STUDY IN CHINA GLOBAL (SCG)孤雁儿 .藤床纸帐朝眠起
原作：李清照（宋）
英译：戈登.奥赛茵，闵晓红
藤床纸帐朝眠起。
说不尽、无佳思。
沈香断续玉炉寒，
伴我情怀如水。
笛声三弄,
梅心惊破，
多少春情意。
小风疏雨萧萧地。
又催下、千行泪。
吹箫人去玉楼空，
肠断与谁同倚。
一枝折得，
人间天上，
没个人堪寄。
Rising at dawn from my Plum Net
– to the tune of “The Lonely Goose”
trans. by Gordon Osing and Julia Min
Rising at dawn from my special Plum Bed
made of rattan in silkworm cocoon net,
I’m already speechless, in gloom and despair.
The eaglewood is now ashes in jade burner,
knowing my heart like cold water of winter.
Hearing the bamboo flute “Plum Blossoms”,
until then, so real seems the Spring’s passion.
The wind delivering a steady down-pouring,
to match my tears — this is just my morning.
Gone is my love from our blessed pavilion,
like the flute player of the tune gone forever,
leaving behind a heart nowhere to recline.
With the blossoms picked with affection,
to whomever to send, earth and heaven?
Appreciation:
This ci was, of course, composed upon the unexpected death of her beloved husband Zhao Mingcheng. The last gesture in the poem refers to the story in the South Dynasty (420-589) when a man named Lu Kai sent a branch of plum blossoms from the lower reaches of the Changjiang River to his best friend in the capital in Chang’an (today’s Xi’an), a spring greeting send in a poem with the expression “ a branch of Spring”.
Notes:
l. “Plum Bed” ：a bed made of rattan with a net made of silkworm cocoon paper, very popular among the literati of the gentle class in the Song. Plum blossoms is the theme with freshly picked branches in the vase or painted on the net or in the paintings hung on the wall behind, often accompanied with small bookshelves, incense burners in the room.
2. “the flute player” : From a story in The Old fairy Tales, in which there was a man who played the flute wonderfully well that even peacocks and white cranes came to him when he played. Lord Qin Mu married his daughter to him. Often the young couple produced the beautiful music on phoenix and birds. So well they sang together that one day their song carried them both off into heaven, the lady on a phoenix, the groom on a dragon. The place where they had lived people named “The Phoenix Place,” here referred to ironically in connection with their separation – the departure of her husband in death.
