claws and fangs? In those former days, our voices and our names rose high together.

I dwell, a strange thing, beneath the thatch and bracken; you ride in a fine carriage, your bearing bold and free.

This evening, amid stream and hill, facing the bright moon, I cannot shape a long cry of the flute—only a howl.

The waning moon cast its cold light, heavy dew lay thick upon the ground, and the chill wind moving through the trees already announced that dawn was near.

The people had by now forgotten the strangeness of it all, and stood in solemn silence, grieving over this poet's ill-starred fate.

Li Zheng's voice continued once more.

I said just now that I did not understand why this fate had come upon me—yet if I think about it a certain way, it is not as though no explanation comes to mind at all.

When I was human, I tried always to avoid the company of others.

People called me arrogant and haughty.

What they did not know was that it was, for the most part, something very close to shyness.

I will not deny, of course, that I—once called the rare genius of my hometown—had my share of self-regard.

But it was what might be called a cowardly self-esteem.

Though I aspired to make a name through poetry, I never took the step of seeking out a teacher or going to find poetic companions with whom to hone my craft through mutual encouragement.

And yet, on the other hand, I could not bring myself to mingle with ordinary men either.

Both were the doing of my cowardly self-esteem and my arrogant shame.

Fearing that I might not be a jewel, I did not dare to polish myself with diligent effort; and yet, half believing I might be a jewel, I could not stoop to keep company with common tiles.

I grew ever more distant from the world and from other people, and through bitterness and humiliated rage I only fed and fattened the cowardly self-esteem within me.

They say that every human being is a tamer of wild beasts, and that the wild beast corresponds to each person's own nature.

In my case, it was this arrogant shame that was the wild beast.

It was the tiger.

This is what ruined me, tormented my wife and children, wounded my friends, and in the end transformed my outward form into something fitting for what was within.

Looking back now, I can only say that I squandered entirely the meager talent I possessed.

Life is too long to accomplish nothing, yet too short to accomplish anything worth doing—so ran the glib epigram I was fond of turning on my tongue; but in truth, all I amounted to was a cowardly dread of exposing the insufficiency of my talent, and a laziness that shrank from hard toil.

There are any number of men who, with far less talent than I, became established poets of real stature simply by devoting themselves wholeheartedly to polishing what they had.

Now that I have become a tiger through and through, I have at last come to see this clearly.

When I think of it, even now I feel a burning regret that scorches my chest.

I can no longer live the life of a human being.

Even if, right now, I could compose the most splendid poem in my head, what means would I have of making it known?

And what is more, my mind moves closer to that of a tiger with every passing day.

What is to be done?

What of my squandered past?

It becomes unbearable.

At such times I climb up to the rocks on the summit of the mountain over there and howl into the empty valley.

I want to cry out this grief that burns within my chest, to tell it to someone.

Last evening too I howled at the moon from that place.

Hoping that someone might understand this anguish.

But the other beasts, hearing my voice, only cower and prostrate themselves before me.

The mountains, the trees, the moon, the dew—all think only that a tiger is raging and roaring.

Though I leap toward the sky and throw myself to the earth in lamentation, not one creature understands how I feel.

Just as, when I was human, no one ever understood the easily-wounded heart within me.

It is not only the night dew that has soaked my fur.

Little by little the darkness all around began to thin.

Through the gaps between the trees, from somewhere, a dawn horn began to sound, its note threaded with sorrow.

The time has come to say farewell.

The hour when I must become drunk—the hour when I must return to being a tiger—is drawing near: so said the voice of Li Zheng.

But before we part there is one more thing I must ask.

It concerns my wife and children.

They are still in Guolüe.

Of course they cannot know what has become of me.

When you return from Lingnan, would you tell them that I am already dead?

Please—let nothing of what happened today ever be revealed to them.

It is a shameless request, but if you would take pity on their helplessness and look after them so that they do not die of hunger and cold by the roadside, there is no greater kindness you could do me.

When he had finished speaking, the sound of weeping rose from inside the thicket.

Yuan Can too had tears in his eyes, and he replied that he would gladly fulfill Li Zheng's wishes.

But Li Zheng's voice immediately reverted to the same self-mocking tone as before, and said:

If I were truly a human being, that should have been the very first thing I asked.

A man who cares more about his meager poetic legacy than about a wife and children on the verge of freezing and starving—that is the kind of man who sinks into a state such as this.

He added, moreover: he wished Yuan Can not to take this road on his return journey from Lingnan, because by then he might be drunk and unable to recognize an old friend, and might fall upon him.

And when, after parting just now, he had gone a hundred paces forward and reached the hill ahead, would he please turn and look back this way.

He would let him see his present form one final time.

Not to make a show of some bravado.

But by revealing his loathsome figure to him, he wished to ensure that Yuan Can would never feel any desire to pass this way again and seek him out.

Yuan Can said a heartfelt farewell to the thicket and mounted his horse.

From within the undergrowth came once more a sound of weeping that seemed impossible to suppress.

Yuan Can glanced back at the thicket again and again as he set out, his vision blurred with tears.

When the party reached the top of the hill, they turned and looked back, as they had been asked to do, toward the grassy clearing in the forest below.

All at once they saw a tiger spring from the undergrowth onto the road.

The tiger raised its head to gaze at the moon, which had now grown white and cold and dim, and gave two or three great roars—and then it leapt back into the thicket, and was seen no more.