ChineseStudy

59. The Song of Everlasting Sorrow | Bai Juyi

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English translation

The Han emperor prized beauty and sought one who could topple a kingdom; for years on the throne he searched and did not find her.

The Han emperor stands for Emperor Xuanzong of Tang. Topple a kingdom means both beauty that overwhelms and, in the grain of the word, a kingdom brought down.

A daughter of the Yang family had just grown up, raised in the inner rooms, unknown to the world.

The word deep keeps her hidden. Hiding her first is what makes her later appearance so grand.

Beauty born of nature is hard to keep hidden; one day she was chosen to stand at the sovereign's side.

Hard to keep hidden is the hinge. She did not seek it; she could not be concealed.

A turn of the eye and a smile, and a hundred charms rise; in all six palaces the rouged and painted lose their color.

Lose their color sets others against her. The poem uses the same device again later.

In the chill of spring she is granted a bath in the Huaqing pools; the warm spring water is smooth on her congealed-cream skin.

The warm spring water is smooth writes touch. Imperial favor lands on actual skin.

Her maids lift her up, tender and without strength; this was when she first received the favor.

Tender and without strength is the charm, and the word first carries the weight. The favor begins here.

Cloud hair and flower face, a golden step-shake in her hair; within the lotus curtains, warm, they pass the spring night.

One line of ornament, one of the warm bed. Outside and inside, both are what favor looks like.

The spring night is bitter-brief, the sun rises high before they rise; from then on the sovereign holds no morning court.

No morning court is where the turn begins. Governance is set down from here.

Serving his pleasure at feasts, she has no leisure; in spring she joins the spring outings, and at night she holds the night alone.

No leisure and holds the night alone write possession. The single word alone excludes everyone else in the palace.

Three thousand beauties fill the inner palace; three thousand shares of favor gather on one body.

Three thousand against one body — the numerical contrast is the meaning.

Made up in the golden house, she tends the night with charm; the jade tower's feast over, drunk, she blends into spring.

Golden house and jade tower are both sumptuous places. Two lines for two faces of one thing.

Sisters and brothers all receive lands; enviable glory rises from her family's gate.

Enviable is the older sense of the word. One woman's favor ennobles a whole family — a thread laid for the upheaval to come.

So it came that the hearts of parents under heaven no longer prized a son but prized a daughter.

This is folk-saying irony, and also the signal of a peak.

The Li palace rises high into the blue clouds; immortal music drifts on the wind and is heard everywhere.

Sound arrives first. He writes the court's splendor from the side of those hearing it.

Slow songs and slow dances hold fast to the strings and pipes; all day the sovereign looks and has not enough.

The word hold fast glues dance to music. Has not enough is how obsession is written.

The war drums of Yuyang come shaking the earth, and shatter the tune of the Rainbow Skirt and Feathered Coat.

The turn of the whole poem. Shaking the earth is set against the immortal music before.

Smoke and dust rise in the nine-fold palace; a thousand chariots and ten thousand riders move southwest.

Moving southwest is flight. He never writes the word flee; the direction stands in for it.

The kingfisher banners sway and sway, moving and halting; a hundred li west of the capital gate.

Moving and halting shows a column that does not want to go — and the disorder of the going.

The six armies will not move on, and there is nothing he can do; the moth-browed beauty dies before the horses.

The six armies will not move on is the mutiny. There is nothing he can do is the only statement left to him.

Her flowered hairpins lie on the ground, no one to gather them; kingfisher combs, golden sparrows, jade hairpins.

Three ornaments in one line, all the names of something scattered. He writes death without blood.

The sovereign covers his face and cannot save her; looking back, blood and tears run down together.

Covering his face is a concrete act. All an emperor can do is cover his face.

Yellow dust drifts loose, the wind is bleak; the cloud-road winds and coils up to the Sword Pavilion.

Drifts loose and bleak both have an emptied look. Scene and feeling travel together.

Below Mount Emei few people pass; the banners have no luster and the sunlight is thin.

No luster and thin turn an imperial procession into a tattered line.

The Shu waters are jade, the Shu mountains green; the sovereign's heart turns to her morning and evening.

Morning and evening reduplicated stretches the days. The greener the landscape, the harder the waiting.

In the travelling palace the moon looks like heartbreak; in night rain the bells sound like a broken gut.

Seeing the moon and hearing the bells are two small things. His grief is made of looking and listening.

