The Chinese celebrate Tang poetry as a pinnacle of their culture

中国人将唐诗视为中华文化之巅

Can poetry come alive to those who must read it in translation?

诗词对于那些要看翻译的人来说是鲜活的吗?

In the West poetry is a minority pursuit; in China it is woven into people’s lives. Children learn classical verse throughout their schooling, new poems celebrate births and marriages, and idiomatic speech is embroidered with ancient couplets.

在西方，只有少数人对诗词情有独钟；而在中国，诗词却融入了人们的生活。孩子们会在学校学习古典诗词，人们会写诗庆祝生命的到来和婚姻，也会在传统的对联上写上祝福的诗词。

The Tang lasted from 618 to 907AD. During its first half, as China flourished, the Silk Road brought luxuries, wealth and exoticism. The capital Chang’an, modern-day Xi’an, had about 1m inhabitants. Perhaps 5% of them were literate. Before a rebellion knocked everything off centre in 755, it may have been the most prosperous and cosmopolitan city in the world.

唐朝自公元618年建国至907年灭亡。在唐朝的前半期，随着国力的逐渐强盛，丝绸之路带来了奢侈品、财富和异国情调。当时的首都长安（也就是现在的西安）有大约100万居民。其中大概有5%的人识字。在755年一场叛乱摧毁了一切之前，长安可能是世界上最繁荣、最国际化的城市。

Verse was communal. Tian Yuan Tan, professor of Chinese at Oxford, explains that, during this time, it spread from the court into everyday life. When somebody left town, you wrote a poem. To dignify a banquet, you declaimed a poem. If your friend was out when you dropped by, you left a poem behind.

诗词是属于大家的。牛津大学中文系教授谭田元解释称，在那个时期，诗词从宫廷传播到了大街小巷中。当有人出远门时，你会写一首送行诗。为了给宴会增光添彩，你会朗诵一首诗。如果你去拜访朋友而对方不在家时，你会留下一首诗。

Plenty of people could write Tang verse. Stephen Owen, a Harvard professor who may have translated more of it than anyone, says that, even if writing good poetry was formidably hard, everyday poems were easy to toss off—Chinese has plenty of rhymes and stock allusions. Fortunately, the best verses were rapidly anthologised, one reason so many still exist.

很多人都会写唐诗。哈佛大学教授斯蒂芬·欧文翻译的中文可能比任何人都多，他说，虽然写一首好诗很难，但写一首普通诗词却很容易——中文有大量的押韵和典故。幸运的是，最好的诗句很快会被选集，这也是为什么如此多的诗词能够流传至今的一个原因。

China has hundreds of poems about the frontier. Most of them were heroic, but here Li He (791-817), a Late Tang maverick, instead paints a desolate picture of a barbarian threat out in the nothingness.

中国有数百首关于边疆的诗。它们大多都是歌颂英雄的丰功伟绩，但在这里，晚唐特立独行的诗人李贺却描绘了边塞一幅萧瑟凄凉的景象。

On the Frontier translated by A.C. Graham

A Tartar horn tugs at the north wind,
Thistle Gate shines whiter than the stream.
The sky swallows the road to Kokonor.
On the Great Wall, a thousand miles of moonlight.
The dew comes down, the banners drizzle,
Cold bronze rings the watches of the night.
The nomads’ armour meshes serpents’ scales.
Horses neigh, Evergreen Mound’s champed white.
In the still of autumn see the Pleiades.
Far out on the sands, danger in the furze.
North of their tents is surely the sky’s end
Where the sound of the river streams beyond the border.

《塞下曲》译者：A.C.格雷厄姆

胡角引北风，蓟门白于水。

天含青海道，城头月千里。

露下旗濛濛，寒金鸣夜刻。

蕃甲锁蛇鳞，马嘶青冢白。

秋静见旄头，沙远席羁愁。

帐北天应尽，河声出塞流。

A lot of Chinese poetry layers images on top of each other. In the first stanza, Li He begins with a panorama—Kokonor comes from the Mongolian word for Qinghai, a region 1,700km west of Beijing.

很多中国诗词都是意象层层叠加的。在诗的第一节中，李贺以一幅全景图开始——Kokonor来自蒙古语，意为青海，位于北京以西1700公里处。

Then he zooms in on the soldiers, down to the plates in their armour. The Evergreen Mount is the tomb of Wang Zhaojun, who was sent as a wife to appeasea Barbarian leader. The mound was supposed to be green—but here, in the moonlight, it is drained of colour, like the steppe.

然后，镜头一转指向了士兵，生动描绘了他们盔甲上的金属鳞片。大青山是昭君墓的所在地，王昭君被派往匈奴和亲。青冢本该是绿色的，但在这里，在月光下，它失去了颜色，就像草原一样。

And the last stanza pulls back out again. Mr Tan points out that Li He mixes scenery and emotion. The flickering star-cluster that Westerners call the Pleiades was an omen of barbarian invasion. Although the soldiers cannot see the horde, they sense it and they are apprehensive. The Yellow River flows from the wilderness into China, unstoppable.

到了最后一节，镜头又拉了回来。谭田元指出，李贺将风景与情感融为一体。被西方人称为昴宿星的闪烁星团是蛮族入侵的预兆。虽然士兵们看不到蛮族部落，但他们能感觉到，并为此忧虑。黄河从旷野流入中国，势不可挡。

(红色标注词为重难点词汇) 

苏格拉底有一句名言：我知我无知。说的是，当你认识到的东西越多就越发现自己无知。苏格拉底认为，人对于客观世界的认识是有限的，且不可能完全认识客观世界，并且不应对客观世界刨根究底。神对于世界的规划自有安排，若人一意孤行地探索世界和自然的奥秘，则最终将亵渎甚至触怒神明。正因为人对神所构建的世界不可能实现完全认知，因此那些宣称自己能够认识和改造世界的人，本身便是无知的代言。尽管苏格拉底的关于“ 我知我无知”的观念的解读，在现在看来有失客观科学。但至少苏格拉底告诫人们，人的认知是有限的，现有的知识甚至可能存在错误和疏漏。同样地，我们在求学之路上也要报以我知我不知的心态，才能走得更远。最后，祝愿莘莘学子都能终有所成！