58. The Old Fisherman | Liu Zongyuan

「烟销日出不见人，欸乃一声山水绿」，这一联的妙处在先后。按常理，天亮了才看得见山水的颜色；柳宗元却把「绿」放在桨声之后，好像这一声「欸乃」才是颜色出现的原因。听觉与视觉调了个次序，无人的山水忽然有了动静。苏轼曾疑这两句可删，其实全诗的活气就在这里：删掉，「不见人」就成了真的空景。

The subtlety of the smoke thins, the sun comes up, and no one is to be seen; a single cry of the oar, and hills and water turn green lies in the order. By ordinary logic the hills would show their color once dawn breaks; Liu Zongyuan puts green after the sound of the oar, as if that cry were what brought the color out. Hearing and sight are switched, and a landscape with no one in it suddenly stirs. Su Shi once wondered whether these two lines could be cut; in fact the poem's life is here — cut them, and no one is to be seen becomes a genuinely empty scene.

全诗只有三句。第一句写夜与晨，第二句写烟散与桨响，第三句写回望与云影。句子与句子之间没有说明，靠动作和景物自己接上。这种写法把时间压缩得很短，也把人的存在压得很轻：渔翁从头到尾没有一句话，没有一次露面，只在「欸乃一声」里显出一点踪迹。到末句，连这点踪迹也交给云了。

The whole poem is three lines. The first gives night and morning, the second the clearing smoke and the oar, the third a backward look and the clouds. No line explains the next; actions and scenery join by themselves. Time is compressed very tight, and the man is kept very light: the fisherman never speaks, never shows himself, leaving only a trace in the single cry of the oar. By the last line even that trace is handed over to the clouds.

「岩上无心云相逐」用「无心」二字，把云写成没有目的、没有牵挂的东西。回望的人是有的，船也在走，但诗不肯收在人身上。这种收法在柳宗元贬谪永州时期的作品里反复出现：人被留在画面之外，或者只剩一个背影。写云的自在，其实反衬人的不自在。末尾的云越轻，前面那个不说话的渔翁就越重。

Careless clouds chase one another uses the word careless to make the clouds purposeless and unattached. There is a man looking back, and the boat is moving, but the poem refuses to close on a person. This ending recurs in Liu Zongyuan's works from his exile at Yongzhou: the man is left outside the frame, or only his back is shown. Writing the clouds' freedom sets off a man's lack of it. The lighter the clouds at the end, the heavier the silent fisherman before them.