ChineseStudy

57. Song of the Stone Drums | Han Yu

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English translation

Zhang holds in his hand a rubbing of the Stone Drums text, and urges me to try a Song of the Stone Drums.

The opening gives the occasion: the rubbing is in someone's hand, and the poem is coaxed out.

Shaoling is gone and the Banished Immortal is dead; with thin talent, what am I to do with the Stone Drums?

Han Yu belittles himself first. Naming Du Fu and Li Bai shows the weight of the subject.

Zhou's order decayed and the four seas boiled; King Xuan rose in wrath and swung heaven's spear.

He turns to the drums' origin: made under King Xuan of Zhou. Heaven's spear is a king's weapon.

He throws open the Bright Hall to receive congratulations; the lords' sword-gems clink and grind together.

Clink and grind writes the crowd. The sound of the court is more real than its spectacle.

He hunts at Qiyang, giving rein to the bold and able; for ten thousand li the birds and beasts are netted.

The hunt was a great event of King Xuan's revival, and the drums' text relates to hunting.

To cut merit into stone and record the achievement for ten thousand generations, they hewed the rock into drums and broke down the towering peaks.

Hewing rock into drums is where the Stone Drums come from. The whole point was to leave a name.

The attending ministers were all first in talent; chosen to compose and carve, they left it in the mountain's fold.

The authors of the text are attending ministers, not the king himself. Those who left the name are themselves nameless.

Rain soaks and sun scorches, wildfire singes; spirits keep watch, and there is no end of waving off and scolding.

Waving off and scolding means driving things away with shouts. That the drums survive so much is put down to guardian spirits.

Where did you get this paper copy, complete to the last hair, without a single error?

Complete to the last hair is the fineness of the rubbing. Then he turns to reading.

The words are grave and the sense close, hard to make out; the script resembles neither clerical nor tadpole writing.

The key line: the drums' script resembles neither. The letterforms are the main clue to their date.

With age, how could strokes not be missing? Like a swift sword cutting a live dragon or alligator in two.

The broken strokes are likened to a severed dragon or alligator. The drums' damage here gets an image.

Like phoenixes soaring and a host of immortals descending; like coral and jade trees with their branches crossing.

Similes pile up, making the letterforms rich. The last line gave damage; this one gives beauty.

Strong as gold ropes and iron chains bolted; lively as an ancient cauldron leaping the water, a dragon through the shuttle.

Bolted and through the shuttle are similes both hard and quick. The strokes have weight, and speed too.

Pedant scholars compiling the Book of Songs did not take them in; the Greater and Lesser Odes are cramped, with no room to spread.

Pedant scholars means the compilers of the Songs. Here Han Yu takes up the drums' grievance.

Confucius travelled west but never reached Qin, and picking up stars, he left out the sun and moon.

Sun and moon stand for the greatest things. Gathering stars and losing the sun is a way of saying the selection was wrong.

Alas, I love antiquity and was born too late; facing these, my tears pour down in streams.

Born too late is the Han Yu brand of regret: not that he does not see, but that he is too late.

I recall being first summoned as a court scholar, the year the era name was first changed to Yuanhe.

He turns to his own career. In the first year of Yuanhe, 806, Han Yu became a court scholar. The date is exact.

An old friend serving in the army on the right flank measured it for me and dug out the drums' sockets.

Sockets are the drums' hollows. For me shows this is his own business.

I washed my cap and bathed, and told the Chancellor of the National Academy: how few such treasures survive.

Washing cap and bathing is reverence, not etiquette — a preparation for the request to come.

With felt wrapping and matting they could be brought at once; ten drums need only a few camels.

Han Yu is doing the transport arithmetic. The drums are not heavy; the hard part is whether others will agree.

Present them in the ancestral temple and set them beside the Gao cauldron — their worth would surpass it a hundredfold.

The Gao cauldron is a famous vessel of the Spring and Autumn period. The comparison raises the drums.

If the imperial grace allowed them to stay in the National Academy, the students could expound and debate them, sharpening one another.

Han Yu wants more than preservation — he wants them in teaching. This point is often overlooked.

When the classics were shown at Hongdu Gate the crowds were already packed tight; one could sit and watch the whole country come running.

Hongdu is where the Han stored classics. He borrows an old event to project the future, and the claim is large.

Scrape off the moss and pick out the lichen till the edges show; set them firm and level, not leaning.

Scrape and pick are the verbs of actual work. After so much preparation, it comes down to hands.

Cover them with a great hall's deep eaves, and hope that after long years nothing else befalls them.

Nothing else is a plain wish; Han Yu makes no grander claim.

