白居易诗
Poems of Bai Juyi
Index
画竹歌并引
Song of Painting Bamboo, with introduction
| 协律郎萧悦善画竹举时无伦萧亦甚自秘重有终岁求其一竿一枝而不得者知予天与好事忽写一十五竿惠然见投予厚其意高其艺无以答贶作歌以报之凡一百六十六字云 | At Harmony's Law Temple, Xiao Yue is good at painting bamboo and does little else. His secret is to spend one's whole life striving for each stalk, each twig. And he says he never succeeds. His understanding comes from Heaven. And this fine work, a sudden drawing with fifteen bamboo shafts, he kindly throws off for me to see. To me, his ideas are so profound, his skills so lofty, that I am unable to respond. This song repays him with a plain lyric of 166 characters. |
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植物之中竹难写 古今虽画无似者 |
Unworthy painters, ancient and modern, find it hard To paint the living plant which lies within bamboo. |
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萧郎下笔独逼真 丹青以来唯一人 |
Monk Xiao's brush alone is truly lifelike. Only he can paint like this. |
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人画竹身肥拥肿 萧画茎瘦节节竦 |
Others paint bamboo as thick and gnarly. Xiao's have slender stalks which joint by joint ascend. |
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人画竹梢死羸垂 萧画枝活叶叶动 |
Others' leaves hang down in withered tangles. Xiao's are living branches with every leaf in motion. |
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不根而生从意生 不笋而成由笔成 |
Not a root that is not born of new ideas. Not a sprout where perfection does not follow brush. |
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野塘水边碕岸侧 森森两丛十五茎 |
Beside wild waters, a tall cliff leans. Two dense thickets are shown by fifteen stalks. |
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婵娟不失筠粉态 萧飒尽得风烟情 |
He captures their graceful, delicate attitude. And a meloncholy arises like a mist spread by the wind. |
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举头忽看不似画 低耳静听疑有声 |
If your glance is quick, this does not seem a painting. Lean in and listen. You can almost hear the wind. |
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西丛七茎劲而健 省向天竺寺前石上见 |
On the right, seven stalks move and grow, Like ones I might have seen beside a temple garden's rock. |
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东丛八茎疏且寒 忆曾湘妃庙里雨中看 |
On the left are eight stalks, spare and cold, Like a woman I once saw in the rain. |
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幽姿远思少人别 与君相顾空长叹 |
Serene beauty, distant longings, both plain to see. We can only look at each other and sigh. |
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萧郎萧郎老可惜 手颤眼昏头雪色 |
Brother Xiao, growing old is a pity. Hands tremble, eyes dim, hair turns snowy white. |
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自言便是绝笔时 从今此竹尤难得 |
My words arrive in time to be your swansong. From now on, such bamboo will be very hard to find. |
-- 白居易
废话
Chinese gentlemen were supposed to excel at 琴棋书画 or "lute, chess, calligraphy and painting." Bai Juyi only took poetry seriously. Later in life, he banged around on the lute a bit. Arthur Waley somehow concluded that Bai Juyi was no judge of painting. I don't know about that. This poem seems to indicate otherwise. I think Bai Juyi was playfully flattering his old friend, who was becoming too old to practice his art. The poem shows not only an appreciation of the surface features of art but also for its power to explicitly convey complicated emotions. But, in the end, the poem conveys a sympathy for our human frailty, something we all must meet.