白居易诗

Poems of Bai Juyi


Index

井底引银瓶

Silver Vase at the Bottom of the Well


(止淫奔也)

(Stop rushing around.)

井底引银瓶
银瓶欲上丝绳绝

That silver vase at the bottom of the well,
I want to pull it up on a silk rope's end.

石上磨玉簪
玉簪欲成中央折

This jade hairpin I'm polishing with a stone,
I just want to break it in half.

瓶沉簪折知奈何
似妾今朝与君别

Sunken bottle, broken pin, who knows what to do?
It's like me this morning, now that you've left.

忆昔在家为女时
人言举动有殊姿

I remember back when we lived together,
The way we spoke was different then.

婵娟两鬓秋蝉翼
宛转双蛾远山色

Moonlight on your face, delicate autumn,
Two moths circling, mountains in the distance.

笑随戏伴后园中
此时与君未相识

We would laugh and joke together in the back garden.
Now we hardly seem to know each other.

妾弄青梅凭短墙
君骑白马傍垂杨

I pick a plum blossom, lean against the wall.
You ride off among the bending poplars.

墙头马上遥相顾
一见知君即断肠

We gaze at each other across this distance.
I know you, too, must be heartbroken.

知君断肠共君语
君指南山松柏树

Your words revealed your broken heart.
You spoke of the pines and cedars up on South Mountain.

感君松柏化为心
闇合双鬟逐君去

And your heart seemed undefiled again.
Then we bound up our hair and went our ways.

到君家舍五六年
君家大人频有言

You went home, five, six years ago
And spent your time among the powerful.

聘则为妻奔是妾
不堪主祀奉蘋蘩

I was in a rush to conform and fit in.
But pleasing the powerful was too bitter for me.

终知君家不可住
其奈出门无去处

In the end, I knew I couldn't conform to you either.
What could I do but leave, with nowhere to go?

岂无父母在高堂
亦有亲情满故乡

How, with no parents in the main hall, was
I so filled with affection for where I came from?

潜来更不通消息
今日悲羞归不得

Hidden away, I hear less and less of you.
Now, I'm embarrassed that you can't return my sadness.

为君一日恩
误妾百年身

For one day of your kindness,
I've damaged my whole life.

寄言痴小人家女
慎勿将身轻许人

I've heard you're now in a foolish man's house.
Be careful not to base your conduct on somewhat reckless men.

-- 白居易


废话

This is another of Bai Juyi's New Lyric Poetry collection from 815. To understand this poem, you need a sense of how classical Chinese handled pronouns. Let us say that you are writing about an equal, in this case a man. You then refer to him as jun1 (君) for "you" and as ru3 (女) for a more intimate pronoun similar to "thou." Jun1 is normally "lord" and ru3 is an overloading of the character for "woman" or nü3. You refer to yourself as qie4 (妾) which is normally "concubine" or a self-referential "I" used by women of the time. With our pronouns straight and with a sense of Bai Juyi's personal history, the context of this poem is clear. It is a lament for his fading friendship with Yuan Zhen.

Bai Juyi met Yuan Zhen in 801 and the two young idealists became the closest of friends. This friendship became the ideal friendship in Bai Juyi's life, the friendship he took most to heart. Over the years, Yuan Zhen became more and more enchanted with power. He cultivated powerful friends, eventually ending up as a toady to the stupid and awful Emperor Muzong. The final lines of this poem, due to their obliqueness, may refer to Yuan Zhen now associating with the prince who would become Muzong.

Over the same years, Bai Juyi moved further and further from associating with the powerful. He married into a powerful family which was often at odds with the eunuchs at court. So the family was prone to fall in and out of favor. Falling out of favor tended to shorten people's life spans. So Bai Juyi became very adept at keeping his head down. At the time of this poem, he has just begun serving his exile in Sichuan, working for the governor there. He was exiled due to a poem he wrote, criticising the court, and will hereafter become much more reserved and nuanced in his approach to criticism.

When Bai Juyi and Yuan Zhen were younger, they often lived together for short periods of time. The silver bottle and the jade hairpin could well be presents given to Bai Juyi by Yuan Zhen. As the two friends drifted apart without losing affection for each other, Bai Juyi might have thrown the bottle down the well in an emotional moment. There were many elaborate ways that men of the time used to bind up their hair on top of their heads. A jade hairpin was the simplest of these.

For a public poem, the fifth couplet above shows how deeply personal it is for Bai Juyi. Moonlight on Yuan Zhen's face (actually, his temples), the delicate autumn when that moon shone on that face, the distinct memory of two moths circling (unless the moths are a metaphor for the two of them) and the mountains in the distance. Concrete memories, certainly. One last note: "pines and cedars" (松柏) can be those actual trees or, taken together, a symbol for "undefiled" or "chaste." Taken separately as symbols together they imply "honesty and virtue."

Index