61. The Han Stele | Li Shangyin
Text
English translation
Original Chinese text
元和天子神武姿,彼何人哉轩与羲。
English translation
The Yuanhe emperor had the bearing of a god of war; what manner of man was he? One like Xuanyuan and Fuxi.
The opening likens Emperor Xianzong to the ancient sage-kings. The Han Stele is about the pacification of Huaixi, so the protagonist is set up first.
Original Chinese text
誓将上雪列圣耻,坐法宫中朝四夷。
English translation
He vows to wipe away the shame of the successive sage-emperors, and to sit in the law palace receiving the four barbarians' homage.
The shame of the successive emperors means the disgrace of warlord separatism. Xianzong's aim is in this line.
Original Chinese text
淮西有贼五十载,封狼生䝙䝙生罴。
English translation
The rebels of Huaixi have held out fifty years; the great wolf bears a chu, and the chu bears a pi.
The great wolf bears a chu, and the chu bears a pi is a figure for a rebel line growing fiercer each generation. Chu and pi are fierce beasts.
Original Chinese text
不据山河据平地,长戈利矛日可麾。
English translation
They hold not mountains and rivers but flat ground; long spears and sharp lances, and by day they can be waved into battle.
Holding flat ground means they rely on no natural defense — pure insolence.
Original Chinese text
帝得圣相相曰度,贼斫不死神扶持。
English translation
The emperor found a sage minister, and the minister was Du; the rebels struck at him and did not kill him — the gods upheld him.
This refers to the assassination of Wu Yuanheng and Pei Du's surviving his wounds. The gods upheld him is the historian's brush.
Original Chinese text
腰悬相印作都统,阴风惨澹天王旗。
English translation
He wears the chancellor's seal at his waist and serves as commander; the wind is bleak and dark around the heavenly king's banner.
Pei Du took command as chancellor. The bleak and dark wind writes the grimness before battle.
Original Chinese text
愬武古通作牙爪,仪曹外郎载笔随。
English translation
Su, Wu, Gu, and Tong serve as his claws and fangs; the bureau clerk follows with his brush.
Su, Wu, Gu, and Tong are four names compressed. The Han Stele must account for the names, since it records the Huaixi campaign.
Original Chinese text
行军司马智且勇,十四万众犹虎貔。
English translation
The marching marshal is wise and brave; the hundred and forty thousand troops are like tigers and bears.
The marching marshal is Han Yu himself. Li Shangyin gives Han Yu a line here.
Original Chinese text
入蔡缚贼献太庙,功无与让恩不訾。
English translation
They enter Cai, bind the rebel, and present him in the ancestral temple; the merit admits no comparison, the reward beyond measure.
Li Su's night entry into Cai was the finish of the Huaixi campaign. Beyond measure is beyond counting.
Original Chinese text
帝曰汝度功第一,汝从事愈宜为辞。
English translation
The emperor says: your merit, Du, is first; and your aide Yu should write the words.
The Stele's occasion is here. The emperor names Han Yu to write it.
Original Chinese text
愈拜稽首蹈且舞,金石刻画臣能为。
English translation
Yu bows his head and dances for joy; carving on metal and stone, your servant can do.
Dances for joy is excitement — how a man of letters reacts to being named.
Original Chinese text
古者世称大手笔,此事不系于职司。
English translation
From of old such writing is called a great hand; this matter does not hang on one's office.
Does not hang on one's office is Han Yu's point: it is not office but craft that writes this.
Original Chinese text
当仁自古有不让,言讫屡颔天子颐。
English translation
Facing what is right, from of old one does not yield; when he finished, the emperor nodded again and again.
Nodding is the emperor's reaction — more concrete than praise.
Original Chinese text
公退斋戒坐小阁,濡染大笔何淋漓。
English translation
He withdraws, fasts, and sits in a small loft; wetting the great brush, how freely it runs.
Fasts is solemnity. Freely it runs is the state of the writing.
Original Chinese text
点窜尧典舜典字,涂改清庙生民诗。
English translation
He emends the words of the Canon of Yao and the Canon of Shun; he corrects the poems of the Pure Temple and the Birth of the People.
Emends and corrects are what Han Yu's composition looked like: he could revise the classics.
Original Chinese text
文成破体书在纸,清晨再拜铺丹墀。
English translation
The writing done, he sets it on paper in a broken hand; at dawn he bows twice and spreads it on the vermilion steps.
A broken hand is a script that observes no single model. Even the stele's calligraphy is his concern.
Original Chinese text
表曰臣愈昧死上,咏神圣功书之碑。
English translation
The memorial says: your servant Yu presents this at the risk of death, praising the sacred merit and writing it on a stele.
At the risk of death is a formula of memorials, but here it has weight.
Original Chinese text
碑高三丈字如斗,负以灵鼇蟠以螭。
English translation
The stele stands thirty feet, the characters big as bushels; a spirit turtle bears it, dragons coil upon it.
The stele's form is written concretely. Spirit turtle and dragons are its ornaments.
Original Chinese text
句奇语重喻者少,谗之天子言其私。
English translation
The lines are strange and the words heavy, and few understand; they slander him to the emperor, saying he had private motives.
