300. Lament of the Changxin Palace | Wang Changling
Text
English translation
Original Chinese text
奉帚平明金殿开，且将团扇共徘徊。
English translation
Bearing the broom at dawn as the golden hall opens; she can only take up the round silk fan and pace to and fro.
Bearing the broom means sweeping and dusting, and shows that after losing favor she is set to menial work. Dawn is first light. The golden hall opens means the palace doors are opened. The round silk fan draws on Ban Jieyu's Song of Resentment, in which a fan is discarded when autumn cools—an image of a woman cast off when her beauty fades. She can only take it up means she just holds it (the variant for the while is noted below). To pace with it to and fro shows her, with only the fan for company, in her loneliness. (The Gutenberg base text reads just then take up the fan and pace; Wikisource reads for the while take up the fan and pace; the chinese-poetry dataset reads for the while take up the fan and go round and back; I follow the Gutenberg text.)
Original Chinese text
玉颜不及寒鸦色，犹带昭阳日影来。
English translation
Her jade face cannot match the color of the cold crow; it still carries the sunlight of Zhaoyang as it comes.
A jade face is a beauty like white jade, here the neglected palace woman. The cold crow is an autumn crow, cold in the season. Cannot match means she is not to be compared with it. Zhaoyang was a Han palace hall, where Zhao Feiyan and her sister lived when they held the emperor's favor, and here it stands for wherever the emperor now favors someone. The sunlight is both the sun's light and a figure for the sovereign's grace. The point is this: even a crow can come from Zhaoyang and carry a little of the imperial radiance, while she gets none of it.
赏析 · Commentary
以扫地的差事写失宠 · Favor Lost, Told Through a Sweeping Task
“奉帚”把失宠落在一个具体动作上：昔日承恩的人，如今天不亮就拿着扫帚洒扫。一个动作，已经说尽盛衰之别。团扇的典故接着补上：扇子一到秋天就被丢开，正如她色衰见弃。
Bearing the broom fixes lost favor in one concrete act: she who once received favor now sweeps at first light. That single action says all the difference between rise and fall. The fan allusion adds the rest: a fan is thrown aside as soon as autumn comes, just as she was cast off when her beauty faded.
拿乌鸦作比 · The Crow as a Comparison
“玉颜不及寒鸦色”一句，历来为人称道。人不如鸦，已够可悲；诗人还给出理由——乌鸦从昭阳殿飞来，羽上带着日影。皇帝的一点余光，她求之不得，乌鸦却轻易沾带。比得越卑微，怨意越深。
The line her jade face cannot match the color of the cold crow has always been admired. That a person is less than a crow is sad enough; the poet even gives the reason—the crow comes from Zhaoyang and carries sunlight on its feathers. A little of the emperor's radiance, which she cannot beg, the crow picks up without trying. The humbler the comparison, the deeper the resentment.