Wandering in the Garden, Waking from a Dream & The Peony Pavilion
Wandering in the Garden, Waking from a Dream is based on the famous Ming drama The Peony Pavilion. In making a study of both works as presented here, it is obvious that they share many similarities. However, despite these similarities, we see distinct aspects of each culture that produced the works, i.e., the K’unshan and the P’i-huang (Peking) form of opera.
The Peony Pavilion is a lengthy play of 55 scenes which gives esoteric a new definition. The story centers around the love between Liu Mengmei and I’u Li-miang. Scene Ten is entitled “The Interrupted Dream” and in it we see that love is taken as something to be celebrated, something worth living and dying for because only love can restore life to such a death. This is not to say that love does not bring yearning and pain “eyeing the apricot flower to slake her thirst” and “rootless ennui,/where are the scissors can cut/the comb can untangle this grief?” (Xianzu 43). The girl is miserable because she feels like she has wasted her youth without knowing love, but it is actually the first stirrings of love in her that are causing her frustration. The use of nature imagery is used to convey this feeling “However fine the peony,/how can she rank as queen/coming to bloom when spring has said farewell?” (Xianzu 45).
In Wandering in the Garden, Waking from a Dream, we get a much more concrete, sensual interpretation, complete with romantic jealousies and rivals and drinking. As General Yu laughed with a swarthy face red from drink, he is rebuffed by a young lady “Fie, fie, be off! Who is here will carouse the night with you?” (161). Still, we see the yearning and longing for love and the pain that can only end when love comes in Wandering “Languishing where may I tell my unquiet heart/Seething how shall I redress this life so ill-fulfilled?” (167).
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