An aria of loneliness in the palace
Du Xunhe reminds us how lonely the life of the luckiest women was
Even in Spring, the Palace Women Weep at Their Mirrors Du Xunhe These eyes derailed my life, Now I'm supposed to put on makeup? Beauty won't win his love, Why tell me to put on makeup? The breeze is warm, the birdsong sweet, The blossom’s dense, so the shade is deep, I remember how this girl lived by a stream, Picking water lilies all those years ago… 杜荀鹤 春宫怨 早被婵娟误，欲妆临镜慵。 承恩不在貌，教妾若为容。 风暖鸟声碎，日高花影重。 年年越溪女，相忆采芙蓉。
Du Xunhe (846-904) was a late Tang poet. The image of Xi Shi haunts this poem, though it is usually read as referring to palace women more generally. Xi Shi was plucked from her simple farm life beside a stream by the king’s talent scouts, and thrust into a world of palace intrigue. In this world, beauty was not enough. Palace concubines might win favour by bearing a son; though that was down to pure luck. They might be popular because their marriage was part of a political alliance; though this left them at the mercy of political forces beyond their control. Xi Shi herself was pressed into service in a weird honey trap scheme, where she had to seduce a rival king. And the scandalous story of Wu Zetian always hung over the Tang Dynasty: during the early Tang, she obtained leverage over the emperor by (so it’s rumoured) indulging his kinky sexual tastes, and went on to gain so much power that she actually set herself up as a new dynasty. For a woman whose life was upturned by being pulled into the palace, the possibilities in front of her must have looked desperate. But she was expected to spend time on her makeup, as if that were the important thing... The poem felt for me like something out of a Broadway musical. The setting and emotion are so clear, and they so obviously capture a moment in a larger tale, that I instantly wanted to make it operatic and performative. Perhaps something along the lines of Cinderella in Into the Woods?