Heaven turns, the sun turns, the dragon carriage comes back; here he hesitates, unable to leave.

The return passes Mawei. The same place: fleeing on the way out, grieving on the way back.

In the mud below Mawei slope, her jade face is not to be seen — only the empty place where she died.

The empty place where she died is the heaviest phrase. He looks for a person and finds only earth.

Lord and ministers look at each other with wet clothes; facing east toward the capital gate, they let the horses find their own way back.

Letting the horses find their own way is what a man with no will looks like. The direction is there; the strength is not.

Back at the palace the pools and gardens are all as before — the lotus of Taiye, the willows of Weiyang.

As before is the most wounding phrase. The things are unchanged; the person is gone.

The lotus like her face, the willows like her brows; facing these, how could he not weep?

How could he not is a rhetorical question whose answer is inside it.

Spring wind, peach and pear in blossom, the day it opens; autumn rain, the plane tree, the hour its leaves fall.

One night, one hour, a pair of seasons. The days turn on just these two ends.

The west palace and the southern Inner Palace are deep in autumn grass; fallen leaves cover the steps, red, unswept.

Unswept is the plain truth of a heartless place. To sweep or not is exactly the difference.

The Pear Garden's musicians show new white hair; the attendants of the pepper chamber and its girls have grown old.

New and old are set against each other. Everyone he knew is aging.

In the evening hall fireflies drift, his thoughts quiet; he trims the lone lamp till its wick is gone, and still cannot sleep.

Cannot sleep is the night of the poem. Before he wrote the spring nights of her prime; here he writes the sleepless one.

Slow, slow the bells and drums, the long night just beginning; bright, bright the river of stars, the sky about to dawn.

Slow and bright both carry the weight of time. He counts the whole night through.

The lovebird tiles are cold, the frost heavy; the kingfisher quilt is chill — with whom to share it?

With whom to share it lands the cold on a person. The things still come in pairs; the man is single.

Long, long the parting of life and death, a year gone by; her soul has never come into his dreams.

Scene before, dream here. What he hopes for is a dream.

A Taoist of Linqiong, a guest of Hongdu Gate, can summon souls by pure sincerity.

The Taoist enters — the poem's second turn. Human means are exhausted, and it turns to arts.

Moved by the sovereign's tossing thoughts, he bids the adept search diligently.

Search diligently is an order carried out. The whole search is to console the living.

He pushes through the void and rides the air swift as lightning, up to heaven and down to earth, searching everywhere.

Up to heaven and down to earth is an old phrase, but here it feels literal: he actually runs both ways.

Above he exhausts the blue deep, below the yellow springs; both are vast and empty, and she is not seen.

Both vast and empty pushes the range to its limit, and the answer is nothing.

Then he hears of a fairy mountain on the sea, a mountain in the vague and the vanishing.

Then he hears is the turn. Vague and vanishing sets the surrounding for what follows.

Delicate pavilions, and five-colored clouds rising; among them many fairies, graceful.

Pavilions first, people after. The order in fairyland is the same as on earth.

One among them has the style Taizhen; snow skin and flower face, she is more or less her.

More or less is the sense of almost, nearly. Even in fairyland, it is still a likeness.

He knocks at the jade door of the golden gate's west wing, and has Xiaoyu announce him to Shuangcheng.

Xiaoyu and Shuangcheng are maids' names. The fairy palace has gates and heralds too, just like the palace on earth.

Hearing that an envoy of the Han emperor has come, within the nine-flowered curtains her dreaming soul starts.

Startled is her only reaction. Before he searched; here she is shaken.

She gathers her robe, pushes off the pillow, rises and paces; pearl blinds and silver screens open one after another.

Paces is hesitation. Her movements are slow because she does not know where to begin.

Her cloud hair half askew, just woken; her flowered crown unstraightened, she comes down the hall.

Half askew and unstraightened are what haste looks like. How urgent the summons was shows in these two things.

The wind lifts her immortal sleeves, fluttering; it still looks like the Rainbow Skirt and Feathered Coat.

One line ties her back to the dance at the beginning. The poem's thread loops around here.

Her jade face is still, tears across it; like a branch of pear blossom in spring rain.

A branch of pear blossom in spring rain is the poem's most famous simile. It writes weeping cleanly.

Holding feeling, gazing fixed, she thanks the sovereign; since the parting, voice and face are both dim.

Both dim pairs with both vast and empty earlier. Head and tail answer each other.

