ChineseStudy

54. Mountain Rocks | Han Yu

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English translation

The mountain rocks are jagged and hard, the path is narrow; at dusk I reach the temple, and bats are flying.

The opening writes the difficulty of the road, in the manner of a travel record — time, route, stopping place, named one by one.

I enter the hall and sit on the steps; the rain has fallen enough, the banana leaves are broad, the gardenia plump.

Broad and plump are plain words, and Han Yu does not avoid them. The fullness of plants after rain is said in two characters.

The monk says the old wall's Buddhist paintings are fine; we bring a torch, and little is to be seen.

Little is to be seen is tactful: the murals have worn away over the years, and the phrase also quietly answers the monk's boast.

They spread the bed and dust the mat and set out soup and rice; coarse as it is, it is enough to fill my hunger.

Coarse is the plain fare; he does not write abundance, he writes sufficiency, and the tone is plain too.

Deep in the night I lie still, the hundred insects silent; a clear moon rises over the ridge, and its light enters the door.

All hundred insects stop is quiet heard, not seen. Quiet pushed to its limit is what gives the light room to enter. The night's lodging is written with great economy.

At daybreak I leave alone, with no road to follow, rising and falling through the drifting mist until it ends.

No road answers the narrow path before. Morning mist hides the way, and a man walks as if on no road at all.

The hills red, the ravine green, crowding and bright; now and then pines and oaks, every one of them ten arm-spans round.

One line lays on color, the next measures. Color and scale take turns, and the eye's work comes out.

Facing the current I go barefoot on the ravine stones, the water loud, the wind moving my clothes.

Bare feet in the water are the nerve of the line — touch, sound, and the brush of the wind stacked together.

A life like this is joy enough of itself; why must a man be reined and bitted by others?

Bit is a horse's bridle. The poem's point is spoken here: not to be reined in.

Alas, you two or three of my own kind — how are we to grow old and never go back?

The closing question turns the earlier joy in the hills into a wish. Going back is going home, and also going to ground.

赏析 · Commentary

用游记的次序写一首诗 · A Poem Written in the Order of a Travel Diary

《山石》通篇按时间推进：黄昏到寺、夜里静卧、天明独去。每到一处先交代动作，再写所见——到寺写山石蝙蝠，升堂写芭蕉栀子，夜里写月光入扉，清晨写雾中山路。韩愈不安排跳跃，也不省略过程。这种照着走的写法，使诗读起来像一篇行记，而山行的乐趣就藏在次序里：不是哪一处特别美，而是一路都值得写。

Mountain Rocks moves entirely by the clock: reaching the temple at dusk, lying still at night, leaving alone at daybreak. At each stop he gives the action first, then what he sees — rocks and bats at the temple, bananas and gardenias in the hall, moonlight through the door at night, mist on the path at dawn. Han Yu does not skip or rearrange. Writing it as one walks makes the poem read like a travel journal, and the pleasure of the walk lies in the sequence: it is not that one spot is especially fine, but that the whole way is worth writing down.

「大」「肥」「疏粝」：不怕俗 · Broad, Plump, Coarse: Not Afraid of the Plain

写芭蕉用「大」，写栀子用「肥」，写饭食用「疏粝」，都是不讲究的字眼。韩愈的趣味就在这里：他不把山寺的草木写成清雅的意象，而是照着眼前的分量说。「肥」字甚至有点粗，但雨后的栀子就是这样。与这种用字相配的是全诗的质地——石是「荦确」的，路是「微」的，脚是赤的。字与景一样，都拒绝打磨。

Banana leaves are broad, gardenias plump, the meal coarse — none of them elegant words. This is exactly Han Yu's taste: he does not turn the temple's plants into refined images but speaks to their actual weight before him. Plump is even a little blunt, yet it is what a gardenia after rain is. Matching the diction is the texture of the whole poem — the rocks jagged and hard, the path narrow, the feet bare. Words and scene alike refuse polish.

末句那一问 · The Question in the Last Line

「人生如此自可乐，岂必局束为人鞿」已经把话说满了：山林之乐足以自立，不必受人牵制。但韩愈又加一句「嗟哉吾党二三子，安得至老不更归」，把独乐变成对同伴的发问。「安得」二字透出的是做不到的意思——他也知道自己还得回去。前面越把山行写得自足，这两句的犹疑就越清楚。全诗不写矛盾，矛盾自己从结尾冒出来。

A life like this is joy enough of itself; why must a man be reined and bitted by others? has already said it all: the joy of the hills stands on its own, and no one need be held in check. Then Han Yu adds a line — Alas, you two or three of my own kind, how are we to grow old and never go back? — turning a private joy into a question put to companions. How are we to carries the sense that it cannot be done; he knows he still has to go back. The more self-sufficient the walk has been made, the clearer the hesitation in these two lines. The poem does not stage a conflict; the conflict rises by itself at the end.

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