李長吉的 ”龍夜吟" / Li Changji's "Dragons at Night"

Once more I return to 李長吉 Li Changji, AKA 李賀 Li He. This poem was particularly difficult: it's somewhat longer than what I'm used to, and I made the mistake of reading a lot of characters according to their modern, or sometimes merely different (in classical Chinese terms), usage. Fortunately, J.D. Frodsham's translation was there to put me on the right track, only for me to deviate from it when I felt doing so benefited the translation.

Some notes on the poem follow, but first I want to discuss the title. Frodsham's "Song: Dragons at Midnight" works well enough in the context of his naming convention for Li's poems, but 夜 encompasses more than just midnight, and I can't imagine beginning a recital of this, or any, poem with a phrase dependent on a colon. Since Li has a considerable number of poems that he refers to as "songs" (喑， 曲， 歌， 樂) because they're probably meant to accompany popular tunes of his day, I've opted to put that element of the title aside. Doing so raises the issue of just how musical my translation is, or rather isn't, but I'm more concerned with conveying the poem's palpable feeling of being trapped by emotion and environment.

By the way, today (September 7) is Camilo Pessanha's birthday. I don't know if he ever read Li Changji, but I suspect he would've liked his work immensely.

Enjoy, dear reader/看官/caro leitor!

微臣
史大偉

-----


李長吉
龍夜吟


鬈發胡兒眼晴綠，高樓夜靜吹橫竹
一聲似向天上來，月下美人望鄉哭
直排七點星藏指，暗合清風調宮徵
蜀道秋深雲滿林，湘江半夜龍驚起
玉堂美人邊塞情，碧窗皓月愁中聽
寒砧能搗百尺練，粉淚凝珠滴紅綫
胡兒莫作隴頭吟，隔窗暗結愁人心


Li Changji
"Dragons at Night"



A curly-haired foreign boy, green-eyed
Plays the flute in the still night amidst tall buildings

Each note approaches the heavens
In the moonlight, beautiful women long for home, weeping

Lined up across seven holes, fingers conceal stars
Unnoticed, gong and zhi notes merge with the cool breeze

On the road to Shu, deep autumn, forest thick with clouds
At midnight dragons rise from the Xiang river, startled

For beautiful women the imperial harem feels like a frontier fortress
Bright moonlight through jade windows, gloom in the audience hall

A hundred feet of silk beaten upon cold blocks
Tears form pearls on face-powder, drop onto red thread

There are no foreign boys to play the hilltop song
Behind dark lattice windows, somber hearts bound together

-----

What I've translated as "foreign", 胡, is used to describe Turkic peoples from west and north of China. 宮徵 Gong and zhi are the first and fourth notes, respectively, of the pentatonic scale, which wouldn't have taken so long to find out if I'd bothered to read Frodsham's notes sooner. 蜀 Shu is one of the Three Kingdoms, about which there's been a certain well-known romance written; it's also the abbreviation for its present-day descendant, 四川 Sichuan province. The Xiang river runs through 湖南 Hunan province, and 湘 is the abbreviation for Hunan.

玉堂, literally "jade hall", showed up in one dictionary as "imperial harem", which seemed a fitting counterpoint to 邊塞, "frontier fortress" - I read a lot of uneasy relationships between people (especially women) and architecture in this poem. The bit about silk and blocks refers to the fulling of cloth; Frodsham says "the sound of silk being beaten on the fulling-blocks in autumn, to make winter clothes, is a familiar symbol of parting and sorrow." He also calls 隴頭吟 the "Long-tou tune" without explaining what "Long-tou" might mean. I've chosen to translate it as "hilltop" because 隴 can mean hillock or mound (or even "burial mound"), and 頭 head or top. Of course, that doesn't help if one wants to know what the "hilltop song" is.

I've made the decision to treat most of those referred to in the poem in the plural, rather than as individuals. Doing so deepens the poem's wistfulness, and makes sense in the context of the imperial harem and its occupants. While this poem's far from uplifting, it's definitely given me a better appreciation of Li's skill. There's a lot going on here, and one day I'll understand more of it.