ChineseStudy

295. Longxi Song | Chen Tao

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English translation

They swore to sweep away the Xiongnu, never sparing themselves; five thousand in sable and brocade perished in the Tartar dust.

The Xiongnu were the Han dynasty's fierce northern foes, here standing for the enemies who raided the Tang frontier. Never sparing themselves tells how the soldiers gave their lives for the realm. Sable and brocade properly means the sable furs and brocade robes of the Han imperial guards, and here stands for an elite, well-equipped force; five thousand is a round number for the many dead. Perished in the Tartar dust means they died on the sandy battlefield of the north. The couplet first shows the troops' valor and sacrifice as they set out.

Pitiable—the bones by the Wuding River are still the man in her spring-chamber dream.

The Wuding River is a tributary of the middle Yellow River in what is now northern Shaanxi; its name means Unfixed, because silt shifts and its depth changes without rule, and it was a place of frontier campaigning in the Tang. Pitiable means lamentable, grievous. The bones are set against the man: on the riverbank he is long since bleached bone, yet in the inner room she still takes him for a living man and longs for his return in dreams. (The Gutenberg base text and Wikisource read deep chamber; the chinese-poetry dataset and the common anthologies read spring chamber, which I follow.)

赏析 · Commentary

从誓师到白骨 · From the Oath to the Bones

前两句写将士的忠勇：立誓扫敌，不惜捐躯，五千精锐埋骨胡尘。后两句忽然把镜头拉回闺房：她梦中的人，正是河边那具无人收殓的枯骨。诗人不评判战争，也不渲染哭声，只用“骨”与“人”的错位，让读者自己感到那份残酷。

The opening couplet shows the soldiers' valor: sworn to sweep away the foe, sparing no life, five thousand elite laid in Tartar dust. The closing couplet pulls the view back to the inner chamber: the man in her dream is exactly the unburied bone by the river. The poet neither judges the war nor milks its weeping; he lets the mismatch between bone and man make the cruelty felt.

一实一虚的对照 · The Real and the Dreamed

河边白骨是实，闺中春梦是虚。她连梦带自己都在骗自己：人早已死了，她却还不知道。诗只点出这一层，不给安慰，也不给结局。短短二十八字里，边塞的惨烈与深闺的痴情互相映照，这正是它传诵不衰的原因。

The bones by the river are real; the spring dream in the inner room is not. She and her dream both deceive her: the man has long been dead, and she does not yet know. The poem states only this much, offering neither comfort nor ending. In twenty-eight characters the horror of the frontier and the devotion of the inner chamber cast light on each other—which is why the poem has never stopped being read.

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