In Zhaoyang Hall the love is cut off; in the Penglai palace the days and months run long.

Cut off against run long. On earth love is brief; in fairyland the days are long, and so is the suffering.

Turning her head to look down at the human world, she does not see Chang'an, only dust and fog.

Does not see, sees is a turn. What she wants is a person; what she gets is fog.

Only with old tokens can she show her deep feeling; the inlaid box and the golden hairpin she sends back.

Old tokens are things the two of them shared. They are the only link still intact.

The hairpin keeps one leg, the box one half; the hairpin is split of its gold, the box divided of its inlay.

Split is breaking apart. Half divided and half kept is leaving a proof.

If only the heart be firm as gold and inlay, heaven and earth will meet again.

This is comfort, and a conditional. The words if only show how hard it is.

At parting she earnestly sends words again; in the words a vow that two hearts know.

Two hearts know is the one privacy. The vow is not for outsiders.

The seventh night of the seventh month, in the Palace of Long Life, at midnight, no one there, the hour of whispered words.

Time, place, and condition are all exact. The more concrete the memory, the more it seems a night that really happened.

In heaven we would be lovebirds flying side by side; on earth, twined branches of one tree.

Both lines say we would. Would is a wish, not a fact. That word is the heaviest in the poem.

Heaven may last, earth may endure, but they end; this sorrow runs on and on, with no ending.

The close pushes time past heaven and earth. This sorrow is the long regret — the word long only lands here.

赏析 · Commentary

「渔阳鼙鼓动地来」：一句把全诗断开 · The War Drums of Yuyang: One Line Breaks the Poem in Two

全诗前半写盛、写宠，语气是缓的；到「渔阳鼙鼓动地来」，忽然换成战鼓。这句之前，宫廷是一个封闭好听的世界；这句之后，逃、死、思、找，一路写下去。白居易没有为转折作任何铺垫，只用「动地」二字压住前面的「仙乐」。这种硬转比慢慢过渡更有力：读的人来不及反应，诗里的人也来不及，安史之乱就是这么来的。

The first half writes splendor and favor in a slow key; at the war drums of Yuyang it switches abruptly to battle drums. Before this line the court is a closed, pleasant world; after it come flight, death, longing, searching, one after another. Bai Juyi lays no groundwork for the turn — he pins the earlier immortal music down with two words, shaking the earth. A hard cut is more forceful than a gradual shift: neither the reader nor the people in the poem has time to react, which is how the An Lushan rebellion came.

「花钿委地无人收」：写死，只写首饰 · Her Flowered Hairpins Lie on the Ground: Death Written as Ornaments

写杨贵妃之死，白居易只给了两句实在的东西：散落的首饰，和掩面的君王。他不写刀兵，不写血，也不写她临死说了什么。「无人收」三个字却是全诗最冷的地方——首饰掉在地上没人拾，说明人已经不能自己作主了。到了「马嵬坡下泥土中，不见玉颜空死处」，找的人只找到土。把死写成物件的散落和一处空地，比写惨状更久。

For Yang Guifei's death Bai Juyi gives two concrete things only: the ornaments scattered on the ground, and a sovereign covering his face. No weapons, no blood, no last words. Yet no one to gather them is the coldest phrase in the poem — the ornaments on the earth mean the person can no longer decide anything for herself. By in the mud below Mawei slope, her jade face is not to be seen, the one searching finds only earth. Writing death as scattered objects and an empty patch of ground lasts longer than writing the horror.

「在天愿作比翼鸟」：把誓言放在最后 · Lovebirds in Heaven: Putting the Vow Last

从「临邛道士」起，全诗转入寻找。找了碧落黄泉，找到仙山，见到人，最后留下的不是重逢，而是一句誓言。白居易把「七月七日长生殿」这段回忆安排在末尾，让整首诗结束在两个人最私密的一刻。而「天长地久有时尽，此恨绵绵无绝期」紧接其后，把个人的恨推到比天地更久。誓言越具体，末尾那一句就越沉。

From the Taoist of Linqiong on, the poem turns to searching. He searches the blue deep and the yellow springs, finds the fairy mountain, sees her — and what is left at the end is not a reunion but a vow. Bai Juyi places the memory of the seventh night in the Palace of Long Life at the close, so the poem ends on the two of them at their most private. Then heaven may last, earth may endure, but they end; this sorrow runs on and on follows immediately, pushing a private grief past heaven and earth. The more concrete the vow, the heavier that last line.

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