89. Listening to the Monk Jun of Shu Play the Qin | Li Bai
Text
English translation
Original Chinese text
蜀僧抱绿绮，西下峨眉峰。
English translation
A monk of Shu carries the Green Lute; he comes down from Mount Emei in the west.
The Green Lute was the famous instrument of Sima Xiangru in the Han, and stands here for a fine qin. The couplet first gives the player and where he comes from, all of it breathing the air of Shu.
Original Chinese text
为我一挥手，如听万壑松。
English translation
He waves a hand for me, and I seem to hear pines in a thousand valleys.
The waving of a hand gives the act of playing with great economy, and the pines in a thousand valleys the sheer size of the sound. Small gesture, vast noise — the gap is the power of the qin.
Original Chinese text
客心洗流水，余响入霜钟。
English translation
The traveler's heart is washed by flowing water; the lingering notes enter the frost bell.
Flowing water alludes to Bo Ya, whose qin could mean running water, and names both the sound and its cleansing. The frost bell is the bell of the frost season, answering the qin's notes.
Original Chinese text
不觉碧山暮，秋云暗几重。
English translation
Unaware, I find the green hills in dusk; the autumn clouds darken, layer on layer.
So lost was he in the music that time slipped away, and only looking up does he find the day has gone. The last line shows how long he listened through a change in the light, never saying he was spellbound — and the spellbinding shows itself.
赏析 · Commentary
怎么写声音，唐诗的一个样本 · How to Write Sound: A Sample from Tang Poetry
写音乐的诗难在把听觉转成别人能懂的东西。李白的办法是三个比喻接续：先比作松涛，是声音的形态；再比作流水，是声音的清越和洗心的作用；最后融入霜钟，是声音的收束和余韵。三步下来，读者对琴声的感觉有了层次。他没有用任何一个专业的音乐术语，全是日常能听见的声音，这是这类诗能被广泛理解的原因。
Poems on music are hard because hearing must be turned into something another person can grasp. Li Bai's method is three figures in sequence: first the sound of pines, which gives its shape; then flowing water, which gives its clarity and its power to wash the heart; last the frost bell, which gives its close and its lingering. Through the three steps the reader's sense of the qin gains depth. He uses no technical musical term at all, only sounds anyone can hear, which is why such poems travel so widely.
「客心」两个字透露的处境 · What Two Words, Traveler's Heart, Reveal
全诗写听琴听得忘我，但在第三联出现了「客心」。这两个字说明李白当时人在异乡。琴声「洗」的，正是客居之人的烦扰。有了这个身份，末联「不觉碧山暮」就不只是入迷，还带着一点不想回到现实中来的意味——现实里有乡愁，琴声里没有。琴、僧、蜀地，这三样对出蜀的李白来说都是故乡的牵连，诗中的亲切感由此而来。
The poem tells of losing oneself in music, yet in the third couplet appear the words traveler's heart. They show that Li Bai was then far from home. What the qin washes is precisely a stranger's agitation. With that condition set, the last couplet's unaware, I find the green hills in dusk carries more than absorption — a hint of not wanting to return to the real, where homesickness is, while the qin has none. The qin, the monk, and Shu are all ties to home for a man who had left it, and the warmth of the poem comes from there.
「绿绮」和「万壑松」的来历 · The Sources of the Green Lute and the Pines
「绿绮」是司马相如的琴名，后世用来泛指名琴，李白一开篇就报出这个名字，等于给琴声定了格调。「万壑松」则让人想到琴曲《风入松》一类的题目，也就把琴声和松风联系起来。两处都有传统的依据，不是随手取的比喻。用典在这里的作用不是炫学，而是让懂行的读者一听就知道这琴是什么水平，僧是什么来路。
The Green Lute is the name of Sima Xiangru's instrument, later used at large for a fine qin, and Li Bai names it at the outset to set the register of the sound. The pines in a thousand valleys brings to mind qin pieces titled after the wind in the pines, tying the music to pine wind. Both have traditional warrant and are not figures chosen at random. The allusion here is not display; it lets a knowing reader hear at once what level the instrument is and what manner of monk is playing.