雨中花慢 . 邃院重帘 From the Inner Garden

From the Inner Garden

-to the tune Blossoms Fading in the Rain

Chinese original: Su Shi

English version: Julia Min (Apr. 2024)

From the inner garden, behind curtains and drapes,

A yearning poem slipped out for a moonlight date—

Over the west chamber, the moon awaits its other half.

Blossoms start fading, leaving butterflies in dismay.

Whose flute melody streams from the North Ridge?

It has a hold on her heart, a touch on her fair face.

So shy behind her screen, so eager on his reed flute;

So close were the hearts, yet a thousand miles apart.

Over the low fence, where his eyes long gazed,

A swelling bough leaned, the red apricot in grace.

Alas, shy love is often betrayed by flushing cheeks，

Trying in vain to hide the desire in a familiar street—

A few stolen joys between the cold and the bleak

Of long hours in waiting, silent and incomplete.

An open love often plays safe with a steady hand,

A routine ride on a known course to a destined land:

It is free of social walls, but also of yearning fire.

Yet lovers’ taste buds grow keen on uncharted mire.

What makes pleasure deep, tender and intense?

The stolen ecstasy of secret, forbidden suspense.

Notes:

1.     Sheng: a traditional wind musical instrument made with bamboo pipes.

Appreciation:

I'd say this poem stands out as a 101 in Su Shi's collection. Of all his romantic works, rarely do we find him pushing the limits of the private feelings of sensual pleasure. The pornographic vibes beneath the lines add a new colour to his profile as one of the greatest minds in Chinese history.

Composed in early spring 1078, the poem was inspired by a painting of Cui Wei, a Tang Dynasty beauty. Su Shi immediately associated it with Yuanzhen's A Tale of Yingying — a story of love colliding with identity, duty, and social judgment. Both protagonists ended up marrying others, yet never stopped longing for each other.

Similar explorations of sensual pleasure appear across world literature — from Ovid's Amores and Shakespeare's Sonnet 151 to Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress" and Lord Byron's Don Juan — though often with more explicit frankness.

As the translator, I have tried to walk the line between fidelity and freedom — a tension every translator knows, much like a gardener walking the line between cultivation and wildness. Su Shi's genius lies in how he subtly hides the heat of desire beneath the coolness of form: a blush, the west chamber, a branch leaning over a wall. The same restraint appears in classical Chinese poetics. The unsaid, the withheld, the stolen — these are what make the heart race.

雨中花慢.邃院重帘

原作: 苏轼（字子瞻, 号东坡居士; 11世纪北宋）

英译: 闵晓红(2024.04)

邃院重帘何处，惹得多情，愁对风光。

睡起酒阑花谢，蝶乱蜂忙。

今夜何人，吹笙北岭，待月西厢。

空怅望处，一株红杏，斜倚低墙。

羞颜易变，傍人先觉，到处被着猜防。

谁信道，些儿恩爱，无限凄凉。

好事若无间阻，幽欢却是寻常。

一般滋味，就中香美，除是偷尝。

Reference:

1.  Baikebaidu.com（百度百科）

2. Oxford Academic (Oxford University Press)/ Shakespeare and Sexuality by Stanly Wells;

3. Picture from Google search on