97. Staying Under Mount Beigu
A poem by Wang Wan, translated by Hyun Woo Kim
The wanderer’s road is outside the blue mountain;
A moving ship is in front of the green water.
The tide flattens—both banks are wide;
The wind is fair—a sail is hoisted.
The Sun is born from the sea, while the night remains;
The spring at the river enters the old year.
What place will a letter from the hometown reach?
The returning wild geese are near Luoyang.
「次北固山下」
客路靑山外
行舟綠水前
潮平兩岸闊
風正一帆懸
海日生殘夜
江春入舊年
鄕書何處達
歸雁洛陽邊
From Hyun Woo:
We have a very interesting poem today. Mount Beigu is in Zhenjiang, a river port outside Nanjing. It seems the poetic narrator is a “wanderer”, but his “road is outside the blue mountain”: in other words, he feels that he should not be at Mount Beigu, which leads him to notice a “moving ship”. He observes the “tide”, “banks”, “wind”, and “sail”. All these imply a good time to sail away.
The following lines, however, introduce contradicting images to the poem. The Sun rises, but “the night remains” even at daybreak, and the “spring”, which would normally be connected with a new beginning, “enters the old year.” The wanderer might have thought all he needed to do was hop on a ship and leave. However, will it be that simple? Can he just leave the remaining “night” and “the old year”?
The last two lines are hard to understand. A “letter from the hometown” should reach somewhere, since nobody sends a letter away without deciding where it should be sent. Nevertheless, the wanderer asks “what place” it will reach. Presuming that it is springtime and the wanderer is near Nanjing, the “returning wild geese” must be heading North after spending the winter in the South. They are “near Luoyang” now, up North. Is the wanderer likening himself to a “letter from the hometown”, the destination of which cannot be known, unlike the wild geese that know where they are and where they should go? Maybe, maybe not. The reader’s mind continues to wander.
P.S. I was wandering in the Chinese Northeast for two weeks, and came back home on Friday. I think you might enjoy reading my travelogue.
If you enjoyed my work, you can buy me a cup of tea. I am not a coffee person, by the way.
These posts are excellent individually, but especially satisfying as they accumulate in the mind, lending the reader a real sense of the philosophical, linguistic, and poetic range occupied by the Tang poets.
“The night remains …” could be the poet’s state of mind.
He is in the mountains, but he does not belong in the mountains. He sees a ship, it’s ready to go, he could get on board and go somewhere else. But will the night still remain wherever he goes? Is this an example of what an English we call the grass being greener on the other side of the hill. No matter where you go, there you are! Perhaps you should be making the most of being in the mountains and not hope that a journey somewhere else, wherever it might be will be better. Thank you for this translation.