The great officials of the court are old in the ways of the world; would they be moved by this? They only straddle and temporize.

Straddle and temporize means having no view and putting things off. One line punctures everything imagined before.

Herd boys strike fire on them, oxen whet their horns; who will lay a hand to stroke them now?

Striking fire and whetting horns are everyday damage. With the officials indifferent, the harm comes from the most ordinary hands.

Worn away day by day, month by month, they near oblivion; for six years I have looked west and only chanted to no purpose.

Six years counts from the first Yuanhe year to now. To no purpose is the truth of the poem.

Wang Xizhi's common writing runs after charm and grace, and a few sheets of it can still be traded for a white goose.

Common writing is Han Yu's verdict on Wang Xizhi, and it is heavy. It is used to set off the drums' neglect.

The eight dynasties after Zhou have finished their wars, and no one gathers them up — what is one to do?

Eight dynasties covers the line from Qin and Han to Sui and Tang. What is one to do is a cry of helplessness.

Today all is peaceful and nothing happens; the state employs Confucian learning and honors Kong Qiu and Meng Ke.

The conditions are all in place, and still no one acts. That is where the irony lies.

How can this be brought up for debate? I would borrow a mouth like a hanging river.

A hanging river is a breach in a dike, pouring without pause. Han Yu knows what he lacks is not argument but opportunity.

The Song of the Stone Drums stops here; alas, my intent will come to nothing.

The close answers the opening's thin talent, what am I to do. The poem is finished; the business is not done.

赏析 · Commentary

「字体不类隶与蝌」：一个读书人的辨物 · The Script Resembles Neither: A Scholar Reading a Relic

韩愈写石鼓，最见功夫处不在那些比喻，而在「辞严义密读难晓，字体不类隶与蝌」这一联。他没有把石鼓泛泛地赞叹为古物，而是抓住字形来判断年代：既不是隶书，也不是科斗文。后面「年深岂免有缺画」讲残损，「鸾翔凤翥」讲笔势，都是围着字形展开的。写金石而先辨字体，这是学者的写法，不是诗人的写法。

In Han Yu's poem the real work is not in the similes but in the couplet the words are grave and the sense close, hard to make out; the script resembles neither clerical nor tadpole writing. He does not praise the drums vaguely as an antiquity; he takes hold of the letterforms to fix their date — neither clerical script nor tadpole script. What follows takes off from letterforms: missing strokes with age, soaring phoenixes for the brush's motion. To write about a bronze-and-stone relic by first identifying the script is a scholar's method, not a poet's.

石鼓的两副面孔 · The Drums' Two Faces

「快剑斫断生蛟鼍」写残，「鸾翔凤翥众仙下」写美，「金绳铁索锁钮壮」写重，「古鼎跃水龙腾梭」写活。四句连用，各管一面：一面是千年风霜留下的缺口，一面是当初刻上去的力量。韩愈没有让这两面分开说，而是让它们互相加强——正因为笔画断得凌厉，才更显得原本的笔力不是凡手。这样写文物，比单说一个「古」字要有内容。

A swift sword cutting a live dragon in two writes damage; phoenixes soaring and immortals descending writes beauty; gold ropes and iron chains bolted writes weight; an ancient cauldron leaping the water, a dragon through the shuttle writes life. Four lines in a row, each holding one face: the gaps a thousand years of weather left, and the force carved in at the start. Han Yu does not keep the two faces apart but lets them reinforce each other — the cuts are so fierce precisely because the original strokes were not a common hand's. Writing a relic this way has more in it than calling it ancient.

「牧童敲火牛砺角」：请托落到田野 · Herd Boys Strike Fire, Oxen Whet Their Horns: The Request Falls Back to Earth

从「濯冠沐浴告祭酒」到「牧童敲火牛砺角」，中间隔着一整段设想：包运、进献、留太学、盖大厦。韩愈把该安排的都安排好了，接着一句「中朝大官老于事」，全部作废。接下来看到的不是太庙，而是牧童和牛。这一升一落的落差，正是全诗的实情：石鼓真正的处境不在朝堂的议论里，在无人的田野上。末尾「吾意其蹉跎」因此不显得突然。

Between I washed my cap and bathed and told the Chancellor and herd boys strike fire, oxen whet their horns lies a whole stretch of planning: wrapping and transport, presentation, a place in the Academy, a great hall for cover. Han Yu arranges everything that should be arranged, then one line — the great officials are old in the ways of the world — voids it all. What we see next is not the ancestral temple but herd boys and oxen. That drop from height is the truth of the poem: the drums' real situation is not in court debate but on an empty field. So my intent will come to nothing does not feel abrupt at the end.

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