99. Writing of My Heart While Travelling by Night | Du Fu
Text
English translation
Original Chinese text
细草微风岸，危樯独夜舟。
English translation
Fine grass on a wind-touched bank; a lone night boat with a tall mast.
Fine, faint, tall, alone — four words all carrying smallness and solitude, and the opening couplet's fourteen characters have settled the mood for good.
Original Chinese text
星垂平野阔，月涌大江流。
English translation
Stars hang low and the plain lies wide; the moon surges and the great river flows.
The couplet suddenly opens out: from one small boat to the plain and the great river. The first line is still, the second moving, and both are famous lines of the widest scope.
Original Chinese text
名岂文章著，官应老病休。
English translation
Is a name made by writing? Office should end with age and illness.
Both lines are ironic. The words is and should carry the grievance: a name is not made by writing, and his office did not end from age and illness but from being pushed out.
Original Chinese text
飘飘何所似，天地一沙鸥。
English translation
Drifting, drifting — what am I like? A single gull between heaven and earth.
The last line takes the gull for a figure of himself: a bird flying between heaven and earth with no branch to rest on, exactly Du Fu's wandering. The figure entrusts the sense of a life to a bird, closing lightly and heavily at once.
赏析 · Commentary
「星垂平野阔，月涌大江流」的气象 · The Scope of Stars Hang Low, the Moon Surges
这两句常被举为杜甫写景的代表。好处在于视角：星低垂是因为平野辽阔，视线放远，星星才显得压下来；月涌是因为江水在流，月光随波起伏。两句都没有说「大」，却写出了极大的空间。与前两联的一只小船对照，个人的渺小和天地的辽阔同时呈现，为末联的自比沙鸥铺好了路。
These lines are often cited as representative of Du Fu's landscape writing. Their merit is the viewpoint: stars hang low because the plain is wide — look far enough and the stars seem to press down; the moon surges because the river is flowing, and moonlight rises and falls with the waves. Neither line says vast, and together they make a vast space. Against the lone boat of the opening, the smallness of a person and the wideness of heaven and earth appear at once, laying the ground for the gull at the end.
「名岂文章著」的不平之气 · The Grievance in Is a Name Made by Writing
杜甫的一生，诗名极高，仕途极不顺。这一联表面是自问自答，实际是反话：我的名声难道只是因为会写文章吗？我的官职难道真是因为老病才丢的吗？两个反问都指向同一个事实——他真正想做的经世事业没有做成。写在漂泊的夜里，语气看似平静，底下是压了半辈子的不甘。
Du Fu's life held great poetic fame and a thoroughly obstructed career. This couplet looks like self-questioning and is in fact irony: is my name only from writing? did I really lose my post to age and illness? Both questions point at one fact — the work he truly wanted to do in the world went undone. Written on a night of drifting, the tone seems calm; underneath is half a lifetime of resentment held down.
沙鸥这个比喻为什么用得好 · Why the Gull Works as a Figure
沙鸥在古典诗里常有两个意思：一是自由无拘，二是漂泊无依。杜甫取的是后者。他用「天地」和「一」把对比拉开——天地极大，鸟极小；而这一只鸟没有伴，没有巢，正像他此时离开成都、漂泊江上。更妙的是，这个比喻既写景也写人，读者可以把它当作眼前的水鸟，也可以当作诗人的自况，两读都对。
The gull in classical poetry often carries two senses: untrammeled freedom, or rootless drifting. Du Fu takes the second. Heaven and earth against one opens the contrast — the world enormous, the bird minute; and this bird has no mate, no nest, exactly like him leaving Chengdu and drifting on the river. Better still, the figure writes both scenery and person: the reader can take it as a waterfowl in view or as the poet's own image, and both hold.