ChineseStudy

13. Qing Xi | Wang Wei

Contents

Text

English translation

Entering Yellow Flower Creek, I always follow the waters of Qing Xi.

The opening word carries no meaning; it only starts the line. "Always" tells us this is not the first time he has taken this route.

Following the mountain's shape it turns a thousand bends, yet the whole way walked is under a hundred li.

The two figures are set against each other: the bends are many, the road is short. In another poem on the same mountain road Wang Wei has a line on the perilous path turning ten thousand times, using the same expression.

Its voice clamours among the broken rocks; its colour goes quiet deep in the pines.

One line gives sound, the other gives colour, matched by two words of sensation. It is the same water throughout; what changes is the ground it crosses.

Rippling, it floats the water chestnuts and cress; clear, it mirrors the reeds.

Neither line names the water. It holds the floating plants and it reflects the reeds; from those two facts its calm and its clarity follow without being stated.

My heart was already idle; the clear stream is as plain as this.

No person has appeared in the four couplets before. The word "already" says the idleness was his own, not given by the stream; "as plain as this" says the water happens to be the same.

Let me stay on the flat rock, fishing rod in hand, and let it end here.

The fishing rod calls up Yan Guang, who withdrew to the Fuchun River; the phrase means a life of retirement. "Let it end here" closes the matter — he is settling on a destination for himself.

赏析 · Commentary

「逐」这一个动作 · The One Action: Following

开头两句只下一个动作：逐。他进黄花川的方式是跟着水走，水转到哪，人跟到哪。第二联补出这个动作的代价——转上千道弯，走不到一百里。两句连起来看，「逐」就不是随手用的字：正因为路短弯多，才要一路顺着走。后面写水声、水色、水中的菱荇葭苇，都是这个动作的延长。等到第五联写自己的心，读者已经跟他走完了全程。

The opening couplet puts a single action into the poem: following. He enters Yellow Flower Creek by walking along the water, turning wherever it turns, and the second couplet adds the cost of that — a thousand bends under a hundred li. Seen together, the verb is not a casual choice: precisely because the road is short and crooked, one has to follow it step by step. Everything after — the sound, the colour, the floating cress, the reeds — extends that one action. By the fifth couplet, when the poem finally speaks of the speaker's heart, the reader has walked the whole way with him.

声与色怎么分家，又怎么合流 · Where Sound and Colour Split, and Where They Join

第三联两句分得很干净：乱石一段给声音，深松一段给颜色。同一条溪水被拆成两种感官分开写。到第四联两种感官又合回水里——菱荇浮在水面是看得见的动，葭苇映在水里是看得见的静。四句排下来，没有一句直说水清或者水缓，清和缓都是从水里浮着、映着的东西上读出来的。这是王维写景物的习惯：要写水，就写水里有什么。

The third couplet splits cleanly: the broken rocks take the sound, the deep pines take the colour. One stream is divided between two senses and written separately. In the fourth couplet the senses join again in the water — cress floating on the surface is motion you can see, reeds mirrored in it are stillness you can see. Across all four lines the poem never states that the water is clear or slow. Both are read off the things floating in it and reflected by it. This is Wang Wei's habit with landscape: to write water, write what the water holds.

心和水最后对上 · The Heart and the Water, Finally Matched

第五联才出现「我心」。位置很讲究：前面四联一直在写景，人不在场。这句说闲是自己本来就有的，水正好也是这个样子，两边各有各的来源，碰上而已。末联接着这个对上，提出留下来钓鱼。「垂钓」用严光富春江的旧事，说的是隐居。全诗从「逐」开始，到「留」结束，一个在走动，一个定下来。

Only the fifth couplet says "my heart". The placement matters: four couplets of scenery have gone by with no person in them. The line says the ease was already his and the water happens to be the same, so the two have separate sources and merely meet. The closing couplet takes that meeting and proposes staying to fish; the rod alludes to Yan Guang on the Fuchun River, which is to say a life in retreat. The poem begins with following and ends with staying — one motion, then a settlement.

Feedback