with this awareness. Evelyn had guided me into the private sanctum of Xue Tao’s inner life which had been, until then, only a mythic and romantic imagining. Suddenly, her poetry became vividly alive and deeply meaningful to me.
After Evelyn died in 1983, her daughter Terry and I convinced my publisher Celestial Arts to bring out the book, which had enjoyed only a brief period of success, in 1990.
Another two decades had passed, and this edition came into being fortuitously during a lovely dinner with Jessica Kingsley, in the spring of 2010 after the book launch in London of my four perennial editions with Singing Dragon. Between our celebratory toasts, I shared with her the story of Evelyn and Xue Tao. Our mutual excitement about the possibility of bringing the book back was immediately ignited.
Returning home, I opened my treasured first edition of this book. It contained a letter I had saved from Evelyn, thanking me for the rebirth of this book, with a wish that I should provide a Foreword for the new edition. Regrettably with the 1990 edition, which had a fine introduction by Paul Reed, I was unable to provide the Foreword in time.
Now Go Ask the River is again resurrected. It is my honor and pleasure to recount my friendship with, and to remember, Evelyn Eaton with much nostalgia and the joy of magical reflection. I also wish to congratulate Jessica Kingsley and her staff at the Singing Dragon for their dedicated vision and mission to bring out, always, truly unique and fascinating books for their readers.
Before you embark on this “back in time” journey with Evelyn, I will offer this story of Xue Tao. The child prodigy, at eight years old, upon hearing her father making up this couplet:
“In the desolate courtyard, the Wu-tong (Phoenix) tree reaches to the sky, soaring in the cloud.”
immediately followed with:
“Perches for the birds from the South and the North its branches’ fallen leaves dance in the draft of the wind.”
Xue Tao’s father, it is told, in awe of her prodigious talent, remained in silence for a long time.
I WOULD LIKE TO THANK Mary Kennedy for allowing me to use her version of Hung Tu’s works, copyright to which she retains. My apologies must go to Chinese scholars everywhere, for whom this image of their country in the ninth century may be an obvious never-never land. Yet Donn Byrne wrote his Marco Polo in pure Irish brogue, and if Marianne Moore’s imaginary garden has a real toad in it, so this imaginary China has a real poet in it. If Go Ask the River helps to bring her work to a wider public, I hope both she and the scholars will forgive me for my errors and blunders. I do not remember the ninth century as well as I once thought I did, when I was in Cheng-tu.
—EVELYN EATON
March 1968
THE PUBLISHER gratefully acknowledges Chungliang Al Huang for bringing this important work to our attention for re-issue and Marte Brengle for her invaluable assistance in bringing this novel to life once again.
EVELYN EATON
One of the twentieth century’s most remarkable authors, Evelyn Eaton was born in Switzerland in 1902. Her parents were staunchly Anglophile Canadian, and she was brought up and educated in England and France, her rather proper Edwardian upbringing culminating in presentation at court in 1923, around the same time as her first volume of poems was published. She spent the years until 1936 mostly in France, and the war years as a war correspondent in China, Burma and India. At the age of forty-two she became an American citizen. From 1949 to 1951 she lectured at Columbia University, and from 1951 to 1960 at Sweet Briar College. In ten different years she was a fellow of the MacDowell Colony. Other creative writing posts took her to Mary Washington University in Virginia, The University of Ohio, Pershing College, and Deep Springs College in Nevada.
In later life she turned increasingly towards Native American culture, with a particular “homecoming” within the ceremonial and mystical aspects. She was, through her soldier father, related to the Algonquians of New Brunswick, but in 1960 moved to the Owens Valley of California, where she made strong ties with the Paiute and Arapaho peoples, out of which came perhaps her best known work, I Send a Voice.
She spent her final years in the small community of Independence, California, dying in 1983. Her papers and manuscripts are permanently housed in the Mugar Memorial Library at Boston University.
She was the author of some thirteen novels, five volumes of poetry, two short story collections, works of nonfiction and works for children. She was a regular contributor of short fiction to The New Yorker—twenty-five of her short stories appeared in that magazine between 1949 and 1960, making Evelyn Eaton one of the leading writers of the mid-twentieth century.
Go ask the river
which are longer,
its eastward-flowing waters
or the thoughts that fill us
at this parting hour.
—Li T’ai Po
(T’ang Dynasty)
TRANSLATED BY HENRY H. HART
Calligraphy by Chungliang Al Huang
PART ONE
PROLOGUE
CIRCA 1100 A.D.
I
IN THE HUNG WU PERIOD of the reign of the Ming Dynasty, about the year eleven hundred, a young scholar named T’ien Chu was traveling on foot from Canton toward the city of Cheng-tu, to assume the post of tutor to the Governor’s household.
It was twilight when he reached the outskirts of the city and passed within its walls. He was tired and dusty, hungry and thirsty too. He thought it might be wisdom to spend the night at an inn, and present himself in the morning, clean and refreshed, to his employer.
He saw lights on the right side of the road, coming from what seemed to be a teahouse. The gates were open and there were more lights shining on a pathway to the door. He turned in gratefully and was welcomed by a servant, who took the pack from his back and led him to a room where everything was prepared for the comfort of travelers, even to a clean silk robe laid out for his use. After he had bathed and changed, a second servant appeared and showed him to an inner court, where she seated him before a lacquered table, more elegant than any in his father’s house. The bowls were of finest jade and the chopsticks of hammered silver.
Wine was brought at once, and before he could express a preference, delicious food, steaming with spicy fragrance. It was obvious that he had come to a superior inn. He seemed to be the only guest, and he was troubled that the reckoning might be beyond his means. He tried to hint to the servant in charge that he was a modest man, a poor scholar, who did not expect to be treated like a rich prince, but his words had no effect. More succulent dishes arrived, with more pretty girls to serve them, more wine was poured, and presently musicians entered with their instruments and arranged themselves at the far end of the court.
When the music began he was astonished at its quality. Canton had excellent musicians, but these were better than any
