The ‘great man theory’ of history is out of fashion, and I don’t know how often historical fiction, either, sets out to portray greatness – whatever that is – in the political sphere. In this book I found myself convinced I was in the presence of greatness, a person I want to call great, and to add to that uncommon experience, she’s a woman. If any of that sounds easy, I don’t think it is. At a point in this book it dawned upon me that in historical fiction, I haven’t met a great woman before – at least in the world of political leadership and statecraft. That may be down to the hf I read, or not. I avoid hf with titles like Empress, Princess, Queen, Consort or Concubine, because I can’t live in the women’s quarters for fun: therefore I don’t know what’s inside those novels, but I do know that this novel – which I nearly didn’t read on title – bulldozed those prejudices of mine, in seconds flat. In here I found quite an awesome human being. And I thought, it isn’t only that the historical subjects are rare (great stateswomen), but in order to create them on the page, you must have to rigorously do your thinking behind your writing. I sensed a rigour of thought behind the presentation of this woman. From early on Heavenlight (Wu Zetian) gives the impression that her abilities swamp those around her, and moreover, she has a confidence in this. When, later in life, she finds herself more effective in worldly affairs than her emperor husband, she steps up to the job without… cognitive dissonance. She’s never been a hanger-on of others (who happen to be men). This mentality must have been necessary for a woman who makes herself Emperor of China. As I understand, Wu Zetian was hopelessly traduced and trashed in the historical sources, so that we can’t expect to recover the ‘truth’ about her. What Shan Sa has chosen to do is salvage her with possible interpretations – possible, and positive. The resultant portrait may or may not resemble the historical person, but again I’ll say, is possible, and even just for that is a useful exercise. For myself, in future, I’m going to have a hard time picturing Wu Zetian any other way than the Heavenlight of this novel. On style. This is told in intense first person; it’s about her and from her; her feelings for others are conveyed, but not so much the others’ existence in themselves. No doubt our subjectivities are as self-centred as this – it isn’t that she struck me as a selfish person. There is a brevity (one large life in 300 pages): in the middle parts I felt this a skimming-over, but in the late parts this brevity worked as an extraction of the essential or the right lines (the author’s a painter). Maybe that was me, getting used to the style. It had enough exclamation marks to play toy soldiers with... I don’t like to complain of such trivialities in translations from the French, but they got hard to ignore. At times I was plunged into the emotional life of this novel; at other times it failed to engage me. Again, I don’t whether that’s me, and I’ll see what happens next time I read this. I mentioned that I can’t stand to live in the women’s quarters: here the Inner Palace is a prison and an insane asylum, and that meant I was fine. These women are overwrought, but they are seen to be made insane. It’s fair enough. I’d note the parallels of youth and age in her sex life. As a young girl she suffers an obsession for one of the emperor’s older wives; when she herself is fifty she is once again infatuated with a fourteen-year-old girl. For years she serves as emperor’s wife; in her widowhood she acquires a young man, and he is kept, for her uses, in such a turned-upside-down way, equivalent to how the emperor treated his concubines… that I think Shan Sa is interested in exploring these matters. I’m a fan of the use of translated names. Zetian is Heavenlight, and so we notice the light themes that coalesce about her. Children of hers are named Splendor, Future, Miracle. Lucky they are, because she can have little to do with her children, and these names were far more memorable for me than, in my ignorance, the Chinese. It exploits the ironies: Wisdom? uh-uh. Intelligence? a distinct lack of. It adds to the atmosphere and the intelligibility of the world, it tells us about their values. The city Chang’an is Long Peace. Our experience is more real when we know what the names mean, as, obviously, the novel’s inhabitants know.
