recite the poem
singing the poem
锦瑟 (note 1)
Jin Se
The lavishly decorated zither
by
李商隐
Li Shangyin
錦瑟無端五十弦，一弦一柱思華年。
Jin3 se4 wu2 duan1 wu3 shi2 xuan2, yi4 xuan2 yi2 zhu4 si1 hua2 nian2
The lavishly decorated zither, for no reason, has fifty strings;
each string, each bridge, reminiscing a magnificent year.
莊生曉夢迷蝴蝶 (note 2)，望帝春心托杜鵑 (note 3)。
zhuang1 sheng1 xiao3 meng4 mi2 hu2 die2, wang4 di4 chun1 xin1 tuo2 du4 juan1
Master Zhuang lost himself in the morning dream of being a butterfly;
Emperor Wang’s amorous spring heart was entrusted to the cuckoo.
滄海月明珠有淚 (note 4)，藍田日暖玉生煙 (note 5)。
cang1 hai3 yue4 ming2 zhu1 you3 lei4, lan2 tian2 ri4 nuan3 yu4 sheng1 yan1
Deep under the vast azure sea, reflected the bright moonlight, pearls cry tears;
In Indigo Mountain, bathed under the warm sunlight, jade releases smoke.
此情可待成追憶，只是當時已惘然。
ci3 qing2 ke3 dai4 cheng2 zhui1 yi4, zhi3 shi4 dang1 shi2 yi3 wang3 ran2
This feeling might have become something to be remembered later on;
Merely, at that time I were already perplexed and lost.
Note 1:
锦瑟 Jin Se (The lavished decorated zither). Jin3 originally means brocade or embroidered work，and here it means beautifully decorated. Se4 is a traditional Chinese musical instrument (zither). There is an allusion in Han history. It says the Emperor Tai ordered an unadorned girl to play the fifty-stringed zither, and heard the music, the Emperor could not stop the profound sorrow flowing in his heart, so he broken the fifty-stringed zither into half. 《汉书·郊祀志上》：“泰帝使素女鼓五十弦瑟，悲，帝禁不止，故破其瑟为二十五弦。This allusion adds to the poem title image with a sense of sorrow.
Note 2:
莊生曉夢迷蝴蝶; zhuang1 sheng1 xiao3 meng4 mi2 hu2 die2;Master Zhuang lost himself in the morning dream of being a butterfly.
This is a famous anecdote in the Book of Zhuang Zi (Zhuang Zi 莊子, also known as the Nanhua jing 南華經). In that book, the Daoist master Zhuang Zi (fourth century B.C.E.) says that he once dreamed of himself as a butterfly and could not know if he was a butterfly dreaming itself as Zhuang Zi or Zhuang Zi dreamed himself as a butterfly. Here by using this allusion the poet asking the question
“What is real and what is unreal?” Is life a dream or a dream is a life? This butterfly image conveys the poet’s perplexed feeling about life itself.
Note 3:
望帝春心托杜鵑; wang4 di4 chun1 xin1 tuo2 du4 juan1;Emperor Wang’s amorous spring heart was entrusted to the cuckoo.
This allusion comes from the myth of Emperor Wang 望帝, named Du Yu 杜宇, an ancient ruler of Shu 蜀 of Three Kingdom period. About him, there are a few different versions of his story. One is them is: Emperor Wang sent his subject Bie Ling to be in charge of the foods. After Bie Ling left, Emperor Wang seduced Bei Ling’s wife. Emperor Wang felt ashamed of his own action later, so he turned his kingdom over to Bie Ling. At the time when Emperor Wang was leaving the capital, a Chinese cuckoo, du4 juan1 杜鹃， was making the calls. It is said that when the Emperor died, his spirit was transformed to become a cuckoo bird and called miserably at night till the blood spit out the poor bird’s throat. That is why azalea got its name－ with the color of blood. Azalea in Chinese, we called it 杜鹃花, and for cuckoo the bird, we call it 杜鹃。 Thus, cuckoo is associated with shame, guilty, lonely ghost, also with tragic love. Would it be possible that the poet was mentioning about du4 juan1 for his own tragic love that has already happened or were going to happen?
《华阳国志·蜀志》：“杜宇称帝，号曰望帝。……其相开明，决玉垒山以除水害，帝遂委以政事，法尧舜禅授之义，遂禅位于开明。帝升西山隐焉。时适二月，子鹃鸟鸣，故蜀人悲子鹃鸟鸣也。”子鹃即杜鹃，又名子规。蔡梦弼《杜工部草堂诗笺》一九《杜鹃》诗注引《成都记》：“望帝死，其魂化为鸟，名曰杜鹃，亦曰子规。”传说蜀国的杜宇帝因水灾让位于自己的臣子，而自己则隐归山林，死后化为杜鹃日夜悲鸣直至啼出血来.。
4. 滄海月明珠有淚; cang1 hai3 yue4 ming2 zhu1 you3 lei4; Deep under the vast azure sea, reflected the bright moonlight, pearls cry tears.
