Looks like having government officials who are Ignorant and Stupid is nothing new. Chinese poet Su Tung-Po nailed it centuries ago.
I was browsing through the International Times for 1969 – the way one does. And there – amid the fevered, underground, counter-cultural world of macrobiotics, head shop ads, rock and roll, anarchy, activism, and psychedelia as seen from North Kensington – was this by the 11th-century Chinese poet Su Tung-Po.
This harsh judgment seems particularly apt considering the current crop of Cabinet officials in both Washington and Whitehall. Although to be truly on point one would have to add criminal and corrupt.
I don’t know when the poem was first translated into English but it certainly appeared in the January 1918 edition of Poetry, translated by Arthur Waley.
Who was Su Tung-Po ?
Su Tung-Po (1037–1101) was a Chinese poet, writer, artist, and statesman during the Song era. He was born into a literary family in what is now Sichuan province. He is also known as Po Su Shi, Su Shih, and Su Dongpo.
Clearly a man of many talents he is credited with designing the parks around Lake Si in Hangzhou.
Su Tung-Po was a man of quite extraordinary ability with an astonishing career – a preeminent scholar and official of the Song dynasty which was a flourishing period for the arts in China. It seems there wasn’t any field in which he did not excel.
Painting and calligraphy were required arts for scholar-officials in the civil service and he excelled in both. He rose in the ranks and impressed the emperors under whom he served. He was frequently at odds with powerful people at the court and was banished more than once. When he fell afoul of infighting and factionalism at the court he left the capital and took up positions in the provinces.
At one point he was arrested and imprisoned for a year because – it is believed – his verses satirized the politics of the day. On his release he lived in exile in provincial Huangzhou, where he built a farm in the the foothills of what became known as the Eastern Slope. He began to call himself Master of the Eastern Slope (Su Dongpo).
Mid-Autumn Moon
The sunset clouds are gathered far away, it’s clear and cold,
The Milky Way is silent, I turn to the jade plate.
The goodness of this life and of this night will not last for long,
Next year where will I watch the bright moon?
– Su Shi
中文（简体）: 宋代文豪苏轼（1037年—1101年）。出自《三十六诗仙图》。日本江户时代画家狩野常信作。日本京都诗仙堂藏。
Kanō Tsunenobu (1636-1713)
On the Birth of a Son
By Su Tung-Po
Translated by Arthur Waley
Families, when a child is born
Hope it will turn out intelligent.
I, through intelligence
Having wrecked my whole life,
Only hope that the baby will prove
Ignorant and stupid.
Then he’ll be happy all his days
And grow into a cabinet minister.
I am reminded of Gilbert and Sullivan “I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major General.” No qualifications at all, hence the appointment.
Oh! Great association!
Who would have thought that back in those days…no one…we seem, erroneously, in many areas, to believe in timeline progress…until we find out…thanks for posting so we know.
Mistaken us progress about think.
Backward folks primitive ages across.
Make perhaps to driven drink
Benighted hopeless people lost.
Thanks our Diej!
What a fascinating, and somehow reassuring post. Thank you for the introduction to Su Tung-Po. How easy great writers make it for us to draw parallels across centuries.
Yes, you are right. Now I think about it, that transcendence is the mark of a great writer.
Somehow I find it reassuring that we human beings have been flawed and power-hungry in many different cultures and millennia. Thank you for educating us a little bit about this great man!
I’ve been reading a little more about him and also some of his poems. Really interesting. He was clearly what Europeans would now call a Renaissance person, only he lived centuries before the Renaissance. And what an era he lived in! I’ve only touched the surface.
Nowadays we don’t settle for “becoming a Cabinet Minister” — the ignorant and stupid can be elected (and possibly re-elected) President.
So true. Forget about interesting – these are nerve-wracking, jaw-clenching, teeth-grinding, stomach-churning, breath-holding, white-knuckle times.
Fascinating Josie! Thanks for posting!
Thanks. I was pleased to discover it.