Vì tôi đọc bản dịch Tiếng Việt, nên tôi sẽ nhận xét bằng tiếng mẹ đẻ của mình. Sơn Táp đã không làm tôi thất vọng. Bất kì một tác phẩm nào của cô cũng làm cho tôi hài lòng và sung sướng đến run rẩy. Một thứ khoái cảm tinh thần.Vẫn như các tác phẩm khác, giọng văn của Sơn Táp vẫn mượt mà, dịu ngọt, vừa rất đàn bà vừa rất mãnh liệt, lại có cái cay đắng buồn thương tiếc nuối đến nát lòng. Nữ Quyền trong các tác phẩm của Sơn Táp được biểu hiện hết sức rõ ràng: những người đàn bà cũng là những kẻ chứng kiến lịch sử và tính dục là một phần không thể thiếu để chứng minh sự nữ tính trong con người họ. Không dám nhận xét gì nhiều, chủ yếu chỉ xin trích một đoạn trong cuốn sách này mà tôi thích nhất miêu tả nỗi cô đơn của Chiếu và niềm nhung nhớ ảm ảnh về người chồng quá cố của bà. Về cơ bản, bản dịch này khá ổn, chỉ trừ một vài typo không đáng kể."Buổi tối, trở về Nội cung, ngồi trước gương, tôi nhìn bới tóc mình, niềm tự tôn của mình, vẻ trẻ trung lừa dối của mình tuột xuống. Khi các thị nữ lướt những mảnh khăn lụa ẩm trên mặt tôi, phấn trắng phấn hồng mờ phai. Tôi phải đối đầu với làn da không tô điểm của mình nơi những nếp nhăn đãbắt đầu dệt mạng lưới ở cuối đuôi mắt, ở khóe môi. Dưới ánh nến, gương mời gọi tôi thâm nhập vực thẳm. Tôi nhìn thấy Tiểu Trĩ trẻ trung, tuấn tú, cặp mắt chứachan ham muốn. Thế là đằng sau chàng, xuất hiện một thiếu phụ mảnh dẻ, kiêuhãnh. Nàng cười. Nàng trêu chàng. Nàng kéo chàng lên lưng con tuấn mã của nàng.Vai sát vai, hông kề hông, họ khuất dạng trong bóng đêm ký ức.Vắng Tiểu Trĩ, vắng những cơn đau đầu và những chuyện lộn xộn đa tình của chàng, tôi thấy Nội cung như trống trải. Trong khuôn viên rộng lớn và những con người dường như đã bỏ đi, mỗi thân cây đều thì thào, mỗi đồ vật đều nói năng, mỗi tấm rèm tỏa một mùi hương làm sống lại những mảnh dĩ vãng. Tôi ngủ một mình và bị chứng mất ngủ hành hạ. Tôi đánh thức Uyển và truyền cho cô bước đi trước tôi, ngọn đèn lồng trong tay. Từ lầu này sang lầu khác, thấy tôi xuất hiện, các cung nhân canh gác sụp lậy và đẩy cửa. Những gian phòng mà ban ngày tôi không dám vào đều được thắp sáng: đây là chiếc lục huyền cầm chàng từng gẩy; kia, trước bể cá cảnh, tôi còn nghe thấy tiếng cười thơ trẻ của chàng; đây, dưới khung cửa sổ này, chúng tôi đã cãi nhau; kia, những nghiên bút, nghiên mực, sách của chàng vẫn mở. Đôi khi, dường như Tiểu Trĩ bước đi bên tôi, thì thầm với tôi những lời âu yếm; đôi khi, tôi lạc mất chàng sau một lan can sơn vẽ, bên khúc quanh một hành lang. Không ngừng, chàng lẩn vào các lùm cây, về nẻo vô cùng. Đôi khi, tôi đánh bạo cho mở cửa chuồng ngựa của chàng. Các tuấn mã, thấy tôi, bồn chồn cựa quậy và hí lên mừng rỡ. Tôi đến ôm Tuyết Ca, con ngựa chàng từng ưa hơn cả, nó đăm đăm nhìn tôi với ánh mắt buồn. Vùi mặt vào bờm nó, tôi khóc.Âm giới đã hút mất Tiểu Trĩ, cha tôi, mẹ tôi, chị và em tôi, cháu gái tôi, các tình địch của tôi. Giờ đây tôi đã tập quên đi thân thể “ngơinghỉ” của mình. Tôi tập cho quen với chiềucao vời vợi của ngai vàng trên đó tôi ngồi, đơn độc từ nay. Đơn độc, tôi di chuyển các quân trên bàn cơ mênh mông là một đế chế mồ côi chủ. Tôi chỉ còn là một tư duy đang ngắm nhìn thiên hạ với lòng từ bi và niềm lãnh đạm.”
