水调歌头 黄州快哉亭赠张偓佺 At the Pavilion of Breezy Joy

水调歌头 黄州快哉亭赠张偓佺

原作：苏轼（ 11th Century）

英译：闵晓红(2023)

落日绣帘卷，

亭下水连空。

知君为我，

新作窗户湿青红。

长记平山堂上，

欹枕江南烟雨，

杳杳没孤鸿。

认得醉翁语，

山色有无中。

一千顷，都镜净，

倒碧峰。

忽然浪起，

掀舞一叶白头翁。

堪笑兰台公子，

未解庄生天籁，

刚道有雌雄。

一点浩然气，

千里快哉风。

At the Pavilion of Breezy Joy

(to my friend Zhang Woquan at Huangzhou)

—    to the tune of “River Tune’s Prelude”

Chinese original: Su Shi (style name 'Dongpo')

English version: Julia Min ( Feb. 2023)

At sunset, the brocade blinds are rolled up.

The river before the porch joins the sky.   

The paint is still wet on the new windows,

just for me, this pavilion, this ancient sight.

I often recall my days at the Hall of Mt Ping

amid the mist and rain of River South’s spring.

The best view leaned on the window cushions—

A wild goose cried past, vanishing from sight.

When tipsy, I could taste Xiu’s mind in his poem.

“The hills disappear to appear” in drifting smoke.

The river at the lower reach spreads far and wide,

like an open sea, mirroring ranks of green peaks.

A wind raises waves, lifting as if a white leaf --     

An old boy in his skiff drifts down the stream,

light as a feather, and free as a bird on the wind.

I start to feel amused by Lord of Orchid Spring.

Totally deaf to Zhuangzi’s “Celestial Melody”,

he named the wind but lost nature’s turning.

Here, with a noble heart, a fearless mind at ease,

You can sail in breezy joy through a rocky sea.

Appreciation：

This is another heroic ci by Su Dongpo, written during his exile in Huangzhou after “Meditating on the Past at the Red Cliff.” Like that earlier masterpiece, it was immediately embraced by contemporary scholars—including the emperor himself—and quickly entered the canon. The closing couplets of both stanzas have been especially admired and frequently quoted in later literature.

Daoism was one of Dongpo’s great spiritual refuges in adversity. A devoted reader of Zhuangzi, he absorbed the Daoist vision of transcendence beyond worldly entanglements. Zhuangzi often recounts the story of Liezi, who learned to ride the wind only after relinquishing the weight of human purpose and social attachments. When the mental barrier between self and world dissolves, so too does the heaviness of the body. As Liezi says, in Eva Wong’s translation:

“Without knowing it, I was being carried by the wind. Drifting here and there, I did not know whether I rode on the wind or the wind rode on me.”

A parallel vision appears in Zhuangzi’s famous butterfly dream, as translated by Burton Watson:

“Suddenly he woke up… But he did not know whether he was Zhuang Zhou who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming that he was Zhuang Zhou.”

The philosophical resonance is unmistakable. This poem centres on transformation, transcendence, and union with the universe. From this Daoist perspective, distinctions such as good and bad, noble and humble, rich and poor, and right and wrong dissolve. These are social constructs belonging to the human world of duality—a necessary soil in which the spirit matures, yet one that must ultimately be transcended. Such insight nourished Dongpo’s unrestrained ethos, evident across his poetry, prose, painting, and calligraphy, and inspired generations after him. One might even argue that this spiritual freedom marks the essential distinction between the heroic, unrestrained school of ci poetry and the restrained, sentimental school that focuses solely on personal sorrow.

Structurally, the poem is equally a masterpiece. The first stanza unfolds a vast landscape through rhythmic shifts in distance and focus, creating a dynamic yin–yang movement. This spatial breadth is enriched by a joyful recollection of the past through the historical figure Ouyang Xiu, which subtly recalls the poet’s own years of official success, when his talent was recognised and nurtured by his great mentor.

The second stanza turns inward, revealing Dongpo’s Daoist impulse to withdraw from the world of duality. Here he expresses a desire to release social values and distinctions, merge with heaven and earth, and experience existence as freely as a bird in flight or as lightly as a feather borne on the wind.

Notes:

1. “The Bracing Pavilion” (Kuai Zai Ting): Built by Zhang Woquan, who—like Su Shi—was banished to Huangzhou. The two became close friends and often met at this pavilion overlooking the Yangtze River.

2. “Xiu”: Ouyang Xiu (1007–1072), historian, poet, calligrapher, and leading scholar of the Northern Song Hanlin Academy. Deeply impressed by the talent of the Su brothers, he once remarked to his son: “This man will become so famous that the world will forget me.” Revered by Su Shi as his greatest teacher, Ouyang had built a pavilion on Mount Ping in Yangzhou, celebrated for its sweeping views—an image Dongpo subtly adopts here.

3. “River South” (Jiangnan): A broad term for the fertile and culturally rich lands south of the Yellow River, long idealised as China’s most prosperous and beautiful region, including cities such as Yangzhou and Hangzhou.

4. “My pillow”: Both Ouyang Xiu and Su Shi once served as local administrators in Yangzhou. The Hall of Mount Ping thus became one of Dongpo’s favourite gathering places, a site of friendship, memory, and cultivated leisure.

5. Song Yu (宋玉): A gifted prose writer of the Warring States period (c. 298–222 BC), associated with the Chu court. In his dialogue “On Wind,” Song Yu distinguishes between “noble” winds that pass the ruler and “humble” winds that touch common people—an argument often read as an oblique critique of political inequality. Su Shi refers to him here as the “Lord of the Orchid Terrace.”

6. Zhuangzi (庄子): The Daoist philosopher Zhuang Zhou classified sound into three kinds: heavenly sounds (wind, rain, birds, waterfalls), earthly sounds (wind interacting with terrain), and human sounds (instrumental music). This taxonomy underscores the Daoist hierarchy that privileges natural spontaneity over human artifice.

Reference:

1. Blooming Alone in Winter by Gordon Osing, Julia Min and Huang Haipeng， published by the People's Publication House Henan Province in 1990 (《寒心未肯随春态》戈登.奥赛茵，闵晓红，黄海鹏)（"The embroidered curtain rolled at sunset, /the river beneath the porch disappears into sky./Just for me, this window, this scene, /the ink and scarlet shining, wet paint./I find myself recalling times of Ouyang Xiu /Gazed from his pillow south along the river at the smoke and rains. /And in the farthest distance saw no lonely wild-goose./I seem to see that drinker’s words, /“Mountains appear to disappear.”//The river is a thousand miles wide, /mirrors easily all the green peaks. /A wind rises in the distance, /lifting a white-haired bird on a leaf, /an old boy in his boat. /Here I can laugh at the feudal sprout of Lantai /Who can’t understand Zhuang Zhou’s theory of moving air, /Who pretends royal-male and ordinary-female are its categories. /Here, just that old boy’s spirit is enough to live in the strongest winds. "）

2. painting from Google；

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