Spring Outlook
By Du Fu
Translated by A.Z. Foreman
Click to hear me recite the original in Medieval Chinese
Click here to hear me recite the original in modern Mandarin pronunciation
The state shattered, river and mountain survive
The city springfallen, weeds and trees take ground
Touched by the times, tears splash at sight of blossoms
Aggrieved at displacement, the heart jolts at birds' sound
The beacons of war have brimmed three months with flame
Letters from home are now worth a thousand in gold
I scratch and pull so much at my whitening hair
It'll soon be too thin for my hatpin to keep hold
By Du Fu
Translated by A.Z. Foreman
Click to hear me recite the original in Medieval Chinese
Click here to hear me recite the original in modern Mandarin pronunciation
The state shattered, river and mountain survive
The city springfallen, weeds and trees take ground
Touched by the times, tears splash at sight of blossoms
Aggrieved at displacement, the heart jolts at birds' sound
The beacons of war have brimmed three months with flame
Letters from home are now worth a thousand in gold
I scratch and pull so much at my whitening hair
It'll soon be too thin for my hatpin to keep hold
Literary Chinese verse-grammar is heavily elliptical and, from a Euroglot perspective, underspecified. In my literal gloss I have placed in parentheses the function-words and forms and morphemes which are not strictly derivable from the Chinese text (since often other relations are possible and plausible), yet which I resort to in order to give some kind of readable English.
Couplet 1:
國破山河在，kwek phè sran he dzèi
城春草木深。dzyeing tshywen tsháu muk syem
(The) state (is) broken/vanquished, (yet) mountains/hills (and) rivers endure/remain.
(The) city (is) spring(-bloom)(ed): grass/plants (and) trees (have) (grow)(n) dense/deep.
In traditional regulated verse (the Chinese verse-form to which this piece belongs), the opening couplet sets the time, place, and/or theme for the entire poem. In the first line the human 國 kwek "state" is contrasted with the natural 山河 sran-ghe "mountains and rivers." 在dzèi "to stay, to be there, to be alive" reads as "endure" or "is still there" in the sense of outlasting. Though 破 phè means "break, shatter, smash" there is more to it than that, it also means "demolish, destroy (e.g. by military action)" and that meaning is relevant here, because 國破 kwekphè in isolation could mean not only "the state is broken/collapsed" but also "the state is destroyed (i.e. by some foreign power)." Use of the verb 破 phè with 國 kwek as its object, in the context of specifically military action, can be found as early as Sun Tzu's Art of War:
凡用兵之法全國為上破國次之蹧軍為上破軍次之
So, when it comes to methods of employing the military, conquering a state's capital (=國 kwek) intact is best; destroying (=破 phè) it is worse. Conquering an enemy army intact is best; destroying it (=破 phè) is worse.
If Du Fu didn't have this all burbling about in his subconscious at least, I'd be surprised. For as he puts a living spin on a dead metaphor by using 國破 kwekphè to mean a nation literally broken to pieces by internal factors, he also employs phrasing often associated with external conflict and vanquishment. In Sun Tzu above, 國 kwek refers to a state metonymically via its city seat, a usage which could occasionally be employed as classical metonym in Medieval Chinese poetry and which is evoked here, as the war-shredded capital city of Chang'an is itself a realm overpowered by nature. Throughout this couplet and the next, we see nature almost metaphorized, as unwitting, uncaring victor, outlasting and tormenting humans. In the first line the broken/destroyed city or nation of humans is set against the unbroken enduring realm of nature. This carries into the second line, where the lush grasses and trees suggest a view of an environment abandoned by humans and therefore overrun, veritably conquered, by wild plants of spring.
Anyway, as with Biblical poetry, syntactic parallelism is a major formal component/constraint of Chinese verse as it had developed by this period. These two lines are syntactically parallel (although not required to by the form.) Both go [Noun+Descriptive Verb| Noun-pair +Verb] in Chinese and so 春 tshywen "spring" is actually a verb here "to come into spring" instead of a noun as it usually is- a license I've seen occasionally taken with words describing time and state in Chinese verse-grammar.
城 dzyeing means "city" here, and is the primary meaning in context. But the word can also mean "city wall", specifically the inner city wall. Medieval Chinese cities were often protected by two sets of walls: an inner defensive wall, the 城 dzyeing "enceinte, bailey" often made of stone or something equally rock-solid, and an outer wall (called the 郭 kwak "rampart, curtain wall") often, but not always, made of rammed earth. Kept between the 郭 kwak and the 城 dzyeing was a pomery with space containing enough farmland to keep the town supplied with food in the event of a siege. If the town expanded, concentric walls could be built as well. If the inner wall is overgrown, it means that all that farmland has been left to the elements, and therefore that it is either abandoned or at the very least horridly famine-prone. Furthermore, the word 郭 kwak "outer rampart" was quite close in pronunciation to 國 kwek "state/nation" (i.e. the word to whose verse-position 城 dzyeing "city" corresponds) so there may be some slight wordplay there with the "state broken" reminiscent of "ramparts broken" when the word is paired with 城 dzyeing.
