大家好！
Welcome to MMXIX C.E. The world remains weird, perilous, and uncertain, rife with human awfulness and beauty. In short, it's a fitting time to revisit our old pal 李賀 Li He, AKA 李長吉 Li Changji, the 詩鬼 Ghost of Poetry (as opposed to 李白 Li Bai, the 仙詩 Immortal of Poetry, or 杜甫 Du Fu, the 詩聖 Sage of Poetry). Of course, as a fan of weirdness, I'm always up for reading Li He.
The following poem isn't particularly weird, alas. I'd go so far as to say it's pretty straightforward by Li's standards—i.e., the references are a bit obscure, but the imagery and theme are clear. However, there's a pleasant degree of emotional ambiguity that gives the poem more depth than it initially seems to have.
Brief notes, all of which come from the indispensable J.D. Frodsham or 李長吉歌詞編年箋注—the annotated collection from which I took the Chinese text— are below the poems. Enjoy, and happy new year, folks!
微臣
史大偉
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客遊
李賀 (李長吉)
悲滿千里心
日暖南山石
不謁承明廬
老作平原客
四時別家廟
三年去鄉國
旅歌屢彈鋏
歸問時裂帛
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The Traveler
Li He (Li Changji)
A heart full of sadness for a thousand li;
the sun warms the stones of Nan Shan.
I can't present myself at the Chengming Hut;
When I'm old, I'll be a guest of the lord of Pingyuan.
Four seasons away from my ancestral temple;
three years since I left my hometown.
I often sing traveling songs, beating on the hilt of my sword;
sometimes, on a strip of silk, I send word that I'll come home.
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Notes:
The 里 li, a standard Chinese measure of distance, is roughly 1/3 of a mile. 南山 Nan Shan is probably located either in the 終南山 Zhongnan Mountains (Frodsham) or, as the annotators in my collection believe, the 女几山 Nüji Mountains (better known these days as 花果山 Huaguoshan). None of these mountains is very far from the Tang capital of 長安 Chang'an, known today as 西安 Xi'an.
The 承明廬 Chengming Hut (Frodsham calls it a "lodge," which sounds better, but everything I read points to "hut"; I wonder what it actually looked like) is where officials waited for an audience with the emperor during the Han dynasty. The 平原 Lord of Pingyuan was the famous statesman 趙胜 Zhao Sheng, from the Warring States-era state of 趙 Zhao. I'd say that Li's mention of seeking refuge in Zhao, which predates the Han dynasty, might be considered weird even by the standards of the classical Chinese love of historical reference, since you can read it as a double layer of nostalgia—or, if you prefer, time travel! The seemingly contradictory "four seasons/three years" chronology is odd, too.
As for Li's messages home, Frodsham notes that "[l]etters were sometimes written on strips of silk"—a cool image indeed.
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