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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=350441" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Song of the Guitar.</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">In the tenth year of Yuanhe I was banished and demoted to be assistant official in Jiujiang. In the summer of the next year I was seeing a friend leave Penpu and heard in the midnight from a neighbouring boat a guitar played in the manner of the capital. Upon inquiry, I found that the player had formerly been a dancing-girl there and in her maturity had been married to a merchant. I invited her to my boat to have her play for us. She told me her story, heyday and then unhappiness. Since my departure from the capital I had not felt sad; but that night, after I left her, I began to realize my banishment. And I wrote this long poem -- six hundred and twelve characters. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">I was bidding a guest farewell, at night on the Xunyang River, <br>Where maple-leaves and full-grown rushes rustled in the autumn. <br>I, the host, had dismounted, my guest had boarded his boat, <br>And we raised our cups and wished to drink-but, alas, there was no music. <br>For all we had drunk we felt no joy and were parting from each other, <br>When the river widened mysteriously toward the full moon -- <br>We had heard a sudden sound, a guitar across the water. <br>Host forgot to turn back home, and guest to go his way. <br>We followed where the melody led and asked the player's name. <br>The sound broke off...then reluctantly she answered. <br>We moved our boat near hers, invited her to join us, <br>Summoned more wine and lanterns to recommence our banquet. <br>Yet we called and urged a thousand times before she started toward us, <br>Still hiding half her face from us behind her guitar. <br>...She turned the tuning-pegs and tested several strings; <br>We could feel what she was feeling, even before she played: <br>Each string a meditation, each note a deep thought, <br>As if she were telling us the ache of her whole life. <br>She knit her brows, flexed her fingers, then began her music, <br>Little by little letting her heart share everything with ours. <br>She brushed the strings, twisted them slow, swept them, plucked them -- <br>First the air of The Rainbow Skirt, then The Six Little Ones. <br>The large strings hummed like rain, <br>The small strings whispered like a secret, <br>Hummed, whispered-and then were intermingled <br>Like a pouring of large and small pearls into a plate of jade. <br>We heard an oriole, liquid, hidden among flowers. <br>We heard a brook bitterly sob along a bank of sand... <br>By the checking of its cold touch, the very string seemed broken <br>As though it could not pass; and the notes, dying away <br>Into a depth of sorrow and concealment of lament, <br>Told even more in silence than they had told in sound.... <br>A silver vase abruptly broke with a gush of water, <br>And out leapt armored horses and weapons that clashed and smote -- <br>And, before she laid her pick down, she ended with one stroke, <br>And all four strings made one sound, as of rending silk <br>There was quiet in the east boat and quiet in the west, <br>And we saw the white autumnal moon enter the river's heart. <br>...When she had slowly placed the pick back among the strings, <br>She rose and smoothed her clothing and, formal, courteous, <br>Told us how she had spent her girlhood at the capital, <br>Living in her parents' house under the Mount of Toads, <br>And had mastered the guitar at the age of thirteen, <br>With her name recorded first in the class-roll of musicians, <br>Her art the admiration even of experts, <br>Her beauty the envy of all the leading dancers, <br>How noble youths of Wuling had lavishly competed <br>And numberless red rolls of silk been given for one song, <br>And silver combs with shell inlay been snapped by her rhythms, <br>And skirts the colour of blood been spoiled with stains of wine.... <br>Season after season, joy had followed joy, <br>Autumn moons and spring winds had passed without her heeding, <br>Till first her brother left for the war, and then her aunt died, <br>And evenings went and evenings came, and her beauty faded -- <br>With ever fewer chariots and horses at her door; <br>So that finally she gave herself as wife to a merchant <br>Who, prizing money first, careless how he left her, <br>Had gone, a month before, to Fuliang to buy tea. <br>And she had been tending an empty boat at the river's mouth, <br>No company but the bright moon and the cold water. <br>And sometimes in the deep of night she would dream of her triumphs <br>And be wakened from her dreams by the scalding of her tears. <br>Her very first guitar-note had started me sighing; <br>Now, having heard her story, I was sadder still. <br>&quot;We are both unhappy -- to the sky's end. <br>We meet. We understand. What does acquaintance matter? <br>I came, a year ago, away from the capital <br>And am now a sick exile here in Jiujiang -- <br>And so remote is Jiujiang that I have heard no music, <br>Neither string nor bamboo, for a whole year. <br>My quarters, near the River Town, are low and damp, <br>With bitter reeds and yellowed rushes all about the house. <br>And what is to be heard here, morning and evening? -- <br>The bleeding cry of cuckoos, the whimpering of apes. <br>On flowery spring mornings and moonlit autumn nights <br>I have often taken wine up and drunk it all alone, <br>Of course there are the mountain songs and the village pipes, <br>But they are crude and-strident, and grate on my ears. <br>And tonight, when I heard you playing your guitar, <br>I felt as if my hearing were bright with fairy-music. <br>Do not leave us. Come, sit down. Play for us again. <br>And I will write a long song concerning a guitar.&quot; <br>...Moved by what I said, she stood there for a moment, <br>Then sat again to her strings-and they sounded even sadder, <br>Although the tunes were different from those she had played before.... <br>The feasters, all listening, covered their faces. <br>But who of them all was crying the most? <br>This Jiujiang official. My blue sleeve was wet.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Bai+Juyi">Bai Juyi</a><div class=q>
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