Thick foliage in spring even context-free would have been ominous to Du Fu's audience I think. In China, trees and shrubs were normally pruned back greatly in spring. If they are growing thickly, it is because normal order has broken down. Nobody is there caring for them. Moreover, the verb 深 syem "to go/grow deep, get dense/thick" can connote infiltration, penetration, pervasion and to my mind has a menacing quality to it in this particular context of breached defenses.
This couplet also illustrates how the general and the specific, or the principle and the instance, can merge in Chinese poetic expressions thanks to underspecified syntax. The first line could read proverbially as "when nations fall, rivers and mountains endure" or "though a nation may fall, the rivers and mountains will survive." Indeed, the phrase 國破 is even today a feature in Chinese proverbs about what happens when nations fall.
Couplet 2:
感時花濺淚，kám dzyi hwa tsàn lwì
恨別鳥驚心。ghèn pat táu keing sem
The syntax here as in the next couplet is parallel (configured as two lines of Verb+Noun | Noun+Verb+Noun) this time by formal requirement. The couplet divides neatly into into four clauses where clause boundary comes between the first two and last three characters of each line. My translation is heavily interpretative.
The original phrasing is somewhat ambiguous, owing to elliptical verse-grammar, and there are many technically possible readings to go with them depending on how one relates the clauses. I have included three such readings below. The first and probably correct, or at least probably intended, reading has the poet as the subject of all four clauses:
(I) feel (so badly in such a) time, (that even) flower(s) (make me) shed tears
(I) hate/grieve separation/parting (so much, that a) bird (can) startle (my) heart.
A second reading has the poet as the subject of the first clause of each line, and the flowers and birds as subjects of the second:
(When I) feel the times, flower(s) shed tears
(When I) loathe separation, bird(s) (are) startl(ed) (at) heart.
A third reading has the birds and flowers as subjects of all the clauses:
Feeling the time, flowers shed tears,
Loath to leave, birds startle are shocked at heart
In the first reading, human suffering is contrasted with indifferent nature. Nature's perpetuity and lushness only serve to remind the poet of human misery and impermanence. Again: the contrast of humankind and nature, a pervasive theme in Medieval Chinese poetry in general and Du Fu in particular. This is the reading I prefer, because it makes sense in light of Du Fu's treatment in general of Nature as something terrifying and completely uncaring. The others are somewhat at odds, I think, with the literary tradition and aesthetic Du Fu was operating with. The second two readings reverse this and construe human suffering as a part of nature's own state, emphasizing the continuity and oneness of the two, in a very un-Du Fu manner. Yet even so perhaps they add to the poem.
濺 tsàn here is rendered as "to shed (tears)", though the chief sense of the word is "splash, spurt"
Couplet 3:
烽火連三月， phung hwé lan sam ngwat
家書抵萬金。 ka syuo téi màn kem
(The) beacon-fires continue(d) over three months/moons
(A) letter from home is worth ten thousand (in) gold/taels
The 烽火 are beacon fires set by sentries atop the wall to warn of the approach of an enemy. If the beacon fires are lit, there's a war on.
Couplet 4:
白頭搔更短， beik dou sau kèing twán
渾欲不勝簪。 ghwèn yuk pet syeng tshrem
(I have) scratch(ed) (my) white(-haired) head so (that it is so) thin
(It) soon (will) not be able to hold (my) hairpin/cap-pin (in)
The final couplet whirls away from the previous three, prosodically, thematically, semantically and syntactically. It is the only one that doesn't rely on semantic antithesis. It uses abstracts such as 更 kèing "even/so" and 欲 yuk "soon, about to" which are in large part absent from the rest of the poem, and it is also the first time the poet describes something so tangibly personal. 勝 syeng "able, hold" (here applied to the - failed- holding of hairpin with hair) has overtones of triumph, mastering something, subduing. Therefore in using this verb in the negative, Du Fu is connoting the opposite of triumph - vanquishment. scratching one's hair in China indicated sorrow or anguish more than confusion. The whitening and falling hair suggests the extent to which the poet is affected by the scene around him, by showing that it has actually ruined his health and is slowly wearing at his physical body. In so doing, it forges a connection between the poet, the state, and even non-human nature (the latter by opposition.) It's really quite confucian. What better way to reflect the falling apart and traumatization of the body politic than by showing it mirrored in the body poetic?
