鮑君徽诗
Poems of Bao Junhui
Index
惜花吟
Tender Blossom Song
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枝上花 花下人 可怜颜色俱青春 |
Blossoms on the branches. Blossoms fall on men. A pity, their faces are full of their youth. |
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昨日看花花灼灼 今朝看花花欲落 |
Yesterday, I saw every blossom blooming. Now, I see each blossom wants to fall. |
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不如尽此花下欢 莫待春风总吹却 |
This joy of falling is not as good as leaving here. Don't linger just for the sex; it ruins all. |
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莺歌蝶舞韶光长 红炉煮茗松花香 |
Orioles sing, butterflies dance, glory of youth grows old. As our hot stove boils tea, the fragrance of old eggs. |
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妆成罢吟恣游后 独把芳枝归洞房 |
Make-up on, singing done, we can do as we please no more. Alone, one fragrant blossom, returns to her chamber once more. |
-- 鮑君徽
废话
The first thing I want to point out is that this is probably a lyric, which is a Chinese poet's words set to a tune known to his listeners. Or hers, as the case may be. As Bao Junhui is living, or trapped, in the Six Palaces of the consorts, it would be a song the other women knew, probably, and not for someone like the emperor.
The next thing is that Chinese is always and ever ambiguous. If you can't come up with three different, valid versions of a poem like this, you aren't trying. Chinese is not double entendre. It is more like polyentendrous (I made that up.) So things like "spring wind" mean both "spring wind" and "sex," "pine blossoms" also means "thousand-year eggs" (the kind you eat,) and so on.
So.... From the standpoint (assumed), that Bao Junhui is intelligent, attractive, and ironical, I have purposely chosen to present the ironical layer beneath what the male courtiers would hear as they passed by a group of consorts singing Bao's lyric. I can't prove my standpoint is Bao's. She could be stupid, unattractive, and totally lacking in irony. She is free to be as Heaven made her. Who am I to interfere?
But if we allow my standpoint, I have not cheated a single syllable. Our lovely, bright ironist could have meant exactly this. And I hope she did. And that the consorts sang it. And if they did, I'm sure the men walking condescendingly by missed all the irony after that bit about "spring wind" captured their tiny minds.