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172. Climbing High | Du Fu

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English translation

The wind keen, the sky high, gibbons wail in sorrow; the islets clear, sands white, birds wheel and return.

One line, three sights — wind, sky, gibbons; islet, sand, birds — fourteen characters with not one idle word. The gibbon's wail fixes the sound, the wheeling birds the motion; the couplet lives in keenness and circling.

Boundless falling leaves rustle down without end; the never-ending Long River rolls on and on.

Boundless and never-ending stretch space and time to their widest at once. The rustling is autumn heard; the rolling is time seen passing — a couplet for the ages, its grandeur carried wholly in the doubled words.

Ten thousand li from home, grieving the autumn, forever a stranger; a hundred years of sickness, alone I climb the terrace.

The fourteen characters hold eight layers of grief — far from home, grieving autumn, being a stranger, forever, a hundred years, sickness, alone, climbing — counted out one by one by the Song critic Luo Dajing. Alone is the heaviest of the eight.

Through hardship and bitter regret the frost on my temples thickens; down and out, I have newly given up the cup of unstrained wine.

In "newly stopped the cup of unstrained wine," stopped means giving up drink because of illness: even the means of drowning sorrow is taken away. The poem closes with "newly stopped the cup of unstrained wine"; the word stopped marks stopping drink through illness, with no relief for sorrow.

赏析 · Commentary

被推为七律第一的一首诗 · The Poem Ranked First Among All Seven-Character Regulated Verse

明代胡应麟《诗薮》推此诗为「古今七言律第一」，理由是通篇对仗而气脉流转：首联句中自对（风急对天高、渚清对沙白），颔联颈联上下相对，尾联依然工对——八句皆对是律体的极限做法，稍有不慎就板滞，而这首读来毫无对仗的束缚感。杨伦《杜诗镜铨》说它「高浑一气，古今独步」。写此诗时杜甫流寓夔州，五十六岁，离去世只有三年：重九登高，独自一人，酒精性病已重到必须戒酒。诗的每一个字都是这个处境的直接产物。

Hu Yinglin's Ming-dynasty Poetry Shelves ranks it first among all seven-character regulated poems, ancient and modern, on the grounds that it is parallel throughout yet flows as one breath: the first couplet pairs within the lines (wind against sky, islet against sand), the second and third couplets pair across, and the close remains strict — eight lines all parallel is the extreme limit of the form, one slip from stiffness, and this poem reads without the least sense of constraint. Yang Lun's Mirror of Du Fu calls it one breath, lofty and whole, unique through the ages. Du Fu wrote it a refugee in Kuizhou, fifty-six, three years from death: climbing on the Double Ninth, alone, his illness already grave enough to force him off wine. Every character is the direct product of that situation.

十四字八层悲：罗大经的计数 · Eight Layers of Grief in Fourteen Characters: Luo Dajing's Count

宋人罗大经《鹤林玉露》把万里悲秋常作客，百年多病独登台拆成八层悲意：万里（离乡之远）、悲秋（时节之哀）、作客（漂泊之身）、常作客（漂泊之久）、百年（暮齿）、多病（衰疾）、登台（登高怀远）、独（无人相伴）。计数虽近游戏，却道出杜诗的一个秘密：他的沉郁不是形容词堆出来的，是名词与动词的密度堆出来的。这一联没有任何「愁」「恨」的字面，悲意全在客观的处境罗列里——处境本身已经是悲的极限，再加情绪词反而轻了。

The Song critic Luo Dajing, in his Jade Dew of the Crane Forest, splits the couplet into eight layers of grief: ten thousand li (the distance from home), grieving autumn (the season's sorrow), being a stranger, forever a stranger (the length of exile), a hundred years (late age), sickness (decline), climbing the terrace (the height that invites longing), and alone (no one beside). The counting is half a game, but it exposes the secret of Du Fu's depth: his gloom is not piled up from adjectives but from the density of nouns and verbs. Not one literal word of sorrow appears in the couplet — the grief lies wholly in the catalog of objective circumstances, which is itself grief at its limit; add emotion words and the weight would only lighten.

新停浊酒杯：结尾的反高潮 · The Newly Stopped Cup: the Anti-climax of the Ending

按律诗的路数，尾联应该把全诗的悲情推到最高。杜甫反着写：艰难苦恨落到鬓毛上，潦倒落到酒杯上——而且是新停的杯。停字一出，全诗的声音忽然降下来：一个连酒都不能喝的病人，登高、望秋、忆万里、数百年，最后手里什么都没有。评家常说这个结尾「收得住」，住在哪里？住在身体上。前面七句是精神的腾挪，最后一句回到肉体：病、老、穷、戒酒。正因为悲到极处还落回一个具体的、被剥夺的动作，这首诗的悲才不飘——它长在一个真实的身体上。

By convention the final couplet should lift the poem's sorrow to its peak. Du Fu writes it backward: hardship and bitter regret settle onto the temples, destitution onto the wine cup — and a newly stopped cup at that. Once stopped appears, the poem's voice suddenly comes down: a man too ill to drink, who has climbed, watched the autumn, remembered ten thousand li and counted a hundred years, ends with nothing in his hand. Critics say the ending is held in. Held where? In the body. Seven lines of spiritual flight, and the last returns to flesh: illness, age, poverty, abstinence. Because the extreme grief falls back onto one concrete, deprived action, the sorrow of the poem never floats — it is rooted in a real body.

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