Couplet 1:
國破山河在，kwek phè sran he dzèi
城春草木深。dzyeing tshywen tsháu muk syem
(The) state (is) broken/vanquished, (yet) mountains/hills (and) rivers endure/remain.
(The) city (is) spring(-bloom)(ed): grass/plants (and) trees (have) (grow)(n) dense/deep.
In traditional regulated verse (the Chinese verse-form to which this piece belongs), the opening couplet sets the time, place, and/or theme for the entire poem. In the first line the human 國 kwek "state" is contrasted with the natural 山河 sran-ghe "mountains and rivers." 在dzèi "to stay, to be there, to be alive" reads as "endure" or "is still there" in the sense of outlasting. Though 破 phè means "break, shatter, smash" there is more to it than that, it also means "demolish, destroy (e.g. by military action)" and that meaning is relevant here, because 國破 kwekphè in isolation could mean not only "the state is broken/collapsed" but also "the state is destroyed (i.e. by some foreign power)." Use of the verb 破 phè with 國 kwek as its object, in the context of specifically military action, can be found as early as Sun Tzu's Art of War:
凡用兵之法全國為上破國次之蹧軍為上破軍次之
So, when it comes to methods of employing the military, conquering a state's capital (=國 kwek) intact is best; destroying (=破 phè) it is worse. Conquering an enemy army intact is best; destroying it (=破 phè) is worse.
If Du Fu didn't have this all burbling about in his subconscious at least, I'd be surprised. For as he puts a living spin on a dead metaphor by using 國破 kwekphè to mean a nation literally broken to pieces by internal factors, he also employs phrasing often associated with external conflict and vanquishment. In Sun Tzu above, 國 kwek refers to a state metonymically via its city seat, a usage which could occasionally be employed as classical metonym in Medieval Chinese poetry and which is evoked here, as the war-shredded capital city of Chang'an is itself a realm overpowered by nature. Throughout this couplet and the next, we see nature almost metaphorized, as unwitting, uncaring victor, outlasting and tormenting humans. In the first line the broken/destroyed city or nation of humans is set against the unbroken enduring realm of nature. This carries into the second line, where the lush grasses and trees suggest a view of an environment abandoned by humans and therefore overrun, veritably conquered, by wild plants of spring.
Anyway, as with Biblical poetry, syntactic parallelism is a major formal component/constraint of Chinese verse as it had developed by this period. These two lines are syntactically parallel (although not required to by the form.) Both go [Noun+Descriptive Verb| Noun-pair +Verb] in Chinese and so 春 tshywen "spring" is actually a verb here "to come into spring" instead of a noun as it usually is- a license I've seen occasionally taken with words describing time and state in Chinese verse-grammar.
城 dzyeing means "city" here, and is the primary meaning in context. But the word can also mean "city wall", specifically the inner city wall. Medieval Chinese cities were often protected by two sets of walls: an inner defensive wall, the 城 dzyeing "enceinte, bailey" often made of stone or something equally rock-solid, and an outer wall (called the 郭 kwak "rampart, curtain wall") often, but not always, made of rammed earth. Kept between the 郭 kwak and the 城 dzyeing was a pomery with space containing enough farmland to keep the town supplied with food in the event of a siege. If the town expanded, concentric walls could be built as well. If the inner wall is overgrown, it means that all that farmland has been left to the elements, and therefore that it is either abandoned or at the very least horridly famine-prone. Furthermore, the word 郭 kwak "outer rampart" was quite close in pronunciation to 國 kwek "state/nation" (i.e. the word to whose verse-position 城 dzyeing "city" corresponds) so there may be some slight wordplay there with the "state broken" reminiscent of "ramparts broken" when the word is paired with 城 dzyeing.
Thick foliage in spring even context-free would have been ominous to Du Fu's audience I think. In China, trees and shrubs were normally pruned back greatly in spring. If they are growing thickly, it is because normal order has broken down. Nobody is there caring for them. Moreover, the verb 深 syem "to go/grow deep, get dense/thick" can connote infiltration, penetration, pervasion and to my mind has a menacing quality to it in this particular context of breached defenses.
This couplet also illustrates how the general and the specific, or the principle and the instance, can merge in Chinese poetic expressions thanks to underspecified syntax. The first line could read proverbially as "when nations fall, rivers and mountains endure" or "though a nation may fall, the rivers and mountains will survive." Indeed, the phrase 國破 is even today a feature in Chinese proverbs about what happens when nations fall.