Few understand is where Han Yu's writing stood. The better it was, the easier to slander.
Original Chinese text
长绳百尺拽碑倒,粗砂大石相磨治。
English translation
A hundred-foot rope pulls the stele down; coarse sand and great stones grind it away.
Grind it away is erasing the text. This passage records the stele's destruction.
Original Chinese text
公之斯文若元气,先时已入人肝脾。
English translation
The master's writing is like primal breath; it had already entered people's livers and spleens.
Entered people's livers and spleens means it cannot be removed — set against grinding it away.
Original Chinese text
汤盘孔鼎有述作,今无其器存其辞。
English translation
The Tang basin and the Kong cauldron carry inscriptions; the vessels are gone today, but their words remain.
A vessel can be destroyed; words outlive it. This answers the fate of the Han Stele.
Original Chinese text
呜呼圣皇及圣相,相与烜赫流淳熙。
English translation
Alas, the sage emperor and the sage minister together shine and spread their bright age.
Shine is the achievement, bright age the atmosphere. Two lines of praise.
Original Chinese text
公之斯文不示后,曷与三五相攀追。
English translation
If the master's writing is not shown to later ages, how can it rival and follow the Three and the Five?
The Three and the Five are the three sovereigns and five emperors. Only writing that lasts can stand beside high antiquity.
Original Chinese text
愿书万本诵万过,口角流沫右手胝。
English translation
I would copy it ten thousand times and recite it ten thousand times; foam at the corners of my mouth, calluses on my right hand.
Foam and calluses are hard labor. The line is extravagant but keeps to the ground.
Original Chinese text
传之七十有二代,以为封禅玉检明堂基。
English translation
Pass it down for seventy-two generations, to serve as the jade seal of the feng and shan rites and the foundation of the Bright Hall.
The close raises the writing to the level of institutions. The Han Stele's weight is gathered here.
赏析 · Commentary
「点窜尧典舜典字」:把碑文写到经典的份上 · Emending the Canon of Yao: Writing a Stele Up to the Classics
李商隐写韩愈作碑,不讲他如何构思,只给动作:「濡染大笔」「点窜」「涂改」。点窜、涂改的对象是《尧典》《舜典》《清庙》《生民》,都是经典。这一笔把碑文的规格抬到了最高——他不是在给别人写碑,是在续写经。韩愈当年以「破体」书写,也是同一个意思:不守成法。全诗写平淮西,落点却在一篇文章上,这是李商隐的选择。
Li Shangyin writes Han Yu composing the stele without any account of how he thought, only actions: wetting the great brush, emending, correcting. What he emends and corrects are the Canon of Yao, the Canon of Shun, the Pure Temple, the Birth of the People — all classics. This raises the stele to the highest register: he is not writing a stele for someone else but continuing a classic. Han Yu's broken hand likewise means observing no fixed model. The poem is about pacifying Huaixi, and it lands on a piece of writing — that is Li Shangyin's choice.
「公之斯文若元气」:碑倒了,文章还在 · The Master's Writing Is Like Primal Breath: The Stones Fall, the Words Remain
全诗写碑,中间忽然写碑被拉倒、被磨平。这是韩碑真实的遭遇。但李商隐紧接着说「公之斯文若元气,先时已入人肝脾」——石头可以磨,进了人身体的东西磨不掉。后面又举汤盘、孔鼎作比:器物没了,文辞还在。这一段把「毁碑」写成了文章的胜利。全诗的结尾也因此成立:能传到七十二代的不是石头,是字。
The poem is about the stele, and midway it writes the stele dragged down and ground away. That is what really happened to it. But Li Shangyin says at once that the master's writing is like primal breath, and had already entered people's livers and spleens — stone can be ground, but what has entered a body cannot. Then he sets the Tang basin and the Kong cauldron beside it: the vessels are gone, the words remain. This passage turns the stele's destruction into writing's victory. The close follows from it: what carries to the seventy-second generation is not the stone but the characters.
写平淮西,却不写战场 · Writing the Huaixi Campaign Without the Battlefield
平定淮西是一场硬仗,李愬雪夜入蔡州也是好题目。李商隐却把战场压到最低:只用「入蔡缚贼献太庙」七个字带过,其余全给朝堂、给宰相、给韩愈的那支笔。他要写的不是战功,是「谁把这件功绩记下来」。因此皇帝的一句话、韩愈的斋戒、碑的倒塌、文章的流传,才是全诗的重心。这个取法,让《韩碑》在众多写平淮西的诗里站了出来。
Pacifying Huaixi was hard fighting, and Li Su's night entry into Cai would make a fine subject on its own. Li Shangyin holds the battlefield to a minimum: seven characters, they enter Cai, bind the rebel, and present him in the ancestral temple, and the rest goes to the court, to the chancellor, to Han Yu's brush. What he writes is not the feat but who records the feat. So the emperor's single sentence, Han Yu's fast, the stele's fall, the writing's survival are the poem's center of gravity. That choice is what makes the Han Stele stand out among the many poems on the Huaixi campaign.