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52. Watching a Pupil of Lady Gongsun Dance the Sword Dance, with Preface | Du Fu

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On the nineteenth day of the tenth month of Dali 2, at the house of Yuan Chi, assistant prefect of Kuizhou, I watched Li the Twelfth of Linying dance the Sword Dance. Marveling at its vigor and lift, I asked who had taught her. She said: I am a pupil of Lady Gongsun. In the fifth year of Kaiyuan I was still a child, and I remember watching Lady Gongsun dance the Sword Dance and the Hunduo at Yancheng — brimming, checked and released, the finest of her day.

The preface sets two dates side by side: the pupil I saw myself, and Lady Gongsun herself, whom I saw as a boy. Fifty years lie between, and the whole poem's sense of time is fixed here.

From the palace women of the two inner troupes, Yichun and the Pear Garden, down to the dancers in outside imperial service, those who understood this dance in the early years of the Emperor of Sacred Letters and Divine Arms came to one person only: Lady Gongsun.

Yichun and the Pear Garden were the court music-and-dance establishments under Emperor Xuanzong. One person only is where she stood then, and it measures the emptiness after.

She had her jade face and brocade dress — and now I am white-haired myself. This pupil before me is no longer in the bloom of youth either.

Three dwindlings in one breath: hers, mine, the pupil's. He writes aging before he writes dancing.

Once I had traced where she came from, I knew the flow was one and the same.

Whose waves are not two means a single line of descent. The figure treats the dance as water: source and branch are the same.

Stirred by what came back to me, I have written this Song of the Sword Dance for what it is worth.

A short close, shutting the preface. The word for what it is worth is self-deprecation — and also the sign that he had to write it.

In the past, Zhang Xu of Wu, master of cursive script, saw Lady Gongsun dance the West River Sword Dance at Yexian several times, and from then on his cursive advanced, sweeping and stirred. From that, one may guess what she was.

He makes the dance visible sideways, through Zhang Xu's brushwork. The dance is gone; the cursive remains, and its force is where the dance still lives.

There was once a beauty, a woman of the Gongsun house; one dance of the Sword Dance shook the four quarters.

The opening leaps from the preface back to her prime. It sets the scale first; the detail comes later.

The onlookers stood thick as a mountain, their faces fallen; sky and earth rose and sank with her, and did not stop.

He writes the crowd and the cosmos instead of the dancer. One layer of indirection, and the weight of the dance is there.

Swift as Hou Yi shooting down the nine suns; lithe as the assembled lords of heaven driving dragons in flight.

Two similes stacked, one of speed, one of soaring. Both are motions of the sky; there is no earthly equivalent.

She comes like thunder gathering its wrath back in; she ends like rivers and seas frozen into clear light.

Coming and ceasing mark the rise and the close. That she can stop cleanly is what shows the reserve behind it.

Red lips and pearl sleeves, both now still; and yet a pupil carries the fragrance on.

Both takes in lips and sleeves, and also dancer and dance. Carries the fragrance on is the hinge that pulls her prime back to the present.

The beauty of Linying is here in Baidi, dancing this piece with her spirit lifted high.

Li the Twelfth from the preface now takes the stage. Baidi is Kuizhou, where Du Fu was living.

Her answers to my questions had given me the whole line of it; feeling the times and touching the old matter, my regret deepens.

The question and answer of the preface close here. Feeling the times is not only about the dance; it points to the years after the An Lushan rebellion.

The late emperor's attendant women numbered eight thousand; Lady Gongsun's sword dance stood first among them.

Eight thousand is a round number set against the single first place of one woman — the sheer count of the high age against one name.

Fifty years turn over like a hand; the dust of war spread and darkened the royal house.

Fifty years as one turn of the palm — the two dates of the preface fuse into this line. One person's aging and a dynasty's decline overlap.

The Pear Garden's young performers scattered like smoke; what is left of the women's music shows against the cold sun.

Scattered like smoke picks up the darkened royal house. In numbers no one stands out; once they are gone, a single figure becomes history.