Couplet 2:
感時花濺淚，kám dzyi hwa tsàn lwì
恨別鳥驚心。ghèn pat táu keing sem
The syntax here as in the next couplet is parallel (configured as two lines of Verb+Noun | Noun+Verb+Noun) this time by formal requirement. The couplet divides neatly into into four clauses where clause boundary comes between the first two and last three characters of each line. My translation is heavily interpretative.
The original phrasing is somewhat ambiguous, owing to elliptical verse-grammar, and there are many technically possible readings to go with them depending on how one relates the clauses. I have included three such readings below. The first and probably correct, or at least probably intended, reading has the poet as the subject of all four clauses:
(I) feel (so badly in such a) time, (that even) flower(s) (make me) shed tears
(I) hate/grieve separation/parting (so much, that a) bird (can) startle (my) heart.
A second reading has the poet as the subject of the first clause of each line, and the flowers and birds as subjects of the second:
(When I) feel the times, flower(s) shed tears
(When I) loathe separation, bird(s) (are) startl(ed) (at) heart.
A third reading has the birds and flowers as subjects of all the clauses:
Feeling the time, flowers shed tears,
Loath to leave, birds startle are shocked at heart
In the first reading, human suffering is contrasted with indifferent nature. Nature's perpetuity and lushness only serve to remind the poet of human misery and impermanence. Again: the contrast of humankind and nature, a pervasive theme in Medieval Chinese poetry in general and Du Fu in particular. This is the reading I prefer, because it makes sense in light of Du Fu's treatment in general of Nature as something terrifying and completely uncaring. The others are somewhat at odds, I think, with the literary tradition and aesthetic Du Fu was operating with. The second two readings reverse this and construe human suffering as a part of nature's own state, emphasizing the continuity and oneness of the two, in a very un-Du Fu manner. Yet even so perhaps they add to the poem.
濺 tsàn here is rendered as "to shed (tears)", though the chief sense of the word is "splash, spurt"
Couplet 3:
烽火連三月， phung hwé lan sam ngwat
家書抵萬金。 ka syuo téi màn kem
(The) beacon-fires continue(d) over three months/moons
(A) letter from home is worth ten thousand (in) gold/taels
The 烽火 are beacon fires set by sentries atop the wall to warn of the approach of an enemy. If the beacon fires are lit, there's a war on.
Couplet 4:
白頭搔更短， beik dou sau kèing twán
渾欲不勝簪。 ghwèn yuk pet syeng tshrem
(I have) scratch(ed) (my) white(-haired) head so (that it is so) thin
(It) soon (will) not be able to hold (my) hairpin/cap-pin (in)
The final couplet whirls away from the previous three, prosodically, thematically, semantically and syntactically. It is the only one that doesn't rely on semantic antithesis. It uses abstracts such as 更 kèing "even/so" and 欲 yuk "soon, about to" which are in large part absent from the rest of the poem, and it is also the first time the poet describes something so tangibly personal. 勝 syeng "able, hold" (here applied to the - failed- holding of hairpin with hair) has overtones of triumph, mastering something, subduing. Therefore in using this verb in the negative, Du Fu is connoting the opposite of triumph - vanquishment. scratching one's hair in China indicated sorrow or anguish more than confusion. The whitening and falling hair suggests the extent to which the poet is affected by the scene around him, by showing that it has actually ruined his health and is slowly wearing at his physical body. In so doing, it forges a connection between the poet, the state, and even non-human nature (the latter by opposition.) It's really quite confucian. What better way to reflect the falling apart and traumatization of the body politic than by showing it mirrored in the body poetic?
(Medieval Chinese transcribed using a slight modification of David Branner's system)
| Han Characters 春望 杜甫 國破山河在， 城春草木深。 感時花濺淚， 恨別鳥驚心。 烽火連三月， 家書抵萬金。 白頭搔更短， 渾欲不勝簪。 | Medieval Chinese tshywen3b màng3 dúo1 púo3c kwek1 phè1 sran2b ghe1d dzèi1a dzyeing3b tshywen3b tsháu1 muk1b syem3 kám1a dzyi3d hwa2 tsàn3b lwì3c ghèn1 pat3bx táu4 keing3a sem3 phung3c hwé1 lan3b sam1b ngwat3a ka2 syuo3b téi4 màn3a kem3x beik2a dou1 sau1 kèing2a twán1 ghwèn1 yuk3c pet3a syeng3 tshrem3 | Modern Mandarin Chūn wàng Dù Fǔ Guó pò shān hé zài, chéng chūn cǎo mù shēn. Gǎn shí huā jiàn lèi, hèn bié niǎo jīng xīn. Fēng huǒ lián sān yuè, jiā shū dǐ wàn jīn. Bái tóu sāo gèng duǎn, hùn yù bù shēng chēn. |
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