ChineseStudy

305. Beyond the Frontier | Wang Zhihuan

Contents

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English translation

The Yellow River reaches far up into the white clouds; a single lone city amid mountains ten thousand fathoms high.

This poem is also titled Liangzhou Song, words made for the Liangzhou tune. The Yellow River reaches far up means the river is viewed from below, running up to the clouds, a grand and vast prospect. A single means the city's loneliness and smallness; the lone city is a frontier garrison fortress in the region of the Jade Gate. Ten thousand fathoms describes mountains of immense height (eight chi make a fathom). (The Gutenberg base text and Wikisource read the Yellow River reaches far up; the chinese-poetry dataset reads yellow sand straight up, sand driven to the sky, which also works; I follow the common text.)

Why should the Qiang flute complain of the willow? The spring wind does not cross the Jade Gate.

The Qiang flute is the flute of the Qiang people of the frontier. The willow is the tune Breaking the Willow; the ancients broke willow branches at partings and sent their grief through the willow, and the tune is plaintive. Why should complain means there is no need to resent. Cross means to go beyond, to reach. The Jade Gate was a fortress the Han set in the northwest, its site northwest of present-day Dunhuang in Gansu, the boundary between the Central Plain and the Western Regions. The spring wind does not cross tells both the bitter cold of the frontier and, beneath it, that the court's grace does not reach the garrison.

赏析 · Commentary

先写大景，再写孤城 · Vast Scene First, Lone City After

起句把黄河、白云拉到一起，气象极大；第二句立刻缩到一座孤城、万仞高山。一大一小、一远一近，边塞的空旷与戍卒的孤单都出来了。诗人不写人，城便是人的处境。

The opening line draws the Yellow River and white clouds together on a grand scale; the second line shrinks at once to one lone city and mountains ten thousand fathoms high. Great and small, far and near, and the frontier's emptiness and the garrison soldiers' solitude both emerge. The poet writes no person; the city is the person's situation.

怨柳与春风不度 · Willow Lament and a Wind That Does Not Reach

后两句用羌笛、杨柳、春风、玉门关串成一层怨意：笛声吹的是离别，可边地连春风都吹不到，又何来杨柳？一个“怨”字，明写笛声，暗写戍边人的思乡；“春风不度”四字，又把朝廷恩泽难及的感慨藏在里头。

The closing couplet strings the Qiang flute, the willow, the spring wind, and the Jade Gate into one layer of complaint: the flute plays of parting, yet on the frontier even the spring wind does not reach, so how could there be willows? The word complain names the flute's sound and covertly names the garrison soldier's homesickness; the words the spring wind does not cross hide the feeling that the court's grace can hardly reach here either.

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