白居易诗
Poems of Bai Juyi
Index
卖炭翁
The Old Charcoal Vendor
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卖炭翁伐薪 烧炭南山中 |
Old charcoal vendor cuts firewood, Makes his charcoal up on South Mountain. |
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满面尘灰烟火色 两鬓苍苍十指黑 |
Face stained with fires' dust and smoke, His hair grey with ash and every finger black. |
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卖炭得钱何所营 身上衣裳口中食 |
How does he get paid for this work, For the clothes on his back, the food in his mouth? |
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可怜身上衣正单 心忧炭贱愿天寒 |
One pathetic garment is all he wears besides A worried heart, cheap coal dust, and the hope for cold weather. |
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夜来城外一尺雪 晓驾炭车辗冰辙 |
Night brings a foot of snow to the countryside. At dawn, his cart is overturned upon an icy track. |
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牛困人饥日已高 市南门外泥中歇 |
Ox stuck, old man hungry, sun already high. Outside South Market Gate, he stops in the mud to rest. |
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翩翩两骑来是谁 黄衣使者白衫儿 |
Now who comes riding in their pretty cart? What yellow-clad official in a white vest? |
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手把文书口称敕 回车叱牛牵向北 |
He creates a traffic jam, reads out his edict. Ox screams, old cart turns, up-ends to the sky. |
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一车炭千余斤 宫使驱将惜不得 |
One cart of charcoal weighs a quarter ton. Our official presses on, no pity can he show-- |
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半匹红绡一丈绫 系向牛头充炭直 |
--For half a man in bloody rags crushed flat as damask silk. Someone holds the ox's head as they sweep the coal away. |
-- 白居易
废话
A Tale
Let us imagine how this poem came to be. Never an early riser, Bai Juyi rides into town, hoping to get to the office by the end of lunchtime. At the South Market Gate, there has been an accident. Men are sweeping up charcoal. One constable holds the halter of an ox. Another stands beside a crushed body beneath a bloody tarp. Bai Juyi learns an officer of the court caused a commotion, holding up traffic to read an edict, and then rode away.
Bai Juyi asks where the crushed old man came from and they point him to the road beyond the gate. Bai Juyi rides south, stopping to ask the locals about the old charcoal vendor. He finds a kiosk where a man tells him the old vendor stopped to rest in the mud. Bai Juyi continues south until he finds where the old man came down off the mountain. Bai Juyi rides up the muddy cart track until he finds charcoal on some icy ground where the cart had overturned. He continues on and finally comes upon a torn down charcoal burn, its last cinders smoking in the melting snow.
It is late afternoon as Bai Juyi rides home to write The Old Charcoal Vendor. He tells himself there probably wasn't anything important to do today at the office anyway. Better to have found this story for a poem.
The usual translation of this poem ends with the palace eunuchs' Marketing Commissioners requisitioning the charcoal for a meager twenty feet of cheap silk and ten feet of better silk (半匹红绡一丈绫) and leading the cart away. My reading requires a more picturesque eye. For example, 半匹 is half a bolt of cloth. But 匹夫 is everyman and so, half a man. Who knows what Bai Juyi saw. It's possible that the ambiguity here was intentional. The eunuchs were immensely powerful and Bai Juyi was good at keeping his head down.