In the book of 博物志 Bo Wu Zhi （Record of Broad Creature), it says “Beyond the
South Sea there are shark people (mermaids) who live in the water like fish, but spin raw shark silk; when their eyes shed tears, weeping tears become pearls.”
Imagine there are beautiful mermaids live under the sea, when the bright noon shines on their pearl tears with silver simmering luminosity. How wonderful the image would be, albeit sad though. But, when I was searching info about mermaid’s tears on web, and there I found a saying goes like : Mermaids cry at least once a day. They cries are not because they are sad; they cried because they feel the world is so beautiful:) It is a happy thought, but, I highly doubt Li Shangyin had this kind of positive thinking when he wrote the poem. So, it would be safe to go with the sad tears theory 🙁 Beside my personal guessing, there is another evidence to support the sad tears theory: This line also alludes to the Chinese idiom cang1 hai3 yi2 zhu1 滄海遺珠 (a leftover pearl in the vast sea). We all know what is leftover means right? Leftover means: remaining as an unused portion or amount and it also can be referring to someone whose talent is not appreciated and thus not been used. So, this line 滄海月明珠有淚 can be interpreted as the poet was mourning his desolate career life and were vastly anquished about his desolation of job opportunity.
《博物志》：“南海外有鲛人，水居如鱼，不废绩织，其眼泣则能出珠.”《新唐书·狄仁杰传》：“仁杰举明经，调汴州参军，为吏诬诉黜陟，使闫立本如讯，异其才，谢曰：‘仲尼称观过知仁，君可谓沧海遗珠矣。’”
5. 藍田日暖玉生煙. lan2 tian2 ri4 nuan3 yu4 sheng1 yan1. In Indigo Mountain, bathed under the warm sunlight, jade releases mist and smoke.
Indigo Mountain, refers to Mount Lantian (Lantianshan 藍田山, it is also called Yüshan 玉山). The mountain was said to be located to the south of Chang’an 長安 and was famous for its jade production. There are a few allusions about this line. One of them is the “Ziyu zhuan” 紫玉傳 (The story of purple jade). In this story there is a main character, Purple Jade, the daughter of the King of Wu 吳, died of a broken heart when she lost the young man she loved; and her ghost disappeared like smoke when her mother tried to embrace it. According to the
alluded purple jade story, the shimmery jade can only be seen from a distance, once when people want to touch it, it vanishes right away. Symbolically, the inaccessible jade at the sun bathing Indigo Mountain can refer to beautiful things in life, which look so beautiful and attracting, but when we want to stretch the hand to reach them, they vanished. Those things can be Li’s tragic romance or his career advancement opportunities.
Robert Frost said: “A poem begins with a lump in the throat.” We certainly can feel Li’s bumpy lumps along the reading. There is another quote goes like: “A poet is an unhappy being whose heart is torn by secret sufferings, but whose lips are so strangely formed that when the sighs and the cries escape them, they sound like beautiful music… and then people crowd about the poet and say to him: ‘Sing for us soon again;’ that is as much as to say, ‘May new sufferings torment your soul.'” (Soren Kierkegaard) It is sad to be a poet, isn’t it?
《元和郡县志》：“关内道京兆府蓝田县：蓝田山，一名玉山，在县东二十八里。”《文选》陆机《文赋》：“石韫玉而山辉，水怀珠而川媚。”《困学纪闻》卷十八：司空表圣云：“戴容州谓诗家之景，如蓝田日暖，良玉生烟，可望而不可置于眉睫之前也。李义山玉生烟之句盖本于此。”
Translated by Shu
Poem Analysis:
Li Shangyin’s poems have high level of ambiguity and are pretty hard to interpret or explain. One of famous modern writer Liang Qi-chao 梁啟超 (1873–1929) once commented that this 锦瑟 Jin3 se4 poem is one of a few poems that he could not determine and could not even explain the literal meaning line by line. Yet he felt they were so beautiful, and when he read them, they give him a new kind of pleasure. Liang also mentioned that beauty is many-sided, especially the naturally mysterious beauty.
From reading this poem, we noticed that there are numerous non-realistic beautiful images (like pearl tears, jade mist …) artistically invented and arranged by poet to convey his spirit or sorrow, a lot of allusions (Master Zhuang, Emperor Wang …), and we also know that the poet’s personal life experiences, unique creative ways of poetry, political experiences, or his understanding and relationship with Taoism all can make the interpretation different depend what the angle we look from.
