293. Already Cool | Han Wo
Text
English translation
Original Chinese text
碧阑干外绣帘垂，猩色屏风画折枝。
English translation
Beyond the green railing the embroidered curtain hangs low; on the crimson screen are painted broken sprays.
The green railing is a railing painted green, and the hanging embroidered curtain shuts the room off from outside. Crimson is the deep red of orangutan blood; the screen painted with broken sprays means a screen depicting cut sprigs of flowers and plants. The couplet moves from outdoors to indoors, the colors rich, and yet no person appears.
Original Chinese text
八尺龙须方锦褥，已凉天气未寒时。
English translation
On the eight-foot bed of dragon-whisker rush with its square brocade mattress; the weather is already cool, but not yet cold.
Dragon-whisker is a rush whose stems can be woven into mats; the square brocade mattress is a square padded coverlet of brocade. Eight feet tells of a large bed and of fine living. Already cool, not yet cold is the most delicate moment of the year: the heat has just gone, the cold has not come, and the heart is most easily stirred. All four lines lay out furnishings and season; the person never enters. (Crimson is written in one edition as orangutan blood, and broken sprays as another flower term; the senses are close.)
赏析 · Commentary
不写人，处处是人 · No Person, Yet Everywhere a Person
全诗四句都是物：栏杆、绣帘、屏风、床席、锦褥，连一句心事也没有。可这些陈设无一不是在为一个人布置——深闺里的女子始终没有露面，她的寂寞却从帘幕低垂、锦褥新铺里透出来。这正是韩偓“香奁体”的含蓄处。
All four lines are objects: railing, embroidered curtain, screen, bed mat, brocade mattress—not one word of feeling. Yet every one of these furnishings is arranged for a person; the woman in the inner room never appears, and still her loneliness seeps through the lowered curtain and the newly laid brocade. This is the reserve of Han Wo's boudoir style.
“已凉未寒”四个字 · "Already Cool, Not Yet Cold"
诗眼在末句。“已凉”是感觉到了，“未寒”是还不至难耐；恰好是夏去秋来、季节转换的空当。人在这样的时节最容易生出时光流逝之感。诗人不点明情绪，只把节候写准，让读者的心跟着这层凉意一起沉下去。
The eye of the poem is in the last line. Already cool means it has been felt; not yet cold means not yet hard to bear—just the interval when summer has gone and autumn comes, the turning of the season. At such a time one most easily feels the passing of years. The poet names no mood; he only fixes the season exactly, and the reader's heart sinks with that coolness.