ChineseStudy

8. The Fair Woman | Du Fu

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English translation

There is a beauty without equal in her age, living quietly in an empty valley.

The opening collides 'without equal' with 'quietly in an empty valley': the most beautiful person is where no one sees her. The rest of the poem explains how that came to be.

She says she was a daughter of a good house; now, fallen, she lives among the grass and trees.

'She says' marks everything after as her own account, with Du Fu stepping back into the position of listener. The whole biography is reported speech, not the poet speaking for her.

Guanzhong fell in the old troubles; her brothers were killed.

One line disposes of the An Lushan rebellion. No battle, only the result: the house is broken. Background appears here solely as what it did to her family.

What is high office worth? They could not even gather the bones of their own.

Their rank is wiped out in one line: in a time like that, position buys back no bones.

The world's feeling turns against a house in decline; everything shifts like candlelight in a draught.

'Candlelight in a draught' is the image for how people's regard swings with the wind. These two lines blame no one in particular — they blame the way the thing works.

Her husband is a shallow man; he has taken a new wife, and she is lovely as jade.

'Lovely as jade' is the irony: the old wife was also without equal. Jade here has nothing to do with looks and everything to do with newness.

The mimosa still knows its hour; mandarin ducks never sleep alone.

Plant and bird are brought in to shame the man: even trees and creatures keep to pairing, and this shallow husband does not measure up to them.

He sees the new wife laugh; how would he hear the old one weep?

Seeing and hearing are two different senses: laughter is visible, weeping is not even audible to him. The new wife occupies his eyes; the old one cannot reach his ears.

Spring water is clear in the mountains and muddy once it leaves them.

This is the poem's central image and her own defence: she has not changed, the situation has. She uses the clarity of water to explain why she stays in the mountains.

The maid comes back from selling pearls; they pull vines to patch the thatch.

Selling pearls means there are still things to pawn; patching the roof means the days now require calculation. Both lines are pure action — not one word says 'poor'.

She picks flowers but does not put them in her hair; she gathers cypress until her hands are full.

Not wearing the flower means the wish to adorn herself is finished. Cypress is evergreen and bitter — she is not gathering flowers, she is gathering cypress. The couplet turns 'no longer trying to please' into two physical acts.

The day is cold, her green sleeves are thin; the light is going and she leans against a tall bamboo.

The close gives one image and no verdict. Bamboo stays green and has joints; she is leaning on it. Du Fu spells out none of what that implies.

赏析 · Commentary

「自云」两个字 · The Two Words 'She Says'

这首诗的身世部分是转述，不是代言。第二句「自云良家子」一出口，后面整段都是她自己的话，杜甫退到听者的位置，一句评语也没插。这个安排决定了读者听到的是谁的声音：由诗人来叙述，她是被同情的对象；由她自己说，她是在解释自己处境的人。

The biographical section of this poem is reported speech, not ventriloquism. Once "she says she was a daughter of a good house" is out, the whole passage that follows is her own account, and Du Fu steps back into the position of listener without inserting a single comment. The arrangement decides whose voice the reader hears. Narrated by the poet, she would be an object of pity; speaking for herself, she is a person explaining her own situation.

清浊不是品德问题 · Clear and Muddy Is Not About Virtue

「在山泉水清，出山泉水浊」常被读成品德自白，其实她说的是处境。泉水在山里清，出了山就浊，变的不是水，是水到了什么地方。这两句放在丈夫另娶之后，作用是把责任推开：不是我不好了，是我不在那个位置上了。她没有为自己辩护一句，只给了一个关于水的常识，让听的人自己去对。

The couplet about spring water is often read as a profession of virtue, but what she describes is situation. Water is clear in the mountains and muddy below them; what changes is not the water but where it has arrived. Placed right after the husband's remarriage, the lines push the blame outward: it is not that she has become worse, it is that she is no longer in that position. She offers no defence of herself, only a common observation about water, and lets the listener make the connection.

摘花不戴，改采柏 · Picks the Flower, Wears It Not, Gathers Cypress

「摘花不插发，采柏动盈掬」是两个动作，写的是同一件事。她还摘花，说明爱美的习惯没断；摘了不戴，说明已经没有要取悦的人。后面接采柏——柏树冬天不落叶，气味苦，和花是完全相反的一类植物。她一捧一捧地采，采的不是能戴的东西。杜甫不用一个字写她的心境，只写她手里换成了什么。

The lines about picking flowers and gathering cypress are two actions describing one thing. She still picks flowers, so the habit of liking pretty things has not died; she does not wear them, so there is no longer anyone to please. Then she gathers cypress — evergreen, bitter-smelling, the opposite kind of plant from a flower — and gathers it by the double handful. What she is collecting is not something that can be worn. Du Fu writes not one character about her state of mind, only about what has changed in her hands.

倚着竹子收尾 · Closing on Leaning Against Bamboo

最后两句是纯画面：天冷，袖子薄，天快黑了，她靠着一根竹子。杜甫到这里停手，不评价，也不交代结局。竹子常青、有节、中空，这些是当时读书人一看就懂的意思，他一个字也不点破。直接称赞会把读者封住，给一个画面不会。

The last two lines are pure image: the day is cold, the sleeves are thin, the light is going, she is leaning against a bamboo. Du Fu stops there — no judgement, no account of what became of her. Bamboo is evergreen, jointed, hollow inside, all of them things a literate reader of the time would read at once, and he spells out none of them. Praise would close the reader off; an image does not.

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