Before the Jinsu mound the trees have grown to a full embrace; by the stone wall of Qutang the grass is bleak.

Jinsu mound is Emperor Xuanzong's tomb. Trees thick enough to encircle a man give time its measure. The stone wall is Qutang at Kuizhou.

On the tortoiseshell banquet the urgent pipes play, the piece ends once more; joy reaches its height, grief follows, and the moon comes up in the east.

This performance ends too. Joy at its height, grief comes is the turn of the poem, and his mood at this moment.

This old man does not know where he is going; his feet are calloused, and in the barren hills his sorrow only quickens.

The close comes back from the dance to a pair of feet. The dance is over, the man still has to walk, and the sorrow settles onto the ground.

赏析 · Commentary

「一舞剑器动四方」：不写舞，写看舞的人 · One Dance of Hers Shook the Four Quarters: Writing the Audience, Not the Dance

杜甫写公孙大娘的舞，很少正面描摹身段。起手「一舞剑器动四方」，四方是被震动的一方；接着「观者如山色沮丧」，沮丧的是观众；再往上「天地为之久低昂」，连天地都跟着起伏。真正的主角始终隔着一层。人看不见的舞，反而靠四周的反应量出了大小。这种写法与他后来写画马、写剑器一脉相承：力不在物本身，在物所及之处。

Du Fu rarely describes Lady Gongsun's body or steps head-on. He opens with one dance of hers, and the sword's breath shook the four quarters — the four quarters are what gets shaken. Then the onlookers stand thick as a mountain, their faces fallen — the faces that fall belong to the crowd. Above them, sky and earth rose and sank with her. The dancer herself stays one layer away throughout. A dance no one can see is measured by what it moves around it. It is the same method he later uses for horses and for the sword: the force is never in the thing, but in what the thing reaches.

序里并排的两个日期 · The Two Dates Side by Side in the Preface

序交代得很清楚：大历二年，看的是公孙大娘的弟子李十二娘；开元五年，看的是公孙大娘本人。前后相隔五十年。杜甫没有把这两次观看说成怀旧的感慨，而是把两个日期原样摆出来，让它们自己形成落差。到了「五十年间似反掌」，落差就合成一句。个人的白头与王室的风尘、梨园子弟的散尽，在这一个「反掌」里叠在一起。序写得像记事，正是为了给后面的抒情留出空间。

The preface is precise: in the second year of Dali he watched Li the Twelfth, a pupil of Lady Gongsun; in the fifth year of Kaiyuan he watched Lady Gongsun herself. Fifty years lie between. Du Fu does not turn the two viewings into nostalgia; he sets the dates down as they are and lets the gap form on its own. By fifty years turn over like a hand, the gap has fused into a single line. His own white hair, the dust of war over the royal house, the Pear Garden scattered like smoke — all of it overlaps in that one turn of the palm. The preface reads like a plain record precisely so that the lyric that follows has room.

借张旭的草书，留住看不见的舞 · Holding the Unseen Dance in Zhang Xu's Cursive

序的末尾忽然写张旭。这位草书大家屡次看公孙大娘舞《西河剑器》，从此草书长进，「豪荡感激」。杜甫没有试图把舞复原，他找到一条还在流通的通道：舞消失了，被舞改写过的笔迹还在纸上。张旭的字成了舞的替身。这也是全诗之所以还能写下去的理由——五十年后剩下什么？剩下一段笔迹、一个弟子的身段，以及一个老人脚下走不完的荒山。末句「足茧荒山」正是这个答案。

At the end of the preface Zhang Xu appears out of nowhere. The great cursive master watched Lady Gongsun dance the West River Sword Dance several times, and afterward his cursive advanced, sweeping and stirred. Du Fu does not try to restore the dance. He finds a channel still open: the dance is gone, but the brushstrokes it rewrote are still on paper. Zhang Xu's characters become a stand-in for the dance. This is also what lets the poem continue at all — what remains after fifty years? A stretch of brushwork, a pupil's steps, and the barren hills an old man cannot walk out of. The last line, feet calloused in the barren hills, is the answer.

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