Do You like book Empress (2006)?
Empress Wu tells the reader about her childhood in one of China’s impoverished but still noble clans, growing up a concubine of the emperor, and finally of becoming empress herself. This is the story of a bird locked in a golden cage, of lavish surroundings that fail to mask captivity, of the boredom and murderous competition of a small city of women all fighting to win the gaze of a single man.The novel’s protagonist, Empress Wu (or Heavenlight), is a fairly complex character who is not always particularly likeable. She is in survival mode; even when she rules as empress, she must contend with assassination attempts and the ever present threat of failing health. This is a novel about a woman whose entire being is tied to the approval of men, and the suddenness with which fortunes can change through factors entirely out of her control.Sa did an excellent job of painting the picture of a world that is at once rich and beautiful, yet brutal and cruel. I found it to be an interesting and well-written novel. It’s an easy read, although not always a pleasant one. This is a great novel to read if you happen to come across it, though I wouldn’t bother going too far out of your way to get it.
—Marlowe
I got this book in a bargain bin. You can definitely tell this author primarily writes poetry and not novels.I powered through it.... But I wouldn't recommend it. It is extremely complicated without giving much explanation. The author must assume that the reader has prior knowledge of the bloodlines of this particular dynasty. Maybe everybody else does but I don't :)The only good character development was of the main character. The other MANY characters never seem to get s chance to have any depthThis book was BLAH
—Stephanie
I've a penchant for literature written with an eye on the grander scale of things. Most probably it comes with my preoccupation with critiquing the canon, albeit through far less flimsy bases than prose and universality and all that invisible-hand jazz. In return for paying attention to fields that are not required for the common range of English (history, politics, decolonization, gender dichotomy, all that fun stuff people like to pretend are subsidiary instead of the power generators of unquestioned classical status), I get a continuum. An angry, muddled, and heckling continuum, by way of the present forever desiring to never pick apart the past, but knowledge is power. Of course, absolute power corrupts absolutely, but you can complain about my biases when white men make up less than ten percent of the population of various prizes, as befits their portion of the demographic. If you actually want to achieve something, your target is not me.In the vein of Imperial Woman and Memoirs of Hadrian we have a work that is closer than either in terms of the physiognomy of author and authored. The prose is to my taste, the world is to my wonder, and the life lived in close sensory detail and alienated moral grounds utterly befits the saying that the past is a foreign country. Up until the end point of the narrative, we reside in the head of one who survives via cunning, fertility, lust, health, strategy, bloodthirstiness, and every recourse of a dynastic body and soul. One runs, and builds, and improves, and kills, until finally immortality begs the question of the empire one has built: what tools will you leave behind once you are dead? What have you left to the rulers, what have you left to the populace, and how will the latter mourn when the former have thrown each other to the wolves.Beware: this is is historical fiction of the Chinese variety whose subject is a woman of infamous degree. Those who do not indulge in historical fact with great pleasure, you may be bored by the ritual regulation and political machination and all that comes with the narrative that rules anempire. Those who indulge to a great degree, you may be miffed by a smoothing here, a sentimentalizing there, for massacres and incest there was to a great degree. Bear in mind, however, that each and every fact has been touched with gynephobic malice. If you want a culprit for nonfictional debacles, there're your men. Outside of that, there is the matter of a sexuality touching on a far broader space of field than the young man and the young woman, lesbian pedophilia and female-dominated gerontophilia being two of the more sensational breeds of intercourse. Even farther, there is the realpolitik of the first millennium CE which put both my favorite families, the Tudors and the Borgias, to shame. To shift to more usual literary matters, carrying all that across is the prose. For those of the French linguistic persuasion, the original text is available. While curious as to how that would go, I am satisfied enough with my Anglo transfiguration to pass on making an effort.Finally, there is the ending, one of those out of body frames that attempts to draw a holism out of a past power speaking to an impermanent present. Enamored with contextual awareness that I am, the last bit bumped this up that last half star. Those of the more objective temperament: you're missing out.
—Aubrey
