64. The Luoyang Girl | Wang Wei

整首诗的重心其实不在结尾，而在转折。前十联写洛阳女儿：对门的居处、十五的年纪、丈夫的骢马、侍女的金盘、画阁朱楼、七香车九华帐，一路铺到「日夜经过赵李家」。铺得越足，最后「谁怜越女颜如玉，贫贱江头自浣纱」就越冷。王维没有在中间插一句议论，全靠前后两个女子的处境自己对照。这种结构后来被白居易写《琵琶行》时用了同一种办法——先写别人的好，再翻出自己或另一个人的难。读的时候要留意，前面那些富贵不是炫耀，是秤上的砝码。

The poem's weight is not in the ending but in the turn. Ten couplets describe the Luoyang girl: the house across the way, her fifteen years, her husband's dappled horse, the maid's golden plate, painted rooms and vermilion towers, the seven-spice carriage and nine-flower canopy, all of it built up to day and night the traffic runs to the Zhaos and the Lis. The fuller the build-up, the colder the final couplet becomes. Wang Wei inserts no comment in between; the two women's circumstances measure each other on their own. Bai Juyi later used the same device in the Song of the Pipa — write the other person's good fortune first, then turn up one's own or a second person's hardship. Note that the wealth earlier is not showing off; it is the weight on the scale.

起句是「洛阳女儿对门居，才可容颜十五余」，语气像邻里闲聊。这个视角决定了整首诗的写法和立场：说话的人住在对门，看得见她出门、看见她丈夫骑马、看见侍女端盘，也看得见她最后静下来坐着。他没有进到屋里，所以写出来的全是外部可见的排场；也正因为站在门外，最后才能转身去看江边浣纱的另一个人。如果开头改成第一人称进入，这首诗大概会变成另一种诗——写成身在其中的人怎么得意，而不是隔一条街看人得意。

It opens, the Luoyang girl lives across the way; her looks are just right, and she is a little past fifteen — the tone of neighbors chatting. That vantage decides the poem's method and its position: the speaker lives opposite, so he can see her go out, see her husband on the horse, see the maid carry the tray, and see her finally sitting still. He never goes inside, so everything written is outward display; and because he stands outside the gate, he can at the end turn and look at that other person washing silk by the river. Had the opening gone inside in the first person, this would likely be a different poem — about how it feels to be the one in favor, rather than what it looks like from across the street.

写洛阳女儿多有钱，王维几乎不直接写她本人。他写丈夫的玉勒骢马、侍女的金盘鲤鱼、房子的画阁朱楼、出入的七香车与九华帐、交往的赵李两家。真正的物主一直不在场，全是围绕她的东西在说话。这种写法有两种好处：一是不用夸张形容词，「金」「玉」「朱」「九」这些字自己就够了；二是把她的富贵写成了一张关系网——她富不富，取决于她身边站着谁。到最后一句「谁怜越女」，网被撤走，只剩一个人站在江边，前面所有名字和器物都不作数了。

To show how rich the Luoyang girl is, Wang Wei hardly writes her. He writes her husband's jade bit and dappled horse, the maid's golden plate of carp, the painted rooms and vermilion towers, the carriage and canopy she comes and goes in, the Zhao and Li houses she visits. The owner herself is never present; everything around her does the talking. The method does two things. It needs no inflated adjectives — gold, jade, vermilion, nine are enough on their own. And it turns her wealth into a net of relations: how rich she is depends on who stands near her. By the last line, who pities the Yue girl, the net is taken away, one person is left standing by the river, and every name and object before it stops counting.