Allusions to Classical Chinese Poetry in Pink Floyd

Down to List of Poems

It's not that widely known that Pink Floyd quoted lines from classical Chinese poetry in a couple of their early songs. (Not widely known, but known nevertheless - see Note at bottom of page).

The first was the song 'Chapter 24' on Piper at the Gates of Dawn, released in 1967. This song by Syd Barrett quotes the Chinese Book of Changes (Yi Jing), a very trendy thing to do at the time and still apparently quite trendy, judging by the number of hits for this term on the Internet. But this is pretty boring stuff. Anyone with a passing interest in Oriental mysticism is apt to quote the Yi Jing as proof of his/her hipness. It's on a par with attributing anything vaguely Oriental to 'Zen influences'.

Another song is much more interesting. First, it doesn't quote just any old classical Chinese poetry, but a couple of incredible, even startling poets of the ninth century Tang Dynasty. One of the poets has always been popular, noted for his mysterious love poetry. Another, known as a 'daemonic genius', has been neglected for over a thousand years and only recently rediscovered. Moreover, some of the lines quoted refer even further back, to the oldest major poet in the Chinese tradition, born in the fourth century before Christ.

The song in question is 'Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun', from A Saucerful of Secrets, which we will look at below. In addition, 'Cirrus Minor' from the album More also alludes to Chinese poetry, so we will also have a look at this song.

As this site is devoted to Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese, we'll take this as an opportunity not just to look at the source of Pink Floyd's lyrics, a humble but compelling Penguin anthology of Chinese poetry, but also to look at the original works — in Chinese. Don't worry if your classical Chinese is a bit rusty. It's reasonably easy to understand in a word-for-word translation and we'll be providing the English version that Roger Waters read.

Set the controls for the Tang dynasty

The third song on Pink Floyd's second album, A Saucerful of Secrets (released on 29 June 1968) is a hypnotic paean to the sun with the sci-fi title of 'Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun'. The lyrics to this song, written by Roger Waters, are remarkably elusive. Since they're delivered in an almost unintelligible whisper, it's not surprising that several versions can be found on the Internet, some of them so off the track that they might have been lifted straight from Japanese liner notes.

My preferred version goes:

SET THE CONTROLS FOR THE HEART OF THE SUN

Little by little the night turns around,
Counting the leaves which tremble at dawn.
Lotuses lean on each other in yearning;
Under the eaves the swallow is resting.
Set the controls for the heart of the Sun.

Over the mountain, watching the watcher,
Breaking the darkness, waking the grapevine.
One inch of love is one inch of shadow.
Love is the shadow that ripens the vine.
Set the controls for the heart of the Sun.

Witness the man who raves at the wall
Making the shape of his questions to Heaven.
Knowing the sun will fall in the evening,
Will he remember the lessons of giving?
Set the controls for the heart of the Sun.
Set the controls for the heart of the Sun.

The second Pink Floyd song to quote from the Penguin anthology is 'Cirrus Minor', from the soundtrack to the film More. The words to this song are difficult to make out and versions vary. My take is as follows:

CIRRUS MINOR

In a churchyard by a river
Lazing in the haze of midday,
Laughing in the grasses and the graze.

Yellow bird you are not long in
Singing and in flying on,
In laughing and in leaving.

Willow weeping in the water,
Waving to the river daughters,
Swaying in the ripples and the reeds.

On a trip to Cirrus Minor
Saw a crater in the sun
A thousand miles of moonlight later.

Although some of these lyrics have been called 'Zen' lyrics by at least one misguided soul, and Taoist by others, they in fact owe much to an anthology of Chinese poetry called Poems of the Late T'ang by A. C. Graham, published by Penguin in 1965. After this anthology, Professor Graham went on to display his powers as an expert in ancient Chinese philosophy, including the works of Zhuang-zi (Chuang-tzu), the Daoist (Taoist) philosopher who famously dreamt he was a butterfly — or was it a butterfly dreaming of being Zhuang-zi? Some of Professor Graham's work on ancient Chinese philosophy is so ground-breaking that it is recommended reading even for Chinese scholars doing research into their own philosophical tradition. But for me, Professor Graham's most beautiful work remains these translations of a number of major and minor poets of the later years of the Tang dynasty (the eighth and ninth centuries), the tail end of a period universally acknowledged as the Golden Age of Chinese poetry.

Below are the Chinese sources of the main lines from 'Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun' and some from 'Cirrus Minor'. To check out the source, just click on the link.

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Introduction (you are here)

Poems of the Late T'ang

Li Shangyin: The Poet of Illicit Love

'Watch little by little the night turn around'

'Countless the twigs which tremble in the dawn'

'Two swallows in the rafters hear the long sigh'

'One inch of love is an inch of ashes'

Li He (Li Ho): The Daemonic Genius

'The River of Heaven turns in the night and floats the stars around'

'Witness the man who raved at the wall as he wrote his questions to Heaven'

'On the Great Wall, a thousand miles of moonlight' (Cirrus Minor)

Du Mu (Tu Mu) & the Yearning Lotuses

Meng Jiao (Meng Chiao) & the Inch of Grass

The Historical Man who Raved at the Wall & his Questions to Heaven (No Chinese)

The Significance of Roger Waters' Allusions (highly speculative)

Sources

Links More! about Pink Floyd and Classical Chinese Poetry

Updates

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Each Chinese poem features:

1. The translation by A. C. Graham
2. The original Chinese version in Traditional characters (not Simplified - the GB Simplified character set on computers lacks some of the characters needed)
3. The Chinese pronunciation in modern standard Chinese, based on Beijing dialect. This is not the pronunciation of the time. The poetry originally followed a rhyme scheme partly lost in modern Mandarin.
4. A simple English gloss on each individual word. The gloss is only a rough guide.
5. Notes on the meanings of the poem.