68. Endless Longing, No. 1 | Li Bai

「美人如花隔云端」的「美人」，在《楚辞》里向来可以两解：一说指君主，一说指所追求的理想或人。李白不交代，全诗的写法也支持这种两可——前面是霜、簟、孤灯的实景，是一个人在夜里睡不着；后面「天长路远魂飞苦」又笼统得像在说别的。相思的对象越是模糊，诗就越是能装下更多东西。如果要给它一个明确的所指，反而把这首诗缩小了。汉魏以来的文人用「美人」寄托君臣或理想，是常见的做法，李白沿用这一路数。

The beautiful one in the beautiful one, like a flower, is cut off at the edge of cloud has two long-standing readings in the Chu elegies: the ruler, or the ideal or person one seeks. Li Bai does not settle it, and the poem's method supports the ambiguity — before, the concrete scene of frost, mat and lone lamp belongs to a man awake at night; after, the sky is long and the road far, and the soul flies bitterly sounds general enough to be about something else. The vaguer the object of longing, the more the poem can hold. Pin it to one referent and the poem shrinks. Since the Han and Wei, writers have used the beautiful one to figure forth ruler or ideal, and Li Bai works in that line.

开头六句里有三样冷的东西，排得很规矩。第一句是络纬的啼声，还只是听见秋；第二句是「微霜凄凄」，冷到了体感；紧接着「簟色寒」和「孤灯不明」，冷到了器物和光。三样东西从声音到温度到光线，一层层逼近床上的人。等到「思欲绝」，读者已经跟着冷了三回。李白很少这样细致地铺陈环境，这一首是例外，因为实在没有别的事情可写——思念没有动作，只能靠周围的东西来量。

The first six lines hold three cold things, arranged in order. The first line is the katydid's cry, which only lets you hear autumn; the second is thin frost lies chilly, cold felt on the body; then the bamboo mat has a cold color and the lone lamp burns dim, cold reaching the objects and the light. The three move from sound to temperature to illumination, closing in on the person in the bed. By comes near to breaking off, the reader has been made cold three times. Li Bai seldom builds environment this carefully; this poem is an exception, because there is truly nothing else to write about — longing has no action, and can only be measured by the things around it.

「长相思」在开头出现一次，在结尾又出现一次，中间隔了五句。开头一句是「长相思，在长安」，还带着一个地名，像是在说一件事情的所在；结尾一句是「长相思，摧心肝」，地名没有了，只剩下结果。同一句话，第二次出现时重了。这种把乐府题目嵌进正文、首尾呼应的做法，从《诗经》的复沓到后来的词牌都有，用在这么短的篇制里，等于把整首诗做成了一个闭合的圈——中间五句是圈里的东西，出不去。

Endless longing appears once at the opening and once at the close, five lines apart. The first, endless longing — in Chang'an, still carries a place name, as if naming where a thing is; the last, endless longing — it breaks the heart and liver, has no place name, only the result. The same words weigh more the second time. Weaving the yuefu title into the body and matching head to tail runs from the refrains of the Book of Songs to later cipai forms; in a piece this short it makes the poem one closed loop — the five lines inside are what is in the loop, and there is no way out.