ChineseStudy

47. Song of White Snow: Seeing Off Secretary Wu Back to the Capital | Cen Shen

Contents

Text

English translation

The north wind sweeps the ground and the white grass snaps; in the Tartar sky it snows as early as the eighth month.

White grass is a frontier pasturage that dries pale. Snow in the eighth month scrambles the seasons at once.

Suddenly, as if spring wind came in one night, a thousand trees, ten thousand trees burst into pear blossom.

Snow on the branches reads as pear flowers. The most famous line here turns something cold into something warm.

It drifts in past the pearl blind and wets the silk curtains; fox fur is not warm and the brocade quilt is thin.

Back indoors from the outdoors. Everything here is costly, and in this cold none of it works.

The general's horn bow cannot be drawn, the protector's iron armour is too cold to put on.

A bow that will not draw and armour that cannot be worn: cold has broken the gear. It is written not as a temperature but as things no longer working.

Across the desert a hundred fathoms of ice run crosswise; the cloud lies dim and grey, frozen over ten thousand li.

Before it was the cold at hand; these two lines go to the largest scale. Everything that moved has stopped.

In the main camp wine is set out for the guest going home — Tartar fiddle, pipa, and Qiang flute.

Drinking the returning guest off means seeing him away. All three instruments come from the western regions; even the festivity is frontier festivity.

Through the dusk snow falls thick at the camp gate; the wind tugs the red flag, frozen so it will not flip.

The red flag is the only colour in all that white. The wind pulls and the flag will not move — one small conflict.

At the east gate of Luntai I see you off; as you go the snow fills the road over the Tianshan.

One line fixes the place, the next says nothing of himself and only the road ahead of the other man.

The mountain bends, the road turns, you are out of sight; on the snow only the marks of hooves are left.

The close has no people in it, only traces. The one seen off has gone out of view, and what remains is a line of prints.

赏析 · Commentary

把雪写成梨花 · Turning Snow Into Pear Blossom

「千树万树梨花开」是这首诗的招牌。妙处不在比喻新奇，在它把季节整个翻了过来：明明是八月飞雪，写出来像春天开满花。前一句说白草折断、胡天飞雪，是冷的实况；紧接这一句忽然转暖。写苦寒而先给一层春天的错觉，后面再冷回去，落差就出来了。

A thousand trees, ten thousand trees bursting into pear blossom is the poem's signature. What makes it work is not the novelty of the comparison but that it flips the whole season over: it is snow in the eighth month, and it reads as spring in full flower. The line before gave the cold facts, snapped grass and snow in the Tartar sky; this one turns warm without notice. Give an illusion of spring before the bitter cold, then let it freeze back, and the drop shows.

冷到装备失灵 · Cold Enough to Break the Gear

写冷，岑参不用一个温度词，全让东西失灵：狐裘不暖，锦衾太薄，角弓拉不开，铁甲穿不上。这些都是军人和贵人身边最结实的东西，连它们都靠不住，冷到什么份上就不用说了。到「风掣红旗冻不翻」，连一面布都被冻住了，写冷写到了尽头。

To write cold, Cen Shen uses no word for temperature and simply breaks things: fox fur is not warm, the brocade quilt is thin, the horn bow will not draw, the iron armour cannot be worn. These are the sturdiest things around a soldier or a nobleman, and if they cannot be relied on, the degree of cold needs no saying. By the wind tugging a red flag that is frozen stiff, even a piece of cloth has been frozen, and the writing of cold has gone as far as it can.

结尾只剩一行蹄印 · Nothing Left but a Line of Hoofprints

全诗送别，写到末句却没有人。山一弯、路一转，人就不见了；雪上留一串马蹄印。前面那么多乐器、酒、旗、雪，最后只剩下这几个印子。岑参不写自己站在那里想什么，也不写什么时候回去，把画面停在一个空的地方。送别诗能这样收，靠的是舍得把话都省掉。

The poem is a farewell, and its last line has no people in it. The mountain bends, the road turns, the man is gone; on the snow a line of hoofprints stays. After all those instruments, wine, flags, and snow, only these marks remain. Cen Shen does not say what he thinks standing there, does not say when he will return, and stops the picture on an empty spot. A farewell can close this way only if the writer can bear to cut every word.

Feedback