The simplest way to interpret this poem is to think it as a sad love story which happened when he was young and he fell in love with a girl who maybe loved to play the zither, by chance? The sound of 50 strings zither was too sad, and that is why people downsize it to 25 strings. Some scholars argued that this poem is one of the 无题 wu2 ti2 poems （No Title poem) Li wrote, for it just took the first two words from the first line.
According to the love theme theory, we naturally assume that Li’s sad love story went a long mourning journey; so, when the poet reached his fifty birthday, and he still was lamenting and deeply tormented by this love experience. When he was reminiscing of the beautiful times with the one he loved in the long long time ago, he felt the sweet moments were so unreal, and so he doubted it, could not decide it was real or just a dream. Just like Master Zhuang got lost in his butterfly dream.
The tragic love possibly was an forbidden love, so that he used the allusion from the cuckoo? As well as the deep sadness that made him so miserable like the cuckoo split blood at so late at night? For the mermaid tears, we can think that maybe he was recalling the departing moments he had with his beloved under a beautiful moonlit night along a beach or a river ( Do you think mermaids might be able to swim upstream like salmon?) and watched the pearl like tears shedding from that beautiful green eyes ( thinking of Ariel now, the mermaid from Disney cartoon). Maybe he was so transfixed by the tears; so in his mind, the tears got transformed into stone image like pearls, and knocked and imprinted on his mind? Just kidding).
For the Indigo mountain part, it is pretty hard to interpret. Maybe it was something to do with a warm summer day outing to the mountain and watching the shimmering scene of mist rising from the jade? Well, we certainly know, it is not that simple. How about let’s combine the sad departing pearl tears with the lamenting of his desolate job career? The indigo jade producing mountain was near Chang An 长安，the capital of Tang Dynasty. The jade would be like the the dream career he inspired to have as an high position official in palace at Chang An. The jade or the career looked so attracting and beautiful, but they would never be reached. Or, thinking of the jade as the lady that he would never be able to marry? Sad right? If we got laid off and a broken heart at the same time, I think we would not forget about them easily either.
In the end, the poet concluded his poem with “This feeling might have become something to be remembered later on; Merely, at that time I were already perplexed and lost.” Bette Davis says “Pleasure of love lasts but for a moment; pain of love lasts a lifetime.” So sad, isn’t it? But, see it from the bright side — at least you got a great memory to last a life time? So, no matter this poem is written about his love, or his friend’s sad encounter, or about Li’s personal political career, or about the mysterious Taoism, this poem is all poetically beautiful and highly allusive and highly challenging and difficult to explain. Dear readers, you are welcome to make your interpretation on this unique, exquisite and mysterious poem. I would love to see how you would interpret it.
Chinese poem analysis and poet info video
李商隐 Li Shangyin background information:
Li Shangyin (李商隐; ca. 813–858), courtesy name Yishan (义山), was a Chinese poet of the late Tang Dynasty, born in Henei (now Qinyang, Henan). Along with Li He, he was much admired and “rediscovered” in the 20th century by the young Chinese writers for the imagist quality of his poems. He is particularly famous for his tantalizing “no title” (无题) poems.
Li had a moderately successful career in the imperial civil service, although he never obtained a high position, either because of factional disputes, or because of his association with Liu Fen (刘蕡), a prominent opponent of the eunuchs.
Li was a typical Late Tang poet: his works are sensuous, dense and allusive. The latter quality makes adequate translation extremely difficult. The political, biographical or philosophical implications supposed to be contained in some of his poems have been a subject of debate for many centuries in China.
His most famous and cryptic poem is called “Jin Se” (錦瑟) (the title is only taken from the first two characters of the poem, thus also a “no title” poem), which consists of 56 characters and a string of images. His “no title” poems are regarded as “pure poetry” by some modern critics.
Although more famous for his sensuous poems, Li indeed wrote in many styles. He can be either satirical, humorous or sentimental. Moreover, some ancient critics hold that he is the only poet who, in some of his poems, succeeds in imitating the masculine quality of Du Fu’s works.
Influence
In 1968, Roger Waters of the rock band Pink Floyd borrowed lines from his poetry to create the lyrics for the song Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun from the band’s second album A Saucerful of Secrets
Part of a poem by Li Shangyin is recited by a minor character in the Mortuary in the computer role-playing game Planescape: Torment.
This info about Li’s background comes from:http://history.cultural-china.com/en/59History2208.html
Pink Floyd – Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun