ChineseStudy

60. The Song of the Pipa, with Preface | Bai Juyi

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English translation

In the tenth year of Yuanhe I was demoted to be marshal of Jiujiang commandery.

The opening gives the date and the office. To be demoted is to be moved down, and the preface lowers his standing from the first line.

The next autumn, seeing a guest off at the mouth of the Pen River, I heard someone playing the pipa in a boat at night; the sound rang, with the accent of the capital.

The capital accent is the poem's seed — an exiled man hears the sound of home.

Asking who she was: a singing girl of Chang'an, who had learned the pipa from the two masters Mu and Cao; when she grew older and her looks faded, she gave herself to a merchant as his wife.

One line gives half her life. From Chang'an to Xunyang — the same arc as the poet's own.

So I had wine brought, and asked her to play several pieces freely.

A short line. To play freely carries both eagerness and fellow feeling.

When the piece ended she looked mournful, and told of the pleasures of her youth; now she drifts and sinks, worn thin, moving from place to place among rivers and lakes.

The word now divides before and after. The pleasure is old; the drifting is present.

Two years since I left office in the capital, I had been calm and content; moved by this woman's words, that night I first felt the meaning of exile.

First felt is the key to the poem. Someone else's words draw out his own feeling.

So I made a long poem and gave it to her as a song, six hundred and sixteen characters in all, and called it the Song of the Pipa.

Six hundred and sixteen characters is an exact count. The preface closes with one statement.

By the head of the Xunyang River I see a guest off at night; maple leaves and reed flowers rustle in the autumn.

The preface has just given the reason; the body starts that night from the beginning. The scene is cold.

The host dismounts, the guest is aboard; I raise the cup to drink, and there is no music.

No music names the lack first. Only then does the pipa have a place to enter.

Drunk without joy, sad at the coming parting; at parting all is vast, and the river soaks the moon.

The river soaks the moon is a real scene and also a mood. The moonlight is steeped in water, the heart in parting.

Then from the water comes a pipa; the host forgets to go back, the guest does not set out.

Then comes is the turn. Forgetting and not setting out — both men stop moving.

Following the sound I quietly ask who is playing; the pipa stops, and she hesitates to speak.

Hesitates to speak writes her wariness, and her place in the world.

I move my boat near and ask to see her; more wine, the lamp turned up, the feast begins again.

The feast begins again answers what came before. The party had been about to break up.

A thousand calls and ten thousand urgings before she appears, still holding the pipa, half hiding her face.

A thousand calls and ten thousand urgings is waiting, and also deference. Half hiding her face is where the character is fixed.

She turns the pegs and plucks the strings, two or three notes; before the tune forms, there is already feeling.

Before the tune forms, there is already feeling is the poem's first line on music. The verdict first, the technique after.

Each string pressed low, each note thinking; as if telling a life's disappointments.

A life's disappointments is what she says and what he hears. The two of them meet here.

Brows low, she plays on with a free hand, telling out the endless matters in her heart.

Free hand is set against telling out. The hand is casual; the matters are not finished.

Light stopping, slow twisting, a brush and then a pluck; first the Rainbow Garment, then the Green Waist.

Four fingering terms in a row. This kind of technical detail is what Bai Juyi and Han Yu liked to write.

The thick string clatters like sudden rain; the thin string whispers like private talk.

Two similes separate thick string from thin. The sound now has size.

Clatter and whisper tangled in one playing, like big pearls and small pearls falling on a jade plate.

Big pearls and small pearls falling on a jade plate is the poem's most famous simile. Sound turns into pearls you can see.

Now an oriole's warble slipping under the flowers; now a spring sobbing down the shoals.

One line writes smooth, one writes rough — two textures of music set against each other.

The spring runs cold and rough, and the strings congeal and break; congealed and broken, they cannot go on, and the sound rests a while.

Congealed twice over writes the pause itself.

A hidden sorrow and a secret grudge rise instead; at this moment, no sound is better than sound.

No sound better than sound is the famous line. The pause is read as content.

Like a silver flask suddenly split and its liquid bursting out; like iron cavalry breaking forth with swords and spears ringing.

From the deepest quiet back to the loudest sound. Suddenly and break forth are both abrupt.

The piece ends, the plectrum drawn across at the center; four strings sound as one, like silk torn.

Torn silk is the close. After so much sound laid down, this cuts it off clean.

The boats east and west fall silent; only the autumn moon, white, in the middle of the river.

Only turns the sound off and returns to moonlight. It answers the soaking moon at the beginning.

She muses, lays the plectrum down among the strings; straightens her dress, stands, and schools her face.

The action shifts from the hands to the person. Schooling her face is the posture of someone about to speak.

She says she was a girl of the capital, her home below the Toad Mound.

She says introduces her account. The poem's second layer starts here.

At thirteen she mastered the pipa, and was ranked in the first section of the Court Troupe.

Thirteen is the age, first section the rank. The numbers line up neatly.

When a piece ended she had masters yielding; made up, she was often envied by the other girls.

Yielding and envied run one straight, one crooked. Skill wins people; beauty draws jealousy.

The young men of the Five Mounds vied to give her gifts; for one piece, red silk beyond counting.

The young men of the Five Mounds means sons of the wealthy. These were her guests then.

Her inlaid silver combs broke beating time; her blood-red silk skirt was stained with spilled wine.

Broke and stained are both carelessness. The things broken then measure the extravagance then.

This year laughing, next year laughing again; autumn moons and spring winds passed by as nothing.

Passed by as nothing carries regret. The good years were wasted by her own hand.

Her brother left for the army and her mistress died; evenings go, mornings come, and her looks fade.

Evenings go, mornings come is time passing; looks fade is the result. People and time move together.

The gate grows cold, carriages and horses few; grown old, she marries a merchant.

Few carriages and horses answers the earlier young men of the Five Mounds. The bustle is over.

A merchant prizes profit and thinks little of parting; last month he went to Fuliang to buy tea.

Prizes profit and thinks little of parting is her verdict on her husband. A complaint, said flatly.

Since he went, I keep an empty boat at the river mouth; moonlight circles the boat, the river water cold.

Keeping an empty boat is where her situation shows. Moonlight circles the boat; no one circles her.

Deep in the night she suddenly dreams of her youth, and weeping in the dream, her makeup and tears run red across her face.

Suddenly dreams is losing control. By day she keeps it; at night she cannot.

I had sighed already at the pipa; hearing these words, I sigh again.

The word again stacks the two. Hearing the music and hearing the person are two things.

We are both people fallen to the ends of the earth; meeting like this, why need we have known each other?

The poem's central line. Why need we have known each other is taking a stranger for one of your own.

Last year I left the capital, and live demoted and sick in Xunyang city.

Sick in bed is a fact and a situation. This is where he begins to speak of himself.

Xunyang is a small place with no music; all year I hear no strings or bamboo.

All year answers the earlier no music. A bare environment is part of the hardship.

My lodging lies near the Pen River, on low damp ground, with yellow reeds and bitter bamboo growing around the house.

Low and damp contrasts with the capital's dry air. Yellow and bitter both carry feeling.

What do I hear there morning and evening? Cuckoos crying blood, gibbons wailing.

A question and an answer. The south's sounds appear here — the opposite pole from the pipa.

On spring mornings by the river with flowers, on autumn nights with the moon, I often take wine and still pour alone.

The word still in still pour alone carries helplessness. Fine scenes, and no one to share them.

Are there no mountain songs and village flutes? They are sour and jangling, hard to listen to.

Are there no first admits they exist, then says they cannot be borne. It sets off how good the pipa was.

Tonight, hearing your pipa speak, it is like immortal music and my ears clear for a moment.

For a moment is the word that matters. They clear briefly, not for good.

Do not refuse — sit again and play one more; I will write a Song of the Pipa for you.

The request and the return are set together. He writes the poem to pay for the piece.

Moved by my words she stands a long while; then sits back, tightens the strings, and the strings turn urgent.

Stands a long while is silent time. Turn urgent is the turn of feeling.

Sad and cold, it is not the sound of before; the whole company hears again and covers their faces, weeping.

Not the sound of before marks the change. Hears again draws the earlier listening back in.

Who among them weeps the most? The marshal of Jiangzhou, his blue robe soaked through.

Blue robe is the dress of a low-ranking official. The close puts him back inside his rank.

赏析 · Commentary

「大珠小珠落玉盘」：音乐怎么写成文字 · Big Pearls and Small Pearls on a Jade Plate: Turning Music into Words

白居易写琵琶，用的不是形容词，是一串可听可视的东西：急雨、私语、珠子落盘、莺语、泉流、银瓶破裂、铁骑刀枪。每一样都有声音，也有形状。更讲究的是次序：先分大弦小弦，再合起来错杂弹；先滑，再涩；涩到极处停下，静过之后忽然炸开。音乐本来是一串过去了就没了的东西，他在句子里给它安排了起伏，读的人才有耳朵。

Bai Juyi writes the pipa not with adjectives but with a string of things you can hear and see: sudden rain, whispered talk, pearls on a jade plate, an oriole, a spring, a silver flask splitting, iron cavalry with swords and spears. Each has a sound and a shape. What is more careful still is the order: thick string and thin string first, then tangled together; smooth first, then rough; rough to the point of stopping, and after the quiet, a sudden burst. Music is a thing that passes and is gone; he gives it rise and fall inside his lines, and only then does the reader have ears.

「同是天涯沦落人」：把陌生人认成同类 · Both Fallen to the Ends of the Earth: Taking a Stranger for Kin

全诗写到这里，一边是贬官，一边是过气的歌女，两个人的身份差得很远。白居易偏偏说「同是」。这个「同」不是地位上的，是处境上的：都从京城被抛出来，都在浔阳这样的地方打发日子。更值得注意的是「何必曾相识」——他把「不认识」也当成了理由。这一句之所以流传，是因为它替很多处境相似、却互不相识的人说了话。

Up to this point the poem has a demoted official on one side and a washed-up singing girl on the other, very far apart in station. Bai Juyi says both anyway. That both is not of rank but of situation: both thrown out of the capital, both marking time in a place like Xunyang. More striking still is why need we have known each other — he makes not knowing a reason too. The line survives because it speaks for many people who share a plight and have never met.

序写事，正文写夜 · The Preface Gives the Facts; the Poem Gives the Night

《琵琶行》的序把时间、地点、人物、起因都交代完了：元和十年被贬，明年秋送客，遇见长安歌女，作诗六百一十六字。读完序，事情已经清楚。但正文不是重复一遍，它把序里的「是夕」拉开，一句一句写成那一夜：江头的风、添的酒、千呼万唤、指法、月白、自述、同悲。序解决「发生了什么」，正文解决「那一夜是什么样的」。两段各管一半，这是白居易的写法。

The preface of the Song of the Pipa gives the date, place, people, and cause in full: demoted in the tenth year of Yuanhe, seeing off a guest the next autumn, meeting a singing girl of Chang'an, writing a poem of six hundred and sixteen characters. After the preface, the facts are settled. But the body does not repeat them — it pulls open that one evening and writes it line by line: the wind at the river head, the wine brought, the thousand calls, the fingering, the white moon, her account, the shared grief. The preface answers what happened; the body answers what that night was like. Each covers half, which is Bai Juyi's method.

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