Buddha should be delighted to know that we had delicious Buddha’s Delight for dinner on the Chinese New Year’s day. More delightful is to read Lin Yutang’s The Gay Genius and Burton Watson’s Selected Poems of Su Tung-p’o after.
Su Dongpo must have read Liezi at very early age, which has been inscribed on his memory even since. Wind appears in Su Dongpo’s poems and essays in almost every other line, either as an admiration to an enlightened Taoist sage flying completely unconstrained in the wind, or being a tiny reed flower being helplessly blown about by the wind.
The latter was indeed a fit symbol of Su Dongpo’s life – forever the stormy petrel of politics and power battles, and always suffered from departure and death in families and friends. “It has seemed to me that there is no greater human happiness than two things, freedom from sickness in the body, and freedom from worries in the mind.” (常以謂人之至樂，莫若身無病而心無憂).
Parting My Brother Ziyou II
Su Dongpo 1071
Translated by Lin Yutang
For a short parting, I can bear it well,
But for a long parting, tears wet my breast.
When we do not see one another,
Distances great and small are the same.
Without parting in this human life,
Who would guess how much one really cares?
When I first arrived at Huaiyang,
You tossed the children who clung to my gown.
You knew then the sorrow of parting
And asked me to stay until the autumn came.
The autumn wind has now arrived and gone,
But this remembrance will always remain.
You asked when I would be coming back,
And I said:’It will be three years from now’.
So parting and reunion go in a cycle,
And joys and sorrows pursue our way.
Talking about this I draw a long sigh,
For my life is like a spikelet in the wind.
With many sorrows, my hair turns white early.
Say farewell to the “Six-One Old Man.’
(“Six-One Old Man” is the literary title of Ouyang Xiu, (1007 – 1072), a Chinese statesman, historian, essayist and poet of the Song Dynasty. )
(I am not sure Spikelet is the correct translation here, isn’t it more appropriate to use Dandelion or Butterweed?)
颍州初别子由二首其二
苏轼
近别不改容， 远别涕沾胸。
咫尺不相见， 实与千里同。
人生无离别， 谁知恩爱重。
始我来宛丘， 牵衣舞儿童。
便知有此恨， 留我过秋风。
秋风亦已过， 别恨终无穷。
问我何年归？ 我言岁在东。
离合既循环， 忧喜迭相攻。
语此长太息， 我生如飞蓬。
多忧发早白， 不见六一翁。
Prelude to Water Music
Su Dongpo 1076
Translated by Burton Watson
Bright moon, when did you appear?
Lifting my wine, I question the blue sky.
Tonight in the palaces and halls of heaven
what year is it, I wonder?
I would like to ride the wind, make my home there,
only I fear in porphyry towers, under jade eaves,
in those high places the cold wind would be more than I could bear.
So I rise and dance and play in your pure beams,
though this human world – how can it vie with yours?
Circling red chambers,
low in the curtained door,
you light our sleeplessness.
Surely you bear us no ill will –
why then must you be so round at times when we humans are parted!
People have their griefs and joys, their togetherness and separation,
the moon its dark and clear times, its roundings and wanings.
I only hope we two may have long long lives,
may share the moon’s beauty, though a thousand miles apart.
调寄水调歌头：
明月几时有，把酒问青天？
不知天上宫阀，今夕是何年？
我欲乘风归去，又恐琼楼玉宇，高处不胜寒。
起舞弄清影，何似在人间？
转朱阁，低博户，照无眠。
不应有恨，何事长向别时圆？
人有悲欢离合，月有阴晴圆缺，此事古难全。
但愿人长久，千里共婢娟。
Former Ode on the Red Cliff
Su Dongpo 1083
Translated by Pauline Chen
In the autumn of 1082, on the 16th of the seventh month, Master Su and his guests sailed in a boat below the Red Cliffs. Clear wind blew gently, the water was calm. The boaters raised their wine and poured for each other, reciting “The Bright Moon” and singing “The Lovely One.”
After a while, the moon rose above the eastern mountain, and hovered between the Dipper and the Cowherd star. White mist lay across the water; the light from the water reached the sky. They went where their tiny boat took them, floating on a thousand leagues of haze, in the vastness as if resting on emptiness and riding the wind, not knowing where they would stop, floating as if they had left the earth and stood alone, having turned into birds and become immortal.
前赤壁赋
壬戌之秋，七月既望，苏子与客泛舟游于赤壁之下。清风徐来，水波不兴。举酒属客，诵明月之诗，歌窈窕之章。
少焉，月出于东山之上，徘徊于斗牛之间。白露横江，水光接天。纵一苇之所如，凌万顷之茫然。浩浩乎如冯虚御风，而不知其所止；飘飘乎如遗世独立，羽化而登仙。
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