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72. Song of the War Chariots | Du Fu

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English translation

Chariots rattle, horses whinny, and the marching men have each slung bow and arrows at the waist.

Three lines of sound and motion: wheels, horses, the slinging of bows. No one has spoken yet.

Parents, wife and children run alongside to see them off; the dust is so thick the Xianyang Bridge cannot be seen.

Run is the operative word. The dust hides the Xianyang Bridge says nothing about crowds and everything about dirt in the air.

They clutch at clothes, stamp their feet, block the road and weep; the sound of weeping goes straight up and reaches the clouds.

Four actions in a row, each one trying to hold the men back. The weeping goes straight up, rising against the ground-hugging dust before it.

A passerby on the road asks one of the marchers; the marcher says only that the call-ups come too often.

The poem's method is set here: the whole poem is one interview. Says only means that is all he will say.

Some went north at fifteen to guard the Yellow River, and by forty were still west, farming garrison land.

Two ages set as far apart as possible: out at fifteen, still gone at forty. Not a line about how those years passed.

When he left, the village headman tied his turban for him; he comes back white-haired and is still sent to the frontier.

Tying the turban marked coming of age, which shows how young he was. Age is written without adjectives, by matching turban to white hair.

Blood spilled at the frontier posts has become sea water, and the Martial Emperor's appetite for new territory is not yet spent.

The Martial Emperor is Emperor Wu of Han, standing in for Emperor Xuanzong of Tang. This is the poem's indictment, spoken through an ancient.

Have you not heard of the two hundred prefectures east of the mountains under the Han — a thousand villages and ten thousand hamlets grown over with thorn and wolfberry?

From the frontier to the interior. Bracken and wolfberry are what grows where no one works the land.

Even if strong women take up hoe and plough, the grain in the fields comes up with no rows to it.

No rows means the furrows have gone to pieces. With the men gone, the land cannot be worked properly — stated concretely.

And the men of Qin can endure hard fighting; driven on, they are no different from dogs and chickens.

Can endure hard fighting is praise elsewhere; here it becomes the reason for their misfortune — the better they fight, the more they are taken.

Though you, sir, have asked, how would a conscript dare voice his grievances?

Dare functions as how would I dare. The line is outwardly humble and in fact states plainly what cannot be said.

Take this winter alone: the troops from west of the pass have still not been stood down.

From the long indictment back to one concrete winter. Take alone narrows it.

The magistrate presses hard for the rent — and where is the rent to come from?

A question appears. No man left in the house, no source for the tax, and the question is left with no answer.

Now I know for certain that bearing sons is a curse, and bearing daughters the better thing.

The sharpest line in the poem. That sons are prized and daughters not is ordinary common sense, and Du Fu turns it around.

A daughter may at least marry a neighbour; a son is buried and lost among the weeds.

The line before is a verdict; this one gives the reason. Together they change good and bad into whether a person lives.

Do you not see, by the shores of Qinghai, the white bones of old that no one gathers?

A second do you not see pulls the camera from the villages back to the battlefield. Bones no one gathers is a stock phrase in the histories.

New ghosts fret over wrongs, old ghosts weep; when the sky is overcast and the rain wets the ground, their voices twitter.

The close lets the ghosts speak because the men have said everything. The sound comes only when the weather turns damp — heard nowhere else.

赏析 · Commentary

一首诗写成了一场问答 · A Poem Written as an Interview

《兵车行》的体裁在唐诗里少见。开头三句是杜甫在旁边看的：车、马、挂弓的人。第四句「道旁过者问行人」一出现，视角就分成了两个人，后面十四句全是那个征夫的回答。杜甫自己不再说话，也不加评论；控诉全部由被征的人自己讲出来。这种写法有个好处：说话的人没有立场要维护，他只是把经历报出来，从十五岁到四十岁，从里正裹头到白发戍边，从千村荆杞到县官索租。到最后两句，连鬼都出来说话，问答的形式撑不住了，才换回诗人的声音。

The Song of the War Chariots uses a form rare in Tang poetry. The first three lines are what Du Fu watches from the side: chariots, horses, men slinging bows. When the fourth line brings in a passerby on the road asks one of the marchers, the viewpoint splits in two, and the next fourteen lines are all the conscript's answer. Du Fu himself stops speaking and passes no judgment; the indictment is spoken entirely by the man taken. The advantage is that the speaker has no position to defend — he reports what happened, from fifteen to forty, from the headman tying his turban to white hair at the frontier, from a thousand thorn-grown villages to the magistrate pressing for rent. Only in the last two lines, when even the ghosts speak and the interview can hold no more, does the poet's own voice return.

「信知生男恶，反是生女好」这一转 · The Turn: Bearing Sons a Curse

「信知生男恶，反是生女好」，杜甫不说战争残酷，只说一个普通人的偏好变了。在一个重男轻女的社会里，「生女好」是反常的；他让这句话从征夫口里说出来，读者自己去补反常的原因——女儿能嫁在近邻，儿子要埋在野草里。这一转的力量来自它的轻：不是控诉，是一个父亲在算账。紧接着两句把账算完，「犹得」「埋没」，一个「犹」一个「随」，把两种命运分开。前面所有的兵车、尘土、白骨，到这里才落到一个家庭内部的判断上，诗因此变得很近。

Now I know for certain that bearing sons is a curse, and bearing daughters the better thing — Du Fu does not say war is cruel, only that an ordinary person's preference has reversed. In a society that prizes sons, bearing a girl is the better thing is perverse; he puts the words in a conscript's mouth and lets the reader supply the reason — a daughter may marry nearby, a son lies in the weeds. The turn draws its force from its lightness: not an indictment, but a father doing sums. The next two lines finish the sums, and the two fates divide. All the chariots, dust and bones before only here settle into a judgment made inside one household, which is what makes the poem so close.

结尾为什么让鬼来说话 · Why the Ending Lets Ghosts Speak

末联「新鬼烦冤旧鬼哭，天阴雨湿声啾啾」，说话的已经不是人了。全诗一直是活人在讲，讲到最后，活的人讲不完这件事——被征的还在被征，还没有变成鬼。杜甫让鬼接着讲，等于把时间往前推了一截：今天的新鬼，就是明天的旧鬼；白骨的数目还在增加。而且他给鬼安排了天气条件，「天阴雨湿」才听得见，声音是有出现时机的，不常听见。这一笔把全诗从现实的控诉推到一个更冷的地方：这场战争的结果不是几个人死，是死的人一批一批地积着。

In the last couplet, new ghosts fret over wrongs, old ghosts weep; when the sky is overcast and the rain wets the ground, their voices twitter, it is no longer the living who speak. The poem has been told by living people all along, and at the end the living cannot finish it — the conscripted are still being conscripted and have not yet become ghosts. Du Fu lets ghosts carry on, which pushes time forward a notch: today's new ghosts are tomorrow's old ghosts, and the count of bones is still rising. He also gives the ghosts a condition — the voices are heard only when the sky is overcast and the rain wets the ground — so the sound has its occasion and is not often heard. The stroke moves the poem from an indictment of the present to somewhere colder: what this war produces is not a few deaths but deaths piling up batch by batch.

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