50. Die Lian Hua (Yan Jidao)

「醉别西楼醒不记」七个字叠着三件事：先「醉别」，后「醒」，再是「不记」。别离发生在醉中，醒来说不记得，而记得的恰恰是「不记得」这件事。接着「春梦秋云」把一个梦和一片云并排放着，梦与云都不长久，「聚散真容易」五个字里，感喟全压在「真容易」三个字的平常口语上。再看「聚散」两个字：并举出来，词里真正落实的只有「散」；「聚」究竟发生过没有，醒来已拿不出凭据。凭据要等下片「衣上酒痕诗里字」才补上。

The opening line stacks three steps of a single night: drunk when parting, awake soon after, and unable to remember. Bu ji, no memory, sits at the end of the line like a door closing, yet the poem could only be said by someone who knows exactly what is missing; the loss is remembered as a loss, which is different from true forgetting. Then chun meng qiu yun sets a dream and a cloud side by side, one from spring, one from autumn, and neither the dream nor the cloud lasts. The verdict, ju san zhen rong yi, gathering and parting are truly easy, spends three ordinary syllables, zhen rong yi, on the complaint. And of the pair in ju san, only the parting is actually realized in the poem; the gathering is left without evidence until the lower stanza produces wine stains and written lines.

「斜月半窗还少睡」把夜写到几点：月已斜，进窗只占半扇，人还醒着。「少睡」的「少」是缺少的少，缺的不是时间，是睡意。下句不写人，只写「画屏闲展吴山翠」：屏风上展着一幅吴山，颜色翠，姿态「闲」。睡不着的人看什么都嫌它闲定，「闲」字落在屏风上，与人的「还少睡」正好相对——同一间屋里，一个闲着一个醒着。「斜月」与「翠」给屋子配了冷色，夜寒还没有出场，屋子里的凉意已经从这一句开始渗出。

Xie yue ban chuang, hai shao shui fixes the hour: the moon has tilted and fills only half the window, and the sleeper is still not sleeping. Shao in shao shui is the shao of lacking, not of few hours; what runs short is sleep itself, not the night. The next line leaves the person alone and turns to the painted screen, xian zhan, idly unrolled, a mountainscape of Wu in green spread open on it. Of the two sharers in this room, one is set down as idle, xian, and the other as awake, hai shao shui, and the contrast does the work a comparison might have done: the landscape can rest, its owner cannot. The slanted moon and the green give the room its cool color, and the cold of the night, ye han, waits in the last stanza, not yet announced.

下片先从旧迹写起：衣上的酒渍、诗中的字句，都是欢聚留下的痕迹。读者从这些留存的东西回到过去，随后红烛才进入眼前的画面。接着「点点行行」把它们分别数过：酒痕论点，字迹论行，数来数去只有一个结论，「总是凄凉意」，一个「总」字收口，不给例外。结句把人拿不出办法这件事推给红烛：「自怜」是烛在自怜，「无好计」是它同样没有办法，「夜寒空替人垂泪」，「空」字说这场流泪全无用处，「替」字说这泪本该由人来流。烛泪替人的说法有来历，杜牧《赠别》有「替人垂泪到天明」，此句只借了「替」字的方向。

The lower stanza begins with traces left behind: wine stains on a coat and words in a poem. They bring the speaker back to the earlier gathering; only afterward does the red candle enter the present scene. Dian dian hang hang sorts the two by shape, stains counted as dots, writing counted as lines, and every count returns one verdict, zong shi qi liang yi, always desolation, with zong, always, closing off exceptions. The final lines hand the impasse to the red candle: zi lian, it pities itself; wu hao ji, it has no good plan either. Then kong in ye han kong ti ren chui lei, “in vain,” says the tears achieve nothing, and ti, on behalf of, moves grief that belongs to a person onto a thing that drips. A wick weeping for someone has a lineage in the Tang poet Du Mu's farewell poem, and the borrowing keeps only that single direction, tears displaced from person to candle.