满庭芳. 蜗角虚名 Why All This Hustle for a Bubble of Fame

满庭芳 . 蜗角虚名

原作: 苏轼（字子瞻, 号东坡居士; 11世纪北宋）

英译: 闵晓红(2023.12)

蜗角虚名，蝇头微利，算来著甚干忙。

事皆前定，谁弱又谁强。

且趁闲身未老，尽放我、些子疏狂。

百年里，浑教是醉，三万六千场。

思量，能几许？忧愁风雨，一半相妨。

又何须抵死，说短论长。

幸对清风皓月，苔茵展、云幕高张。

江南好，千钟美酒，一曲满庭芳。

Why all this hustle for a bubble of fame  

--to the tune “Vibrant Garden”

Chinese original: Su Shi (11th Century)

English version: Julia Min (Dec. 2023) 

Why all this hustle and bustle

for a bubble of fame—

as mighty as a fly’s eye,

as tiny as a snail’s brain?

Your fate was already set

well before you came.

So why still so obsessed

with loss and success?

If I were blessed with a long age—

a 100-year life span to spend,

I’d set this soul free,

let it be breezy and gay,    

with 36000 rounds of nice wines,

and 36000 sweet dreams at night.

Just think again,

list out all the good and bad days,

You’ll find half spent in sorrow,

taken by the wind and rain.

The River South here is a haven

for pleasure and for social grace.

Then, why spend this human life,

Judging in complaint till strained? 

Let’s party on the moss-laid carpet,

dancing the wind of murmuring waves,

with roaming clouds, a velvet canopy above,

and the full moon, a glowing jade of love.

Together we’d share many cups of fine drinks.

Together, to the tune Vibrant Garden, we sing,

Notes:

1.     ‘a 100-year life span’: Chinese people believed that a standard life span is 100 years, and that an age over 80 is already regarded as a good ending, or, in other words, a reward for a blessed person.

2.     ‘River South’: here it refers to Hangzhou;

Appreciation:

The precise year of composition is yet to be confirmed—either around 1073 or, more likely, 1089 during Su Shi's second governorship of Hangzhou. Critics favour the later date: by then, he had endured banishment to Huangzhou, risen to the Emperor's Secretary General, and voluntarily left the Royal Court. The poem's deep philosophical grasp of fame and fate bears the weight of that journey.

Its structure is remarkable—a critical essay disguised as a lyric poem. Most poems usher the reader in through scene or description; this one strikes its subject from the first line, suggesting it may have been an immediate reaction to another work, or to the fierce cold war between his Old Party and the reformist New Party. The tone shifts dramatically—from a cynical indictment of power-chasing to spiritual freedom—coloured throughout by the sharp, like his father Su Xun’s essayistic style. The subject echoes Shakespeare's "All the world's a stage."

The poem was well received in the gentlemen's society, often recited at intellectual gatherings, and embraced equally by Daoists and Buddhists seeking to awaken from social attachments. It was carved on stone tablets across China, and several idioms derived from it still enrich the Chinese dictionary.

In my English version, "a bubble of fame" is inspired: it transforms the original's "虚名“（empty fame）into a visually engaging, immediate concept, while the rhyme of "mighty" and "tiny" in the opening couplet mirrors the original's paradoxical wit. The final image—"the full moon, a glowing jade of love"—honours both Chinese cultural resonance and English lyrical grace.

Reference:

1. baike.baidu.com

2. picture from Google