105. In Reply to Magistrate Zhang | Wang Wei

张少府问的是「穷通理」——仕途上什么算穷、什么算通，这是个实在的问题。王维给了一个不实在的答案：渔歌入浦。这个答法有两层意思。一是避答，关于穷通，他已经用前六句表态了——不关心，所以不讨论。二是给答案：你看，渔歌多自在，这就是穷通的道理。以景代答是唐诗常见的手法，答得越虚，留白越多。

Magistrate Zhang asks about the principle of failure and success — what counts as thwarted and what as flourishing in a career. That is a practical question, and Wang Wei gives an impractical answer: a fisherman's song entering the inlet. The answer works two ways. It avoids answering — on failure and success he has already stated his position in the first six lines: he does not care, so he does not discuss it. And it does answer: see how free the fisherman's song is, and there is the principle. Answering with a scene is common in Tang poetry, and the vaguer the answer, the more it leaves open.

这一联是王维诗里最放松的画面之一。风吹开衣带，是风在做，人没有动作；月光照琴，人在弹，但也不刻意。两个动作都处在半主动半被动之间，合起来是一种「不用力」的生活状态。放在「晚年惟好静」之后，这一联就是那种「静」的具体形态——不是枯坐，是坐得住。

This is among the most relaxed pictures in Wang Wei. The wind blows the sash open — the wind acts, the man does nothing; the moon shines on the qin, and he plays, but without effort. Both actions hover between doing and being done to, and together they make a way of living that does not strain. After I care only for quiet in my late years, the couplet is the concrete form of that quiet — not sitting withered but sitting easily.

王维晚年确实半官半隐，但他并没有真的完全脱离世事——他仍在朝中挂职，写下不少应制诗。所以「万事不关心」更像是一种理想的姿态，而非完全的实况。不过诗的真诚不必等同于生活的实况；写下这句话的人，至少在那一刻，是想这样生活的。理解这一点，不必替他辨证，也不必指其虚伪。

Wang Wei in his later years did live half in office and half out, but he was not wholly detached from the world — he still held a court post and wrote a good many poems on imperial command. So the world's affairs no longer concern me is rather an ideal posture than a full account. But the sincerity of a poem need not equal the facts of a life; the man who wrote the line, in that moment at least, wished to live so. Understanding this needs neither excuse nor a charge of hypocrisy.